THE GOBLIN NEWSLETTER - 127 - CULTURE WARHAMMER

I have been watching tons of videos of interviews with the old Games Workshop crew about the start of Warhammer & other GW projects. I’m deliberately trying to push my youtube algorithm away from political analysis towards something more fun & that actually has to do with my profession. In watching these & thinking about generational stuff a lot, I really see how Gen X grew up in the shadow of the Boomers but were actually the shadow (In Jungian terms) of the Silent Generation. My parents had me relatively young for boomers. Most of my friend’s parents were older than them & my brothers are older millennials now. I’m a younger Gen Xer but definitely a Gen Xer. Because of this, I was raised with some of the Millennial generation’s issues & I could understand what both Gen Xers & Millennial psychologies were like. I grew up watching little kid’s media longer because my youngest brother is six years younger than me. But back to Games Workshop, my understanding & expectations of fantasy came from the fantasy that was part of the psychedelic 60s including the stuff that was being aimed at Gen Xers throughout the 80s. My understanding of Rock&Roll & the Counterculture in general is tinged with this 1969-1989 flavor. Even though I was too young to have been influenced by the same things, when I started to research the stuff in the early 90s, I understood my roots as having begun with people who were 20-30 years older than me, my parent’s age. To me, the Golden Age of Games Workshop is from 1986-1992. This was also the most influential time of my life, when I was 10-16. Now, it’s 2024 & I talk with my kids about fantasy frequently, they are Gen Z & even though me & Katie raised them with our values, they have taken on the Gen Z culture anyway. Because of this I am fully versed in what the younger people say they want out of their fantasy & all the ways that fantasy institutions are susceptible to the same kind of social pressures that regular society is. I’ve been determined to not be part of the culture war & just do my thing, be an artist, have my own vision, not engage in the proxy wars of the Democrats & Republicans in places like D&D & what have you. That’s all to say, I like what I like, I do what I do, so should you. If the issue becomes around pushing you to do something their way, especially when these things are not about governing a public or publicly perceived institution, the issue is about freedom, not the culture war.   

x SEAN

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