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GW shouldn't have to create a sidebar with Zippy the Emperor's Eunuch telling you "hey kids this is satire" for you to realize that giving up your essential humanity to be cog in a doomed war machine is undesirable, and its glorification satire.
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Dec 16, 2021 20:04
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homullus posted:GW shouldn't have to create a sidebar with Zippy the Emperor's Eunuch telling you "hey kids this is satire" for you to realize that giving up your essential humanity to be cog in a doomed war machine is undesirable, and its glorification satire. They shouldn't have to but given the preponderance of fash showing up at tournaments and making nazi armies it's clear they do.
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Dec 16, 2021 20:08
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homullus posted:GW shouldn't have to create a sidebar with Zippy the Emperor's Eunuch telling you "hey kids this is satire" https://warhammeradventures.com/ what about "hey (literal) kids look how awesome and brave these heroes are" quote:Warhammer Adventures is a series of action-packed stories about brave heroes battling monstrous enemies and winning great victories against impossible odds in the far future universe of Warhammer 40,000  They sure are priming these kids for their grand satirical epic!
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Dec 16, 2021 20:12
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Coolness Averted posted:The FF RPG series has a ton of stuff about how absurd the Imperium is. The Tyrant star is absolutely, 100% real in-game, and it is absolutely a chaotic phenomenon of crazy potency. They had a whole 3 adventure series related to it and people who tried to harness its power, and in the first book an echo of it is summoned via arcane machinery and black magic, and even the echo of it is so dangerous that player characters automatically gain insanity and corruption points, and if they look at it they have to pass a check or gain even more. Edit. Also, I dug up my corebook, and read the relevant section, and the text really does not support the reading of it being an eclipse and imperials just being clueless about astronomy. They describe different ways it has manifested in different systems in relation to other astrological bodies, and how whenever it shows up it causes earthquakes, mass insanity, outbreaks of psykers, and outright chaos mutations. Edit 2. They actually mention eclipses and astronomers in the text, and state that the Tyrant star sometimes eclipses the normal sun, but not always (it can appear as a second star or as a corona of dark flames around a moon), so the imperials pretty obviously know what eclipses are. Warden fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 20:29
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Armor blessing my massacring their own allied sisters of battle was probably the most realistic to their stated operating procedure thing the space marines have ever done. It's something obviously counter productive and evil.
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Dec 16, 2021 20:45
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Leperflesh posted:I think 40k is a satire, in the same degree as Star Trek is a bright vision of humanity's post-scarcity future. Which is to say, it's that, occasionally, when it services the current author/writer/director/storyteller's story in some way: and the rest of the time, it's a background thing the creator is aware of, but doesn't feel like leveraging right now. The trappings of the setting are more influential: every Federation ship has warp nacelles, always, but Federation characters do not always remember that in their setting there's not supposed to be resource scarcity, everyone's allowed to pursue personal development wherever that might lead, there's no racism or sexism any more, and so on. Similarly, every Imperial ship is lavishly, absurdly encrusted with cathedrals, there's skulls glued to every surface, and everyone has huge pauldrons, always; and sometimes, the Imperial fleet is exterminating an entire planet with billions of humans on it because they heard a rumor someone sprouted a tentacle somewhere on the surface, but quite often they're heroically defending innocent human hive-cities from hordes of alien monsters that would definitely eat the whole world if they're not defeated.
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Dec 16, 2021 20:45
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Warden posted:The Tyrant star is absolutely, 100% real in-game, and it is absolutely a chaotic phenomenon of crazy potency. They had a whole 3 adventure series related to it and people who tried to harness its power, and in the first book an echo of it is summoned via arcane machinery and black magic, and even the echo of it is so dangerous that player characters automatically gain insanity and corruption points, and if they look at it they have to pass a check or gain even more. Funny enough, it's how I read that section of the core book today. But also this is a setting where belief manifests into reality, so even if it was peasants getting scared by natural phenomenon, it still could create something scary. I looked it up too, because I played more Rogue Trader and Black Crusade and my group was far more likely to play with the Imperials as clowns. So I had to double check to see if it was something my group borrowed from WH Fantasy like literal chicken inquistors. It's also directly near sections about a lovely mining planet where everyone is a serf living in misery and only the queen and her barons have any Imperial tech. Only in her old age has the planet's ruler stopped to think "why are the serfs so sad?? I should have my barons investigate." I see that my group added the hook for the mining planet that daring to care about the serfs is heresy and leads to a coup when we ran the game, the core book leaves it just at "the barons don't really want to waste their time investigating." I also didn't play or read the adventure path about the tyrant star being real, which definitely changes things. To the point I'm practically saying "Well my table..." as a justification for why racial alignment wasn't really so bad. Coolness Averted fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 20:51
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Coolness Averted posted:Funny enough, it's how I read that section of the core book today. Dark Heresy p. 317 posted:With little warning, a ghostly star apparently emitting black flames and esoteric, unknown radiations, spontaneously materializes in a planetary system How did you get "these rubes don't know what an eclipse is" out of that? I am genuinely asking, because I am honestly perplexed.
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Dec 16, 2021 21:14
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Bottom Liner posted:https://warhammeradventures.com/ I agree that it contradicts the message of the adult 40K stuff. Do you feel that a different product aimed at a younger audience is obligated to explore the same themes? Do you think that, by telling those kids that the characters are brave heroes, that later the adults who grew up with Warhammer Adventures will be unable to conclude that being slaughtered in an undying* Emperor's endless war in which they have no say is not great?
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Dec 16, 2021 21:30
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Bottom Liner posted:https://warhammeradventures.com/ My daughter is eleven. When that series came out I bought her the first few books as they relate to her Dad's toy soldiers. I know the 40K background is pretty grim, so I figured I'd read the first couple of books before I gave them to her. If you think the book is "look how awesome and brave these heroes are" you haven't read them. The very first book is about kids (who don't initially know each other) living on a miserable hive world. Then the Necrons attack. At least two named characters are killed. The kids are brought together as they try to escape the planet, but they don't like each other. While they're on their way out some Ultramarines arrive to fight the Necrons, but they're quickly slaughtered. The kids barely escape as the planet is destroyed. From that point on they're on the run. They aren't fighting back or making brave stands, they're just trying to escape. One character wants to try to find her parents, but doesn't even know if they're alive - and the others were either orphaned by the attack or are on the run from the Imperium. And yes, the idea that the whole Imperium is based on bigotry, lies, and propaganda is brought up in the next book.. There's no "awesome brave heroes" theme in the books. They are kid's books, in that there aren't graphic descriptions of death, but it is very, very clear that the Imperium is a very bad place in a hostile galaxy and the kids are not going to have a good time. Cessna fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 21:48
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homullus posted:I agree that it contradicts the message of the adult 40K stuff. Do you feel that a different product aimed at a younger audience is obligated to explore the same themes? Do you think that, by telling those kids that the characters are brave heroes, that later the adults who grew up with Warhammer Adventures will be unable to conclude that being slaughtered in an undying* Emperor's endless war in which they have no say is not great? So far the only appearance of the Space Marines is in the first book. The kids think that the Marines will save them as they've been raised on the "Marines are heroes" propaganda, but as I said, the Marines get slaughtered by the Necrons rather quickly and the kids barely escape.
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Dec 16, 2021 21:50
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homullus posted:I agree that it contradicts the message of the adult 40K stuff. Do you feel that a different product aimed at a younger audience is obligated to explore the same themes? Do you think that, by telling those kids that the characters are brave heroes, that later the adults who grew up with Warhammer Adventures will be unable to conclude that being slaughtered in an undying* Emperor's endless war in which they have no say is not great? Well when the line of books is designed to hook kids into the hobby (as said by GW directly) yeah, I do think they should be thematically consistent. Cessna posted:
No, I haven't read the GW kids books lol. But everything I posted is direct copy and paste from the GW website so again it falls back on what they are portraying vs what they are advertising. I will admit that by your synopsis, the kids books actually portray things as appropriately bad better than the main line stuff but that's also not satire. I don't think GW know what satire is. I also don't think children are going to understand the message of "actually these guys are bad" and not just be devastated when the supposed heroes just get slaughtered. That's not conveying any message that the imperium is actually the bad guys, just that the evil side won, better pull harder for the good guys next time.
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Dec 16, 2021 21:54
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Bottom Liner posted:Well when the line of books is designed to hook kids into the hobby (as said by GW directly) yeah, I do think they should be thematically consistent. They aren't undying literature, but they're decent as kid's books go. Bottom Liner posted:But everything I posted is direct copy and paste from the GW website so again it falls back on what they are portraying vs what they are advertising. That's one of the things that comes up; the kids believe the whole "Marines good heroes, aliens bad" thing at the start but as things happen they start questioning this. Bottom Liner posted:I will admit that by your synopsis, the kids books actually portray things as appropriately bad better than the main line stuff but that's also not satire. I don't think GW know what satire is. I will absolutely agree that 40K lost its way and went from satire to "heroes of the Imperium" for entirely too long, but the kid's books are absolutely not pushing that version of things. Their overall theme is that the Imperium is a bad place; it's all the kids know, but they clearly don't like it and as the stories go on they start questioning it. I don't know how far they'll take this as the series is still being written.
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Dec 16, 2021 22:04
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Some people read satire and get what is going on. Some people read satire and think it's goat people. You're never going to get rid of the second group from the fan base. The problem is when you let the second group create canon, which is what GW did in the late 90s.
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Dec 16, 2021 22:09
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Warden posted:How did you get "these rubes don't know what an eclipse is" out of that? I am genuinely asking, because I am honestly perplexed. That bolded section you quoted about the tyrant star briefly eclipsing suns is actually what sold me on it. It looks to me like they're describing a solar eclipse but don't know what one is. Saying multiple people have all observed this happening on different planets and they all say "It's like our sun was briefly eclipsed" reads to me as the wink and nod to the reader. Remember, eclipse is also a word that means to darken, hide or surpass, not just the concept of a celestial eclipse. This is a setting about space dark ages where the knowledge that built the empire is lost and you have mechanics who think spirits live in machines and you make the machine work through elaborate rituals that sooth or cajole the spirits, I'd assume their astronomers aren't much better at actually knowing how things work. There's just the added twist that in WH40k belief can shift things, so whether the ritual accidentally includes actual maintenance or there are now machine spirits for real is left to the GM to set. The RPGs I cut my teeth on were WoD stuff where it was explicitly stated "This book is written from the perspective of <faction>. It will contradict what <other faction> says," and some of the history and the world as groups know it turn out to be 100% wrong. But I also viewed the incompetence and how easily the acolytes fail or get hosed up in core DH versus Ascension or the other games in the FF 40K line was intentional, and not bad design where folks found goofy emergent gameplay. I can also be 100% wrong, since RPGs have done dumb stuff like include headbutting as a stat in Call of Cthulhu, or WoD made tons of splats about their gamelines overlapping, but were incredibly dismissive of the "Super friends" sort of games players tried, and actively shat on concepts like abominations. Skinwalker-ghoul-kinfolk mages were the realm of NPCs not the players. Coolness Averted fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 22:10
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Eastmabl posted:Some people read satire and get what is going on. nicely done
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Dec 16, 2021 22:23
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homullus posted:Bigots did not perceive All in the Family as satire. Right-wing militarists did not perceive Starship Troopers as satire. Again, you cannot "fascist-proof" media, but GW very clearly wants to eat its cake and have it too. They want to sell product predicated on how fuckin badass the ubermensch super-soldiers of the fascist empire are while simultaneously going "oh but it's a satire" like a fig leaf, and then people wonder how a guy calling himself Austrian Painter wearing actual literal fascist regalia shows up at a tournament and nobody bans them or kicks them out and, maybe just as importantly, why when GW does make a statement condemning things (albeit vaguely, no named names) other people go "ugh I can't believe GW would give into woke purity culture like this." If you want to base your business model around selling power armored super-soldiers to the MOLON LABE crowd fine, whatever, but if you actually do not want fascists feeling welcome and emboldened within your hobby that means you have to own that poo poo better than a vague statement now-and-again and leaning on an increasingly decrepit "but it's satire" defense.
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Dec 16, 2021 22:38
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Kai Tave posted:Again, you cannot "fascist-proof" media, but GW very clearly wants to eat its cake and have it too. They want to sell product predicated on how fuckin badass the ubermensch super-soldiers of the fascist empire are while simultaneously going "oh but it's a satire" like a fig leaf, and then people wonder how a guy calling himself Austrian Painter wearing actual literal fascist regalia shows up at a tournament and nobody bans them or kicks them out and, maybe just as importantly, why when GW does make a statement condemning things (albeit vaguely, no named names) other people go "ugh I can't believe GW would give into woke purity culture like this." ok but I was discussing whether 40k is satire, and whether it needs to be painfully obviously satirical to be "good" satire I agree that GW should, and readily could, do more
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Dec 16, 2021 22:56
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What do you suggest that they do? Edit: No snark there, I'm interested in ideas.
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Dec 16, 2021 22:56
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Roadie posted:One easy example of WH40K actively pivoting away from obvious satire: in 1e, the Space Marines were criminal draftees who were mindwiped and brainwashed, and basically set up as Vietnam War-era drafted soldiers exaggerated to the nth degree. In 2nd edition they got rid of most of that and just had them (usually) willingly recruited, and in every edition after they've been made increasingly heroic ubermensch. I'm not sure that's obvious satire: the trope of the hard men from hard places and various psychopaths making the hardest soldiers was a popular trope around that time, and 1e draws directly on that. It's also only a few months before Rick Priestly decides to change all that by writing about Space Marine origins in a White Dwarf article that rewrites it all to be handpicked genetically compatible children. It's not so much satire are two flavours of dystopian badfuture. Which is really what a lot of very early WH40k is: it's not satirical as much as it's dystopian and occasionally taking the piss. The human faction is a tyrannical police-state empire that unfairly persecutes mutants and psykers, the ork faction are nazi-themed, the tyrannids own slaves, the genestealers are evil, the demons are evil, the plants are evil... and the small ray of hope is that in the Eye of Chaos, when planets are cut off from the rest of the galaxy, humans and orks sometimes band together to survive, demonstrating that humans and orks can get along and they may be hope for peace one day. It's not a satire of fascism, it's an occasionally satirical depiction of a fascist dystopia, because it's self-evident that the fascist dystopia is bad. And then they started buying into the propaganda of the fictional fascist dystopia they'd made and just legitimized it while simultaneously robbing the setting of any hope that they could ever be anything better.
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Dec 16, 2021 23:03
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Mormon Star Wars posted:I've never see anyone talk about the Ciaphas Cain books to defend 40k as satire, because they aren't satirizing the real world - Ciaphas Cain is satirizing other 40k written media. I.e., the joke is that the other 40k books are so over the top that they would have to be baseless propaganda, so Ciaphas is a look at what the actual events could have looked like. And having them as in universe documents, being actively redacted and re-written by an inquisitor, because their contents would be too shocking to the morale of the Imperium if they were ever released, adds another level of satire onto the already present "Flashman-but-nicer-and-also-40k" That said, one would have to have actually read (at least) the blurb on the back to figure out which of these are the joke ones and which are "serious" ones:    
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Dec 16, 2021 23:05
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Broke: Bespoke: 
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Dec 16, 2021 23:08
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LatwPIAT posted:And then they started buying into the propaganda of the fictional fascist dystopia they'd made and just legitimized it while simultaneously robbing the setting of any hope that they could ever be anything better. Do you think the setting is irredeemable at this point?
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Dec 16, 2021 23:15
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Not without basically burning it all to the ground in the way that is most embarrassing to every imperial faction. Like grots eating the emperors living corpse in an over the top comical way being the swansong of 40k. Something that makes anyone that took it all seriously very angry.
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Dec 16, 2021 23:23
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Cessna posted:What do you suggest that they do? I think a long-form article or series (with pictures from their image archive, for which they take full credit on the art direction) on the Imperium and fascism, published on their website, would be good. Literally talk about the fascist elements of the lore and art historically, point out some examples that clarify the satire, point out some things that muddied the water. Talk about the influences at the time. Talk about some images they'd do differently now. Really, not much different from what's happening in this thread, but having it come publicly and semi-permanently from the owners of a longstanding IP would be a very different thing.
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Dec 16, 2021 23:59
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I think a lot of the setting outside the Space Marines and Imperial guard are a lot less problematic. Even within the imperium you have Ad Mech as decaying techno priests, Sisters of Battle as hyper-militant space catholics. They have a similar dystopian vibe to the Marines, but without the glorification of genetic uber men. I really like the Drukhari/Dark Eldar as moustache twirling torture elves. There's nothing to admire in them, and their evil is so absurdly relentless it completely neuters the unpleasentess of what they actually do. Although the eldar backstory has their empire falling into decadence when they spent all their time either loving or torturing each other. And maybe I'm over sensitive, but "decadence" is one of those words that sets alarm bells ringing. It feels almost like fash propaganda about the fall of rome - a glorious empire collapsing and destroying itself with too much weird sex. And it's not something that can be chalked up to an unreliable narrator - it's an objective, neutral description of the settings history.
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Dec 17, 2021 00:02
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If they dared, they could have the Imperium undergo a revolution, throw off the shackles of fascism, and have a glorious communist future in which it turns out that also, hey, they're far more effective at combating the forces of chaos and the bug aliens etc. when people have lives worth fighting for, government institutions that are capable of innovation and improvement, and they don't commit atrocities on their own people. Of course, that'd probably also mean the end of the stompy fascism-marines, and I don't know if GW could sell a legit-admirable helper-force that does conflict de-escalation and connects people with social services as the face of its tabletop wargames.
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Dec 17, 2021 00:10
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That's kinda how the tau started off with the whole greater good thing before everyone cried "wtf this sucks" so they gave it a darker twist, no? That was probably the canary in a coal mine if they ever planned on doing something like that to the imperium of man.
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Dec 17, 2021 00:13
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I mean, you could just make the game about the revolution itself, and then you get to kill all of these boring spike-and-skull-bedecked losers.
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Dec 17, 2021 00:13
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"Look while we indeed are now a kindler gentler socialist imperium, we can all admit our armor and aesthetic were pretty cool so we're going to keep all of that. Sorry for any confusion this may cause"
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Dec 17, 2021 00:15
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homullus posted:ok but I was discussing whether 40k is satire, and whether it needs to be painfully obviously satirical to be "good" satire If you have to keep telling people over and over "it's a satire" as they keep unironically embracing your catholic space nazi faction as the cool dudes, then there's a pretty strong chance your satire fuckin sucks. It's really wild that GW gladly authorizes tons of poo poo that glorifies the Imperium to the point that it's catnip for fascist dipshits, but somehow it's everyone else's fault for just not getting the joke. This is like dumping bags of sugar all over the floor and then wondering where all these ants keep coming from, you very clearly put up a "No Ants Allowed" sign and everything. Cessna posted:What do you suggest that they do? On GW's end, I think that while the statement they issued regarding the specific incident was better than it could have been that it still demurred by not actually naming names or addressing the failures of the specific incident, and it's also unclear exactly what concrete steps they plan on taking to address the issue. They say you can email them if you need help "creating a safe and rewarding experience for your attendees" but what does that mean exactly? What help are they going to offer, what does it look like? "We'll kick you out of official GW stores and events if you fly fash regalia" is a good and concrete step, though given GW's history of store- and tournament-level management, I'm inclined to be skeptical of what this looks like until it's put into practice. I don't think that the 40K setting is "irredeemable" in a sense that it has to be scoured to the bedrock like some sort of moral cognitohazard and the people pointing out that the "it's a satire" defense has worn thin haven't really been arguing for such either, and at this point I actually don't think it would be possible to "course correct" such a massive behemoth anyway without, as Bottom Liner says, basically pissing everyone off. I just think that if GW wants to make bank off selling Cool Space Marine poo poo that they should probably be more inclined to own it rather than wanting to do so while also going "but it's satire!" every time some of their fans uncritically identify with the uncritical presentations. I think there are ways you could change some things around in terms of "what gets made" like having more stuff that's from non-Imperial perspectives, including things like "not having as many fiction vignettes of Space Marines slaughtering a faction within that faction's own codex." Understanding that thoroughly de-fashing a setting which is centered around a fascist empire is probably never going to be possible outside of radical overhauling or throwing the whole thing in the trash, at the very least I think GW and its wider fanbase could benefit from a greater sense of self-awareness about where things stand rather than just occasionally putting out a "fascism is bad" statement before going back to making bank off the adventures of the glorious ubermensch. Semi-joking but also semi-not-joking answer: make female space marines canon.
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Dec 17, 2021 00:19
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Bottom Liner posted:That's kinda how the tau started off with the whole greater good thing before everyone cried "wtf this sucks" so they gave it a darker twist, no? That was probably the canary in a coal mine if they ever planned on doing something like that to the imperium of man. That was also during the "lol, what's market research" age though, wasn't it? Its very possible that was just the loudest voices and not the majority. It may be worth revisiting.
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Dec 17, 2021 00:21
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Capfalcon posted:If there's this much argument about whether or not your satire is satire, I think the most generous statement you can make is that it's satire, but not very good at it. more like people need to stop worrying about what theoretical idiots might think and just take responsibility for your own interpretive readings of fiction. nothing is immune to misunderstanding and the expectation that something must be in order to communicate is ridiculous e: especially since it's still entirely possible to criticize 40k within that framework! Bottom Liner posted:Except 40k has done exactly that, just in a way that's counterproductive to their claims of satire and cautionary storytelling. "Everyone is a bad guy and this is all satire" doesn't square well with literally every bit of art direction being grand epic heroic badassery and glory. The only way it could come full circle at this point would to have 40k end and have the bugs just devour them all in the most comical over the top way that makes everything that came before it completely pointless and moot. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Dec 17, 2021 |
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Dec 17, 2021 00:53
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Kai Tave posted:On GW's end, I think that while the statement they issued regarding the specific incident was better than it could have been that it still demurred by not actually naming names or addressing the failures of the specific incident, and it's also unclear exactly what concrete steps they plan on taking to address the issue. They say you can email them if you need help "creating a safe and rewarding experience for your attendees" but what does that mean exactly? What help are they going to offer, what does it look like? "We'll kick you out of official GW stores and events if you fly fash regalia" is a good and concrete step, though given GW's history of store- and tournament-level management, I'm inclined to be skeptical of what this looks like until it's put into practice. You might know this, but in case you didn't follow the case too closely: that incident was an independently-run game con in Spain. GW didn't run it, or endorse it, or fund it, or have staff or volunteers there. So, making a clear statement that they condemn that poo poo, and offering support to organizers in the future, is just about all they really can do. There's also a strong argument - which I agree to - that naming the nazi and his convention-enablers is a bad idea, not only for legal reasons, but also because it gives individuals publicity that they don't deserve. "Look at how I'm being oppressed" is straight out of the fash playbook, and naming them gives them ammo that leaving them anonymous doesn't. Aggrandizement isn't always positive, and even negative aggrandizement is a net benefit to these people. Does this mean GW has done everything it can about dealing with the fashy segment of its customer base? Absolutely not, and I completely agree with you there.
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Dec 17, 2021 01:00
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Cessna posted:Do you think the setting is irredeemable at this point? There are few things I think are truly irredeemable and a lot of people who aren't fascists clearly get a lot of joy out of WH40k as a concept, but any attempt to "fix" things would have to involve a strong direction and a willingness to spit in the face of the people who like the proto-fascist power-fantasy stuff and tell them that, no, that stuff's going away. Which would be a grueling process sure to embitter a lot of fans, doubly so because of the growth of a cottage industry of delivering content based on uncritical engagement with WH40k "lore", for whom the primarily engagement with WH40k as a property would be exactly all the stuff that needs to be burned down so the healing can begin. God I hate "lore".
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Dec 17, 2021 01:01
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Dexo posted:"Look while we indeed are now a kindler gentler socialist imperium, we can all admit our armor and aesthetic were pretty cool so we're going to keep all of that. Sorry for any confusion this may cause" PeterWeller posted:Yeah, Mystara's a setting with no Orientalism or race essentialism going on.
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Dec 17, 2021 01:01
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Bottom Liner posted:Except 40k has done exactly that, just in a way that's counterproductive to their claims of satire and cautionary storytelling. "Everyone is a bad guy and this is all satire" doesn't square well with literally every bit of art direction being grand epic heroic badassery and glory. The only way it could come full circle at this point would to have 40k end and have the bugs just devour them all in the most comical over the top way that makes everything that came before it completely pointless and moot. Yeah, this is the push to make things people want to buy and paint. You can say in the backstory all you want how it's a deep commentary on fascism or whatever, but ultimately you gotta make appealing models for people to buy, paint, fight, etc. I respect people who engage it on that level way, way more than people who engage it like it's the best story and most thought-out universe ever, how their giant cathedral meme-imagery is cutting commentary.
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Dec 17, 2021 01:02
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Honestly, I think most factions besides Marines do a better job of communicating the satire. The Guard runs the gamut from terrified conscripts being threatened with literal execution to vat-grown soldiers with a deep-seated cultural deathwish. Sisters are deeply immersed in blind zaotry, and have repentance through torture literally baked into their core unit list. Adeptus Mechanicus punish innovation on pain of death and trundle into battle with a cadre of lobotomized cyborg servants. You only need to see a Conmissar, a Penitent Engine, or a Servitor model to know these are some bad dudes. Marines (and their various power armored offshoots) feel a lot easier to sanitize in contrast. And their core fantasy doesn't involve conscription like the Guard or blind zealotry to the degree of the other two factions I named. If you dig deep, you'll find some real iffy stuff, like cannibalism being baked into their genes and chapters named poo poo like the Marines Malevolent. But especially if your entire exposure to Marines is chill chapters like ths Ultramarines or Salamanders, they just kinda seem like chill, heroic space dudes surrounded by a lot of weird trappings. You know what's actually really similar? Halo. A series that if you only peek at the games is about a cool super soldier guy protecting humanity, then you read the expanded material and oh poo poo, it's fascism everywhere. The Bee fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Dec 17, 2021 |
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Dec 17, 2021 01:06
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The current lore poo poo about the divided Imperium could even be a good starting point to making a better, less overtly fashy setting out of things. The Imperium was already so big that it was having problems holding together, so just, y'know... let Guilliman's crusade to reunite the Imperium across the Great Rift fail. Let the Imperium atomize as the fascists turn on each other as they are wont, and new powers forming from small clusters of worlds banding together. Let some get picked off by Chaos or 'Nids or whatever because grimdark, but others hold together because most sectors and subsectors had to be fairly self-sufficient anyway (insofar as clusters of inhabited worlds can be called "self-sufficient"). Either make a new faction out of it called, I don't know, the Scattered Realms, or lean harder on people developing a distinct identity for their IG armies or whatever. Most importantly, let it stand that the Imperium has been dealt a genuine blow and drastically diminished, and that they're not going to fix it back up thanks to some Great Man. The Marines? I donno, a lot of chapters are powers unto themselves anyway. Let that play out in weird and different ways for the various chapters as unity breaks down and doctrine starts failing (even more than it already has). Just don't make them the sole driving force behind every new state of consequence out in the shattered former Imperium.
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Dec 17, 2021 01:26
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No more books with opening fiction like the 5th edition Dark Eldar where the story was "Dark Eldar accidentally warp a bunch of Salamanders into Commoragh, lose badly to the marines, who eventually gently caress off because they made their point, anyway here's the rules for the losers in your loser book, loser."
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Dec 17, 2021 01:51
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