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How do!

So something that’s cropped up multiple times in multiple background threads is the tedium of Memeified Background. Typically, but not entirely limited to, a single piece of background flavour being taken as gospel, when actually, things are more interesting, varied and subtle.

And what I want people to do is to nominate a Memeified aspect of the background for a group analysis. Whilst no-one, not even GW, knows every single last bit of lore ever written ever? Between us we’re fairly well read, and have a good collective library of books to check and cite. And so we can collectively discuss and explore, to better understand the background. We’ll likely never get to absolute certainty and “truth”, but we should be able to add some real depth to the wider understanding.

Once we’ve a few nominations for exploration, I’ll add a poll. Been ages since we had a poll. And from there, start with the most voted for.

Two things I've heard over and over, but have a common denominator.

One. That the Thousand Sons are actually dust in their suits (that can be vacuumed up upon destruction).

Two. Magnus did nothing wrong.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Two things I've heard over and over, but have a common denominator.

One. That the Thousand Sons are actually dust in their suits (that can be vacuumed up upon destruction).

Two. Magnus did nothing wrong.

The Thousand Sons being dust in their armor goes back at least to the 2nd edition codex, in the fluff for Ahriman. " Inside the heavy shell of ceramite and adamantium the physical bodies of the Chaos Space Marines had been reduced to a handful of dust but their spirits remaines, trapped for all eternity. . ." pg. 107

The classics and worst for me are ORK tech only works because they believe it and purple makes ORKS invisible. The last one is especially bad. Pretty low hanging fruit though.


Also, while I’m at it, ORKS being mushrooms.


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 Insectum7 wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Two things I've heard over and over, but have a common denominator.

One. That the Thousand Sons are actually dust in their suits (that can be vacuumed up upon destruction).

Two. Magnus did nothing wrong.

The Thousand Sons being dust in their armor goes back at least to the 2nd edition codex, in the fluff for Ahriman. " Inside the heavy shell of ceramite and adamantium the physical bodies of the Chaos Space Marines had been reduced to a handful of dust but their spirits remaines, trapped for all eternity. . ." pg. 107

I never thought that was a meme, not got loads of books on them but the 2020 codex said “ By then the damage was done. Every single Thousand Sons warrior struck by the sorcerous bolts had been reduced to ensorcelled dust sealed forever within their battle armour.” Page 10. And by definition, dust could be vacuumed up.

I think definitely the worst is Ork belief. In that literally anything an Ork believes, no matter how ridiculous, becomes reality.

I'm not even that old by wargaming standards (sorry guys), but even I'm old enough to remember the "purple stealthy Orks" thing being just a joke because of how silly it is. Then it stuck around, then it got canonised by various writers.

Well, we’ve our first nomination

Yes. I have thoughts on that.

I think that my biggest problem with the Ork belief thing is how it is pushed to extremes - people act like an ork can pick up a handful of bullets, point their finger, and if they believe enough, fire their hand like a gun.

My understanding of Ork belief was that it had a subtle influence which made their weapons keep working beyond the point at which they would naturally fail. A weapon has to start off working for Ork belief to influence it.

I know there is lore, I think in the 4th edition codex, where Ork weapons are inspected by the mechanicus and they say they shouldn't have been working in the battle, and now do not work. I think it's that Ork belief counteracts the need for maintenance, not the inability to function. It is also likely due to misinformation and fanaticism - the mechanicus may well have declared it to be non-functional because it didn't have a purity seal.

This is further evidenced by weapons which used to misfire or go wrong, EG the shokk attakk gun, or the old Ramshackle trukks which went wildly wrong as soon as they were destroyed, and modern hazardous weapons like KMB. Ork belief doesn't overpower physics, it just leans probability in favour of the orks. A bearing which hasn't been oiled could go at any time, but Orks believing it works makes it go later rather than sooner. Anyone who's had an old motorbike and a low budget to repair it may be familiar with this.

I love Ork belief - things like red ones going faster, and blue being lucky, and the idea that their weapons would go wrong very rapidly in the hands of a non-ork. The limits of Ork belief are frankly obvious - how many warbosses thought themselves unkillable? If belief could do it, then there would be a LOT of unkillable orks out there!

We talking about actual stuff blown out of proportion, or stuff created entirely in the memeosphere?

I’m pretty tired of “all marines want to be ultramarines” which does have its root in official products. But also the Guiliman/Yrvraine thing, which is a 100% fan ship.

Ork Belief
Krieg Shovel Love
Blood Raven Kleptomania (OK, partially justified)
Tau being "the good guys"
Salamanders being "The Good Guys"
The Tyranids are fleeing something
The Necrons created the Tyranids
The Old Ones created the Tyranids
Orks will become Krorks if they just get big enough
The Beast was a Krork
Diggas exist anywhere except Gorkamorka/Angelis
Ullanor is the Ork Homeworld
Literally any loyalist chapter was founded with traitor geneseed
XYZ source is "not canon"

Phew. Had some things to get off my chest apparently

When it comes to memelore I would define it as something that people actually believe is actual lore.
Like with the Ork belief thing, there are quite a number of players that believe it's actually lore.
Whereas Guilli-vraine is *just* a meme.


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Charax wrote:

Tau being "the good guys"

Is that even a thing in meme lore? I don't think I've ever really heard that
Unless by "the good guys" you mean "not the comically evil guys"
All the Tau memes I see is usually space communism (although I guess communism is more of a positive thing with young people than it has been previously)

So it's just not the terrible memeification of Marnaeus Calgar and his endless armour variations?

Charax wrote:

Krieg Shovel Love
Blood Raven Kleptomania (OK, partially justified)

These are good ones though

But is the Blood Ravens one at all justified?
Doesn't the meme come entirely from the relics/upgrades you unlocked in the Dawn of War games which are famous relics from other chapters.
These games were never canon in the first place, game mechanics like that should readily be taken as non-canon, and the relics were never said to be stolen at all.
The kleptomania thing seems entirely just the community taking a meme and making it canon

It was big when they were released in 3rd edition, LOTS of people believed they were the only "good" faction and viscerally rejected any signs of a darker side to them (communion helms, ethereal pheromone control, sterilising human colonies). Now that seems to have morphed into "The Farsight Enclave are the only good guys" but it's still a thing

 kirotheavenger wrote:

These games were never canon in the first place, game mechanics like that should readily be taken as non-canon, and the relics were never said to be stolen at all.
The kleptomania thing seems entirely just the community taking a meme and making it canon

OK I'm adding "X isn't canon" to my list. How many times do how many people in GW need to say everything is Canon before fans will stop arbitrarily ringfencing things as "not canon"?

Charax wrote:
It was big when they were released in 3rd edition, LOTS of people believed they were the only "good" faction and viscerally rejected any signs of a darker side to them (communion helms, ethereal pheromone control, sterilising human colonies). Now that seems to have morphed into "The Farsight Enclave are the only good guys" but it's still a thing

Didn't Ethereal pheromone control come from exactly the same place as the ork psychic thing? IE a techpriest who was shown as not having a clue what he was talking about, stating he can't imagine why the Tau would be loyal so of course it must be mind control. Although I know Phil Kelly has more recently made such mind control *very explicit* canon in quite a ridiculous way. There's even been multiple sources that contradict it, such as the Tau Codex stating that wasn't the case, and the Aeronautica Taros supplement laying out all the reasons the Tau gave a better life and people fought hard to resist the Imperials.
The mind control idea doesn't actually make much sense because large volumes of Tau operate independently of Ethereals for extended periods all the time and maintain their loyalty to the Greater Good. Ethereals don't exist in *anything like* the numbers/density that would be necessary to control Tau society against the society's will with pheromones.
Kelly has also made it very explicit that Farsight *is* the good guy as Kelly's Enclaves are an egalitarian utopia straight out of Star Trek. He's erased all of the previously grimdark aspects of the Enclaves (IE it being a xenophobic military junta)

Also IIRC the sterilization thing came from Dawn of War again.

Actual examples of Tau's 'grimdark' come from things like the communication helms, eugenics, extremely collectivist society, gunboat diplomacy, 'Tau first among equals' empire structure, etc.

OK I'm adding "X isn't canon" to my list. How many times do how many people in GW need to say everything is Canon before fans will stop arbitrarily ringfencing things as "not canon"?

If want to take that approach then all memelore is actual canon lore
Of course 40k canon is varied, inconsistent, and contradictory. But not everything *is* canon
I believe Relic Entertainment was explicitly kept at arms length by GW - which is why they invented the Blood Ravens in the first place and said basically nothing about them, as they wanted freedom to actually tell a story

OK doke. Tau Motivations will be on the poll, as it seems to be one folk want to discuss

Also gives me an excuse to dig out my Xenology book!

 kirotheavenger wrote:

Charax wrote:
It was big when they were released in 3rd edition, LOTS of people believed they were the only "good" faction and viscerally rejected any signs of a darker side to them (communion helms, ethereal pheromone control, sterilising human colonies). Now that seems to have morphed into "The Farsight Enclave are the only good guys" but it's still a thing

Didn't Ethereal pheromone control come from exactly the same place as the ork psychic thing? IE a techpriest who was shown as not having a clue what he was talking about, stating he can't imagine why the Tau would be loyal so of course it must be mind control. Although I know Phil Kelly has more recently made such mind control *very explicit* canon in quite a ridiculous way. There's even been multiple sources that contradict it, such as the Tau Codex stating that wasn't the case, and the Aeronautica Taros supplement laying out all the reasons the Tau gave a better life and people fought hard to resist the Imperials.
The mind control idea doesn't actually make much sense because large volumes of Tau operate independently of Ethereals for extended periods all the time and maintain their loyalty to the Greater Good. Ethereals don't exist in *anything like* the numbers/density that would be necessary to control Tau society against the society's will with pheromones.
Kelly has also made it very explicit that Farsight *is* the good guy as Kelly's Enclaves are an egalitarian utopia straight out of Star Trek. He's erased all of the previously grimdark aspects of the Enclaves (IE it being a xenophobic military junta)

Also IIRC the sterilization thing came from Dawn of War again.

Actual examples of Tau's 'grimdark' come from things like the communication helms, eugenics, extremely collectivist society, gunboat diplomacy, 'Tau first among equals' empire structure, etc.

OK I'm adding "X isn't canon" to my list. How many times do how many people in GW need to say everything is Canon before fans will stop arbitrarily ringfencing things as "not canon"?

If want to take that approach then all memelore is actual canon lore
Of course 40k canon is varied, inconsistent, and contradictory. But not everything *is* canon
I believe Relic Entertainment was explicitly kept at arms length by GW - which is why they invented the Blood Ravens in the first place and said basically nothing about them, as they wanted freedom to actually tell a story

Tau society has its psychological conditioning and I see the Ethereals as troubleshooters and managing the most entrenched dissenters or the high level ones. What is known is that when the Ethereals get personally involved face to face, Tau find they are persuaded when they weren't previously. The Ethereals aren't controlling an overtly oppressed population. Ordinary propaganda and conditioning deals with most dissent without necessitating Ethereal intervention.

I think most of the stuff I could think of has been mentioned already.
Orky belief
Guilliman + Yvraine
Communist Tau ("communism" has been memed to death in the real World already, even before there were memes, to the point that hardly anyone seems to know what it means anymore..., so, sticking it to a fictional race is already a bad idea).

Tau are fishpeople comes to mind, but it is so easily refuted it's not really worth talking about, I think?

The Necron/ Blood Angel alliance might be a good one, it's also one I hardly know more than the meme about.
Krorks are the ancestors of Orks AND fought in the War in Heaven AND were created to fight the Necrons is... I think very ambigous fluff with little basis but taken for granted online. I'd like that to be discussed.

Dark Angels are CSM... is a meme and honestly I find it a little sad that the HH books "solved" that fluff without any ambiguity left over. Or not? I mean, 40K DA fluff seems to make little sense if their whole secret thing is... well, we had the same stuff happen to us as every other Legion during the HH, namely a couple of guys changing sides. But then they didn't really change sides. It's all quite weak fluff, really. But DA Fans could convince me otherwize.

Also? Start digging out your citations beforehand. I’m hoping we can include quite a few, including where identifiable, a meme’s point of origin (for instance, the Orky weapon and therefore what they believe happens).

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

Dark Angels are CSM... is a meme and honestly I find it a little sad that the HH books "solved" that fluff without any ambiguity left over. Or not? I mean, 40K DA fluff seems to make little sense if their whole secret thing is... well, we had the same stuff happen to us as every other Legion during the HH, namely a couple of guys changing sides. But then they didn't really change sides. It's all quite weak fluff, really. But DA Fans could convince me otherwize.

The whole Dark Angel secret thing is definitely lore that's been overtaken by time and doesn't really fit or make sense anymore.
It was just written as a reference to gay culture in the same vein as many other Rick Priestly gags and references that litter his works. But now GW is trying to take itself more seriously and "ha ha they're gay" doesn't work quite the way it used to. Combined with GW 'filling in' the secret across the HH novels and Fallen 'arc' and Lion's return... the secret is left being quite nonsensical


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Iracundus wrote:


Tau society has its psychological conditioning and I see the Ethereals as troubleshooters and managing the most entrenched dissenters or the high level ones. What is known is that when the Ethereals get personally involved face to face, Tau find they are persuaded when they weren't previously. The Ethereals aren't controlling an overtly oppressed population. Ordinary propaganda and conditioning deals with most dissent without necessitating Ethereal intervention.

But that's kinda the point
It makes complete sense that the Tau would be utterly subservient to the Greater Good without any silly mind control.
Tau are literally selectively bred (and no doubt greater-good-spirit is something they select for) and raised from birth in communes.
The level of indoctrination that your average Tau receives would make an Astartes blush, and Astartes are like the peak of blind loyalty to their regime

I don't know the exact citation but I do remember an old (3e) fluff piece on the Blood Axes saying that they liked to wear camo but made sure to use bright colors so that everyone could see it. The example was purple and I think lime-green, painted very garishly.

That could be the origin of the "purple is stealthy" idea though I can't say for sure.

I remember there was a common joke going around about purple ninjas in like the 2010s. Went something like;

Did you know purple ninjas are the stealthiest ninjas?

What? No!

Think about it - have you ever seen a purple ninja?!

This joke was then "40k-ified" but swapping it to a purple Ork.
It's playing on the same joke as idea of Orks painting themselves in garishly bright camouflage colours. Purple is obviously not good camouflage,

Ork lore is definitely the most widespread one that's bad.

Krieg shovels is very cringe.

Alpha Legion memes are horribly overdone, and I say this as someone who just hit 7k points of painted Alpha Legion.

Regarding Tau, they are plagued by writer inconsistency. Their codex writers as well as some novels seem to want them pretty nuanced and interesting, with a lot of ambiguity, creating a faction that is "good" only because it's competing with the hell that is 40k (and would be a villain faction if it existed in a realistic setting).

The main issue with Tau lore is Phil Kelly, who seems to think subtlety is for chumps, time for onscreen mind control suicides baby.

His writing almost feels like an apology to Imperium fans who are upset that they don't get to be the "best option in a bad choice".

There’s also room for alien environment camo being very different in terms of effective colouring.

If you’re wearing our regular camo in an alien jungle which is all reds and purples? It’s probably not going to work. Especially when you keep in mind camo is about breaking up your outline, making the human body harder to recognise.

Given Orky Know-Wots is pretty much a matter of engineered instinct? It’s entirely possible for that to extend to selecting the most appropriate camo colours for a given environment.

But that’s for the actual Dememeifying thread when it’s time.

For now, keep the suggestions coming. Once we’ve five, I’ll start the poll.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There’s also room for alien environment camo being very different in terms of effective colouring.

If you’re wearing our regular camo in an alien jungle which is all reds and purples? It’s probably not going to work. Especially when you keep in mind camo is about breaking up your outline, making the human body harder to recognise.

Given Orky Know-Wots is pretty much a matter of engineered instinct? It’s entirely possible for that to extend to selecting the most appropriate camo colours for a given environment.

But that’s for the actual Dememeifying thread when it’s time.

For now, keep the suggestions coming. Once we’ve five, I’ll start the poll.

Purple Orks have never been presented as being actually stealthy though. It's not about being on an alien planet.
It's a joke about the disconnect between stealth and a highly visible colour, and a conjoining of that humour with the Orky belief (which is usually pushed to extremes for humour)

I was referring to the Kommandos rather garish garb mentioned above

Also? We’re assuming Orks see the same colours as we do.

But yeah. That’s for the thread itself, which I have an interesting thought on.

 Ashiraya wrote:

Alpha Legion memes are horribly overdone, and I say this as someone who just hit 7k points of painted Alpha Legion.

Oh god the Alpha Legion, yeah a great example

Regarding Tau, they are plagued by writer inconsistency. Their codex writers as well as some novels seem to want them pretty nuanced and interesting, with a lot of ambiguity, creating a faction that is "good" only because it's competing with the hell that is 40k (and would be a villain faction if it existed in a realistic setting).

The main issue with Tau lore is Phil Kelly, who seems to think subtlety is for chumps, time for onscreen mind control suicides baby.

His writing almost feels like an apology to Imperium fans who are upset that they don't get to be the "best option in a bad choice".

Yeah this is absolutely it
Phil Kelly also has a pretty terrible grasp of Tau lore, in one book he stated that Shadowsun came from the Vio'la sept. That would basically be the equivalent of an author saying that Marneus Calgar came from the Salamanders!

Alpha Legion will be on the poll. But someone else will have to kick that one off, as I’m barely passingly familiar with them.