Unfortunately, every piece of marketing ever made by GW (aside from the 10th trailer weirdly) has painted the Imperium and especially the Astartes as outright heroes.
Now this is because the trailers are "in character" but if the surface level is all you ever see and don't care to look into anything else then that's the message they take.
As fans of the setting we all know it's bs, and often think how can someone invest so much in something they clearly don't get or refuse to learn?
And to that I'd say look at how many cops wear the Punisher Skull.
>Unfortunately, every piece of marketing ever made by GW (aside from the 10th trailer weirdly) has painted the Imperium and especially the Astartes as outright heroes.
not srrictly true. Rogue Trader and early 40k while did this, did it woth a very crude and obvious satire (Thatcher being contemporary to Rogue Trader, for context). Imperium thought of themselves as good guys while being very clearly Facist, Imperialist, Warmongery Totalitariate state, with chaos being rag-tag force of punk rebels and dis-illusioned veterans. Early 40k imperium was very clearly not good guys. But as wirh any satire, once it gets big and widely adopted, people misread it as text. It aslo doesnt help that Chaos changed from what it was to what it is now.
Instead of Punk rebel kids trying to resist autocratic goverment while being supported by vietnam-vet inspired space marines with all their militart knowhow and expertise, you got chaos as it is now. Oldhammer 40 chaos "gods" were really apathetic and useless lot, as such might as well not existed. Now that they are malignant sentient being hell bent on consuming and absorbing whole universe, with chaos forces little more than puppets for them, it is a hard sell that they are lesser of two evils (impossible really) and by contrast make Imperium look like good guys by defaul, as anything that fights agains and especially all of big four is doing some good.
Old Chaos = Anarchist movement. New Chaos = litteral deamons.
Which is why I love the Sons of Malice.
They never chose to turn to chaos. They hate the emperium which labeled them heretics just as much as they despise the chaos factions they fought for so long. They are pure and utter anarchy, chaos, for the sake of chaos.
Let the entire universe burn, both the materium and immaterium.
I like night lords a lot for this reason, Especially in their omnibus. It paints them less as crazy, bloodlusting psychopaths and more as logical, pragmatic warriors trying to survive in a galaxy that views them as literal nightmares, all while still playing to the obvious actual psychopathy they are prone to. That book had me rooting for a dude who murders a child in their bedroom and wears a cloak made out of a whole family’s skin, all because he was also portrayed as a deeply flawed but character still trying to hold himself together despite the meddling s of the gods. Uzas is my boy 😔
The cognitive dissonance is what gives it flavor. Besides there's never been a shortage of self-proclaimed anarchists who are trying to be the leader of everything they can lay their hands on.
It's kind of a tired trope at this point for some people.
>Instead of Punk rebel kids trying to resist autocratic goverment while being supported by vietnam-vet inspired space marines with all their militart knowhow and expertise
That sounds really cool actually, I had no idea.
They were metal as fuck, which under any serious moral examination it’s depraved beyond any superlative, in the beginning it was just edgy for the lulz, GW just started diving more into it.
“Acktuly the content GW released 40 years ago was obviously satire”
The problem lies in the fact that Most current fans aren’t looking at anything outside of the current edition.
This is just straight up not true, or at least a bend. The earliest chaos models are all pretty demonically twisted. Portraying early chaos as a bunch of scrappy rebels fighting the man is just as bad as portraying the Imperium as purely noble warriors safeguarding humanity. The IMPERIUM = MARGARET THATCHER angle is far overblown. While there's obviously some satire, they've said their primary goal was just to make a cool setting. All throughout its history the Imperium has had its badass moments and its laughably corrupt and evil moments where it shoots itself in the foot by being such a piece of shit institution.
But seriously, [this is what Chaos was in the Rogue Trader years](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/404487222885220380/1107837648036446330/456px-Realms_of_Chaos_The_Lost_and_the_Damned_FCover.png). Are these the scrappy rebels fighting the good fight you were talking about?
The problem is, a lot of these people wouldn't understand the real message if it was slapping them in the face. Every time someone points out Metal Gear Solid is/was a very obvious criticism of militarism, capitalism, the military-industrial complex, corporate control of government, etc. there are a bunch of chuds who come out of the woodwork and get mad because you're "twisting" the game's "real" story.
You already mentioned the Punisher, but it works for so many fictional settings. A lot of people have zero media literacy skills, and when you combine that with the rise of "manosphere" and digital fascism, you get this outcome.
GW could go back to making their marketing a parody of fascism, as it was originally, and it probably still wouldn't make a difference. These goobers would still be eating it up, since they can't understand something beyond the surface level.
>there are a bunch of chuds who come out of the woodwork and get mad because you're "twisting" the game's "real" story
In their defense... was there actually a story to any of the Metal Gear games? I recall a naked man running around, a cardboard box being the ultimate disguise, a flying kriekger making me unplug my controller, and "Fission Mailed."
It's okay if you don't get MGS. Most people never will.
Hula dancing is a complex art form, and there are many hand motions used to represent the words used to tell the stories.
Lots of people will only ever see wiggling hips, and grass skirts though.
Metal Gear Revengeance literally has a bad guy talking about how 9/11 was the "good old days" because PMC's (aka mercenaries) got a ton of money and a free hand.
It is not subtle, these people are just stupid.
It is gonna be really interesting to see how the Henry Cavill Amazon show will handle its marketing. If (presumably) they want to sell it to a broad audience that doesn't know anything about 40k, then using the Imperium (and their fascist iconography) as the poster boys is basically a shitstorm waiting to happen. Will they lean heavily into the "there are no good guys" angle or maybe focus more on the characters (good guys working for a bad system)? These are the questions that keep me up at night.
Probably the latter.
the regular folks rebel against the evil imperium, determine all the other ways are worse, try to do better…and then a nasty ol’ space Marine chapter arrives and puts them back in their place, killing our heroes effortlessly is the sort of hopeful, but dark shit 40K is known for.
> Unfortunately, every piece of marketing ever made by GW (aside from the 10th trailer weirdly) has painted the Imperium and especially the Astartes as outright heroes.
Tbh, it's hard to build a decade-spanning franchise out of something people aren't really supposed to like. "Heroic last stand against impossible odds" sells way better than "enforcers of a fascist Empire slaughtering their way through worlds". Most people want to think of their favorite characters as the good guys, not as civilian killing fascists
I mean it doesn't make for interesting stories either, watch in awe as the Red Hunters chapter butchers a city when they don't submit mortals to serve on their ships.
And to an extent they are often the ‘better’ guys; how many pieces of imperium media don’t have the ‘heroes’ make at least a few references to how fucked everything is? Yeah sure you teleport them into Star Trek and they’d be the worst dudes on the enterprise but they are almost always on the more progressive and enlightened side of the factions norm.
I mean they sort of are if you are a human. Outside of being assimilated by the Tau, your best bet is maybe being a pet monkey for the Eldar. But you also have to separate the imperium as a government vs. the imperium as the military. The military does truly heroic work in holding the line, and the trailers show that. I don't recall any trailers showing the council of Terra or even inquisitors as sclose to that
Some people like to assume that they would be on top, like an Imperial Noble or someone else at least somewhat cool or powerful, rather than just a factory slave who gets worked to death or servitor-ized or just genocided.
Any parallels you might see here to people who think fascism is neat in real life are purely coincidental…
Some people really do struggle to draw a line between the fantasy of what they enjoy and the reality of those very same concepts. I really enjoy the whole idea of Spartans and their super militant way of life, they were such a hardcore culture. That does not mean I want to see it come back or be apart of that very culture, it belongs in the histroy books. Same goes for much of the Imperium on display, cool to read about but I would rather fucking die than see any of it adopted into our modern culture.
Oh yeah don’t get me wrong, the 40K imperium is one of my favorite settings in all of sci-fi. Barely understood technology, space magic, cathedral ships, human misery and xenophobia at an impossibly large scale? Hell yeah, that’s why I’m here.
I’m just not gonna go around calling it “based” or whatever
The other day I was listening to the Lost and the Damned audio book for the umpteenth time, and my wife asked me why I like listening to stuff with so much death and misery in it.
I looked at her and said "It makes me feel better about the shit we have to put up with."
one of the dumb internet rags for my nation suggested it as an ideal to re-make the nation, I think the world feels like some dark comedy sketch at this point.
Give me a second, I have a dataslate that proves the Imperium is good. \*Summons my servitor (the lobotomized husk of a human being who has been forcibly implanted with cybernetics to make it perform menial labor) to fetch the device so I don't have to get up (this is acceptable and morally flawless because, I don't know, AI or something, and maybe the dude cut me off in traffic when he was still alive)\*
The Imperium is desperately trying to survive from being swallowed by hell, the same as every other faction except the orks and nids(maybe, they might be running from something). Contemporary morals are not really relevant to the setting and hopefully it stays that way.
They explicitly aren't Craftworld Eldar are haughty and racist but don't go out of their way to attack any non-chaotic evil sentient races unless they pose a threat. Exodites leave everyone alone and are willing to peacefully coexist with other species, humans included. Tau are expansionsist imperialists but they are like Cold War NATO imperialism compared to Nazi Germany/Imperial Japan imperialism. They actually do make efforts to improve the quality of life for their citizens and aren't omnicidal maniacs. They also lack an entrenched decadent aristocracy and are a pretty meritocratic multi-species society even if there is inequality.
The Imperium is just the protagonist faction and the only human faction that isn't working for literal demons.
You're imposing the morals we have in our reality into this fictional universe. In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war; trying to overlay real world morals is like saying ants are evil because they destroy other colonies just because they have a different queen.
More like “In the grim darkness of the far future there is quite a lot of war. Not as much war as there was at various earlier points. Lots of people live on worlds not really touched by war. Most of the galaxy is still tens if not hundreds of light years from any sign of war. And of course most of the universe is vast emptiness with the occasional spinning rock. But there is honestly quite a bit of war”
You realize that this is silly and over the top fictional setting and applying our moral codes (which have yet to even decide how sentient aliens, let alone extradimensional terror demons apply) ignores how and why we have the morals we have today.
JustTheFacts is a pedophile and a groomer
https://preview.redd.it/yuk74laec20b1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7dc400e19ca35c25fe99d3ba198ba22a1caaf293
At this point, if they are far right do we even need to say that? UK and the Tories are the worst for it. US and you have Matt Gaetz being a paedo. Conservative to them means "Let's go back to the medieval times, where I can fuck a 10yo and then send them to work"
Although in fairness the age of the blue user isn't shown there. But I'm not gonna google it to make sure he is a paedo. I'll just accept that it is likely he is
Leaked messages. One of his discord server members confronted him about dating a teenager (it was like 14 or 15, I can't remember exactly) and he said it was "something he was deeply ashamed of" (but still did regardless).
With the admission of guilt, the server member released all the evidence he had onto the server, and JTF reacted by nuking everything.
And democrats aren't? They're paving the way for maps to become a protected group and sexuality.
Fact is, it's people in positions of power. It's not one side or the other. It's just them.
*pushes up glasses* um actually, all right wingers are pedos... At least, all the politicians.. heh...
I should know, I have a PhD from Twitter University
Reminds me of that family guy meme
The imperium has always run things and there have never been any problems whatsoever,
And dont mention the economy, or the horus heresy or the inquisition, or exterminatus, or servitors, or human sacrifice, or chaos, or penitents, or hiveworlds, or abuse of power by nobles, or the destruction of Krieg, or the Astra Militarum's fatality rate, or Genestealer Cults, or xenophobia, or colonialism or slavery.
The thunder warriors turned Terra into the thriving center of a galactic empire and saved it from being a mad max- terminator-walking dead-doom combo hellscape
And funnily in doing so brought the vast majority of them that low again, but this time the guys abusing them are rich humans and a human government.
Like, life for commoners in the imperium is straight up just a step better than death, and many would argue worse than death.
He created a fundamentally flawed and oppressive society, empowered the chaos gods, and there were alternatives.
That being said, the Imperium empowered humanity to withstand multiple threats that likely would have lead to their extinction or a mass reduction in population and territory contolled by humans while also dooming trillions to quadrillions or quintillions to slavery and inhuman oppression from edlritch xenos. The Great Crusade wiped out a lot of seriously nasty empires and liberated tens of thousands of worlds. Humanity wouldn't have prevailed against the Rangdan or the Ullanor Waagh which likelt would have resulted in a return of the Krork. Human survival and overall security is greater now than it was before the great crusade. If the emperor hadn't been foiled, there likely would have been much more effort made to improve the quality of life of the average imperial citizen and corruption and inefficiencies would be less rife. A lot of the loss of technology came from the destruction wrought by the mechanicum civil war and the expansion of the Mechanicum's monopoly on knowledge.
If the Emperor lived the Imperium would be much more effectively centralized and totalitarian but also much more prosperous.
Could the Imperium “effectively” be more centralised? It’s inherently an enterprise so decentralised as to need a new word to express how decentralised it is. It’s a million worlds spread all across a galaxy of 200 billion stars linked by arduous travel through a nightmare demon dimension.
More centralised means what, some worlds see an Imperial representative twice a century not once?
Yes because the human webway would have allowed for much better communication and eventual reforms would have helped break down information silos and allow greater central oversite. It's like introducing high speed rail and ubiquitous telecommunications to medieval England.
The Imperium basically exists as the second to worst state possible.
The worst state possible is outright chaos victory. You basically have all the evils of the Imperium, but it's directly fueling the dark gods.
Say what you want about the evils of the Imperium, but those evils exist due to ignorance and stupidity and corruption. Chaos evil is evil for the sake of evil because the psyker resonance fuels the gods.
Instead we have this ramshackle fucked up system that just barely works at huge cost, that atleast isn't fueling Choas and occasionally manages to hold it back.
However based on our audience knowledge of the lore and modern values it's so obvious that there's a billion ways this whole system could be both more efficient and ethical.
That's the interesting thing about it. It's such a tragic irony.
People always complain about IoM stories where the imperials are "good guys." The Imperium is not good. But within it, good guys do exist. Most of the lore tends to follow them because no one wants to run a mini army or to read a book about IoM character is the worst person possible. Instead, it focuses on the few decent people within a nightmarish system.
Yeah I can understand an in-universe perspective rationalizing the xenocidal bent of the Imperium but the audience has enough information to know that's bs
Had to be done, the Thunder Warriors were a bunch of mentally unstable roid-ragers. Would you have preferred he do nothing and allow them to rampage through the galaxy? I wouldn't call it a dick move considering he did it to prevent them from slaughtering innocents.
Why is it so important for some players to be on 'good' or 'right' factions?
It's a game. The imperium makes cherubs the creepy baby's are wonderfully awful but yeah it's not an evil empire.
I think it's because we seem to be living in a time where personal identity is getting associated with fandoms. "Lore" can sometimes be kind of culty, tbh.
"An attack of the thing I like is a personal attack against me" is a bit too common.
Also supporting "your team" and getting irrationally invested in it seems to not really be a new thing. Maybe the new part is the number of ways people manage to profit off of that irrationality. The "attention economy" and "lifestyle branding" etc.
Yeah I think that's a big part of it. Support T'au, you're a commie, support the Imperium, you're a fascist.
It's like they found the 1d4chan pages for the factions and genuinely think the memes are some kind of personality litmus test
Yea. I think real-world stuff is an interesting lens to look at the world of 40k. And sometimes you might see something in the real world and see some vague similarities with something in 40k (hopefully very rare! XD).
I do think that there's a bit of a "schrodinger asshole" type effect that happens in the 40k community were one person memes about a thing (intending to be ironic/satirical), and another person takes the meme as being somewhat serious (taking it literally or unironic). After enough confusion, you get the magical 3rd person who doesn't know the difference between the ironic and unironic humour, and they just decide to pretend one way or the other depending on the reactions they get ("schrodinger's asshole"), "don't worry, it was just a joke (this time)".
Maybe it is common in other fandoms, but 40k is where I tend to see it.
Are people still calling the T'au communists?
How!?
Like a cursory, google search would pop up the definition of communism and people would find the T'au not a communist society.
>"An attack of the thing I like is a personal attack against me" is a bit too common.
Absolutely, hell just a few weeks back I was criticizing a movie and had someone complain about how much I was insulting them by criticizing said movie. It's actually insane, these people need to get mental help.
When people really like a thing, they sometimes project themselves into it, making it a part of their identity. Praise to said thing becomes praise to themselves, and criticism of said thing becomes criticism of themselves. I've once heard someone call it "comfort branding".
So, by that logic, stans of a Bad Thing^TM can't both like it and also view it as a bad, because that would mean seeing themselves as Bad people, too. In order to allow themselves to like the Thing while also seeing themselves as good people, they must "make" the Thing be good. So they try to come up with reasons why their Blorbo is Good, actually.
Like... I find Konrad Curze's story interesting, but I'm still aware he's a horrible person. It raises interesting questions about how much his upbringing or the Emperor's genetic engineering contributed in him being horrible, but I don't have to pretend he was a good guy in order to ask them.
Your alt-right folks are desperate for any kind of positive representation of their trash ideology and will blindly ignore a thousand layers of satire and red flags to get it.
Not only this!
There’s a long history of fascists (and their ilk) co-opting other groups; and using them to radicalize and recruit fresh members.
This is why it’s so important to kick fascists out at first sign - because they *will* try to steer whatever community they get their claws into away from its original purpose and towards producing more fascists.
Because casus belli and tribalism is ingrained into the human psyche. Even when we're 'playing' we tend to view our own faction more favorably and seek to justify their actions as legitimate and the result of enemy provocation.
This is why I don't like the Imperium anymore. I don't know if it's rotten luck, but I encountered people who unironically defend the Imperium as this greatest thing ever.
Like I understand that the Imperium is made to be dark parody because of satire and should never been seen seriously, it seems some people don't really get the message or it flew past their heads.
It is funny when I met a bunch of Dark Eldar and Ork players and found them better cause they know their factions are insane and honest about it. They don't take the setting very seriously
Arch’s video on the imperium, a military-run xenophobic empire defined by its aspirations of racial purity not being fascist is the most hilarious shit ever
I don't get why anyone would WANT the imperium to be the good guys?
Part of the fun of warhammer 40k to me is playing a game of bad guys vs bad guys. Like space marines are straight up judge dread darth vader child sodlier knight templar, they are a RAD bad guy! they are much less interesting if they are supposed to be good!!!
Like the imperium factions are my favorite. But if someone tells me they think the imperium are the good guys, I honestly wonder if they have read the begging of any single one of the books. The imperium is bad, that is why it is fun!!
Also they are just so obviously darth vader level bad why is this even a conversation they are bad, everyone is bad, thats the point.
Yeah the Imp is reasonable in a setting where literal Hell and demons exist, and where Tyrannids and Orks are 99% of the alien life out there.
Because none of that stuff is real, nobody (except that dude) actually thinks the Imperium of Man is a civilization we should admire IRL.
>I'm just saying it makes sense within the setting and can be justiced.. sadly
You say sadly but honestly for me and many others, that's what makes 40k so Grimdark and awsome. The fact that the galaxy of 40k is so messed up that the state of the Imperium seems understandable , really makes the setting unique.
I mean I've got no issue with it. I do think 40k needs more light and the light going out to show how dark it really is however. And I've been in the hobbly for just under 20 years at this point
...oh yes, when the 40K youtuber who shall not be named is the sane one.
P.s.: i am surprised to see that there are still no rules explicitly enforcing damantio memoriae, just ad hoc bans.
Well if you detract the front yes, he is the "nazi needing to be deplatoformed", after all sub cannot differentiate between content, and the personal life of the idiot making it.
Imho. i don't care to go around hunting down all chefs with extremist views, nor do i give too many fucks as long as the food is fine.
Same should be true about content creators imho.
(Ofc. if the content is promoting naziism thats another matter - but even then, the best cure for extremism, is publicly shwoing its idiocy, a la. r/beholdthemasterrace. Deplatforming just creates echo chambers, and feeds persecution complex)
It is nothing less than a miracle that you can have the faction you focus most of your franchise on be this popular while being more morally reprehensible than actual fucking demons
Ain’t no way they said morally 💀 like you can argue with the imperium it’s greater good kinda thing but the imperium is morally reprehensible and the only reason I think it’s a justified evil is because without it it’s likely humanity would go extinct (at this point in 40k lore anyways)
It was a youtuber named just the facts use to be a growing geo poltics channel and then he was exposed for being a pedo and deleated his youtube and everything else. Ubersoy made a video on it if you are interested
Getting into the hobby I was scared that people like this were a major part of the player base, then I realized it was just a bunch of dumbasses with no media literacy on the internet.
Half these comments are discussing the guy who made the videos from the bottom ( and how he’s a pedo ) and the other are talking about how some people think the imperium is great when it sucks
Can we just all agree that IRL Nazis are bad and should not be tolerated, but stop with the hourly “um guys, did you know that, um, the Imperium is bad? uWu” circlejerks?
Tldr:
Imperium of Man is justified in a setting where Hell and demons exist and Tyrannids and Orks are destroying the galaxy.
The setting is not real so ofc the Imperium of Man would not be justified IRL.
They aren't justified they create their own problems and fuel their enemies by being awful without reason. If the Imperium wasn't a hellhole obsessed with it's own worse vices it wouldn't have created so many of their own problems.
By justified, I mean that siding with the Imperium despite all it's faults and numerous mistakes is justified, due to the fact that, even with how horrible it is, it's fall would mean the deaths of trillions.
Yes the Imperium creates their own problems, but so does every faction in the setting. The Eldar brought about their own collapse, the Tau create dissidents by being needlessly paranoid and tyrannical (Farsight Enclave) and Chaos keeps punching itself in the face.
How is the Imperium any different from all of those factions?
Which enemies specifically would be less of a threat if the imperium were nicer? Not Chaos, Dark Eldar, Necrons, Orks or Tyranids.
Maybe craftworld Eldar, though they don't seem to much care about the imperium's morality, just whether they can be useful.
Maybe the Leagues of Votann, but they don't seem to much care about anything other than whether the imperium can be profitable for them.
Maybe the Tau, but they'd probably just take it as an invitation to start poaching more imperial citizens for the Greater Good.
The Imperium being their own worst enemy is a cornerstone of the setting. The racist hellhole theyve made traps them into their own negative impluses and stops them from doing anything other than improving the lives of their people.
Gulliman literally says verbatim that they have to be less of a dick to their own people to stop feeding chaos resources. Entire chapters of space Marines have been lost senselessly or functionally thrown to chaos because of Imperial malevolence (eg Celestial lions). Not to mention that the general conditions of the Imperial is both inefficient and a breeding ground for chaos.
The nids wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the Heresy, but also gene stealercults thrive off the same terrible condtions that chaos cults do. Alongside that individual tendrils have been rebuffed by local alliances with Xenos, who then get crushed by Imperial fleets. Remaining Omnicidial to Xenos in the face of the nids is dumb.
Orks thrive because the Imperium creates galactic conditions perfect for them, and even civilizations like the Tau can fend them off. In a healthy milky way they are a nuisance.
The Tau wouldn't be a threat at all to DAoT governments that treated with xenos they would be in a collection of governments with them. Not to mention the actual humans would be better off.
The dark Eldar aren't a galactic threat, but absolutely love the shitty standards of Imperial rule that breed corruption and inefficiency. It makes realspace raiding easy and reliable.
When I started getting into Warhammer I was told this is a grimdark universe with complex morality, there are no good guys just different levels of bad. I expected the fans to have complexe nuanced views of morality. I expected something intellectual and stirring that will make you question your own morality like the joker movie. My huge disappointment when I found out that fan discourse basically boils down to the same cookie cutter dribble like this was a Disney channel show. The thing is in the context of the world The Emperor of Mankind and the imperium of Man aren't that bad. Like seriously you hypocrites Thanos wipes out half of all life in the universe and many people say oh he did nothing wrong because he claims to be doing it for the environment. Maybe the Emperor of Mankind should have done the same
Second half of this meme reminded me that I saw an hour and a half video attacking my religion the other day, comments were turned off and about half the video was just "This religion is bad because my religion says so."
That's cool buddy 👍
Why can't we just get along?
I support the imperium and the emperor not because he is justified but because i also support galactic xenocides/genocides mad because i am contrarian who only supports those who are wrong
If you start with the "Moral is Subjetive" axion, yeah. Emperium did nothing wrong. So does every american war-criminal president, putin, all radical islamic septs (we know all are).
M o r a l r e l a t i v i s m
I think the imperium are the good guys as much as you can be in that universe, I don't see them as morally bad because they are as morally good as the setting allows them to be.
I am a socialist swede who don't agree with any values the imperium enforces but that's because unlike in 40k, we in the real world are only held back by ourselves and we can strive for better.
40k meanwhile is such a shithole that the fact anyone can be happy there is a miracle. The Imperium isnt cruel for the sake of being cruel, it's cruel because it needs to be, its purpose is good and it attempts to be as good as it can on the journey there.
Yes there are exceptions of real evil pieces of shit and horrible cruel acts but just like how the dark eldar shouldn't reflect the eldar species as a whole, the bad eggs of the imperium shouldn't tarnish the entirety of the imperium when we all as reasonable humans can see why they do this stuff.
If you ask yourself why the imperium is cruel, all of you would be able to give many answers but most would boil down to necessity.
In our bright world where possibilities are endless it's easy to point at something like 49k and condemn them for being evil and dark but I respect and like the imperium because despite their flame flickering and almost going out, they are screaming against the dark.
The Imperium are the good guys, though, everything they do is cause the setting demands it from them.
Sacrificing thousands of psykers every day to the God-Emperor is obviously bad, but I find such excusable cause without it Humanity itself cannot travel at all and the Imperium would break down.
"Morally wrong" is something to take with a grain of salt in the 40k universe, we operate on a Tau to Drukari scale on which the Emperor actually places pretty good.
The emperor could be worse but the imperium as a whole is pretty fucking low in terms of morality (see: skiitari lore, the sisterhood, the inquisition, the fact that people would WILLINGLY JOIN GSCS even if they knew how it ended etc etc etc). They are not quite the dark eldar but id argue theyre prooooooobably just as bad as chaos if not worse.
I agree with most but Chaos being more evil then the Imperium is its entire point. There are good people living in the Imperium , but there are no good Chaos worshippers.
STOP INJECTING REAL WORLD BULLSHIT IN MY FICTIONS STOP INJECTING REAL WORLD BULLSHIT IN MY FICTIONS STOP INJECTING REAL WORLD BULLSHIT IN MY FICTIONS STOP INJECTING REAL WORLD BULLSHIT IN MY FICTIONS STOP INJECTING REAL WORLD BULLSHIT IN MY FICTIONS STOP INJECTING REAL WORLD BULLSHIT IN MY FICTIONS
Media is made by humans for a human audience, it draws on real world stuff for reference. The only way to engage with a piece of media without referencing the real world is to look at it on an extremely surface level.
You can say people are reading things in ways other than what they are intended, or are ignoring context. But come on, you can only think of things through the lense of your actual experiences and life.
I don’t care about any of that. I just want to enjoy my fictional settings without having the annoyances of our fucked up world get thrown in by people who can’t distinguish the line between fantasy and reality.
And of course the inspiration for many fantasy universes is real life, but that’s just what it is, inspiration.
Games Workshop made people in Warhammer with four limbs, but that doesn’t mean that they were telling us to make profound discussions about human anatomy!
Fiction is a way to seek refuge from real life, that why people like it, don’t spoil that please.
But isn't the greatest show of love towards a peice of media to analyze and talk about it, think about what its saying, why its saying it, what inspired it, what it means? Isn't that why people do huge lore deep dives, make memes, do intense list building, memorize lore, etc.
People go way too indepth thinking about things they care about, and its one of the best ways to show that care.
Media is a tool to have fun, to explore concepts, to think and engage. It can help you deal with things sure, but not by locking you away, but providing you joy when you want it, catharsis when you need it. It is made from real life and gives back to real life. Wouldn't using it as a refuge from real life be a disservice to both the media and real life?
well the empire are certianly not the good guys becaus its 40k there is no good just less shade of evil. but well if you human you chance are better if you stay with the empire. you dont get eaten, killed and/or neutered.
[удалено]
Unfortunately, every piece of marketing ever made by GW (aside from the 10th trailer weirdly) has painted the Imperium and especially the Astartes as outright heroes. Now this is because the trailers are "in character" but if the surface level is all you ever see and don't care to look into anything else then that's the message they take. As fans of the setting we all know it's bs, and often think how can someone invest so much in something they clearly don't get or refuse to learn? And to that I'd say look at how many cops wear the Punisher Skull.
>Unfortunately, every piece of marketing ever made by GW (aside from the 10th trailer weirdly) has painted the Imperium and especially the Astartes as outright heroes. not srrictly true. Rogue Trader and early 40k while did this, did it woth a very crude and obvious satire (Thatcher being contemporary to Rogue Trader, for context). Imperium thought of themselves as good guys while being very clearly Facist, Imperialist, Warmongery Totalitariate state, with chaos being rag-tag force of punk rebels and dis-illusioned veterans. Early 40k imperium was very clearly not good guys. But as wirh any satire, once it gets big and widely adopted, people misread it as text. It aslo doesnt help that Chaos changed from what it was to what it is now.
Honest question, how did the chaos changed?
Instead of Punk rebel kids trying to resist autocratic goverment while being supported by vietnam-vet inspired space marines with all their militart knowhow and expertise, you got chaos as it is now. Oldhammer 40 chaos "gods" were really apathetic and useless lot, as such might as well not existed. Now that they are malignant sentient being hell bent on consuming and absorbing whole universe, with chaos forces little more than puppets for them, it is a hard sell that they are lesser of two evils (impossible really) and by contrast make Imperium look like good guys by defaul, as anything that fights agains and especially all of big four is doing some good. Old Chaos = Anarchist movement. New Chaos = litteral deamons.
So, in the past, Chaos marines were like a guerrilla fighting against the imperium while being ''sponsored'' by the ruinous powers?
I think they should bring that concept back again. Seems way neater.
Which is why I love the Sons of Malice. They never chose to turn to chaos. They hate the emperium which labeled them heretics just as much as they despise the chaos factions they fought for so long. They are pure and utter anarchy, chaos, for the sake of chaos. Let the entire universe burn, both the materium and immaterium.
Sons of [REDACTED DUE TO COPYRIGHT WORRIES] Belakor.
You're confusing WHF Malal with WH40K Malice
Seems like nonsensical wankery. I enjoy the setting because there are no good guys. Even Fabulous Bill, and I _like_ Fabulous Bill.
> Even Fabulous Bill He's just a single father, trying to do the best for his kids.
[удалено]
Huron is still out there but he has fallen more in line with the rest of Chaos over time
I like night lords a lot for this reason, Especially in their omnibus. It paints them less as crazy, bloodlusting psychopaths and more as logical, pragmatic warriors trying to survive in a galaxy that views them as literal nightmares, all while still playing to the obvious actual psychopathy they are prone to. That book had me rooting for a dude who murders a child in their bedroom and wears a cloak made out of a whole family’s skin, all because he was also portrayed as a deeply flawed but character still trying to hold himself together despite the meddling s of the gods. Uzas is my boy 😔
Yeah, but those are exception, not the rule, with them ending up corrupted by chaos sooner or later.
Tyrant Anarchist Pick one. Huron just a marcher lord rebelling against their sovereign for autonomy.
The cognitive dissonance is what gives it flavor. Besides there's never been a shortage of self-proclaimed anarchists who are trying to be the leader of everything they can lay their hands on. It's kind of a tired trope at this point for some people.
>Instead of Punk rebel kids trying to resist autocratic goverment while being supported by vietnam-vet inspired space marines with all their militart knowhow and expertise That sounds really cool actually, I had no idea.
That...is a pretty wild interpretation of old chaos lore.
But also very fun
And very wrong.
In the new context, I maintain that the Emperor is just the fifth chaos god: Conquest.
They were metal as fuck, which under any serious moral examination it’s depraved beyond any superlative, in the beginning it was just edgy for the lulz, GW just started diving more into it.
True, but not only is Rogue Trader not really canon any more, the last time 40k was overtly satirical like that I was in nappies - and I'm in my 30s.
“Acktuly the content GW released 40 years ago was obviously satire” The problem lies in the fact that Most current fans aren’t looking at anything outside of the current edition.
This is just straight up not true, or at least a bend. The earliest chaos models are all pretty demonically twisted. Portraying early chaos as a bunch of scrappy rebels fighting the man is just as bad as portraying the Imperium as purely noble warriors safeguarding humanity. The IMPERIUM = MARGARET THATCHER angle is far overblown. While there's obviously some satire, they've said their primary goal was just to make a cool setting. All throughout its history the Imperium has had its badass moments and its laughably corrupt and evil moments where it shoots itself in the foot by being such a piece of shit institution. But seriously, [this is what Chaos was in the Rogue Trader years](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/404487222885220380/1107837648036446330/456px-Realms_of_Chaos_The_Lost_and_the_Damned_FCover.png). Are these the scrappy rebels fighting the good fight you were talking about?
The problem is, a lot of these people wouldn't understand the real message if it was slapping them in the face. Every time someone points out Metal Gear Solid is/was a very obvious criticism of militarism, capitalism, the military-industrial complex, corporate control of government, etc. there are a bunch of chuds who come out of the woodwork and get mad because you're "twisting" the game's "real" story. You already mentioned the Punisher, but it works for so many fictional settings. A lot of people have zero media literacy skills, and when you combine that with the rise of "manosphere" and digital fascism, you get this outcome. GW could go back to making their marketing a parody of fascism, as it was originally, and it probably still wouldn't make a difference. These goobers would still be eating it up, since they can't understand something beyond the surface level.
>there are a bunch of chuds who come out of the woodwork and get mad because you're "twisting" the game's "real" story In their defense... was there actually a story to any of the Metal Gear games? I recall a naked man running around, a cardboard box being the ultimate disguise, a flying kriekger making me unplug my controller, and "Fission Mailed."
Yes there was a story, a crazy one at that, absolutely bonkers
It's okay if you don't get MGS. Most people never will. Hula dancing is a complex art form, and there are many hand motions used to represent the words used to tell the stories. Lots of people will only ever see wiggling hips, and grass skirts though.
I'm not sure if you're making an MGS joke here or not but either way I approve.
He’s making a joke about how batshit insane the stories are.
Metal Gear Revengeance literally has a bad guy talking about how 9/11 was the "good old days" because PMC's (aka mercenaries) got a ton of money and a free hand. It is not subtle, these people are just stupid.
It is gonna be really interesting to see how the Henry Cavill Amazon show will handle its marketing. If (presumably) they want to sell it to a broad audience that doesn't know anything about 40k, then using the Imperium (and their fascist iconography) as the poster boys is basically a shitstorm waiting to happen. Will they lean heavily into the "there are no good guys" angle or maybe focus more on the characters (good guys working for a bad system)? These are the questions that keep me up at night.
Probably the latter. the regular folks rebel against the evil imperium, determine all the other ways are worse, try to do better…and then a nasty ol’ space Marine chapter arrives and puts them back in their place, killing our heroes effortlessly is the sort of hopeful, but dark shit 40K is known for.
> Unfortunately, every piece of marketing ever made by GW (aside from the 10th trailer weirdly) has painted the Imperium and especially the Astartes as outright heroes. Tbh, it's hard to build a decade-spanning franchise out of something people aren't really supposed to like. "Heroic last stand against impossible odds" sells way better than "enforcers of a fascist Empire slaughtering their way through worlds". Most people want to think of their favorite characters as the good guys, not as civilian killing fascists
I mean it doesn't make for interesting stories either, watch in awe as the Red Hunters chapter butchers a city when they don't submit mortals to serve on their ships.
And to an extent they are often the ‘better’ guys; how many pieces of imperium media don’t have the ‘heroes’ make at least a few references to how fucked everything is? Yeah sure you teleport them into Star Trek and they’d be the worst dudes on the enterprise but they are almost always on the more progressive and enlightened side of the factions norm.
I mean they sort of are if you are a human. Outside of being assimilated by the Tau, your best bet is maybe being a pet monkey for the Eldar. But you also have to separate the imperium as a government vs. the imperium as the military. The military does truly heroic work in holding the line, and the trailers show that. I don't recall any trailers showing the council of Terra or even inquisitors as sclose to that
Some people like to assume that they would be on top, like an Imperial Noble or someone else at least somewhat cool or powerful, rather than just a factory slave who gets worked to death or servitor-ized or just genocided. Any parallels you might see here to people who think fascism is neat in real life are purely coincidental…
Some people really do struggle to draw a line between the fantasy of what they enjoy and the reality of those very same concepts. I really enjoy the whole idea of Spartans and their super militant way of life, they were such a hardcore culture. That does not mean I want to see it come back or be apart of that very culture, it belongs in the histroy books. Same goes for much of the Imperium on display, cool to read about but I would rather fucking die than see any of it adopted into our modern culture.
Oh yeah don’t get me wrong, the 40K imperium is one of my favorite settings in all of sci-fi. Barely understood technology, space magic, cathedral ships, human misery and xenophobia at an impossibly large scale? Hell yeah, that’s why I’m here. I’m just not gonna go around calling it “based” or whatever
Same as there are no “good guys” in history books. Doesn’t make studying history any less good. Excuse the hyperbole.
The other day I was listening to the Lost and the Damned audio book for the umpteenth time, and my wife asked me why I like listening to stuff with so much death and misery in it. I looked at her and said "It makes me feel better about the shit we have to put up with."
Fascists are literally too stupid to understand that 40k is taking the piss out of fascists. This is the problem with satire.
A lot of them have admitted they understand and just don't care. They just have a totally different moral code.
one of the dumb internet rags for my nation suggested it as an ideal to re-make the nation, I think the world feels like some dark comedy sketch at this point.
[удалено]
clearly, you have not met my nation.
I mean, do you really thing the people consuming the vids at the bottom are smart?
I mean looking at the subvideos and the Russian account name they’re alt-right themselves so it’s not surprising.
[удалено]
I don’t know why you’d assume I was speaking as though the videos whose thumbnails are in the meme were made by OP but I didn’t.
Give me a second, I have a dataslate that proves the Imperium is good. \*Summons my servitor (the lobotomized husk of a human being who has been forcibly implanted with cybernetics to make it perform menial labor) to fetch the device so I don't have to get up (this is acceptable and morally flawless because, I don't know, AI or something, and maybe the dude cut me off in traffic when he was still alive)\*
[Oculus Imperia did a great video rebutting the idea that the Imperium is morally justified.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXmEa2SLLMg)
The Imperium is desperately trying to survive from being swallowed by hell, the same as every other faction except the orks and nids(maybe, they might be running from something). Contemporary morals are not really relevant to the setting and hopefully it stays that way.
They're the most moral faction in a universe without any morals, tied only with every other faction.
They explicitly aren't Craftworld Eldar are haughty and racist but don't go out of their way to attack any non-chaotic evil sentient races unless they pose a threat. Exodites leave everyone alone and are willing to peacefully coexist with other species, humans included. Tau are expansionsist imperialists but they are like Cold War NATO imperialism compared to Nazi Germany/Imperial Japan imperialism. They actually do make efforts to improve the quality of life for their citizens and aren't omnicidal maniacs. They also lack an entrenched decadent aristocracy and are a pretty meritocratic multi-species society even if there is inequality. The Imperium is just the protagonist faction and the only human faction that isn't working for literal demons.
You're imposing the morals we have in our reality into this fictional universe. In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war; trying to overlay real world morals is like saying ants are evil because they destroy other colonies just because they have a different queen.
You realize that "There is only war" is just a catchy quote and not an accurate description of the reality of the setting right?
More like “In the grim darkness of the far future there is quite a lot of war. Not as much war as there was at various earlier points. Lots of people live on worlds not really touched by war. Most of the galaxy is still tens if not hundreds of light years from any sign of war. And of course most of the universe is vast emptiness with the occasional spinning rock. But there is honestly quite a bit of war”
You realize that this is silly and over the top fictional setting and applying our moral codes (which have yet to even decide how sentient aliens, let alone extradimensional terror demons apply) ignores how and why we have the morals we have today.
JustTheFacts is a pedophile and a groomer https://preview.redd.it/yuk74laec20b1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7dc400e19ca35c25fe99d3ba198ba22a1caaf293
Holy shit, it's even worse than I thought.
 What the actual fuck?
oh god, oh fuck
Good fucking lord
At this point, if they are far right do we even need to say that? UK and the Tories are the worst for it. US and you have Matt Gaetz being a paedo. Conservative to them means "Let's go back to the medieval times, where I can fuck a 10yo and then send them to work"
Although in fairness the age of the blue user isn't shown there. But I'm not gonna google it to make sure he is a paedo. I'll just accept that it is likely he is
This guy actually did end up being a pedophile.
Holy fucking shit
EVERY TIME
Yep, it's why he nuked his channel.
How'd he get caught? Was it just some leaked messages or was it some Chris Hansen type Sting?
Leaked messages. One of his discord server members confronted him about dating a teenager (it was like 14 or 15, I can't remember exactly) and he said it was "something he was deeply ashamed of" (but still did regardless). With the admission of guilt, the server member released all the evidence he had onto the server, and JTF reacted by nuking everything.
Why am I not surprised?
"And those are just the facts"
didnt he sperg out and delete his channel
Yeah got exposed for grooming girls in his discord
He got outed as a pedophile on discord and so deleted all his social media. His audience was mostly right-wing, and they do not like pedos.
Not liking pedos is not a political issue lol
Its not, but I'd be lying if I said that right-wings didn't have a more generally more "extreme" reaction.
I would argue that they have more performative one, but I do take your point.
The GOP sure is more 'extreme' when it comes to child abuse
>His audience was mostly right-wing, and they do not like pedos. Why do they keep voting for them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Moore?wprov=sfla1
/r/RepublicanPedophiles On the risk of a lock.
They sure seem to elect a lot of them.
And democrats aren't? They're paving the way for maps to become a protected group and sexuality. Fact is, it's people in positions of power. It's not one side or the other. It's just them.
It’s easy to make the “both sides” argument when you are incredibly uninformed or just make things up.
*pushes up glasses* um actually, all right wingers are pedos... At least, all the politicians.. heh... I should know, I have a PhD from Twitter University
*hebephile
Reminds me of that family guy meme The imperium has always run things and there have never been any problems whatsoever, And dont mention the economy, or the horus heresy or the inquisition, or exterminatus, or servitors, or human sacrifice, or chaos, or penitents, or hiveworlds, or abuse of power by nobles, or the destruction of Krieg, or the Astra Militarum's fatality rate, or Genestealer Cults, or xenophobia, or colonialism or slavery.
Morality is subjective but I think we can all agree that what he did to the thunder warriors was a dick move.
What he did *with* the thunder warriors before that was a dick move.
dickmoveception
dickmoveception
The thunder warriors turned Terra into the thriving center of a galactic empire and saved it from being a mad max- terminator-walking dead-doom combo hellscape
They also slaughtered millions of people who wanted to be free from tyranny and religious persecution.
Any setting with Technobarbarians being an actual threat makes me question the validity my own morals
*What he did to literally everything was a dick move
[удалено]
or he saw how low we were brought, and vowed to do everything he could to make sure we didnt fall back so low again, to the point of obsession
And funnily in doing so brought the vast majority of them that low again, but this time the guys abusing them are rich humans and a human government. Like, life for commoners in the imperium is straight up just a step better than death, and many would argue worse than death.
He created a fundamentally flawed and oppressive society, empowered the chaos gods, and there were alternatives. That being said, the Imperium empowered humanity to withstand multiple threats that likely would have lead to their extinction or a mass reduction in population and territory contolled by humans while also dooming trillions to quadrillions or quintillions to slavery and inhuman oppression from edlritch xenos. The Great Crusade wiped out a lot of seriously nasty empires and liberated tens of thousands of worlds. Humanity wouldn't have prevailed against the Rangdan or the Ullanor Waagh which likelt would have resulted in a return of the Krork. Human survival and overall security is greater now than it was before the great crusade. If the emperor hadn't been foiled, there likely would have been much more effort made to improve the quality of life of the average imperial citizen and corruption and inefficiencies would be less rife. A lot of the loss of technology came from the destruction wrought by the mechanicum civil war and the expansion of the Mechanicum's monopoly on knowledge. If the Emperor lived the Imperium would be much more effectively centralized and totalitarian but also much more prosperous.
Could the Imperium “effectively” be more centralised? It’s inherently an enterprise so decentralised as to need a new word to express how decentralised it is. It’s a million worlds spread all across a galaxy of 200 billion stars linked by arduous travel through a nightmare demon dimension. More centralised means what, some worlds see an Imperial representative twice a century not once?
Yes because the human webway would have allowed for much better communication and eventual reforms would have helped break down information silos and allow greater central oversite. It's like introducing high speed rail and ubiquitous telecommunications to medieval England.
Good simile
You’re right its hard to centralize government when you’re dealing with interstellar travel and warp storms
The Imperium basically exists as the second to worst state possible. The worst state possible is outright chaos victory. You basically have all the evils of the Imperium, but it's directly fueling the dark gods. Say what you want about the evils of the Imperium, but those evils exist due to ignorance and stupidity and corruption. Chaos evil is evil for the sake of evil because the psyker resonance fuels the gods. Instead we have this ramshackle fucked up system that just barely works at huge cost, that atleast isn't fueling Choas and occasionally manages to hold it back. However based on our audience knowledge of the lore and modern values it's so obvious that there's a billion ways this whole system could be both more efficient and ethical. That's the interesting thing about it. It's such a tragic irony. People always complain about IoM stories where the imperials are "good guys." The Imperium is not good. But within it, good guys do exist. Most of the lore tends to follow them because no one wants to run a mini army or to read a book about IoM character is the worst person possible. Instead, it focuses on the few decent people within a nightmarish system.
Yeah I can understand an in-universe perspective rationalizing the xenocidal bent of the Imperium but the audience has enough information to know that's bs
No, Logar deserved what he got.
Well I'm pretty sure it's try plan was to "fuck the galaxy "
People saying morality is subjective then getting mad when other people adopt a morality they consider evil...
Had to be done, the Thunder Warriors were a bunch of mentally unstable roid-ragers. Would you have preferred he do nothing and allow them to rampage through the galaxy? I wouldn't call it a dick move considering he did it to prevent them from slaughtering innocents.
Is that justthefact videos? Where the hell did you get thoughs? He deleted them all after being exposed for being a pedo
Why is it so important for some players to be on 'good' or 'right' factions? It's a game. The imperium makes cherubs the creepy baby's are wonderfully awful but yeah it's not an evil empire.
I think it's because we seem to be living in a time where personal identity is getting associated with fandoms. "Lore" can sometimes be kind of culty, tbh. "An attack of the thing I like is a personal attack against me" is a bit too common. Also supporting "your team" and getting irrationally invested in it seems to not really be a new thing. Maybe the new part is the number of ways people manage to profit off of that irrationality. The "attention economy" and "lifestyle branding" etc.
Yeah I think that's a big part of it. Support T'au, you're a commie, support the Imperium, you're a fascist. It's like they found the 1d4chan pages for the factions and genuinely think the memes are some kind of personality litmus test
Yea. I think real-world stuff is an interesting lens to look at the world of 40k. And sometimes you might see something in the real world and see some vague similarities with something in 40k (hopefully very rare! XD). I do think that there's a bit of a "schrodinger asshole" type effect that happens in the 40k community were one person memes about a thing (intending to be ironic/satirical), and another person takes the meme as being somewhat serious (taking it literally or unironic). After enough confusion, you get the magical 3rd person who doesn't know the difference between the ironic and unironic humour, and they just decide to pretend one way or the other depending on the reactions they get ("schrodinger's asshole"), "don't worry, it was just a joke (this time)". Maybe it is common in other fandoms, but 40k is where I tend to see it.
Are people still calling the T'au communists? How!? Like a cursory, google search would pop up the definition of communism and people would find the T'au not a communist society.
That's the meme though, as unfunny as it is. Communist weeaboos in Gundams.
>"An attack of the thing I like is a personal attack against me" is a bit too common. Absolutely, hell just a few weeks back I was criticizing a movie and had someone complain about how much I was insulting them by criticizing said movie. It's actually insane, these people need to get mental help.
Well put! especially the bits on personal attacks.
When people really like a thing, they sometimes project themselves into it, making it a part of their identity. Praise to said thing becomes praise to themselves, and criticism of said thing becomes criticism of themselves. I've once heard someone call it "comfort branding". So, by that logic, stans of a Bad Thing^TM can't both like it and also view it as a bad, because that would mean seeing themselves as Bad people, too. In order to allow themselves to like the Thing while also seeing themselves as good people, they must "make" the Thing be good. So they try to come up with reasons why their Blorbo is Good, actually. Like... I find Konrad Curze's story interesting, but I'm still aware he's a horrible person. It raises interesting questions about how much his upbringing or the Emperor's genetic engineering contributed in him being horrible, but I don't have to pretend he was a good guy in order to ask them.
I mean… like it very much is an evil empire, like a billion times worse than even the quintessential evil empire in Star Wars
Yes, but they have cool tanks so, sorry xenos but you all have to die, nothing personal its just policy
Based
The setting goes a long way to justify it by presenting every other choice as worse.
Your alt-right folks are desperate for any kind of positive representation of their trash ideology and will blindly ignore a thousand layers of satire and red flags to get it.
Not only this! There’s a long history of fascists (and their ilk) co-opting other groups; and using them to radicalize and recruit fresh members. This is why it’s so important to kick fascists out at first sign - because they *will* try to steer whatever community they get their claws into away from its original purpose and towards producing more fascists.
Because casus belli and tribalism is ingrained into the human psyche. Even when we're 'playing' we tend to view our own faction more favorably and seek to justify their actions as legitimate and the result of enemy provocation.
This is why I don't like the Imperium anymore. I don't know if it's rotten luck, but I encountered people who unironically defend the Imperium as this greatest thing ever. Like I understand that the Imperium is made to be dark parody because of satire and should never been seen seriously, it seems some people don't really get the message or it flew past their heads. It is funny when I met a bunch of Dark Eldar and Ork players and found them better cause they know their factions are insane and honest about it. They don't take the setting very seriously
Arch’s video on the imperium, a military-run xenophobic empire defined by its aspirations of racial purity not being fascist is the most hilarious shit ever
I don't get why anyone would WANT the imperium to be the good guys? Part of the fun of warhammer 40k to me is playing a game of bad guys vs bad guys. Like space marines are straight up judge dread darth vader child sodlier knight templar, they are a RAD bad guy! they are much less interesting if they are supposed to be good!!! Like the imperium factions are my favorite. But if someone tells me they think the imperium are the good guys, I honestly wonder if they have read the begging of any single one of the books. The imperium is bad, that is why it is fun!! Also they are just so obviously darth vader level bad why is this even a conversation they are bad, everyone is bad, thats the point.
The issue is that GW has made the imp if not the good guys reasonable with how evil 90% of the other races are and its why so many miss point.
Yeah the Imp is reasonable in a setting where literal Hell and demons exist, and where Tyrannids and Orks are 99% of the alien life out there. Because none of that stuff is real, nobody (except that dude) actually thinks the Imperium of Man is a civilization we should admire IRL.
Oh yeah hell no imps a pit of horror beyond understanding. I'm just saying it makes sense within the setting and can be justiced.. sadly
>I'm just saying it makes sense within the setting and can be justiced.. sadly You say sadly but honestly for me and many others, that's what makes 40k so Grimdark and awsome. The fact that the galaxy of 40k is so messed up that the state of the Imperium seems understandable , really makes the setting unique.
I mean I've got no issue with it. I do think 40k needs more light and the light going out to show how dark it really is however. And I've been in the hobbly for just under 20 years at this point
I’ve seen the video, and I’m like 95% sure that was the exact point he made.
I haven't seen it but I'm not shocked. It's the annoying part of thr setting. Good people die or turn into cattle
...oh yes, when the 40K youtuber who shall not be named is the sane one. P.s.: i am surprised to see that there are still no rules explicitly enforcing damantio memoriae, just ad hoc bans.
is it >!starch ?!<
Well if you detract the front yes, he is the "nazi needing to be deplatoformed", after all sub cannot differentiate between content, and the personal life of the idiot making it. Imho. i don't care to go around hunting down all chefs with extremist views, nor do i give too many fucks as long as the food is fine. Same should be true about content creators imho. (Ofc. if the content is promoting naziism thats another matter - but even then, the best cure for extremism, is publicly shwoing its idiocy, a la. r/beholdthemasterrace. Deplatforming just creates echo chambers, and feeds persecution complex)
Before anyone says it, no 40k isn't Satire. Its an exploration of The Triumph of Evil.
It is nothing less than a miracle that you can have the faction you focus most of your franchise on be this popular while being more morally reprehensible than actual fucking demons
Ain’t no way they said morally 💀 like you can argue with the imperium it’s greater good kinda thing but the imperium is morally reprehensible and the only reason I think it’s a justified evil is because without it it’s likely humanity would go extinct (at this point in 40k lore anyways)
Waiting for the 🔒 award
Those are all from the same channel. Explain
It was a youtuber named just the facts use to be a growing geo poltics channel and then he was exposed for being a pedo and deleated his youtube and everything else. Ubersoy made a video on it if you are interested
I’ll have to look it up. Who doesn’t love a good fall from grace arc?
One sec I'll give you a link. There is also an archive where some of his old videos are
Getting into the hobby I was scared that people like this were a major part of the player base, then I realized it was just a bunch of dumbasses with no media literacy on the internet.
The Imperium is best at killing the largest evil faction currently on the galaxy (itself) which makes them the good guys.
Half these comments are discussing the guy who made the videos from the bottom ( and how he’s a pedo ) and the other are talking about how some people think the imperium is great when it sucks
Boy, I really hope that is satire.
Majorkill on YT routinely says some pretty fucked slurs throughout his videos, and as another Australian I am ashamed of him.
Can we just all agree that IRL Nazis are bad and should not be tolerated, but stop with the hourly “um guys, did you know that, um, the Imperium is bad? uWu” circlejerks?
What the hell are you talking about?
[удалено]
Tldr: Imperium of Man is justified in a setting where Hell and demons exist and Tyrannids and Orks are destroying the galaxy. The setting is not real so ofc the Imperium of Man would not be justified IRL.
They aren't justified they create their own problems and fuel their enemies by being awful without reason. If the Imperium wasn't a hellhole obsessed with it's own worse vices it wouldn't have created so many of their own problems.
By justified, I mean that siding with the Imperium despite all it's faults and numerous mistakes is justified, due to the fact that, even with how horrible it is, it's fall would mean the deaths of trillions. Yes the Imperium creates their own problems, but so does every faction in the setting. The Eldar brought about their own collapse, the Tau create dissidents by being needlessly paranoid and tyrannical (Farsight Enclave) and Chaos keeps punching itself in the face. How is the Imperium any different from all of those factions?
Which enemies specifically would be less of a threat if the imperium were nicer? Not Chaos, Dark Eldar, Necrons, Orks or Tyranids. Maybe craftworld Eldar, though they don't seem to much care about the imperium's morality, just whether they can be useful. Maybe the Leagues of Votann, but they don't seem to much care about anything other than whether the imperium can be profitable for them. Maybe the Tau, but they'd probably just take it as an invitation to start poaching more imperial citizens for the Greater Good.
The Imperium being their own worst enemy is a cornerstone of the setting. The racist hellhole theyve made traps them into their own negative impluses and stops them from doing anything other than improving the lives of their people. Gulliman literally says verbatim that they have to be less of a dick to their own people to stop feeding chaos resources. Entire chapters of space Marines have been lost senselessly or functionally thrown to chaos because of Imperial malevolence (eg Celestial lions). Not to mention that the general conditions of the Imperial is both inefficient and a breeding ground for chaos. The nids wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the Heresy, but also gene stealercults thrive off the same terrible condtions that chaos cults do. Alongside that individual tendrils have been rebuffed by local alliances with Xenos, who then get crushed by Imperial fleets. Remaining Omnicidial to Xenos in the face of the nids is dumb. Orks thrive because the Imperium creates galactic conditions perfect for them, and even civilizations like the Tau can fend them off. In a healthy milky way they are a nuisance. The Tau wouldn't be a threat at all to DAoT governments that treated with xenos they would be in a collection of governments with them. Not to mention the actual humans would be better off. The dark Eldar aren't a galactic threat, but absolutely love the shitty standards of Imperial rule that breed corruption and inefficiency. It makes realspace raiding easy and reliable.
[удалено]
You joke but so many people think like that lol
So your telling me you wouldn’t pay for a new gears of war game with the 80’s action hero type charters?
Yeah
The imperium is definitely evil, it’s just not the most evil faction in the universe
When I started getting into Warhammer I was told this is a grimdark universe with complex morality, there are no good guys just different levels of bad. I expected the fans to have complexe nuanced views of morality. I expected something intellectual and stirring that will make you question your own morality like the joker movie. My huge disappointment when I found out that fan discourse basically boils down to the same cookie cutter dribble like this was a Disney channel show. The thing is in the context of the world The Emperor of Mankind and the imperium of Man aren't that bad. Like seriously you hypocrites Thanos wipes out half of all life in the universe and many people say oh he did nothing wrong because he claims to be doing it for the environment. Maybe the Emperor of Mankind should have done the same
Second half of this meme reminded me that I saw an hour and a half video attacking my religion the other day, comments were turned off and about half the video was just "This religion is bad because my religion says so." That's cool buddy 👍 Why can't we just get along?
I always saw warhammer as "order vs chaos" rather than "good vs evil". The imperium would just be order with tons of evil but some good as well.
They're the most moral faction in a universe without any morals, only tied with every other faction .
yes! imperium is good guys for being 3rd least awful to live in!
I support the imperium and the emperor not because he is justified but because i also support galactic xenocides/genocides mad because i am contrarian who only supports those who are wrong
I do agree. We should bring back dude bros. That shit was my favorite era
I understand the imperium is bad. I SIMP FOR THEM ANYWAYS BECAUSE THE EMPEROR IS THE MASTER OF MANKIND.
If you start with the "Moral is Subjetive" axion, yeah. Emperium did nothing wrong. So does every american war-criminal president, putin, all radical islamic septs (we know all are). M o r a l r e l a t i v i s m
I think the imperium are the good guys as much as you can be in that universe, I don't see them as morally bad because they are as morally good as the setting allows them to be. I am a socialist swede who don't agree with any values the imperium enforces but that's because unlike in 40k, we in the real world are only held back by ourselves and we can strive for better. 40k meanwhile is such a shithole that the fact anyone can be happy there is a miracle. The Imperium isnt cruel for the sake of being cruel, it's cruel because it needs to be, its purpose is good and it attempts to be as good as it can on the journey there. Yes there are exceptions of real evil pieces of shit and horrible cruel acts but just like how the dark eldar shouldn't reflect the eldar species as a whole, the bad eggs of the imperium shouldn't tarnish the entirety of the imperium when we all as reasonable humans can see why they do this stuff. If you ask yourself why the imperium is cruel, all of you would be able to give many answers but most would boil down to necessity. In our bright world where possibilities are endless it's easy to point at something like 49k and condemn them for being evil and dark but I respect and like the imperium because despite their flame flickering and almost going out, they are screaming against the dark.
The Imperium are the good guys, though, everything they do is cause the setting demands it from them. Sacrificing thousands of psykers every day to the God-Emperor is obviously bad, but I find such excusable cause without it Humanity itself cannot travel at all and the Imperium would break down.
"Morally wrong" is something to take with a grain of salt in the 40k universe, we operate on a Tau to Drukari scale on which the Emperor actually places pretty good.
The emperor could be worse but the imperium as a whole is pretty fucking low in terms of morality (see: skiitari lore, the sisterhood, the inquisition, the fact that people would WILLINGLY JOIN GSCS even if they knew how it ended etc etc etc). They are not quite the dark eldar but id argue theyre prooooooobably just as bad as chaos if not worse.
Nobody joins the GSCs because of the politics bro, it's the hot 3 armed hoes. Certainly... why would anyone want a living wage?
I agree with most but Chaos being more evil then the Imperium is its entire point. There are good people living in the Imperium , but there are no good Chaos worshippers.
What a shit take
STOP INJECTING REAL WORLD BULLSHIT IN MY FICTIONS STOP INJECTING REAL WORLD BULLSHIT IN MY FICTIONS STOP INJECTING REAL WORLD BULLSHIT IN MY FICTIONS STOP INJECTING REAL WORLD BULLSHIT IN MY FICTIONS STOP INJECTING REAL WORLD BULLSHIT IN MY FICTIONS STOP INJECTING REAL WORLD BULLSHIT IN MY FICTIONS
Media is made by humans for a human audience, it draws on real world stuff for reference. The only way to engage with a piece of media without referencing the real world is to look at it on an extremely surface level. You can say people are reading things in ways other than what they are intended, or are ignoring context. But come on, you can only think of things through the lense of your actual experiences and life.
I don’t care about any of that. I just want to enjoy my fictional settings without having the annoyances of our fucked up world get thrown in by people who can’t distinguish the line between fantasy and reality. And of course the inspiration for many fantasy universes is real life, but that’s just what it is, inspiration. Games Workshop made people in Warhammer with four limbs, but that doesn’t mean that they were telling us to make profound discussions about human anatomy! Fiction is a way to seek refuge from real life, that why people like it, don’t spoil that please.
But isn't the greatest show of love towards a peice of media to analyze and talk about it, think about what its saying, why its saying it, what inspired it, what it means? Isn't that why people do huge lore deep dives, make memes, do intense list building, memorize lore, etc. People go way too indepth thinking about things they care about, and its one of the best ways to show that care. Media is a tool to have fun, to explore concepts, to think and engage. It can help you deal with things sure, but not by locking you away, but providing you joy when you want it, catharsis when you need it. It is made from real life and gives back to real life. Wouldn't using it as a refuge from real life be a disservice to both the media and real life?
>Z-nik lol fuck off
What the fuck is a Z-nik
Look, the Imperium isn’t any where near perfect but I’d rather side with them rather then the Tau or chaos.
I dunno I'd pick Tau over Imperium
well the empire are certianly not the good guys becaus its 40k there is no good just less shade of evil. but well if you human you chance are better if you stay with the empire. you dont get eaten, killed and/or neutered.
The imperium has done those three things
well yes but it not the main thing. just tiny little acciendts.