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I think we’ve got crossed wires.

My argument here is that up until the advent of the Primaris Marines, the overall army structure of Marines had remained pretty constant, just with new dooberies added here and there.

And during that period, the calls for Female Marines weren’t as numerous.

Primaris were a major shake up, as I could now field an army entirely devoid of those classic squad types, with no completely direct analogy squads.

And so, when that shake up occurred? It all felt a bit more fair game. Marines weren’t the same Marines anymore. The setting’s most popular option had undergone a fundamental change. And so, adding Female Marines no longer felt quite so distant.

This is just my take on it of course. As ever I’m not presenting as an authority.

My point is that making some of them FSM doesn’t affect the kind of structure you’re talking about at all. It’s more like the kind of lore shifts that have already happened. Compared to Primaris, the change is minor.

Is it?

Primaris involved the creation (or refinement, depending on how you look at it) entirely new organs, which create the improvements in the finished products.

Cracking a chromosomal adaptation doesn’t seem necessarily more complex or dramatic.

I mean the change of allowing for FSM is minor compared to making Primaris marines, in that it won’t change the structure of the army the way Primaris did.

I still think we have crossed wires.

I brought up that Primaris were a significant change, and it’s after that change that we saw Female Marines become a more popular request.

It had always been there, but with such a significant overhaul, it seemed more possible, particularly as the Astartes conversion process is no longer sacrosanct.

And so, at the time of Primaris, the impetus to extend it to Female candidates was lesser. And so either wasn’t thought of, was discounted etc.

I think it had more to do with the general rise of women in gaming in general that happened to coincide prior to the Primaris revamp.

The MMO era brought with it a huge need for character creators and with that a huge opportunity for people to represent themselves in games. Mobile gaming created a huge surge in different kinds of games. Combined, the demographic exploded beyond the bounds of what it had previously confined itself to.

I think for a lot of people it was pretty eye opening. Suddenly instead of being something hidden to avoid pushing girls away, games became something a lot of people shared. I think its pretty natural to then look to other hobbies you enjoy and ask why women seem to still treat them the way videogames were just a few years ago.

A long time ago, women gamers were like Dark Eldar players winning GTs... we'd all heard the stories, but none had ever seen one.

Last time I was in a GW store I saw two women playing (neither of them were employees)... My 16 year old self wouldn't have believed that.

 catbarf wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I see where you're coming from, but I just disagree. I think the "enabling" argument is somewhat flawed because you could make a similar "enabling" argument about the fascist underpinnings of the Imperium ("40K is the gateway drug to fascism!"), and I certainly wouldn't want the Imperium to be changed for the sake of political correctness. I see it as part of the "edge" or flavor of the 40K universe. I think the universe is more interesting when it has these ideological tensions within it, and I don't think the reasoning of "some people might use it to be a jerk!" is a good enough one to change it. I imagine those that do are going to be obnoxious anyhow.

With 40K becoming more mainstream and less satirical over time, there's a bigger discussion to be had about whether GW can still depict the Imperium as having negative beliefs without being perceived as endorsing those beliefs, or providing cover for those who share them.

I honestly don't know how you get away from the gleeful over-the-top-violent/oppressive mentality without fundamentally changing the character of 40K. I feel a big part of the draw is that it's still a universe where religious fervor is often played a bit for laughs. "Burn heretic", "Cleanse with holy fire", along with "Blood for the blood god" are fairly iconic 40K characterizations. Then there's the more subtle "Knowledge is power, guard it well.", "An open mind is like a fortress unbarred and unguarded", or the "only those who prosper can truly judge what is sane", which all speak to a fearful/oppressive mentality. I don't know how you square that circle with "mainstream" without seriously chipping away at the 40k "pathos", for lack of a better term.

Like, how you remove the grimdark from 40k and still have it be 40k? It's where grimdark comes from.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I see where you're coming from, but I just disagree. I think the "enabling" argument is somewhat flawed because you could make a similar "enabling" argument about the fascist underpinnings of the Imperium ("40K is the gateway drug to fascism!"), and I certainly wouldn't want the Imperium to be changed for the sake of political correctness. I see it as part of the "edge" or flavor of the 40K universe. I think the universe is more interesting when it has these ideological tensions within it, and I don't think the reasoning of "some people might use it to be a jerk!" is a good enough one to change it. I imagine those that do are going to be obnoxious anyhow.

With 40K becoming more mainstream and less satirical over time, there's a bigger discussion to be had about whether GW can still depict the Imperium as having negative beliefs without being perceived as endorsing those beliefs, or providing cover for those who share them.

I honestly don't know how you get away from the gleeful over-the-top-violent/oppressive mentality without fundamentally changing the character of 40K. I feel a big part of the draw is that it's still a universe where religious fervor is often played a bit for laughs. "Burn heretic", "Cleanse with holy fire", along with "Blood for the blood god" are fairly iconic 40K characterizations. Then there's the more subtle "Knowledge is power, guard it well.", "An open mind is like a fortress unbarred and unguarded", or the "only those who prosper can truly judge what is sane", which all speak to a fearful/oppressive mentality. I don't know how you square that circle with "mainstream" without seriously chipping away at the 40k "pathos", for lack of a better term.

Like, how you remove the grimdark from 40k and still have it be 40k? It's where grimdark comes from.

You can't remove it.

Yes you could "sanitise" it into something different ,but it would be a fundamentally different thing by the end and would lose all of its original appeal.
Now you could make it different and still popular - sure that's possible.
But it wouldn't be the same thing and right now the over-the-top grim dark is selling like crazy for GW so they've zero pressure to change and all the encouragement to keep going!

Yeah. I totally understand the concern that going mainstream might mean obscuring the satire or the no longer highlighting that imperium = bad. But even the more popular sources of 40k media like Space Marine 2 don't really shy away from it. Like, sure, SM2 doesn't have you murdering the population of a local hab block for fear of chaos corruption, but we still have lobotomized cyborg zombies doing physical labor, guardsmen getting executed for cowardice, etc.

If the average 'casual' that is being attracted by reductive clickbait tiktoks and youtube videos is anything to go by, that ship has well and truly sailed.

Plenty of fans of 40k have been enjoying it for years unironically assuming the imperium and space marines are heroes, that the ends justifies the means makes the imperium 'gee shucks we just have to be bad because of this carefully constructed narrative that makes anything else fail' a sad good guy, doing terrible things but ultimately being noble while doing it.

The satire is not really there anymore except as a shield to deflect fash-sympathy criticism, so that GW can post about how it's for everyone and is clearly satirical. then go right back to mainlining heroic imperium marines forever.

It's a boiler plate disclaimer used in the event a schoolshooter says he was just killing heretics like Titus.

It's not their fault your comprehension skills weren't good enough to understand how clearly satirical it was and never to be taken seriously - here buy this new dozen book series about how the imperium is the only hope for humanity.


If even some of your consumers are taking it straight, then your messaging isn't clear enough. If GW truly wants it to be the satire it was originally, they need to be very very obvious about it.

The lack of clearly horrible quotes about open minds, xenocide, ignorance as virtue etc has removed a lot of these lampshade hanging moments.

Wasn't the Satire basically back in the Rogue Trader days when it was less Satire and more copying all the other Satire and creations of the time and the general theme.

40K has been its own Grimdark setting for ages now and within the setting itself it takes it seriously not in satire.


As I said earlier GW doesn't have to change the media to "appease the masses" they are already appeasing a big enough market that their capacity can only just keep up.

Sure there are real world hate groups that also like 40K. They might even try and justify it somehow; but I think if you go through the motion of trying to suppress anything hate groups might possibly one day potentially use in a hateful manner you'll have to sanitise everything and in the end the hate group wins cause they'll just use something else to attack with.


Again 40K is a fiction, a fantasy. It's up to those who engage with it to have the maturity to separate reality from fiction.
The very same way that WWII games don't remove the Nazis; or GRRM doesn't have to write whole pages of essays on how he doesn't condone the actions that took place at the Red Wedding.




Plus lets pause and remember once more that GW is already being popular and approaching mainstream and its doing it without making sweeping changes.

 Overread wrote:
The very same way that WWII games don't remove the Nazis; or GRRM doesn't have to write whole pages of essays on how he doesn't condone the actions that took place at the Red Wedding.

The WWII games that don't remove Nazis, aren't painting the Nazis as heroes. Likewise, GRRM doesn't make heroes of the Freys.

In contrast, GW does often portray the Imperium as the good guys. Heroes who are doing what is necessary. Not as the unnecessarily zealous extremists they are.

 Matt of Jasoom wrote:

 Overread wrote:
The very same way that WWII games don't remove the Nazis; or GRRM doesn't have to write whole pages of essays on how he doesn't condone the actions that took place at the Red Wedding.

The WWII games that don't remove Nazis, aren't painting the Nazis as heroes. Likewise, GRRM doesn't make heroes of the Freys.

In contrast, GW does often portray the Imperium as the good guys. Heroes who are doing what is necessary. Not as the unnecessarily zealous extremists they are.

Um, The Imperium portrays the Imperium as the good guys; nobody wants to think they're the bad guys, and propping yourself up as the hero is how you dupe the masses into following you into Hell.

GW just tells the stories from the Imperium's perspective, flawed as it is.

 BorderCountess wrote:
Um, The Imperium portrays the Imperium as the good guys; nobody wants to think they're the bad guys, and propping yourself up as the hero is how you dupe the masses into following you into Hell.

GW just tells the stories from the Imperium's perspective, flawed as it is.

I 100% agree that this is probably the intent.

But IMO, that intent is becoming lost. And I don't just mean, lost on consumers with poor media comprehension. I mean, lost by GW themselves. To the point that product descriptions on the website describe imperial forces as "noble".

Now, maybe (though I doubt it), the GW website's product descriptions are meta/ironically supposed to be written from the Imperial perspective. But, if true (and, as I say, I doubt it), then that's a very unwise choice if they actually expect anyone to interpret it that way. I think the truth is much simpler: GW (or, at least, important elements at GW) keep forgetting that the Imperium aren't noble. Either way, the suffocating frequency with which they're portrayed as such, means that any defense of "oh, we don't actually believe this voice we're writing in" would ring hollow.

 BorderCountess wrote:

 Matt of Jasoom wrote:

 Overread wrote:
The very same way that WWII games don't remove the Nazis; or GRRM doesn't have to write whole pages of essays on how he doesn't condone the actions that took place at the Red Wedding.

The WWII games that don't remove Nazis, aren't painting the Nazis as heroes. Likewise, GRRM doesn't make heroes of the Freys.

In contrast, GW does often portray the Imperium as the good guys. Heroes who are doing what is necessary. Not as the unnecessarily zealous extremists they are.

Um, The Imperium portrays the Imperium as the good guys; nobody wants to think they're the bad guys, and propping yourself up as the hero is how you dupe the masses into following you into Hell.

GW just tells the stories from the Imperium's perspective, flawed as it is.

And as GW are the creators of the imperium and how it acts, GW are the ones portraying them that way. And if they aren't explicit about it, the reader is not expected to assume that's what they're doing anyway. Few of the books published by BL have any preface that lays out how this is a propaganda piece by the munitorum, or a framing device of a administratum official correcting the story to make it seem heroic. They're almost all told from the perspective of space marines doing whatever mission they've been ordered to do and being badass at it.

EDIT: What Matt says. The intent may be there, but it's so thin now that only people immersed in it long enough will see it and not always then. When you're playing with questionable things like these as entertainment, it behoves you to be crystal clear with your audience. We have seen plenty of examples how not doing so impacts people. Especially when children are one of the core demographics, people who don't have sophisticated enough comprehension or experience to understand things like this.

 Hellebore wrote:

 BorderCountess wrote:

 Matt of Jasoom wrote:

 Overread wrote:
The very same way that WWII games don't remove the Nazis; or GRRM doesn't have to write whole pages of essays on how he doesn't condone the actions that took place at the Red Wedding.

The WWII games that don't remove Nazis, aren't painting the Nazis as heroes. Likewise, GRRM doesn't make heroes of the Freys.

In contrast, GW does often portray the Imperium as the good guys. Heroes who are doing what is necessary. Not as the unnecessarily zealous extremists they are.

Um, The Imperium portrays the Imperium as the good guys; nobody wants to think they're the bad guys, and propping yourself up as the hero is how you dupe the masses into following you into Hell.

GW just tells the stories from the Imperium's perspective, flawed as it is.

And as GW are the creators of the imperium and how it acts, GW are the ones portraying them that way. And if they aren't explicit about it, the reader is not expected to assume that's what they're doing anyway. Few of the books published by BL have any preface that lays out how this is a propaganda piece by the munitorum, or a framing device of a administratum official correcting the story to make it seem heroic. They're almost all told from the perspective of space marines doing whatever mission they've been ordered to do and being badass at it.

EDIT: What Matt says. The intent may be there, but it's so thin now that only people immersed in it long enough will see it and not always then. When you're playing with questionable things like these as entertainment, it behoves you to be crystal clear with your audience. We have seen plenty of examples how not doing so impacts people. Especially when children are one of the core demographics, people who don't have sophisticated enough comprehension or experience to understand things like this.

I think this is incredibly disingenous and frankly insulting to people enjoying the basics of escapism in entertainment that you basically think they're braindead enough to not be able to distinguish fiction vs reality and you're veering strongly into the debunked argument of "playing video games cause children/people to be violent" where you literally have to write out how people should feel about everything taking place because you don't trust people to be able to read subtext or understand that the setting is a vehicle for having fun. Do you need flashing reminders every time you watch Looney Tunes to "DO NOT USE DYNAMITE ON ROADRUNNERS" or an annoying meta-narrator that keeps stating how violence is bad and you shouldn't use it as a last resort every time Batman beats a goon on screen?

Do you think RPG's (tabletop or video game wise) where you're allowed to kill, maim, or otherwise do terrible things shouldn't be allowed or either heavily censored or you as a player are constantly being blasted by the DM or the game that you're a bad person for doing so?

I never said anything of the sort and glamorising fighting monsters is in no way equivalent to normalising fascism as the heroic ideal of your setting.

Your argument is a false equivalence based on a sweeping standardisation. Just because you call something entertainment doesn't suddenly mean they all affect people identically. Watching people get murdered used to be entertainment. I'm pretty sure you'd take a dim view to a game where you play a child molester and you're rewarded for it or even exist in a setting where for some reason it's the only way to save humanity. Similarly, play a game being rewarded and supported in being hans lander from inglorious Basterds and do what he does in a straight unapologetic fashion.

You examine things on their individual merits not on what label they have. Killing monsters and getting buried treasure are highly fantastical and separate from reality. Mixing real-world ideologies and behaviours into the fiction that are relatable to the audience DO have an impact, which is what childhood cartoons like bluey work from. Normalise intolerance, normalise fascism and glorify it in your fiction and it's a lot less clear than fighting imaginary creatures and buried treasure.

And we already have concrete real-world examples of fans of 40k using it to treat trans and gender diverse people, women and other minorities terribly on social media. The very reason gw put up their 'its all satire guys' message was specifically because a fan was emboldened to literally wear his intolerance on his sleeve.

I never said it should be banned for the kids, I said they need to be CLEAR in how they portray their products that they are bad if they want people to actually think they are bad.


And it is abundantly clear that a worryingly large proportion of the western world CAN'T tell fantasy from reality, or we wouldn't have the ridiculous amount of woowoo bs, conspiracy theories and ivamectin eating, flat earth spouting lunacy we currently have.

 Grimskul wrote:
I think this is incredibly disingenous and frankly insulting to people enjoying the basics of escapism in entertainment that you basically think they're braindead enough to not be able to distinguish fiction vs reality ...

I didn't read that at all from Hellebore's post (and I certainly didn't write it in mine). I haven't seen any accusation of confusion of fiction and reality.

The erosion of distinction that was discussed isn't between fiction and reality, but between author's voice and character's voice. And I don't think you have to be "braindead" to confuse those two things when distinction is lacking.

 Matt of Jasoom wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:
I think this is incredibly disingenous and frankly insulting to people enjoying the basics of escapism in entertainment that you basically think they're braindead enough to not be able to distinguish fiction vs reality ...

I didn't read that at all from Hellebore's post (and I certainly didn't write it in mine). I haven't seen any accusation of confusion of fiction and reality.

The erosion of distinction that was discussed isn't between fiction and reality, but between author's voice and character's voice. And I don't think you have to be "braindead" to confuse those two things when distinction is lacking.

It wasn't my original intent, but the discussion around the media literacy of the populace is itself an important issue and leads to poor outcomes in a range of areas, like medicine.


The tldr of it for me is - if gw cares that their customers understand the imperium is bad and they shouldn't venerate it, they are doing a terrible job and it doesn't surprise me that many people unironcially see marines as true noble heroes. I've no dog in the fight, but I think it's pretty disingenuous of GW to post about the game being for everyone without any effort to lampshade these things in the game itself. That's all my comments were about.

GW is free to do whatever it wants, nobleify marines, glorify the imperium..or not. But their messaging is pretty mixed in the subject and imo they need to pick a lane and be very clear about it.

But who's going to buy a book where the protagonist kicks dogs all the time in addition to killing the more evil demons? It's always very convenient that the protagonist never gets depicted ethnically cleansing a planet because their genome failed its purity test, slaughtering children because their parents were exposed to chaos etc. you know, the things we are told the imperium does which makes it bad and would thus hang a lampshade on it...

 Hellebore wrote:
If the average 'casual' that is being attracted by reductive clickbait tiktoks and youtube videos is anything to go by, that ship has well and truly sailed.

Plenty of fans of 40k have been enjoying it for years unironically assuming the imperium and space marines are heroes, that the ends justifies the means makes the imperium 'gee shucks we just have to be bad because of this carefully constructed narrative that makes anything else fail' a sad good guy, doing terrible things but ultimately being noble while doing it.

The satire is not really there anymore except as a shield to deflect fash-sympathy criticism, so that GW can post about how it's for everyone and is clearly satirical. then go right back to mainlining heroic imperium marines forever.

It's a boiler plate disclaimer used in the event a schoolshooter says he was just killing heretics like Titus.

It's not their fault your comprehension skills weren't good enough to understand how clearly satirical it was and never to be taken seriously - here buy this new dozen book series about how the imperium is the only hope for humanity.


If even some of your consumers are taking it straight, then your messaging isn't clear enough. If GW truly wants it to be the satire it was originally, they need to be very very obvious about it.

The lack of clearly horrible quotes about open minds, xenocide, ignorance as virtue etc has removed a lot of these lampshade hanging moments.

Sad but true. This is the actual biggest issue with he current GW lore, and like I said in the thread about changes you'd make, this would be the main thing I'd change were I in charge. Of course not to make the Imperium good, but make it explicit that they're not the good guys, that it is corrupt, stupid and ineffective, and even that if chaos is terrible too, they might actually have a pretty good point in trying to bring the Imperium down.

Also, female marines, LGBT representation etc are also good tools to make it clear that it is not about apologia of real bigotry. People who unironically idolise Imperium hate that sort of stuff, so it is an easy and effective to way to get the message across.

 Hellebore wrote:

And we already have concrete real-world examples of fans of 40k using it to treat trans and gender diverse people, women and other minorities terribly on social media. The very reason gw put up their 'its all satire guys' message was specifically because a fan was emboldened to literally wear his intolerance on his sleeve.

And I'd argue that's as far as GW had to go. After that the Warhammer community can just ignore/oust a person who is behaving intolerably.
That person would have used any hint of lore/story or whatever from Warhammer or anything else. The key thing is that they are looking for a way or means to insult. This is one of those "you can't beat stupid" situations where you can't lower yourself to their level to win. You could change all the lore of 40K and they'd still find some way to connect something they enjoy with their political/social ideals; even to the point of "Well 40K is a universe so I made my own faction who are racist haters and its allowed because GW says I can make my own stuff up so its Cannon" or such.

 Hellebore wrote:

And it is abundantly clear that a worryingly large proportion of the western world CAN'T tell fantasy from reality, or we wouldn't have the ridiculous amount of woowoo bs, conspiracy theories and ivamectin eating, flat earth spouting lunacy we currently have.

This isn't a western thing this is just a people thing. The important distinction is that GW doesn't present itself as fact. It's not trying to convince people the Earth is Flat as a proven point of fact; its a toy. Warhammer is a Toy brand making toys with stories behind them.
As I said if someone thinks that is reality then that is on that person not on the Warhammer community, GW, 40K lore or such

^Yah, I tend to agree with the above post.

I don't disagree with any of that. But I don't think it does GW any favours for there to be ambiguity on whether the imperium is good or bad. Although if it's just a toy, why is it not ok to have space nazis as scifi toys for kids? The difference between alternate future space nazis and the imperium isn't that great, because they both purport to represent our future. One just has the swastikas filed off - is that enough to make it so fantastical that no one can connect it to reality? Would it change anything if the imperium was built off a holy text the emperor venerated called Main Kimf? Everything else on Terra references real countries, peoples and ideologies.

There is a line we have, it's just a subjective one and often falls outside the things we enjoy ourselves.

Like I said, they used to have very clear lamp shading text spread throughout their books that were highly satirical - the 'an open mind is like a bastion with its gates unbarred', 'only the insane prosper, only those who prosper can judge what is sane', etc. Quotes from people in setting that shows their true colours.

The more at odds with modern sensibilities those quotes were, the more obvious that this was a flying rodent gak insane setting that people really shouldn't want to live in or emulate. But we've lost all that and now we're prose-led, ie only characters talking about themselves and the righteousness of their actions and conveniently their actions are always positioned as heroic, or necessary no matter how evil they actually are.

I don't see it getting any better as it moves into the mainstream via Amazon.

 Hellebore wrote:
I don't disagree with any of that. But I don't think it does GW any favours for there to be ambiguity on whether the imperium is good or bad. Although if it's just a toy, why is it not ok to have space nazis as scifi toys for kids? The difference between alternate future space nazis and the imperium isn't that great, because they both purport to represent our future. One just has the swastikas filed off - is that enough to make it so fantastical that no one can connect it to reality? Would it change anything if the imperium was built off a holy text the emperor venerated called Main Kimf? Everything else on Terra references real countries, peoples and ideologies.

Are Space Marine players indoctrinated when they buy into the army?
I've not played SM ever so I don't know, but playing all the other factions I have across the other games I was never forced to join the ideologies of those factions.

I feel like this argument is heading down the same pathway as "video games make people violent and create school-shooters". Something that you can propose, but which has no actual evidence of being outside of an exceptionally tiny number of people for whom existing mental issues were the primary cause.

Heck look at Helldivers 2 which is promoting violent genocide in the name of spreading democracy and in-game they aren't hiding any of it. It's right there fully bold in your face.

And yes if you directly based the Imperium off a real world faction like the Nazis complete with direct easily referenced parallels and iconography it would change things. For starters the German market is likely to be locked out unless you changed those elements. After that who knows - there's Konflict 42 doing alternate WW2 history; there's also likely a bunch of other wargames and such in the market doing likewise. But that's moving the goalposts a bit - the Imperium of Man isn't copying or trying to hold up a single recent historical group - its a mishmash of everything.

 Hellebore wrote:

Like I said, they used to have very clear lamp shading text spread throughout their books that were highly satirical - the 'an open mind is like a bastion with its gates unbarred', 'only the insane prosper, only those who prosper can judge what is sane', etc. Quotes from people in setting that shows their true colours.

I think some of what you're seeing is less "GW changing for mainstream" and more just a change in how they do codex. You might also have noticed that the last couple have done away with the page/half a page per model on in-world lore and now they only do a bit on the newly added models instead of the full army. Something that was disappointing to me when I got a new army codex, but all the previously released models didn't have any entries for digging into their lore even a little bit.

 Hellebore wrote:
But we've lost all that and now we're prose-led, ie only characters talking about themselves and the righteousness of their actions and conveniently their actions are always positioned as heroic, or necessary no matter how evil they actually are.

To this point- if you look at popular 40K media right now, you've got a Secret Level episode that is 100% bolter porn without a hint of self-criticism or satire, and Space Marine 2 which is pretty much the same thing in interactive form. People call SM2 still grimdark because it features servitors and summary executions- no doubt accompanied by breathless twenty-page essays on Lexicanum about how the logistical situation of the Imperium justifies the use of both practices against overwhelming odds blah blah blah. Meanwhile Call of Duty of all friggin' things had a level where you gun down civilians in an airport to highlight just how bad the bad guys are.

I'm not really worried about kids getting radicalized by 40K or whatever, but I do think we're seeing a distinct and deliberate shift from a satirical setting, where the Imperium is gakky because it's full of gakky people doing gakky things, to a serious setting, where the Imperium is gakky because of external factors and being a genocidal fascist is objectively The Right Thing To Do. And when they get called out on it, GW claims satire, but... I don't see it anymore. They gave Guilliman a freaking halo on the cover of the rulebook.

And I think that's reflected in this thread, which is why I brought the topic up, Insectum. Marines as a boys-only club is in-character with a reading of the Imperium as a backwards, ultra-conservative institution that works against its own interests and where you would never want to be a cog in its machine. But the drive for inclusivity demonstrates that that's not how Marines are perceived. They're the protagonists, they're the Good Guys, you want to be them and you want to see yourself in them. The grimdark is being sanded off in favor of a more mainstream-friendly image, more edgy than evil.

Don't forget the best Space Marine game released in the past few years: Boltgun.

But I digress.

Since 5th edition, the Company (Games Workshop, not Weyland-Yutani) has painted the Ultramarines with the positive paintbrush.

The Ultramarines have been honorable, have a sector of space that the common people don't suffer as bad as most of the rest of the Imperium, and have been used as the poster boys for pretty much everything (from movies to video games to merchandise).

They really are the outlier in the GrimDark Imperium, and that's why they are a safer choice when introducing new people to the universe.

 Overread wrote:

And yes if you directly based the Imperium off a real world faction like the Nazis complete with direct easily referenced parallels and iconography it would change things. For starters the German market is likely to be locked out unless you changed those elements. After that who knows - there's Konflict 42 doing alternate WW2 history; there's also likely a bunch of other wargames and such in the market doing likewise. But that's moving the goalposts a bit - the Imperium of Man isn't copying or trying to hold up a single recent historical group - its a mishmash of everything.

My point was that the concept that entertainment is beholden to nothing and can be produced with abandon is not entirely true and we do draw lines on things, and we are happy and consider it normal TO draw lines like that. My question was, how close a mishmash of realworld things do you need to get before it crosses that line? And if GW itself agrees that the imperium is terrible because of these horrible real world ideologies why are they failing at writing their material to reflect that? My comments are true for any entertainment product, but we're talking about GW.

It's hypocritical - condemn the imperium in your products, not just as PR spin when someone does something that could make your product look bad. Or embrace the edginess of turning fascists into heroes and don't bother to pretend otherwise. GW are trying to have it both ways.

Because characters like Titus, Eisenhorn, Gaunt, Ventris - they're all enforcers of the imperium's ideology, unapologetically and are thus themselves fascist 'heroes'. The nuremburg trials outlined very precisely how 'just following orders' is not a protected position, so I have no problem at all condemning those characters for their actions on behalf of their repressive regime. Being a nice guy and still following Hitler's orders doesn't protect you.

Do you think anyone reading those characters truly thinks they are villains/bad people though? That they are the Himmlers, Goerings and Geobels of the imperium - the 'heroes' of a terrible regime? Do you think we should try to defend them AS real heroes and not villains? Would that not be apologism?


I suppose what I'm asking is - what do you think the 'correct' (how you do, or how you think we should) way for a consumer approaching the imperium and its fiction is? Should they be approaching it as reading a story about the equivalent of an SS officer who just so happens to pause their eugenic genocides of sections of humanity to kill things that are more violent than them? Or a poor hero caught in the machinery of a regime they can't get out of and who commits atrocities because they 'have' to, which is ok?

I don't have an answer, but I see people say 'we all know the imperium is bad and GW says so' but I don't really see that reflected in how people consume such 'bad' fiction. To analogise it looks a bit like dealing with a racist uncle - we ignore the terribleness of their ideology because we can get along talking football (badass murdering of demons and aliens).... leaving said uncle to continue to spout their intolerance unchecked because he can also talk Gronk for hours.

 catbarf wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
But we've lost all that and now we're prose-led, ie only characters talking about themselves and the righteousness of their actions and conveniently their actions are always positioned as heroic, or necessary no matter how evil they actually are.

To this point- if you look at popular 40K media right now, you've got a Secret Level episode that is 100% bolter porn without a hint of self-criticism or satire, and Space Marine 2 which is pretty much the same thing in interactive form. People call SM2 still grimdark because it features servitors and summary executions- no doubt accompanied by breathless twenty-page essays on Lexicanum about how the logistical situation of the Imperium justifies the use of both practices against overwhelming odds blah blah blah. Meanwhile Call of Duty of all friggin' things had a level where you gun down civilians in an airport to highlight just how bad the bad guys are.

I'm not really worried about kids getting radicalized by 40K or whatever, but I do think we're seeing a distinct and deliberate shift from a satirical setting, where the Imperium is gakky because it's full of gakky people doing gakky things, to a serious setting, where the Imperium is gakky because of external factors and being a genocidal fascist is objectively The Right Thing To Do. And when they get called out on it, GW claims satire, but... I don't see it anymore. They gave Guilliman a freaking halo on the cover of the rulebook.

And I think that's reflected in this thread, which is why I brought the topic up, Insectum. Marines as a boys-only club is in-character with a reading of the Imperium as a backwards, ultra-conservative institution that works against its own interests and where you would never want to be a cog in its machine. But the drive for inclusivity demonstrates that that's not how Marines are perceived. They're the protagonists, they're the Good Guys, you want to be them and you want to see yourself in them. The grimdark is being sanded off in favor of a more mainstream-friendly image, more edgy than evil.

I agree that there's a perception of Marines being "the good guys" on a surface level at least, and I'd say that's not too out of step with older editions either. I think back to the famous 2nd edition box art with the bright red Blood Angel Captain/Sergeant. And I agree that the dark underbelly isn't quite as forward as it was in the years of RT through . . . 4th-ish? I definitely don't like Guilliman-With-A-Halo either. But I wonder if the grimdark has actually brightened once you dig into it. It seems to me that it's still there, but the candy coated shell is shinier/thicker these days. Or maybe there's just more of it because GW is in full on marketing mode with all the modern frills.

But then we get into perceptions vs. substance, and whether or not to change the substance to fit the perceptions, or leave the substance as-is and use the dissonance to add tension to the exploration of the setting. This dissonance seems like the stance GW has had throughout it's history really. "Marines are good! Check out these awesome heroes!" and then you dig in and it becomes "Oh . . . Oh nooo. . . they do what now?! . . . Oh no no noooo" And then you have a bunch of people wanting to play Salamanders because they're the "nice ones". I think that dissonance is good. Maybe more than good. Important.

And I have to apologize catbarf, this deserves a better/longer reply and I just can't do that right now.

Edit: I also have to say I've never been into the whole self-insert thing/argument either. Maybe it's just me, but the overall character of a faction has been what drives me beyond appearance and playstyle.

For my part, I always go back to the game.

For me, BL IS NOT LORE. Video games ARE NOT LORE. It's all fan-fic, and most of it is wrong. The game, however, will ALWAYS set you straight.

There were plenty of stories of Imperial atrocity in the campaign books of 9th. When everyone was complaining about the shift in tone, I didn't really see it, because only the game mattered.

Did I read some BL stuff?

Sure.But it never connected to the game. That's not to say it wasn't worth reading- it is. But it's like watching the Rick and Morty Anime: it's good, but it is its own thing.