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2024/05/28 23:45:22
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
A Town Called Malus wrote: GW missed a perfect opportunity to really bring in some modern satire with the return of Guilliman.
They should have had the Ecclesiarchy refuse to recognise him as he wasn't toeing the line of what 10,000 years had done to religion in the Imperium, so that the return of the son of their god and what he claimed were the ideals of said god directly clashed with the new tenets they had built. So they get a sniper to put a turbo round through his brain as he is a false prophet.
Bring that satire of fundamentalists full circle by pointing out that many christians today would try to crucify Jesus if he returned as stuff like prosperity gospel is about as far from his teachings as you can get, and people have a lot of money and power invested in not having their followers realising that.
In fact, I'd have had the Imperium completely purge the Ultramarines afterwards. They are created from the seed of a traitorous heretic after all, and how better to demonstrate the self destructive purity politics of the Imperium and its insanity than them deciding to wipe out a military force that gave them millennia of loyal service because their primarch didn't fit the current view and was too much of a threat to the power of the high lords. But that would annoy the space marine players, so it would never happen.
Also, the Imperium is explicitly fascist. It ticks pretty much every single box in Umberto Eco's list of major fascist characteristics. About the only ones you could maybe say it doesn't is the appeal to the middle class and the sexual aspects of machismo. But then, Eco never said that fascism needed every single one of these characteristics to be fascism, just that these are the more common characteristics observed in fascist ideology.
Spoiler:
"The cult of tradition", characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.
"The rejection of modernism", which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.
"The cult of action for action's sake", which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.
"Disagreement is treason" – fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.
"Fear of difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.
"Appeal to a frustrated middle class", fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.
"Obsession with a plot" and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society. Eco also cites Pat Robertson's book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.
Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak". On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
"Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy" because "life is permanent warfare" – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.
"Contempt for the weak", which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate leader, who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.
"Everybody is educated to become a hero", which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, "[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death."
"Machismo", which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold "both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality".
"Selective populism" – the people, conceived monolithically, have a common will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he alone dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of "no longer represent[ing] the voice of the people".
"Newspeak" – fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.
40k sticks so closely to this list that it makes me think someone at GW used it for inspiration at some point or another when developing the imperium
2024/05/30 14:34:54
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
kodos wrote: came across a similar discussion on reddit recently and the intresting part here is that for people to understand the satire of 40k one need to understand Britain of the 80/90ies, need to read the old books and read some old novels
Like a big part of that discussion was what are Orks in 40k if one only know the gaming material and some novels, they are the comic relief of the setting (meaning everything else is serious), some see them as symbol of the African communities (opressed by imperialism) and others as the true fascist of the setting (as there is some german WW2 style in the art and models).
The internet will tell you that the original Orks were modeled after Hooligans, but without knowing the details of the british football hooligans this does not mean much and the connections are not made
If one needs to read certain novels to relise that 40k is satire and the rulebook is not enough to make that point than 40k has already lost that aspect
I mean there are times orcs in fantasy were absolutely standins of a british person's perspective of Africans living in Africa.
The game designers were heavily influenced by anti establishment punk culture. But, uh, sometimes that's still got plenty of yikes parts of it.
there's a certain degree to which any works in the lineage of Tolkien and D&D cannot escape the racist beginnings of the trope. Tolkien even used race science terminology in descriptions in Lord of the Rings. 40k is a bit distant from that origin and takes explicit influence from a specific alternative source, so it's better than most in this regard, but the original issue present remains, like a genetic disorder passed down from father to child. even knowing the background present, the "savage" and "mongoloid" coding of orcs remains present and makes the way they're presented in 40k a bit problematic. you can't fully escape the issue unless you break from convention completely, and when 40k's entire point at the beginning was "conventional fantasy, but in space", it's difficult to do so
Tyel wrote: I think this is probably splitting hairs to the 9th degree, but I'd argue the Imperium is insufficiently developed to be fascist.
I mean a fundamental issue of the Imperium is that it isn't centralised. You could argue its more centralised in the most recent lore (cos Guilliman etc) - but not really.
Its social organisation is far closer to high middle ages feudalism (and I realise all those terms are contested) than the office politics of modern bureaucracies.
I would describe the imperium as decayed fascism. In reality, all fascist regimes were highly fractious and internally competitive and backstabby. The imperium's disunified nature is just a natural result of all the backbiting fascists naturally get up to lasting 10 thousand years (without somehow collapsing, because fascist regimes ALSO have never survived the death of their leader in reality)
ah, but you see, the Imperium's leader never actually died. sure, his body died, but he's being kept alive, so really, he still counts as being alive. totally definitely alive, nothing to worry about there. everything is fine
2024/05/31 22:19:05
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
even if the imperium ever did manage to eradicate every alien species from the galaxy, that wouldn't stop the violence. that just means it's time to turn inward. humanity is full of abhumans and mutants, so those also need to be dealt with. keep enacting violence until they reach the ideal. forever more death, forever more sacrifice, until that ideal is reached (nevermind the fact that this ideal of "human", much like the nazi ideal of "arayan" is nothing more than a hollow icon, a fascistic ideal that can never truly be accomplished, but instead provides an excuse to continue the violence against whoever is deemed as part of the out group
2024/05/31 22:20:30
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
hell, look at the difference between Squats and Votann. once abhuman, now xenos. it's an out of universe change, since "xenos" describes one of the major cornerstones of 40k factions, but it also works in-universe— what once was tolerable must now be cast aside and eradicated as more enemies are sought out (was meant to be added to my last post, oops)
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/05/31 22:20:54
2024/05/31 22:27:32
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
StudentOfEtherium wrote: hell, look at the difference between Squats and Votann. once abhuman, now xenos. it's an out of universe change, since "xenos" describes one of the major cornerstones of 40k factions, but it also works in-universe— what once was tolerable must now be cast aside and eradicated as more enemies are sought out (was meant to be added to my last post, oops)
But they are still Abhuman though? They were never made xenos, they are still very much abhumans in the fluff.
is what i was talking about. it's an out of universe thing, but you can make in-universe commentary on it as well
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2024/05/31 22:27:50
2024/05/31 23:01:47
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
Tyran wrote: The real question is if humanity itself would accept a benevolent xenos hegemon and thus overthrown the IoM or fight to the bitter and absolute end and thus prove the IoM does represent humanity.
"humanity" isn't making choices as a collective whole. either the imperium imposes its will onto humanity and forces those choices, or humanity is unable to make such universal choices. some worlds would happily accept xenos leadership, while some would fight to the last man, and a vast range exists between those extremes. even under the imperium, worlds are divided
2024/06/03 12:07:20
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
Da Boss wrote: If people have far right views, I don't think Warhammer is going to convince them one way or another. They might use the rhetoric in a jokey way to downplay their ideas, but people generally know the difference between fantasy and reality. I think only severely ill or developmentally disabled people would actually be radicalised by a tabletop wargame, and I'm not sure those people would be less likely to be radicalised if the game made the satire more overt.
well, it's not that the game itself would convince them, but those people using the game to downplay their real-world ideology using it as a vehicle for those views. not a process that could happen in isolation, but this is a community-based game, and if you end up in a poor community, especially online, there are far too many easy pitfalls
2024/06/04 14:49:27
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
if we're talking about satire and the imperium being terrible, there's no reason why women shouldn't also be space marines— why let men do all the horrible things when Thatcher proved women can just as easily ruin lives! hashtag girl power
2024/06/04 15:38:36
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
StudentOfEtherium wrote: if we're talking about satire and the imperium being terrible, there's no reason why women shouldn't also be space marines— why let men do all the horrible things when Thatcher proved women can just as easily ruin lives! hashtag girl power
Sister of Battle already has that covered, I think. I'm pretty sure they commit more war crimes than space marines, being die-hard religious fanatics who love using fire and all.
Also inquisitors. They're like, living war crimes. They don't follow the Geneva Convention, they follow the Geneva Checklist.
right, so if there's no issue with women in the setting, then there's no issue with women being space marines!
2024/06/04 19:33:45
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
Sisters have a distinct identity-they're the ultra religious battle nuns of the Imperium.
Marines are much more malleable in their identity-you have the religious zealots (Black Templars), you have the Vikings (Space Wolves), you have the Knights (Dark Angels), you have the vampires/angels (Blood Angels), you have the practical minded soldiers (Ultramarines)... Basically anything you can imagine, in terms of armies, can be found among the ranks of Marines.
Except women, because they apparently have cooties.
This is, fundamentally, where the failure to understand things exists.
Sisters aren't "ultra-religious battle nuns of the Imperium".
Sisters are the ultra-militant arm of the Ecclesiarchy, acting as the standing army of the predominant religion of the Imperium. The entire organization exists as a loophole preventing men at arms.
Those Vikings you want? Knights? "Vampires"? Practical minded soldiery? All of those things can be found in the ranks of the Sororitas as well.
where are the AdSor vampires??? if 40k had blood-drinking nuns, i have a feeling i would have seen that on tumblr already. where are the AdSor vikings or mongolian hordes? all the art i've ever seen of the faction is more or less the same aesthetic, sometimes in different colors
Insectum7 wrote: Sure, but I'd still argue that the best course of action is for GW to explore that variety, rather than continue pounding more styles/identities/expression into Marines.
Why not both?
Make Marines be able to be any gender as a good first step, and work towards raising the prominence of other factions.
Agreed. And, let's be completely honest, it will be MUCH quicker/faster for GW to include women Astartes than redesigning/meaningfully including variety into other factions - after all, it took barely any effort with Custodes.
the biggest barrier is The Lore, but all that would need is a campaign book or new edition launch trailer to establish that GW is doing something new now
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/06/04 19:34:41
2024/06/04 19:41:36
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
Dai wrote: Well this is a ruined thread, why always the devolution to tedious culture war crap. The whole rest of the internet has that. This is supposed to be discussing the satire in 40k.
how can we talk about 40k as political satire without talking about the politics it is or isn't satirizing?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/06/04 19:42:19
2024/06/04 19:53:13
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
Kanluwen wrote:Those Vikings you want? Knights? "Vampires"? Practical minded soldiery? All of those things can be found in the ranks of the Sororitas as well.
Where? Please, I'd love to see these examples, and the same degree of aesthetic range that has been afforded to the Astartes on this.
Oh, hang on...
Kanluwen wrote: I don't read Sisters fiction enough to say, but the core bit about them is simply that they're devotees of the Imperial Cult.
So, you made your statement up. Nice.
Yeah, no. The aesthetics of the Sororitas can be as varied as the Astartes and the Guard.
That they have not been is a problem in and of itself.
This is a huge problem that I think is important, a lot of factions have lots of themes to explore, but just don’t get it.
The sisters of battle and sisters of silence are to me a problem of this, why they are different they have through a bit of neglect end up similar as well. A discussion for other places.
But this also I think leads onto another issue that happens with a loss of satire, and that’s a Sanitised Politics. This is a huge issue within all nerd media honestly, a lot of writers don’t know enough about these subjects to really write them well within 40K.
They can’t depict the struggles women have in the setting, or Why space marines being just men is Horrifying since often they understand 40K, but not these issues.
So it’s glossed over, Sanitised with a imperium is bad to everyone brush.
It’s hard to discuss Satire without at least dipping into these discussions as well.
violence against women hasn't been an aspect of the setting since the early 90s. the imperium is an egalitarian state where women hold power just as often as much as men, and this has been true longer than i've been alive. there's certainly a lot of odd sexist artifacts here and there, but those are attributable as much to out-of-universe factors as in-universe
i'm curious, why is it horrifying that only men can be space marines? i've never seen "horrifying" used to describe that plot point before
2024/06/04 22:30:58
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
Tawnis wrote: There's one point that seems to be brought up a lot in this that's seeming to go unaddressed, so I figured I'd chime back in for a moment.
I'm hearing a lot of it's bad to portray (primarily) Space Marines, but others too as "good guys" in the setting, and I don't think that's an entirely fair statement. It's bad to portray The Imperium as good, but just as in any real work fascist state, there can and will be good people forced to live their lives within that system that are nothing but cogs in the machine either through fear or ignorance.
One of my favourite stories in 40k is that of the Celestial Lions, the Space Marine chapter that spoke out against the Inquisition. On Khattar the Lion's wiped out a massive chaos cult that had taken control of the planet while sparing the majority of the civilian population, after they had withdrawn and claimed the planet re-conquered, the Inquisition decided to blow it up anyway, just to be sure. The Lions were stunned and immediately tried to bring the Inquisition to task for their actions, only to realize that for all their transhuman might, they were nothing in the face of Imperial bureaucracy. After their words fell on deaf ears, they suddenly started having "accidents" ships disappeared never to be heard from again, key chapter figures were assasinated, and they were constantly undersupplied and assigned to the most dangerous missions possible.
The Lions were and are still an arm of the Fascist Imperium, but one that did try and stand up and make things better, only to be crushed almost completely but the boot of their masters.
The reason why I think it's fine, in fact good, to have SOME stories when PEOPLE in the Imperium are at least good guy adjacent is because it amplifies just how far gone the Imperium is, that they can only ever do good on a small scale because the massive force of the Imperium itself has such a choke hold on everything in it's domain that even a force as strong as a Space Marine Chapter, as a Primarch, is so much smaller than the force of uncountable brainwashed trillions led by a ruling class that has a constant deathgrip on all the power.
The trouble with some stories in this is about perspective. Much of the stories are told from the POV of Imperial Citizens, and many of them are indoctrinated to specifically not understand what is so wrong and broken about their society. Not everyone seems to be able to write that angle well, to get the horror across to the reader, while keeping the characters ignorant of it.
along this same wavelength, i think it would be interesting if the main story of 40k, with Guilliman and so on, wasn't about "a good person saving a decrepit empire", but showing how frail the concept of "a good person" is. there's a lot of mileage to be had about the relative morality and how "good", for the majority of people in the imperium, especially those with power, doesn't mean making things better for most people, but making the system run better or have a better perception without fixing the underlying issues. but i think everyone in this thread, no matter where you stand on the matter, can agree that GW's writing just isn't there to handle such complex topics
2024/06/05 12:15:41
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
StudentOfEtherium wrote: if we're talking about satire and the imperium being terrible, there's no reason why women shouldn't also be space marines— why let men do all the horrible things when Thatcher proved women can just as easily ruin lives! hashtag girl power
Sister of Battle already has that covered, I think. I'm pretty sure they commit more war crimes than space marines, being die-hard religious fanatics who love using fire and all.
Also inquisitors. They're like, living war crimes. They don't follow the Geneva Convention, they follow the Geneva Checklist.
right, so if there's no issue with women in the setting, then there's no issue with women being space marines!
The issue is that it goes against the lore and thus makes it so the entire history of spacemarines has to be rewritten just because it has to portray the world of today for some reason..
So what if in a fictional army there are no women, what if a xenos has no women to begin with and are all androgyn? Should they suddenly also have women? Heh.
any retcon that updates the lore to allow women to exist doesn't need to be retroactive (and in fact would have to be additive). have some trinket text about Cawl making new innovations to allow for more recruitment now that [insert 11th edition enemy faction] have brought the imperium to the eve of destruction. there. that's all we need, and then we can move on and pretend this game didn't spend 40 years scared of women cooties
2024/06/05 13:07:12
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
But to take it back to Warhammer, your question actually provides for a cool campaign set in the era Indomitus. What if a cult of Nurgle is poisoning an Imperial world and seeking to summon both daemons and Death Guard to support the descent into disease. A planetary Governor has instituted mandatory vaccination, and the Arbites are rounding up and executing non compliant citizens- some of whom will be Nurgle Cultists, while others will belong to militarized religious orders.
You could create a vaccinated keyword that offers some protection vs. Nurgle's diseases, and some citizens disillusioned with the Imperial pogrom might join the Nurgle forces or succumb to corruption by another chaos power. Some within the Imperial forces may support them- ie. target priority against visibly mutated followers of Nurgle rather than the more human-looking infected but not yet mutated non-compliant citizens duped into supporting the very forces that are killing their fellow citizens by their "discontent" with Imperial governance.
They could all drive Cargo-8 transports to the hive city of Ottawaviticus to protest Imperial Governor Trudeaudonnai.
And that would bring satire back to 40k without GW needing to make a single change to lore or mechanics to facilitate it.
Not really, as the Imperium is still in the right in this case, which I'm pretty sure is what many in this thread are griping about. It would be more of a satire if there was no disease, it was just an imperial overreaction to a common cold instigated by an overzealous and paranoid inquisitor, and the vaccine being imposed was incredibly faulty. And the oppressed citizens do end up being tricked into joining Chaos, because that's how Chaos works, it exploit's humanity's own failings.
the issue here is that it would be a hard story to tell without pandering to anti-vaccers— if the vaccine is for frivolous reasons, and has harmful effects, you're going to get people pointing at it and saying "see, that's just like the real vaccine!" and using it to justify their anti-scientific opinions. it's a very thin line to tread in order to make a story like this work without vilifying vaccines or real world vaccine mandates
2024/06/05 14:19:48
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
But to take it back to Warhammer, your question actually provides for a cool campaign set in the era Indomitus. What if a cult of Nurgle is poisoning an Imperial world and seeking to summon both daemons and Death Guard to support the descent into disease. A planetary Governor has instituted mandatory vaccination, and the Arbites are rounding up and executing non compliant citizens- some of whom will be Nurgle Cultists, while others will belong to militarized religious orders.
You could create a vaccinated keyword that offers some protection vs. Nurgle's diseases, and some citizens disillusioned with the Imperial pogrom might join the Nurgle forces or succumb to corruption by another chaos power. Some within the Imperial forces may support them- ie. target priority against visibly mutated followers of Nurgle rather than the more human-looking infected but not yet mutated non-compliant citizens duped into supporting the very forces that are killing their fellow citizens by their "discontent" with Imperial governance.
They could all drive Cargo-8 transports to the hive city of Ottawaviticus to protest Imperial Governor Trudeaudonnai.
And that would bring satire back to 40k without GW needing to make a single change to lore or mechanics to facilitate it.
Not really, as the Imperium is still in the right in this case, which I'm pretty sure is what many in this thread are griping about. It would be more of a satire if there was no disease, it was just an imperial overreaction to a common cold instigated by an overzealous and paranoid inquisitor, and the vaccine being imposed was incredibly faulty. And the oppressed citizens do end up being tricked into joining Chaos, because that's how Chaos works, it exploit's humanity's own failings.
the issue here is that it would be a hard story to tell without pandering to anti-vaccers— if the vaccine is for frivolous reasons, and has harmful effects, you're going to get people pointing at it and saying "see, that's just like the real vaccine!" and using it to justify their anti-scientific opinions. it's a very thin line to tread in order to make a story like this work without vilifying vaccines or real world vaccine mandates
Hmm... that could work with a bit of an extra angle and get both sides of it. The original story would be the beginning, where the vaccine does work and the plague is starting to dissipate. However, then some high up member of the Ecclesiarchy shows up claiming that the only thing people need to be saved is their belief in the Emperor, so they shut down all this "science nonsense" holding city-wide sermons and prayer sessions, only for the disease to come back twice as strong as before and overrun the planet.
yeah, that certainly works! folly and hubris are classic ways to present satire
could even have an inquisitor come in and ban the vaccine on the basis of it being heretech, then later claim that it had been their idea to use it in the first place when it turns out it actually worked
2024/06/05 20:39:28
Subject: has 40k had the satire flanderised out of it?
StudentOfEtherium wrote: that's all we need, and then we can move on and pretend this game didn't spend 40 years scared of women cooties
Plenty of cooties among the sisters, again.
Not the same thing. Sisters were basically extinct as a playable faction for decades.
Also, traitor slaaneshians (noisemarines) may have female spacemarines imho. go for it.
Thank you for showing just how those sorts of "it's just the lore" comments can then reflect on the real world.
Having women Astartes is compared with the faction of depraved, hedonistic, daemon-worshippers. You conflated women Astartes as being "evil", "corrupted" and "perverse". You don't see why that's *maybe* just a bit of a bad reflection on presentations of women or non-masculine identities in 40k?
And then imagine when you start getting people who might start comparing IRL folks to these factions - deeming them similarly "depraved" or "hedonistic", or "perverse" - and then defending their comments as just being "lore jokes".
In fact, I don't have to imagine. A user was banned on this site for doing just that.
Do you see why this might be a problem?
When people are able to take elements of 40k and weaponise them, then the satire isn't working.
the funny thing is, i've joked in the past about "GW introduces female space marines specifically through EC, with GW proclaiming that only the most debaucherous legion would ever consider being transgender" as, like, an absurd joke about GW being bad at progressivism. never thought i'd see someone suggest that happen for real (granted, and to be fair to leo, they didn't mention trans people like my old joke did, but it's still not a great suggestion!)
