WH40K canon is like “what if we made up the entire terrible history of modern Europe so we could sell WWII soldiers” and then not only did some fans idealize the Nazis despite the “obvious bad guy” label, but the Napoleonic Wars and interwar Glasgow razor gangs started as spin-offs which became favorite games in their own right.
｜霜の狼｜人面獣心」
@Leucrotta ...does WH40K have /any/ good guys?
@frost @Leucrotta welcome to world history (the people we think of good guys are often just the ones who happened to come out ahead in the final tally, who are generally more popular, or who have better PR teams. See for example contemporary opinions of China versus Japan, and then Google "Nanking" and "Unit 731")
I've been listening to the Revolutions podcast and while I'm all for overthrowing tyrants it's clear that us average people nearly always lose either way.
@wilbr @Leucrotta Yeah okay but most ones were still better than the freaking Nazis.
@frost @Leucrotta the main bad part about Nazis was the technological advancement enabling wholesale destruction at an impersonal distance, including mass imprisonment and mass execution, and the particularly cold and sinister way they targeted specific groups which was then documented by newly-invented mass media.
Mass r*pe, pillage, pogrom, exile, sacking, taking of slaves, and attempts to take over the known world are sadly common in history. Soldiers are generally consistently barbaric.
why am I debating the fact that the Nazis were particularly bad
@wilbr @Leucrotta I don't think most countries, even most invaders, did that kind of systematic wiping-out-an-entire-people genocide.
(Plenty did, though. e.g. what the US did to Native Americans. The Nazis certainly weren't /unique/.)
@frost @Leucrotta I think it's very fair to say that Nazis are particularly bad and most invaders' crimes against humanity don't rise to the level of Nazism and fascism. I'm more getting to the core point that in Warhammer and European history and indeed world history, shit was pretty heinous and the world's victors mostly live with themselves by systematically lying and forgetting about what happened.
Remember, until very recently the king could kill you for speaking poorly of him.
Since I'm being blocked and subtooted without an opportunity to clarify or respond, nothing I ever say should ever imply that Nazis weren't world-shakingly bad, causing us to invent the whole concept of crimes against humanity.
What I am implying is that without photos and videos and IBM computers that Nazis took mountains of notes with, *we wouldn't know* precisely how evil Nazis were.
It's likely that before that *some invaders were even more sadistic* but we have little way of knowing.
Like in the historical record we know soldiers would r*pe and pillage and take slaves and massacre every member of the king-appointed enemy they could find... but that's just what soldiers and kings were PROUD of talking about, what was able to be said without impugning the king's honor or being ostracized or disbelieved and forgotten. That stuff was seen as "for the good of God and country" because kings were divinely appointed and God's will. What about the stuff THEY considered unspeakable?
cut cause it's a long response!
@frost Yes and no;
No, because we know everyone in the game is kinda terrible to holy crap that's terrible, but the game's background largely doesn't come into actual play (the Imperial penchant for vivisection and fundamentalism gets reflected in some, not all, visuals).
Yes, because the game's future is *supposed* to be bleak. Keep in mind the game starts out in the 80s, when you've got the Cold War, the Troubles, and no internet to challenge fairly tight conservative control of the media, so despite how bad your reality looks, you're very much being told that England (er... the UK!) or the USA are saintly good guys, Christianity is flawless, the future is wonderfully bright etc. AND your escapism is mostly Tolkien, Star Wars, Star Trek, D&D's good alignments, lots of noble good guys versus horrible baddies.
A "dark future" or "shades of gray" might seem trite and overdone now after that's been around for decades - but in the 80s and even into the 90s, saying "Judge Dredd /Lobo/Elric of Melnibone *isn't* a good guy" or "there are no good guys in 40K" is pretty revolutionary. If you read the canon, too, it's very influenced by Dune, Arthurian mythology, and WWI, all of which are distinctly tragic.
And it's not just counterculture, there's a practical aspect; the GW folks wanted to sell their game, and the quickest way to steer people from just playing the official good guy faction is to make no official good guy faction.
Does all this make sense?
re: cut cause it's a long response!
@Leucrotta Huh! Huh, neat. Yeah, that makes sense!
I totally forgot the "most people would want to play the good guys" aspect.
@Leucrotta That just sounds..depressing.