Control: Kharn and Co-Opting Characters…
I, Dalton Lewis, drastically change the story of Warhammer 40k in my mind when I tell the story. Do you do this? I bet you do. Traditionally in Warhammer 40k lore the Space Marines are noble heroes who fight to protect the benevolent Empire from all manner of evil: aliens like the monstrous tyranids and the vicious orcs, or the undead necrons or even the devious space elves. Their worst enemy, however, the most evil bad guys of all, are the chaos marines. These chaos marines worship daemons and want to take over everything. They enslave and kill people and wreck the galaxy with their evil schemes.
I disagree. That doesn’t happen in my year 40,000 lore. In my story the humans who are in charge of an empire are vaguely menacing. They’re partially good and partially bad. They worship an emperor who wanted to take over everything. That’s bad. The chaos marines who worship daemons aren’t necessarily evil. They are some good and some bad. There’s nothing wrong with the concept of worshiping daemons in this story. They just work for the nonhumans, protecting and supporting them.
Why do I like Kharn? He’s great. He fights like crazy for everything that he gets in life. He gives his all for the cause. He doesn’t apologize or surrender or give a halfway effort. He does everything all the way every time. I really admire him because of that. I think that he is an excellent character.
My fan fiction shows a benevolent team of chaos marines. The fan fiction is set in the year 2020 and 2021, with the chaos marines dealing with an alien invasion and the normal lives of this era. I wanted to show the contrast of this era versus the alien invasion plots. I thought that this would develop an interesting story.
Why do we do this? The characters are supposed to be one thing and not another. Abaddon is supposed to be a bad guy manipulating things and taking over for the bad guys. Kharn is supposed to be a soulless asshole who betrays anyone and kills indiscriminately. Ahriman is supposed to be only in pursuit of knowledge and nothing else, and yet I turn them into heroes in my mind and my fan fiction.
I think that’s a bonus to being a fan: we get to use these characters in our minds however we want to. If we want Captain America to sing a song and dance number with Loki then he will do so. That’s what writers do when they present us their characters — they understand that we will take them into our minds. We will then turn them into our own characters and live our own stories with them. There’s a growing story from our collective conscious out there — we just need to understand and appreciate it.
Thanks, and take care, friends.
