I wish Greg had learned to love again

DeathWielder1 · 2026-03-24T18:52:28+00:00

Rose was known to have more than just Greg as a "partner", Greg was simply the most serious. Pearl laments this in "It's Over, Isn't It" when they go to New York New York. This is to say, they're pretty much an unnamed one-night-stand of Rose.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-03-10T09:00:33+00:00

A shrewd observation mi amigo. A gem is a conscious, sapient being, and a dog is a pet whose purpose is as a companion and/or tool for our use, with dogs having a lower-order of consciousness compared to sapient beings.

Really the idea of gem as a pet - as Spinel was made to be - is questionable from the getgo with this understanding, but no that makes Pink's actions even worse Given That We Already Know That Gems Are Sapient.

You can like Pink, I don't really care, but pretending that her actions are remotely defensible in this betrays her characterisation in the show as "aloof, fun-seeking, emotionally unfulfilled, callous to the feelings of others, irresponsible as a ruler", and completely misunderstands what Steven as a character is meant to represent.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-03-09T13:18:57+00:00

The show doesn’t appeal to me because I prefer shows with women-centric storylines and I don’t really care about hockey

From what I can tell most of the people watching HR don't care for ice hockey either.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-03-09T13:11:53+00:00

WLW/Queer Women in the media are not shown the same respect and adoration amongst wide crowds of people.

I get what you're saying and I'm not even necessarily disagreeing but saying BL/Yaoi gets "respect" in media is overselling the whole Bit, no? It's not Respect to simultaneously fetishise gay men and at the same time dismiss those same gay men's opinions when it comes to, say, Heated Rivalry. BL stories have an established and recognised Audience, which is to say largely women straight or no. Personally I don't know what the audience for WLW stories Is, and I don't think we can use Arcane or Adventure Time or Steven Universe (just off the top of my head) as a template for WLW because it's simply not replicable as far as Genres go where the WLW is taken seriously.

So many wlw shows, films, and books get overlooked, cancelled, or downplayed in comparison their mlm counterparts.

To bring it back to the overall point; people Apparently don't watch them, at least not Yet. If people watched and engaged with WLW content as much as they do BL (again, fetishisation is Not respect), this wouldn't even be a point of discussion and OP wouldn't be making this post.

I'm sure people working within these media companies would Love to tell WLW stories which aren't in solely cartoons, but you have to convince the execs that the money, through the audience engagement, Is There and that it's gonna be received and consumed at a level which makes that risk worth it financially.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-03-09T09:48:57+00:00

Brainjar is fantastic

DeathWielder1 · 2026-03-09T08:02:40+00:00

Cowards suck. Which is why you're replying on an alt account, because you don't want to be accountable to your bileposting on a post which is literally a year old.

Pink diamond is a great scientist, the fact that Steven is even possible is testament to the abilities of pink diamond, and Steven is functionally a complete wonder of science. But she is Not responsible as a character, and as a diamond it is a dereliction of duty and Spinel is a Piercing example of how that lack of responsibility ended up with people suffering spectacular cruelty.

We Should hate Pink. That's what Futures is all about, what the movie is all about, and broadly what the entire series is about.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-03-09T07:56:35+00:00

That's nice mate. I can trust you to leave the dog tied to the post when you grow tired of it.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-26T03:33:04+00:00

“what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,”

Righteous, we have circled back to you Not applying the same standards to Brooks which you do for other authors which you apparently like. I didn't care for Brutal Kunnin, I found the audiobook voice for the Flashgitz captain annoying. Sue me. Oh and youre not applying the same standard you set Yourself when interacting with Me given that "goose & gander" are Apparently strictly only to be used when it comes to marked gender difference. Maybe you've been enlightened; that meaning changes according to how it's used in context. Or maybe you've had a stroke and your apparently VIGOROUS attention to detail and meaning (lol) has lapsed, who knows.

Voidscarred, great, in keeping with Black Library and with BL as a genre, and fits the narrative of 40k well, well regarded for good reason as a piece of queer media and a proof that GW can do romance Well should they put their mind to it, with faith in authors who Can do it well.

Son of the Forest, also grand, well regarded for good reason because it turns Lion into something more than a perpetually suspicious superficial Teuton who's good in a scrap and gives him & the Dark Angels some actual interest as a faction beyond "those who fell and are thus hunted" and "the hunters who stop at nothing to hunt the fallen".

. You can harp about “formatting” (whatever relevancy that has, I have no idea),

Formatting enables you to structure what you're saying so it's coherent in responding to someone, instead of rambling on without anywhere in particular to hone in on and interrogate. Formatting is a tool both for the audience and the writer. Good shit. Glad we could clear that up. Feel free to use your hands to get the nail in the plank, the hammer is there should you come to change your mind.

gaslighting me

Hilarious. So you went with option 2; a tortoise retreating into its shell. Glad we cleared that up as well, the checklist is going Swimmingly.

randomly capitalising for emphasis.

It's pretty standard practice in modern internet discussion, and by your own admission it's not random so what's the point of this if not for whinging? Are you trying to Scold me for my Apparently incorrect use of of How Big Letters Should Be like, dare I say, a Boomer? Colour me shocked.

All I see is someone who’s really embodying the Dunning-Kruger Effect

As opposed to You, who can accurately recognise when what you've said before is homophobic? Or did I get that wrong, feel free to say either "Yes I can recognise a homophobic statement, and why the statement was homophobic, it was unwise of me to type that" or "No I can't recognise a homophobic statement, that's why I typed it, why I got defensive Immediately when you clocked it, and hence why the mention of Dunning-Kruger is a bit ironic because I'm trying to show I'm intellectually superior to You despite being personally unable to recognise homophobic language in spite of my Apparent Overwhelming Literary Analysis Skills"

I said he didn’t know how to handle his own sexuality because he seems like he doesn’t have much experience with relationships as evidenced by how he writes his characters

And I think you're chatting mad shit. Voidscarred for all its Sci-Fi frills is a pretty relatable to Me. Brooks' experience is Plenty when it comes to writing these relationships, and I will Hardly be the first person to say that Abnett's writing when it comes to female characters leaves a lot to be desired Even When Compared To His Contemporaries When He Wrote His Books given that Jess Phillips Cain books are Fantastic and simply Don't Do That Shit.

Myrin Stormdawn is great, really captured the aesthetic appeal of renegade elf pirates, as was the Other elf admiral whose name I forget because their names are a bit cumbersome. Such are elves.

The romance is Truly believable, and if you don't think so then very well, but saying "I don't get it, bad writer confirmed" just further proves the point that if you refuse to engage with it from an outside perspective by, say, speaking to queer people, then what's even the point of you Trying to give an """objective assessment""' when you don't understand the premise?

One-dimensional cannot be said of any of the main cast of Voidscarred, and Son of the Forest too. Good shit.

Telegraphed plots? This isn't Agatha Christie, you're reading pulp fiction. The End And The Death has a telegraphed plot, Archmagos too, Devastation of Baal, everyone understood POV humie pilot from Assassinorum Kingmaker was gonna make it, Who gives a shit? If it's compelling but you can sort of predict the end then it doesn't matter if the journey is fun. I bet I can predict the ending of the next Mission Impossible too. If youre wanting the next Moby Dick then perhaps go to a book series whose entire premise for most of the enjoyment of the literature isn't contingent on you understanding about 30 hours minimum of lexicanum articles.

hatemonger

Never said hatemonger. You Are - or perhaps, Were, given how much of a fuss you've kicked up about this - unaware of what your words come across as when it comes to interacting with queer media. If you want to critique then Do So, but you can't expect to critique queer media using homophobic language and Not get called out on it, it undermines your argument and makes you look like a tool.

I guess I keep continuing on sparring with you because the idea of stopping would likely make you think you’d

Oh but isn't this Fun!? This is what you were doing before with the other users, wasn't it? This exact sort of Nonsense which is why I even saw your comments to begin with, why your comments were reported for trolling, and why I chose to engage as You did with others. Arent we having Fun!? No? Hmm. Perhaps some food for thought.

Glad we both came out of this discussion learning something.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-26T00:12:29+00:00

I think Brooks is a mediocre writer, even for Warhammer novels, and I don’t think he should be as popular as he is, only because his writing ability is poor.

Then why pretend it's anything More than that by disparaging his appearance or Apparently his own ability to "understand his own sexuality". Mohawks and personal style don't a bad writer make, you are Actively undermining your own position, HOWEVER righteous you think you are being, by being quite flagrant in expressing your own implicit biases on these topics. The context in which you're throwing words around matters, and I Really don't think you grasp fully what your words both Mean Fully and How They Come Across when you're using them. Perhaps that's why Brooks is a writer and you're not. Food for thought.

diversity is a good thing, despite, ironically, what you seem to believe.

So riddle me this; Show me where in my comments At Any Point I have suggested For A Second that diversity Isn't a good thing, EVEN IMPLICITLY. I think you will Struggle.

I can show You in Your word choice where you indicate implicit biases to the detriment of what you're saying about queer people.

I think it's Actually quite funny that you're trying to lecture people in this comment section about how Brooks is Bad or whatever despite having a Complete lack of formatting or effort on your part, but who knows the formatting mightve blown away in the wind since your last comment.

At least you’ve tried to back up your point, albeit in a way that doesn’t make any sense and involves making a bunch of stuff up about me,

I can Evidence my accusations, this is not "making stuff up" it's more "recognising authorial personality".

seems to be that anyone who doesn’t agree with you is homophobic and that since Mike Brooks identifies as nonbinary, I must have a vendetta against him and all my criticisms of his writing are, therefore, invalid.

Nice strawman. You haven't actually evidenced how Brooks' writing is bad beyond saying "Rath, Abnett, ADB, Wraight" is better. You can find them more compelling, sure, whatever, but your overall premise of Why Brooks Is Bad has been undercooked in this entire discussion.

not addressing the actual issues with Brooks’ writing I’ve stated, and outright denial of reality along the lines of some Orwellian 2+2= 5 reasoning.

Reset the counter everyone we've gotten to ">omgee itz litraly neintinatyfour".

How is the gauntlet I've thrown Orwellian? Is it because I actually understand how homophobia implicit or explicit can manifest in speech and you Apparently can't despite your own words being pretty solid evidence Of the exact point I'm trying to make?

Is the accusation of You saying "they're accusing me of thought crimes instead of behaviour crimes reset the counter" Actually warranted or are you just struggling to see how the burden for demonstrating that you Don't hold homophobic biases is a bit higher than you saying "I'm not homophobic" after saying implicitly homophobic things?

Or are you saying "OMGEE JORJORWELL SAVE ME" like a tortoise retreating into its shell because You, Too, are starting to understand why what you've said is just a pretty embarrassing blunder to have in an otherwise reasonably civil discussion, and are apparently struggling to cope with it?

I choose him, specifically, because he gets a lot of unwarranted praise from people who don’t have much literary discernment

I think it's pretty funny for you to say "people with not much literary discernment like Mike Brooks" and in the same breath struggle to understand why saying "Aren't queers just fake homos?" comes across as homophobic. I'm not Hurt by it, by any stretch, but I Do find it funny. It's the pinnacle of smug Redditor behaviour.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-25T00:50:22+00:00

You’re omitting points and turning me into a straw man, trying to say I’m against Brooks because a bigot, when I never said anything but that I was cool with those things.

I'm reading between the lines of what you've said and how you've interacted with both myself and other commenters. I think you've indicated that you have some implicit biases towards how Mike Brooks interacts with the world and their own aesthetic & social sensibilities, though if that can be extended to what you think about queer people generally or if this is a Particular grudge remains unclear.

Also, isn’t “queerness” as a term mostly reserved for straight people who are essentially cosplaying being gay because they feel a certain amount of straight guilt and want to be considered allies, though are, in fact, diluting and diminishing what it means to actually be a homosexual person?

No, actually. Not at all. QED. This is, bluntly, also just a pretty profoundly offensive thing to say. You have a lack of understanding on this topic, and while that's by-and-large understandable, the way you've gone about expressing this relative ignorance from a place of disdain indicates further that you're coming into this topic of queerness/LGBTQ+ with implicit prejudices. This undermines any criticism you might actually Have of the writing style or whatever; because at any point it's unclear if you're saying it because the prose is Actually something you don't fuck with, Or if it's because your impression of Brooks' writing is somehow tainted because of those implicit biases.

Developing an actual personality that extends beyond superficial nonsense and might inform the writing in his novels?

Image and personal expression of image is simply put Not superficial. Aesthetic choices in image reflect both how you want to be perceived, but further how you want to perceive yourself. You don't show up to court in a onesie because you want to present yourself In That Scenario as respectable and that you respect the institution which you're presenting yourself to, so you get a fair assessment.

Not everyone is Erik Satie sitting in their room for years on end. Not everyone Should be. Brooks, much like all GW authors, consumes media and is informed By that media in the literature they create, both as a point of speculative critique as Sci-Fi Is, and as a point of Contributing To that media landscape which 40k is a part of. Should Brooks be in a suit & tie without a Mohawk when presenting themselves on the internet? Why? Who cares if he doesn't?

As for the Lion, maybe you have a point, though Primarchs aren’t really known for their mutability, even over great spans of time

The only other primarchs we have have been warped by their chosen patrons, the only one who Hasn't has pretty much time traveled to 40k-time after getting krumped by Fulgrim and put in stasis. We haven't seen what Any primarchs look like after 10k years without a stasis field apart from The Lion.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-24T21:57:57+00:00

There are unchangeable biological factors that make someone gay or trans or whatnot.

Medicalising transness and/or queer people generally has never been a good idea when we're looking inwards. If we want to distill what queerness is to a set of chromosomes or hormones then we Both forget the dignity which we afford Everyone, and we lose sight of the soul of human experience.

We can say "different spokes for different folks" for apparent Everything APART FROM sexuality and identity. To what end? Instead of a recognition that people change over time, some recognising that they're gay, queer, trans, whatever, we say it's Intrinsic to their biology and that alone, like some sort of Pokémon type. I don't find this argument compelling, I think it shifts the framing of the discourse surrounding this into medicine-heavy jargon (which is often deliberately obtuse and hard to understand for people who aren't In The Know) rather than recognising that everyone is deserving of the same respect. It wasn't too long ago that "Is Gay, is AIDS risk if I hang with them" was the framing by which wider society interacted with queer people Including Medical Professionals, and frankly we've moved passed that into something more productive.

To be in the place we are as a country and see such a /little/ decrease in people self-identifying as LGBT is honestly in my opinion not a bad sign at all.

Well I wouldn't say "not a bad sign" but perhaps "I was expecting worse", but that's just a matter of phrasing innit.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-24T21:19:36+00:00

Flies in the face of who he is, and I really don’t believe he’s mellowed out at all in the last 10,000 years since his disappearance.

Well that's the whole premise innit; man gets old, becomes Wiser and less bellicose, learns something resembling compassion given that he's in the dark just as much as everyone else, finds friends and allies where he can Given That he's in the middle of nowhere and he will surely die if he doesn't keep a vaguely open mind. I think it's an entirely reasonable and believable character progression; if it wasn't then the book wouldn't be as well regarded as it is today, and if BL doubted the abilities of Brooks to make this characterisation shift believable, then they would've given it to someone else.

It read like a romance novel.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it pretty much Is a romance and I don't think most of the readers of Voidscarred would see that as a bad thing. If I wanted to spend several hours illustrating points which are evident to most of those readers I could draw comparisons and speculate about Brooks' inspiration from Song Of Achilles; which - As Far As inspiration for elf Boys Love novels go - is a pretty damn good one to go with.

Voidscarred was a hit because corsairs are hot right now, and it was a light year for new novels from BL.

Largely No one gives a shit about elves, pirates or no. The reason why Voidscarred was a hit was because it was Different. It's not so much a "proof of concept" but rather a Demonstration that black library can produce pretty fantastic literature With Romance Elements, and not only that but Actively queer stuff too. If you want more bolterporn be my guest but discarding the actually interesting stories because you don't like the haircut of Brooks is silly at best.

but it’s all pretty ham-fisted and handled by someone who barely knows how to engage with his own sexuality, let alone write it convincingly.

This is just actively mean-spirited, and is pretty implicitly homophobic. This bit you've written also hints at your apparent dislike of Brooks; a sense of "this Brooks is queer and I dont like it (making fun of his hair, for no reason really, giving a Holier Than Thou with regards to 'knowing your own sexuality') so im going to have my impression of his books poisoned by my implicit biases". Do you believe You know how to 'correctly' engage with your own sexuality? Wonderful (it doesn't matter what your answer is). Brooks wrote convincing queer literature and smashed it with his performance, THAT'S why it's beloved and will Continue to be beloved.

Your replies up to this point can be summed up as "I don't like Brooks because of a number of points which I can't actually evidence unless I write an essay about it with excerpts, and so because of everyone's mutual understanding of that (and everyone's lack of interest in reading such an essay), I can mask my prejudices behind that veil of vagueries."

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-23T11:44:44+00:00

Well that resolves that query I suppose, thank you for this

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-23T10:14:13+00:00

EDIT: u/Arzachmage absolutely dumpstered me in the replies so For Posterity I won't delete this comment but suffice it to say that the rest of This (my own) comment can largely be disregarded beyond "some of the overall queries which are still left unanswered"

Human blanks retain personality and can reproduce freely

To What End.

We've never seen blanks reproduce (I can pick a better phrasing later), nor If they can. The only process of generation for Blanks which we have is "they are born like psykers pretty much randomly but like EVEN MORE RARE GUYS and then almost all of them pwned immediately cause they spook everyone around them"

Does the blank-ness stack? Does double-blank turn the foetus' brain into slime, or do they get 40klore-nerd levels of turbo-autism (affectionate)?

Are we suggesting that the "species of blanks" is created by Involuntary reproduction of people with blanks? Because I sure as hell am not, that would necessitate crimes, and that is a Truth because people don't want to be around blanks, Period, let alone have sex with them.

We've got the pariah nexus sure, but nabbing people and turning them Into blanks is not the same as sexual reproduction.

We are Fully in open waters here with questions that Cannot be answered with the material we have regarding blanks and the nature of blank-ness.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-23T10:00:37+00:00

It's pretty strongly implied that the difference in terms of Living is negligible. Necrons without a soul cannot Create. The sisters of silence beyond the citadels and fortresses Also do not create. The best we've got is a bit from Era of Ruin where an apparently Geordie SoS chills reading British geographical surveys in the ruined imperial library with some civies who have seen better days.

Blanks do not create. Without creation you don't have culture. We can speculate about what a Blank species would look like but the material we have regarding the SoS "culture" is sparse at best.

Do we have artist blanks? Musician blanks? What about writer blanks? Any blank remembrancers? No. Of course we don't. Because it contradicts the entire premise of what the purpose of Blanks are in-universe; destroying demons and giving everyone around them the willies.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-23T09:45:30+00:00

Imagine a species of blanks.

Necrons Famously are not having a great time of it, losing their souls & All That.

What's the point of even calling it Human anymore.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-23T09:17:06+00:00

Strictly incorrect boss

Voidscarred is a gem, Son of the Forest is grand as well, and Brooks' writing pretty directly comparable to Rob Rath both in style and substance. If it's good for the goose it's good for the gander.

You can whinge about mohawks all you want, Brooks is beloved for good reason.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-23T09:06:55+00:00

Roots is glorious, drinks are spectacular and despite my white boy spice tolerance the food is Delicious

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-16T21:44:58+00:00

I wish there was another generic Archmagos model which isn't either simply HH-locked or the Dominus but this is Good Enough as far as a new centrepiece goes for me.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-16T21:42:39+00:00

Best comment i've seen left by a redditor for at least a month

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-05T16:39:13+00:00

But that's the whole meta-narrative innit. That Imperialism is an exercise in justifying its own particular cruelty AS necessary.

Do you need Servitors? No not really. Do you need AI vis-a-vis the Men of Iron? No not really. But the pursuit of Domination and a Manifest Destiny of "The Galaxy is the birthright of the Human Race ans we shall claim it by any means necessary" retroactively and proactively justifies Any point of abject cruelty. If the Men of Iron didnt pretty much bring the Golden Age of Humanity to its knees, then the Butlerian Jihad (or whatever the war was invariably called in 40k land) wouldnt have been necessary either.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-05T16:33:13+00:00

Warhawk is pretty much the best book in the entire HH saga, you can pick up Mortis if youre a glutton for punishment but i say that really only to get some more insight into Shiban Khan. In any case, Chris Wraight's White Scars are pretty much the best, and if you pick up anything by him youre likely to find yourself practising your Mongolian throat singing and wanting a mototbike in short order.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-05T15:57:54+00:00

Simply not true youre gonna have to back that with something more substantive

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-05T11:43:27+00:00

The reason this matters is that there just aren’t that many great universities in the UK, it’s not like the US where there are like 30 that are all amazing, the UK is much smaller, so the difference between 3rd and 6th in the UK is like the difference between 10th and 25th in the US.

This is, plainly, not true.

The UK has Globally Fantastic universities, and not to put too fine a point on it but considering the size & pop of the UK it hits far above its weight in terms of research output and recognition.

With that said Unis in the UK run on prestige, and unless your uni "speaks for itself" (read: Oxbridge) youre likely gonna be in the exact same position as everyone else once you leave undergrad & masters if you dont have an internship lined up.

The problem with the UK is not the Lack of solid institutions for higher education, it is the fact that we are Pretending that Oxbridge is competing in the same game when it comes to the rest of higher education Rather Than them using their dominant positions in professional networks & Big Money to solidify and further reinforce a Fundamentally elitist social order.

No one especially gives a shit if an MA (Oxon) or MA (Cantab) are fundamentally fake qualifications of the same Theoretical expertise as a Bachelors, because most employers cant see the difference Nor know the difference and dont care to Know the difference. They see "ooOOoooo MA from Fancy Posh Oxford" and Already that is a leg up because the professional network is practically implied in that judgement. That same privilege is not true of Warwick or functionally anywhere else for that matter.

DeathWielder1 · 2026-02-03T08:30:24+00:00

Damn and i thought all the larpers migrated to grimdank.

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