And if we're going back to "authorial intent" then we can and should also go back to the authorial intent from first purposes, and you can absolutely do a wargame where every faction has a reason to go to war against every other faction, that you play on a tabletop with small groups of miniatures, without making the setting absurdly
Sure, but will it last or be successful? Warhammer came out in 1987. Can you honestly name another tabletop wargame from the late 80's? Even if you can, can you honestly say it has the same lifespan and cultural relevancy of 40k? 40k is liked and successful because it's grimdark, because that is the most defining thing setting it apart from it's competition.
Except this assumes that 'mind controlling daemons' and 'world eating bugs' are strictly speaking necessary to the setting. 40k has rewritten its background again and again and in fact has often rewritten it to make the Imperium less unsympathetic, so this doesn't really follow. The Tyranids (well, Genestealers, back in the day) could just as easily have been written as a functional polity which wasn't genocidal and happened to have buggy aesthetics, Chaos could have been retconned to be more benign, with the positive aspects of the Chaos Gods emphasized, they literally rewrote the Necrons entirely to make them sympathetic and capable of things like 'diplomacy' and 'having actual characters,' and it's not hard to say "the galaxy is constantly full of skirmishes because communications is slow, everyone borders everyone else, and no faction is actually particularly united."
And then it'll be like every other late 80's tabletop setting apeing the current political climate with space!cold war. 40k is grimdark because GW wants it grimdark, and the Imperium being an awful necessity's a large part of that grimdark formula.
The Necron rewrite was just good world design: you already have one mindless tide of death in the Tyranids, why not make the unloved machine faction unique with dynasties and politics and characters with unique, limited time models?
Except that infamous 40k blurb that coined the very term "grimdark" made it clear that the Imperium is the worst regime to ever rule humanity. That is part of what you dub the "grimderp". It isn't that the Imperium is necessary. It's that the Imperium, just like every other faction, makes the setting even worse, even more dystopian. Humanity is preyed upon by orcs and literal daemons and world eating bugs and in addition it slaves under the most cruel, most wasteful, hilariously inefficient regime history has ever known.
Because grimdark.
Yeah, thats my point. GW wrote the Imperium as is to add to the grimdark, the only disconnect is that I'm further arguing that because of this, GW would never allow a viable alternative, and if pressed would justify this as the Imperium being necessary.
It's always fascinating how people in the 40k fandom have a tendency to get all outraged about the (admittedly existent) Tau atrocities, while at the same time that is stuff the Imperium is doing on a regular and daily base on far larger scales.
The Joke
Your head.
The Imperium's atrocities are old news, but I'm not seeing how fans are sleeping on them when you literally can't bring up 40k without
several someones' mentioning them. Contrast to the Tau who are often presented in a better light than the Imperium, when, as you say, they're qualitatively just as awful.
Have you heard of a thing called a 'joke'?
I'm not saying, to be clear, 'it's just a joke' is a valid defense of anything, but you literally pulled out a humorous footnote that is debatable in whether it even seemed to be intended to be read plainly and then went on a rant seemingly assuming Susano is some manner of communist apologist or whatever for... a silly footnote that was intentionally made missable, positioned to be disconnected from his actual main point etc.
Maybe re-examine that quote and consider wether it was fully serious? Because I cannot civilly tell you quite how frustrating it is for someone to take your joking response to a joke, interpret it as serious, and then go off on a rant about it.
Especially when the poster before them had already recognized and responded to the joke with another one.
