4 ms·

> I do wish that GW would just lean in and drop the fascist iconography and let marines be good. Starship Troopers (also about space marines, hmm…) has had the

by mLuby 5y ago

> I do wish that GW would just lean in and drop the fascist iconography and let marines be good. Starship Troopers (also about space marines, hmm…) has had the same critique. Maybe they need to go in the other direction and make the satire even less subtle. Relatedly, there may be some value in discovering exactly which form of awful you gravitate toward. I'm just a casual observer of WH40K but I thought the whole point was that every group is bad in some special way, morals like compassion and honor are fleeting in the face of an actively hostile universe, and within that grim dark sandbox everyone's inner edgelord can play on maximum "rule of cool" mode.

UncleMeat 5y ago
Starship Troopers actually has highly visible satire. You don't need to dig. You don't need to go read the novels to try to find it. GW could make the satire much less subtle. But I think it would sell more poorly. You are correct that the actual universe, if you really dig, portrays the imperium as truly terrible (and everybody else). But if you look at the minis, the rules, the boxes, and the art it really seems like the imperium are good guys resisting evil.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
  >> You don't need to go read the novels to try to find it. There was one novel, by Robert A. Heinlein. I once declared to a circle of fellow Warhammer players that it's one of my favourite Sci Fi books ever and someone accused me of being a fascist (and Ted). Years later I related the story on HN and I was taken to task by an HN user who accused me of lying about how much I like Starship Troopers because I misremembered a detail in it, I think about voting rights. Morale of the story: sometimes I think the internet is stupid.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    The novel of Starship Troopers doesn't really work as a comparison, IMO. Verhoeven basically didn't read it and Heinlein had different goals. Even if you believe that Heinlein was writing satire, the satire is way more apparent in the movie. In comparison, the popular consumable representation of the imperium is just straight up good guys. You have to dig into the novels (which only a small number of people read) before you find any of the satire.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
      I don't know about that. I remember thinking "the marines worship a psychic vampire" after reading one of the 40k rulebooks. You can get your grimdark on pretty hard with just those. Which makes sense as the game is the main product, not the fluff. There'd be no point in hiding all the good stuff in fiction that I suspect most players don't read anyway. Edit: on the matter of satire I don't absolutely disagree with you. I don't think the Astartes are presented as heroic good guys, but I also don't find lots of satirical intent in the fluff. What it's always reminded me of is UK comic books of the '90s (I think) like 2000AD with Judge Dredd and all that, so more cynicism and black humour than satire. And also a bit of the Mad Max kind of heavy metal aesthetic sensibilities (yes, I know) found in various science fiction graphical works of art I've caught sight of here and there. There was an entire comics magazine called Heavy Metal that had nothing to do with the music genre but which I think was pretty much 100% the 40K aesthetic. And the fluff has changed quite a bit over the years, as have the minis. I've seen older genestealers and they look nothing like today's slick plastic models. And then there was a whole race called the Squats, i.e. space Dwarfs, that got lost in space and time (their entire line was discontinued). I think -but that was before my time- the reason was that they didn't fit in with the grimdark theme. Last thing: in 40K I had Tau. I loved the models, especially the Kroot; exactly because they were such a departure from the grimdark Astartes and their enemies and fri... other enemies. I distinctly remember reading that they were supposed to be like the foil of all the other races, straight up good guys who genuinely fought for the Common Good, honest to gods. But the people who make those decisions in GW decided they didn't like that and gave them a dark secret, although at the point I stopped buying the rulebooks it was only hinted at and never really made clear. I had an idea of modifying some Tau with Chaos and Tyranid bits but I never got around to it. Anyway yeah, they were supposed to be the actual good guys, but that got zilched so that everyone could be bad.

by mLuby 5y ago

UncleMeat 5y ago

Starship Troopers actually has highly visible satire. You don't need to dig. You don't need to go read the novels to try to find it. GW could make the satire much less subtle. But I think it would sell more poorly. You are correct that the actual universe, if you really dig, portrays the imperium as truly terrible (and everybody else). But if you look at the minis, the rules, the boxes, and the art it really seems like the imperium are good guys resisting evil.

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
>> You don't need to go read the novels to try to find it. There was one novel, by Robert A. Heinlein. I once declared to a circle of fellow Warhammer players that it's one of my favourite Sci Fi books ever and someone accused me of being a fascist (and Ted). Years later I related the story on HN and I was taken to task by an HN user who accused me of lying about how much I like Starship Troopers because I misremembered a detail in it, I think about voting rights. Morale of the story: sometimes I think the internet is stupid.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  The novel of Starship Troopers doesn't really work as a comparison, IMO. Verhoeven basically didn't read it and Heinlein had different goals. Even if you believe that Heinlein was writing satire, the satire is way more apparent in the movie. In comparison, the popular consumable representation of the imperium is just straight up good guys. You have to dig into the novels (which only a small number of people read) before you find any of the satire.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
    I don't know about that. I remember thinking "the marines worship a psychic vampire" after reading one of the 40k rulebooks. You can get your grimdark on pretty hard with just those. Which makes sense as the game is the main product, not the fluff. There'd be no point in hiding all the good stuff in fiction that I suspect most players don't read anyway. Edit: on the matter of satire I don't absolutely disagree with you. I don't think the Astartes are presented as heroic good guys, but I also don't find lots of satirical intent in the fluff. What it's always reminded me of is UK comic books of the '90s (I think) like 2000AD with Judge Dredd and all that, so more cynicism and black humour than satire. And also a bit of the Mad Max kind of heavy metal aesthetic sensibilities (yes, I know) found in various science fiction graphical works of art I've caught sight of here and there. There was an entire comics magazine called Heavy Metal that had nothing to do with the music genre but which I think was pretty much 100% the 40K aesthetic. And the fluff has changed quite a bit over the years, as have the minis. I've seen older genestealers and they look nothing like today's slick plastic models. And then there was a whole race called the Squats, i.e. space Dwarfs, that got lost in space and time (their entire line was discontinued). I think -but that was before my time- the reason was that they didn't fit in with the grimdark theme. Last thing: in 40K I had Tau. I loved the models, especially the Kroot; exactly because they were such a departure from the grimdark Astartes and their enemies and fri... other enemies. I distinctly remember reading that they were supposed to be like the foil of all the other races, straight up good guys who genuinely fought for the Common Good, honest to gods. But the people who make those decisions in GW decided they didn't like that and gave them a dark secret, although at the point I stopped buying the rulebooks it was only hinted at and never really made clear. I had an idea of modifying some Tau with Chaos and Tyranid bits but I never got around to it. Anyway yeah, they were supposed to be the actual good guys, but that got zilched so that everyone could be bad.