How much 'GrimDark' is to much?

[Wildeybeast]

Good point. IIRC correctly, that was Joss Whedon's little joke in Buffy, he'd have Spike use English swear words and they'd get past the American censors because they had no idea what they were. Whacks the DVD rating up over here though.

[Kyban]

Along the lines of the mod's point, I think it's only civilized to consider what people are more likely to have personal experience with. If you've had first-hand experience with one of the real-world evils that can be represented in 40K, I think you're more entitled to be sensitive about it. In my mind, there's a big difference between a 12 year old American being offended by a National Socialist-themed army and a concentration camp survivor being offended by the same army, you know what I mean? Similarly, if I had any guys at my club who had been child soldiers and they thought my toy child soldiers were over the line ... I'd be okay with that, honestly. In the real 20th and 21st centuries, child soldiers are not a nice thing.

I agree that sometimes people are too easily offended, and I think a hobbyist needn't feel constrained by those people. But I also think a hobbyist needs to remember that 40K satirizes a lot of stuff that is genuinely horrible in real life, and when somebody is offended by something that is genuinely horrible - even in satire - the civilized hobbyist should at least inquire as to whether the offended party has some reason to find the satire beyond the pale.

I would be more careful than that though, it really depends on who will see your models but personal experience can be broader than that, it may offend a soldier that had encountered child soldiers on a deployment, for example. Though people can be too easily offended, you have to consider their frame of mind, some people are pretty sheltered and are offended by any gore or violence at all (these tend to be the people that don't watch the news).

[Psychosplodge]

**** bollocks **** **** wank bugger arse ******* **** bloody

just checking

[ElectricPaladin]

...bloody

Oh, man. It would be hilarious of "bloody" was blocked.

So, I'm trying to do a really great ****** effect for my Khorne berserkers. Does anyone know which red to use to get a good ****** effect? Are there any particularly good ****** glazes out there? Also, I've heard that for the blood to look realistic, you need to use a brown undercoat - is that true?

[Wildeybeast]

I would be more careful than that though, it really depends on who will see your models but personal experience can be broader than that, it may offend a soldier that had encountered child soldiers on a deployment, for example. Though people can be too easily offended, you have to consider their frame of mind, some people are pretty sheltered and are offended by any gore or violence at all (these tend to be the people that don't watch the news).

If you know someone in your area this applies to then that is fair enough. But to rule it out on the basis that you may one day possibly meet a gamer who might have seen some child soldiers is just silly. British soldiers are not currently deployed in any African warzones (where you almost exclusively find child soldiers) and they virtually never are given that a) The African Union likes to keep matters in house wherever possible and b) the west doesn't give a toss about wars in Africa. And why on earth would someone who is offended by gore and violence be playing a WAR game? We just need to use common sense here people.

[Kyban]

If you know someone in your area this applies to then that is fair enough. But to rule it out on the basis that you may one day possibly meet a gamer who might have seen some child soldiers is just silly. British soldiers are not currently deployed in any African warzones (where you almost exclusively find child soldiers) and they virtually never are given that a) The African Union likes to keep matters in house wherever possible and b) the west doesn't give a toss about wars in Africa. And why on earth would someone who is offended by gore and violence be playing a WAR game? We just need to use common sense here people.

Like I said, it really depends on who will see the models, most likely it won't be an issue but it isn't something i'd personally want to have in my army even if it were meant to portray the reality of war.
There are a lot of child "soldiers" in the middle east as well, more like kids who are given guns and told to shoot at UN troops but might still have a large impact on someone forced to fight them.

[Durendin]

There's a big difference between doing something deliberately to be provocative such as the "Westboro Christian Marines" or using swastikas on your Leman Russes. I don't think anyone here would have difficulty in realizing the motivations of someone who would do as much, but that's not what's getting my grinding my gears on this. It's the assumption that I have to take anyone else's random issues into account while spending my money. That's just hilarious and not in an overly amusing way.

The desire to protect people's feelings if taken too far usually ends up paradoxical eg. "I'm so anxious that I might offend "X" that I don't interact with them just in case so as to ensure no offence is risked!"

Now I'm not digging out my old RT Imperial Guard Suicide Bombers just yet but the models exist as does the official fluff behind them for the 3rd Armageddon War. Out of general politeness of course I'm not using them as proxies for a Demo-Team. However if I ever met anyone at my local games club who dared raise his beliefs as worth more than everyone else's then I'd feel the need to challenge these ideas, not drop to my knees in supplication.

[White Tiger88]

After looking closely at this thread....Do i have the ONLY local Games Workshop store that Encourages the Blood & Guts? My Chaos lord (Sub for Mortarion till he is officially release) has an Ultramarine cut in half on his base with guts spewing out

[ElectricPaladin]

There's a big difference between doing something deliberately to be provocative such as the "Westboro Christian Marines" or using swastikas on your Leman Russes. I don't think anyone here would have difficulty in realizing the motivations of someone who would do as much, but that's not what's getting my grinding my gears on this. It's the assumption that I have to take anyone else's random issues into account while spending my money. That's just hilarious and not in an overly amusing way.

The desire to protect people's feelings if taken too far usually ends up paradoxical eg. "I'm so anxious that I might offend "X" that I don't interact with them just in case so as to ensure no offence is risked!"

Now I'm not digging out my old RT Imperial Guard Suicide Bombers just yet but the models exist as does the official fluff behind them for the 3rd Armageddon War. Out of general politeness of course I'm not using them as proxies for a Demo-Team. However if I ever met anyone at my local games club who dared raise his beliefs as worth more than everyone else's then I'd feel the need to challenge these ideas, not drop to my knees in supplication.

I think this is a pretty good attitude. The point of living in a democratic civil society is that everyone has a right to free expression, and a right to feel however they want about it. Ideally, you can play with whatever models you want, and if anyone is bothered by it they can talk to you if they feel like it... or just deal. And if you're bothered by them being bothered, you can deal, too. And then you can all go home and complain to your wives about that jerk-faced someb*tch at the game store. But when dealing with each other, you don't try to make anyone's ideas better or more important than another's - you just present your own opinion and leave it at that.

That said, there is always the matter of what would be in good taste. That's a lot more debatable. To get back to the OP, I think he was asking less "what will get me in trouble? We can all agree that "trouble" is kind of a weird term to apply to this kind of situation. I think he was asking "where is the boundary of good taste." In some ways, that's a more interesting question.

Honestly, I find the whole "HOW DARE YOU DO THAT TASTELESS THING!?!?" vs "HOW DARE YOU NOT TELL ME TO DO THIS TASTELESS THING!?!?" debate pretty meaningless, not to mention being a total - and sometimes intentional - distraction from the core issue. Look, you can model your army however you want. And someone else might take offense, and the store owner might side with you, and you may end up needing to find a new place to play. All of these potentialities are the result of the free choices of individuals living in a free civil society. What should you do? That's a bigger question, but ultimately, a personal question.

Incidentally, I tend to deal with a similar issue whenever I try to talk about the issue of how women are presented in nerd-focused art. I try to say "it isn't that I have a problem with gravity-defying boobs, it's that I think we send a message when we present gravity-defying boobs on one page and perfectly realistic men on the other, and I think creators should think harder about that" but the response I get is "STOP TELLING ME THAT BOOBS ARE BAD!" It gets exhausting. Sometimes people are very quick to assume that you are questioning their rights when, in fact, what you're questioning is their judgement.

For myself, I happen to think that making light of someone else's suffering is probably wrong. Not that it should be illegal, but it's probably a jerky thing to do, and I try to avoid doing jerky things. Now, "making light of" and "talking about it" are different things. For example, as I wrote initially, making a mocking and ridiculous army of child soldiers where the characters have greenstuff footy pyjamas and teddy bears and are painted to look as though they have soiled themselves in terror... that's a pretty jerky thing to do. Even if you don't encounter someone who has been a child soldier, you may encounter someone with strong feelings about the issue, and they are going to be hurt and offended.

Again, I'm not saying that you can't do this. You can do whatever you want to.

On the other hand, modeling some of your troops to look like adolescents in a fantasy setting that is supposed to include such things, that's fine. You aren't making light of anything, you're just including it.

Back to the first example, though. There are a lot of things you can do. You can paint swastikas on every model you own. You can make a Chaos army that would make Slaanesh blush. You can paint your entire force of Salamanders to look like characters from an antebellum minstrel show. The question, though, is should you? Ask yourself: what's the payoff? Why do you want to do this? Are you trying to hurt someone? Are you expressing something meaningful? If it's the latter, what are you trying to say, and might there be a way to say it that won't drown out the content?

[DarkDesigner]

EP, very well said. I pretty much agree with every word.