Girls Go Slash/Boys Go Bang
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enemies. Within the W40K universe, to use one of the game’s slogans, “there is
no peace, only war”, with each species fighting often just to survive. On earth
(Terra), superstition and dogma dominate, the knowledge of science and
technology having been lost millennia before, and a God-like Emperor, who has
ruled the Imperium for 10,000 years, holds power.
To play W40K, players collect, then paint plastic and metal 28mm-scale
miniatures sold by Games Workshop of a particular army/species within the
W40K universe (such as, for example, the elite ‘Space Marines’ of the
Imperium, heretical ‘Chaos Space Marines’, malevolent ‘Chaos Daemons’, or
‘Space Orks’).2 Once a player has collected and painted their army, they may
then engage in wargames with friends, ranging in size and complexity from
minor skirmishes with a few miniatures to mass ‘Apocalypse’ battles involving
many hundreds of miniatures and futuristic vehicles using a relatively
straightforward rules system developed by the company over the last two
decades (Cavatore et al., 2008). Such battles are not necessarily re-enactments
of battles that occurred within the W40K narrative universe—in the way that,
for example a historical war-gamer might recreate the Battle of Waterloo or
Gettysburg—but are, rather, generic battles/missions of the type that might take
place in that universe between the different armies/races, such as battles to take
and hold objectives, seize ground, or simply to annihilate the enemy. The W40K
canon nevertheless provides the background context in which these missions
occur, describing both the history of the W40K universe and its inhabitants, as
well as offering fictionalised visions of warfare in the 41st Millennia to inspire
gameplay.
It is, however, not essential to be thoroughly immersed within the W40K
canon to play a game of W40K, and, indeed, players will differ on how loyal
they are to the ‘fluff, as it is called, when collecting and gaming with their
armies. On the one hand, some players will strive to adhere to the ‘fluff for
their particular army, making sure that it only contains those characters, units,
vehicles, and so on that are canonically accurate. Many will also, like historical
wargamers, go to great lengths to paint their armies in the ‘correct’ liveries and
with appropriate insignia. On the other, many ‘powergaming’ players will, while
still staying within the rules of the game, eschew what is canonically accurate in
favour of constructing armies filled with high-powered units or weaponry (or
‘cheese’) in order to increase their chances of winning games.
As one moves within W40K fandom away from gaming into fanfiction and
other areas of fan creativity, the canon begins, however, to exert a stronger
influence (see Walliss, forthcoming). Several online repositories for W40K
fanfiction, for example, insist that authors only post stories that are true to the
canon (cf Pugh, 2005 on the Jane Austin fanfiction site, The Republic o f
Pemberley). To quote the first two rules, for example, of the fanfiction section of
the Astronomican forum:
1. When creating a story never create a story that go[es]
against the fluff, or is a corrupted version of the fluff if you do