The Grim Dark and Me

It's been a while I know.

I've been ruminating on this one for a while, and have been wanting to explore why I as an (occasionally) tofu munching lefty who worries about human rights and such things am drawn to the world of Warhammer 40k and other 'grimdark' media.

40k has been suggested as being responsible for the term 'grimdark', the tagline being "in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war". The term refers to fiction with an emphasis on societies that are dysfunctional, violent and amoral. In 40k the human race is led on a killing spree across the stars by a psychic cadaver. All that is different is to be obliterated and the humans are in a constant state of war with the space-elves, the space-zombies, the space-communists and the Orks...in space. At the same time the Imperium of man crushes the souls of the majority who live in it, toiling in the name of the God-Emperor of mankind. There are of course a privileged few who live in luxury, but they too live in fear of the day their number comes up for some stupid reason.

I have two warhammer related tattoos. One is a servo-skull. These are floating skulls with varying levels of independent intelligence that serve as anything from calculators to personal assistants. No calculators don't need to be in a skull, yes they are. Mine is called Rodriguez, I don't know why. The other is a Fleur-de-Lis and Imperial Rosary. A Fleur-de-Lis was the first tattoo I ever wanted, mainly due to having been far too taken with Milady, but for these purposes it stands for the Sisters of Battle. This is a militant order of nuns fanatically devoted to the God-Emperor. As well as their own troops, the Battle Sisters are known for things like penitent engines, which are like standard mechas except the poor sod 'driving' the thing is stapled to the front and drugged out of their mind.

There's a lady on tiktok who has a bunch of these and has named them all after her exes. If that's not art I don't know what is.

There was a kerfuffle a few years ago about the existence of gay people in the novels that take place in this terrible universe. This should not be taken to mean that the gay people had a decent life - pretty much noone has a decent life. Everyone is miserable, and then hopefully they are dead and not a floating google. There was also this:

This was the response of a forum admin who had been pushed to the brink of sanity because some people had painted their Bloodletters (a cult dedicated to the Chaos God of Battle and Murder, the Chaos Gods are sort of the bad guys, but also everyone is basically the bad guys) with rainbows and other people got VERY UPSET about that.

But Siân, why would you read this stuff. You care about human rights and equal treatment and things not being generally awful.

First - I would say I am not alone. I happen to know of several people in the immigration law community who are also warhammer nerds. I like to think that the badly drafted sources books and obscure rules of play are good training for dealing with the immigration rules.

But beyond that, what on earth am I doing. Grimdark of this type doesn't give the same thrill as horror, where you get to safely experience a thrill or confront fears. Sometimes it is scary, but mostly it's not. Mostly what it is, is hilarious.

And that's the thing, this is where we get to laugh at evil, it's turned up to 11 and then some and becomes ridiculous. The skull adorned uniforms of the SS have noting on these guys - there are skulls on EVERYTHING, and SPIRES on SPACESHIPS for some reason. And I think that's what draws me to it. It comes from the same satirical British tradition that gave us Judge Dredd, another place where human darkness is mocked by turning up the volume until its nonsensical.

Now, for those wanting genuine emotional experiences those are to be found - I highly recommend the Gaunt's Ghosts novels by Dan Abnett. The death of one character in particular will live with me forever. But mostly, I think we need to laugh at horror, to play act our darkness (though interestingly SA is not something to be found much if at all in the Black Library novels). If this comes with the satisfying noise of far too many dice being rolled - all the better.