This is fantastically written, fren. Which means I'm sure you've received disgusting amounts of hatred over it, since it claws at the heartstrings.
I didn't play the games, and I've never read the books, but I've got good memories of the 40K community. My Dad is an old school geek, and raised me on all kinds of scifi and fantasy stories. We moved around a lot, because Daddy was in the Navy, and the places where I always felt the most at home, where ever we moved, were the Games and Comics stores. And of all the stores I'd been in, when I was a child, the ones with the nicest people was always the Games Workshops. Once, when I was maybe six or seven, and Dad went in to go and play a game with some of his buddies, and I was more or less left to go look around at all the miniatures on the wall, and the other tables. The clerk watched me, and when he saw I'd been looking at one particular set for a while, he came over to ask what I was so interested in. I was looking at what I would learn to call a CogBoy, and I asked the clerk- who couldn't have been more than sixteen at the time, I'm sure- why the figure had all those bits coming off of it, and if it was like Doc Oct from Spiderman. And the clerk took the time to tell me the lore of Mars, and the story of the Omnissiah. He didn't talk down to me because I was a little kid, or a girl. He didn't get impatient when I would interrupt him to ask more questions.
I'm sure there've been assholes who've worked in the physical stores, but all my experiences with them have been like my first, which is why they were always one of my favorites to go inside of, even though as I grew older, I discovered that I enjoyed the roleplaying bit more than the tabletop part of ttrpgs, and since I couldn't find any friends who were interested in- or frankly, could afford- to rp it with me, I never really got into the world aside from listening to Dad talk about games he played and the lore.
It's a damn shame, if this is the way they've decided that they want to go. Not surprising, considering how ironically closeminded all of the other geeky hobbies become when they go woke. But an absolute shame.
This is fantastically written, fren. Which means I'm sure you've received disgusting amounts of hatred over it, since it claws at the heartstrings.
I didn't play the games, and I've never read the books, but I've got good memories of the 40K community. My Dad is an old school geek, and raised me on all kinds of scifi and fantasy stories. We moved around a lot, because Daddy was in the Navy, and the places where I always felt the most at home, where ever we moved, were the Games and Comics stores. And of all the stores I'd been in, when I was a child, the ones with the nicest people was always the Games Workshops. Once, when I was maybe six or seven, and Dad went in to go and play a game with some of his buddies, and I was more or less left to go look around at all the miniatures on the wall, and the other tables. The clerk watched me, and when he saw I'd been looking at one particular set for a while, he came over to ask what I was so interested in. I was looking at what I would learn to call a CogBoy, and I asked the clerk- who couldn't have been more than sixteen at the time, I'm sure- why the figure had all those bits coming off of it, and if it was like Doc Oct from Spiderman. And the clerk took the time to tell me the lore of Mars, and the story of the Omnissiah. He didn't talk down to me because I was a little kid, or a girl. He didn't get impatient when I would interrupt him to ask more questions.
I'm sure there've been assholes who've worked in the physical stores, but all my experiences with them have been like my first, which is why they were always one of my favorites to go inside of, even though as I grew older, I discovered that I enjoyed the roleplaying bit more than the tabletop part of ttrpgs, and since I couldn't find any friends who were interested in- or frankly, could afford- to rp it with me, I never really got into the world aside from listening to Dad talk about games he played and the lore.
It's a damn shame, if this is the way they've decided that they want to go. Not surprising, considering how ironically closeminded all of the other geeky hobbies become when they go woke. But an absolute shame.