Remove ads

You Are Wrong About Skaven Morality, or, Stop Citing The Warhammer Wiki You %*$%'s

Alex said:
I will say personally that I prefer them to be basically pure evil since in my mind mostly because I like to imagine them mostly as objects of satire showing off the foolish and destructive nature of blind self interest and superiority (both superiority of the self and superiority of the in group or tribe). They are Patrick Bateman an obvious monster camouflaged among the boardroom, Johnny Rico and his school Pals slowly becoming disposable fodder and SS commanders etc. Seeing them as basically walking political cartoons leaves them with less room for nuance but personally I think that would take away from their sting.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I still recc Children of The Horned Rat, it doesn't make them especially less evil but it is more detailed than anything I've seen come out of AOS. Although keep in mind like the tyranids plenty written about the Skaven is not meant to be written BY skaven.
 
Part of the problem with Fan Wiki is that they are A) written by fans and B) written by fans.
A) implies that people who are really into a subject to the point of being able to write about it are the most likely to have implicit bias based on their own faction preferences and can't write from a neutral point of view.
B) implies that people who get into a fandom deep enough that they care to the point of devoting their time to writing articles about the lore are likely to be the most blind to the publishers complete disinterest in their being a cohesive lore encylopedia. If they want you to have such they will sell it to you. This ends up with wiki's either having to make interpretations or flat out invent to fill the gaps.

Games Workshop lore flat out contradicts itself for the purpose of sell more stuff.
Some of the best written and beloved novels from the early days went out of print due to contradicting the timelines and most recent lore.
Then of course GW pulled the old DC comics gambit of resetting the whole universe just so they could start telling the story again from the beginning.
 
SinisterPorpoise said:
In fact, the opposite may have more support; I keep hearing about an official short-story that had the entire 40K universe inside of a snowglobe on top of some Imperial Magister's desk.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
When Age of Sigmar introduced its meta-setting, with cycles of worlds getting nommed by Chaos and then getting reborn in new but different ways, my guess was 40k would be revealed to be another turning on that same wheel. Maybe in the future, maybe in the past or maybe all Wheel of Time and both. But they haven't really done much with the concept since that I remember.
 
Fourthspartan56 said:
To be fair early Warhammer did have direct references to 40k (heck not even just early Warhammer- Total War Warhammer 3 is curated by GW and it has a literal chainsword as a unlockable item) and Chaos is essentially identical. It's obviously not canon but it's not just 40k fans trying to project their preferences onto Fantasy.

It relies on a fairly selective examination of the evidence and is ultimately incorrect but I can see why someone might come to the conclusion that they're in the same universe.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Most of that evidence tends to be easter eggs put in just as shout-outs.

Though honestly, they're not helping themselves keeping the two separate, when they write things like the libre chaotica.

Which has this.

View: https://imgur.com/a/6nwE79X


Then again, given that the series is written in-universe as someone who is slowly losing their mind it all can be taken as literally just a fever dream.
 
Parth said:
Most of that evidence tends to be easter eggs put in just as shout-outs.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Right, that's why I said it obviously wasn't canon.

My point was just that there was scraps of information that could make a semi-plausible claim to a connection if one wanted to make the argument. Not that it was actually justified to do so.
 
IIRC the last hint at a shared universe was an aos novel that had some characters traverse nurgles garden and get aided bt a mysterious huge silver knight... cough cough Draigo... cough cough...
 
Honestly, besides all the entirely logical reasons, painting the Skaven as inherently pure evil was always going to fail for purely emotive reasons. Just as Skaven are rats in the first place because a lot of people have hangups about rats for various reasons, and view them as gross, disgusting vermin, plenty of other people can't take it entirely seriously because the counter-narrative, based on hard evidence, that actually rats are really cute sometimes, and that therefore:


 
Depends on the rat. And I don't think that the Skaven are created and presented as pet material. Or to evoke cuteness or good feelings.
Skaven in official lore is are made to evoke feelings of disgust, gross and horror. Not cuteness or good feelings.
 
thor2006 said:
Depends on the rat. And I don't think that the Skaven are created and presented as pet material. Or to evoke cuteness or good feelings.
Skaven in official lore is are made to evoke feelings of disgust, gross and horror. Not cuteness or good feelings.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Well, sure, thank you for completely misunderstanding my point. Skaven are the way they are, and were chosen to be rat-men, because of the associations with plagues and pestilence, with being vermin and gross and evil and bad and all of that, which some people associate rats with (which is why comparing humans you don't like to vermin unworthy of life is a classic dehumanization tactic).

However, such an association and take will always have to contend with the fact that there's a counter-narrative about how cute and neat rats are, which has within it a different set of associations.

You can compare it to the way that every generic fantasy said (or used to say), "Snake people are fundamentally evil, because the traditional view of snakes is as evil, malicious liars and poisoners and etc" and then plenty of snake enthusiasts went, "Oh, yeah?"
 
Yes but for such counter narrative to happen the rat needs to either make them cute or assign something that makes either misunderstood heroes, vilains or people with a heart of gold. Or anything to evoke a pet or sympathy towards Skaven.
Without those things the default assumption about rats and what they are is going to the on the negative side. Even to rats enthusiasts. Because Pestilens or Moulder or general behavior and look of Skaven will not evoke the idea of cute and cuddly even to rats enthusiasts.
As far as things stands from both of at outlook and personality wise the Skaven are evil and made to be despised by the audience. No examples to soften that image exists.
 
Rats do make nice pets.

As long as you get a rat that has been specifically bred to be a pet.

Also, ask any snake enthusiasts and they'll tell you that snakes are nice pets as well. Provided that you respect them.

While yes there might be a counter-narrative, it doesn't change the fact that rats do in fact carry diseases, or snakes even pet snakes can in fact hurt humans if you don't respect them.

Very few people would own a king cobra for example.
 
thor2006 said:
Yes. I don't doubt that. But Skaven are not pet rat material. In the official lore.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well that sounds like official lore's problem. Did they really expect everyone to treat species based on Someone's Favorite Pet as absolute evil just because it's described with the words that many people have already used for Someone's Favorite Pet?
 
I believe the point several users are missing is that several traits can be described the exact same way but get wildly different results.

"A verminous face peered out from the shadows. Fuzzy hands gripped at crude weapons, while a furless tail capped in bronze thrashed behind it."

Perception 1) "Plague-bearer!"
Perception 2) "Friend-shaped."
 
Also, while the Under-Empire is in fact fascism hours, I will say that tail-blades are honestly kinda a very cool little thing that I think should exists in more media because they're very cool as a 'tailed being fighting' thing.

But yeah, the Under-Empire is very clearly an authoritarian, theocratic menace... the actual question, and the one where the Warhammer wiki actively manufactured evidence while linking to citations that did not say what they said they did, was about the idea of the inherent evil of all Skaven.
 
The Laurent said:
Also, while the Under-Empire is in fact fascism hours, I will say that tail-blades are honestly kinda a very cool little thing that I think should exists in more media because they're very cool as a 'tailed being fighting' thing.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I will say that they're a bit iffy for me, because if you're a tailed being, your tail is part of your spinal column and whipping it around in a battle environment where giant bludgeons and blades are being swung around is a bit iffy unless the tail in question is very sturdy and well protected.

Something like a WHF saurus, that has a lot of muscles and scales and is purpose-built by genetic engineers to have their every appendage be crafted for no purpose except combat, can rock a tail blade and it's probably fine. Something like a skaven is asking to get their tail docked with a sword.
 
16 characters said:
Was Sleek Sharpwit not a canon character?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Outside wanting for Skaven to have a history and to have things that should be preserved, what other things Sharpwit had to make them good, or symphatetic?
And didn't Sharpwit was killed by Queek Headtaker, and his head?
The problem with Skaven is their biology and an active Horned Rat. Removed that and the Skaven would soon have civilizations that are not 100% awful.
 
Honestly I love this thread, it actually made me like skaven more because I love the idea the council of 13 are just leading around their population. Makes sense aside from the fact that skaven atrocities are on a whole nother scale to other skaven so it would raise awareness to probably not trust Mr grey seer.
 
But yeah, fundamentally the average Skaven is a Skavenslave. It's just that this is a hard thing to wrap your head around, because obviously in the game they're at best an undifferentiated mass of low-value troops you send in knowing they're going to die horribly and quickly.

It's like how you should never forget that a majority of the world, both in the medieval period and now, is... poor.

The nobles and the lords and even the merchants and burghers and all of that... they're a tiny tip of a very large iceberg.

So thinking about what the fuck it looks like below is probably going to be enlightening.
 
Fun fact: Bats are mentioned to be a common pet among Skaven. While they dislike cats, birds of prey, and species of dogs commonly used by ratcatchers, they are said to find bat squeaks soothing [soothing!].
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top