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In The Grimdark of Fanfiction -40k

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Wobulator said:
Man, I would love to see your sources on this.
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Which claim, specifically? The Imperium being genocidal? The Imperium wiping out or annexing other polities? The imperium being a shitty military dictatorship run by a strongman? That the Imperium directly helped Chaos get a massive boost across the board?

BC like, most of those are just obviously true, and the House Heresy gave Chaos a massive boost and wouldn't happen if the Imperium didn't exist.

None of my claims are rlly especially controversial, I feel like?
 
veteranMortal said:
Which claim, specifically? The Imperium being genocidal? The Imperium wiping out or annexing other polities? The imperium being a shitty military dictatorship run by a strongman? That the Imperium directly helped Chaos get a massive boost across the board?

BC like, most of those are just obviously true, and the House Heresy gave Chaos a massive boost and wouldn't happen if the Imperium didn't exist.

None of my claims are rlly especially controversial, I feel like?
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....do you want to talk in good faith or do you want to toss out bad faith argument after bad faith argument? I asked you to provide sources. Will you?
 
veteranMortal said:
Sources for what? You can't just demand sources in general, because I don't know what, specifically, is being disputed?
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"explicitly a rancidly genocidal fascist storm of conquest that destroyed a multitude of morally superior societies and peoples, led to vast amounts of suffering and gave Chaos a massive shot in the arm."
 
Wobulator said:
"explicitly a rancidly genocidal fascist storm of conquest that destroyed a multitude of morally superior societies and peoples, led to vast amounts of suffering and gave Chaos a massive shot in the arm."
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A valid interpretation as far as I am concerned. Official media all to often softballs how bad the Imperium truly is. And despite its awfulness being one of it's distinguishing features, fans always seem to come to bat for it, try weasel away it with "its necessary" card, like it's not playing right into the propaganda that regimes try to justify their terribleness with.
 
Like what do you think "brought into compliance" means?

it's not the United Nations. It's the Imperium. And it did imperialism to every human world out there most of whom didn't want to join for the obvious reason that being made a colony to a giant empire sucks.

Like we have the interex as an obvious example of a better, more humane society destroyed by the imperium's horrible self perpetuating imperialism hatewheel, but honestly, even without that more detailed instance, you don't have to be an english major to recognize Compliance for the ugly euphemism it is.

imperialism is by nature coercive and awful, andthat before we get into all the non human societies that were just flat out xenocided.
 
Wobulator said:
"explicitly a rancidly genocidal fascist storm of conquest that destroyed a multitude of morally superior societies and peoples, led to vast amounts of suffering and gave Chaos a massive shot in the arm."
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which part of this are you quibbling?

that the imperium committed genocide? it definitely did.

that the great crusade was a conquest? it definitely was

that the imperium was fascist? i mean, people can and have quibbled the exact definition of fascism re: the imperium but its very definitely a militaristic authoritarian regime, that's not exactly controversial

destroyed a multitude of morally superior societies and peoples? the diasporex, the interex, almost definitely many others, both explicitly shown in the fiction and implicitly as part of the crusade.

that it led to vast amounts of suffering? most people in the imperium live on a world that is at best "generally unpleasant"

that it gave Chaos a massive shot in the arm? Heresy, the Horus
 
veteranMortal said:
which part of this are you quibbling?

that the imperium committed genocide? it definitely did.

that the great crusade was a conquest? it definitely was

that the imperium was fascist? i mean, people can and have quibbled the exact definition of fascism re: the imperium but its very definitely a militaristic authoritarian regime, that's not exactly controversial

destroyed a multitude of morally superior societies and peoples? the diasporex, the interex, almost definitely many others, both explicitly shown in the fiction and implicitly as part of the crusade.

that it led to vast amounts of suffering? most people in the imperium live on a world that is at best "generally unpleasant"

that it gave Chaos a massive shot in the arm? Heresy, the Horus
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Now here's a question: What was the alternative? If the Imperium does not form, then what happens? Because my guess is "the Beast kills everything". The Imperium absolutely sucks, but to say that it was the worst option is what I'm disagreeing with.
 
Wobulator said:
Now here's a question: What was the alternative? If the Imperium does not form, then what happens? Because my guess is "the Beast kills everything". The Imperium absolutely sucks, but to say that it was the worst option is what I'm disagreeing with.
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That's a false dichotomy.

there were other options than "massive horrible imperialistic forgive extractive despotic state" that the pre-emperor could have gone with. He didn't because he's just kinda a shitty person.

And that's assuming the "beast" had to be "dealt with". Apparently, the Krork were capable of civilization and diplomacy, the idea that they had to be destroyed at any cost seems more imperial propaganda than absolute truth.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
That's a false dichotomy.

there were other options than "massive horrible imperialistic forgive extractive despotic state" that the pre-emperor could have gone with. He didn't because he's just kinda a shitty person.

And that's assuming the "beast" had to be "dealt with". Apparently, the Krork were capable of civilization and diplomacy, the idea that they had to be destroyed at any cost seems more imperial propaganda than absolute truth.
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Ah yes, the vast and great diplomatic achievements of the Orks. How could I forget.
 
Wobulator said:
Ah yes, the vast and great diplomatic achievements of the Orks. How could I forget.
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are you going to make a point here?

"Kill all the aliens and force all the humans to join our fascist distatorship at gunpoint" is not in fact the only solution to the problems humanity in WH40k. In fact, the actual history that plays out in-verse showed that it wasn't even a solution- or at least, not a successful one.

That was my point.

do you have one, or are you just going to keep making snipes without actually expressing a stance?
 
Wobulator said:
Now here's a question: What was the alternative? If the Imperium does not form, then what happens? Because my guess is "the Beast kills everything". The Imperium absolutely sucks, but to say that it was the worst option is what I'm disagreeing with.
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What a fascinating change of gear from "you can't prove that!" to "well anyway there isn't any alternative"

Like, there are many alternatives - the Orks are noted to be beginning to move in the direction of coherent governance in the war of the beast, iirc, and even if they weren't, polities like the Diasporex, the Admech or the Interex are likely strong enough to withstand the Green Tide, at the very least.

Alternatively, the Emperor could've come up with a solution that wasn't "I must become military dictator"

Like, idk, once he unified Terra he could've just gone out with his Thunder Warriors and whupped whatever Orks were being troublesome at Ullanor or wherever.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
And that's assuming the "beast" had to be "dealt with". Apparently, the Krork were capable of civilization and diplomacy, the idea that they had to be destroyed at any cost seems more imperial propaganda than absolute truth.
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veteranMortal said:
Like, there are many alternatives - the Orks are noted to be beginning to move in the direction of coherent governance in the war of the beast, iirc, and even if they weren't, polities like the Diasporex, the Admech or the Interex are likely strong enough to withstand the Green Tide, at the very least.
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I'm baffled at how anyone can read the War of the Beast get "The Orks were becoming civilized" from it. They were becoming worse, as they organized into a coherent force of omnicide. That is not the same as being a civilization which you can speak with.

Remember, the Orks are weapons and the Krork are better weapons. Their idea of diplomacy is "surrender so we can use your population as slaves and make more weapons by working you to death until your entire species dies off" and their idea of civilization is "organized form of warfare" versus their previous horde of gang-like brutes.

The Krork aren't civilized, they are the antithesis of civilization.

veteranMortal said:
Like, idk, once he unified Terra he could've just gone out with his Thunder Warriors and whupped whatever Orks were being troublesome at Ullanor or wherever.
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Eh, and how would that deal with all the many, many humans and xenos in-between which would not necessarily want a warfleet to march through their space? Also, where would he get a fleet without Mars? And how would he destroy all the orks that were gathering without violating other people's territory? Nevermind that the TW would never be enough to face the Orks on the ground.

The plan was "1. form empire and unify humanity quickly-> 2. kill orks and other threats as we conquer the galaxy-> 3. reform empire into something not shitty and actually nice" but all kinda went to hell (literally) midway through part 2.


Mind you, that doesn't mean I agree with the guy you were arguing with about how the IoM is "absolutely necessary".
 
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Also even if you do go with the idea that assembling a massive superpower to go Ork-hunting is 100% necessary that doesn't mean the Great Crusade forcing worlds under it's heel and genociding basically every alien it could (with few exceptions) was required. Most of the worlds they came across were brought into the fold without violence, the Emperor could have got an empire that's 90% of the size of the canon Imperium and probably got to Ullanor a century early. But no, he just had to squash everybody else ASAP.

The genocides were about as necessary as Curze stringing up people's faces on his armour.
 
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Mr. Happy said:
Got a source for that?
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Sons of the Emperor anthology.

The book said:
Wars happened, and deeds of violent compliance driven by necessity. Those are the actions history remembers from that age. But for every world or culture that resisted, or denied the offer of friendship, for every xenos race that baulked and drew arms at the approach of mankind, a hundred worlds rejoiced and hymned their relief to see the expeditionary fleets take high anchor in their skies. The Great Crusade, so called by those who came later, was for the most part bloodless. Though the expeditionary fleets raced out from Terra like the fragments of a nail bomb, they voyaged not to destroy but to locate the lost and scattered branches of the human species, to rebuild and re-light a galactic culture that Strife and Old Night had, together, put asunder.
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The story it's in does not frame these statements in a context where it would be natural to treat it as in-universe Imperial propaganda.

So yes, there is some support for the argument that the Imperium could likely have crushed the Orks faster and been 90% as large as it was, if it simply said "Ok, fine then, enjoy being alone" to human worlds who could not be persuaded to join diplomatically, provided they weren't an active danger. It leads to two conclusions which aren't as conflicting as they might appear to be at first glance:
1. The "Great Crusade" was not as bad as it is often portrayed as being. Arguably it was mostly good, until Chaos messed things up.
2. The bad parts of the "Great Crusade" were probably not as necessary and justified as they are often portrayed as being. They were mostly a tragic waste and pointless violence driven by arrogance, viciousness, shortsightedness, or error.

Dethstroke said:
The plan was "1. form empire and unify humanity quickly-> 2. kill orks and other threats as we conquer the galaxy-> 3. reform empire into something not shitty and actually nice" but all kinda went to hell (literally) midway through part 2.
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It's the classic revolutionary dilemma. You create something terrible as an intermediate stage to reach something better (with varying degrees of sincerity), but such things have a bad habit of getting stuck in the "something terrible" phase quite often. A story as old as mankind, probably.
 
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At the end of the day, the 40k galaxy is an incredibly shitty place. Basically every single thing in it wants nothing more than to murder everything else.
In this sort of environment, having a thousand isolated empires is an excellent way to have everyone die as they get swallowed up one by one- by Chaos, by Orks, by Tyranids, by whatever. You need to unify, and quickly. This also does not gel well with diplomatically assimilating everyone, because people are generally really not fans of being assimilated.

Did the Great Crusade do some shitty things? Absolutely. The alternative, however, was far worse- and I have yet to see anyone offer any serious alternatives.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
there were other options than "massive horrible imperialistic forgive extractive despotic state" that the pre-emperor could have gone with.
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He did go with the other options before the Age of Strife and Iron War. It folded over thanks to galaxy being such shitty place.

Chloe Sullivan said:
He didn't because he's just kinda a shitty person.
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You seem to missunderstood entire point of Emperor. He was not some villain that you rooted for to get his come uppance. He was that one good guy in such shitty galaxy not even his god like power was enough for him to actually bring reason and freedom to humanity. Give him some more time and he was going to dissapear and let humanity make its own future as he had before but first he had to stop the armageddon pileup that was happening.

Then he got shanked by his most trusted son and saw his works twisted away from his intention. Which was what made it a tragedy (which GW seem to forget about but nvm that.)

There is only one person responsible for IoM of later years being oligarchic fascist dystopia and that person is not Emperor, it is Lorgar. I mean seriously Lorgar acts exactly like 40k Inquisitors up untill Monarcia where he was humilited for it by Emperor. If Emperor wanted what he was doing he would not stop him. Hell I think Emperor was planing to purge Lorgar for acting like such fascistic little shit and got convinced otherwise by other primarchs but I can't find the source for it so take it with pinch of salt.

In short everything you said about Emperor is actually Lorgar working around the clock to twist Emperors vision. In fact in the end of Horus Heresy there is almost nothing left behind of Emperors plans and instead Lorgar Book takes the place of it. The book Emperor banned btw. So blaming the Emperor is very misguided IMO.


Chloe Sullivan said:
And that's assuming the "beast" had to be "dealt with". Apparently, the Krork were capable of civilization and diplomacy, the idea that they had to be destroyed at any cost seems more imperial propaganda than absolute truth.
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I mean if you think Krok is more worthy to live than humanity sure but even Eldar made a point to destroy any Ork concentrations. If it was possible to deal with them Eldar would have done it at some point in last 60 million years. And remember Eldar was allies with them in the War in Heaven so they have reason to try it. Since they haven't we can take the idea of it being impossible as canon.
 
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Tasoli said:
There is only one person responsible for IoM of later years being oligarchic fascist dystopia and that person is not Emperor it is Lorgar. I mean seriously Lorgar acts exactly like 40k Inquisitors up untill Monarcia where he was humilited for it by Emperor. If Emperor wanted what he was doing he would not stop him. Hell I think Emperor was planing to purge Lorgar for acting like such fascistic little shit and got convinced otherwise by other primarchs but I can't find the source for it so take it with pinch of salt.
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We know that there was talk of possibly putting down the Word Bearers - at the rumour level, but Russ and Magnus for definite came out strongly against the idea - per The First Heretic (which also notes quite specifically that it wasn't just a case of, "Lorgar is doing everything fine as far as he knows, then suddenly Monarchia gets levelled"; at least four other Primarchs - Horus, Guilliman, Magnus and Corax - had all told Lorgar to knock off the pogroms and shit before the Emperor had to get involved; and considering that Corax and Magnus disagree on basically everything, and hate each other to boot, well).
 
The problem with Emps is that he fostered a xenophobic, supremacist, and dare I say fascistic society. It's pretty simple: he was a tyrant who presumed to know what's best for the galaxy, and so attempted to mould a new humanity after his own image, while excusing himself through the self-justification that it was all in the name of survival.
 
Baron Ouroboros said:
The problem with Emps is that he fostered a xenophobic, supremacist, and dare I say fascistic society. It's pretty simple: he was a tyrant who presumed to know what's best for the galaxy, and so attempted to mould a new humanity after his own image, while excusing himself through the self-justification that it was all in the name of survival.
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Given the state of the galaxy, it kinda was required for survival
 
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