My head canon is that he is behind every major event that has happened in recent years. He hates Warp travel though, thinking that it's for servitors, so it takes him time to work.
That is what makes 40k so great, the freedom of making your own stories. There is just one caveat, you can and are encouraged to make your own stories but GW might still retire a whole line of models (like it is currently happening with the firstborn) so you can suddenly not play your story with the current edition of the game rules. So soon your chapter of marines who have lost contact with the Imperium for the last 1000 years is stuck in an older edition of the game rules. Not a problem until you move to another city and need to search for a new player group...
Aside from the video which really clears any questions I had about how anything "canon" works in 40k, I just have one sidenote, whether or not you will or have ever been thinking about it, never change you're intro/outro music lol, I hope you keep going on to make more 40k videos and I hope you're channel grows from it because the way I see it, 40k has the chance to really take off here soon and I'll hope to come across a video of yours in the future and hear that classic intro soundtrack and know, this will yet be another fantastic 40k video to enjoy
A friend of mine is a bit of a purist when it comes to the lore he accepts because he hates the way Black Library handles the Emperor's Children, specifically before their fall to chaos, and as such he cleaves to the Forgeworld black book series.
Your videos are well made and highly insightful and quite frankly, you could make them on any 40k subject and I would enjoy them and find them interesting. I enjoy noticing when current works seemingly contradict the stuff I read back in the old Rogue Traders days, but I never took things as being wrong, just wrongly understood. Just like GW wrongly thinks Squats should be forgotten about!
The idea of canon in a table top RPG game in the first place is funny, they created a setting for games to be created in and pretty much anything goes. You get two choices, a fantasy medieval type setting or a futuristic war torn setting to create games in. You can create whatever lore and story you want in your games in the settings they provide, just don't try to make money on it/publish it as a fan work for other fans to enjoy or they'll squash you with their army of lawyers XD.
Any comic book fan of any seniority considers GW's abuse of 'canon' and 'retconning' downright adorable. If you've followed any title from the bigs over the course of a few decades, you've found yourself going "Wait, WHAT?!?" a...number of times.
usually in comics they can tell that oh it's just another timeline, but to me it works only like maybe 2 times and then turns into bs, the only exceptions are the ones where lore actually allows for it like Doctor Who with its time manipulations and whatnot,
@@alterego9082 American comics have this thing where authors are often replaced by others, and when that happens stuff changes and a new canon is made. Which apparantly is a pain in the behind for book stores so i learned, they also like Mangas more as thats 1 author over the whole series, makes sorting alot easier.
@@Spacefrisian yeah and mangas i would say are in general more orderly like they are divided in arcs and you go through them , with comics i find it often more confusing, like they put more effort into art style then orderly presentation
@@nivekleveb8872 duh, it is superhero universe, its completely different in its realm of possibilities then any sci fi universe even one as edgy as 40k
Cool take on this topic. Really not excited by the characters and weapons in the more recent iteration of 40k like giant robot suits where the character is fully exposed, just naff. I think 2nd edition and dark millenium are the pinnacle. Yes it is slow but the close combat system was awesome and made for real duels, the wargear cards were super fun, and the vehicle card system was so much cooler and made vehicles realistically worrying to infantry. keeping your games under 1500 points made for a game that you could play on a weekend day happily.
The art of the 5th book of the HH (Fulgrim) has some mk vi emperor's children , even though the mk vi wasn't invented yet (the artwork was depicting the drop site massacre).
Part of the reason I go with "everything is canon, not everything is true" is to handle GWs response to their farming of IP in the black library and the like. Hit any 40k loretuber and throw in the guys at 40klore on Reddit and they can cite down to the page number in book xyz where it says "blah" and immediately get countered with another book 123 that says the opposite. They're loose with it because they don't give a shit. As long as merch sells they go "maaayyybbeee...who knows". So they seem to lean to that view. For money. If something sticks, they can turn it into a $250 limited edition box set that sells out immediately and gets scalped. Except for Ian Watson's Inquisitor, they literally (and literarily) added a bit to say this isn't canon.
@@ArbitorIan This video is kind of the lore of Warhammer lore but you know what I mean. You have good presentation and speaking skills and that's standout since there are so many 40k channels out there. Your lore videos seem to perform the best, maybe from those having broad appeal or the mysterious RUclips algorithm boost, they are always enjoyable. Cheers mate, I hope more people find and grow your channel.
Interesting take, and one that I've heard repeated a few times. I do agree that it is highly personal what you consider to be "canon" or not, or if there even is one, and that objectively, officially GW has this "Everything is canon, not everything is true" bit. Like for me personally, that doesn't really hold up. It's an easy way to dismiss criticism of inconsistencies and the like. They may claim that it's just unreliable narrators or setting for a table top wargame meant to be flexible but their publications and actions simply show that isn't the case and I think you have to be pretty naive to believe that. Don't get me wrong, I love the setting and many of novels, even though the quality can be a bit... inconsistent at times. But I think we should call it for what it (sometimes) is, bad writing and misinformation (which is okay!) and not just believe GW's excuse every time. Especially considering how very hard GW has been clamping down on fans expressing themslves and exploring their games and their stories through conversions and fan animations.
Kinda funny to watch this video in the present days considering now GW started to vehemently protecting their intellectual properties against fan creations If you can't charge people for overly priced plastic figurines and paint tools in the age of internet then you must start charging for their imaginations
So glad I found your channel. You've done a great job distinguishing yourself from the pack of other 40k channels by clearly putting a lot of love and effort in each video, and it shows. Keep it up Ian, can't wait for more!
Real history ain’t clear either, it’s interpretations of available sources and physical evidence, in constant development. So GW seems better than most.
Like, your post **should** read as 'theorising' instead of 'interpretations', but interpretations by motivated actors are the why the first five words in your post are apt on a range of subjects...
4:40 "...and they [Squats/Squat homeworlds] get eaten by Tyranids..." Not exactly "canon". It's something some designer said they considered doing, stated in a blog post somewhere, but which never entered the books themselves. It's just accepted wisdom among fans, even though it was never confirmed officially. GW just stopped talking about Squats. Fans latched onto "Squats got eaten by Tyranids" because it was the only explanation for their absence that approaches being true. GW could bring the Squats back at any time. You know, if they weren't _cowards._
I dont even play the tabletop but i love the setting, so for my POV the fact that sometimes we never get to see actual interesting parts of this like the cabals, Alpharius plot, Squats, heresy era marines, thunder warriors and etc pains me to no end. They just need to tell more about them, not even change them, just have them fight some random war in some random planet, theres PLENTY of those anyway. Man, sometimes i find a curse to actually like warhammer (glances at EndTimes and IP changes lately)
I think the ambiguity about the nature of events and 40K is an important part of how players interact with the setting. A person who wants to learn about the lore of Star Wars or Star Trek can find answers that are probably objectively true in encyclopaedic articles, and they can trust that to be true, and they can be comfortable in the certainty of their knowledge. Interacting with warhammer lore is much more like studying ancient or medieval history. There are very clear, and accepted generalisations which is probably someone’s entry point to their knowledge on the subject. As they continue their study, they find oddities and contradictions that fail to synchronize with the generalized knowledge the student possesses. That forces them to form a more nuanced opinion, or maybe come to question the previously held generalized. Because 40K is a galactic dark age, I believe it is important for the aesthetic of the 40k universe to create the sensation that you are grasping for truth in a mire if ambiguity, bias or outright absence of evidence, just as a historian must when trying to describe 6th century Britain. This makes the lore more engaging to me. (While simultaneously serving its primary function as a bottomless vessel for people’s imaginations to pour into painting plastic models engaging in table top warfare)
Very well articulated, and Rick has always been clear that this was his explicit intent. The unreliability of the narrators has been rather obscured as the narrative setting has grown, in terms of volume, medium and contributor, because if you overdo the subjectivity it gets tiresome. But the background has always been in the service of products, and the unreliable narrator allows for commercial flexibility while maintaining a semblance of narrative cohesion.
Really cool take... Totally... I mean look at the history of Carthage. The only sources of information we have on them is the Greeks and the Romans, and the only thing they tell us is they were a bunch of merchants, some pearl clutching about Hannibal, a couple of possible god names, and that the Romans really, really really hated them... a lot. 40K has losses of information on the scale of Carthage that happen every other Tuesday. Hell the Squats might not even be extinct. Just misfiled.
EXACTLY! Love this comment ^v^ And, aside from the massive size and inefficiency of the Administratum, pro-imperial propaganda is canonically the Imperium's state-religion so nothing is 100% trustworthy, especially anything xenos-related.
A major instance I can think of where they definitely "retconned" something is the 13th Black Crusade. The global Eye of Terror campaign in the early 2000s had its ending and minor consequences on the lore, but that was all changed in 2017 with the Fall of Cadia and return of Guilliman.
There is kind of a pattern in how GW decides that Lore will be decided by fan games. Then Chaos gets smashed and GW gets mad, retcons that and hands Chaos a massive victory, defying all logic in process.
Didn't it end in a stalemate? Like Chaos scoring a minor victory, but their fleet was unable to launch a full invasion because the Imperium players won their games, and only half of Cadia ended in Chaos hands? I would see the Fall of Cadia as a continuation from that ending, a progress from the original stalemate, as opposed to a retcon. Unless there's something I'm misinterpreting.
In our country, we don't even use the word "lore" for Warhammer facts. We just use the word "background" instead. Warhammer (40k and Age of Sigmar) is not a historical setting, it's a sandbox. It will never be spelled out completely and definitively. Because there should always be a place (and a lot of space!) for fun creativity. This is much more important than the "canon". In addition, think how bad it will be if the world is written to the end and it will be difficult to add something new to it! Thus, all the facts, all the official stories in the books are just samples of what can happen. This is not holy Scripture, for the sake of some comma of which it is worth killing your friends.
It's honestly really refreshing to see a fictional universe take this approach to canon. There needs to be a baseline level of consistency for a story to function, but getting caught up in the tiny details rarely (if ever) actually helps that story. Especially for stuff that involve hundreds of creators working over the course of decades.
Space Marine is still one of my favourite 40k novels as it was a fantastic portrayal of the internal life of a marine in a time when we didn’t really have that. Many modern BL books like the Horus Heresy & ABD’s work have surpassed it, but the image of things like him sitting in the cell scrimshawing has really stuck with me over the years.
@@thebag1981 I read that book so long ago I kinda forgot about it, then I read Sons of Dorn and thought it was a weird re-write! Space Marine was a great book, wish I still had it.
I think this works for most things, but doesn't work for some lol. Kremlo the Slann isn't canon in the main WHFB setting. Saying there's no canon implies there are no facts in the setting. If they decided there really are fewer than 20 primarchs (21 because of Omegon I guess) that'd be a retcon.
So I've been out of 40K for a while but isn't the end result of the Eye of Terror campaign from 2023 and the supplements that followed retconned by what happened in the Gathering Storm? Like as I recall (and I did work for GW while the campaign was on and then again about three years later) in the original version of the Thirteenth Black Crusade, Cadia held and Abbadon ended up getting knocked back into the Warp.
Nope. The 2023 plotline is the same as the original one - Abaddon attacks, is pushed back by Cadia's defenses and it ends with a stalemate 'war going on on the surface'. Then the 2023 plot continues on from there and adds the second fleet, pylons, Blackstone Fortress, etc etc. Gathering Storm continues and adds to the story from Eye of Terror.
Concerning squats: they were a large space empire, or farers. Thus if they lose their home planet doesn't mean that the race is dead. If Terra was lost, humanity would still exist.
Exactly. There are Squats everywhere in the setting. They're just too short to see, what with all the scale creep and Space Marines now being 17 feet tall or whatever.
@@Madhattersinjeans I’m aware of that, it’s just sad that negativity always draws the most - be it views of money. I agree and we indeed need more of channels like these, instead of the top ones filling up the feeds with hate and rage - which I’ve now started to hit “not interested” on.
I think unlike many franchises that are based around books, movies, etc. games like 40K have a back ground universe that is meant to be played in by people. Much like D&D, players of 40K have the ability of telling their part of the story with their group friends. It is this that also allows player, in their own understanding of the universe, to have a Space Marine Chapter that is all First Born who have carved out a minor fiefdom on the other side of the Great Rift and no one can tell person that they are wrong. 40K form its beginning was about telling stories on the table top (competitive play has its place), so have a flexible ‘canon’ mean the people who play can feel comfortable making up whatever they want.
I remember when Eldrad killed himself at the end of the 13nth black Crusade when Cadia never broke, and was shattered into many crystals that boosted other Farseers psychic powers (was actually a artifact in the Eldar codex)....pretty hard to explain that when he is also running around now atm and Cadia was destroyed...
As someone who grew up with Star Wars novels, video games, etc, this approach is vastly superior imo. Sure, it might be a mess, but it's everyone's mess, not merely some ticks on a corporate marketing strategy. Well okay, not *just* that.
2:47 HOLD ON! I have hereticus material at home?!? For shame! I'll have to check which print edition it is; I bought it in like 1993-1995. Might be worth something! :D
Good job collecting all those author quotes for the video. I've been enjoying your content and your collabs with Mira a lot lately, and I think that one of the strong points of your work on youtube is acknowledging the authors and history of GW as not being separated from the development of the setting. Most youtubers don't do that and likely many simply don't know the real world story of Warhammer (the most notable exception being Luetin)
Nicely done. One example of a non-retcon retcon would be the 5th edition Necron codex which relegated the previous canon to a subset of the "expanded" canon, except for the Pariahs buggering off somewhere unknown (an example of ignoring the inconvenient lore) and the disconnect between the codex lore (which kept the "fear & loathing" fluff) and the actual new rules which destroyed the old "fear & loathing" tabletop lists. The best example of a classic retcon would be the difference between the pre-6th edition Black Templar and 6th edition and after Black Templar. It was pretty much caused by GW, as usual, failing to exercise critical editing when they went for the psuedo-Catholic sideswipe with the Council of Nikea book. Yes, there has been much gaslighting about it being the trial of Magnus and the Emperor's decree not meaning what it said compounded by the closely following Horus Heresy interfering with implementation of the decree. The end result was the Black Templar being the only (known) group of Astartes following the Emperor's decree and therefore the only group not declared by the Emperor himself as the Emperor's enemies. They were also arguably the most atheistic of Chapters, did not follow the codex Astartes and fairly obviously had, at a minimum, numbers approaching a small Legion. Oops! So, we got a cut in numbers, a change to being Empy worshipping idiots, and codex compliant other than an odd troops choice. They retained a lack of psykers, but cried that they didn't know why Empy took their witches away. It removed many of the distintive bits of organization (no Devastators, but double the special and heavy weapons in squads for example) and went from heavy armor and drop pod specialists to that artifact of the tabletop, the TemplOrks screaming "Blood for the Blood Emperor!" Then, the most amusing bit, the one thing both versions would have agreed on, absolute rejection of Primaris Marines, was hand waved away.
Interesting video! I'd be interested in what you think about "The Outer Circle" a warhammer critics video about cannon is like. He supposes that the setting changes far less often than people suggest when you look at it over the years. I think a possible example of this is your video on the Badab war is a good example of this, you talk about its history and how it changes, yet I was struck by how much over the years stays the same, it really is adding on details and filling in gaps, and sometimes calling back to something that was changed to re-introduce it, like making the Tiger claws a successor of the Astral Claws, because Tiger Claws was the original name used for Astral claws in the first concept of the war. I am of the personal belief that part of the reason warhammer lore is like this is because it has several years of stories that were written without a clear idea of cannon that its impossible to untangle now. I think it shows an inability to clean house and decide on a single cannon, and I just wonder if its worth the frustration
IIRC, the BBC has a similar stance on Doctor Who canon that GW does on Warhammer canon: there isn’t one. Atlantis was destroyed three different times, three different ways. All these stories are true, and trying to reconcile them will make you go cross-eyed.
So if i make a fanfiction of three succesor chapters (the destroyers,void tridents and the fire lords) not very known where they are doing a crusade to exterminate a chaos sorcerer of a warband like the disciplines of destruction in a unknown planet. Then it will be canon?
I've always been under the mindset that everything is canon, unless there is something that disproves it/changes it or if the ip owner says something else
1:37 By that logic Space Crusade and Heroquest are both Canon. Also Games Workshop in the 'Realm of Chaos' supplements 'Slaves to Darkness' and 'The Lost and the Damned' say that the Warhammer Fantasy world is a planet in the 40k universe. Games Workshop have denied that this is true since late second edition, but GW are wrong. I prefer a quote from White Dwarf, I forgot which one (probably between 190 ~ 245) but someone said that Warhammer 40k is like Batman, there are multiple iterations and each is different from Adam West to Michael Keaton (and on and on and on)
Channel is totally better than any others out there! I tried listening to a few of other popular recommendations and they’re unbearable, like poor attempts at audio drama and just unnecessarily long and drawn out. Amazing shirt btw.
![Yailin La Mas Viral, @kreizyk.official - Dale 2 (Remix) [Video Oficial]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/JaYHBzgqz94/mqdefault.jpg)
Everything is Canon - Motto of the imperial Guard Artillery
Astartes doing not Astartes thing? Canon! Inquisition defecting to Tau? Canon! Yo Mama? Canon!
@@RonaldoLuizPedroso that would explain Grey Knights doing not Grey Knights thing. It was a blatant chapter tarnishing attempt.
Kreigsman to be specific...😂
Arbitor Ian: Everything is canon.
Da Orks: Everything is cannon.
The funny did not justify the laugh.
Under rated comment. Need more likes
Agreed. I laughed harder than I should have.
That should be spelled with a K.
This should be made a canon Ork saying by GW. (with a K, of course, like Scooter Campbell points out)
We're missing the obvious question: where has Obi-Wan Sherlock Clouseau been hiding all this time?!
Oh. That’s a reference that I get
He hasn't, you just aren't looking hard enough
@@mazimadu You don't find Obi-Wan Sherlock Clouseau. He finds you.
Heroes such as him do their job and move on, he seeks no accolades.
My head canon is that he is behind every major event that has happened in recent years. He hates Warp travel though, thinking that it's for servitors, so it takes him time to work.
That is what makes 40k so great, the freedom of making your own stories.
There is just one caveat, you can and are encouraged to make your own stories but GW might still retire a whole line of models (like it is currently happening with the firstborn) so you can suddenly not play your story with the current edition of the game rules.
So soon your chapter of marines who have lost contact with the Imperium for the last 1000 years is stuck in an older edition of the game rules.
Not a problem until you move to another city and need to search for a new player group...
Aside from the video which really clears any questions I had about how anything "canon" works in 40k, I just have one sidenote, whether or not you will or have ever been thinking about it, never change you're intro/outro music lol, I hope you keep going on to make more 40k videos and I hope you're channel grows from it because the way I see it, 40k has the chance to really take off here soon and I'll hope to come across a video of yours in the future and hear that classic intro soundtrack and know, this will yet be another fantastic 40k video to enjoy
A friend of mine is a bit of a purist when it comes to the lore he accepts because he hates the way Black Library handles the Emperor's Children, specifically before their fall to chaos, and as such he cleaves to the Forgeworld black book series.
This is the best explanation of something many people struggle with as fans I have ever heard.
Your videos are well made and highly insightful and quite frankly, you could make them on any 40k subject and I would enjoy them and find them interesting. I enjoy noticing when current works seemingly contradict the stuff I read back in the old Rogue Traders days, but I never took things as being wrong, just wrongly understood. Just like GW wrongly thinks Squats should be forgotten about!
Mate, I'm so happy I came across your channel. Great work!
The idea of canon in a table top RPG game in the first place is funny, they created a setting for games to be created in and pretty much anything goes. You get two choices, a fantasy medieval type setting or a futuristic war torn setting to create games in. You can create whatever lore and story you want in your games in the settings they provide, just don't try to make money on it/publish it as a fan work for other fans to enjoy or they'll squash you with their army of lawyers XD.
Any comic book fan of any seniority considers GW's abuse of 'canon' and 'retconning' downright adorable. If you've followed any title from the bigs over the course of a few decades, you've found yourself going "Wait, WHAT?!?" a...number of times.
usually in comics they can tell that oh it's just another timeline, but to me it works only like maybe 2 times and then turns into bs, the only exceptions are the ones where lore actually allows for it like Doctor Who with its time manipulations and whatnot,
Everything cannon awsome that’s the truth for warhammer 40k emperor protect… cadia stands in the heart of her people go kasrkin squads go…….
@@alterego9082 American comics have this thing where authors are often replaced by others, and when that happens stuff changes and a new canon is made.
Which apparantly is a pain in the behind for book stores so i learned, they also like Mangas more as thats 1 author over the whole series, makes sorting alot easier.
@@Spacefrisian yeah and mangas i would say are in general more orderly like they are divided in arcs and you go through them , with comics i find it often more confusing, like they put more effort into art style then orderly presentation
@@nivekleveb8872 duh, it is superhero universe, its completely different in its realm of possibilities then any sci fi universe even one as edgy as 40k
When are you gonna finish your necromancer gang series? That was pretty interesting tbf
Love the videos! Keep 'em coming.
huh, no wolves on Fenris ....
6:32 - 6:45 Nice... appreciated.
This just hurts now
Cool take on this topic. Really not excited by the characters and weapons in the more recent iteration of 40k like giant robot suits where the character is fully exposed, just naff. I think 2nd edition and dark millenium are the pinnacle. Yes it is slow but the close combat system was awesome and made for real duels, the wargear cards were super fun, and the vehicle card system was so much cooler and made vehicles realistically worrying to infantry. keeping your games under 1500 points made for a game that you could play on a weekend day happily.
Awsome vid thank you my opinion everything cannon
That picture of Rick priestly with boo on his tongue lulz
The art of the 5th book of the HH (Fulgrim) has some mk vi emperor's children , even though the mk vi wasn't invented yet (the artwork was depicting the drop site massacre).
MK VI was used extensively during the Heresy.
Bravo, brilliant and insightful explanation.
*profoundly deaf Imperial Guard artillery officer*: "What? What's that? Yeah, yeah, everything is Cannons! Loads of Cannons mate, we've got cannons for days!"
Part of the reason I go with "everything is canon, not everything is true" is to handle GWs response to their farming of IP in the black library and the like.
Hit any 40k loretuber and throw in the guys at 40klore on Reddit and they can cite down to the page number in book xyz where it says "blah" and immediately get countered with another book 123 that says the opposite.
They're loose with it because they don't give a shit. As long as merch sells they go "maaayyybbeee...who knows".
So they seem to lean to that view. For money. If something sticks, they can turn it into a $250 limited edition box set that sells out immediately and gets scalped.
Except for Ian Watson's Inquisitor, they literally (and literarily) added a bit to say this isn't canon.
I love they class things they don't like as Heretical
Nailed it. Perfect explanation
You make very nice lore videos.
Thanks, one day I'll actually get back to making them!! 🤣
@@ArbitorIan This video is kind of the lore of Warhammer lore but you know what I mean. You have good presentation and speaking skills and that's standout since there are so many 40k channels out there. Your lore videos seem to perform the best, maybe from those having broad appeal or the mysterious RUclips algorithm boost, they are always enjoyable. Cheers mate, I hope more people find and grow your channel.
Ah Sisters of Battle Canoness! I get it now.
More videos!
Interesting take, and one that I've heard repeated a few times. I do agree that it is highly personal what you consider to be "canon" or not, or if there even is one, and that objectively, officially GW has this "Everything is canon, not everything is true" bit. Like for me personally, that doesn't really hold up. It's an easy way to dismiss criticism of inconsistencies and the like. They may claim that it's just unreliable narrators or setting for a table top wargame meant to be flexible but their publications and actions simply show that isn't the case and I think you have to be pretty naive to believe that.
Don't get me wrong, I love the setting and many of novels, even though the quality can be a bit... inconsistent at times. But I think we should call it for what it (sometimes) is, bad writing and misinformation (which is okay!) and not just believe GW's excuse every time. Especially considering how very hard GW has been clamping down on fans expressing themslves and exploring their games and their stories through conversions and fan animations.
Everything is canon, - Yvrain and Guilliman are fucking
dark imperium init
Love it!
How about the real cannon that we know as tts?
Kinda funny to watch this video in the present days considering now GW started to vehemently protecting their intellectual properties against fan creations
If you can't charge people for overly priced plastic figurines and paint tools in the age of internet then you must start charging for their imaginations
Right on, as usual.
I'm gonna go with Everything Is Cannon, cause hell...it's good stuff!
So glad I found your channel. You've done a great job distinguishing yourself from the pack of other 40k channels by clearly putting a lot of love and effort in each video, and it shows. Keep it up Ian, can't wait for more!
I like to believe that Necron pariahs still exist. Like Szeras has some around or whatnot.
That's almost completely certain- Szarekh used them as the basis for establishing the Pariah Nexus.
Real history ain’t clear either, it’s interpretations of available sources and physical evidence, in constant development.
So GW seems better than most.
Like, your post **should** read as 'theorising' instead of 'interpretations', but interpretations by motivated actors are the why the first five words in your post are apt on a range of subjects...
4:40 "...and they [Squats/Squat homeworlds] get eaten by Tyranids..."
Not exactly "canon". It's something some designer said they considered doing, stated in a blog post somewhere, but which never entered the books themselves. It's just accepted wisdom among fans, even though it was never confirmed officially. GW just stopped talking about Squats. Fans latched onto "Squats got eaten by Tyranids" because it was the only explanation for their absence that approaches being true.
GW could bring the Squats back at any time. You know, if they weren't _cowards._
I dont even play the tabletop but i love the setting, so for my POV the fact that sometimes we never get to see actual interesting parts of this like the cabals, Alpharius plot, Squats, heresy era marines, thunder warriors and etc pains me to no end.
They just need to tell more about them, not even change them, just have them fight some random war in some random planet, theres PLENTY of those anyway.
Man, sometimes i find a curse to actually like warhammer (glances at EndTimes and IP changes lately)
It did enter the books, it was in the preface to the second edition of the Inquisition trilogy by Ian Watson
They did bring one back .)
Turns out they're not cowards XD
I think the ambiguity about the nature of events and 40K is an important part of how players interact with the setting. A person who wants to learn about the lore of Star Wars or Star Trek can find answers that are probably objectively true in encyclopaedic articles, and they can trust that to be true, and they can be comfortable in the certainty of their knowledge. Interacting with warhammer lore is much more like studying ancient or medieval history. There are very clear, and accepted generalisations which is probably someone’s entry point to their knowledge on the subject. As they continue their study, they find oddities and contradictions that fail to synchronize with the generalized knowledge the student possesses. That forces them to form a more nuanced opinion, or maybe come to question the previously held generalized. Because 40K is a galactic dark age, I believe it is important for the aesthetic of the 40k universe to create the sensation that you are grasping for truth in a mire if ambiguity, bias or outright absence of evidence, just as a historian must when trying to describe 6th century Britain. This makes the lore more engaging to me. (While simultaneously serving its primary function as a bottomless vessel for people’s imaginations to pour into painting plastic models engaging in table top warfare)
Underrated comment. That's a great way to look at it
Well said!
Very well articulated, and Rick has always been clear that this was his explicit intent. The unreliability of the narrators has been rather obscured as the narrative setting has grown, in terms of volume, medium and contributor, because if you overdo the subjectivity it gets tiresome. But the background has always been in the service of products, and the unreliable narrator allows for commercial flexibility while maintaining a semblance of narrative cohesion.
Really cool take... Totally... I mean look at the history of Carthage. The only sources of information we have on them is the Greeks and the Romans, and the only thing they tell us is they were a bunch of merchants, some pearl clutching about Hannibal, a couple of possible god names, and that the Romans really, really really hated them... a lot. 40K has losses of information on the scale of Carthage that happen every other Tuesday. Hell the Squats might not even be extinct. Just misfiled.
EXACTLY! Love this comment ^v^ And, aside from the massive size and inefficiency of the Administratum, pro-imperial propaganda is canonically the Imperium's state-religion so nothing is 100% trustworthy, especially anything xenos-related.
Who is here after the female custodes retcon? :D
I literally can’t tell you how happy I get when I see you’ve uploaded a new video! Your Channel is AMAZING!!!
Warhammer lore is Necromunda underhiver's knowledge of history and outside world.
A major instance I can think of where they definitely "retconned" something is the 13th Black Crusade. The global Eye of Terror campaign in the early 2000s had its ending and minor consequences on the lore, but that was all changed in 2017 with the Fall of Cadia and return of Guilliman.
I was about to say that.._
@@GarmrsBarking And they did the exact same thing to Fantasy in Storm Of Chaos.
There is kind of a pattern in how GW decides that Lore will be decided by fan games. Then Chaos gets smashed and GW gets mad, retcons that and hands Chaos a massive victory, defying all logic in process.
@@gokbay3057 If that isn't the definition of chaos, then I don't know what is.
Didn't it end in a stalemate? Like Chaos scoring a minor victory, but their fleet was unable to launch a full invasion because the Imperium players won their games, and only half of Cadia ended in Chaos hands? I would see the Fall of Cadia as a continuation from that ending, a progress from the original stalemate, as opposed to a retcon. Unless there's something I'm misinterpreting.
In our country, we don't even use the word "lore" for Warhammer facts. We just use the word "background" instead.
Warhammer (40k and Age of Sigmar) is not a historical setting, it's a sandbox. It will never be spelled out completely and definitively. Because there should always be a place (and a lot of space!) for fun creativity. This is much more important than the "canon". In addition, think how bad it will be if the world is written to the end and it will be difficult to add something new to it!
Thus, all the facts, all the official stories in the books are just samples of what can happen. This is not holy Scripture, for the sake of some comma of which it is worth killing your friends.
It's honestly really refreshing to see a fictional universe take this approach to canon. There needs to be a baseline level of consistency for a story to function, but getting caught up in the tiny details rarely (if ever) actually helps that story. Especially for stuff that involve hundreds of creators working over the course of decades.
Literally the only channel for which I actively look forward to its video-release day.
Oh the Draco book, that is indeed a steaming pile of heresy.....
I personally think Canon is extremely overrated. I hear lots of straw man arguments made to defend it but I just laugh them off.
I think Calypso said it best:
"Same story, different versions *but all are TRUE*..."
The astra militarum with the wermacht uniform is among the worst things ive ever seen tbh
6:43 ugh, the worst type of Warhammer person
Valid arguments, but "everything is canon" just sounds more like a lazy excuse for quality control.
"Every Canon is a retcon of something in 40K"
- Me, circa just now -
So Ciaphas Cain is actually worshipped by some crazy monks out there?
Love the reference to “Space Marine” and “Draco”. Both cool novels. (My copy of “Space Marine” is looking a bit worse for wear at this point though)
Space Marine is still one of my favourite 40k novels as it was a fantastic portrayal of the internal life of a marine in a time when we didn’t really have that. Many modern BL books like the Horus Heresy & ABD’s work have surpassed it, but the image of things like him sitting in the cell scrimshawing has really stuck with me over the years.
@@thebag1981 same, that book had the absolute best description of the creation of a space marine yet
@@thebag1981 I read that book so long ago I kinda forgot about it, then I read Sons of Dorn and thought it was a weird re-write! Space Marine was a great book, wish I still had it.
Why exactly are they now considered “Hereticus”?
@@SanJ922 One of them has a scene where space marine initiates have to eat horrible things covered in literal poop sauce.
I think this works for most things, but doesn't work for some lol. Kremlo the Slann isn't canon in the main WHFB setting.
Saying there's no canon implies there are no facts in the setting. If they decided there really are fewer than 20 primarchs (21 because of Omegon I guess) that'd be a retcon.
My man I really need to know where you buy your shirts cause this ones freaking KILLER.
Great video as always, keep it up!
The Inquisition War Trilogy is Canon and I will die on that hill!
this currently has 40k views, nice
For the Renegade god! Malice!
What is your intro song called? Its realy good
I prefer the phrase "everything is canon" but yes, there is so much flexibility built into the 40k verse it's extraordinary.
So I've been out of 40K for a while but isn't the end result of the Eye of Terror campaign from 2023 and the supplements that followed retconned by what happened in the Gathering Storm? Like as I recall (and I did work for GW while the campaign was on and then again about three years later) in the original version of the Thirteenth Black Crusade, Cadia held and Abbadon ended up getting knocked back into the Warp.
Nope. The 2023 plotline is the same as the original one - Abaddon attacks, is pushed back by Cadia's defenses and it ends with a stalemate 'war going on on the surface'.
Then the 2023 plot continues on from there and adds the second fleet, pylons, Blackstone Fortress, etc etc. Gathering Storm continues and adds to the story from Eye of Terror.
I really love what you do and i love your voice, please keep releasing amazing vids. Also, more lore! :-D
Thank you for being normal.
Concerning squats: they were a large space empire, or farers. Thus if they lose their home planet doesn't mean that the race is dead. If Terra was lost, humanity would still exist.
Exactly. There are Squats everywhere in the setting. They're just too short to see, what with all the scale creep and Space Marines now being 17 feet tall or whatever.
Why isn’t this channel above the bigger ones that screams negativity every day…?
@@Madhattersinjeans I’m aware of that, it’s just sad that negativity always draws the most - be it views of money. I agree and we indeed need more of channels like these, instead of the top ones filling up the feeds with hate and rage - which I’ve now started to hit “not interested” on.
Malice be like: ruclips.net/video/edJS5P7T2Lg/видео.html
This video makes me happy
If 40k should ever end, I would gw massive Credit if the end it with j. R. R. Tolkien waking up in his study in 1958 saying: "this was a weird dream"
I think unlike many franchises that are based around books, movies, etc. games like 40K have a back ground universe that is meant to be played in by people. Much like D&D, players of 40K have the ability of telling their part of the story with their group friends. It is this that also allows player, in their own understanding of the universe, to have a Space Marine Chapter that is all First Born who have carved out a minor fiefdom on the other side of the Great Rift and no one can tell person that they are wrong. 40K form its beginning was about telling stories on the table top (competitive play has its place), so have a flexible ‘canon’ mean the people who play can feel comfortable making up whatever they want.
I remember when Eldrad killed himself at the end of the 13nth black Crusade when Cadia never broke, and was shattered into many crystals that boosted other Farseers psychic powers (was actually a artifact in the Eldar codex)....pretty hard to explain that when he is also running around now atm and Cadia was destroyed...
Gav Thorpe: "I'll make EVERYTHING Canon. And when everything is canon... NOTHING Will be >:> >:> >:>"
Canon vs cannon
As someone who grew up with Star Wars novels, video games, etc, this approach is vastly superior imo. Sure, it might be a mess, but it's everyone's mess, not merely some ticks on a corporate marketing strategy. Well okay, not *just* that.
2:47 HOLD ON! I have hereticus material at home?!? For shame!
I'll have to check which print edition it is; I bought it in like 1993-1995. Might be worth something! :D
Generic comment for the algorithm
Thankful response!
Good job collecting all those author quotes for the video. I've been enjoying your content and your collabs with Mira a lot lately, and I think that one of the strong points of your work on youtube is acknowledging the authors and history of GW as not being separated from the development of the setting. Most youtubers don't do that and likely many simply don't know the real world story of Warhammer (the most notable exception being Luetin)
Nicely done. One example of a non-retcon retcon would be the 5th edition Necron codex which relegated the previous canon to a subset of the "expanded" canon, except for the Pariahs buggering off somewhere unknown (an example of ignoring the inconvenient lore) and the disconnect between the codex lore (which kept the "fear & loathing" fluff) and the actual new rules which destroyed the old "fear & loathing" tabletop lists.
The best example of a classic retcon would be the difference between the pre-6th edition Black Templar and 6th edition and after Black Templar. It was pretty much caused by GW, as usual, failing to exercise critical editing when they went for the psuedo-Catholic sideswipe with the Council of Nikea book. Yes, there has been much gaslighting about it being the trial of Magnus and the Emperor's decree not meaning what it said compounded by the closely following Horus Heresy interfering with implementation of the decree.
The end result was the Black Templar being the only (known) group of Astartes following the Emperor's decree and therefore the only group not declared by the Emperor himself as the Emperor's enemies. They were also arguably the most atheistic of Chapters, did not follow the codex Astartes and fairly obviously had, at a minimum, numbers approaching a small Legion. Oops!
So, we got a cut in numbers, a change to being Empy worshipping idiots, and codex compliant other than an odd troops choice. They retained a lack of psykers, but cried that they didn't know why Empy took their witches away. It removed many of the distintive bits of organization (no Devastators, but double the special and heavy weapons in squads for example) and went from heavy armor and drop pod specialists to that artifact of the tabletop, the TemplOrks screaming "Blood for the Blood Emperor!"
Then, the most amusing bit, the one thing both versions would have agreed on, absolute rejection of Primaris Marines, was hand waved away.
:)
Everything (that helps selling new miniatures) is canon (and everything that doesn't too actually, we just won't talk about it)
Interesting video! I'd be interested in what you think about "The Outer Circle" a warhammer critics video about cannon is like. He supposes that the setting changes far less often than people suggest when you look at it over the years. I think a possible example of this is your video on the Badab war is a good example of this, you talk about its history and how it changes, yet I was struck by how much over the years stays the same, it really is adding on details and filling in gaps, and sometimes calling back to something that was changed to re-introduce it, like making the Tiger claws a successor of the Astral Claws, because Tiger Claws was the original name used for Astral claws in the first concept of the war.
I am of the personal belief that part of the reason warhammer lore is like this is because it has several years of stories that were written without a clear idea of cannon that its impossible to untangle now. I think it shows an inability to clean house and decide on a single cannon, and I just wonder if its worth the frustration
Out of context, you seriously mean that the Empire is "EvIl FaShIsT" fraction, or it was ujust for a meme?
This video will be important when the new WH40K show gets released, I'm sure of it.
IIRC, the BBC has a similar stance on Doctor Who canon that GW does on Warhammer canon: there isn’t one. Atlantis was destroyed three different times, three different ways.
All these stories are true, and trying to reconcile them will make you go cross-eyed.
So if i make a fanfiction of three succesor chapters (the destroyers,void tridents and the fire lords) not very known where they are doing a crusade to exterminate a chaos sorcerer of a warband like the disciplines of destruction in a unknown planet. Then it will be canon?
I've always been under the mindset that everything is canon, unless there is something that disproves it/changes it or if the ip owner says something else
1:37 By that logic Space Crusade and Heroquest are both Canon.
Also Games Workshop in the 'Realm of Chaos' supplements 'Slaves to Darkness' and 'The Lost and the Damned' say that the Warhammer Fantasy world is a planet in the 40k universe. Games Workshop have denied that this is true since late second edition, but GW are wrong.
I prefer a quote from White Dwarf, I forgot which one (probably between 190 ~ 245) but someone said that Warhammer 40k is like Batman, there are multiple iterations and each is different from Adam West to Michael Keaton (and on and on and on)
There is a widespread theory that Sigmar Heldenhammer from WHFB was one of the missing Primarchs, I quite like that one myself
The Squats didn't hade anywhere! GW squashed them and we won't forget it!
Fun fact, apparently fan animators are also not canon
40k is just like real life, there is no real truth to history just propanganda.
Top notch channel on all marks. No filler, no bullshit, just pure love for the material.
No I wasn't *not-working* that was just an unreliable narrator...
Instant fan. Amazing video. Heard of you through Jay from Eons of Battle. Glad I subscribed.
Gav Thorpe is the worst name in all of human history. Nothing he says or does is ever right
I love the way this guy presents information and his manner is very likable. Great channel.
If canon doesn't matter. Then what is a meltagun?
Channel is totally better than any others out there! I tried listening to a few of other popular recommendations and they’re unbearable, like poor attempts at audio drama and just unnecessarily long and drawn out. Amazing shirt btw.