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As someone who isn’t a fan of Guilliman coming back and actually being a noble ruler (as opposed to previously the super sketchy high lords, who I thought fit a grim dark degraded tone much more), I’ve always considered 40k to be the bad ending. If there was a video game, the 40k we know would be an ending slide that happened when the player had truly made terrible choices. The game is over and we are stuck in the bad outcome. It won’t get better.
Humanity in 40k is collectively a corpse that doesn’t know or accept that it’s already dead (just like the emperor himself- symbolism!). The most humanity can do are have brief moments of staving of things getting worse. Humanity can at massive cost and misery preserve a terrible status quo every now and then and call it a victory, but even the victories just lead to losses and the losses keep leading to the final death of humanity.
Yeah, that’s exactly why the Imperium should embrace Chaos. Chaos has been advocating for the survival of the Imperium for a long time and are actually the good guys. They got so close with the Horus Heresy but the Imperium, being the conservatives they are, decided that it wouldn’t be the best.
Chaos will give the Empire the power it needs and usher in a new golden age of prosperity and will bring all those filthy Xenos to heel. The Empire is dying, but for it to live the Emperor needs to die. Death to the false emperor. ☀️
Yes, Inquisitor, this one right here.
The inquisition is just Khorne worship with extra steps
Disgusting.
🙃
Well if you go by the predictions of the Cabal, 40k is the bad ending at least when it pertains to the galaxy as a whole. Chaos slowly grows feeding on the corruption and unending war that humanity brings while none of the species truly flourish (except for maybe the orks and the tyranids).
Whether it is the good ending when it pertains to humanity only is up for debate because there are several hints dropped in 30k that this was only outcome which ensured humanities survival
I prefer wide sweeping and impressionistic views when it comes to tone and theme.
Hints of intricate plots in passing are much more interesting than actually sitting down and mapping them out play by play in detail.
In this wide sweeping view that puts tone above all else, I very much lean to a view that humanity was doomed a long time ago and is simply being stubborn about the inevitable.
I prefer wide sweeping and impressionistic views when it comes to tone and theme. Hints of intricate plots in passing are much more interesting
I am not a literature student but aren’t hints of intricate plots in passing kind of an opposite to wide sweeping views because they will never give a wide enough view¿?
Wide sweeping, as in a high level view that only briefly touches on things like these deep plots without dwelling on them.
Many of the plots and pieces of lore in 40k were introduced intentionally as snippets that weren’t ever thought out fully. They were introduced to give the idea of plots existing and to create a tone. Later writers coming in and fleshing out those snippets often turned something mysterious into something convoluted.
Agreed and this is why the horus heresy book series was an awful idea.
It has removed all nuance and discussion about the most important formative conflict in the setting.
Now the war in heaven is the big murky historical conflict that set the stage…. But thankfully it is safe because it’s only Xenos.
I’ve been thinking that for a while. But sadly it made them an ridiculous amount of cash. :/
Also, some more hot takes from me:
- The Horus Heresy books aren’t even that good.
- The whole thing started turning bad when we took the fluff as “lore” in the first place.
I actually like Papa Blueberry getting to wake up and say “What the fuck” to really emphasize that even the ancient space crusader thinks this future is FUCKED, but I have no faith in Gee Dubs to go anywhere worthwhile with it.
Leadership and progress and hope are all things that have no place in 40k. Guilliman is a noble person who brings these things in amounts uncomfortable for the setting. Therefore he has no place in 40k. He needs to exist only as a long dead legend that people wish they had, but he is gone- just one more piece of hope that can’t be brought back.
Gulliman waking up and being absolutely shocked at the sight of things only works if he is immediately put back into stasis by the high lords for their own petty reasons, but that’s not happening so the entire tone of 40k has shifted with him being awake and in charge. Not just with him, but he is something easy to point at as an example.
More people getting into 40k think the Imperium are “the good guys” because while the set dressing of candles and power armor and gothic buildings are still around, the insane mindset of the people in 40k has been softened, at least in presentation quite a lot in enough ways that it is understandable why people new to 40k now think humanity is good.
To be entirely fair, the nature of 40k as a vehicle for selling miniatures (and thus changing with the tastes of the market, or what the execs think the market likes) has meant that its tone has changed radically over the years. But that’s really the trouble with a long-running universe without a clear guiding vision. Everyone scrapes together bits and pieces from the era they got into it, and then looks at that as the ‘truest’ version of the universe.
For what it’s worth, I’m generally in agreement that the grimdarkness of the grimdark future is what sets 40k most apart from other settings, and trying to shift that over to a more Warhammer Fantasy tone of “Things are BAD but there are still people Fighting The Good Fight” isn’t the right direction to take it. Especially after trying to kill off Warhammer Fantasy. I love Ciaphias Cain, but his popularity is a contributor to this too.
I still remember my introductions to 40k - a demo disc with Dawn of War on it, and subsequently, when enthusing to a friend about it, being shown a hodgepodge of collectibles and a Tyranid rulebook which had BIG fucking Aliens vibes. Good shit. Remorseless fanatics, lost and brutalized worlds, warrior-monks of a religion of war (but not blind berserking rage), hardened conscripts against horrors they only dimly glanced? Fuck, that was such a new and novel aesthetic. I was entranced from the start.
The Imperium isn’t even the good guys to humans lmao
corpse starch sounds like a conspiracy theory some rightoid in the boonies thinks is going on at McDonalds
Are you telling me the Fascist Space Gothic Puritan Catholic Divine Monarchists with a ‘Soviet And Starship Troopers’ aesthetic aren’t the good guys for mankind???
Justified in universe, possibly. Good? No, they’re fucking evil on a good day. But that’s the point. Sure they’re evil, but are they the most evil? No. The entire 40K universe runs on Gray and black morality; there’s no such thing as good there.
There is such thing as good! It’s just locked up in grandfather nurgles closet being used to test the latest and greatest plagues and sicknesses before they’re welcomed upon a unprepared galaxy.
Then why are those posts claiming they are good?
Because they’re wrong?
As is the person claiming there is no good in 40k.
There is good in 40K but imho it’s very rarely present in the power structures.
Good thing no one said a good faction then!
But they exist anyways. Eldar and Votann, die mad about it, monkeighs.
Oh yeah, and I’m still kinda sad about the Tau becoming mind controlling assholes and the chaos gods shifting from neutral forces of the universe toward evil deities
I mean there is an argument, whether you agree with it or not, for moral relativism, and in that case I certainly would say that in-universe, a moral relativist would consider the imperium the good guys.
There is an argument, but I don’t think it’s convincing. The single best way to cripple their most deadly foe (so far) is to be less evil and make everyone’s lives less shit. They could hamstring chaos by simply ceasing their eternal crusade and focusing on improving the average peon’s life. The Imperium as a state only exists because of a “well-intentioned” checks notes… galactic crusade of conquest and omnicide against any non-human. In pretty much any other media they are unambiguously the bad guys, having other bad guys to fight doesn’t change that. They are literally a characture of every evil space empire. We just get fed so much propaganda that it starts to work a little.
It is a deliberate comment on the nature of fascism. First you call the entire world your enemy, attack, and then claim oppression and justification when they defend themselves.
It’s crazy how many people don’t seem to understand the part of the intro that says “To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable.” It’s pretty unambiguous. Hell in some of the lore there are plenty of places that actually seem almost pleasant to live in, though they rarely last long without being imperial or disappearing.
I thought that the Tau were the in universe good guys (and even then they were morally grey at best)?
There is some creepiness around the ethereal caste and what exactly is going on with them. Tau have also been hinted (maybe confirmed) to sterilize human subject populations in one of the Dawn Of War games.
Personally, I take a very impressionistic and loose approach to canon, especially in 40k. My personal interpretation (and this is semi-head canon so I don’t need any “well acktually” replies here) is that Tau represent “the good guys” and should be a material example of why taking the high road in 40k just doesn’t work. Tau should basically be always trying to be understanding, and diplomatic, and all that other coexisting Star Trek stuff- and it needs to blow up horribly in their face every single time until they are forced to be violent like everyone else. Tau are a great baseline for a sane culture that’s being dropped into the 40k universe and just getting culture shock upon culture shock as they encounter more of it.
I’m not sure if the plot thread ever went anywhere (I mostly liked 40k to read the lore in the codexes and buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo this was years ago) but the Tau were kind of being propped up by the dark eldar who would frequently and seemingly benevolently swoop in to save them from various threats like tyranid invasions with some omanous price implied to be paid at a later time.
The Dark Eldar saved the Tau from a hive fleet for a ‘mere’ cultural exhange.
The Tau who accompanied the Dark Eldar to Commoragh were turned into Talos engines and the like, mutated horribly and tortured by Hommonculi.
The Tau have since learnt the difference between the craftworld Eldar and their debased kin. Something most Imperials don’t seem too interested in learning due to their extreme xenophobic brain washing.
From what I recall, yeah they are basically the least bad.
There are no good guys in 40k, every single faction is grey… most of them dark grey
Orks are good guys. They just want to have a good fight. A utilitarian calculus would clearly show that the entire universe being ruled by Orks would maximize sentient happiness!
“Can’t we all just not get along?”
“
Can’tweall just not get along?be trumping!” - Orks
Sounds like heresy to me.
I think The Imperium of Man is the best solution humans could come up with to the threats of a horrific and unforgiving universe, and it does preserve the species, so in that sense it’s “good” even if it’s a nightmare of human rights violations every second of every sol on nearly every planet in the empire. Plus, who the fuck is gonna argue with a psyker so strong he can fight off literal chaos gods?
Plus, who the fuck is gonna argue with a psyker so strong he can fight off literal chaos gods?
Apparently everyone, considering that no one has listened to Big E since he sat his ass on the Golden Throne.
In universe they are justified because Tyranids.
Tyranids won’t just kill every person on a planet, they will eat everyone, every animal, every tree, every insect and strip a planet back to the minerals and then do it again. They arent immoral because they have no morals.
In the face of that literally anything is justified even if it’s horrific.
In the face of that literally anything is justified even if it’s horrific.
What about things that are both horrific and counterproductive?
See: Papa Blueberry’s high level despair over the Imperium going from “Bad but with a clear cause” to “Directionless bureaucracy-bound theocracy with corpse starch”
This is an entire universe designed around what a fourteen year old thinks is cool. It is not equipped to answer Sartre’s question “why not commit suicide?”
The Imperium are the worst outcome for humanity.
The Interex would not have fallen to Chaos.
The fleet based societies wouldn’t have invaded and gone to war with literally all peaceful Xeno.
A sane federation of post dark age human planets could have been formed without the autocratic dictatorship and avoided war with half the galaxy.
This would have left humanity AND xenos better off and more capable of defeating emerging threats like the Tyranids.
I don’t disagree. I didn’t say the Imperium was the best option, I said it’s the best option humans could come up with. I may be a little cynical nowadays about how readily people will accept authoritarianism in the face of a crisis.
I miss r/40kLore. It was my favourite sub. But sometimes people do drugs and post on it.
Arbitor Ian - Every Faction is Bad
