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 PenitentJake wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 PenitentJake wrote:

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The larger point though, is that as players, we have more control over what the game looks and feels like than most of us are willing to use in order to solve our own problems-

sigged for truth

And the counter point to that is that it’s not even working.

Worlds are attacked, depopulated and/or lost pretty regularly.

The Imperium was meant to be about protecting mankind. Forcibly pacifying a hostile galaxy so future generations might live in peace and prosperity.

Now? It has no actual regard for humanity. At all. The ignorance has taken over. Knowledge is jealously hoarded for sake of having more. But relatively little is done with it.

It’s endless cruelty to the very beings it’s meant to be protecting is done with no actual plan beyond “put out the next fire”, and in doing so, lighting a bunch of other fires.

Chaos Cults take root so easily because of the oppression. People live miserable lives of unending toil, with a decent percentage of humans, thanks to the population density of a Hive World, without ever seeing the sun or breathing fresh air.

It’s fighting, and sometimes it’s even the good fight, but not making anything better. Nothing is improving.

Even the return of Primarchs and the reveal of the Primaris has only maintained the stagnation and status quo. And for the vast majority of Imperial citizens? It’s not change a thing.

Again, the Imperium was never about protecting mankind. It was, from the very beginning, a genocidal fascist campaign of conquest for the glory of one person.

The same person who was meant to have been alive for millennia failed to learn the lesson of every single Empire in history, which is that when you expand by military force, your only reward is a greater circumference you have to defend.

The only reason there was a galaxy spanning human empire that actually had control (and do we actually know that actually existed in the form people assume?), was because it was not forged out of genocide of every species it encountered and so did not create brand new borders of a galaxy spanning war with every new system.

I agree it was genocidal and fascist, but the original plan has always been presented as a Means To An End.

Doesn’t change the means were immoral and horrific like. But it’s still a reason for it all, even if it’s by no means a good or just reason.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I agree it was genocidal and fascist, but the original plan has always been presented as a Means To An End.

Doesn’t change the means were immoral and horrific like. But it’s still a reason for it all, even if it’s by no means a good or just reason.

I disagree. The Emperor may have said it, but he was clearly lying. Just look at what he actually did and built.

Literally every fascist in history has said that their campaigns were a means to an end.

Judge people not by their words, but their actions. The Emperor is nothing more than a fascist warlord, just the most successful one but fundamentally no different in character.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I agree it was genocidal and fascist, but the original plan has always been presented as a Means To An End.

Doesn’t change the means were immoral and horrific like. But it’s still a reason for it all, even if it’s by no means a good or just reason.

I disagree. The Emperor may have said it, but he was clearly lying. Just look at what he actually did and built.

Literally every fascist in history has said that their campaigns were a means to an end.

Judge people not by their words, but their actions. The Emperor is nothing more than a fascist warlord, just the most successful one but fundamentally no different in character.

Do we know what the Imperium would have looked like if that little Horus Heresy thing didn't happen? Because what the Imperium is sure seems unintended.

Leopold Helveine wrote:

 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.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Literally every fascist in history has said that their campaigns were a means to an end.

Judge people not by their words, but their actions. The Emperor is nothing more than a fascist warlord, just the most successful one but fundamentally no different in character.

Do we know what the Imperium would have looked like if that little Horus Heresy thing didn't happen? Because what the Imperium is sure seems unintended.

It would still have been *built* on the foundation of oppressive regimes and xenophobic brutality. Regardless of what the Imperium was supposed to be at the end, it used the tools of fascism to attempt to build it - and never stopped trying to use those tools.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I agree it was genocidal and fascist, but the original plan has always been presented as a Means To An End.

Doesn’t change the means were immoral and horrific like. But it’s still a reason for it all, even if it’s by no means a good or just reason.

I disagree. The Emperor may have said it, but he was clearly lying. Just look at what he actually did and built.

Literally every fascist in history has said that their campaigns were a means to an end.

Judge people not by their words, but their actions. The Emperor is nothing more than a fascist warlord, just the most successful one but fundamentally no different in character.

I'm not so sure he was. The few times we really get into Big E's headspace is through some of his conversations with Malcador that we're told of in memories/flashbacks.

Malcador says that The Emperor's original intent was to conquer the galaxy and then step down, leaving humanity to be run by humanity, not by himself. Now you hear this kind of thing from tyrants all the time, so why should we believe this was Big E's plan. There are 3 reasons that come to mind for me, though there may be more I don't know about:

1) Malcador doesn't believe this will ever happen and tries to dissuade The Emperor from the idea. If Big E really wanted to rule everything forever, when Malcador, his closest confidant, in private council, is telling him that humanity will always need Big E to rule them why disagree and try to convince Malcador otherwise?

2) You start to see it at the end of the Great Crusade. One of the things that begins to stir the ire of some of the Primarchs at the end of the Great Crusade is that the unlimited power they used to possess over the Imperium is slowly being taken away and given to mortals. A little at a time, it is transitioning to a system run by people. It's absolutely still a horrible oligarchical system, but Big E is still voluntarily relinquishing some of both his and his son's sway over the Imperium at large.

3) Big E's always been around. Having been around for so long, if his goal was always total galactic conquest with himself at the head, why wait until when he did? Why not take over everything during the golden age of humanity when it would have been even easier to conquer the stars? He was certainly involved during that time, but very much behind the scenes, so it's hard to say how much of a role he played, but he is certainly plenty content to just do his own thing for long stretches of time without shepherding humanity.

We see so little inside the Emperor's head that it is hard to say definitively, but personally, I do think that after creating this exclusively human galaxy, he'd either fade back into the shadows with most or all of his space marines and let humanity run itself, or take them all beyond the rim of the galaxy and go find something else to conquer, because that "man" had ambitions and whose to say that Humanity's manifest destiny to the entire universe wasn't his next goal?

 Insectum7 wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I agree it was genocidal and fascist, but the original plan has always been presented as a Means To An End.

Doesn’t change the means were immoral and horrific like. But it’s still a reason for it all, even if it’s by no means a good or just reason.

I disagree. The Emperor may have said it, but he was clearly lying. Just look at what he actually did and built.

Literally every fascist in history has said that their campaigns were a means to an end.

Judge people not by their words, but their actions. The Emperor is nothing more than a fascist warlord, just the most successful one but fundamentally no different in character.

Do we know what the Imperium would have looked like if that little Horus Heresy thing didn't happen? Because what the Imperium is sure seems unintended.

One line of argument there is “much like the 500 Worlds of Ultramar”. Which at least during the Great Crusade were well equipped and mutually supporting.

And we can’t know what The Emperor’s end goal truly was, because the Heresy ruined that. But given he was by all accounts really pleased with the 500 Worlds? We have some evidence it was indeed a means to an end.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Leopold Helveine wrote:

 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.

Incorrect. Sisters have had playable, though always kinda "meh", rules in every edition since 2e.
During 3e - 7th they'd go a few editions between getting their next "meh" updates & even then GW only invested the bare minimum of effort into them - as befitted a low selling model range*.
Sorta like "Well, we've still got this stuff in inventory. And we don't have anything better to fill a couple of WD pages with for the {month} issue. Or "Hmm, what's this PDF stuff all about?" "You there, Intern, write something up ruleswise for the SoB!"

*Wich of course is it's own feedback loop. "Meh" rules = low interest in the line wich in turn = low sales. Wich leads to little effort being invested in either new rules or new models. Wich loops back to low sales....
But the range was available for purchase & the rules were playable if one were determined to have a SoB army!

ccs wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Sisters were basically extinct as a playable faction for decades.

Incorrect. Sisters have had playable, though always kinda "meh", rules in every edition since 2e.
During 3e - 7th they'd go a few editions between getting their next "meh" updates & even then GW only invested the bare minimum of effort into them - as befitted a low selling model range*.
Sorta like "Well, we've still got this stuff in inventory. And we don't have anything better to fill a couple of WD pages with for the {month} issue. Or "Hmm, what's this PDF stuff all about?" "You there, Intern, write something up ruleswise for the SoB!"

*Wich of course is it's own feedback loop. "Meh" rules = low interest in the line wich in turn = low sales. Wich leads to little effort being invested in either new rules or new models. Wich loops back to low sales....
But the range was available for purchase & the rules were playable if one were determined to have a SoB army!

I'm mostly talking about the minis and the fact that rules were scant. Obviously, they weren't *dead*, but they were on life support. They've only really had love because of their new plastic range.

So, ultimately, I don't really think my statement was *that* off the mark. They were functionally unplayable to most people (short of proxying).

 Tawnis wrote:
I'm not so sure he was. The few times we really get into Big E's headspace is through some of his conversations with Malcador that we're told of in memories/flashbacks.

Malcador says that The Emperor's original intent was to conquer the galaxy and then step down, leaving humanity to be run by humanity, not by himself. Now you hear this kind of thing from tyrants all the time, so why should we believe this was Big E's plan. There are 3 reasons that come to mind for me, though there may be more I don't know about:

Transitioning power from a special golden not-god man to unelected bureaucrats largely drawn from Terra. Not the slam dunk you think it might be. The Webway might have helped reduce the stresses of an interstellar empire in terms of travel and communication but the Council of Terra wasn't going to switch to free and fair elections when the Emperor walked off.
The Xenophobia and genocidal tendencies would have remained along with the brutal suppression of anything considered "other".

3) Big E's always been around. Having been around for so long, if his goal was always total galactic conquest with himself at the head, why wait until when he did? Why not take over everything during the golden age of humanity when it would have been even easier to conquer the stars? He was certainly involved during that time, but very much behind the scenes, so it's hard to say how much of a role he played, but he is certainly plenty content to just do his own thing for long stretches of time without shepherding humanity.

He needed humanity to be desperate enough to let him be in charge. Golden Age humanity was at the peak of its power and would never have submitted easily to the Emperor. You can see it when the Imperium comes across similarly advanced societies during the Crusade who have weathered the Dark Age but either advanced or retained their cultures and tech.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Leopold Helveine wrote:

 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!)

 Gert wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:
I'm not so sure he was. The few times we really get into Big E's headspace is through some of his conversations with Malcador that we're told of in memories/flashbacks.

Malcador says that The Emperor's original intent was to conquer the galaxy and then step down, leaving humanity to be run by humanity, not by himself. Now you hear this kind of thing from tyrants all the time, so why should we believe this was Big E's plan. There are 3 reasons that come to mind for me, though there may be more I don't know about:

Transitioning power from a special golden not-god man to unelected bureaucrats largely drawn from Terra. Not the slam dunk you think it might be. The Webway might have helped reduce the stresses of an interstellar empire in terms of travel and communication but the Council of Terra wasn't going to switch to free and fair elections when the Emperor walked off.
The Xenophobia and genocidal tendencies would have remained along with the brutal suppression of anything considered "other".

3) Big E's always been around. Having been around for so long, if his goal was always total galactic conquest with himself at the head, why wait until when he did? Why not take over everything during the golden age of humanity when it would have been even easier to conquer the stars? He was certainly involved during that time, but very much behind the scenes, so it's hard to say how much of a role he played, but he is certainly plenty content to just do his own thing for long stretches of time without shepherding humanity.

He needed humanity to be desperate enough to let him be in charge. Golden Age humanity was at the peak of its power and would never have submitted easily to the Emperor. You can see it when the Imperium comes across similarly advanced societies during the Crusade who have weathered the Dark Age but either advanced or retained their cultures and tech.

Oh, of course, it was just the replacement of one terrible system with another, my point was only that I do think he intended to step down himself.

That's a fair point on 3 and could very well be the case. It's hard to say since we know so little about what he was doing at that point in time.

We know he was waiting for humanity to be both technologically advanced but also desperate enough to accept his rule.

The Age of Strife allowed this to happen and while it certainly messed things up a bit, it also made the vast majority of human worlds desperate for stability.

Those who had created pocket empires or indeed had advanced their cultures and technology tended to resist the Imperium. Of course it didn't help that the Emperor was a big old space racist.

Or, as a counter?

He saw no need to reveal himself when things were good, as mankind just didn’t need him. As a species we were prospering and expanding. Given whatever organised government or governments came before the Age of Strife were able to survive in a galaxy with pre-Fall Eldar and Orks ‘ard enough to survive pre-Fall Eldar? They must’ve been pretty bloody powerful.

Which also introduces the possibility The Emperor knew humanity at that point had the power to just do him in. Which brings all sorts of other what-iffery into play!

Think I’ll do a Background Thread on that topic.

So we're calling the Emperor justified again? It's OK he took power and created the worst regime ever known, subjugating billions of humans many of whom were doing just fine, and eradicating similar numbers of Xenos many of whom were also not a threat to humanity?

I dunno about justified, but that old "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" adage is coming to mind.

It doesn't matter that he wanted to make a utopia for humanity. What matters is he done goofed.

That's like, a core theme of 40k.

 Gert wrote:
So we're calling the Emperor justified again? It's OK he took power and created the worst regime ever known, subjugating billions of humans many of whom were doing just fine, and eradicating similar numbers of Xenos many of whom were also not a threat to humanity?

Just because what he did and how he did it was awful, doesn’t mean he may not have had good intentions. And even if he did have good intentions it doesn’t justify how awful the regime he led was.

Some of the worst and most destructive zealots are those who thought their cause was righteous. C.f. Also tbh much of the Imperium (though there’s also plenty that don’t think they’ve a good cause).

The fact that the Emperor (and his immediate subordinates) thought they were justified is a key part of the warning inherent in the lore imo, it’s so easy to slip into doing bad things in the same of what you think is a good cause and end up with horrific and tyrannical results.
The Emperor is *wrong*, this is not a good way to protect humanity, but I think the intent is that he genuinely believes it is and that he can step down when it’s complete.
Ollanius has some good dits in the SoT series on some of the Emperor’s previous misadventures in this regards.

Whereas ‘yeah he was just a crazy egotist’ loses the message as people are less likely to see themselves in that.


The problem, as others have said, though is that the important ’the Imperium is bad and not the right way’ message frequently gets lost in all the ‘aren’t Space Marines awesome!’ nature of a lot of the fiction these days. Though there’s still some good stuff in the more lower level fiction (Warhammer Crime is excellent in this regard).

Remembering that the Emperor's literary origin is Paul Atreides, you should be able to take a lot of intention from him and Herbert's intentions for him.

One of the issues is that GW have spent so long trying to glorify and legitimise the imperium to make them the heroes of the setting, that people have bought into it and retroactively justified everything as necessary.

Because they can't be heroes if they did bad things that weren't necessary.


This again comes back to the premise on which the arguments are founded - either you start from the premise that they were trying to do good, and thus everything ipso facto must be necessary to get where they are (the fascist apologia), or they were not the heroes and thus have done bad.

What GW have done a pretty good job of doing is PR facelifting the imperium and its leaders in the same way any dictatorial leader uses the state controlled media to whitewash their image.

Thus the consumer buys into the lie and becomes its ardent defenders. GW then no longer has to defend its creation, because consumers will do it for them,

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 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.

Personally I hate the retcon stuff - Primaris etc. But if they were going to do it, they should have done it whilst trashing their IP with the Primaris range and floaty tanks.

Honestly though I would prefer they went the other way. Emphasise the problems with all male, fanatical close minded organisations. Can still be a 'fun' faction, and your poster boy, but the writing should leave you in no doubt why celibate pyscho conditioned all male forces are a bad idea, their fall to corruption in universe, but also sadistic excess, etc. etc. And get back the in universe fiction of having not a second thought about crushing all the babies heads of a city they are ordered to depopulate in order to save ammunition for any citizens who are resisting.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Leopold Helveine wrote:

I'm probably walking on eggshells in a power armor here but that discussion would be very simple; no real or imaginary danger will ever warrant state force of any kind and suggesting otherwise equates fascism.

I thought in conventional political theory a western nation state has to hold a monopoly of violence, and uses coercive violent on a daily basis, but with the broad consent of the public. The classic example being policing.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I agree it was genocidal and fascist, but the original plan has always been presented as a Means To An End.

Doesn’t change the means were immoral and horrific like. But it’s still a reason for it all, even if it’s by no means a good or just reason.

I disagree. The Emperor may have said it, but he was clearly lying. Just look at what he actually did and built.

Literally every fascist in history has said that their campaigns were a means to an end.

Judge people not by their words, but their actions. The Emperor is nothing more than a fascist warlord, just the most successful one but fundamentally no different in character.

Technically this makes traitor legions the good guys
(I agree with you btw)

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Leopold Helveine wrote:

 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.
.

Wow, Nothing you fantasised here of what I "meant" with my post is in my post..
I just said female spacemarines could be slaaneshian because of all the marine factions they are the most feminine (see slaaneshian demons in AOS for instance) Eldar also have female troops like banshees (aos whitch elves apply) as so do the drukhari..

It's really just you trying to find something behind my post..

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Leopold Helveine wrote:

I'm probably walking on eggshells in a power armor here but that discussion would be very simple; no real or imaginary danger will ever warrant state force of any kind and suggesting otherwise equates fascism.

I thought in conventional political theory a western nation state has to hold a monopoly of violence, and uses coercive violent on a daily basis, but with the broad consent of the public. The classic example being policing.

Oh I agree there, that is why I am a localist and ignore all politics.

---

edit: Is this thread what a book club is like btw?
-
To get back on the "we have to prevent any content from possibly ever affecting someone's real life".. that is impossible, you would have to put a ban on thought and especially -imagination-, good luck with that.

 Leopold Helveine wrote:


edit: Is this thread what a book club is like btw?

My boss told us they are all about affairs and dating, and while you lot are great, we just don't have that spark.

The_Real_Chris wrote:Honestly though I would prefer they went the other way. Emphasise the problems with all male, fanatical close minded organisations. Can still be a 'fun' faction, and your poster boy, but the writing should leave you in no doubt why celibate pyscho conditioned all male forces are a bad idea, their fall to corruption in universe, but also sadistic excess, etc. etc. And get back the in universe fiction of having not a second thought about crushing all the babies heads of a city they are ordered to depopulate in order to save ammunition for any citizens who are resisting.

Space Marines as a concept are so close to a pitch-perfect parody of over-the-top toxic masculinity. An all-boys club of socially stunted child soldiers, so wracked with daddy issues that it takes only a nudge for half of them to turn evil. A super manly big muscly beefcake power fantasy, but also literally impotent, conditioned to redirect every emotional response into anger because their junk don't work. Framed that way, Marines being all-male is virtually necessary to their characterization.

But again, that implies satire, something GW seems hesitant to do in general, let alone with the poster boy faction.

 Gert wrote:
So we're calling the Emperor justified again? It's OK he took power and created the worst regime ever known, subjugating billions of humans many of whom were doing just fine, and eradicating similar numbers of Xenos many of whom were also not a threat to humanity?

LOL, no one said he was justified.

He was functionally a monster, but it's in those tiny moments when he's not that his lore is all the more frightening. If he was only a power mad dictator (which he absolutely was), it would be easy to write him off as a cartoonish depiction and move on, but it's those little moments of humanity that slip through the cracks that still make him seem like a person; one long since blinded by his own delusions of grandeur sure, but a person none the less. Those little moments that seem altruistic in the ocean of atrocities show us that beneath it all, he is still human, and while a human can't physically do what he can, that doesn't mean there could never be one that create what he did.

For another good example of this from another medium is the anime Overlord. Momonga is portrayed as this goofy and relatable gamer to immediately relate him to the audience, he just seems like someone stuck in way over his head. Yet as the series progresses, under his Ainz persona he goes from being a reluctant protector to a full on genocidal conqueror, all what still maintaining that bit of humanity beneath his actions that keeps him relatable.

That's the scary thing about stories like these. We think ourselves so much better than these tyrants, but power and ambition are slippery slopes, and everyone needs to be cautious of what we do in the pursuit of our goals, be in on as large a scale as a galactic one, or as small as a personal personal one.

 catbarf wrote:

Space Marines as a concept are so close to a pitch-perfect parody of over-the-top toxic masculinity. An all-boys club of socially stunted child soldiers, so wracked with daddy issues that it takes only a nudge for half of them to turn evil. A super manly big muscly beefcake power fantasy, but also literally impotent, conditioned to redirect every emotional response into anger because their junk don't work. Framed that way, Marines being all-male is virtually necessary to their characterization.

But again, that implies satire, something GW seems hesitant to do in general, let alone with the poster boy faction.

I can remember it being done explicitly only once with an IG commander despairing of his subordinate being in thrall to the crimson fist contingent that was there to hunt renegade marines, not prosecute his war. Said a bunch of similar things.

I very nearly posted something like Catbarf's post earlier. I see Space Marines as an expression of OTT toxic masculinity. So it works for me, having them be male and a "no girls allowed" club.

That said, I wouldn't be that bothered if GW changed that. They've changed loads of stuff from what I like in the setting over the years and I'm comfortable with headcanon as my solution.

 Hellebore wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
@Hellebore: I'm sorry I'm out of time to respond atm. I didn't forget you though! I must say I'm having a difficult time finding the difference/distinction you are trying to make though. Trying to keep it in mind as I go about my other obligations.

Because the outcomes for video gaming is easy to measure - you should see an uptick in violence committed by gamers. Which we don't see.

The acceptance of and engagement with intolerant ideologies is a larger societal effect that is harder to measure, and it happens across years rather than the spontaneity of hypothetical violent gamers. As I said in the post I made yesterday, people often don't notice it until it's built too much momentum to be easily stopped.

However we have plenty of precedent for this happening in society and that it starts with small things like not calling people on their ideologies and the live and let live approach (the 'they came for the unionists but I wasn't one' aspect). It's popper's paradox of tolerance and it's been proven multiple times in different countries just in the last 100 years.

This is another example of a false equivalence - because I've described what could be called a slippery slope and many people would dismiss it on those grounds because other slippery slope arguments have been dismissed. But again, the context is key. We've actually got evidence in Germany, Italy, Cambodia, China, Korea, Argentina etc that this slippery slope actually happens.

Which is why it is important to examine the premise underlying the argument, rather than just looking at whether you can apply the same logic to both.

Ok, I have to say that I'm pretty uneasy with this line of thought. Like, you make the claim that the two scenarios are not the same (videogame violence vs. 40k authoritarianism) because one can't be measured, but then label the unmeasurable thing as being problematic. This strikes me as very "thought police-ish", and essentially rife with opportunity to become authoritarian because it enables actions to be taken without evidence.

There's also two immediate logical problems I see. The first is that this leaves open the possibility that violent video games actually can lead to more violence . . . except in some way that's not measurable. The second is that there ought to be some way to measure whether 40k players are somehow more authoritarian. Like, the data should be there if your claims are true. It might be hard to measure, sure, but still theoretically measureable.

And on authoritarianism, I just don't think it's something you cam stamp out by simply not looking at it. Everyone should learn about it from history, for starters. And if the subject is taught properly the lesson should include the contexts for it's rise in popularity during those historical events, to demonstrate it's seductivity. I'm gonna suggest that any rise in the popularity of authoritarianism is not going to be because it shows up in a fictional universe, but instead it's really just going to be a reaction to the environment. People being economically stressed, looking for reasons why they feel angry/afraid/etc, and somebody comes along with a scapegoat and a method of "correction" that just happens to involve an increase in persecution and consolidations of power.

A fictional setting or symbol or expression isn't going to be the underlying cause of authoritarianism, but rather might find itself an unwitting banner for authoritarians who, if said symbol wasn't there, would just find some other banner instead.

Imo it's probably healthier for society to have these fictional examples of authoritarianism floating about so that it can be engaged with and critiqued in a safe environment. It creates a non-high stakes environment where the bad ideas can be expressed, exposed, and countered. Most people will "get it", and some inevitably wont, but I don't think you can thought-police those types out of existence, and trying to do so probably just makes the problem worse.

Yeah I really doubt anyone became a neo-nazi because 40k, but I can see many neo-nazies being attracted to 40k.

 Leopold Helveine wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
An analagous question to the 40k "purge the daemon with extreme prejudice" scenario is "How dangerous does a virus need to be for you to support forced vaccinations?" Which is not a simple discussion.

I'm probably walking on eggshells in a power armor here but that discussion would be very simple; no real or imaginary danger will ever warrant state force of any kind and suggesting otherwise equates fascism.

I can respect that sentiment, but the scary part is that ultimately it's somwhat out of the individuals hands what collectives would decide.
The point isn't whether on not something is fascist. The point is more dangerously "under what conditions do people begin to choose authoritarianism." Which I think is often a society-level response to what's percieved as a civilizational trolly problem, real or imagined.

That's why "othering" is so important to such movements. The "other" is the occupants on the track of the trolley problem that the train will run over.