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Sympathy for the heretic

Honestly, lately I've been coming around to the idea that chaos isn't worth rewriting them to be sympathetic. What they instead need is more clarity of thematic purpose. Chaos is built of horrible, self-destructive impulsives: blind, directionless rage, ruthless, self-serving ambition, insane (AND FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS, NON-QUEER OR FEMININE CODED) excess, and and worship of stagnation. The Imperium can bolter or chainsword as many cultists as they like, but they will never defeat chaos, because they don't have an answer to chaos. The things chaos feeds off of is the same things the Imperium's power structure relies on.

The real key to denying the Imperium's narrative is just not making everything a matter of pauldrons vs. spikey pauldrons. Have more perspectives outside the Imperium and Chaos. I think the newly introduced Leagues of Votann are a great example of this. Unlike the tech cult, they aren't superstitious and advance their science. They could do some much for the galaxy, but because fascists gotta fascist, they have to keep their heads down and focus on staying alive. The Kins' very existence makes the Imperium look buffoonish and self-destructive.

40k needs more like that. Factions that, with some disagreement, come together and present a united front against the threats facing the galaxy, but don't because the Imperium is in the way. Think covens of non-chaos aligned war witches, or rebel worlds, or actual Xenos races that aren't the Orcs or Tyranids.
 
I mean, considering the amount of rewriting that would have to be done anyway to make chaos sympathetic, it's not really that much more.
 
You would still need to work around the fact tha Imperium, quite obviously, is not the worst faction, and that the fascist narrative of being surrounded by enemies is depicted as true in the story.
It would take a lot of writing to work around that.
While just stating that, no, Imperium is full of shit, and the universe is not as terrible or hostile as they claim, takes lot less effort.
 
I mean I think what @tankdrop24 is saying is that the league of votons shows that the solution is to surround the Imperium with "enemies" who are straight up better people. Make the Imperium one of two evil empires struggling to control the galaxy and snuffing out the embers if hope these other polities represent
 
BossFight said:
I mean I think what @tankdrop24 is saying is that the league of votons shows that the solution is to surround the Imperium with "enemies" who are straight up better people. Make the Imperium one of two evil empires struggling to control the galaxy and snuffing out the embers if hope these other polities represent
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There already are enemies who are better people (if only marginally in some cases).
But unless they are going to get loads more attention than i expect they will, the setting will remain Imperium centric with most of the stories centering on the Imperium as a force for, not good as such, but as a force of not quite so fucked up.
Chaos, as it is, remains an excuse for the Imperium, a justification, and i don't think they deserve or need one.
 
tankdrop24 said:
Honestly, I think this is the core issue of the setting, when you get down to it, too much screentime for the imperium. Or let's be real here, too much attention focused on space marines.
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True, lot of the fash fanboyism in the setting could be, not fixed, but made less, if Imperium was not such a focus.
Having factions that are not so terrible, but still manage to survive, would help a lot.
But that would require basicly rewriting the whole setting because as it is, lot of the canon exists basicly to threaten Imperium, which means those threats would eat any weaker factions with ease.
 
tankdrop24 said:
Honestly, I think this is the core issue of the setting, when you get down to it, too much screentime for the imperium. Or let's be real here, too much attention focused on space marines.
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That's to be expected, tbh.
Although fans enjoy the underdog / meatwall aesthetic of regular human soldiers, on average they want to see the big time heroes who can chop up a bunch of orks, and there's only one source of those.
Valmond said:
But that would require basicly rewriting the whole setting because as it is, lot of the canon exists basicly to threaten Imperium, which means those threats would eat any weaker factions with ease.
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Well, yes and no. Tau exist, and people regularly stumble across new things in isolated frontiers. It's not like there's unbroken front lines between contiguous territorial space-nations.
 
Ralson said:
Well, yes and no. Tau exist, and people regularly stumble across new things in isolated frontiers. It's not like there's unbroken front lines between contiguous territorial space-nations.
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And the only reason Tau keep existing is that everyone else gets distracted with something else.
If everyone was not so busy fighting with everyone else, most major factions could just go and eat them.
 
Valmond said:
And the only reason Tau keep existing is that everyone else gets distracted with something else.
If everyone was not so busy fighting with everyone else, most major factions could just go and eat them.
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Honestly, that is a rather big issue with Warhammer 40k. Any side that is able to actually threaten the Imperium is either worse than the Imperium, or outright mindless.

The best change would probably be doing away with the whole trend of "The Tau are pitiful and only survive because nobody cares, the Eldar are on the constant brink of collapse, etcetera". Make the factions be able to actually stand up to the imperium and grind their forces to a standstill.

Make the Tau an actual interplanetary federation/empire that can, through the power of technology, actually fight off the Imperium to where they can't just roll over them, not even if they paid their full attention to them, as an example.
 
The Tau have canonically defeated Imperial counterattacks, Ork incursions, Tyranid fleets, etc.

They wouldn't be able to withstand the BIGGEREST EVER version of each of the above, but that's not a problem. It would be weird for the Imperium to really tighten its belt, deprioritize its other priorities, and throw a big-ass crusade at the Tau.
Rafin said:
I mean sure, if you dig deep, read between the lines and apply critical theory based on contemporary politics then you find all the fascism laced through everything always
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:eyebrow:
 
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Ralson said:
They wouldn't be able to withstand the BIGGEREST EVER version of each of the above, but that's not a problem. It would be weird for the Imperium to really tighten its belt, deprioritize its other priorities, and throw a big-ass crusade at the Tau.
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Yeah, my point is that there should be more factions that aren't as terrible as the Imperium and yet stand on the same ground and can properly match them even in a full blown assault. Because otherwise, you're just going to keep making the point of "to be the best, you have to be a monster or worse".
 
The whole "You can find fascism everywhere if you look for it" is such a weird take.
Like, yeah, sure, and?
It feels like the person is saying to stop worrying about fascism because it is everywhere anyway.
 
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There is a valid sentiment of "the search for traces of fascism has passed the point of diminishing returns," because the search for nearly anything can pass the point of diminishing returns.

The problem, of course, is that our times are such that there are wildly divergent ideas about where the point of diminishing returns is found. Some think that there is no point in ever objecting to anything fash-ey. Some thing that there is nearly always a point.
 
Valmond said:
The whole "You can find fascism everywhere if you look for it" is such a weird take.
Like, yeah, sure, and?
It feels like the person is saying to stop worrying about fascism because it is everywhere anyway.
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Sorry. I meant everything always in WH40k specifically. I phrased it badly, but my point was that this thread already (correctly) concluded that WH40k is full of fascism. Not just the Empire. The Chaos Space Marines are big macho factions following their strongest leader and conquering and killing anyone not like them. The Tau use education camps and mass sterilization on undesirables. The Eldar worship bygone glories and are massively racist towards everyone else. The Orks, even beyond might is right and war is glory, are built on racial chattel slavery (gretchins/grots) and have all kinds of ideas about how society should always be (green mostly). And so on and so forth.

So one can discard the setting because fascism is so deeply laced into everything and one just doesn't want to deal with it anymore. But then why even continue talking about WH40K in a constructive way?
 
Rafin said:
Sorry. I meant everything always in WH40k specifically. I phrased it badly, but my point was that this thread already (correctly) concluded that WH40k is full of fascism. Not just the Empire. The Chaos Space Marines are big macho factions following their strongest leader and conquering and killing anyone not like them. The Tau use education camps and mass sterilization on undesirables. The Eldar worship bygone glories and are massively racist towards everyone else. The Orks, even beyond might is right and war is glory, are built on racial chattel slavery (gretchins/grots) and have all kinds of ideas about how society should always be (green mostly). And so on and so forth.

So one can discard the setting because fascism is so deeply laced into everything and one just doesn't want to deal with it anymore. But then why even continue talking about WH40K in a constructive way?
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Because i genuinely like lot of the aesthetics and the lore and think the game could be better?
Because i think the game can contain fascism without supporting fascist narrative?
Because the very premise of this thread is about examining the setting and seeing how to remake it and improve it?
Because fascism is an actual pressing problem in the world and we should not just ignore it when it appears in fiction?
 
Out of all Chaos Gods, the easiest one to make into a good or noble entity is probably Khorne. Someone who values martial honour, the thrill of a fight and even the sheding of enemy blood, but despises cowards, butchers and those who prey on weak and defenless foes.

I would like to see human factions that are capable of telling the Imperium to fuck off. The problem with rebelions of imperial planets is that they are always destined to fail because the Imperium can literally drown them in men and machines.

"Sure you beat one imperial assault, but what about the other 100 or so?"
 
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Valmond said:
Because i genuinely like lot of the aesthetics and the lore and think the game could be better?
Because i think the game can contain fascism without supporting fascist narrative?
Because the very premise of this thread is about examining the setting and seeing how to remake it and improve it?
Because fascism is an actual pressing problem in the world and we should not just ignore it when it appears in fiction?
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I shouldn't have posted just after waking up. I ended up arguing all the wrong points.

My point is very much not that we should take Warhammer with all the fascism as is or leave it. My point is that there's fascism laced through everything currently, so if a faction, from a Doylist perspective, only existing as the "disgusting" foil for the fascists is enough to throw them out wholesale and start from scratch then we should start from scratch much more broadly.

In general I got lost in the weeds here. I was trying to counter Ralson's argument that there's no point to trying to rewrite a more sympathetic Nurgle faction due to how little of positive value there is there.

I don't know why I somehow managed to seem as if I supported the opposite point of what I was trying to support...

tl;dr ~ Fascism is bad. There's a lot of it in Warhammer presented as not bad. But we like the aesthetics. So we should try and preserve the aesthetics even among the factions that were originally written only as a foil to fascist heroes, if we find a way.

Edit: Or much more broadly speaking, I have a preference for retaining four factions noticeably inspired by all four Chaos Gods in any AU Chaos. Even if they were originally only created as terribad Other to be exterminated by ubermensch Space Marines. Even if I struggle coming up for ideas for some of them at first.
 
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Random thought about Nurgle: make the meme that Isha and Nurgle are actually a married couple into reality. They're two deities who ended up specializing into their niches, life and death. Or something like that.
 
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DestinyPlayer said:
Random thought about Nurgle: make the meme that Isha and Nurgle are actually a married couple into reality. They're two deities who ended up specializing into their niches, life and death. Or something like that.
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If the goal is to make Nurgle/Chaos less evil, then the dichotomy could be "unrestrained creation versus careful selection". Make Nurgle less about plague and rot, and more about spawning an endless of wildly varying and competing life, with the plagues just being the inevitable result of that; Isha's job would be to cull the more destructive variants as much as she can and promote the growth of the more useful and interesting ones. The Gardener of Nurgle's Garden.
 
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Rafin said:
The Tau use education camps and mass sterilization on undesirables.
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Nitpick: The only mention of Tau sterilizing anyone is a reference by an Imperial officer in a non-canon ending of Dark Crusade. The fandom just took it and ran with it because of course they did.

Canonically, a lot of humans who work for the Tau are descendants of invaders in the Damocles Gulf crusade (ref). So they don't even do it to actual enemy shock troops.

(However, the nature of these things is that fan beliefs bleed over to authors, so it'll probably become canon eventually. :V )
 
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Ralson said:
Nitpick: The only mention of Tau sterilizing anyone is a reference by an Imperial officer in a non-canon ending of Dark Crusade. The fandom just took it and ran with it because of course they did.

Canonically, a lot of humans who work for the Tau are descendants of invaders in the Damocles Gulf crusade (ref). So they don't even do it to actual enemy shock troops.
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Well, to be fair, the Ethereals are into shady stuff themselves and recently Tau have been seen killing their non Tau allies after one of their expansions.
 
Sabertooth said:
Well, to be fair, the Ethereals are into shady stuff themselves and recently Tau have been seen killing their non Tau allies after one of their expansions.
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There is an obsession by a certain segment of the WH40k fanbase, which often is now writing for 40k, to make the Tau "no better than the Imperium" for some random reason, even though arguably that contravenes the entire point of the Tau, which is that they're the idealistic and probably doomed species who are, unfortunately, just too small to matter.
 
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