Horus: Come on, you can do it!
Leman Russ: Show them your fangs!
Ferrus Manus: I Have your back!
Fulgrim: Beauty can be found in every thing, all you need to do is see it
Vulkan: Make every moment count!
Dorn: I will be your bulwark against the dark but you must be the light
Rouboute Guilliman: remember your training and we’ll pull through this together.
Magnus: let your mind flourish, never be afraid to let it do so
Sanguinius: Watch over one another, care for one another.
Lion’El: Do not give in!
Perturabo: you can knock down any wall in your way!
Mortarion: you are needed, you matter to one or to many, you are most certainly needed.
Lorgar: keep faith in yourself and you will succeed.
Jaghatai: Balance is the key to peace.
Konrad Curze: keep your chin up and a deadly glint in your eye
Angron: Never stop struggling!
Corax: you are seen, you are noticed, you are worthy of compassion.
Alpharius: no matter how many people there are you are unique.
Emps: you are radiant, you are the reason another fights on.
Malcador: your path may be muddy, but it is yours to walk none the less.
I will admit to deep and abiding curiosity: what did you think needed changing?
Things I thought that needed changing, in no particular order and numbered only for organization of thoughts:
1. Carl Thonius as a character. I feel that his being the archetypal “hacker”/non-combat character doesn’t really fit with the world of 40k or, indeed, the plot of Ravenor.
2. The whole Patience/Halstrom bit in the later books. It seems to come out of nowhere and then disappears with just as much notice as it came (granted, this might be because Halstrom is essentially dead, but).
3. The introduction of Maud Plyton seems to come, again, out of nowhere. As far as I can recall, she’s introduced right at the end of the second or right in the middle of the third book – hardly enough time for us as readers to strike up the kind of rapport with her that we’ve gotten with Kara, Nayl, Patience and Carl.
Either introduce her earlier or, like every other person on Eisenhorn/Ravenor’s retinue (at least in the Eisenhorn books) make her an expendable extra.
Anyway, those were really my big gripes.
I forgot Maud Plyton EXISTED. Ain’t that something. Carl’s skillset is, yeah … weird. Would have been better paired with a role like Aemos’, as would have been more sensible.
Hiijacking a random post, I was just rereading Eisenhorn, and ugh it reminded me of some of my issues with Ravenor without even rereading that.
The major tone shift in the direction of sex, drugs, and rock and roll between trilogies and the sheer sleeziness of it compared to the relatively classy Eisenhorn.
Carl Thonius. Just. I remember a long talk with a friend about how he’s treated by the other characters in the narrative that amounted to: A woman can be forgiven for being a woman and be a Strong Female Character if she has a lot of masculine traits and is good at fighting, but is also sexy. She’s as good as a guy, but fuckable! (You might get the impression I was not super impressed with the character of Patience Kys.) Feminine traits are still stignatized. Even worse if they’re attached to a man. (Compare Thonius wearing nice clothes and how lovingly described Bequin’s dresses are back in the Eisenhorn trilogy.) Now of course we must constantly mock and belittle him and his weakness and uselessness, despite the fact he does contribute to the team regularly, he’s just not a front-line fighter.
Maud Plyton was my other favorite. She was barely in that book, but she was great. Needs more screentime. On the other hand, I vividly remember having to take a step back during one of the scenes between her and her senile uncle and say “That is more emotionally devastating than anything else in this entire book, regardless of if the magic stuff has higher stakes, because that actually happens, is happening right now in real life.”
Everyone spends forty page stretches not putting the clues together after I, the reader, already have, and they have that information god damn it just get the plot going.
I have so much less patience with “Ooh, they’re so shippable” compared when I first read these series. Oh look, another queer-coded villain. I could be reading fanfic right now and have actual queer relationships, including fucked up hero/villain ones, not homoeroticism that is never quite explicitly spelled out or followed up on. I meant to do a whole post on various details and weird implications of that, after my reread.
Me: “The 40k setting has baked-in sexist and racist problems that we should address. Particularly the models- lack of diversity of gender/features, particularly with the GW ‘Eavy Metal paintjob where everyone’s white. And I don’t like the Imperium because it’s genuinely awful? As in it’s designed to be? It’s literally a fascist theocracy?”
40k stans: “Women can’t be space marines because 30 year old technobabble lore is more important than representation, sexism doesn’t exist because the (metal, old, expensive, sexualized, neglected) Battle Sisters line technically still exists, racism doesn’t exist because you personally can paint your minis any race you please and then like… five or six people will see them! As opposed to the thousands and thousands who look at the official art of white people in space in the codices! Also, yay space fascism.”
because by fate even the gods are cast down 