In The Grim Darkness Of The 41st Millennium, Nobody Beats G.I. Joe!

To be fair to Lileath, it can be a headache figuring out how to avert the future one sees in visions.
And to be fair to Khaine, fuck Khaine.

SCDMR Aramatha said:

Wow, my jaw dropped with how GI Joe dealt with the King, how do you come with these unique solutions? Because I thought GI Joe had no choice but to kill the King. Amazing update as always.

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"Unique"? All I did was rip off G4 My Little Pony rip off Doctor Who rip off Leverage rip off everyone and their grandmother rip off A Christmas Carol, like thousands have before me. And use a plot device from one of my favorite G.I. Joe episodes I watched dozens of times on VHS as a kid. XD

Aaaand yeah, killing the King wouldn't have solved much. Sure, the next guy in line for the throne wouldn't have agreed to burn down the planet (a threat already taken care of), and he wouldn't have burned down innocent people daily... but not only would the horrible feudal system have remained in place, the next guy in line is kind of being blackmailed by Bondieu, with all the problems that follow.

Now, granted, you haven't yet seen the full extent of what G.I. Joe has just persuaded Aurelien Helldrake to actually do. That'll most likely be revealed next chapter.

Also question how come the Chaos gods didn't notice the Organitron gods and decide to gobble them up, it's a bad habit of theirs.

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The Chaos Gods are, to put it mildly, multitasking, between the entire freaking galaxy and everything going on inside the Warp itself.
Organitron and its local Warp, meanwhile, benefits from the Egyptian Pantheon, the gods of the Realm, the Heart Of Ponyland, and various mystical entities (such as the Lady Of The Lake) all joining forces to maintain a barrier that keeps the nasties out.
It's not a permanent solution. It won't keep the tide of daemons out forever. But, well, hopefully it doesn't have to - and like I said, the Chaos Gods have other things to focus on, especially since there's a Black Crusade planned a couple decades down the road.



As an aside, I can't help but notice folks don't seem bowled over by the reveals of Major Goodpart and Prince Raoul's respective secrets. XD
...Then again, I'm not sure people even remembered (or cared about) the fact the Major had a secret, and I know some people had guessed Raoul was secretly a psyker.

sun tzu said:

As an aside, I can't help but notice folks don't seem bowled over by the reveals of Major Goodpart and Prince Raoul's respective secrets. XD
...Then again, I'm not sure people even remembered (or cared about) the fact the Major had a secret, and I know some people had guessed Raoul was secretly a psyker.

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I actually assumed we'd learned Raoul was a psycher already and I had forgotten. It did make a lot of sense, I just thought it was effective recap

As for our Napoleon, that is cool. I wonder what the equivalent of funding the development of canning for logistics is.

sun tzu said:

As an aside, I can't help but notice folks don't seem bowled over by the reveals of Major Goodpart and Prince Raoul's respective secrets. XD
...Then again, I'm not sure people even remembered (or cared about) the fact the Major had a secret, and I know some people had guessed Raoul was secretly a psyker.

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I don't know if I knew or cared enough about Goodpart to be shocked by the twist, and I'm pretty sure the Bonnapartie name has never come up before in the story. Maybe if one or the other was changed or there was some ongoing mystery that had been resolved then it would be meaningful but as it is Goodpart goes from being the most skilled ally of GI Joe to being the most skilled ally of GI Joe and also he's been running a long standing con. Nothing really changed and it mostly just came across as another way of showing how GI Joe is running rings around everyone else in the setting. Maybe we'll look back on this in the resolution where we can see how this has been a master stroke in shaping their desired outcome however until that happens I can't really appreciate it for that.
Raoul I wasn't entirely sure if it was the truth that GI Joe had uncovered or if it was just what GI Joe thought was happening because theres only so many things that can explain everything about that situation and it was kinda overshadowed by the whole other thing it was dropped in as a side not to.

sun tzu said:

It's not gonna get super-relevant to Nobody Beats, but, my take on the Emperor is basically "the Age Of Strife equivalent of Doctor Mindbender decided to create the Age Of Strife equivalent of Serpentor, and, Terra's warlords and techno-barbarians having no G.I. Joe equivalent, this genetically-designed super-psychic transhuman fascist was successful in taking over the world. His personality flaws caught up to him when he tried to extend that success to the galactic stage, though".

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I kinda get why you might do that, but I feel like it's a missed opportunity. In this, and for the AdMech, the Imperium is essentially validating the initial assumptions of GI Joe. On every front, the Imperium is fascist stupidity devouring itself over and over again. I think that works to let GI Joe be unequivocally heroes, but it also plays into some boring insert tropes.

I think narratively there's some missed opportunities for GI Joe to make faulty assumptions that drive character growth and interesting narrative. Not that the Imperium is in any sense good, but having some of the things GI Joe assume to be obviously false turn out to be true puts them on the back foot for once.

I mean it fits the original media for GI Joe to never have to challenge their own core assumptions and be proven inevitably right by events, I'm not sure how the fundamental optimism of GI Joe translates if the Imperium is in any way justified in its assholery.

Overall, this fic is fun though, and I've enjoyed the updated play on "good guys win through the power of friendship"

LtDanAintGotLegs said:

but it also plays into some boring insert tropes.

I think narratively there's some missed opportunities for GI Joe to make faulty assumptions that drive character growth and interesting narrative.

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I think theres a problem of assumptions. While generally I would agree with the writing framing this is kind of a 'You do not have to hand it to Hitler' sort of deal.
If we were going to challenge GI Joes assumptions the fundamental metaphysics of the universe like Machine spirits or how the emperor got to the point of his 30K self would be more reasonable places than "Maybe the Grand Crusade had a point actually." but would still be very difficult without retconning or rewriting Horus Heresy lore. However as noted by Sun Tzu

sun tzu said:

It's not gonna get super-relevant to Nobody Beats

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The scale of this story is probably never going to extend outside of the sector, diving into lost history like that would be pretty surprising given the expected scope.

Fascism doesn't make the trains run on time, we don't have to pretend otherwise to make some narrative conflict.

I'm kind of wondering how Bondieu plans to make good on his threat against the prince, we already know this place doesn't get black ships regularly due to the incident with the psyker in prison.

Frankly if he has that kind of pull he should already be able to run roughshod over a mere system governor.

Dark as Silver said:

I think theres a problem of assumptions. While generally I would agree with the writing framing this is kind of a 'You do not have to hand it to Hitler' sort of deal.
If we were going to challenge GI Joes assumptions the fundamental metaphysics of the universe like Machine spirits or how the emperor got to the point of his 30K self would be more reasonable places than "Maybe the Grand Crusade had a point actually." but would still be very difficult without retconning or rewriting Horus Heresy lore. However as noted by Sun Tzu

The scale of this story is probably never going to extend outside of the sector, diving into lost history like that would be pretty surprising given the expected scope.

Fascism doesn't make the trains run on time, we don't have to pretend otherwise to make some narrative conflict.

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Yeah, the Imperium is a noxious abomination, I don't want to whitewash it at all. However, it's not just first principals fascism, it's societal level PTSD taken to the nth degree. The Long Night was existentially bad, and humanity has endured multiple near extinction level events. The Imperium itself kept getting kicked (or kicking itself) in the balls every time things looked to be getting better, and, absent GI Joe, is still one of the *less* bad factions in the setting. Good people feed themselves into its' ever hungry maw because the alternative - whether it's eaten by 'nids, corrupted by Chaos, or enslaved by the Dark Eldar, is generally *worse*. And that's *horrifying*. OP appears to be leaning more into OG Rogue Trader cracky parody, rather than the modern, much bleaker setting.

There's also the bit where if the Imperium was that incompetent and built on that big of a house of lies, how the heck has it endured 100 years, let alone 10,000? At base societal level you have to assume they're doing some things at least somewhat correctly, or they should have collapsed under the weight of their own corruption and incompetence, to say nothing of the numerous existential threats floating around in the wider Galaxy.


Most of the big picture stuff is irrelevant to the sector yes, but machine spirits existing and being a buffer against Chaos corruption and possession is canon, and by removing it you remove a gigantic unexpected attack vector against GI Joe.

LtDanAintGotLegs said:

There's also the bit where if the Imperium was that incompetent and built on that big of a house of lies, how the heck has it endured 100 years, let alone 10,000? At base societal level you have to assume they're doing some things at least somewhat correctly, or they should have collapsed under the weight of their own corruption and incompetence, to say nothing of the numerous existential threats floating around in the wider Galaxy.

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Be careful with this, last time I said that anthropomorphising objects seems to be a part of make believe in childhood development we got into a very long and stupid argument about where exactly the boundary is.
The thing I'd stress here is that they don't have to be doing things correctly, they just cannot be so hat on head stupid that they'd fail sooner.

LtDanAintGotLegs said:

Good people feed themselves into its' ever hungry maw because the alternative - whether it's eaten by 'nids, corrupted by Chaos, or enslaved by the Dark Eldar, is generally *worse*. And that's *horrifying*.

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This causation isn't true even if the part after the because might be. Good (or potentially good) people don't make a free and informed choice in favor of the Imperium basically ever - because the Imperium does not permit such a choice. Even skipping over the overwhelming non-availability of any information except Imperial misinformation, the only exits available to any but the tiniest minority are death (this proposal is acceptable) or rebellion (the Imperium will go to great lengths to make this unpleasant).

If you happen to inherit Rogue Trader status, you maybe have the option to decide how much you want to actually support the Imperium vs. walk away. For everyone else...

I actually know how the imperium persisted despite being a shitstain.

First of all while Emps was still a fascist dickbag during 30k he had a toolset for dealing with people that would become problems, i.e. the constant expansion, and his own personal super powers to paper over the cracks.

Afterwards the sheer size of the imperium meant that it would keep going, keep it's components at least nominally aligned, and it would have the resources to put down rebellions. Especially since it can do resource extraction without bringing people up to a threatening tech level, and isolate them from each other. This was especially facilitated by the fact that every other notable power was actively trying to be worse, up until the Tau and Necrons came along.

Essentially the imperium hasn't persisted so much as just used it's sheer mass and resources and size as ablative armor to collapse a bit at a time and slap a bandaid on itself each time, to the point it's about 90% bandaids by the 40k era.

I mean, realistically it is very difficult to believe that actual central Imperial authority could still exist by 40K.

And I don't mean 'if we assume the Imperium live down to their press', I mean 'at all given the material facts'. Their communication is terrible, their institutions cannot effectively centralize given travel times, and it's extensively established that local and regional leaders are not overwhelmingly loyal to the imperial core. They ought to have shattered like a car windshield run over by a Land Raider by now.

Technically they have, but the individual institutions have spread out and form ersatz governmental authority by invoking the imperium prime in their games against the locals and each other, so when actual imperial reps storm in everyone treats them like big shots because if they don't then it's free game on them for everyone else.

w34v3r said:

I'm kind of wondering how Bondieu plans to make good on his threat against the prince, we already know this place doesn't get black ships regularly due to the incident with the psyker in prison.

Frankly if he has that kind of pull he should already be able to run roughshod over a mere system governor.

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Bondieu can't really influence when the next Black Ship will show up, no.
But he absolutely can go "the Prince is a psyker! Under no circumstances can he be allowed to take the throne!", and politically it would be devastating.

LtDanAintGotLegs said:

Yeah, the Imperium is a noxious abomination, I don't want to whitewash it at all. However, it's not just first principals fascism, it's societal level PTSD taken to the nth degree. The Long Night was existentially bad, and humanity has endured multiple near extinction level events. The Imperium itself kept getting kicked (or kicking itself) in the balls every time things looked to be getting better, and, absent GI Joe, is still one of the *less* bad factions in the setting. Good people feed themselves into its' ever hungry maw because the alternative - whether it's eaten by 'nids, corrupted by Chaos, or enslaved by the Dark Eldar, is generally *worse*.

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Nnnnnot really.
Good people feed themselves into the Imperium's ever hungry maw because they're slaves, and the Imperium isn't asking, it's ordering.
(And my headcanon is that while the Orks, Drukhari, Chaos, and Tyranids may be horrifying, there are in fact various decent minor factions out there, human or otherwise - and that the Imperium destroys them whenever it finds them.)

There's also the bit where if the Imperium was that incompetent and built on that big of a house of lies, how the heck has it endured 100 years, let alone 10,000? At base societal level you have to assume they're doing some things at least somewhat correctly, or they should have collapsed under the weight of their own corruption and incompetence, to say nothing of the numerous existential threats floating around in the wider Galaxy.

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Some of it is just setting conceit - the medieval stasis trope applied to a sci-fi setting.
But on a Watsonian level... Well. The Imperium is surviving because, first, most of its energies and structures are devoted to keeping each individual part of it under control (even if it means crippling each individual part). Second, because it's massive enough that it can (and does) lose thousands of worlds and keep going (and I absolutely view the Imperium as being smaller and smaller every millennium - it's just that the rate at which it shrinks is slow). And thirdly, most importantly...

...it's just not in the interest of the other major galactic powers for the Imperium to collapse. From the perspective of both Commorragh and the Chaos Gods, the Imperium isn't even worthy of being called an enemy or a rival - it's a resource to be harvested. The Orks are just as happy to fight each other as the Imperium. And for the Asuryani, the Imperium is more of an environmental hazard (that can occasionally be wielded as a tool against certain problems). Really, the only ones who are serious about destroying the Imperium are the Necrons (in the sense of being serious about conquering most of everything and exterminating the rest - you know, once they get seriously going) and the Tyranids (who just want to eat everything), both of whom only have a fraction of their power currently active in the galaxy.

(A lot of the servants of Chaos - including most Chaos Marines - are serious about destroying the Imperium, but that's because they're suckers for Chaos's internal propaganda. They're marks.)

Frankly, even in the canon setting, the Horus Heresy ends with the Imperium pretty dominant. Chaos is still powerful, but it's at least somewhat contained. Nids obviously haven't arrived, Tau don't exist, Dark Eldar are more of a minor irritant from the perspective of the Imperium as a whole, Necrons aren't up. The big threat would be the Orks, but the big ork empires had all been crushed. There are still a lot of them, but they are manageable.

And then you have 10000 years of slow decay. I think that actually indicates that things aren't going well. Because many of the issues they have are the result of complacency letting things fester and get worse, combined with new novel things coming onto the scene.

Cosar said:

And then you have 10000 years of slow decay. I think that actually indicates that things aren't going well. Because many of the issues they have are the result of complacency letting things fester and get worse, combined with new novel things coming onto the scene.

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10000 years of slow decay is a record far stronger than any institution in real human history.

It would have been an uncommon accomplishment for the Imperium to exist at all by M32. (As sun tzu says, it's historical stasis tropes.)

Aineko said:

10000 years of slow decay is a record far stronger than any institution in real human history.

It would have been an uncommon accomplishment for the Imperium to exist at all by M32. (As sun tzu says, it's historical stasis tropes.)

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If only there were a major power in the setting who was a literal god of apathy and stasis and could harvest the Imperium's despair...

edit:

Cormoragh and the Dark Eldar are a nuclear reactor for Slaanesh, the Imperium and humanity are a sustainable wind farm for Nurgle and Khorne.

LtDanAintGotLegs said:

I kinda get why you might do that, but I feel like it's a missed opportunity. In this, and for the AdMech, the Imperium is essentially validating the initial assumptions of GI Joe. On every front, the Imperium is fascist stupidity devouring itself over and over again. I think that works to let GI Joe be unequivocally heroes, but it also plays into some boring insert tropes.

I think narratively there's some missed opportunities for GI Joe to make faulty assumptions that drive character growth and interesting narrative. Not that the Imperium is in any sense good, but having some of the things GI Joe assume to be obviously false turn out to be true puts them on the back foot for once.

I mean it fits the original media for GI Joe to never have to challenge their own core assumptions and be proven inevitably right by events, I'm not sure how the fundamental optimism of GI Joe translates if the Imperium is in any way justified in its assholery.

Overall, this fic is fun though, and I've enjoyed the updated play on "good guys win through the power of friendship"

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Basically the issue here is there's an incompatibility between the protagonist and antagonist forces that makes it feel like the Joes are OP inserts.

Namely, the problem is that the Imperium is fascist and fascists are incompetent fuckwads.

Hypercompetent protagonists work just fine when you give similar credit to the opposition. Think Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty - this pair works because they're both ridiculously smart people and the way they play off each other feeds the engagement of their stories. Holmes doesn't feel like an OP self-insert because his opposition stacks up well against him.

But OTOH with the Joes they're competent and the Imperium is a bloated fascist theocracy. That's not to say that the Imperium isn't dangerous, just that the Sun Tzu rightly has no interest in portraying a fascists as cool. He's playing it straight which means correctly showing the fascists as a bunch of thuggish, corrupt, self-defeating losers.

FunkyEntropy said:

Basically the issue here is there's an incompatibility between the protagonist and antagonist forces that makes it feel like the Joes are OP inserts.

Namely, the problem is that the Imperium is fascist and fascists are incompetent fuckwads.

Hypercompetent protagonists work just fine when you give similar credit to the opposition. Think Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty - this pair works because they're both ridiculously smart people and the way they play off each other feeds the engagement of their stories. Holmes doesn't feel like an OP self-insert because his opposition stacks up well against him.

But OTOH with the Joes they're competent and the Imperium is a bloated fascist theocracy. That's not to say that the Imperium isn't dangerous, just that the Sun Tzu rightly has no interest in portraying a fascists as cool. He's playing it straight which means correctly showing the fascists as a bunch of thuggish, corrupt, self-defeating losers.

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The Joes are OP. They're supposed to be, that's rather the point of them. But that's actually not weird or imbalanced in terms of fiction. Most stories, at least in genre fiction, have protagonists who greatly outclass most if not all of their adversaries.

Holmes might clash with Moriarty, but only sometimes. Most of the time he's taking down far less exalted opposition made meaningful only by the asymmetry of the position.

Even a putative everyman action hero most likely "makes ace" within a single action scene a few minutes long. G. I. Joe aren't that. They're the best collection of battlefield bunny-ears lawyers Earth can assemble. (That's why "kill a Carnifex with a sidearm" is a routine combat activity...)

This story shows G. I. Joe being capable and the Imperium of Man being shitty fascists, but those two things are only weakly connected.

FunkyEntropy said:

Basically the issue here is there's an incompatibility between the protagonist and antagonist forces that makes it feel like the Joes are OP inserts.

Namely, the problem is that the Imperium is fascist and fascists are incompetent fuckwads.

Hypercompetent protagonists work just fine when you give similar credit to the opposition. Think Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty - this pair works because they're both ridiculously smart people and the way they play off each other feeds the engagement of their stories. Holmes doesn't feel like an OP self-insert because his opposition stacks up well against him.

But OTOH with the Joes they're competent and the Imperium is a bloated fascist theocracy. That's not to say that the Imperium isn't dangerous, just that the Sun Tzu rightly has no interest in portraying a fascists as cool. He's playing it straight which means correctly showing the fascists as a bunch of thuggish, corrupt, self-defeating losers.

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Yeah… the continued inability for GI Joe to be wrong certainly isn't helping with that "cult of the operator" thing sun tzu mentioned? It's not just that they've been beating the facists regularly at their own game due to general competence mismatch, it's that the joes have generally proven to be constantly correct about everything they assume, and their decisions very rarely have any negative consequences for them.

Like, taking a traumatized sanctioned psyker into their midst probably should have resulted in some shit going wrong, simply because they don't have the experience to safely deal with the threats that psykers pose. Helping people recover from trauma is incredibly difficult and being in good conditions where you're treated well can only do so much to prevent the kind of attacks that tend to make shit go really badly for anybody in the general vicinity of a psyker.

The only time GI Joe winds up portrayed in anything approaching a negative light so far in the story is when it comes to the people responsible for their oversight. The comments about how, for example, members of GI Joe can't be openly gay or lesbian because of military conduct laws? Where actual members of the joes just kind of pretend it's not happening because those laws are silly and they're a band of comrades in arms who know better? Yes that's an accurate representation of the period appropriate military, but it's pretty much the only time GI Joe has done anything even slightly wrong over the course of the story, and the natural conclusion it draws the reader to is that these hypercompetent commandos should have less oversight.

Like, you don't need to portray the facists as competent to achieve this. The orks and tyranids could have posed a reasonable threat to GI Joe, with their biology and technology enabling them to do shit that no other enemy the joes have encountered can. Instead they just kinda… fell over and died. En masse. Yes GI Joe are the heroes who save the day, yes they're extremely good at what they do, but they still struggle.

If the necrons wind up showing up and posing as little threat as the orcs and nids… I think I'd probably just drop the story.

I do not mind how GI Joe is managing so far, sometimes the fascist just needs a good skewering, considering how often fans have made excuses for the Imperium obnoxiously often, even on this forum.

I do like when the Joes face setbacks, that's how we see they really are that good.

So like, the CCs. Some of the first real 'damage' they've taken! Or Ironhide vs The Titan with no kit, or locked in a forcefield with a Knight. Cut off and facing an enormous ork horde. Those were some of the coolest bits.

ShyPerson said:

I do not mind how GI Joe is managing so far, sometimes the fascist just needs a good skewering, considering how often fans have made excuses for the Imperium obnoxiously often, even on this forum.

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I mean yes, the imperium can absolutely always have more mud flung on it, lord knows people need more reminders that there is no heroic faction in canon 40K (rip tau you didn't deserve what GW did to you) but this very clearly doesn't want to just be a popcorn flick. Sun Tzu's character writing and discussions about the narrative themes and impacts the characters are having clearly show just how much effort has gone into making this fic smart. But the fact that the joes are having less trouble with Warhammer fourty kay than the Avatar did in Sun Tzu's other quest, with worm? It… kinda detracts from it. At least it does for me. The GI Joe themes of American exceptionalism and imperialism are getting more and more pervasive and harder and harder to ignore.

darkstarling said:

So like, the CCs. Some of the first real 'damage' they've taken!

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They casually replaced the worst offenders with robotic fakes and have taken all of maybe a week in-story to find an angle to get rid of them with barely any mention by leaning on their contacts in this most recent chapter. This was not "damage" this was their shoes getting a bit of mud on them.

TheLurker said:

Like, taking a traumatized sanctioned psyker into their midst probably should have resulted in some shit going wrong, simply because they don't have the experience to safely deal with the threats that psykers pose. Helping people recover from trauma is incredibly difficult and being in good conditions where you're treated well can only do so much to prevent the kind of attacks that tend to make shit go really badly for anybody in the general vicinity of a psyker.

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Not to single this out (in case you feel like I'm using this to disregard the rest of your post, I just want to talk about this particular line of thought here), but I think this is kind of an interesting idea because it is taking the Imperium line about the dangers psykers pose and making the cardinal sin of assuming the fascist regime is telling the truth.

This is just my personal interpretation of the WH40K franchise, but I take everything the Imperium says about anything with a monumental mountain of salt. They are, again, a bloated fascist theocracy. They care about exercising control, and in this case maintain that control in part by keeping the population afraid and at each others throats. Fascism loves using minority populations as scapegoats to keep the masses pointing fingers at each other so they don't turn around and start pointing fingers at them, the actual source for many of the populaces woes. It's not too much of a stretch to read into it that the Imperium is doing exactly that here with pskyers (and mutants).

Again, this is just my personal interpretation of the setting. I'm just considering the source of information (the Imperium) and adjusting accordingly.

FunkyEntropy said:

Not to single this out (in case you feel like I'm using this to disregard the rest of your post, I just want to talk about this particular line of thought here), but I think this is kind of an interesting idea because it is taking the Imperium line about the dangers psykers pose and making the cardinal sin of assuming the fascist regime is telling the truth.

This is just my personal interpretation of the WH40K franchise, but I take everything the Imperium says about anything with a monumental mountain of salt. They are, again, a bloated fascist theocracy. They care about exercising control, and in this case maintain that control in part by keeping the population afraid and at each others throats. Fascism loves using minority populations as scapegoats to keep the masses pointing fingers at each other so they don't turn around and start pointing fingers at them, the actual source for many of the populaces woes. It's not too much of a stretch to read into it that the Imperium is doing exactly that here with pskyers (and mutants).

Again, this is just my personal interpretation of the setting. I'm just considering the source of information (the Imperium) and adjusting accordingly.

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See I would absolutely accept that reasoning if it weren't for the mountains of canon writing that give us in-character perspectives of psykers of all walks of life and backgrounds losing control and causing problems through no fault of their own. If that's another conceit of the fic that Sun Tzu is adjusting, like declaring that machine spirits aren't real, than very well, but it's cutting off yet another potentially interesting avenue to explore GI Joe being challenged by the setting. And again, importantly, the imperium's answer doesn't have to be correct. If being a psyker does come with perils and hazards due to the nature of the warp, and the joes found a humane and empathetic way of dealing with those threats, thereby proving that the Imperium's cruelty is unnecessary even in the face of the "evils" that its fanboys use to justify it's existence, that would be much more interesting to me.

EDIT: Hell the eldar literally do this already, their entire race are psykers, but they have methods of training, meditation, and cultural treatment that pretty much completely eliminate the risk of psyker powers "going wrong" or whatever. The problem is that the imperium doesn't and it's sanctioned psykers are all heavily traumatized and incredibly undertrained.

Frankly I think psykers being actually that dangerous should be tossed in the bin. I think one of Games Workshop worst mistakes was to conform the setting to the fascists mindset of intolerance being the correct choice. Including making psykers really that dangerous.