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Let's Read: Warhammer Fantasy: End Times

Do you prefer the current slow, detailed method or would you like a quicker, less detailed one?

  • Status Quo

    Votes: 28 66.7%

  • Quicker and less detailed

    Votes: 14 33.3%
  • Total voters
    42
Reader mode
Maugan Ra said:
At this point I am pretty sure 90% of the RPG market relies on you ordering the books online, either in pdf form or as a hardcopy delivered to your door.

Except for D&D itself, which is never available legally in pdf form, because Wizards have a bee in their bonnet about the very idea.
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There was a point where I had every DnD 5E book physically, until they released like a dozen more books over the course of a year or two. The RPG section had so many DnD books that it was swarming the shelves. Even my country in the Middle East sells DnD books. I don't think PDFs are necessary when you've cornered the market so thoroughly.
 
ScottishMongol said:
Well that's a letdown.

You know, up till now I was thinking there was an actually salvageable story somewhere in here about Arkhan and Mannfred's Excellent Adventure. If this had been unconnected to the End Times as a whole...and maybe been slightly better written...and had just remained about Mannfred and Arkhan having wacky hijinks, fighting Brettonians, Skaven, and Imperials as they try and resurrect Nagash while plotting against each other, you could have a pretty good story. Even if you still had them succeed, if this were a standalone plot it could serve to shake up the setting and introduce some cool new faction elements for the Undead.

So yeah, I guess if you changed almost everything about this it would be good.
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Might I suggest the 40K book The Infinite & The Divine? Its about two necron characters and their multi-millenia rivalry, with quite a few comedy duo type scenes.

dptullos said:
Everchosen. Nagash is the Everchosen
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This, I'll admit, was not a twist I saw coming. Bravo.
 
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Codex said:
Hmm. Interesting. Important question that may determine whether I read the book: On a scale of 1-10 how heavy is the homoerotic subtext?
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Hmm, pretty low I'm afraid to say, maybe only a 3 or 2. They are soulless robots, and I think they were both alive they were the equivalent of a dust covered professor that talks about how great his subject matter is but refuses to teach it.
 
LilyWitch said:
They introduce a femme Cryptek for Orikan to obsess over to prove how Not Gay he is.
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The classic. I think I felt the same way when I read synopsis for Gotrek and Felix and laughed at Felix being a womanizer who constantly gets laid with women. Authors get so insecure when they form a strong relationship between two male characters they need to desperately prove that they're Not a Thing, and they're Not Gay.

Gotrek literally carries a piece of armor on his shoulder in Age of Sigmar on the side that Felix used to stand when they were fighting together, and his books apparently contain segments where he searches for Felix in hopes that he was reincarnated in the Mortal Realms:

"Shoulder Plate of Edassa: On his left shoulder – the side that was once protected by Felix Jaeger – Gotrek wears a section of plate armour forged in the image of a roaring lion. Through some form of spiritual protection or perhaps just pure luck, the ornate artefact seems to protect its wearer from a great deal of harm."
 
Yeah. Orikan and Trazyn are def more frenemies than Gotrek and Felix being true companions but there is certainly still tension there. Not sexual, they are both solidly ace (at least as Necrons) but you could read homoromantic subtext into their rivalry.
 
LilyWitch said:
Yeah. Orikan and Trazyn are def more frenemies than Gotrek and Felix being true companions but there is certainly still tension there. Not sexual, they are both solidly ace (at least as Necrons) but you could read homoromantic subtext into their rivalry.
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I love using the word homoerotic subtext, but I don't actually desire eroticism so much as having a nice dynamic with substance behind it.
 
Codex said:
Gotrek literally carries a piece of armor on his shoulder in Age of Sigmar on the side that Felix used to stand when they were fighting together, and his books apparently contain segments where he searches for Felix in hopes that he was reincarnated in the Mortal Realms:

"Shoulder Plate of Edassa: On his left shoulder – the side that was once protected by Felix Jaeger – Gotrek wears a section of plate armour forged in the image of a roaring lion. Through some form of spiritual protection or perhaps just pure luck, the ornate artefact seems to protect its wearer from a great deal of harm."
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.. I had completely missed this. That's genuinely so sweet. I hope they find each other again.
 
One of my pet peeves is the idea that primary relationships need to be romantic or have romantic elements.

The fan tendency to make significant relationships romantic is frustrating, because it creates the expectation that you can't really be close to someone unless you're sexually attracted to them.

Dragonofelder said:
This, I'll admit, was not a twist I saw coming. Bravo.
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Thank you!

I like the idea that the real enemy is not the Inevitable Victory of Invincible Chaos, but the short-sighted greed of the people who keep breaking the shield wall for their own power. All of Archaon's dark faith would be useless without the useful idiots.
 
dptullos said:
One of my pet peeves is the idea that primary relationships need to be romantic or have romantic elements.

The fan tendency to make significant relationships romantic is frustrating, because it creates the expectation that you can't really be close to someone unless you're sexually attracted to them.



Thank you!

I like the idea that the real enemy is not the Inevitable Victory of Invincible Chaos, but the short-sighted greed of the people who keep breaking the shield wall for their own power. All of Archaon's dark faith would be useless without the useful idiots.
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That's basically canon. If Malekith hadn't set off the Sundering and started the Dark Elves, then ignited the War of Vengeance, basically every single evil in the modern world would either have never been created or would be much weaker without the vacuum the Dwarfs and Elves left.
 
Mopman43 said:
That's basically canon. If Malekith hadn't set off the Sundering and started the Dark Elves, then ignited the War of Vengeance, basically every single evil in the modern world would either have never been created or would be much weaker without the vacuum the Dwarfs and Elves left.
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Indeed. And the same is true for the ET, to a lesser extent.
 
dptullos said:
One of my pet peeves is the idea that primary relationships need to be romantic or have romantic elements.

The fan tendency to make significant relationships romantic is frustrating, because it creates the expectation that you can't really be close to someone unless you're sexually attracted to them.
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Cool down my friend. I'm a bi woman who likes seeing people like me in fiction. I'm not going to take over the internet and demand that all stories have primary characters in romantic relationships with each other. I'm perfectly aware that you can be close friends with someone without being attracted to them, I just want more stories for queer people like me. My tendency to view things in a romantic lens does nothing to your enjoyment of the characters.

It's also odd that you jump to sexual attraction. I'm perfectly fine with romantic attraction and prefer a focus on that aspect in fact.
 
Codex said:
Cool down my friend. I'm a bi woman who likes seeing people like me in fiction. I'm not going to take over the internet and demand that all stories have primary characters in romantic relationships with each other. I'm perfectly aware that you can be close friends with someone without being attracted to them, I just want more stories for queer people like me. My tendency to view things in a romantic lens does nothing to your enjoyment of the characters.

It's also odd that you jump to sexual attraction. I'm perfectly fine with romantic attraction and prefer a focus on that aspect in fact.
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That is fair. I am sometimes frustrated when fans sometimes treat platonic friendship as an inferior version of romantic relationships, but your desire for more stories for queer people is valid. I apologize for being the Fun Police.

I do feel that Orikan and Trazyn could work as extremely snarky exes. Perhaps you should contact the Black Library and inform them of the opportunity for a prequel covering their disastrous breakup?
 
Just an update on what's been going on for me. I'm still in London, and due to a special set of circumstances, I'm likely to stay for the next couple months. I expected to get back to reviewing the End Times when I got back to my country, but that doesn't seem likely for the recent future at least. I don't know when I'll start to get back to the End Times, but I'm currently having a lot of fun catching up with Age of Sigmar and engaging in the Warhammer hobby firsthand in a physical fashion. I felt like a child at a candy store when I went to the Dark Sphere megastore and found a veritable treasure haul of books at 50% off:
Unfortunately not a lot of Fantasy, and aside from Archaon's backstory nothing about the End Times. Not even secondhand hobby stores care about ET. Unfortunately for me, I don't have access to those books because I sent them back home before I knew I would be staying, so all I have is Covens of Blood because I didn't feel like explaining to my parents why I have a book with a half naked woman on display in my bag.

I'll probably get back to ET sometime soon, but honestly, I'm considering getting into the Warhammer hobby. I'm having a lot of fun lately.
 
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Announcement of Indefinite Hiatus
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    • I'd like to make this clear straight out of the gate. No beating around the bush. I'm probably never going to finish this readthrough. Sorry to those who have kept up with the thread in hopes of me going over it, but I've decided I don't want to do it.

    The reasons for this are multitudinous. I found while I was doing this thread that I am not made for brevity. I tend to want to make every section of every part clear and accessible to people, so my posts tend to be high effort and take a lot of time. I tried to make it briefer, but I haven't managed it. Another is that the process of working through the End Times as a Read-Along was genuinely draining and depressing. I expected this readthrough to be somewhat entertaining, at least for me and my viewers, as we all took turns making fun of the End Times. But I started to realise that after a certain point, things took a downward spiral. I started becoming much more annoyed and irritated at the writing, and this thread became a locus of negativity, which is well deserved because the End Times suck severely. I found that the experience was not positive, and I wasn't sure I wanted to continue to dredge up and focus so much negativity over something that was done and dusted years ago.

    I might read the End Times in my own time. I don't expect it to be entertaining or informative. I don't think I will post anything here about it, and I don't want to place the pressure on myself. I know it might sound silly, but I've been working on my mental health lately, and I've found that trying to drudge through something I don't enjoy is not good for me and probably not good for anyone. I saw people doing these types of read-alongs about stuff they passionately hate and thought I could make it work, but I don't think I'm the type of person who can do that. It just doesn't appeal to me.

    If I make a thread about something in the future, then it's going to be about something I'm passionate about and that I like. Which brings me to another aspect of why I'm stopping. I've fully gotten into Age of Sigmar, and I have to say that I'm a fan. I have a literal army of Sylvaneth models and an asssortment of Kharadron Overlords, Daughters of Khaine and Idoneth Deepkin, and dozens of books. I've enjoyed my time delving into a world that I like, and I found that the End Times didn't even factor in all that much into the setting anyways, so it's not like I even want to read it. Most of the End Times is either ignored or even retconned in AoS, so there was no point in reading ET. If something was set up in the End Times and left loose, it is not getting resolved in AoS. Even GW are trying to forget that it exists.

    The point is, I'm done with End Times. Thank you to everyone who's stuck around with me through the months. Sorry I couldn't finish a single book. I hope I see you all again another time in another thread, and hopefully in a more positive light.

    Final verdict on the End Times: Damn. It's pretty bad.
     
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