Space King is the result of Games Workshop’s aggressive policy toward fan content creators. It’s a parody series based on the grim Warhammer 40,000 universe, created by YouTube channel Flashgitz. It focuses entirely on the local version of the Space Marines and their attempts to right their own wrongs. How? By bringing goodness and joy, in both the cruelest and sweetest ways, of course.
War on free advertising
The grim universe of Warhammer 40,000 is vast. Numerous factions exterminate each other for the amusement of the laughing gods. The war has been going on for tens of thousands of years, and mountains of official books have been dedicated to it.
Those unfamiliar with the franchise are sure it’s a futuristic world where fantasy races shoot each other in space. Those who’ve begun to delve into the story will say the world is full of nuances and will eagerly explore the nuances of the factions involved in the global conflict. Veterans who’ve studied the universe for years will declare it’s a futuristic world where fantasy races shoot each other in space WITH ESPECIAL CRUELTY! They simply already know that delving into every detail and the constantly shifting canon is detrimental to one’s psyche.
It’s safe to say that the universe is very interesting and fascinating to explore. Numerous fans, driven by sheer enthusiasm, created content in the form of videos, drawings, and game modifications. In doing so, they provided Games Workshop with a huge amount of publicity, which played a significant role in popularizing the franchise.
But Games Workshop wanted even more! The company tightened its rules for fan content, forcing many creators to delete their work or cease publishing it for fear of lawsuits. The goal of this behavior was to create the Warhammer+ platform, where, in theory, controlled content creators would generate even greater profits for the overlords. The result turned out to be far weaker than what people created for free.
Initially, the YouTube channel Flashgitz released videos of Space Marines from the Black Templars order fighting a community of Slaaneshi (hedonists) in furry animal costumes (furries). After massive raids, the Space King project was created, which deviates from Warhammer 40,000 enough to avoid lawsuits from Games Workshop.
A New Dark Universe
The creators jokingly stated that they were creating a project for “mentally challenged boys and thirty-year-old men.” Space King focuses on explosions, destruction, and bloodshed. The source of the chaos are the Psycho Warriors—X-Men counterparts to the Space Marines, clad in Juggernaut armor.
Although psycho warriors are similar to space marines, they have significant differences:
- Space Marines undergo rigorous training from early childhood, after which they are subjected to modification. Once completed, Space Marines produce gene-seed—a rare resource essential for the creation of supersoldiers;
- To create a psycho-warrior, an ordinary boy is needed. Holy globules are implanted into the boy, and within seconds, he is transformed into a fully-fledged super-soldier. His memories are also overwritten. If the holy globules are destroyed, the psycho-warrior dies forever.
The Psychic Warriors are divided into legions and perform specific tasks. Among their ranks are commanders, warriors, medics, engineers, and chaplains who oversee the spiritual development of their brothers. The Psychic Warriors’ symbol is a mask disfigured by hatred—it is displayed on armor, weapons, ships, Titans, and even on superweapon explosions.
Although the psycho-warriors are physically healthy men, psychologically they remain at the level of boys. They destroy aliens by the trillions for fun, fool around, and generally make life difficult for those around them with their idiocy. Due to the lack of self-preservation instinct, the psycho-warriors’ sacred spheres are constantly being destroyed, leading to a slow decline in the super-soldiers’ numbers.
Psycho-warriors live up to their name. With rare exceptions, they are devoid of compassion, logic, or common sense. They are constantly searching for enemies to destroy—if they don’t, the super-soldiers will literally die of boredom.
The Holy Journey for Junk
The series’ plot revolves around the figure of the Cosmic King. He is essentially a local version of the Emperor of humanity. The difference is that the Cosmic King did not ascend to the Golden Throne, but disappeared—presumably while shopping for cigarettes. The Psycho Warriors are religiously loyal to the Cosmic King and eagerly await his return.
A group of protagonists is tasked with searching for sacred artifacts with which the Cosmic King interacted in the past. Legend has it that the Cosmic King will return once all the artifacts are collected. It seems more likely that the giant skulls overseeing the psycho-warriors concocted the legend to harness the boundless energy of their charges for a useful purpose—the extermination of humanity’s enemies and victims.
The main characters combine mission with entertainment, searching for someone to shoot or to make their lasers a cooler shade. Their most common enemies are aliens, who range from bloodthirsty monsters to pathetic punching bags.
One episode featured an AI. In the Warhammer 40,000 universe, the Artificial Intelligence is called the Abominable Intelligence. It received this name because it nearly successfully exterminated all of humanity in the past. In the world of Space King, the AI is naive and dreams of learning to be human, and the main characters showed surprising solidarity. They taught it hatred!
The Christmas episode featured psykers and renegades. The psykers exorcise their comrades who don’t fit in—all sorts of alien-loving perverts and capitalists. The psyker turned out to be a psyker named Rudolph, who used his big red nose to read minds.
Diagnosis
Compared to Warhammer 40,000 and Space King, the latter is much simpler and more straightforward. However, the new, dark universe is well-thought-out and well-developed enough to satisfy fans of simple violence and humor. The animation quality surpasses almost all the work Games Workshop puts on Warhammer+ – further proof that it’s not worth sawing the branch you’re sitting on.
Currently, each episode is garnering millions of views. Netflix has already expressed interest in the series and offered to buy the rights, but the creators decided to remain independent. Now, in response to every such offer, they send an animated image of a character named Hatemonger tearing apart the “cave of low consonances,” or, more simply, the ass, of an anthropomorphic remote control. Only hatred of corporations, only hardcore!
