Switch Theme:

I think GW is completely neglecting the lore of the alien races.  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
»
Author Message
Advert


Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
  • No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
  • Times and dates in your local timezone.
  • Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
  • Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
  • Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.




Made in us
Nasty Nob




Cary, NC

I'm a LONG-time ork player and collector, so I would love to see more about them, but I do think that BL has a difficult balance to strike with xenos stories.

If you write alien races with genuinely alien perspectives, it's going to be really, really hard for readers to emphathize with them, simply because the main character's perceptions and emotions are actually foreign to the reader.

If you make aliens that are relatable to the reader, you are, in effect, not really writing very well about aliens. These xenos should be way more different to us than medieval monks, or feudal Japanese, or cavemen. They would be the products of billions of years of evolution that is completely different. Genetically, we would have more in common with sponges and moss than an ork or an eldar, and maintaining a reader's connection with the alien is going to be hard when the reader genuinely doesn't think the way the alien does (heck, how does the writer imagine it?).

Given the age of the eldar race, they were a civilized culture before we were homo sapiens. How many spider monkeys could write believable novels about human motivations (and how many other spider monkeys could read and understand them?). The weakness of the Eldar and Dark Eldar trilogies was that they made Eldar too much like humans, in my opinion. I never really stopped reading the book and thought, "Why would he (or she) possibly do that?". If I had, would I have realized that the author was capturing Eldar psychology, or would I have criticized the author for sloppy, unbelievable motivations?

I do think that BL should be having a LOT more stories with humans interacting with xenos (not just screaming threats and shooting them), since it would serve to look at xenos psychology, but still maintain a human perspective on the whole thing. I keep toying with a Moby Dick pastiche where Ishmael is a crewman about a Rogue Trader vessel and Queequeg is a Blood Axe Ork Freebooter working for the humans.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/04/07 03:34:12


 
 
Forum Index » 40K General Discussion
Go to: