This weekend, my partner and I will be attending one of the fall festivals in the area. I expect a delightful bacchanal of apple cider donuts, perusing local crafts, and sampling the offerings from regional distilleries—all of which I'll need to distract myself from the knowledge that, across the Atlantic, at the University of Heidelberg, enlightened minds are convening for panels like "In the Name of the Emperor? Authority and Pluralism in the Grim Darkness of the Far Future" and "Are We the Baddies?: The Ethical Implications of the Imperium’s War with Chaos and the Inverted Meaning of Order."
The Warhammer Conference, which bills itself as "the world’s first academic conference dedicated to all things Warhammer," is hosting over 50 presentations where theorists and philosophers are presenting their scholarly appraisals of Space Marines, Genestealer cults, and 40K fanfic. The two-day conference ends tomorrow, and frankly, I have never been more upset that I didn't pursue academia. Sure, I'd have consigned myself to a harrowing life of anxiety and financial turmoil, but I'd have a lot more excuses to listen to the world's most studied sickos do the deepest possible dives on their fascinations of choice.
