Woke: That doesn’t even make sense, stop being weird
Bespoke: Space Marines can’t be feeeeeemale because they’re all gay for each other. It’s just a giant polycule. they ain’t talking about war when they call each other “battle brother”.
Woke: That doesn’t even make sense, stop being weird
Bespoke: Space Marines can’t be feeeeeemale because they’re all gay for each other. It’s just a giant polycule. they ain’t talking about war when they call each other “battle brother”.
I say this as someone who does enjoy some 40k media. It’s not a real satire.
It can’t be a satire until there’s a real alternative shown to the empire, at least hypothetically. Not while there are things in the lore that actually ‘justify’ a fascist response. Not until every rebellion stops being chaos or genestealers.
Speaking of genestealers, take them as an example. Nothing about them adds to a satire of fascism. They do the opposite. They show fascism as correct. Evil outsiders coming into poison the bloodlines of the people, to drive them to madness and revolution, and the only solution is to kill all of them. That’s not a satire.
You should play 40k Rogue Trader then, and just take the Iconoclast options all to their logical conclusions. I would rather not spoil the effect of it, but I can DM some good outcomes if you like.
Oh, I have! Rogue Trader is very good.
Well, I went heretic actually, but the iconoclast path is super coolAll I know about satire is that satire is supposed to exaggerate the real-life target it’s mocking and real-life fascists have specialized cum extraction units that anally probe their fallen brethren in order to extract their precious seed. So, if WH40k was an actual satire, then geneseeds should be stored in the prostate and can only be extracted when a battle brother anally fists their fallen brother with a specialized power fist. It’s not satire if your fictional portrayal of fascists downplays how ridiculous fascists are in real life.
Yeah, generally the best way to make fascists feel stupid is to make them seem weird or dorky.
Fascists are grossly incompetent, and that’s one of the things that’s missing in almost all “satirical” portrayal of fascists, which makes sense since Western society was only ever against fascism during WWII when they were forced to be. And it’s very telling how it was during 1939-1945 when satirical portrayal of fascists actually highlights how stupid and incompetent they are. Part of it was just how popular slapstick was during that time, but seriously, go watch actual satirical portrays of fascists during that time. The tone is completely different from modern “satirical” portrayals.
There’s the classic Schichlegruber Doing the Lambeth Walk, which took footage from Triumph of the Will and edited the footage so it looked like Nazis were dancing to some popular music that the Nazis themselves denounced as “Jewish mischief and animalistic hopping.” The obvious message of the short film was that Nazis were incompetent buffoons who only knew how to march and not even march that well.
The stupid and incompetent WH40k faction are orks, not space marines. Space marines are what fascists think they are while orks are what fascists actually are. Hell, even calling them orks gives them too much credit because orks aren’t that cowardly.
It is present in 40k tho.
TBH, not all Space Marines are sane, or competent. That’s really just a handful chapters, and specifically usually the Ultramarines. Marines Malevolent function basically in the exact same way that IRL special forces do (gleefully sadistic, murderhorny, criminal psychos), and basically everyone hates working with them as a result of that. It’s really only when viewed at an absolute surface level that any of the things that fascists supposedly “like” about 40k appear to be even remotely correct, and even then only if you’re wearing blinders.
The instant you start looking under the hood at things like the Ecclesiarchy & the Imperial Nobility it becomes extremely obvious that the rot is terminal & inextricable from how the Imperium as a society is structured.
Maybe the orks, but not space marines or the imperium of man as a whole. By incompetence, I don’t mean “setting up a self-defeating empire that’s doomed to failure” but “shooting yourself in the face because you held the bolter the wrong way.” In general, every single faction, even orks, gets buttered up because no one wants to be buy overpriced figures of a joke faction.
Sorry, I edited my reply right before you answered.
Fair enough, I suppose. I’ll grant you it’s unusual for most factions to be portrayed as actively stupid on like, an individual level. If I were to go looking for examples, again I would look at the Ecclesiarchy & Imperial Nobility first though.
Part of this though is that I think it takes some amount of talent as a writer to be able to make a plausibly stupid villain, and most 40k media while IMO not completely terrible is generally at best like Airport Pulp in terms of the quality of writing.
A good example of what I’m talking about, that I’m reminded of because I’ve been rewatching Breaking Bad recently, was the bit where Walt & Jessie are trying to steal P2P from the chemical warehouse. They successfully pull off their scheme to use thermite to fry the locking system, but then they don’t realize that a chemical warehouse isn’t going to carry shit in easily transportable quantities for individual use, and don’t think to steal a hand-truck, so they end up waddling around with a 50 gallon barrel of industrial chemicals between their legs.
What I’m getting at is that I don’t think most writers would care that much about the logistics of this kind of thing, or make a point of writing it into the story.
It’s not the lore that asserts the ‘fascist’ response is justified, that comes from brain-dead chuds “fans” who don’t know how to read subtext and take everything they read and see at face value, the lore is pretty clear on this point: the Imperium’s problems are its own creation (the entire meta-point of Chaos in the lore) and warfare isn’t solving it, merely delaying the inevitable and fueling the crisis
That’s not satire, that’s just a story of good vs evil
One of the major Genestealer Cults is literally a parody of the pharmaceutical industry and eugenics and a pretty good one at that
Not trying to say there are no elements that are good satire within it, or that there isn’t good writing at times. There is! I have enjoyed some 40k stuff myself, and it works well when the focus is on how terrible the imperium is.
What I am saying is that at large, in the big picture, it’s really not doing it well. For every “Wow this is terrible.” there’s often a large amount of “Well, it’s the best we’ve got.” or focus on the heroism/glory/valor of Space Marine #39181. The IP is trying to double dip in tone, which ultimately is what lets the fascist fanbase fester. Because there are elements in the setting and content creation that specifically appeal to them, that appeal to their narrative and fantasies.