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The 4th(?) edition codex, which I still have for some reason, despite never playing Tau, and not having played 40k at all in a decade, specifically uses the phrase "manifest destiny" when describing the Tau Empire's political goals, so there's a pretty obvious real life country that was already being mined for inspiration. It's Canada
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Dec 14, 2015 08:56
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Been a while so the details might be off, but the first Tau Codex had some Imperial scribe analyzing a Tau propaganda video. There is a scene with Guardsmen vastly outnumbered and outgunned, putting up a fight and finally surrendering when the Crisis Suits jumppack in and blow up a bunker. A few years later all the Guardsman live on a farming colony and enjoy a life without war and death, full of freedom. The sergeant calls out to all Imperials to give up their arms, join the Greater Good and live their life growing food and enjoying Tau friendship. The only two things the Imperial notes is how the fight has to be fake because nobody would stop shooting when the enemy surrenders and that he wrote down the names of everyone who surrendered so they can be executed when found.
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Dec 14, 2015 11:35
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The conversation's moved on a little bit, but I very clearly remember reading the fluff section in Rogue Trader back in 1988 as a science-fiction-savvy 14-year-old and thinking it blindingly obvious that the emperor was a huge hoax, a figurehead corpse with the astronomicon created by the Golden Throne itself. Looking back on it now, it's presented a bit more ambiguously, but that's orders of magnitude better than what the fluff morphed into, with the emperor as a nascent chaos god of humanity or whatever the gently caress.
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Dec 14, 2015 12:40
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Avenging Dentist posted:I wouldn't say always. I'm pretty sure most of that stuff isn't in the original Codex (or the second one, which are the only ones I have). That sounds more like a retcon to make the Tau more evil. Yeah that's kinda like Bretonnians used to be foppish aristocrats with Robin Hood and stuff and then they slowly became Nazis that murdered peasants for fun. I don't think EVERYTHING has to be as grimdark as possible and having some races or factions that aren't totally hosed up allows for some contrast for the ones that are.
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Dec 14, 2015 12:55
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Giant Ethicist posted:The conversation's moved on a little bit, but I very clearly remember reading the fluff section in Rogue Trader back in 1988 as a science-fiction-savvy 14-year-old and thinking it blindingly obvious that the emperor was a huge hoax, a figurehead corpse with the astronomicon created by the Golden Throne itself. Looking back on it now, it's presented a bit more ambiguously, but that's orders of magnitude better than what the fluff morphed into, with the emperor as a nascent chaos god of humanity or whatever the gently caress. The emperor as nascent chaos god of humanity was introduced back in Realms of Chaos, so that was there in the beginning. In fact, doubt was added to that theory (or it was reinforced, depending on how much you trust the inquisition) in 3rd edition. It's not new, would be my point. Now, the root of the theory is that he is trapped from ascending by his corpse and the throne and the idiocy of the hidebound Imperium, and his offspring are trying to kill him to cause his ascension, which if they're wrong would cause the Imperium to collapse rather than enter a golden age...
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Dec 14, 2015 13:06
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Most of the Tau fluff about pheromone mind control, being created by the Eldar and sterilising Imperial worlds comes from sources that are on the edge of what is considered canon (Xenobiology, the Dawn of War computer game). The codex fluff is deliberately ambiguous on this stuff, so players and opponents can read what they want to into the Tau. Perhaps the Tau are the good guys, who want the best for everyone in their empire, but to outsiders they are hopelessly naive about the greater universe they exist in. Or perhaps they’re not really the good guys, and just see a diverse empire as an advantage over their enemies, with no moral regard to how they bring races into their empire, but then draw parallels to failed dictatorships and communist regimes. And nobody really cares that their fluff is never really fleshed out, because, you know, they aren’t Space Marines. They exist to be enemies for the Space Marines to fight, so it’s acceptable that they are defined from the Imperium’s point of view based on limited knowledge and understanding. They should be thankful the Imperium got their name right.
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Dec 14, 2015 13:19
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Ubik_Lives posted:And nobody really cares that their fluff is never really fleshed out, because, you know, they aren’t Space Marines. They exist to be enemies for the Space Marines to fight, so it’s acceptable that they are defined from the Imperium’s point of view based on limited knowledge and understanding. They should be thankful the Imperium got their name right. I have to say, I do quite like the Imperiocentric perspective from which much of the fluff is written. I'm primarily a Xenos player and I enjoy and engage with the fluff on its own terms for the races that I play*, but the general sense of continuity that you get from reading Inquisition reports about alien capabilities is neat and it situates you as a viewer. * For example, the Ork fluff in GorkaMorka, which is by necessity less Imperiocentric, is great by itself, and the Eldar already have a pretty good self-standing canon of their own.
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Dec 14, 2015 13:56
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Tau are good guys in the sense that they try diplomacy first and only resort to violence when necessary - Tau are expansionist but they try to integrate races rather than wipe them out. Everyone else immediately jumps to killing each other as soon as they are within firing range.
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Dec 14, 2015 14:30
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Avenging Dentist posted:If you interpret all fluff as written in-universe (which it often is), you end up having to ask a lot of questions about who the intended (in-universe) audience is. Would some random Imperial citizen have access to the full chronology of the Tyrannic War, where the Ultramarines' First Company was wiped out to a man? Probably not. I think the intended audience for most of the fiction is someone in the Inquisition, which makes the absence of any rumors of rebels in Ultramar kind of suspect; the Inquisition would probably be very interested in that knowledge. On the contrary, the fiction about Ultramar paints it as close to idyllic as possible in 40K, with the possible exception of the Tau. I guess I never put much thought into who the audience is, but after some thinking, I think the audience is the propaganda writers themselves. The difference between now and the Rogue Trader era is that the propagandists now believe their own bullshit. That's why there's no more ambiguity. Bringing it back to Fantasy, in a previous thread, someone said that the Skaven were "greedy, long nosed subhumans trying to undermine a glorious Germanic Empire". It was a joke, but its completely true: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIQp31Oyn70   Some Nazi Fucker posted:"They're cunning, cowardly and cruel and usually appear in massive hordes. They represent the elements of sneakiness and subteranean destruction among animals, just as the jews do among mankind." I can understand why this kind of presentation would make people uncomfortable, but as Jew, I'm completely the comfortable with it (the GW stuff, not the nazis  ) The reason I'm comfortable with it is because Warhammer Fantasy/40k lets me side with the blood curdling monsters pouring out the sewer to sweep away the bullshit. Its like if Inglourious Basterds were from the viewpoint of the Germans.
Nebalebadingdong fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Dec 14, 2015 |
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Dec 14, 2015 15:25
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I really loved the concept that people just don't believe in Skaven. And that Skaven themselves facilitate this with propaganda, human collaborators, and assassination. It even comes up in Vermimtide, the dwarf says something about how the Empire could have been prepared if they'd believed the dwarfs' warnings that they were real.
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Dec 14, 2015 15:50
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:that's still a pretty lazy and boring direction to go with them. if it's hard to think of a a way to complicate a faction that doesn't involve them being secretly stalinist hitlers you could try ripping off any country* that has ever existed ever Infinity's batshit insane fluff does wonderful things with national stereotypes and factions. I love the fact that it's the growing nations like Brazil that dominate, while the USA and GB + friends are the backwards low-tech guys that got left behind.
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Dec 14, 2015 15:59
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If I'm not mistaken, Imperials don't believe in Skavens because the thought that there are countless hordes of cruel, scheming monsters underneath your feets is a bit too much to bear. The RPG said something along those lines: There are two myths in the Empire: The first is that Skavens don't exist, the second is that people believe the first.
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Dec 14, 2015 16:00
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the old world was really cool
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Dec 14, 2015 16:01
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Moola posted:the old world was really cool But did it have flying golden Sigmarines with swirly swirly swirls all over the place? Huh?
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Dec 14, 2015 16:08
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Moola posted:the old world was really cool It was 
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Dec 14, 2015 16:13
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Giant Ethicist posted:The conversation's moved on a little bit, but I very clearly remember reading the fluff section in Rogue Trader back in 1988 as a science-fiction-savvy 14-year-old and thinking it blindingly obvious that the emperor was a huge hoax, a figurehead corpse with the astronomicon created by the Golden Throne itself. Looking back on it now, it's presented a bit more ambiguously, but that's orders of magnitude better than what the fluff morphed into, with the emperor as a nascent chaos god of humanity or whatever the gently caress. This is backed up by what little background they have written on the High Lords of Terra. I always thought these people consciously worked towards keeping the idea of the Emperor alive, and furthering the idea of a God-Emperor. This is backed by Inquisitors trying to kill and change SM doctrine where they feel he is an ally or a stronger version of them, but not a God. If you take the Inquisitor rules and background as cannon, it's also pretty clear anyone with any actual power is manipulating everything they can to keep humanity down, and only serve to fight each other using the weapons of the Imperium to further their own power. This is both among groups and individuals. Those that truly believe in the emperor are often manipulated by other for their own needs. I always took it as the Imperium is the lesser of two evils, they are the good guys because they are slightly better then the bad guys. Very slightly.
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Dec 14, 2015 16:23
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Their flashing tongues, spitting out blood and poison.
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Wasn't there a really old story with a bunch of shadowy guys creating the Inquisition in the aftermath of the Emperor getting killed? I remember that one pretty much setting the scene for "do we reveal the truth and say he's dead or do we hide that in order to protect order?" and different factions within that organization starting basically day 1.
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Dec 14, 2015 16:29
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So it just dawned on my that Ultramar is just Ultramar
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Dec 14, 2015 16:47
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Re the Skaven thing, there are a few reasons mentioned in stories about why the Empire denies their existence: 1. The higher ups know they exist but deny it to avoid causing panic amongst the populace. 2. They are exploiting Skaven psychology, by denying their existence they threaten the Skaven less. If the Empire ever united against the Skaven, the Skaven will unite in response and destroy the Empire under sheer weight of numbers. As is the Skaven infight too much to be a true threat. 3. IIRC one story/fluff book mentions the Skaven cast a ritual every 13 years to make mankind forget about them, I'm not sure if this is canon or where I heard it though.
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Dec 14, 2015 16:52
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Zark the Damned posted:If the Empire ever united against the Skaven, the Skaven will unite in response and destroy the Empire under sheer weight of numbers. DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUN! 
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Dec 14, 2015 18:22
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Whether it's canon or not, it would make sense for Tau to sterilize human populations. There're simply way too many humans for them to ever take over. They'd quickly become a minority in their own empire if they didn't do something to curtail the human population, so I can easily see that as a route they'll end up taking in the fluff.
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Dec 14, 2015 20:59
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The main problem with GW and I think why Priestley left the company is the fluff all comes from the 80s and stuff like Judge Dredd. The core setting of WH40k is a monolithic theocratic fascist state, I don't think anyone reading it was supposed to think that it wasn't all just a little bit tongue in cheek. Same with the low-fantasy Warhammer setting, it's a dark fantasy setting with all the gothic dials cranked to 11, if it took itself seriously it would be fantastically boring. Then we get poo poo like bloodsecrator skullbloods and the sigmarines and it's played completely straight. Not to mention how one-dimensional the Space Marines have become in 40k. Somewhere along the line the main fluff writers at GW started looking at ultra-religious, fascist, xenophobic super-soldiers and thinking 'yes, of course these are the good guys' EDIT: I mean, that's really my problem with the whole AoS thing. Imagine if the whole sigmarines thing didn't take itself so seriously, and it just went way over the top with all the fluff, and we really did have guys with cloaks that shoot hammers but it wasn't played off as some amazing serious grim stuff. I would loving love that setting. You could go extremely '80s heavy metal album cover' with it in all the best ways. Which was the best part about the original warhammer setting, I think. Operant fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Dec 14, 2015 |
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Dec 14, 2015 21:06
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Nebalebadingdong posted:I guess I never put much thought into who the audience is, but after some thinking, I think the audience is the propaganda writers themselves. The difference between now and the Rogue Trader era is that the propagandists now believe their own bullshit. That's why there's no more ambiguity. No matter how one interprets the in-universe audience of the 40k fluff, I think they made Ultramarines specifically (and Space Marines in general) a little too squeaky-clean. They've squandered a lot of opportunities to show off the dark side of the Space Marines, forcing fans to selectively ignore lots of fluff so that the overall backstory isn't stupid. Nebalebadingdong posted:Bringing it back to Fantasy, in a previous thread, someone said that the Skaven were "greedy, long nosed subhumans trying to undermine a glorious Germanic Empire". With things like this, I sometimes wonder if any monster-race would be completely immune to racist allegory. It's not like forest goblins, which are pretty explicitly copying Native American dress; I'm not sure anything about Skaven directly references the Jewish people (but I could be wrong, since I don't know a ton about Skaven). Would any other monster-race that posed a similar threat have an equally-racist interpretation? Anti-Semitic imagery is probably vague enough that you could find an example of any "monstrous" trait that you might apply to a fantasy species. Of course, if you start out conscious of this, you could probably do more to subvert the racist allegory than they did with the Skaven. Still, it seems like a pretty tough problem, especially when you have multiple people working on a project who might not get the memo (e.g. Judge Dredd was originally supposed to be racially-ambiguous, but there was some confusion, so now he's white since that's what the art finally settled on).
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Dec 14, 2015 21:26
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Avenging Dentist posted:Would any other monster-race that posed a similar threat have an equally-racist interpretation? Anti-Semitic imagery is probably vague enough that you could find an example of any "monstrous" trait that you might apply to a fantasy species. The population of outcasts coming from that island that's nearby the main continent and who settled in the northenrn part of their new continent are a bunch of warmongering sadistic bastards. And slavers.
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Dec 14, 2015 21:32
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Weren't the original orc depictions super racist as well?
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Dec 14, 2015 21:43
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Avenging Dentist posted:With things like this, I sometimes wonder if any monster-race would be completely immune to racist allegory. It's not like forest goblins, which are pretty explicitly copying Native American dress; I'm not sure anything about Skaven directly references the Jewish people (but I could be wrong, since I don't know a ton about Skaven). Would any other monster-race that posed a similar threat have an equally-racist interpretation? Anti-Semitic imagery is probably vague enough that you could find an example of any "monstrous" trait that you might apply to a fantasy species. Well, understand that in the real world, we often struggle with the ambiguity of The Enemy - in whatever form it may take - being populated entirely by human beings, each of whom is an individual with their own personal record of behavior, their own attitudes, and their own ethical standing. When we choose to make war on the Other, we invariably must first dehumanize them, using all of the familiar strategies; we can condemn their political structures, their cultural mores, the actions of their governments, etc., and when we go to darker places, we can condemn them because of their religious difference, their inferior genetics, etc. In fiction, we have the luxury of defining The Enemy such that they - empirically, by definition, without question - possess Bad Traits that make them OK To Kill. Doing so plays a dual role: it gives us convenient antagonists to make the protagonists unquestionably In The Right when they kill their enemies... and, it helps us to reinforce our real-world narratives, as we draw parallels between the people we don't like in real life and the people the authors have presented for us to hate in the fictional universe. So, any "monster-race" in fiction will always have parallels with the traits ascribed to real-world groups of people that at one time or another have been the target of the dehumanizing strategies. Authorial intent is too completely aligned with the intent of real-world stereotyping for it to be otherwise. If you wanted to present a fantasy faction that had none of these parallels, you'd have to work very hard to still have them act as antagonists at all. One approach might be to completely avoid certainty when describing the faction... make any attribute the reader could possibly consider negative be "according to X", while there is always an "according to Y" conteropinion that denies that attribute. If the reader is constantly conscious that the narrator's descriptions of the faction are unreliable, it will be impossible to mentally categorize the faction as unquestionably The Bad Guys. Since being circumspect and relentlessly fair about people you might want to defeat through violence is pretty unusual in the real world, it'd be a lot harder to draw those parallels.
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Dec 14, 2015 21:47
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Kurieg posted:Weren't the original orc depictions super racist as well? Savage Orcs always had and still have a "cartoon cannibal" aka racist stereotype of black aboriginals aspect to them. The Spear Chukka weapons platform didn't help.
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Dec 14, 2015 21:48
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Tolkein's orcs are also racist caricatures, and he was borrowing from earlier (also racist) fantasy and not-so-fantasy depictions of "irredeemable savages that it's OK for us to kill."
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Dec 14, 2015 21:53
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Apparently the Age of Sigmar is so boring that we are discussing 40K in the Fantasy thread. 
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Dec 14, 2015 21:55
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There's not even enough in Age of Sigmar to make fun of.
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Dec 14, 2015 21:57
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You could make more stories about the rats within the armor but all the jokes have been made in the first story.
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Dec 14, 2015 21:59
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We have had our laughs about blood secretors and now AoS just leaves us empty... like the armor when the rats go to eat cheese.
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Dec 14, 2015 22:02
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I kinda think that in a reality where there are literal daemons that can possess you if you get too mad/proud/sick/horny, that maybe a fascist theocratic government is the best you can hope for. I would take living on the Ultramarine planet over most anything else the 40k world has to offer, other then maybe being an ork who gets to drive a tank, those guys must be having a blast 24/7.
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Dec 14, 2015 22:05
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Avenging Dentist posted:Would any other monster-race that posed a similar threat have an equally-racist interpretation? Anti-Semitic imagery is probably vague enough that you could find an example of any "monstrous" trait that you might apply to a fantasy species. If an outsider is disruptive to a community, its gonna fall into this "trap". I put trap in scare quotes because I think playing it straight (like GW does) is the correct approach. People get the gut reaction that native-orcs or jew-skaven is bad, but they think these racist caricatures can be fixed by making them more human or more complex (like Blizzard did). You get into this losing argument that "they're like us, they love their children, they just want to live in peace". You can't prove humanity to a Nazi, don't even try. Unconditionally side with the rats and orc doods, and help them burn dat poo poo to the ground 
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Dec 14, 2015 22:14
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bongwizzard posted:I kinda think that in a reality where there are literal daemons that can possess you if you get too mad/proud/sick/horny, that maybe a fascist theocratic government is the best you can hope for. I would take living on the Ultramarine planet over most anything else the 40k world has to offer, other then maybe being an ork who gets to drive a tank, those guys must be having a blast 24/7. Yeah, but this is just the same kind of language the ultra right wing uses as justification for actual ethnically pure fascism ("We must secure the existence of our people and a future for adamantium|wang fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Dec 14, 2015 |
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Dec 14, 2015 22:37
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Considering the Warp is mostly a reflection of everyone else turned crazy, the solution to it probably isn't 'Go crazier and spread more endless misery that will drive people to side with the literal devil just to get away from you'. I mean, that was a big thing in WHFRP, which was my main experience with Warhammer Fantasy: They pointed out a lot of the poo poo like the crazy nobles where one of the big things that drove people to Chaos. Similarly, it mutated people partly because once someone was mutated, they didn't really have many other choices for places to go; a mutant is marked by Chaos, and so it's Chaos or death for them. Misery and injustice were regularly depicted as sending people to tentacle town just as much as vice.
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Dec 14, 2015 22:41
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adamantium|wang posted:Yeah, but this is just the same kind of language the ultra right wing uses as justification for actual ethnically pure fascism ("We must secure the existence of our people and a future for Sure, but like literal space daemons dude. Actual beings spawned from bad vibes. Not to mention some green dudes who exist only to fight and space bugs.
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Dec 14, 2015 22:47
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bongwizzard posted:I kinda think that in a reality where there are literal daemons that can possess you if you get too mad/proud/sick/horny, that maybe a fascist theocratic government is the best you can hope for. I would take living on the Ultramarine planet over most anything else the 40k world has to offer, other then maybe being an ork who gets to drive a tank, those guys must be having a blast 24/7. I feels like that's how stories end up devolving into straight 'hero versus badguydemons' poo poo just with detours where the hero does something nominally nasty (but usually not dwelt on or explored and/or with an in-universe excuse) to check the grimdark boxes, or worse, HARSH TIMES CALL FOR HARSH DECISIONS moments that don't even count as morally ambiguous because so many sad wankers get off on that as a heroic ideal.
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Dec 14, 2015 23:16
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Oh yea it is lazy storytelling but taken literally I will take space fascism over "eaten by space bugs" any day. There was a thing on NPR this weekend about wether or not violent tendencies were intrinsic to human nature and one of the people interviewed briefly touched on the idea that an external threat to all humanity would be what it takes to unite us and I though of warhammer and was deeply ashamed with myself.
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Dec 14, 2015 23:29
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bongwizzard posted:I kinda think that in a reality where there are literal daemons that can possess you if you get too mad/proud/sick/horny, that maybe a fascist theocratic government is the best you can hope for. I would take living on the Ultramarine planet over most anything else the 40k world has to offer, other then maybe being an ork who gets to drive a tank, those guys must be having a blast 24/7. My issue is just that the Ultramarines are depicted as master planners and that living in Ultramar is actually pretty nice (aside from that time their poo poo got wrecked by Tyranids), when there's not a lot of justification for why it's so much better than everywhere else. The only not-dumb way I've been able to interpret it is that Ultramar is about the largest a stable society can get before everything breaks down. Otherwise, why not just use the Ultramarines political model for the whole Imperium? I find it hard to believe that there's something special about Ultramarines and their subjects that makes them able to produce a basically-functioning society when everyone else seems to fail at it. Night10194 posted:I mean, that was a big thing in WHFRP, which was my main experience with Warhammer Fantasy: They pointed out a lot of the poo poo like the crazy nobles where one of the big things that drove people to Chaos. That's the part of Warhammer that I always liked: the idea that all the suffering in the world (or galaxy) is ultimately our own fault. I much prefer the idea that the "grim darkness" of Warhammer is inside each of us, rather than a bunch of Aryan supermen holding the line against the forces of Evil. It's impossible to even have these discussions about AoS because the only actual people are Chaos worshipers. Sigmarines are effectively immortal and manage to have even less character than Space Marines (who can at least take off their helmets to scowl at the bad guys), while Lizardmen are just holographic projections of the Slann's memories (or something). Everything in AoS in infinite in a bad way: every Realm is of infinite size and each faction has infinitely many dudes to throw at the other side, so every individual story is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. About the only thing that's not infinite is stuff: Sigmar's hammer, the Ur-Gold the dwarfs want, etc. However, I haven't seen a single reason why I should care about some random artifact. e: Hahahahaha, from Lexicanum: "The Anvils of Heldenhammer are a Stormhost of the Stormcast Eternals, wearing black armor. They are dark and brooding because they were reforged when the Broken World was in a magical gloom." Avenging Dentist fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Dec 14, 2015 |
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Dec 14, 2015 23:36
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