Warhammer 40K meets idol singers. Yes, really.
StringStorm, a Youtube music creator already known for making music for If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, decided to make a song based on a piece of fanart created by Luth of Bolter to Kokoro fame. This quickly spiraled into it's own little series of videos where various factions in the Grim Dark Future of the 41st millennium decided to get in on the Idol Singer business.
You can find the first song here
, the playlist here, and String Storm's Youtube channel here
Tropes contained in Warhammer Idol Month:
- Auto-Tune: Fittingly for a Tech Priest, Megane talks and sings with an auto-tuned voice. It's more noticeable when she speaks, though.
- All-Loving Hero: Downplayed and subtle, but Megane has shades of this - not only is she friendly with the other idols, giving props to the Necron idol - a xenos - without hesitation (at least some of the others are too), but she is the only idol to go onstage with another idol, and deals with Khorne in good faith.
- Also, of course, Nana of Nurgle, whose song literally sounds like
a song from MLP - in the best possible ways.
- Also, of course, Nana of Nurgle, whose song
- Big Eater: Tyriana, as befitting her status as a Tyranid Idol. She was even found by the Imperial Guard commissar at the snack table with her identifying information taped to her head.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Megane directly address the viewers when the other idols are screaming and panicking again the third time an Idol does an orbital insertion directly onto the stage."You know what? At the risk of breaking character, I'm not even going to bother."
- Country Music: Khortney's song, Hogtied.Khorne: "Um, actually, it's pronounced "Khornetry", thank you very much:
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Fittingly for the Orks, putting a dress and an idol-like wig onto an Ork turns said Ork into an idol singer.
- Crack Fic: It's a web series about Warhammer 40,000 that is focused on using idol singers in place of going to war.
- Cute Machines: As opposed to being a robot skeleton, the Necron idol Catherine is a Robot Girl who has the Necrons' color aesthetic.
- Cute Monster Girl: All of the Chaos idols fit, as well as several other idols.
- Mina of Chaos Undivided is a succubus.
- Khortney of Khorne inherits her creator's Big Red Devil aesthetic, which doubles as a cow girl look that complements her Wild West cowgirl theme.
- Slaanesh's Slania is a Lamia.
- Nurgle's creation Nana is a Slime Girl.
- Tzeentch has created the Harpie Talibah.
- The Ork idol inherently counts just for what she is.
- As does Tyriana, the Tyranid idol.
- Declaration of Protection: Tsalie Valk of the Imperial Guard declares her intent to protect the listener to the very end in "For You".
- Doomed Hometown: Between the line "Although my home and hearth are gone" and her purple eyes, it's quite apparent that Tsalie Valk is Cadian as well as that the song takes place after Cadia's destruction.
- Doting Parent: Nurgle's attitude towards his idol Nana.
- Dragged into Drag:
- The Dark Eldar now mostly kidnap humans and force them to wear cosplay, often forcing them to crossdress as well.
- The Orks made ??????? into their idol by dressing the Ork who suggested they participate in the idol singing competitions in crude, improvised, and frankly unconvincing drag. However, once they add a twintails wig, it's close enough that the WAAAAAAGH kicks in and the Orks' collective belief turns him into a girl with all the requisite musical talent to perform as an idol.
- Drop Pod: A running gag about how the various Idols get to the stage involves having them use something as a drop pod, ranging from mecha (Macha and Kimmy) to a giant rock (???????, which is to expected due to being an Ork).
- Early-Installment Weirdness: There are no chibi plot segments or preview for the next song in the credits for the first song, which became staples of the series in the later songs. This is justified, since there were no plans to actually make more than the original one.
- Excuse Plot: A little more involved than most excuse plots, but still it's an excuse for comedy skits before and after the songs.
- The Fashionista: What the Dark Eldar of all people have become. Fabius Bile (or rather, now Fabulous Bile) has also taken up fashion and polishes the Chaos gods' idols for the Chaos idol competition. Also he speaks French/Aeldari.
- Gasp!: When Malal of all people shows up with his idol, the rest of the Chaos Gods let out a loud gasp followed by a shocked exclamation of "MALAL?!"
- Go-Karting with Bowser: In the actual 40k setting, these people would be mortal enemies (a fact people notice in-universe), and yet they have a singing competition together.
- Gender Bender: ???????'s debut - the Warboss singles out the Ork who suggested they participate in the idol competitions and has several of the other Orks dress him up in a skirt, shove some fruit in his shirt as Fake Boobs, and put some makeup on him, before noting something's missing. Once they apply a wig, the WAAAAAAGH kicks in and turns him into a girl, after which she says she's now feeling "KAWAAAAGH!" Which makes sense. After all Orks run on Clap Your Hands If You Believe and an Idol Singer needs to be a woman.
- Genre Roulette: Justified in that each song is made by a different faction and idol. So they would have a different genre and style of performance. As some examples, Khortney (Khorne's idol) sings country, Kimmy (the Tau idol) sings in an opera style, Talibah (Tzeentch's idol) sings jazz, and ??????? (the Ork idol) sings metal.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: The Inquisition's song "Himejoshi" is about her stumbling across a lesbian couple and being conflicted about not wanting to break it up despite one of them being a xeno and the other a human (hence the line "why am I so obsessed with this cursed, forbidden love?"). note At the end, she opts to do her job, hence chasing Lilith and Valk to brand them as "weebs".
- Gratuitous French: All of Fabius Bile's lines are spoken in French, for no apparent reason.
- Green-Skinned Space Babe: All of the Tau idols, naturally.
- Heavy Metal: ???????'s song Stalwart. Of course the Orks make a Heavy Metal War song.
- Hope Spot: It seems like for a few seconds Chaos has finally decided to work together with their designed by committee Idol. And then immediately fall into squabbling. Par for the course.
- I Know Your True Name: Mina claims to need this in "Demon Eyes", though for what isn't specified.
- Also implied to have power over her by her choice to herself as "Mina" rather than the name Nurgle gives her, which sounds something like "Minaxdafneurneuffrom".
- Insistent Terminology: Khorne insists that Khortney performs "Khornetry", not "Country".
- Instant Expert: Due to the Orks’ beliefs bending reality, ??????? being dressed up as an idol singer is all it takes for her to become a talented singer.
- Intercourse with You:
- Sister Rosie's song, Promethium Laced With Love, is far from subtle. It's totally just about a Sister re-loading her flamethrower.
- Macha's song, Claim Me, is Macha all but begging the listener to take her virginity.
- Khortney's song, Hogtied, is about BDSM and is explicit enough that a common initial criticism was that it almost sounded Slaaneshi, at least until Slania's song dropped.
- Slania's song, Give Me!, goes even farther than the above three - quickly jumping past any notion of such things as "subtext", "ambiguity" and "euphemisms". It's even on a parody of an adult video website (though it's just a single page that embeds the actual unlisted video). Slaanesh is the deity of excess, after all...
- Lighter and Softer: All the Factions in 40K have decided to engage in Idol competitions instead of war. There is much less hostility than in the canon, and even the Dark Eldar are reduced to simple pranksters and Khorne to feeding from flame wars rather than actual blood being shed.
- Luminescent Blush: Sister Rosie sports one throughout her song, due to Megane deciding to make it rather obviously lewd.
- Make Games, Not War: Idol competitions have entirely replaced conventional warfare in the Idol Month universe.
- Meaningful Name: Megane the Techpriestess has giant glasses. Megane means glasses in Japanese.
- No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: Everyone else giving up the galaxy-wide Forever War in favor of resolving everything with idol competitions has made waging WAAAAGH boring for the Orks as nobody fights back anymore and it turns out krumpin' 'umies isn't as much fun when the 'umies don't try and krump you back. Thus they go where the challenge now lies - idol competitions.
- No Name Given: The Ork idol's name is never given and even the video name only ever calls her "???????".
- Obligatory Bondage Song: Khortney's song "Hogtied" is all about how much she enjoys dominating men, especially describing the use of whips and spurs in sex play.
- Obsession Song: Shadowsun's song "Kitty" is one for Kitten and their "totally not canon" past relationship.
- Playing Hard to Get: Macha's song also has this in it's lyrics. Not because she wants to be difficult, but it wouldn't be fun without any struggle.
- Poke the Poodle: What pretty much everyone gets up to these days. The worse the Dark Eldar do is use random humans as fashion models for practice. And the Tyranid's plans are to charm everyone in the galaxy to give them food.
- Recursive Fanfiction: The whole series was started by a piece of 40K fanart by Lutherniel. And to further how recursive it's gotten, the series has inspired it's own fan art.
- Robot Girl: Naturally, the Necrons' idol, Catherine.
- Shout-Out:
- Shadowsun's entire song is a shout out to If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device. Which makes sense as StringStorm has done a great deal of work for the series, providing several of its soundtracks.
- It's not the most obvious. But in retrospect of course the Orks would make a song that's effectively the heavy metal version of Love is a Battlefield.
- Macha's entire personality and song is based on the 40k's fanbase jokes about her being an eternal virgin who can never get laid.
- Potentially is that the Inquisition's Idol is Ordos Xenos Inquistor Amberley Vail as the Idol singer matches almost 1-to-1 Amberley's description, including being a professional singer.
- Sick and Wrong:
- Downplayed for laughs in ???????'s short. The Ork Warboss is weirded out by the whole thing.
- The rest of Chaos have this reaction to the fake website that the viewers have to go through to get to Slannesh's Idol video.
- Start My Own: Shadowsun decides to leave the Tau Empire and be an independent idol when she's told that she can't be an Idol Singer as she's Fire Caste (the warrior caste) and idols can only be Water Caste (the diplomatic and mercantile caste), and that the Farsight Enclaves already have their own idol, Torchstar.
- Vapor Wear: After landing, ??????? (the Ork idol) doesn't appear to be wearing anything below the waist and is preserving her modesty entirely by way of the placement of her guitar. Curiously, the miniskirt she was wearing in the chibi art appears to be absent in her full portrait.
- We ARE Struggling Together: Chaos manages to work together just long enough to make an Idol for Chaos Undivided. Then after a successful first show, they immediately start squabbling and set out to make their own idols. Which is par for the course.
Troper's Debut! - Warhammer 40k Idol Month
