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Unpopular opinions we have on fiction

"Let's go! open up, it's time for Unpop!"
Alright, time for my mandatory Unpopular Opinions Post. Let's get this over with.
"You're late. You know the deal. You can Omelaspost for a Funny, or you can make an interesting post for an Insightful."
Here in Unpopular Opinions Poster Civilisation, no one chooses to make interesting posts. It's better to make the one joke everyone knows for the Funny, rather than risk your entire life for just one Insightful rating.
"Tomorrow you better not be late, or I'll have you posting for Informative reactions as punishment."
"Yes sir, sorry, I won't be late next time."

Down here, us Omelasposters only get one Rating a day. One Funny rating is just enough to get your post:reaction ratio to the next day. But that's the life of Unpopular Opinions Poster Civilisation. If you wanna survive, you have to Unpopular Opinions Post. Every Omelasposter has the same goal, and that's to make it to the top thread, where all the Brothers Karamazovposters live. Except, most Brothers Karamazovposters are born on the top thread. If you're an Omelasposter, there's only one way up, and that is through the Temple of Unpopular Opinions. The Temple of Unpopular Opinions is the only structure on SV that combines the bottom thread to the top thread. To make it up, you have to post an impossibly hard Unpopular Opinion Reply that no Omelasposter has ever completed. And that's assuming you even get the chance to post the reply in the thread. The inside of the Temple is protected by a barrier and the only way an Omelasposter gets past the barrier is if they've earned a gilded post. I've never even tried getting a gilded post before, but if I'm going to rank up to a Brothers Karamazovposter one day, I'm gonna have to.
 
Alane1 said:
On the Primarchs themselves I also will never not be amused that one of the most stable well-adjusted and resistant to chaos primarchs, Guilliman grew up in Space Rome with good parents, one of which told off Konrad Curze to his face in defiance of Curze trying to kill her.
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The Emperor claimed up and down to be doing everything he did for the sake of humanity, and yet one of the most loyal and well adjusted primarchs is the one who was raised the most like an ordinary man and probably the least like the Emperor would have raised him.
 
king of hybrids said:
One of the real ironies is that odds are most of the loyal Primarchs and legions would have been the first to receive a visit from the Custodes once the webway was complete
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The Primarchs and Space Marines were always expendable. It's funny that Robute was indeed the only one thinking "Ok so what do we do after the war is over?" Simply the wisest of them
 
I have to admit part of me is curious would have resulted if let's say the emperor wasn't able to get to Guilliman before the whole heresy business went down and he had just been left to his own devices in the millennia afterwards.
 
Fantasy and historical dramas should embrace kings wearing crowns atop helmets in battle. Especially as Henry V having part of his crown cut away with an axe in the melee at Agincourt is a metal-as-hell image and I'm sad I've never seen it depicted or imitated.
 
I wouldn't say expendable so much as designed for a purpose. Magnus was going to be his webway SysAdmin, Gulliman would be in charge of paperwork, Dorn and Peter doing public works etc. By and large you just stop making more regular Marines outside of the amount required for security
 
I hold that people think way too short-term when the end of the Legions is discussed. Rather than "an Ararat for the Astartes", I think you'd be looking at much more of a slow withdrawal and withering away over centuries or millennia, perhaps following expeditions to fully chart the Webway (which had only reached the Canticle City by the time of the Heresy, after all) and as the Primarchs (at least, per Malcador, those who could be reconciled to new roles) assumed new tasks re governing the changing Imperium.
 
bluntblade said:
I hold that people think way too short-term when the end of the Legions is discussed. Rather than "an Ararat for the Astartes", I think you'd be looking at much more of a slow withdrawal and withering away over centuries or millennia, perhaps following expeditions to fully chart the Webway (which had only reached the Canticle City by the time of the Heresy, after all) and as the Primarchs (at least, per Malcador, those who could be reconciled to new roles) assumed new tasks re governing the changing Imperium.
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Yeah though there were definitely ones who'd simply have to be...discarded. Most prominently Angron and Konrad.
 
Malcador literally tells someone that the intention is to do to the Astartes what was done to the Thunder Warriors, and in general Malcador does make it clear that he considers the desires of the Primarchs to be gloried to be totally pointless (in that short story where he nearly force chokes Horus to death, for the clearest example).

In the early HH books there's this persistent theme around the Space Marines wondering what point they'll have when the Great Crusade is done, and everything about the Primarch family drama and the future of their very many large adults sons is eventually contrasted against the Emperor doing all kinds of shady psychic science. The future he's building is for what he considers to be true humanity: psychic but not engineered. Magnus at least had a long term purpose and perhaps some of them might have been kept around (there's an ongoing bit about the Emperor wanting his own roomies across deep time), because in Fury of Magnus there's a vision of the intended future where Perturabo seems to be alive. But equally when the Emperor tries to get Magnus on side and Magnus brings up the issue of mutations among his legion the Emperor tells him that he'll just make him more.

Even without Malcador's statement on the matter the future looked pretty bleak. In the end, it's the Imperium of Man, not the Imperium of Gene Manipulated Superhumans.
 
MysticKnightJoe said:
Yeah though there were definitely ones who'd simply have to be...discarded. Most prominently Angron and Konrad.
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People say this but...

Was the end of the Great Crusade ever achievable? Like, everyone takes it as an article of faith that the Imperium was right on the cusp of conquering the galaxy, but it...wasn't, based on the fluff we've been given? There were huge swathes of space left where no human had ever tread, bypassed Ork empires that still would have required centuries if not millennia to erase, Eldar running around well inside the Imperium's borders, and no matter how determinedly they stuck to the Imperial Truth there's always gonna be a Chaos problem unless the Emperor secretly had some plan to shut down the Eye of Terror, the Maelstrom, and other warp storms.

When Malcador talks about how they're totally gonna purge the Space Marines in the near future he sounds like an idiot. The job's not done. The job will probably never be properly done given the persistence of some of the involved threats. The Legions may have shrunk, but it also seems unlikely they would have entirely gone away as long as there are crazy sentient fungus, and we know how hard it is to get rid of those. Even the Imperium of the Great Crusade could have been at that job still ten thousand years later.

Then at some point they'd have tripped over the Necrons or the Tyranids would have shown up and now the Space Marines definitely aren't going away.
 
Night said:
People say this but...

Was the end of the Great Crusade ever achievable? Like, everyone takes it as an article of faith that the Imperium was right on the cusp of conquering the galaxy, but it...wasn't, based on the fluff we've been given? There were huge swathes of space left where no human had ever tread, bypassed Ork empires that still would have required centuries if not millennia to erase, Eldar running around well inside the Imperium's borders, and no matter how determinedly they stuck to the Imperial Truth there's always gonna be a Chaos problem unless the Emperor secretly had some plan to shut down the Eye of Terror, the Maelstrom, and other warp storms.

When Malcador talks about how they're totally gonna purge the Space Marines in the near future he sounds like an idiot. The job's not done. The job will probably never be properly done given the persistence of some of the involved threats. The Legions may have shrunk, but it also seems unlikely they would have entirely gone away as long as there are crazy sentient fungus, and we know how hard it is to get rid of those. Even the Imperium of the Great Crusade could have been at that job still ten thousand years later.

Then at some point they'd have tripped over the Necrons or the Tyranids would have shown up and now the Space Marines definitely aren't going away.
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The Great Crusade was never going to take over the entire galaxy no. The goal was to go as far out as you can before your resources are stretched to the bone and then migrate into the webway with everyone you could get. By the start of the second book everything had already begun to break down, the core was demanding tribute from the periphery that would create uprisings and civil wars as is and totally destroy any chance of further expansion.

It's probably easiest to think of the Great Crusade as in part an ideological project and in part creating a buffer zone; break all of the Ork Empires around the edges, secure them with fortress worlds, break into the Webway on Terra with the breathing room this grants you.

But assume for a moment that Lorgar makes his Roll to Disbelieve the Chaos Gods or Erebus trips and breaks his neck sometime before Rising. You still likely see a full out Administratum vs Periphery civil war at some point while the Emperor has his Do Not Disturb sign up as the various power centers attempt to solidify their position as doing what they believe Emps wants. Any progress to "pacifying" the borders will grind to a halt there.
 
Night said:
Was the end of the Great Crusade ever achievable?
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Considering the characters involved, does it matter?

Like IMHO the great crusade was always destined to fail in some way- if it wasn't chaos it'd be something else. If it wasn't the Horus Heresy, it'd be the Khans Karnage or Rouboute's Rebellion or whatever. If none of that happened, then the Imperium circa great crusade would have ran into the same problem the Imperium circa 40K is dealing with, in that the imperium would eventually grow too large to effectively administrate.

But like, the thing is, again, the great crusade being kind of doomed to fail, impossible to complete, whatever, all that is stuff that probably would not occur or be seriously considered to the Emperor or Malcador, both of whom are defined by having a hubris as godlike as their power and a vision stretching into eternity with eyes that can't see past their nose. Malcador is a little better, but only in the sense that he possesses an understanding of humanity and people the emperor lacks.
 
One of things about 40k i really dislike is this idea people seem to have that, if not for the heresy, it would totally have worked.
Emperor, in his infinite wisdom would totally have made a galaxy spanning empire that is not a complete hellhole for almost everyone living in it.
That Emperor was a good person.
Instead of Emperor lead Imperium still being terrible, just in different ways.

Emperor may have been smart, competent, a tactical and scientific genius with godlike attention to detail and psychic powers to make all of that almost unnecessary.
But he was not a good man.
And the nation he was building was never going to be benevolent to its people.
 
I mean, it kinda depends what the actual goal of Great Crusade was. "Conquer and pacify the entire galaxy" was the official reason, but we know that's not really what Emperor aimed for. Webway Project existed for a reason.
 
Of course given what we know of the Dolmen Gates and how the Webway reacts to outside interference, the Webway Project was also doomed to fail once the Webway detected the human intrusion and collapsed the sections connected to it.
 
Now, only slightly different topic...

I hate zombie movies and how they depict fighting zombies. Everyone just.. stands still, waiting for zombies to slowly walk up to them and reach to them. Like, seriously, unless you are in tight spaces where movement is not an option you can just... step back. Why is it then, that every zombie apocalypse depicts people just standing in one place, waiting for zombies to reach?

Hell, any movie really where there is an advancing horde of slow moving melee only monsters. Why do all soldiers always just stand in place, waiting to be overrun? Where is movement? Where is frog-hopping backwards? Where are vehicles slowly backing away and blasting away at the enemy horde?

Why does everyone just standing in place it was some video game?
 
For foot slogging infantry it kinda makes sense, it is very damn hard to back away while fighting. Doing so in a coordinated manner? near impossible.

Vehicles though? their whole point is mobility, but then again movies and most videogames always get vehicle combat extremely bad.

But yes military in most zombie movies tend to be brain dead.
 
The problem is really that, if the military if responding in a remotely put-together and competent fashion, normal zombies aren't actually much of a threat to them. Maybe the disease itself is, and maybe there's more going on, but even if they're inhumanly resilient in most ways a bunch of melee-only walking-speed infantry that die when you shoot them in the head aren't going to be anything like a peer opponent to any force with smart use of massed or heavy-duty modern firearms and grenades, let alone actual combat vehicles. Given that zombies are also generally depicted as stupid and having no meaningful combat skills beyond sheer physiology, there's not much chance of them turning that around by themselves.

That means to realistically have zombies as a threat, you need to either up their danger or have them face opponents less dangerous than a competent military. And if you want the whole "zombie apocalypse" thing, you can't just have them pick on civilians without saying something about the military, so incompetence is at least an easy answer, if not a good one.
 
IMO you can make zombies a credible threat to armies. Just not one that can't be beaten with sufficient preparation. Like, I could see in urban enviroment a fast moving zombies managing to rush infantry, and there being ammo issues, but like... in an open field? Where military has all the time to prepare?

Yeah, no way a slow shambling wave, no matter how many millions, is going to be issue.
 
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