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 tauist wrote:
IXth gets theirs next week eh? Nice.

Have they finally retconned all the homosexuality references out from DA lore? Still mentions "The Rock" and that?

Why would they? Because why should they?

Yes, right. Its kind of difficult to retcon the name of the Primarch and it relates to the name of a real life poet and poem. So nothing modern, giant corporate GW can do about the whimsy of how a lot of these names were initially thought up.

I think someone looked into 'The Rock' being a gay bar in Nottingham thing and found it was an urban legend.

 tauist wrote:
Have they finally retconned all the homosexuality references out from DA lore? Still mentions "The Rock" and that?

All two of those references are fanon, not canon. There's no evidence there actually was a gay bar/club called the Rock. I don't even know of any evidence that the Lion El'Jonson pun goes as deep as the subtext of the poem.

On Ultramar they have the Blue Oyster Bar.

Just mucking about. But seriously, according to Valrak they could be announcing a new mid-size Knight for 40K soon. Getting a little ahead of myself here, but if it's true then I sure hope they provide rules to run it in 30K.

What does mid size mean? Between Armiger and Questoris? Same as Questoris?

SamusDrake wrote:
On Ultramar they have the Blue Oyster Bar.

That gives a while new meaning to the Blue Öyster Cult…

I have this image in my mind of Titus and one of his mates walking straight into that situation.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
What does mid size mean? Between Armiger and Questoris? Same as Questoris?

According to Valrak he said between the Armiger and Questoris.

SamusDrake wrote:

According to Valrak he said between the Armiger and Questoris.

That's pretty interesting, I hope it gets HH rules too.

 Fabio Bile wrote:

 tauist wrote:
Have they finally retconned all the homosexuality references out from DA lore? Still mentions "The Rock" and that?

All two of those references are fanon, not canon. There's no evidence there actually was a gay bar/club called the Rock. I don't even know of any evidence that the Lion El'Jonson pun goes as deep as the subtext of the poem.

To add some context here, a lot of the ideas for these names were created very early on in the setting. GW wasn't the multi-million pound behemoth that it is now and the characters and background didn't have the gravitas that has since been attached to it. I think the link to the poem and author is pretty much beyond dispute, as there are so many similarities: the poem named 'Dark Angel', by Lionel Johnson, and which is about his own repression of homosexuality (I assume this is referenced by the 'terrible secret' that the Chapter/Legion harbours).

This is a more detailed examination and the poem itself. I think you have to be willfully obstinate, or have some other issue that is bigoted in nature, to ignore the very obvious links to how the name and initial DA fluff was formulated.
https://www.thedarkfortress.co.uk/librarium/lionel_johnson.php

There are several other well documented links to literary figures relating to the other Primarchs, most notable Konrad Kurze, and the Joseph Conrad novel Hearth of Darkness. Others are extremely basic in terms of how they are named (such as Ferrus Mannus or Vulkan for example) - but you have to remember these were often only a single line of text and a character name with no other exposition. Rick Priestley in interviews about the topic said he had initially wanted the Heresy to be so steeped in legend and so long ago that no-one was really sure whether any of it really even took place or if those were real people, in the same way modern historians view characters from Greek legend. As such having the leader of the Iron Hands chapter have a name that is literally the latin for 'Iron Hands' makes sense in that context, and which has now made it seem a bit weak because everything has had so much exposition and we know what haircut Sanguinius was sporting during the battle for Terra.

I'm just parroting what 28 Mag, issue #3, page 187 says:

"What may not be immediately obvious is that
this roots the Dark Angels Legion in queer
culture, as The Dark Angel is a meditation
on Johnson the poet’s deeply repressed
homosexuality. Driven to ruinous alcoholism
by desires he was told were unforgivable, The
Dark Angel is one man’s shriek against his
own unalterable nature. In the poem, Johnson
characterises his homosexual desires as the
titular Dark Angel, who ‘dost my soul such
subtile [sic] violence’. In addition to this, the
Dark Angels’ Chapter planet is called The Rock.
During the late 1980’s - the time of 1st edition
40K’s publication - The Rock was also the
name of Nottingham’s local gay club."
-V.W. Talos, Love Among Angels, 28 Mag

Looking further deets on this, indeed seems like there was no club called "The Rock" in Notthingham around that time. One suggestion thinking they meant some "castle" by it, but who can tell really.. must have been a nickname for some other bar GW guys used as an in-joke, perhaps.

I just like to hold onto this cuz I know all the rightwing 40K people get foamy at the mouth at the slightest notion there might be something to this "theory"...

 Pacific wrote:

To add some context here, a lot of the ideas for these names were created very early on in the setting. GW wasn't the multi-million pound behemoth that it is now and the characters and background didn't have the gravitas that has since been attached to it. I think the link to the poem and author is pretty much beyond dispute, as there are so many similarities: the poem named 'Dark Angel', by Lionel Johnson, and which is about his own repression of homosexuality (I assume this is referenced by the 'terrible secret' that the Chapter/Legion harbours).

One should put not too many thoughts into the poem. All the Fallen stuff is from 2nd edition while the Dark Angels existed since the Rogue Trader book.

S-x among all-male organizations, including religious orders is a thing as well.

But I doubt GW's use of real world history would ever extend that far.

 Pacific wrote:
I think you have to be willfully obstinate, or have some other issue that is bigoted in nature, to ignore the very obvious links to how the name and initial DA fluff was formulated.

woah there buddy

Here David Ely did a thorough rundown of early Dark Angels background:

https://david.ely.fm/2021/05/04/writing-about-the.html

Turns out they had the names before they had the story. The Dark Angels and Lynn Elgonsen are present right from the start, in the Rogue Trader rulebook. But there's no element of shame and secrecy until Codex Imperialis from the 2nd edition starter box.

So it's possible that Rick Priestley (or whoever) had the whole theme and backstory in mind but didn't bring it up for six years. It's also possible that he just thought "Dark Angels" sounded cool and that the reference to Johnson was purely about the title of his poem.

Now, when they get to Codex Imperialis, yeah, that quoted passage sounds like they're riffing on the poem. But that doesn't mean they're carrying over any of the subtext and context.

Granted I'm not big on poetry, but to me the poem doesn't even read as gay, particularly. It reads like Catholic anxiety over having any kind of sexuality. The Dark Angel could just be masturbation. Of course, we know the author was gay so it figures that's what he was writing about, and that makes sense.

And we "know" that the Dark Angels' secret is some kind of implication or in-joke about homosexuality. That factoid's been passed around the fandom for decades. But again to me the Dark Angels don't seem any gayer than other Space Marines. The other main Chapters have secrets too - they're vampires, werewolves and Romans. All of which are kinda gay. Or as gay as you want them to be, anyway.

SamusDrake wrote:
But seriously, according to Valrak they could be announcing a new mid-size Knight for 40K soon. Getting a little ahead of myself here, but if it's true then I sure hope they provide rules to run it in 30K.

Just as soon as they give us rules for the Dominus knight in 30k, I am sure they will.


Aaany second now...

 Ashiraya wrote:

Just as soon as they give us rules for the Dominus knight in 30k, I am sure they will.


Aaany second now...

I've got this gut feeling that the Dominus will return when it has a repackaged 30K specific kit, like the Questoris and Armiger kits. Along with the three Cerastus kits, I'd guess that they can only release so many kits in one edition and so they might introduce the kit and it's rules with a journal release - for this edition.

I'd consider that very optimistic, considering it didn't get rules in 2.0 or 3.0, whereas Armigers were released essentially simultaneously and did receive rules in both.