Why do you guys hate him so much?

He ranges from readable pulp to complete garbage. The First Heretic was decent, but Betrayer and Master of Mankind were horrible. He's obviously not a stylist and the writing is dry, but what kills him is his crippling inability to write not even a human being, but a 2D persona. Every character he wrote is either bland or one dimensional, Angron is just angry and has daddy issues, Lorgar is evil and religious, the Emperor a total idiot, who is somehow supposed to be an empire forging psychic warlord. Reading his novels makes the HH seem like a joke and this is with the low expectations one has for any fan fiction.
Abnett is the only decent BL author, he manages to be fast paced and entertaining, sticking to traditional pulp forms (spy novel, detective novel) with 40k aesthetics.

They're mad he pisses on benevolent mary sue emperor despite that never having been a thing. Veeky Forums is just easily rustled.

The baby rage directed at Abnett by Legion and Prospero Burns when they came out tells me that you're wrong. nu/tg/ latches onto Abnett so they can have a good BL writer/bad BL writer (ADB or whoever in this case) dichotomy.

Pointing out that the Emperor was actually evil is one thing, but BL nowadays makes him out to be an absolute moron. That diminishes the setting no matter what side you're a fan of. And frankly Chaos fans calling anything else evil is ridiculous on its face.

Mostly right except
>Abnett
>fast paced
Not until the last 10 pages

Chaos is evil too, Chaos fans acknowledge reality. The whole conflict is like Skeletor vs Hordak which has happened countless times and everyone who knows anything about Masters of the Universe knows both are evil.

This "both sides are wrong" garbage ADB peddles is bullshit.

The Emperor being evil? Sure. But by comparison, the other side at its core is literally fighting to turn the galaxy into a hellscape where humankind is doomed to suffer at the whims of eldritch gods from another dimension. It's a false-equivalency. The Emperor is a bad dude, but the other side is incomparably worse in every way. Life under the Emperor for a normal human is frankly not that bad. Great even, by the standards of the setting. Life under Chaos is constant suffering and degradation.

That normal human living under the emperor exists for a blip and then he goes into the eldritch dimension for all eternity. The Emperor lied to them all too, and didn't tell every time they're ambitious or angry or sad they're making the eldritch gods more powerful. The only non-hypocritical way to live in warhammer, and the only way to have even a chance to not get molested by wild daemons, is to follow the Path of Glory. It's still evil but Emperor is denying it to his subjects.

Everyone in BL is bad, it's fan fiction. It's just that Abnett makes it readable and doesn't make it insultingly stupid.
But you don't read the BL because you want quality literature, you read it because you want passable entertainment.

Eisenhorn had a decent pacing to it. Maybe because it takes no concentration so you can easily read 80 pages/h.

What is quality literature? I can't even start reading Tolkien's LotR, because of its fuckawful beginning.

That's retardation on your side. Lotr is an incredibly easy going novel and very comfy at that.

Nah lol

Read some Dickens.

What's bad about the beginning of LotR?

Ulysses is the only thing a thinking man reads in his life.

Go to the library, then the Literature section.

>see outdated trash you are forced to read in school
Wew

>The problem is that the fanbase consists of autists who never realized Emperor is more Torquemada than Leto II.
the emperor... is more an inquisitor who commits holocaust for religious reasons..... than a god-like being who has clairvoyance and is ready to sacrifice all to set humanity on a path of supremacy?

yeah you dumb

The whole point of quality literature is that it transcends time. But it takes some effort to read, making it impossible for brainlets to consume.

Wrong Torquemada (or is it?)

200 pages on fucking hobbits and the virtues tobacco, the latter being mostly completely irellevant to the plot.

That comic was a major inspiration for 40K so that's hardly coincidence

>e-celeb thread

If you read only one book in your life, you are not a thinking man.

Try reading his books rather than falling for the memes. ADB’s chaos is definently vile and evil, and he does a good job explaining why people might still be tempted by it.

It's relevant to the work itself, you are just incapable of looking beyond the plot. The whole point is that the hobbits are a small and virtuous people without much power defeat the dark lord. The atmosphere it creates in the beginning is exactly what makes Frodo a tragic character and it mimics the experience Tolkien had when returning from WWI, hinting at PTSD and a loss of innocence.

But he is a leftist soyboy, even if he does that part reasonably well.

You know the Emperor? That guy who literally saved the human race? That guy who made the Imperium to protect humankind from xenos and chaos. That guy who sacrificed himself so that humanity may survive, and is being tortured for 10k years just so that humankind would persist and remain?
Yeah, what a fucking asshole and a badguy.
But remember those traitor space marines? Yeah, they're the good guys and saving everyone by trying to feed humankind to hell abominations.
>ADB

The emperor fed the human race to Chaos by making a pact with the Chaos Gods for power to conquer the galaxy and is directly responsible for Abaddon, Horus and all the other traitors. Human race in the form of Interex, Adrantis and so on existed without him and would still exist in 41st millennium without him.

Only brainlets fall for in-universe propaganda.

>transcends time
More like circlejerking assholes who dedicate which books are important or not

>making up memes and headcanon shit so fucking hard you defend shitty writing

Are IG players this cringy irl? Do they unironically browse /pol/ as well?

>But he is a leftist soyboy

At what point in any of his books does this come up? Why does this in any way prevent you from reading his books?

>IG players
Fuck off, ADB, go back to your reddit cuckshed.
The shitty retcons are exactly the reason why people hate ADB and HH series here. Also even considering nu-canon, most of the shit you've written is wrong.

>Also even considering nu-canon, most of the shit you've written is wrong.
Nah, you are just a clueless redditor. It's always been canon, the same people who ran GW in the period you think you know about run it now.

>run
>implying Bobby Kotick knows shit about Destiny outside of it printing money
>he brings up /pol/
That's why you're a laughing stock, ADB. You're delusional.

>gets triggered when I mentioned IG
C r i n g e

>"If I say it enough time it will become real"
Nice arguing, ADB.

Do you have that IG image?

The guys who made the fluff up are still running GW. You think Alpha Legion having two Primarchs was invented for the HH series?

>ADB’s chaos is definently vile and evil, and he does a good job explaining why people might still be tempted by it.

Nah, his portrayal of both Abaddon and the temptation by the chaos gods in Soul Hunter was utter shit.

holy shit the irony on your post lmao

Like I've said, his soyboyism is besides the point, he's a bad author regardless.
He does irrationally dislike organised religion and authority, which is the source of his stupid retcons. But if he did the same for any other reason it wouldn't have made any difference.

I'm not sure how you not grasping something simple makes the writing of Lotr bad.

...

There are no retcons in Horus Heresy, the introduction of lore is mandated by GW. The fact that the writers say as much without being fired or sanctioned in anyway should have shut up the brainlets who go "muh poor GW is having their floof retconned by contract authors,".

>Like I've said, his soyboyism is besides the point, he's a bad author regardless.

The why bring it up?

>He does irrationally dislike organised religion and authority, which is the source of his stupid retcons. But if he did the same for any other reason it wouldn't have made any difference.

As I see it he is anti-authoritarian, not anti-authority. I don't know if he's anti-organised religion more than all of 40K is. The ecclesiarchy is hardly ever portrayed in a wholly positive light, being based on the worst tendencies from real world religion and all.

I don't hate him :3

He seems to have a lot of daddy issues

>He gives the traitor legions a bit of depth rather than just being mustache twirling villains.
But that's the problem. 40k is a ironic setting, trying to create depth in a setting like that will just ruin what made it fun

>Emperor is more Torquemada than Leto
Not... really? unless you're only looking at the modern incarnation.

So like every other GW writer then

Meant him at a Warhammer World open day once, I was playing a game and the black library panel was just behind the tables, he came over to observe, and he asked why all my Dark Angels were pale white guys. I said it fits the theme of knights who who are on a repentant mission so being pale fit them as obssessive plus knights were a mostly northern Europe thing and he said this isn't medieval though its 40k which fine, I guess it is but I wanted to fit a theme, its my dudes.

Thats what put me off him, who cares what colour I paint them, its a fucking table top. I even have some black cultists for my WE but because I wanted some variaton

Pale white as armour or pale white as race?

Well yes.

Because he flat out stated that my faction won.
Have you ever seen people play a wargame where one player control some Al Quaida Terrorists and the other player is the Americans and literally controls drones that are free to blow up the Towel-heads at no risk to themselves? Where it's basically a 100% one-sided shooting gallery?
No you don't, because that would be a boring garbage premise for a wargame.
And that's what 40k is now for Daemon players like me. We won the fucking setting and as a result all tension is gone.
Why bother going on Black Crusades? Daemons don't die, Daemons don't age, at this point it's literally just self indulgence.

"Rage against the dying of the light" may sound nice and all and may work well for a story where you have only one point of view, but it takes an incredibly amount of retardation to apply this theme to a wargame where one side is the dying of the light because you basically turn half your player base into set dressing for the other half.

Originally DA's were Native Americans, then they became gay anglos in space.

>inb4 he didn't actually mean it

>Emps is the single most potent psyker in human history
>perhaps only outclassed by the old ones or first generation eldar
>incapable of repairing his body
>unable to spin new flesh from the warp's infinite power
I'm sure theres an obvious answer to this. But why didn't he do this before his mind fractured to the 4 winds?

That's how GW rolls is.
1st Edition WHFB rulebook says all gods are Chaos and Chaos will win, and 6th edition Hordes of Chaos also said all gods are actually Chaos. Didn't stop people from enjoying it.

Wtf I love the emperor now

>As I see it he is anti-authoritarian, not anti-authority
He's a fucking idiot. The point of 40k is that EVERY option is horrible, turning the actually slightly more horrible faction into noble renegades because you're butthurt about Nazis misses the point completely.

that's not entirely true, one of their recruitment worlds is filled with the decedents of native american colonists. But yeah the native american thing was a pretty important bit of DA lore even the "Deathwing" was a reference to it until the HH retconned it

How popular do you think Chaos-happy-play-endtime was?

White race, I should clarify.

Ever wonder why WHFB never was as popular as 40k? Because 40k had more people with a viable win condition. Basically only sadists and autists played Fantasy.

I did mean it. The fluff books are full of propaganda and embellisment. Alpha Legion did have two primarchs in the early 90's, Abnett mentioned in an interview that GW had been holding onto that bit for a long time before they told him to put it in a book.

With the Emperor, he's always been the dude we see in the Last Church. He made a deal with Chaos for ultimate power and thought to use it for his own ends, and weaved a mystique of omnipotence about himself. But in truth his ability was not enough to repair his body, to answer , or more crucially to throw back the daemon invasion of his webway.

That is an extremely specific reason as to why you think 40k is more popular. The reality is likely more simple.

The execution was bad, not the idea.

Well it's a cold, blunt fact. If mankind is to thrive it must first become powerful enough that the warp holds no great peril to it. But evolution takes time and the necessary oppression of the species slows that down even more

>Because 40k had more people with a viable win condition

No. It's the same all over.

It's a distillation, but true. 40k's aesthetics and factions are more refined and more interesting.

Were you around for the Storm of Chaos campaigns and how pissed off people were when GW fiated the whole thing?

That's maximum soyboy level. Indeed, it's your dudes, there aren't racial quotas for miniat yet.

>He's a fucking idiot. The point of 40k is that EVERY option is horrible,
In your opinion.

>turning the actually slightly more horrible faction into noble renegades because you're butthurt about Nazis misses the point completely.
I don't think he presents chaos as the good option. Everyone who messes with chaos ends up some degree of fucked. He does however present the renegade marines as being more complex than just 'the bad guys'. This doesn't make them sympathetic IMO, just more rounded. His protagonists are still terrible people who do horrible stuff, but you understand their reasons for doing it, even if these reasons wouldn't resonate with us, the readers.

I don't understand what you are talking about in regards to nazis?

I don't mind that too much, other than edgelords people rarely think of them selves as the "bad guy"

I remember an old White Dwarf when Andy Chambers talking about the 2nd ed chaos Codex when it came out that he wanted to portray the faction as angry, bitter and feeling betrayed rather than inherently evil

whiny chaos is and always has been worst chaos

>Were you around for the Storm of Chaos campaigns and how pissed off people were when GW fiated the whole thing?

Again, bad execution and Storm of Chaos wasn't meant to end the setting. It was meant to create a new status quo. GW said so themselves. Why are you like this?

The general arc of BL's HH series has been extremely generous to the fallen legions whilst shitting constantly on the Emperor for basically everything he did at any point.
It's not that the traitors are rounded, it is they are being fed "It wasn't MY fault" excuses.

I enjoy his books, but I have no opinion on him personally.

eh not whiney so much as relatable, he wanted them to have a reason to fall to the predations of Chaos beyond being just bad dudes.

>Why are you like this?
Why are you lying so wilfully? The global campaigns clearly showed people don't give a fuck about Chaos OR about the "Chaos is the big bad" narrative. It's literally the disconnected writers clique at GW who want to push that narrative.

>In your opinion.
Have you read anything related to 40k? At all? Even the video games?

>Everyone who messes with chaos ends up some degree of fucked
Absolutely, but ADB has a clear trend to represent the setting's villains as clear dindu nuffins by intentionally leaving out their more horrific characteristics, adding sympathy character's like the Word Bearer's confessor woman as cheap emotional catalysts and generally present them as making terrible decisions and being fucked over by chaos as a direct consequence of the Imperium/The Emperor/Loyalists/Authority being evil.

The Word Bearer's and Night Lords' books are a great example of this.
Just compare Betrayer or First Heretic to Dark Apostle. Even though the latter actually has slightly worse prose (which is probably ADB's on area of any competence), the characters, plot and overall feel of Reynold's is so far superior it's not even funny.

Again, Reynold's rendition off the Word Bearer's is both more evil and far superior than ADB's. The tragic misunderstood victims who are good at heart and got thrown under the tracks by the evil evil authoritah so they had to turn to other masters is a narrative that fits maybe the Thousand Sons on it only does so because they also have their hubris to prevent this from becoming one-sided.
Pushing the story for Lorgar or the Night Lords just cheapens everything that actually gave them texture before.

That's stupid. They were just bad dudes. That is why they turned against the Emperor. Trying to justify that is retarded because in the end you will always have to deal with the fact that they betrayed the one guy who was objectively the best leader for humanity.

>But the forces of Chaos were not quite so easily beaten. The whispered to the Primarchs from the warp, disturbing their dreams with promises of power, appealing to their pride, their martial prowess, and their courage. No single Primarch was wholly resistant to these unspoken temptations. The character of each was sorely tested, and fully half of them failed that test. So subtle was their temptation that they never even suspected how thier own loyalties were changing.

>For example, Mortarion Primarch of the Death Guard Legion fully belived that he was the herald of a new age of justice. Angron of the World Eaters genuinly thought that he alone could save humanity from destruction. Horus too, the greatest Primarch of all, was convinced of the virtue of the martial ideas for which he fought.

The point isn't whether they actually were betrayed but that they thought they were

>Why are you lying so wilfully? The global campaigns clearly showed people don't give a fuck about Chaos OR about the "Chaos is the big bad" narrative. It's literally the disconnected writers clique at GW who want to push that narrative.

No, I didn't lie. I just said that SOC was not meant to end the setting. We have an archive interview of the writer Gav Thorpe telling us that it's not meant to end the setting. It was meant to create the status quo of which 7th ED would be built around.

The SoC was poorly received because some factions got shafted and because of of infamous ending.

Everything else you said is a fabrication and doesn't have any relevancy.

>Just compare Betrayer or First Heretic to Dark Apostle
Or the night lords trilogy to Lord of the Night.

That's from the codex. Off what a burn. Sure showed that guy was talking out of his ass.

Oh and to add to You CAN'T write your primarchs like those poor misguided creatures who got driven from one abusive master to the next and just want their justified revenge because every plot like that is literally invalidated by all the loyalist Primarchs who lived under the same conditions and didn't fall to Chaos like autists. Trying to justify their fall just turns them from self-determined rebels into weak willed puppets.

Again, Magnus is probably the only one where that narrative works because he actually endured very different circumstances than his brothers and even then he did plenty wrong and is a nuanced character.

>The point isn't whether they actually were betrayed but that they thought they were
It's ridiculous. Moving the decision to fall from the Primarchs just turns them into cardboard pushovers. If ADB wanted to give nuance to the Traitors maybe he should have written them as capable people making their own decision and play up the angle of actual independence compared to the loyalists instead of writing them as emotionally stunted babies who need Chaos plot armour to even wipe their own asses.

ADB's Night Lords are the pirates who don't do anything.

Chaos turned them by playing on the things that made them shitty. Trying to portray that as a justification is retarded because it always comes back to the fact that the Emperor was clearly the best leader for humanity and that if they wanted what was good for humanity they should have followed him. Saying that they thought that betraying the Emperor would "herald a new age of justice" or "save humanity from destruction" just shows that they were either insane or subhumanly stupid, because it was obvious that no leader could be better for humanity than the Emperor.

Desu Lord of Night was kino

Fuck, to add to that AGAIN:

It was actually the LOYALISTS who were the independent and pro-active party during the Heresy. As soon as the Emps fucks off, the Traitors immediately find a new sugar daddy (or find one as soon as the Emps told him to stop being a retard in Lorgar's case). Meanwhile the Loyalists are intelligent enough to keep doing what they're already doing on their own.

You got to realise that nobody who knew the Emperor personally (before he became all glowy and shiney) liked him. Pius who is the most righteous dude in the galaxy DISTASTES the Emperor and calls him "the thing they call Emperor". If things aren't so dire, he wouldn't waste a second on that bastard. Alivia Sureka sweetest Milf ever to live hates the Emperor for creating the Space Marines in all their monstrosity. Both them sided with the Emperor and helped him to fulfil his quest across the ages because "they" were much worse than him. He is an asshole but the Chaos Gods are on a whole other level. If the Chaos Gods didn't exist or weren't as aggressive, then Alivia and Pius would have probably fought against the Emperor and his evil.