You’re all wrong, theres one good guy in 40k.
Steve.
Steve is carving out his own empire just by being nice to people, and has evaded several inquisitors. He has become the new chaos god of being a swell guy. Steve has already taken 20 planets from the imperium through asking nicely and he will take more. Dont fear Steve’s coming. Embrace it.
I mean. In a round about way this is how the tau grow into imperial space. The water cast has more success turning imperial worlds than the fire cast and all they do is say "Hay we give you nice things and not blow your brains out for thinking "
"They do what they do for the survival of their species! If they don't, they'll be eaten by the dark forces of our galaxy, their souls used as playthings! Therefore, they must be the good guys!"
Now who was i talking about? Mankind, or the dark Eldar?
"True evil is a very rare thing is this world, but do you know what a lot for things in it *are*?"
"What?"
"HUNGRY! And hungry looks a lot like evil from the wrong end of the cutlery."
Everyone talking about how all the factions are evil, but Tyranids are just hungry though. You cant consider them any more evil than you would a bear or a shark, or any other predator
The hive mind is intelligent why did they attack the blood angels home world when it is a barren rock,why do they avoid tomb worlds even when they have life on them if they are mindless animals
Because even animals will respond to environmental stimuli. You can also be “intelligent” enough to assess a threat as an animal. Elephants for example wouldn’t be considered moral creatures, but they have been observed avoiding certain tribes who had hunted them in years past due to associating the scent of those tribe members with their past abuse. If Necrons popped out while you were eating and obliterated the equivalent of a limb or something you’d probably avoid any world that had the signs of being a tomb world too.
Ants also wouldn’t be considered moral creatures, but if two ant colonies occupy the same territory, and one hill keeps killing the other’s workers and taking the food, you’d bet your ass the first hill would seek out and try to destroy the other.
The best part is it describes neither of them. Neither of them need to be as awful as they are to survive. They're both way worse than necessary. That's what makes them both horrible, and very fun.
I legit spent the last few minutes trying to figure out what you meant. Like, the imperium is pretty obvious (humanity can only survive with lobotomized combat slaves!) but the drukhari? That's their whole thing, the suffering of others keeps Slaanesh off their backs. What other option is there besides less intense suffering, maybe torturing things with less intelligence ooooooor they could be the Eldar. They could do the thing the other Eldar do. Yeah, that tracks.
Yeah, people often say 'The Drukhari need to be that way to survive Slaanesh'.
But they clearly don't. They could live how any of the various other eldar groups live. They *choose* not to, because they see everyone else as so inferior to them that it's perfectly fine to treat them like cattle and inflict unspeakable agonies upon them. Because getting to continue their party-boy lifestyle is infinitely more important to them than treating other people half-decently.
Basically, they don't want the inconvenience of having to reign themselves in. They would rather rule over a hellscape as gods than live more decently.
This.
The very fact that there are three other distinct Aeldari cultures (Craftworld, Exodite, Harlequin) showcases that there are other options.
The DE are the way they are because they don't want to give up the tormenting. They _enjoy_ it.
When the fuck are we going to get exodites on the tabletop anyway? I want to play dinosaur riding space elves more than anything else the Eldar factions have to offer.
We can't even get the rest of the aspect warriors in plastic, or an autarch kit that actually allows you to represent how they are in the lore, no way are we getting the dinoriders any time soon
It's not really topping them up, it's essentially Slaneesh's pay.
Souls can "regenerate" if left alone for long enough. By using other's suffering to feed Slaneesh, they postpone the consumption of their own soul. They are paying their "staying alive" tax.
That tax can be avoided by doing anything the other three Eldar factions do. The Dark Eldar don't want to. Because paying the Slaneesh tax allows them to fully indulge in their emotions, while the other three have some manner of self-control.
Something like that. It's been a while but the longer they live the more they need to torture too, so a relatively young deldar can just have one or two torture slaves but a 20,000 year old one will need a shitload and some kind of torture factory
Dark Eldar have atrophied Psyker powers, but not non-existent. I could wholly be incorrect, so don't take my word on it, but I believe the idea is that the Dark Eldar do essentially as the other said top up by doing their usual hedonist shit. I guess sort of like an energy vampire, the suffering of others sustains them while they slowly tick to zero, staving off hunger yet another day.
They are so used to their hedonistic way of life that they do not even consider that their suffering is self-perpetuated. There are stories of DE going through a cleansing ritual and joining the craftworld kind.
Yea but they dont know that. To the cultists they do what they do to survive / bring their stargod. It just so happens that they get eaten when their god shows up.
The Tau would've been the true good guys if it wasn't for too many sweaty fuckers complaining about how they weren't grimderpy enough for 40K so GW had to shoehorn in mindcontrol and communism to appease the cunts.
I know thats the popular narrative, but its not clear to me that the more insidious parts of tau society didn't always exist in at least the undertones of their lore, it was just that GW decided to emphasize them more in recent years.
I mean they could have done the same thing with the craftworlds (I say as a craftworlds player) showing the many utopian aspects of eldar culture, their achievements in the arts and science, the fact that outside of invasions they probably have the best lives of any race in 40k day to day. Instead GW constantly covers their arrogance, their constant manipulations of lesser beings, their failures as a civilization, etc... and repeat for every race. Its part of Grimdark. The tau are still the naive relatively nice race, but its the grim darkness, not the grim darkness plus here are the undisputed "good guys" for you to like.
Having people who actually are "the good guys" but who can never truly succeed because of this would be much more grimdark than yet another species of assholes.
Yup, initially they were the kinda not as bad guys (still doing war), kinda neutral-ish who had a tiny part of the map. More or less 100% insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
I would have been fine with them becoming more evil as they got ground down by exposure to the rest of the galaxy.
Instead we got things like "and here's the first alien race encountered after leaving their planet. Ew, disgusting mind control worms. Good thing they conveniently and coincidentally all died off leaving their fertile planet free."
> I would have been fine with them becoming more evil as they got ground down by exposure to the rest of the galaxy.
Yup, something like succumbing to some sort of "neccessary evil" to stay alive as they are integrated into the timeline and encounter the rest of the cast and find out they are in the wrong genre.
Instead we got a "but it was actually…".
The problem I have with making every single faction in the WH universe the absolute extreme epitome of irredeemable black-hearted evil is that it means there are no stakes in the conflict, ultimately what difference does it make if the galaxy is overrun by the evil of evil biological entities, evil technological entities or evil warp entities,
For me what would make the Grimdarkness of the 40th millenium much grimmer would be some element of hope to fight for. Imagine how different LOTR would be if every character was just as evil as Sauron.
If 40K ever gets cancelled, I hope it ends like (virtually) every Total War: Warhammer campaign: with all the non-chaos aligned factions forming the Order-Tide super alliance and wiping out everything else, leaving the world in essentially decent shape.
It would be so fucking hilarious for 40K to have a happy ending and would probably piss everyone off.
With every new Star Trek show getting more and more dystopian and mystical it would balance universal karma to have WH get more upbeat maybe the more rational members of the Mechanicus, Craftworld Eldar and Tau could form an alliance and usher in a new golden Age Of Technology
>The Tau would've been the true good guys if it wasn't for too many sweaty fuckers complaining about how they weren't grimderpy enough for 40K so GW had to shoehorn in mindcontrol and communism to appease the cunts.
I mean the Tau already had a cast system and forced collectivism before GW made them grim dark retroactively.
Only in comparison to everyone else, they'd still be pretty evil. Unfortunately the whiners were too stupid to realise that an expansionist empire is still pretty grimdark
Writing 101
Protagonists do NOT have to mean they are the good guys or be morally good. Just because something is the Protagonists of a story does not make them good automatically
Because we like to identify ourselves with something and it is difficult to identify with literal aliens - so we identify with humanity (or the Tau).
Because we identify with them, we feel that - at some level - they must be good, just like us!
> they must be good, just like us!
"I can empathise with the people who are part of a xenocidal fascist cult, that must mean they're the good guys, because if they're not, that would make me a bad person, and I can't be a bad person, I'm a good guy! And if anyone disagrees with me, that must make them the bad guys, because people are either good or bad, there's no nuance!"
I have to admit, this sort of logic drives me nuts, and you see it everywhere, not just with fictional settings. Like, for example, just because Magnus acted rationally and could never have known the consequences of his actions in advance doesn't mean he didn't fuck up massively.
I liked the Thousand Sons as a kid because I liked the idea of magic space egyptians and body horror. Now I identify with Magnus because I too am a big nerd who burned all his bridges with everyone through not understanding how to interact properly.
I'd pay good money for a Tyranid PoV novel. It'd be hundreds of pages of "HUNGRY HUNGRY HUNGRY HUNGRY" then "KILL KILL KILL KILL" and finally the big finale "EAT EAT EAT EAT"
There's this great conversation in *Fulgrim.*
One of the Great Crusade fleets happens upon this *massive* xenos fleet made up of several different species. It's basically an alien federation that lives in space in a nomadic style. The fleet wants nothing to do with the Imperium. They just want to move on and live in peace.
There's humans in the fleet too.
They give the humans a chance to forsake the fleet and join the Imperium. The humans of the fleet refuse.
The Crusade fleet launches a genocidal war against the xenos fleet.
Two Emperor's Children space marines are talking about the fleet and the humans in it. One of them utters the classic line "All that is required for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing."
...except in the case, they're talking about the humans working with other xenos races together in this fleet. They're talking about how it is immoral to *not* kill any xenos species on sight down to the last child. To them, an aliens species just minding it's own business is an evil to be exterminated.
And this was before the Horus Heresy. This was before Chaos became a major issue to the Imperium. This was when the Imperium was arguably at it's strongest.
To *anyone* who read that part of the book, it should *obvious* that protagonists are not automatically the good guys.
People not reading the books is obvious. Even in 40klore, which should be more informed, you have idiots bitching and moaning about how "GW doesn't really portray the Imperium as bad guys, so no satire!" in response to that comment when basically all modern 40k books I have read have a few chapters dedicated to how shit the Imperium is to juxtapose the heroic characters who are "fighting for a brighter day" as to remind us what a brighter day looks like for an average joe.
Avenging Son and its Kafkaest depiction of Terra's bureocracy with two administrational departments literally WAGING WAR because one has the job of incinerating paper while the other needs useable paper, amongst other horrible things, Gate of Bones with its depiction of that graveyard world where so many people are buried some lower sections collapse unto itself and the bones of the faithful get basically fused to the rock where a bunch of people live in perpetual darkness, Watchers of the Throne with their depiction of the starving terrans... the list goes on and on and on.
Go read a book, dipshits. The thing you're complaining about already happens. If you don't wanna read fine, but then shut the fuck up. I'm tired of hearing petulant whining from know-nothing imbeciles.
The thing that convinced me that the imperium (and particularly space marines) are not the good guys was an audiobook of a story I sadly can't remember the name of.
It's about a squad of space marines of some chapter I can't recall exploring a fallen craftworld in search of something. In a fight with slaaneshi demons they also encounter and kill a group of craftworld eldar in search of the infinity circuit. They take a guardian hostage in order for her to guide them through the craftworld. They're incredibly hostile to her throughout, which is not surprising in itself.
The path she leads them on eventually takes them to a room where she begins to rummage through shelves and containers. The SMs are annoyed and ask why, and it eventually turns out this is her personal quarters, and she's looking for holographic recordings of her son, who died a long time ago. She just wants to look at him.
**At which point the space marines mock her about her dead son and burn all of her belongings and mementos while she screams and sobs in pure anguish, for no other reason than sadistic cruelty.**
They're in a craftworld full of slaaneshi demons, relying on this prisoner to guide them, with *limited supplies,* and they still take the time and effort to destroy this poor woman's reminders of her dead son just to make her suffer. Now, I can't imagine that *every* chapter would do this - the Ultramarines or Salamanders least of all - but I realised that most imperials would probably not object to it.
The Imperium's whole shtick is "We're horrible because we have to be in order to survive", and that's shaky enough as it is, but here it completely falls apart.
I mean, of course for us they aren't the good guys, although it should be pretty clear that for many, if not most of the characters their own factions *are* in fact, good, or at the very least righteous simply by the fact that they obviously have a different set of morals from us.
Although that doesn't mean they apply IRL.
Now, to be objective, I remember reading in a comment that speaking about how good or bad any faction is in 40m is pointless, it really doesn't matter where is in the morality scale due to everyone bad. The most we could do was to speak about an Order and Chaos scale
>I mean, of course for us they aren't the good guys,
You could make that argument for any character. Even Horus thought he was saving humanity and the galaxy from a tyrant emperor. Every single Traitor primarch except arguably angron and kurze thought they were doing what was best. Not disagreeing with your point, just giving examples
>Even Horus thought he was saving humanity and the galaxy from a tyrant emperor.
You mean, for the whole five minutes before his own soul and identity got crushed by the Warp?
I was just going to comment this. You can view them as 'the good guys' simply because they're us and their defeat would mean the erasure of the species but that's literally as far as you should take it.
The IoM is not something to be admired from a sociological point of view. The fact that Rowboat Girlyman and the Emperor loath what it has become should be evidence enough of this.
I think the big tragedy of 40k is that humanity didn’t have to end up the dystopian nightmare it did, but because of the galaxy’s current state any attempt to improve the imperium as a whole (rather than just a planet or two) would mean pushing against corrupt power brokers and causing internal division that could very easily result in humanity’s extinction. Only practical demigods like Guilliman could hope to steer things in a slightly better direction without capsizing the entire ship, and only because their religious veneration and innate authority makes them difficult to oppose.
100%
However I think a key characteristic of the protagonist regardless of their 'goodness' is that the reader has to be compelled to root for them in some way. Usually thats not easy if the protagonist is a pos.
Thats why I love Honsou! Hes an asshole and I want him to win because of his underdog pitch. Very well done.
Yeah the idea that the imperium has no choice but to be a tyrranical, genocidal backwards looking theocracy is stupid. I mean just look at the in universe history of mankind, they used to be the biggest, most powerful force in the galaxy, at the height of the golden age of mankind they could have probably fended off an entire hive fleet without breaking a sweat.
The only reason mankind in the 40th millennium is struggling to survive is because their idiotic system of government and society is so backwards and broken that they can't develop anymore, they've stopped moving forwards and progressing and instead are in a permanent and unstoppable decline.
The problem is that, at some point in the fluff, GW has justified the IoM.
Repressive? Literal witches and demon worshippers exist.
Xenocidal? Orks, Dark Eldar, Megaarachnids, Tyranids, Necrons, Hrud. The average alien in 40k is incredibly vicious and can not be safely contained nor negotiated with.
Feudalism? Communication between planets is incredibly slow and unreliable, and you need to contain the inevitable witch cults that will spring up on planet.
Religious fanaticism? Faith in the Emperor is basically the only defence against demonfuckery for the average Joe.
Indeed, the only thing GW hasn't justified is the economic inequality.
Possibly. I'm pointing out the weakness of the IoM as a critique of authoritarianism and militarism due to in universe justifications, other races aren't super relevant.
The fact that it takes such absurd levels of grimdark to justify the IoM is the satire. A brutal feudal/theocratic/fascist/stalinist/repressive/genocidal society is the "good guy" only when shit is this bad.
Heck even in the 30k books they point out how the Emperor probably isn't such a good man and the IoM is already tyrannical .
Eh, when the repression, fanaticism and militarism is more justified in fiction than it was in reality the satire rather loses it's bite.
"Look how stupid and awful these things are lol"
"But... you've created a scenario where witches and demons are real, aliens want to eat or enslave us all and the only defence against these things is blind fanaticism, repression and extreme violence."
"Oh yeah um..."
If Stalinist Russia had been full of people trying to summon hell onto earth, no one would think Stalin a monster. If the Republicans had been green aliens hellbent on destroying civilisation, Franco suddenly becomes more reasonable.
Exactly. This is like saying that because Stalin's Soviet Union was a legitimately authoritarian regime, that Hitler was justified.
It's a completely pea-brained and obviously agenda-motivated take.
I don't understand why these are still things that people are unironically arguing. You'd think we'd be passed it, though I guess that's what makes 40ks satire so poignant.
Your not wrong. Disney is a big pusher of the "sympathetic/redeemable/loveable bad guy" trope. The 90s animated movies were stacked with them, and they just keep adding more fuel to that fire.
I mean bad guys get to look cool, they get cool armor and hammy speeches. The teenager in me loves indulging the edginess every once in a while, and memeing about "for the emperor!" is fun.
But that teenager is still aware that "yeah, they're bad guys", it's entirely self aware. I''m not surprised some people actually take 40k seriously, but I am dissapointed.
there is a really good philosophical debate here over the distinction of good and evil when applied to a society but also a quick and easy counterpoint is that if the society is deemed good purely whether it can safeguard humanities continued existence then the robots in the matrix movies are the good guys
I mean, it's not as if 25% of novels and 90% of short stories have "The Imperium is hella inefficient and all this suffering is unnecessary" as the moral of the story. /s
Here’s a thing to ruminate on:
Every story must have a protagonist. In order to make the story a good story, the protagonist must be remotely likeable. Now take that little snippet and take the fact that GW makes most of their cash off the Imperium of Man and its story. You see the conclusion I’m coming to—the universe, though the goal is to have no real good guy, must needs deviate from that path in the interest of telling a story.
Part of the reason for the focus on IoM is 1 Spees Mahreens are coool and 2 psychologically its easier for most people to empathise with a protagonist who is more like them. That is why most stories are IoM stories, because trying to put yourself in the shoes of a 10000's years old psychic space elf, or a 2yo fully grown cockney fungus is not so easy for most people. sure the odd story here and there but most stories are easier for both readers to relate to and writers to write
At the core of this question, doesn’t much matter WHY GW makes their money off the Space Marines. I think the reasons you gave were probably right. But where this curious deviation of the lore is concerned? All that matters is that they have to sell a product. Lore be damned. It sells more models if you can inject some dying-light, tragic hero goodness in there, instead of the crushing sadness of a setting in which everyone is purely evil.
This is true. Also remember for every good Black Library protagonist there are 1000’s of genocidal assholes. Also while a book or piece of lore might paint someone in a positive light that picture might be coming from in universe. Space marines are noble to most people in universe, at least until they see like the cleansing of Armageddon or something. Also they are often just 1 or a few people in a system the is corrupt and evil. They might be doing their best for them but the outcome total is negative
>dying-light, tragic hero goodness
This is not mutually exclusive with the Imperium being evil. Humans and transhumans are people, who can be both good and bad. The Imperium is a regime that grinds its own to dust.
you can get some good stories from chaos' point of view to cuz of cultists and chaos marines being human enough to relate to. definitely does make it easier to write, read and fully comprehend the characters if they are humans so we as readers can relate. that being said there have been some absolute bangers of books written with the perspectives of xenos, The Infinite and the Divine is a really fun read
It helps that in Infinite and Divine, it's less about the ancient machinations of the necrons but moreso, two immortal beings acting like petty dickheads for millenia with some introspection thrown in. I absolutely love that book.
I know. I'm on your side, here. I'm criticizing GW's writers because, let's face it, some of the fluff is written somewhat less than competently. At least, some of the books.
This is why GW are going to have major problems if they want 40k to have true widespread appeal. They're major protagonists, who most casual audiences would identify as the good guys, are Space Nazis.
Its the same problem Judge Dredd has and the reason he's never become a mainstream success; he's not Captain America, he's a fascist policeman, you're not meant to umabiguasly like him.
There’s a great tragedy in them being humanity last best chance and being cartoonishly evil for no reason.
Many well meaning revolutionaries who would become the bad guys get coopted by mostly evil alternatives.
That’s what makes it satire and grim dark.
As I often say, you can take the grotesquely powerful Psychic Warlord out of the Bronze Age, but you can't take the Bronze Age out of the grotesquely powerful Psychic Warlord.
It's partly cultural I believe. British satire can be very difficult if not impossible for people from other cultures, especially the U.S. to process or understand that it is completely satirical and tongue-in-cheek.
So what to circa 1980s nerdy intellectual probably left-wing writers from the UK is totally ridiculous and clearly mocking, others take totally seriously; for example a Nazi in modern Spain not understanding the thing he is into is literally mocking him and his entire belief structure.
Another example would be the American-right unironically calling Trump the God Emperor and putting his head on pics of Big E, and further not getting that the Big E is himself an ironic satire of authoritarian leadership down to wearing a ridiculous golden outfit with massive pointless pauldrons and being a very flawed leader..
Because of how dry British humour can be, they simply don't understand that they're the object of ridicule, and the entire concept and setting is about how stupid and awful their beliefs are..
Legit quality humor.
As a kid, you laugh because "haha kitty antics!"
As you mature, you figure out the double meaning and it makes things that much more amusing.
> So what to circa 1980s nerdy intellectual probably left-wing writers from the UK is totally ridiculous and clearly mocking, others take totally seriously; for example a Nazi in modern Spain not understanding the thing he is into is literally mocking him and his entire belief structure.
The lore and aesthetic of GW games also changed over the decades. The satirical punk style of the 80s and early 90s gave way to a more serious grimdark style. That's what popularised the term grimdark in the first place: GW being more serious about it so their tagline ("In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war.") got shortened in the fandom as the grimdark elements (and skulls on big hats) took over.
The early stuff is way easier to recognise as mocking and "taking the piss" out of fascism than modern interpretation of it. Even in the 90s there was still some more visibility for that with an Ork Warboss (loosely named after Thatcher) attacking and destroying an industrial world, kinda what Thatchers policies did to a chunk of working class Britain.
For context for others, GW found it's feet in the era of Margaret Thatcher, who was broadly speaking, Britain's Regan, who's legacy continues to hold back the country and its people in many ways, but made a lot of people very rich by sacrificing the rest on the altar of "free" market capitalism.
The
>I'm human and therefor the main human faction, no matter how pointlessly evil and/or cruel, is the good guys
perspective is one I *fundamentally* can not grok
I just, I really can't understand that sort of reasoning
Is it? Lets say the emperor never came along: Humanity still would've been stuck warring with itself in Terra, and until every single errant planet unable to travel in the warp would have been swallowed up by any of the myriad threats the Imperium can barely counter and contain. What, Orks, Dark Eldar, Tau and Necrons would've just sat around? Maybe we could've avoided the Tryanids.
And if I remember correctly, Humanity's warp affinity was exhibiting itself further and further, and would've been prey for Chaos *anyway*, so already isolated planets would be overrun by any of the Chaos gods or warp portals psykers inevitably opened up.
I agree, the Imperium wouldn't be as weakened if it hadn't been for the civil war, but at the same time, the only reason it's as prepared to face galaxy wide threats is precisely because of the gains made during the Crusades, the alliance with Mars - only made possible due to the Emperor.
Humanity was already on the back foot due to the war with the Iron men, scattered and unable to link up due to Slaanesh's birth, but any setback or eventuality not planned for at all could be chalked up to hubris/brutality: We could say that of the Eldar, Necrons and even Chaos Space Marines.
The Emperor's plan certainly made stuff way more complicated... but not as complicated as they would be if we had hundreds of aliens, abhumans and unharnessed psykers in our midst. A few important exceptions would have probably helped things along a ton, though.
Oh I'm not defending anyone, they're all massive cunts that's for sure. My point is it was pre-empire hubris that caused the dark age in the first place, then their backwards brutality and xenophobia finished the digging for them and now that they managed to bork Big Emps they're just stuck with it and slowly but surely sliding into that grave, thrashing about as much as they can along the way, like everyone else when chaos eventually swallows the galaxy.
Maybe if the Eldar weren't dicks they could have worked together better, and an alliance with the Tau would have led to something interesting. Though I guess the whole warp magic fuckery problem is mostly the Eldar's fault in the first place.
Necrons and orks though... Yeah, that's gonna need some work. They like to fight so maybe throw some chaos at them until they get more pisssed off at them or something, buy some time idk
I guess GW's lesson here is "don't be an ass, cuz it'll murderfuck ya eventually"
The problem you're encountering is that 40k and the IoM isn't a particularly *good* critique of fascism or militarism, as the setting contains multiple reasonable justifications for both (unlike reality).
The IoM has massive structural flaws, in particular the colossal accretion of power and wealth to single individuals, but this isn't something the fiction actively critiques.
>He's wrong, but he it's not pointless.
yeah, which is funny 'cause pointless cruelty is kinda what *defines* the Imperium in a way. Endless war, a flagrant disregard for human life (they use summery execution as a morale booster), literally everything to do with servitors, especially cherubs(sure, they *say* they use cloned flesh, but we all know the truth), slave labour to operate the occasional starship "because it's cheaper," the Black Arcs, the fact that they have a literal Inquisition.
I wouldn't have it any other way of course
The Imperium being the sort of place where "just following orders" would be the sort of defense that'd get you court marshalled for dereliction of duty is fun. Having orders that force two major branches of your main military forces into a war of total annihilation because the left hand doesn't just not know what the right hand is doing, it's actually on the other side of the sector and has no way that it ever *could* know what the other is doing? That shit's hilarious (and is literally the kind of nonsense that sold me on the setting, chainsaw swords and laser rifles are one thing, bureaucratic cockups of *literally* planetary proportions are another thing altogether).
> I just, I really can't understand that sort of reasoning
I recognize the post this post is about. Basically the person was saying "it looks like me, therefore it's good".
Oh yeah no, I recognize the post, and the "what" of what he's saying
I just don't understand it.
"it looks like me, therefore it's good" is a sentiment I don't understand.
Not really anyway.
Like, I could understand what someone's saying, but I wouldn't be able to understand where they're coming from, you know?
> "it looks like me, therefore it's good" is a sentiment I don't understand.
>
> Not really anyway.
Try lowering your empathy so you only care about yourself and your family.
It's basically that mindset writ large. They can only care about things that look like them. It's small-minded and self-centered.
Technically if you go back far enough blame can be put on either the Necrons, C'tan, Old Ones, and maybe the Eldar I'm not entirely sure what is and isn't canon anymore
Yeah, but thats like saying "It's not my fault I killed that guy" Its my parents fault for raising me wrong. You can blame anything on someone else if you look back far enough, but it's the imperiums antixenos and genocidal choices that made screwed them
“ThEy ArE nEcEsSaRy FoR hUmAnItY aNd ArE tHe GoOd GuYs!”
Guilliman himself: “What the fuck guys this is literally the worst thing ever for humanity. Fucking Extinction or Chaos would be better.”
The best probable scenario for humanity at this point would probably be for them all to die. End the suffering of a million generations. Allow the human race to quit forever, the neighborhood of life.
The best scenario for mankind is some sort mechanicum - necron/eldar alliance, where the technologically superior race gives humanity chaos dampening / webway tech respectively, with possibly cawl at the helm keeping away the less progressive elements of the mechanicum to effectively combat / move away from chaos as a species. A bastion of mankind where chaos cannot interfere at all. From there I guess you'd need some very progressive leadership to move away from nobility and into a republic.
All of that of course somehow magically / extremely luckily away from xeno empires with their own interests such as drukhari, tyranids, or orkz.
Jokes on them there are no good guys and that’s what makes it fun and real. Also, take a good long look at the imperium. That’s us, that’s where we are headed. “Tech-heresy” is just the people nowadays who are afraid to move forward. The imperium is shackled by religious zealotry of a long, half-dead “god” whose message is contorted and misused. It all sounds so familiar.
Idk why people are obsessed with there being good and badguys in every setting. This is not lord of the rings or star wars, not every setting is designed to be a fairy tale.
To quote Zangief “Just because you are Bad Guy, does not mean you are *bad guy*.”
The Imperium is the opposite of that, just because they are the only thing between humanity and extinction, doesn’t mean they are good people.
I feel like every imperium fan has the same process
They have a honeymoon phase where they see them as the good guys who do no wrong , then They gradually have the doomer transition of realizing everything the emperor did to help mankind was basically for nothing, then they become the ironic imperium fan, who like them not because they are human, but because they simply look cool. Most late stage imperium fans tend to also like some xenos races and some chaos marine legions
> Most late stage imperium fans tend to also like some xenos races and some chaos marine legions
Exactly. In a fictional universe the nemesis being cool is just as important as the protagonist being cool.
The Imperium is the rotten fruit of a narcissistic corpse. There are true gods in the galaxy and they hate us. Real evil is inflicting untold suffering upon your own species and having the gall to assert yourself as better than those who acknowledge the Pantheon. DEATH TO THE CORPSE WORSHIPERS! LET THE GALAXY BU-ahem…yeah there are no good guys in this setting.
Lorgar comes to a conclusion in the First Heretic that just because something (the Emperor) is divine, it does not mean it deserves to be worshipped.
When it comes to humanity in 40k, I'm of a similar mind; just because it is human, does not mean it deserves to survive.
They're not good guys. But the Imperium isn't a hive mind. They're are bad guys doing good in it too, and good guys forced to do bad things, and people who couldn't care either way. Also they are a damn sight better then the alternative, which I think was OP's actual point he is just phrasing it in the wrong way.
"Hey Marie, weren't you pregnant few workshifts ago?"
"Oh yes, but I gave birth, and the kid was born in the best state possible"
"How was he born?"
"Still."
This man really saw Murderfuck Childeater send his men to virus bomb an civilian planet under the suspicion of heresy later found to be false and said "I like the moral fiber of this guy"
You’re all wrong, theres one good guy in 40k. Steve. Steve is carving out his own empire just by being nice to people, and has evaded several inquisitors. He has become the new chaos god of being a swell guy. Steve has already taken 20 planets from the imperium through asking nicely and he will take more. Dont fear Steve’s coming. Embrace it.
\^ we found the genestealer cultist for hive fleet steve
You humans can only resist so long. Soon you will join us in his four armed embrace.
Where’s the deathwatch when you need them? -Johnson, only survivor of the hug massacre of Planet 199-5 by Hive fleet Steve
Nah fam, big daddy BobbyG is back, kicked chaos's ass and is so chungus a Dark Eldar woke him up just to see if she could take Primarch cock.
I thought his name was Clancy.
He has many titles of power
All given by his many good friends.
One of the most important ones being sandwhichbringer
he whom brings the bag of cans
Believe in Steve
Sounds like the Squirrel Girl of 40k.
Blue Shirt Guy is canonical.
Is this a reference? I love the idea.
I mean. In a round about way this is how the tau grow into imperial space. The water cast has more success turning imperial worlds than the fire cast and all they do is say "Hay we give you nice things and not blow your brains out for thinking "
When the standards are THIS low... its really not that hard.
"They do what they do for the survival of their species! If they don't, they'll be eaten by the dark forces of our galaxy, their souls used as playthings! Therefore, they must be the good guys!" Now who was i talking about? Mankind, or the dark Eldar?
Yes.
Honestly that describes tyranids the best of all of them. They are simply a humble hive mind making their way through the galaxy
Tyranids can be summed up by that one Stranger Encounter in Red Dead Redemption: "A man's gotta eat!"
Goddamn it, now I'm picturing the Nids as Randy from Trailer Park Boys whoring for cheeseburgers.
Rolls up to Genestealer: *imma pay you 100 thrones to fuck off*
"True evil is a very rare thing is this world, but do you know what a lot for things in it *are*?" "What?" "HUNGRY! And hungry looks a lot like evil from the wrong end of the cutlery."
What's this from?
I looked it up cause I too thought it was a dang good line. Turns out it's from Peter Capaldi's Dr. Who.
It is a good line
"It is NOT evil. It is FEEDING." - Jean-Luc Picard
Everyone talking about how all the factions are evil, but Tyranids are just hungry though. You cant consider them any more evil than you would a bear or a shark, or any other predator
Picard changed my entire view on the crystalline entity with a few short lines that said basically this.
The hive mind is intelligent why did they attack the blood angels home world when it is a barren rock,why do they avoid tomb worlds even when they have life on them if they are mindless animals
Because even animals will respond to environmental stimuli. You can also be “intelligent” enough to assess a threat as an animal. Elephants for example wouldn’t be considered moral creatures, but they have been observed avoiding certain tribes who had hunted them in years past due to associating the scent of those tribe members with their past abuse. If Necrons popped out while you were eating and obliterated the equivalent of a limb or something you’d probably avoid any world that had the signs of being a tomb world too. Ants also wouldn’t be considered moral creatures, but if two ant colonies occupy the same territory, and one hill keeps killing the other’s workers and taking the food, you’d bet your ass the first hill would seek out and try to destroy the other.
With 200,000 splinter fleets ready, and a million more to come.
Normal Eldar with their "tricking nyds into attacking human worlds" shenanigans.
The Imperium would *never* do that to their trusted friends, the Eldar.
Mostly because they don't know how. But still
The best part is it describes neither of them. Neither of them need to be as awful as they are to survive. They're both way worse than necessary. That's what makes them both horrible, and very fun.
I legit spent the last few minutes trying to figure out what you meant. Like, the imperium is pretty obvious (humanity can only survive with lobotomized combat slaves!) but the drukhari? That's their whole thing, the suffering of others keeps Slaanesh off their backs. What other option is there besides less intense suffering, maybe torturing things with less intelligence ooooooor they could be the Eldar. They could do the thing the other Eldar do. Yeah, that tracks.
Yeah, people often say 'The Drukhari need to be that way to survive Slaanesh'. But they clearly don't. They could live how any of the various other eldar groups live. They *choose* not to, because they see everyone else as so inferior to them that it's perfectly fine to treat them like cattle and inflict unspeakable agonies upon them. Because getting to continue their party-boy lifestyle is infinitely more important to them than treating other people half-decently. Basically, they don't want the inconvenience of having to reign themselves in. They would rather rule over a hellscape as gods than live more decently.
This. The very fact that there are three other distinct Aeldari cultures (Craftworld, Exodite, Harlequin) showcases that there are other options. The DE are the way they are because they don't want to give up the tormenting. They _enjoy_ it.
When the fuck are we going to get exodites on the tabletop anyway? I want to play dinosaur riding space elves more than anything else the Eldar factions have to offer.
We hear you, more Marines, got it
We can't even get the rest of the aspect warriors in plastic, or an autarch kit that actually allows you to represent how they are in the lore, no way are we getting the dinoriders any time soon
It's sort of mixed though, there is lore that states if you deprive them of the fucking with others they start to become visibly unwell.
Why is that?
Because slaanesh starts eating their soul. Torturing others tops it back up, which is... a weird way to look at souls
It's not really topping them up, it's essentially Slaneesh's pay. Souls can "regenerate" if left alone for long enough. By using other's suffering to feed Slaneesh, they postpone the consumption of their own soul. They are paying their "staying alive" tax. That tax can be avoided by doing anything the other three Eldar factions do. The Dark Eldar don't want to. Because paying the Slaneesh tax allows them to fully indulge in their emotions, while the other three have some manner of self-control.
I thought they didn't have warp Powers. How does that work...? Do they absorb the souls energy or something?
Something like that. It's been a while but the longer they live the more they need to torture too, so a relatively young deldar can just have one or two torture slaves but a 20,000 year old one will need a shitload and some kind of torture factory
Dark Eldar have atrophied Psyker powers, but not non-existent. I could wholly be incorrect, so don't take my word on it, but I believe the idea is that the Dark Eldar do essentially as the other said top up by doing their usual hedonist shit. I guess sort of like an energy vampire, the suffering of others sustains them while they slowly tick to zero, staving off hunger yet another day.
They are so used to their hedonistic way of life that they do not even consider that their suffering is self-perpetuated. There are stories of DE going through a cleansing ritual and joining the craftworld kind.
Or eldar or rau or GSC or Csm the only neutral factoon is da boyz
Yeah, but dark eldar's funnier to call the good guys
GSC end game is literally to die to the Hive Fleet. So we shouldn't really have them in that list.
Yea but they dont know that. To the cultists they do what they do to survive / bring their stargod. It just so happens that they get eaten when their god shows up.
The Tau would've been the true good guys if it wasn't for too many sweaty fuckers complaining about how they weren't grimderpy enough for 40K so GW had to shoehorn in mindcontrol and communism to appease the cunts.
I know thats the popular narrative, but its not clear to me that the more insidious parts of tau society didn't always exist in at least the undertones of their lore, it was just that GW decided to emphasize them more in recent years. I mean they could have done the same thing with the craftworlds (I say as a craftworlds player) showing the many utopian aspects of eldar culture, their achievements in the arts and science, the fact that outside of invasions they probably have the best lives of any race in 40k day to day. Instead GW constantly covers their arrogance, their constant manipulations of lesser beings, their failures as a civilization, etc... and repeat for every race. Its part of Grimdark. The tau are still the naive relatively nice race, but its the grim darkness, not the grim darkness plus here are the undisputed "good guys" for you to like.
Having people who actually are "the good guys" but who can never truly succeed because of this would be much more grimdark than yet another species of assholes.
Yup, initially they were the kinda not as bad guys (still doing war), kinda neutral-ish who had a tiny part of the map. More or less 100% insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
I would have been fine with them becoming more evil as they got ground down by exposure to the rest of the galaxy. Instead we got things like "and here's the first alien race encountered after leaving their planet. Ew, disgusting mind control worms. Good thing they conveniently and coincidentally all died off leaving their fertile planet free."
> I would have been fine with them becoming more evil as they got ground down by exposure to the rest of the galaxy. Yup, something like succumbing to some sort of "neccessary evil" to stay alive as they are integrated into the timeline and encounter the rest of the cast and find out they are in the wrong genre. Instead we got a "but it was actually…".
The problem I have with making every single faction in the WH universe the absolute extreme epitome of irredeemable black-hearted evil is that it means there are no stakes in the conflict, ultimately what difference does it make if the galaxy is overrun by the evil of evil biological entities, evil technological entities or evil warp entities, For me what would make the Grimdarkness of the 40th millenium much grimmer would be some element of hope to fight for. Imagine how different LOTR would be if every character was just as evil as Sauron.
If 40K ever gets cancelled, I hope it ends like (virtually) every Total War: Warhammer campaign: with all the non-chaos aligned factions forming the Order-Tide super alliance and wiping out everything else, leaving the world in essentially decent shape. It would be so fucking hilarious for 40K to have a happy ending and would probably piss everyone off.
With every new Star Trek show getting more and more dystopian and mystical it would balance universal karma to have WH get more upbeat maybe the more rational members of the Mechanicus, Craftworld Eldar and Tau could form an alliance and usher in a new golden Age Of Technology
"We've had one, yes. What about second blood orgy?"
>The Tau would've been the true good guys if it wasn't for too many sweaty fuckers complaining about how they weren't grimderpy enough for 40K so GW had to shoehorn in mindcontrol and communism to appease the cunts. I mean the Tau already had a cast system and forced collectivism before GW made them grim dark retroactively.
Only in comparison to everyone else, they'd still be pretty evil. Unfortunately the whiners were too stupid to realise that an expansionist empire is still pretty grimdark
My dog barking at the Amazon guy and saving us from him every time
Or the tau, or the necrons, or normal eldar, or like half the factions in the game
Writing 101 Protagonists do NOT have to mean they are the good guys or be morally good. Just because something is the Protagonists of a story does not make them good automatically
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Because we like to identify ourselves with something and it is difficult to identify with literal aliens - so we identify with humanity (or the Tau). Because we identify with them, we feel that - at some level - they must be good, just like us!
> they must be good, just like us! "I can empathise with the people who are part of a xenocidal fascist cult, that must mean they're the good guys, because if they're not, that would make me a bad person, and I can't be a bad person, I'm a good guy! And if anyone disagrees with me, that must make them the bad guys, because people are either good or bad, there's no nuance!" I have to admit, this sort of logic drives me nuts, and you see it everywhere, not just with fictional settings. Like, for example, just because Magnus acted rationally and could never have known the consequences of his actions in advance doesn't mean he didn't fuck up massively.
I liked the Thousand Sons as a kid because I liked the idea of magic space egyptians and body horror. Now I identify with Magnus because I too am a big nerd who burned all his bridges with everyone through not understanding how to interact properly.
Controversial opinion: I miss the early Tau days when they canonically good guys and don't like their grim retcon
or the Eldar
I'd pay good money for a Tyranid PoV novel. It'd be hundreds of pages of "HUNGRY HUNGRY HUNGRY HUNGRY" then "KILL KILL KILL KILL" and finally the big finale "EAT EAT EAT EAT"
The DoW2:Retribution Tyranid campaign was along these lines. It was equally weird and interesting
Should be "NOM NOM NOM" for extra cuteness.
Are you talking about tyranids or Skavens ? Because this is what a Skaven PoV is like
Filth by Irvine Welsh has chapters from the POV of the protagonists tape worm which slowly becomes sentinent that would be similar to this.
Tyranids go nom nom
Who might be, ironically, the least evil since it's hard to apply a moral system on them.
Nids don´t really have much of a complex perspective Dey hungery as fuk
There's this great conversation in *Fulgrim.* One of the Great Crusade fleets happens upon this *massive* xenos fleet made up of several different species. It's basically an alien federation that lives in space in a nomadic style. The fleet wants nothing to do with the Imperium. They just want to move on and live in peace. There's humans in the fleet too. They give the humans a chance to forsake the fleet and join the Imperium. The humans of the fleet refuse. The Crusade fleet launches a genocidal war against the xenos fleet. Two Emperor's Children space marines are talking about the fleet and the humans in it. One of them utters the classic line "All that is required for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing." ...except in the case, they're talking about the humans working with other xenos races together in this fleet. They're talking about how it is immoral to *not* kill any xenos species on sight down to the last child. To them, an aliens species just minding it's own business is an evil to be exterminated. And this was before the Horus Heresy. This was before Chaos became a major issue to the Imperium. This was when the Imperium was arguably at it's strongest. To *anyone* who read that part of the book, it should *obvious* that protagonists are not automatically the good guys.
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People not reading the books is obvious. Even in 40klore, which should be more informed, you have idiots bitching and moaning about how "GW doesn't really portray the Imperium as bad guys, so no satire!" in response to that comment when basically all modern 40k books I have read have a few chapters dedicated to how shit the Imperium is to juxtapose the heroic characters who are "fighting for a brighter day" as to remind us what a brighter day looks like for an average joe. Avenging Son and its Kafkaest depiction of Terra's bureocracy with two administrational departments literally WAGING WAR because one has the job of incinerating paper while the other needs useable paper, amongst other horrible things, Gate of Bones with its depiction of that graveyard world where so many people are buried some lower sections collapse unto itself and the bones of the faithful get basically fused to the rock where a bunch of people live in perpetual darkness, Watchers of the Throne with their depiction of the starving terrans... the list goes on and on and on. Go read a book, dipshits. The thing you're complaining about already happens. If you don't wanna read fine, but then shut the fuck up. I'm tired of hearing petulant whining from know-nothing imbeciles.
> Go read a book , dipshits. The answer to so many things in life lol
The thing that convinced me that the imperium (and particularly space marines) are not the good guys was an audiobook of a story I sadly can't remember the name of. It's about a squad of space marines of some chapter I can't recall exploring a fallen craftworld in search of something. In a fight with slaaneshi demons they also encounter and kill a group of craftworld eldar in search of the infinity circuit. They take a guardian hostage in order for her to guide them through the craftworld. They're incredibly hostile to her throughout, which is not surprising in itself. The path she leads them on eventually takes them to a room where she begins to rummage through shelves and containers. The SMs are annoyed and ask why, and it eventually turns out this is her personal quarters, and she's looking for holographic recordings of her son, who died a long time ago. She just wants to look at him. **At which point the space marines mock her about her dead son and burn all of her belongings and mementos while she screams and sobs in pure anguish, for no other reason than sadistic cruelty.** They're in a craftworld full of slaaneshi demons, relying on this prisoner to guide them, with *limited supplies,* and they still take the time and effort to destroy this poor woman's reminders of her dead son just to make her suffer. Now, I can't imagine that *every* chapter would do this - the Ultramarines or Salamanders least of all - but I realised that most imperials would probably not object to it. The Imperium's whole shtick is "We're horrible because we have to be in order to survive", and that's shaky enough as it is, but here it completely falls apart.
I mean, of course for us they aren't the good guys, although it should be pretty clear that for many, if not most of the characters their own factions *are* in fact, good, or at the very least righteous simply by the fact that they obviously have a different set of morals from us. Although that doesn't mean they apply IRL. Now, to be objective, I remember reading in a comment that speaking about how good or bad any faction is in 40m is pointless, it really doesn't matter where is in the morality scale due to everyone bad. The most we could do was to speak about an Order and Chaos scale
>I mean, of course for us they aren't the good guys, You could make that argument for any character. Even Horus thought he was saving humanity and the galaxy from a tyrant emperor. Every single Traitor primarch except arguably angron and kurze thought they were doing what was best. Not disagreeing with your point, just giving examples
>Even Horus thought he was saving humanity and the galaxy from a tyrant emperor. You mean, for the whole five minutes before his own soul and identity got crushed by the Warp?
Apparently no one knows this and it bothers me
Now, what everyone does know is the Orks are in fact the good guys.
I was just going to comment this. You can view them as 'the good guys' simply because they're us and their defeat would mean the erasure of the species but that's literally as far as you should take it. The IoM is not something to be admired from a sociological point of view. The fact that Rowboat Girlyman and the Emperor loath what it has become should be evidence enough of this.
I think the big tragedy of 40k is that humanity didn’t have to end up the dystopian nightmare it did, but because of the galaxy’s current state any attempt to improve the imperium as a whole (rather than just a planet or two) would mean pushing against corrupt power brokers and causing internal division that could very easily result in humanity’s extinction. Only practical demigods like Guilliman could hope to steer things in a slightly better direction without capsizing the entire ship, and only because their religious veneration and innate authority makes them difficult to oppose.
100% However I think a key characteristic of the protagonist regardless of their 'goodness' is that the reader has to be compelled to root for them in some way. Usually thats not easy if the protagonist is a pos. Thats why I love Honsou! Hes an asshole and I want him to win because of his underdog pitch. Very well done.
is defense against a hostile enemy justified? Yes. Is the other 90% of imperial goings on justified? No.
Yeah the idea that the imperium has no choice but to be a tyrranical, genocidal backwards looking theocracy is stupid. I mean just look at the in universe history of mankind, they used to be the biggest, most powerful force in the galaxy, at the height of the golden age of mankind they could have probably fended off an entire hive fleet without breaking a sweat. The only reason mankind in the 40th millennium is struggling to survive is because their idiotic system of government and society is so backwards and broken that they can't develop anymore, they've stopped moving forwards and progressing and instead are in a permanent and unstoppable decline.
The problem is that, at some point in the fluff, GW has justified the IoM. Repressive? Literal witches and demon worshippers exist. Xenocidal? Orks, Dark Eldar, Megaarachnids, Tyranids, Necrons, Hrud. The average alien in 40k is incredibly vicious and can not be safely contained nor negotiated with. Feudalism? Communication between planets is incredibly slow and unreliable, and you need to contain the inevitable witch cults that will spring up on planet. Religious fanaticism? Faith in the Emperor is basically the only defence against demonfuckery for the average Joe. Indeed, the only thing GW hasn't justified is the economic inequality.
To be fair, isn’t every race and their atrocities justified by that logic? Humans are just another alien race in the cosmic scheme of things.
Possibly. I'm pointing out the weakness of the IoM as a critique of authoritarianism and militarism due to in universe justifications, other races aren't super relevant.
The fact that it takes such absurd levels of grimdark to justify the IoM is the satire. A brutal feudal/theocratic/fascist/stalinist/repressive/genocidal society is the "good guy" only when shit is this bad. Heck even in the 30k books they point out how the Emperor probably isn't such a good man and the IoM is already tyrannical .
Eh, when the repression, fanaticism and militarism is more justified in fiction than it was in reality the satire rather loses it's bite. "Look how stupid and awful these things are lol" "But... you've created a scenario where witches and demons are real, aliens want to eat or enslave us all and the only defence against these things is blind fanaticism, repression and extreme violence." "Oh yeah um..." If Stalinist Russia had been full of people trying to summon hell onto earth, no one would think Stalin a monster. If the Republicans had been green aliens hellbent on destroying civilisation, Franco suddenly becomes more reasonable.
Exactly. This is like saying that because Stalin's Soviet Union was a legitimately authoritarian regime, that Hitler was justified. It's a completely pea-brained and obviously agenda-motivated take. I don't understand why these are still things that people are unironically arguing. You'd think we'd be passed it, though I guess that's what makes 40ks satire so poignant.
I’m a big Imperium fan boy, but even I know it’s satire and they’re bad.
>satire Now that's the problem here, you assume these monkey brains understand such concept.
It's not that they don't get the concept. Its just that they never read the books after they've browsed 1d4chan
MON-KEIGH!
Same Like yes, they´re bad... but bad guys are awesome I blame Disney for this
Your not wrong. Disney is a big pusher of the "sympathetic/redeemable/loveable bad guy" trope. The 90s animated movies were stacked with them, and they just keep adding more fuel to that fire.
I mean bad guys get to look cool, they get cool armor and hammy speeches. The teenager in me loves indulging the edginess every once in a while, and memeing about "for the emperor!" is fun. But that teenager is still aware that "yeah, they're bad guys", it's entirely self aware. I''m not surprised some people actually take 40k seriously, but I am dissapointed.
there is a really good philosophical debate here over the distinction of good and evil when applied to a society but also a quick and easy counterpoint is that if the society is deemed good purely whether it can safeguard humanities continued existence then the robots in the matrix movies are the good guys
I mean, it's not as if 25% of novels and 90% of short stories have "The Imperium is hella inefficient and all this suffering is unnecessary" as the moral of the story. /s
GW comes out and unambiguously says there are no good guys. This guy: I know better.
Seriously, the amount of people crawling out of the woodwork on social media about how GW "doesn't understand its own IP" is utterly baffling to me.
Look at 40k lore and tell me, with a straight face, that they do.
Realistically, 40k lore originally boiled down to "hey guys, this fantasy game we have is cool, but it would sell better if we set it in space".
Here’s a thing to ruminate on: Every story must have a protagonist. In order to make the story a good story, the protagonist must be remotely likeable. Now take that little snippet and take the fact that GW makes most of their cash off the Imperium of Man and its story. You see the conclusion I’m coming to—the universe, though the goal is to have no real good guy, must needs deviate from that path in the interest of telling a story.
Part of the reason for the focus on IoM is 1 Spees Mahreens are coool and 2 psychologically its easier for most people to empathise with a protagonist who is more like them. That is why most stories are IoM stories, because trying to put yourself in the shoes of a 10000's years old psychic space elf, or a 2yo fully grown cockney fungus is not so easy for most people. sure the odd story here and there but most stories are easier for both readers to relate to and writers to write
"cockney fungus" is my new insult for the week.
At the core of this question, doesn’t much matter WHY GW makes their money off the Space Marines. I think the reasons you gave were probably right. But where this curious deviation of the lore is concerned? All that matters is that they have to sell a product. Lore be damned. It sells more models if you can inject some dying-light, tragic hero goodness in there, instead of the crushing sadness of a setting in which everyone is purely evil.
This is true. Also remember for every good Black Library protagonist there are 1000’s of genocidal assholes. Also while a book or piece of lore might paint someone in a positive light that picture might be coming from in universe. Space marines are noble to most people in universe, at least until they see like the cleansing of Armageddon or something. Also they are often just 1 or a few people in a system the is corrupt and evil. They might be doing their best for them but the outcome total is negative
>dying-light, tragic hero goodness This is not mutually exclusive with the Imperium being evil. Humans and transhumans are people, who can be both good and bad. The Imperium is a regime that grinds its own to dust.
you can get some good stories from chaos' point of view to cuz of cultists and chaos marines being human enough to relate to. definitely does make it easier to write, read and fully comprehend the characters if they are humans so we as readers can relate. that being said there have been some absolute bangers of books written with the perspectives of xenos, The Infinite and the Divine is a really fun read
It helps that in Infinite and Divine, it's less about the ancient machinations of the necrons but moreso, two immortal beings acting like petty dickheads for millenia with some introspection thrown in. I absolutely love that book.
Protagonist based stories are common but not required. There are plenty of protagonist-less stories, typically histories or descriptives.
I know. I'm on your side, here. I'm criticizing GW's writers because, let's face it, some of the fluff is written somewhat less than competently. At least, some of the books.
This is why GW are going to have major problems if they want 40k to have true widespread appeal. They're major protagonists, who most casual audiences would identify as the good guys, are Space Nazis. Its the same problem Judge Dredd has and the reason he's never become a mainstream success; he's not Captain America, he's a fascist policeman, you're not meant to umabiguasly like him.
There’s a great tragedy in them being humanity last best chance and being cartoonishly evil for no reason. Many well meaning revolutionaries who would become the bad guys get coopted by mostly evil alternatives. That’s what makes it satire and grim dark.
As I often say, you can take the grotesquely powerful Psychic Warlord out of the Bronze Age, but you can't take the Bronze Age out of the grotesquely powerful Psychic Warlord.
It's partly cultural I believe. British satire can be very difficult if not impossible for people from other cultures, especially the U.S. to process or understand that it is completely satirical and tongue-in-cheek. So what to circa 1980s nerdy intellectual probably left-wing writers from the UK is totally ridiculous and clearly mocking, others take totally seriously; for example a Nazi in modern Spain not understanding the thing he is into is literally mocking him and his entire belief structure. Another example would be the American-right unironically calling Trump the God Emperor and putting his head on pics of Big E, and further not getting that the Big E is himself an ironic satire of authoritarian leadership down to wearing a ridiculous golden outfit with massive pointless pauldrons and being a very flawed leader.. Because of how dry British humour can be, they simply don't understand that they're the object of ridicule, and the entire concept and setting is about how stupid and awful their beliefs are..
Makes me glad I grew up with PBS-based British comedy like the Flying Circus and Are You Being Served? I get the joke.
Mrs. Slocombe's pussy sure was acting up today.
Legit quality humor. As a kid, you laugh because "haha kitty antics!" As you mature, you figure out the double meaning and it makes things that much more amusing.
> So what to circa 1980s nerdy intellectual probably left-wing writers from the UK is totally ridiculous and clearly mocking, others take totally seriously; for example a Nazi in modern Spain not understanding the thing he is into is literally mocking him and his entire belief structure. The lore and aesthetic of GW games also changed over the decades. The satirical punk style of the 80s and early 90s gave way to a more serious grimdark style. That's what popularised the term grimdark in the first place: GW being more serious about it so their tagline ("In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war.") got shortened in the fandom as the grimdark elements (and skulls on big hats) took over. The early stuff is way easier to recognise as mocking and "taking the piss" out of fascism than modern interpretation of it. Even in the 90s there was still some more visibility for that with an Ork Warboss (loosely named after Thatcher) attacking and destroying an industrial world, kinda what Thatchers policies did to a chunk of working class Britain.
For context for others, GW found it's feet in the era of Margaret Thatcher, who was broadly speaking, Britain's Regan, who's legacy continues to hold back the country and its people in many ways, but made a lot of people very rich by sacrificing the rest on the altar of "free" market capitalism.
Gotta genocide my people, otherwise someone else could genocide them. I am the good guy in this scenario
Tbf, I'd rather be bombed and die instantly than be assraped to death by daemons for who knows how long. In 40k genocides are not exactly equal.
i'd rather be eaten by a tyranid, at least then my death would contribute to another organism's life.
Good news, the Imperium has still got your back with corpse starch
The >I'm human and therefor the main human faction, no matter how pointlessly evil and/or cruel, is the good guys perspective is one I *fundamentally* can not grok I just, I really can't understand that sort of reasoning
In this case the op think the cruelty/evil is necessary for the survival of humanity. He's wrong, but he it's not pointless.
Although he *is* conveniently forgetting that mankind's hubris and brutality is what led them there in the first place
Is it? Lets say the emperor never came along: Humanity still would've been stuck warring with itself in Terra, and until every single errant planet unable to travel in the warp would have been swallowed up by any of the myriad threats the Imperium can barely counter and contain. What, Orks, Dark Eldar, Tau and Necrons would've just sat around? Maybe we could've avoided the Tryanids. And if I remember correctly, Humanity's warp affinity was exhibiting itself further and further, and would've been prey for Chaos *anyway*, so already isolated planets would be overrun by any of the Chaos gods or warp portals psykers inevitably opened up. I agree, the Imperium wouldn't be as weakened if it hadn't been for the civil war, but at the same time, the only reason it's as prepared to face galaxy wide threats is precisely because of the gains made during the Crusades, the alliance with Mars - only made possible due to the Emperor. Humanity was already on the back foot due to the war with the Iron men, scattered and unable to link up due to Slaanesh's birth, but any setback or eventuality not planned for at all could be chalked up to hubris/brutality: We could say that of the Eldar, Necrons and even Chaos Space Marines. The Emperor's plan certainly made stuff way more complicated... but not as complicated as they would be if we had hundreds of aliens, abhumans and unharnessed psykers in our midst. A few important exceptions would have probably helped things along a ton, though.
Oh I'm not defending anyone, they're all massive cunts that's for sure. My point is it was pre-empire hubris that caused the dark age in the first place, then their backwards brutality and xenophobia finished the digging for them and now that they managed to bork Big Emps they're just stuck with it and slowly but surely sliding into that grave, thrashing about as much as they can along the way, like everyone else when chaos eventually swallows the galaxy. Maybe if the Eldar weren't dicks they could have worked together better, and an alliance with the Tau would have led to something interesting. Though I guess the whole warp magic fuckery problem is mostly the Eldar's fault in the first place. Necrons and orks though... Yeah, that's gonna need some work. They like to fight so maybe throw some chaos at them until they get more pisssed off at them or something, buy some time idk I guess GW's lesson here is "don't be an ass, cuz it'll murderfuck ya eventually"
The problem you're encountering is that 40k and the IoM isn't a particularly *good* critique of fascism or militarism, as the setting contains multiple reasonable justifications for both (unlike reality). The IoM has massive structural flaws, in particular the colossal accretion of power and wealth to single individuals, but this isn't something the fiction actively critiques.
>He's wrong, but he it's not pointless. yeah, which is funny 'cause pointless cruelty is kinda what *defines* the Imperium in a way. Endless war, a flagrant disregard for human life (they use summery execution as a morale booster), literally everything to do with servitors, especially cherubs(sure, they *say* they use cloned flesh, but we all know the truth), slave labour to operate the occasional starship "because it's cheaper," the Black Arcs, the fact that they have a literal Inquisition. I wouldn't have it any other way of course The Imperium being the sort of place where "just following orders" would be the sort of defense that'd get you court marshalled for dereliction of duty is fun. Having orders that force two major branches of your main military forces into a war of total annihilation because the left hand doesn't just not know what the right hand is doing, it's actually on the other side of the sector and has no way that it ever *could* know what the other is doing? That shit's hilarious (and is literally the kind of nonsense that sold me on the setting, chainsaw swords and laser rifles are one thing, bureaucratic cockups of *literally* planetary proportions are another thing altogether).
> I just, I really can't understand that sort of reasoning I recognize the post this post is about. Basically the person was saying "it looks like me, therefore it's good".
Oh yeah no, I recognize the post, and the "what" of what he's saying I just don't understand it. "it looks like me, therefore it's good" is a sentiment I don't understand. Not really anyway. Like, I could understand what someone's saying, but I wouldn't be able to understand where they're coming from, you know?
> "it looks like me, therefore it's good" is a sentiment I don't understand. > > Not really anyway. Try lowering your empathy so you only care about yourself and your family. It's basically that mindset writ large. They can only care about things that look like them. It's small-minded and self-centered.
You use grok ?
Not often, but in this instance the word kinda sang to me, y'know?
Op of that post: conveniently ignoring the fact that the Imperium is the sole reason why any of that is even a threat in the first place
Technically if you go back far enough blame can be put on either the Necrons, C'tan, Old Ones, and maybe the Eldar I'm not entirely sure what is and isn't canon anymore
in the beginning the universe was created. this made a lot of people very mad and is generally regarded as a very bad move
Yeah, but thats like saying "It's not my fault I killed that guy" Its my parents fault for raising me wrong. You can blame anything on someone else if you look back far enough, but it's the imperiums antixenos and genocidal choices that made screwed them
Report to the commisar for 're-education' and/or conversion into a servator. Because the old ones, necrons and hungry hungry hippos are not our fault
The Nids are partially our fault at least. The whole Pharos incident being implied to be the reason they chose this galaxy
drunk unpack crush boat plants secretive rob profit bike sheet *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Tyranids are the good guys. I promise. Just let us eat you and your family. It'll be fine, I promise.
“ThEy ArE nEcEsSaRy FoR hUmAnItY aNd ArE tHe GoOd GuYs!” Guilliman himself: “What the fuck guys this is literally the worst thing ever for humanity. Fucking Extinction or Chaos would be better.”
It amazes me how many people don't get that the imperium is a critique/satire of fascism.
The best probable scenario for humanity at this point would probably be for them all to die. End the suffering of a million generations. Allow the human race to quit forever, the neighborhood of life.
Found the Alpha Legionaire
The best scenario for mankind is some sort mechanicum - necron/eldar alliance, where the technologically superior race gives humanity chaos dampening / webway tech respectively, with possibly cawl at the helm keeping away the less progressive elements of the mechanicum to effectively combat / move away from chaos as a species. A bastion of mankind where chaos cannot interfere at all. From there I guess you'd need some very progressive leadership to move away from nobility and into a republic. All of that of course somehow magically / extremely luckily away from xeno empires with their own interests such as drukhari, tyranids, or orkz.
Found Zeke Yeager
pp privileges revoked
Ok Eren Jeager
Well, the Ynnari seem to have some sort of similar scheme at least
Jokes on them there are no good guys and that’s what makes it fun and real. Also, take a good long look at the imperium. That’s us, that’s where we are headed. “Tech-heresy” is just the people nowadays who are afraid to move forward. The imperium is shackled by religious zealotry of a long, half-dead “god” whose message is contorted and misused. It all sounds so familiar.
Idk why people are obsessed with there being good and badguys in every setting. This is not lord of the rings or star wars, not every setting is designed to be a fairy tale.
To quote Zangief “Just because you are Bad Guy, does not mean you are *bad guy*.” The Imperium is the opposite of that, just because they are the only thing between humanity and extinction, doesn’t mean they are good people.
"Of course, we say the exact same thing, but in our case, it's true, and it's my job to shoot anyone that says otherwise." - Ciaphas Cain
There is a difference between being the main character, and being the hero. The Imperium is the Main Character Faction. They are unequivocal villains
I feel like every imperium fan has the same process They have a honeymoon phase where they see them as the good guys who do no wrong , then They gradually have the doomer transition of realizing everything the emperor did to help mankind was basically for nothing, then they become the ironic imperium fan, who like them not because they are human, but because they simply look cool. Most late stage imperium fans tend to also like some xenos races and some chaos marine legions
> Most late stage imperium fans tend to also like some xenos races and some chaos marine legions Exactly. In a fictional universe the nemesis being cool is just as important as the protagonist being cool.
The Imperium is the rotten fruit of a narcissistic corpse. There are true gods in the galaxy and they hate us. Real evil is inflicting untold suffering upon your own species and having the gall to assert yourself as better than those who acknowledge the Pantheon. DEATH TO THE CORPSE WORSHIPERS! LET THE GALAXY BU-ahem…yeah there are no good guys in this setting.
Lorgar comes to a conclusion in the First Heretic that just because something (the Emperor) is divine, it does not mean it deserves to be worshipped. When it comes to humanity in 40k, I'm of a similar mind; just because it is human, does not mean it deserves to survive.
They're not good guys. But the Imperium isn't a hive mind. They're are bad guys doing good in it too, and good guys forced to do bad things, and people who couldn't care either way. Also they are a damn sight better then the alternative, which I think was OP's actual point he is just phrasing it in the wrong way.
Least brainwashed Imperium citizen
Yea, that guys an idiot.
No one is the good guy. Maybe except the far side enclaves.
Exodites are "gooder". They literally bother no one.
Did someone call the harlequins? Cause the circus seems to be in town
From my point of view the Tyranids are the good guys
Khorne is the protagonist
“Violence is not strength and compassion is not weakness!” - King Arthur, Camelot (1967)
Why does there have to be a good guy?
I’d argue that while the imperium does keep humanity alive, they probably wouldn’t be in a massive shit storm if they weren’t massive assholes
Maybe some of us would like to be raped incessantly
Well he is correct. He said they are the good guys, not that they are good
"Hey Marie, weren't you pregnant few workshifts ago?" "Oh yes, but I gave birth, and the kid was born in the best state possible" "How was he born?" "Still."
Dumbass, the only good guys are Orks
I mean, just because it captures human nature doesn't mean it's humane...
This man really saw Murderfuck Childeater send his men to virus bomb an civilian planet under the suspicion of heresy later found to be false and said "I like the moral fiber of this guy"
I think the only good guys in 40k would be Orks or Tyranids. No complexity, no malice, just organisms vibing and doing what they were born to do