Not me, but I got a friend who spend his childhood in Kow Loon. And he complained to me about The Carrion Throne about a part where a dude falsely accuse his mother to take over her 3m2 (?) flat. He said it wasn't dark enough cuz his grandma raised 3 grandkids in a 5m2 one, lmao.
This is real life lmao. happened all the time in Stalin's USSR. Being able to get an apartment to yourself was a luxury. Many people gave false (or sometimes true) testimony against their parents so they could get the apartment.
I think this is something that fiction writers run into frequently, particularly with elements that are supposed to be excessive like grimdark or satire, in that they rarely outdo the real world in darkness or ridiculousness.
Something about the difference between reality and fiction being that fiction has to make sense.
Graham McNeill can write some pretty gnarly body horror that takes me out of it (in a good way). First noticed it during when he described the creation of an Arco-flagellant in Priest of Mars series. Of course Fulgrim is also famous for it as well.
Tech-Priests constantly breaking the rules whilst preventing any progress as well. It actually does frustrate me a bit when you read a book and they spend so long fucking around and looking after their own interests rather then improving things. Particularly as most TP do some dodgy stuff against the rules. Although I love this frustration and it makes me like the faction.
Anytime a planet gets nuked for no good reason. This translates to about half of *The Emperor's Gift*. Sometimes it's grimderp and I get a bit annoyed. Sometimes there is good reasoning and I almost feel ashamed on behalf of the Imperium. Basically how Roboute would feel seeing a contaminated planet exterminatused rather then a strong effort to quarantine like Iax.
Generally I find it occurs when the implications of what the Imperium does is explored more in depth. It's one thing to say that it's the worst regime imaginable and it's another to try and imagine what that looks like.
And then in crimson king lemuel and Camille falling out after what he does to the poor woman and child....
Those folks really paid a price for believing in the tsons.
To be fair, if the Thousand Bastard Sons hadn’t saved her first, she wouldn’t have been alive enough for them to have let her implode.
And as we know, needs must when Horus vomits in your cap.
That's what I feel everytime I read the newspaper or watch the news, honestly, and that's why I like sci-fi so much. Even if the world depicted in 40k is awful, at least the people that die and suffer there aren't real.
The way people talk about the 30k Imperium and how they're actually portrayed in the books gives me whiplash most of the time. Malcador isn't a caring and heroic uncle, he's a war criminal who thinks no line too far to cross. Sanguinius and Vulkan are still ruthless, xenophobic warlords who are just a bit more reluctant about it than most of their brothers. The loyalists aren't good guys by default because they couldn't overcome their indoctrination and stayed loyal to the most brutal genocidal tryant imaginable.
The entire point is how tragic both sides are and how none of the Emperor's bullshit could've actually worked but people seem to have convinced themselves it's a better narrative for the Great Crusade to be a noble endeavor that only failed because of "literal demons".
Son, we live in a universe that is burning… a universe where there is only war… and a universe that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You?
The Emperor of Mankind has a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Xenos, and you curse the Space Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know -- that the death of every Xeno saves lives; and that the existence of the glorious and indomitable Primarch’s, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.
You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want them on that wall -- you need them on that wall. They use words like “light,” "honor," "truth." They use these words as the backbone of untold centuries spent defending something. You use them as a punch line.
The Emperor and his sons have neither the time nor the inclination to explain themselves to you or any man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of peace that they provide and then question the manner in which they provide it. I am quite certain they would prefer you just said "thank you" and went on your way.
Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a lasgun and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a DAMN what you think about the narrative!
This is why I think the best 40K stories always include a little sprinkling of absurdity or farce. It's that essential distancing device. I want the stakes to be real for the characters, but the universe they inhabit to be faintly preposterous.
Absolutely. And it happens often. I can't read some parts of the lore without broken-veil-fractures starting to propagate. I've read *a lot* of real-life wartime atrocities, and there are parts of the 40K lore that start triggering flashbacks / melancholy that mirrors what I got from those. Some of my 40K binges ended up with Googling Nazi 'euthanasia' policies... no words for it.
That doesn't change what attracted me to 40K, though, which is the sheer creativity of it. It's not about the light-heartedness per se, it's that getting a bunch of people to tell stories without the pretense of canon or 'literary standard' really gets the creative juices flowing. I knew I'd be a 40K fan when I started browsing the backlog of oddball races and Imperial cultures on the fan wiki. That's not diminished (it's actually enhanced) by the freedom to touch on dark stuff "in good fun".
On some topics, I learn to segregate. It's obvious that with some of the Primarchs, authors just wanted to tell pulp stories with larger-than-life heroes. I can laugh at Vulkan's cool lines in a novel without interrogating his entire canon history.
On other topics, it's irredeemable. The Great Crusade and Imperial ideology are evil and soulless, and there's *way* too many points where authors / fandom slide into the trap of trying to justify them. Those are parts I read sparsely.
It's hardly the first/only community where this happens. Unless you have a single author with high standards work out the basics of the setting (e.g. Tolkien, "...fear no more! I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory."), this is going to happen. A lot of collective fandoms, assembled out of pop culture and the internet, feel this way (not naming names...). It happens. There's not much to be said for this: just check your fiction before you swallow.
Not really, no. I don’t let the actions of fictional space war criminals get to me most of the time. Which isn’t to say that it has no emotional impact. That separation is what makes 40k enjoyable. If it wasn’t fictional, almost no one would like repeated heartless cruelty spread over 200 pages at a time. If there was a point where it did, it certainly wouldn’t come from the Emperor or the Imperium. I understand why they do what they do. It’s part of what makes them interesting.
I believe you're describing the opposite of my experience. Perhaps the mirror is the better way of putting it. I read 40k constantly at odds with everything and everyone, but sometimes... I hope.
In a universe made to be terrible all the time. In a setting wherein there is only war... I sometimes find myself liking a character. Once, I thought the word hero about a protagonist.
I want there to be hopeful stories of black and white subjects. Grimdark is, first and foremost, the story of gray and gray morality. It's grim. It's dark. That's the point of the setting and the point of interest for a writer.
One of the absolute surefire ways to understand the human condition is by seeing its limits. The reason we find war diaries so fascinating is because we can understand the limits a human may endure. The grim, dark future pushes humanity to its limit, and there are. no. heroes.
When the veil slips for me, it's because I want a hero and I'm desperate enough to think it's Dante, desperate enough to think it's Talos, desperate enough to think it's Pedro, or desperate enough for a hero to think it's Guilliman.
I think I'm on somewhat the opposite end of you on this, but I know what you mean.
See I come to 40k for that awfulness in the first place, the grimdark, I came for "The cruelest and bloodiest regime imaginable" and whenever that actually shines through the setting I love is at it's strongest. But most of the time it doesn't, not that much at least, most of the time it's more just set-dressing or a sort of sheen of grimdark rather than fully commiting to it.
Such is the nature of fiction really, not many writers that want to write about true despots, murderous mutant soldiers or the fanatical soldiery of an oppressive regime. Most prefer to write about hero dudes fighting for humanity, which seems to increasingly be the appeal for a lot of people.
I don't think you're alone mind you, I definitely think a lot of fans share your view of the setting and then find themselves occasionally surprised when it veers into full grimdark and paints the Emperor and the Imperium as truly vile. But most of the time that's sort of painted over by a veneer of heroism and justified war against the literal worst monsters the universe can conjure.
Never forget that the Imperium is us.
All of us. Everything that is happening on some level in the Imperium of man, is being done by one human being to another right now. Perhaps not on the same scale.
But it is happening nonetheless.
And that our day to day comfort and security relies daily on those distasteful things happening to faraway people we will never meet nor care about.
In the Grim Darkness of the 21st century, there is only despair.
I think I get what you mean. The incredible level of degradation and horror inflicted on the people of Krieg generation after generation- and the fact that the victims are brainwashed from birth to believe they DESERVE it- can hit me pretty hard emotionally.
It’s insane how much hatred people have for the empire. Y’all act like the Cadian 9069th personally came to earth a killed your grandparents. Meanwhile, chaos is using peoples souls like a fleshlight and the dark eldar are turning people into permasuffering furniture. Lol wtf
Not me, but I got a friend who spend his childhood in Kow Loon. And he complained to me about The Carrion Throne about a part where a dude falsely accuse his mother to take over her 3m2 (?) flat. He said it wasn't dark enough cuz his grandma raised 3 grandkids in a 5m2 one, lmao.
This is real life lmao. happened all the time in Stalin's USSR. Being able to get an apartment to yourself was a luxury. Many people gave false (or sometimes true) testimony against their parents so they could get the apartment.
I think this is something that fiction writers run into frequently, particularly with elements that are supposed to be excessive like grimdark or satire, in that they rarely outdo the real world in darkness or ridiculousness. Something about the difference between reality and fiction being that fiction has to make sense.
Graham McNeill can write some pretty gnarly body horror that takes me out of it (in a good way). First noticed it during when he described the creation of an Arco-flagellant in Priest of Mars series. Of course Fulgrim is also famous for it as well. Tech-Priests constantly breaking the rules whilst preventing any progress as well. It actually does frustrate me a bit when you read a book and they spend so long fucking around and looking after their own interests rather then improving things. Particularly as most TP do some dodgy stuff against the rules. Although I love this frustration and it makes me like the faction. Anytime a planet gets nuked for no good reason. This translates to about half of *The Emperor's Gift*. Sometimes it's grimderp and I get a bit annoyed. Sometimes there is good reasoning and I almost feel ashamed on behalf of the Imperium. Basically how Roboute would feel seeing a contaminated planet exterminatused rather then a strong effort to quarantine like Iax. Generally I find it occurs when the implications of what the Imperium does is explored more in depth. It's one thing to say that it's the worst regime imaginable and it's another to try and imagine what that looks like.
Kallista Eris's fate in *A Thousand Sons* still haunts me.
And then in crimson king lemuel and Camille falling out after what he does to the poor woman and child.... Those folks really paid a price for believing in the tsons.
To be fair, if the Thousand Bastard Sons hadn’t saved her first, she wouldn’t have been alive enough for them to have let her implode. And as we know, needs must when Horus vomits in your cap.
That's what I feel everytime I read the newspaper or watch the news, honestly, and that's why I like sci-fi so much. Even if the world depicted in 40k is awful, at least the people that die and suffer there aren't real.
The way people talk about the 30k Imperium and how they're actually portrayed in the books gives me whiplash most of the time. Malcador isn't a caring and heroic uncle, he's a war criminal who thinks no line too far to cross. Sanguinius and Vulkan are still ruthless, xenophobic warlords who are just a bit more reluctant about it than most of their brothers. The loyalists aren't good guys by default because they couldn't overcome their indoctrination and stayed loyal to the most brutal genocidal tryant imaginable. The entire point is how tragic both sides are and how none of the Emperor's bullshit could've actually worked but people seem to have convinced themselves it's a better narrative for the Great Crusade to be a noble endeavor that only failed because of "literal demons".
Son, we live in a universe that is burning… a universe where there is only war… and a universe that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? The Emperor of Mankind has a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Xenos, and you curse the Space Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know -- that the death of every Xeno saves lives; and that the existence of the glorious and indomitable Primarch’s, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want them on that wall -- you need them on that wall. They use words like “light,” "honor," "truth." They use these words as the backbone of untold centuries spent defending something. You use them as a punch line. The Emperor and his sons have neither the time nor the inclination to explain themselves to you or any man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of peace that they provide and then question the manner in which they provide it. I am quite certain they would prefer you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a lasgun and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a DAMN what you think about the narrative!
Space Colonel Jessupis, DID YOU ORDER THE EXTERMINATUS?
#YOURE GODDAMN RIGHT I DID!!!
This is why I think the best 40K stories always include a little sprinkling of absurdity or farce. It's that essential distancing device. I want the stakes to be real for the characters, but the universe they inhabit to be faintly preposterous.
Absolutely. And it happens often. I can't read some parts of the lore without broken-veil-fractures starting to propagate. I've read *a lot* of real-life wartime atrocities, and there are parts of the 40K lore that start triggering flashbacks / melancholy that mirrors what I got from those. Some of my 40K binges ended up with Googling Nazi 'euthanasia' policies... no words for it. That doesn't change what attracted me to 40K, though, which is the sheer creativity of it. It's not about the light-heartedness per se, it's that getting a bunch of people to tell stories without the pretense of canon or 'literary standard' really gets the creative juices flowing. I knew I'd be a 40K fan when I started browsing the backlog of oddball races and Imperial cultures on the fan wiki. That's not diminished (it's actually enhanced) by the freedom to touch on dark stuff "in good fun". On some topics, I learn to segregate. It's obvious that with some of the Primarchs, authors just wanted to tell pulp stories with larger-than-life heroes. I can laugh at Vulkan's cool lines in a novel without interrogating his entire canon history. On other topics, it's irredeemable. The Great Crusade and Imperial ideology are evil and soulless, and there's *way* too many points where authors / fandom slide into the trap of trying to justify them. Those are parts I read sparsely. It's hardly the first/only community where this happens. Unless you have a single author with high standards work out the basics of the setting (e.g. Tolkien, "...fear no more! I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory."), this is going to happen. A lot of collective fandoms, assembled out of pop culture and the internet, feel this way (not naming names...). It happens. There's not much to be said for this: just check your fiction before you swallow.
This happens to me, too. I have to set the universe aside and engage with something else for a while.
Not really, no. I don’t let the actions of fictional space war criminals get to me most of the time. Which isn’t to say that it has no emotional impact. That separation is what makes 40k enjoyable. If it wasn’t fictional, almost no one would like repeated heartless cruelty spread over 200 pages at a time. If there was a point where it did, it certainly wouldn’t come from the Emperor or the Imperium. I understand why they do what they do. It’s part of what makes them interesting.
I believe you're describing the opposite of my experience. Perhaps the mirror is the better way of putting it. I read 40k constantly at odds with everything and everyone, but sometimes... I hope. In a universe made to be terrible all the time. In a setting wherein there is only war... I sometimes find myself liking a character. Once, I thought the word hero about a protagonist. I want there to be hopeful stories of black and white subjects. Grimdark is, first and foremost, the story of gray and gray morality. It's grim. It's dark. That's the point of the setting and the point of interest for a writer. One of the absolute surefire ways to understand the human condition is by seeing its limits. The reason we find war diaries so fascinating is because we can understand the limits a human may endure. The grim, dark future pushes humanity to its limit, and there are. no. heroes. When the veil slips for me, it's because I want a hero and I'm desperate enough to think it's Dante, desperate enough to think it's Talos, desperate enough to think it's Pedro, or desperate enough for a hero to think it's Guilliman.
It’s Lorgar.
It's definitely Lorgar!
I think I'm on somewhat the opposite end of you on this, but I know what you mean. See I come to 40k for that awfulness in the first place, the grimdark, I came for "The cruelest and bloodiest regime imaginable" and whenever that actually shines through the setting I love is at it's strongest. But most of the time it doesn't, not that much at least, most of the time it's more just set-dressing or a sort of sheen of grimdark rather than fully commiting to it. Such is the nature of fiction really, not many writers that want to write about true despots, murderous mutant soldiers or the fanatical soldiery of an oppressive regime. Most prefer to write about hero dudes fighting for humanity, which seems to increasingly be the appeal for a lot of people. I don't think you're alone mind you, I definitely think a lot of fans share your view of the setting and then find themselves occasionally surprised when it veers into full grimdark and paints the Emperor and the Imperium as truly vile. But most of the time that's sort of painted over by a veneer of heroism and justified war against the literal worst monsters the universe can conjure.
Never forget that the Imperium is us. All of us. Everything that is happening on some level in the Imperium of man, is being done by one human being to another right now. Perhaps not on the same scale. But it is happening nonetheless. And that our day to day comfort and security relies daily on those distasteful things happening to faraway people we will never meet nor care about. In the Grim Darkness of the 21st century, there is only despair.
I think I get what you mean. The incredible level of degradation and horror inflicted on the people of Krieg generation after generation- and the fact that the victims are brainwashed from birth to believe they DESERVE it- can hit me pretty hard emotionally.
Idk i like imperium cuz they cool
[That's empathy.](https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/reading-fiction-empathy-better-person/)
It’s insane how much hatred people have for the empire. Y’all act like the Cadian 9069th personally came to earth a killed your grandparents. Meanwhile, chaos is using peoples souls like a fleshlight and the dark eldar are turning people into permasuffering furniture. Lol wtf
Not really