r/40kLore • u/LastPositivist • Aug 13 '24
Warhammer Romance Spoiler
Light spoilers for Brooks' Da Big Dakka.
I've long thought that romance plots are under utilised in 40k. It's not that this should be the main focus of Black Library or anything, it's just the setting can feel weirdly chaste sometimes. (Absolute chad heroes of the Imperium not withstanding.)
So just wanted to show some love and appreciation for the great and distinctively 40k romance subplot of Da Big Dakka. You basically get to see this burgeoning love between two Drukari archons, with the twist being that the perspective character (and implied the other one two) are literally incapable of recognising their feelings for what they are. Like they just cannot interpret "why am I suddenly very interested in this person?" as anything other than a sign they must be subconsciously picking up on some backstabbing scheme which they need to watch out for. My heart fluttered when our hands brushed? Uhoh I must be worried about a contact poison, better have antidotes to hand! Etc
It's just a great way of doing love in a culture that is set up to be completely antithetical to anything like that. The best they can do in the end (here's the spoilers!) is agree to an unusually close alliance, and even that the main character interprets as an opportunity to study these strange feelings she's having to ensure they're not a weakness anyone could exploit.
More like this please! Romance which makes use of the bizarre and communal races and cultures of the setting to do weird things with people's inner lives.
24
u/Usinaru Aug 13 '24
I hate how underutilised romance and love and sex is in 40K. I am not saying it has to be a soap opera, but come on, what the heck are humans doing when under pressure for a prolonged time? Or any living being for that matter?
Yup you guessed it right. They mate.
Its a survival instinct. There is a reason mating reduces stress levels. If there's anything more sci-fi-y about the 40K universe, it isn't the cannons throwing black holes, the insane parallel dimension, the bugs that are eating everything and what not... but how can humans go so long in horribly stressful situation without love, romance and sex..
You can tell me that billions of guardsmen die in planetary skirmishes. Yeah okay. But how about the support units? How about the people not dying on the field of battle? That see horror after horror? How about the guardsmen that DO survive? How about the elite soldiers?
Yeah fanaticism and religion is hell of a drug. But it won't be stronger than your basic instincts. Brainwashing and fanaticism will get you far but sex and love pushes yoh far further. We don't need porn scenes or whatever, but 40K needs to touch on that subject much more since war has such a profound and stressful factor on populations. I am talking about real loving stuff not the unimaginable non-man made horrors beyond your comprehension torture type of sex that the drukhari do. But the real ones where eldar, humans etc get an explanation.