The limits of Grimdark, Grimderp, and Suspending Disbelief

[Roomsky]

So here's a thread for the never-ending debate about what gives flavor to the setting and what takes people out of it. More specifically, the nonsensical for the sake of grimdark. Discuss here what is and is not too far for your enjoyment, your peeves in author quirks, and what you'd rather see. 

 

Here is the preexisting discussion thus far:

 

 

MrDarth151

I've always disliked that (The Imperium's Institutional stupidity), to be honest. If stupidity is so common in the Imperium of Mankind, it would not have survived a few decades, much less ten millennia

 

You are, of course, entitled to like and dislike what you will.

 

That said, very little about the setting makes sense, everything from the design of institutions to the questionable application of physics would destroy an IRL Imperium over the course of a few decades. Dismissing some madness but not all of it never struck me as much more than arbitrary.

 

 

MrDarth151

Honestly? I find myself having less problem with physics breaking stuff, for example, than I do with practical everyday consequences of running an empire.

 

Physics breaking is just bread and butter for any Sci-fi universe, but as I get older, the fact that people charge of the Imperium are transcendental geniuses except for the times we actually see them work starts to grind my gears a bit. 

 

Especially since it must be a conscious decision on part of the writers and editors. Internet made finding this stuff stupid easy. Like, you are literally three clicks away of having access to detailed military manuals, philosophy concerning authoritarianism and utilitarianism, and everything else a writer might to portray this stuff with a degree of realism.

 

You don't need to even portray Imperium as universally competent, just... not stupid.

 

This plagues even good writers. I remember reading Emperor's Legion, which on the whole I enjoyed, but even then, there are things like "Recruiting million soldiers from the population of quadrillions to defend what is probably second most important world in the entire Imperium, over the course of a decade is considered an impressive achievement" and I'm just screaming "You cannot be serious!" at the book, because somehow civilisation dedicated to war longer than recorded human history at this point in time is literal millions of times less effective than WWII Germany at recruitment.

 

I would call it a parody, were it not played completely straight.

 

 

mc warhammer

which is the foundation of the 40k universe, yeah? parody. and parody can certainly be played straight.

 

isn't the reader supposed to read it an think "how stupid/ignorant/wasteful"?

 

now that 40k has moved away from the ott nuttiness of its satirical roots...it does present a challenge for the writers to make irl sense of it in the more sombre modern interpretation.  and its an ongoing process, and obviously not a perfect one. i sometimes think about how some planets were originally stand-ins for countries ...that concept is a little awkward and ungainly these days. though authors have made attempts to introduce some variance and diversity of late into worlds, we're still left with certain ideas (right or wrong) like fenris being an entire world of vikings.

 

but does that buzz my kill? not really.

 

pull at the thread of most modern fictional universes and they unravel fast (the marvel or dc universes make zero sense). most of their audiences can see the thread, the writers can too. just nobody wants to give it a tug.

 

it's a suspension of disbelief thang.

 

or maybe....just maybe part of the appeal of 40k is the over-the-top crazy.  i don't really understand why anyone would want to take the 40k out of 40k.

 

I'd argue that even divorced from the physics of things, much of 40k's foundation is based on the logistically impossible. Hand-written messages on vellum being a form of record-keeping, for example. Alternatively, vague astropathic messages being used to communicate anything at all, the idea that FTL communication is based on the interpretation of dreams would have the entire Imperium self-destruct in a matter of months. Yet I would never argue against the removal of such facets, as every bit of lore jettisoned for lack of believability just brings the setting closer to a more poorly written version of Dune.

 

 

MrDarth151

Can I not make a criticism without it being immediately straw manned into oblivion?

 

The point is not that I want all of the nonsense of 40k gone, the point is that there are elements of it that I could do without.

 

Chainswords, for example, don't really make sense as weapons. But they fit the aesthetic and have the very childlike quality of "This is so cool!" to them. So what's the harm?

 

All of the "Look, those people are so stupid it's a wonder they can breath properly" do nothing for me. They don't bring me enjoyment, and instead create cognitive dissonance, and break my willing suspension of disbelief.

 

I really don't enjoy people being stupid for stupidity sake, when by all evidence available, they should be geniuses. I don't like artificial problems that exist because the very obvious solution is ignored.

 

I believe it is possible to preserve thematic and aesthetic themes of 40k and eliminate most of blatantly stupid stuff, because most of blatantly stupid stuff serves little narrative purpose.

[Roomsky]

To MrDarth:

 

I apologize for that, it was not my intent.

 

My point is that, simply in the realm of stupidity, I don't see a distinction between record-keeping on parchment and the the High Lords failing to recruit a significant amount of soldiery off Terra. The use of parchment in a world with recording devices, human computers, etc boggles belief, there is no reason to do it beyond creating atmosphere. Where do they get all the hide? Why would you store important information in something so easily lost/destroyed? Only idiots would, or people who've been indoctrinated into thinking it's "logical". And, in reality, no one would get anything done with such a system in place.

 

I view the Terra recruitment problem the same way. There's so much useless bureaucracy in place that it makes the task nigh-impossible, but no one sans Guilliman sees a problem with it because they've been raised that way. Of course, I agree, such a thing is basically impossible and any such system would implode rapidly, but again, my view is that the same applies to most things in universe.

 

Again, I'm not saying you shouldn't find problem with it, I'm trying to justify why I have a hard time wrapping my head around it. I don;t really have a limit to tolerance for grimderp, mostly because in my view the dissection of anything in 40k yields utter nonsense, may as well go balls to the wall with some good-`ol slave operated artillery loaders.

[carlisimo]

A thread about snippets pulled from other threads is too lacking in context to work well, imo.

 

But I do have one. The destruction of Bodt by redirecting its moon into it in Forge World's book 6 (Retribution) bugged me a little bit. It brought to mind an old White Dwarf article from the late ‘90s or early ‘00s titled, “Rocks Are Not Free, Citizen” which was a response to a mailed-in question asking why the Imperial Navy didn’t just hurl asteroids at target planets (because of the time and fuel involved).

 

One day I had too much time on my hands and made some assumptions and did some math. It doesn’t work out - the Bodt story gives a timeline of “a matter of hours” (based on the details of Austen Mor’s attack I assumed 10 hours) between the push and the collision, and a pretty wide orbit for the moon with a perigee of “half a million kilometers”. I assumed it was the closest point in its “highly eccentric” orbit, for which I used e=0.75. The illustration shows a spherical moon which hints at a minimum mass. Unfortunately, the energy required to push it for an impact in that timeframe would greatly exceed the moon’s gravitational binding energy so it’d pulverize it. It would also be 900 times as much energy as that given off by setting off enough Cold War-era nuclear weapons (B53) to reliably destroy reinforced concrete structures on the entire surface of an earth-sized planet.

 

If Autek Mor had given the moon a little push and then waited several weeks for it to hit Bodt, the energy requirement would have been more reasonable.

 

But it’s not as bad as other Heresy-era stories of planets (mostly Traitor primarch homeworlds) exploding under bombardment. If you get the Warp involved, sure, I can’t argue. But the stories don’t always.

 

It was still a fun story though, and I have nothing against the author for not being versed in orbital mechanics when he wrote it. I think I just really liked that old “Rocks Are Not Free, Citizen” article and in this case, it still holds up!

[Lucerne]

The previous edition's Tempestus Scion lore is one of the rare cases that edges into grimderp for me- not least because of the way it basically makes it impossible to have any remotely human Commissar, overdoes the brainwashing aspects of the Scholar and also makes the Scions into diet space marines which is self-evidently absurd.

 

It's not even atmospheric in its absurdity, because it renders Commissars into cowardly, self-serving broken meatrobots- which takes away from the whole damn point, and makes Scions into perfect automatons with no real room for characterization. The scholas should be unpleasant, stormtroopers are the peak of the Guard and tight-knit, well equipped, and commissars are cold-blooded, but the clowns who wrote the details of the lore for the Scions codex missed the forest for the trees, and it's a relief that that specific aspect of Scion lore has been quietly swept under the rug.

 

The way I make sense of the lore aspect as presented in the previous Scion codex is to see them as one approach of many to Scions- one that turns out broken shells for Commissars incapable of inspiration or anything more involved than gunning down deserters, and turning out mindless, programmed brutes for Scions. There's no room for Gaunts, Cains, or even any remotely relateable commissars to come out of the Scion codex's lore- they're supposed to be capable of acting as morale officers, not broken shells. Similarly, the Scions being hyped as they are are more or less incompatible with the stormtroopers of yesteryear in lore.

[mc warhammer]

 

MrDarth151

Can I not make a criticism without it being immediately straw manned into oblivion?

 

 

but you do. regularly.

 

and i honestly don't think people were attacking you. rather than a straw man, i was just broadening the scope of discussion. i don't think i attributed any of it to you specifically

 

edit: it's not my place to "explain" to someone how they should feel. if you felt attacked, then that is the truth of it for you, i apologise. 

A thread about snippets pulled from other threads is too lacking in context to work well, imo.

 

But I do have one. The destruction of Bodt by redirecting its moon into it in Forge World's book 6 (Retribution) bugged me a little bit. It brought to mind an old White Dwarf article from the late ‘90s or early ‘00s titled, “Rocks Are Not Free, Citizen” which was a response to a mailed-in question asking why the Imperial Navy didn’t just hurl asteroids at target planets (because of the time and fuel involved).

 

One day I had too much time on my hands and made some assumptions and did some math. It doesn’t work out - the Bodt story gives a timeline of “a matter of hours” (based on the details of Austen Mor’s attack I assumed 10 hours) between the push and the collision, and a pretty wide orbit for the moon with a perigee of “half a million kilometers”. I assumed it was the closest point in its “highly eccentric” orbit, for which I used e=0.75. The illustration shows a spherical moon which hints at a minimum mass. Unfortunately, the energy required to push it for an impact in that timeframe would greatly exceed the moon’s gravitational binding energy so it’d pulverize it. It would also be 900 times as much energy as that given off by setting off enough Cold War-era nuclear weapons (B53) to reliably destroy reinforced concrete structures on the entire surface of an earth-sized planet.

 

If Autek Mor had given the moon a little push and then waited several weeks for it to hit Bodt, the energy requirement would have been more reasonable.

 

But it’s not as bad as other Heresy-era stories of planets (mostly Traitor primarch homeworlds) exploding under bombardment. If you get the Warp involved, sure, I can’t argue. But the stories don’t always.

 

It was still a fun story though, and I have nothing against the author for not being versed in orbital mechanics when he wrote it. I think I just really liked that old “Rocks Are Not Free, Citizen” article and in this case, it still holds up!

 

 

would you say those issues are specific to BL or can they be found in popular sci fi generally?

[mc warhammer]

 

It's not even atmospheric in its absurdity, 

 

"atmospheric in its absurdity" is a good way to put it- that tends to be how most of this stuff gets a pass from me

 

haven't read that particular example though, and of course, with suspension of disbelief, mileage varies.

[Xisor]

Just because something is logically stupid, doesn't mean it is ineffective or unworkable.

 

That is: it just needs to be marginally better than whatever it's competing against.

 

On the grand scale of 30k through to 40k, especially where humans face off against nameless alien cultures, humanity is basically winning because of access to cheat-codes.

 

Namely:

- Soul-binding of astropaths

- Navigators

- Pre-existing star-spanning technology (STCs etc)

 

All those other logistical details can be overcome by sheer weight of resources, or humanity's extreme manoeuvrability.

 

Over those years, the only forces known to be in excess of humanity's expertise and (questionable) competence are Necrons and Eldar - both of whom are largely out of the picture. (And both of whom are serious problems as of 40k.)

 

Add in the Tyranids (who have access to an arguably different set of cheat codes), and humanity's 'stupidity' is now being put to the test.

 

----

 

To put it another way: success is reputedly predicated on soft skills, the sort that psychologists and sociologists and economists wrestle to capture and identify, by which we on the internet, Intellectuals, write off as nonsense in comparison to our delightful 'expertise' and 'logic'.

 

Whilst expertise and logic are categorically important, they're near-nothing compared to the ability to harangue eighty otherwise good people into enacting your will. 81 people versus 1 people is quite a stark change in power.

 

Similarly, if you crystallise and stratify technology at an ambiguously advanced point, but then put extreme binders and social taboos on 'poking about in things', then it's possible to vaguely envisage a way in which 'radical hackers' just can't get much traction. They can tinker with things here and there, but thanks to countless forest fires afflicting knowledge and technology down the centuries, I find it entirely believable that the intended Grimdark can grind on stupidly, but successfully.

 

Indeed, I expect a fairly clever author could do a really impressive study on 'the supposed inefficiencies of Imperial Bureaucracy', wherein we look at the conventional wisdom as well as looking at the creative solutions that untold billions of adepts working with small and tolerable 'mutations' or 'workarounds' to their practices end up cementing a truly ingenious and effective (albeit unknowable, on an intuitive human level) level of effectiveness.

 

Well, if I squint I can imagine it. (Hah, for anyone who's interested in Singularity-versus-STC/Dark Age of Technology thinking, consider this wild proposal: Imperial Bureaucracy is the explicit product of STC analysis of efficient organisations.)

 

---

 

I'm reminded pleasantly of this from that:

 

"The bureaucracy of the Imperium is like a well-oiled machine – and, like any machine, it is incomprehensible to ordinary humans, deserves constant reverence and attention, and is a thing to be deeply feared by the likes of you."

[Huggtand]

To uphold the readers suspension of disbelief there are certain limits that an author cannot go past since that will force the reader question the realism and logic of the story. Suspension of disbelief is an essential ingredient for any kind of storytelling and something the author should consider and not be lazy and just dump it on the reader. Different genres have different levels of limits and in a story set in our real universe in modern times, a magic car will break the suspension of disbelief but in the setting of Harry Potter it will not. The 40k is set in our real physical universe 40 millennia in the future and on top of the soft sci-fi adds a fantasy element with the warp, so quite a high tolerance for suspension 

 

But the most important rule of disbelief is that the author don't break the internal logic of the universe. Unfortunately BL authors do this on a regular basis witch can break the readers willingness to suspend realism for the sake of enjoyment. Since the warp is a fantasy element, doing unbelievable things with it do not break the suspension but the the normal universe have the same rules, logic and laws of physic as ours and breaking those rules (outside of what can be explained with sci-fi) can easily break the suspension. 

 

Often though its the logic part that clashes with our knowledge as readers .
I know that WW2 armies numbered in their millions and when we read that the throne-world (population ridiculous) see it as an accomplishment to stomp up a million soldiers over the course of a decade I question the logic. Heck, even the Iron Age ancient civilizations could muster armies of hundred of thousands per side.

 

Often the rebuttal is that the reader should employ a suspension of disbelief but that is not good writing. If the author just had described the nightmare bureaucracy of raising soldiers on Terra (maybe different organizations sabotage the process for their own gains or fears) there would not be any question and even built up more atmosphere by describing the internal logic  

 

One other problem for GW/FW/BL as a setting is the inconsistency. In one novel a marine can beat thousands of guardsmen and in the other a big mob of civilians with knives will take one down.

[Deadlight]

Theres also the issue of space wolves and blood angels recruitment. For homeworlds with relatively small populations on death worlds, combined with the low success rate of aspirants. With the aspirants being the strongest of the young males in the populations. How have the people of these planets been able to maintain the population numbers?

[Huggtand]

Theres also the issue of space wolves and blood angels recruitment. For homeworlds with relatively small populations on death worlds, combined with the low success rate of aspirants. With the aspirants being the strongest of the young males in the populations. How have the people of these planets been able to maintain the population numbers?

 

There is a lot of those issues   

 

Though FW gave an explanation regarding the space wolves in Inferno. It's hinted that Fenris population was extended by relocating (drugged and memory wiped) suitably feral tribes from other planets. If that was enough to raise the stable population for future recruitment is another question.

 

Often such an explanation is plausible enough to get an suspension of disbelief 

[MrDarth151]

Theres also the issue of space wolves and blood angels recruitment. For homeworlds with relatively small populations on death worlds, combined with the low success rate of aspirants. With the aspirants being the strongest of the young males in the populations. How have the people of these planets been able to maintain the population numbers?

 

Oh, that's simple: For Space Wolves, it is an actual problem, which is why the chapter is so diminished. Blood Angels have actually the highest success rate of Aspirants I am aware of.

 

No, seriously. Dante has them get roughly fifty Astartes from the pool of what, roughly thousand candidates? That's one per twenty. It's orders of magnitude higher than other chapters get. Usually it's somewhere between thousand and ten thousands candidates per Space Marine.

 

It would be more realistic if BL and GW didn't insisted on almost wiping various Chapters in either mass defeats of pyrrhic victories, but they are not so good with numbers.

 

Also, I'm going to make a big post regarding my grievances later today, just so I can be clear on the subject. Look forward to it. I'd like to think I'm fairly good at constructive criticism when I want to be.

[Phoebus]

At the risk of diving right back into a Chapter recruitment debate, it would appear as if the Adeptus Astartes recruiting rates are skewed by the artificial difficulty the Chapters themselves inject into it. It’s not just the Blood Angels we’ve seen succeed that way; as far back as Angels of Darkness, we see the Dark Angels show up in a non-descript feral world where a tribe parades out about 20 adolescents and have them engage in a series of not-too-impressive physical feats and competitive challenges. Two of them make the final cut, though one has second thoughts and ends up getting executed. I’m willing to bet that, outside of non-standard requirements (like mastering the Canis Helix), the only real pre-requisite is for the candidate to be genetically “pure” to be a good enough match for the gene-seed. The rest is probably just their warrior cult stuff in play, seeking out only the “best” to join their elite fraternity... even though they transform the Aspirant mentally, physically, and psychologically to the point where he hardly has ties to what he was to begin with.

 

To the actual topic at hand... in my humble opinion, the real issue is that there isn’t enough grimdark... or, rather, that it’s not applied consistently enough. When I think of most of the characters we’re introduced in this setting, very few feel germane to the introductory paragraphs that remind us of how awful this universe at the start of every novel. Ragnar Blackmane, Ciaphas Cain, Bronislaw Czevak, Gregor Eisenhower, Ibram Gaunt, Solar Macharius, Gideon Ravenor... none of these characters are “perfect” in the sense that they’re without personal flaws (Ragnar is prone to rages, Eisenhower compromises himself morally, etc.), but none of them behave in a manner representative of the dystopian realm on whose behalf they act. Their opponents tend to be suitably evil, but the gray area inbetween tends to populated less by nuanced ruthless pragmatists, xenophobic murderers, or paranoid and megalomaniacal potantes and more by mundanely inept people.

 

That’s not what Warhammer 40k has been selling, though - not for some time, at least. Though once a parody, as others have mentioned above the darkness of this universe is conveyed with a mostly straight face. There absolutely are qualities about the setting that are absurd when compared to our understanding of how the world works - The mysticism surrounding technology and the religious ritual that precedes operating any complex machinery - but I don’t think there’s any denying that these are being presented as tragic, not comic, in introductory texts such as the main rulebook.

 

Can the Imperium function the way it is? I happened on a Twitter thread that included Gav Thorpe and Aaron Dembski-Bowden, and they repeated basic things that all of us should remember: the Imperium is not working out. It came to be thanks to the genius and industry of a god-like being. It has been getting chipped down by the Ruinous Powers and various Xenos factions ever since. Gav and Aaron mentioned something struck me as quite profound: the Imperium continues to exist thanks to inertia. Humanity keeps churning out armies by the untold billions and claims new worlds or reclaims once previously lost to enemies, but wastes everything it touches. On a long enough timeline, a planet claimed by the Imperium becomes one form of oppressive hellhole. It gets worse and worse until the people either rebel, fall to Chaos, or fall prey to a more mundane foe.

 

The people who ensure this happens on sector, segmentum, or galactic scale don’t need to be stupid or petty. They need to be insane in the sense described in those wonderful little quotes in the main rulebook: men and women who have risen to power after seeing and causing untold horrors, to the point where the value of human life becomes insignificant compared to the whole and to the need to deny the horrors that populate their galaxy. Ordinary people don’t just live out awful existences as ignorant fanatics living and dying in the same monolithic tower, perhaps chained to their place of work, because they’re comically stupid; the human beings Chris Wraight describes in the Carrion Throne are, in my humble opinion, perfect examples of the imprisoned cave-dwellers Plato spoke of. They are people who have never known different, and who have had fear, hate, and obedience drilled into them since the day they were born.

 

These are the things I want to see more of.

[bluntblade]

I like Xisor's cheat code analogy. Very astute and nicely put.

[DarkChaplain]

I mean, the Imperium almost collapsed under The Beast, the High Lords got nuked, then replaced with better, more stable candidates a century or so later. There are times of good leaders, there are times of terrible ones. This stuff is cyclical. Once in a while something good happens and pushes the Imperium forward, but most of the time it stagnates and declines.

 

You need to keep in mind that "The Imperium" isn't a unified whole. It shares a basic creed, which ends up being very diverse in how the individual worlds approach it. They all have planetary governors of some sort, and administratum branches to connect to the rest. But in essence, exports and imports aside, most worlds would go on even if they got cut off from the rest of the sector. Terra is probably the biggest most draining planet in the entire Imperium, with how much stuff they need to ferry in just to keep the population from starvation. I'd argue that most other worlds would be pretty fine within their own systems, and farm worlds especially would likely go on millennia on their own even if Terra got conquered by Abaddon. Heck, they might not even hear about Abaddon replacing the Corpse-Emperor.

 

I mean, even the Inquisition, for all its limitless authority, doesn't act Imperium-wide, but has branches per sector, with individuals dedicating themselves to systems. Even if the very top breaks down, there are plenty of positions in the chain of command to keep at least their sector or system from falling as well.

[Huggtand]

DIsclaimer: my formative years of 40k are RT and Second Edition so I'm an old fart who think it was all better in the olden days. So take my opinions for what they are 

 

Grimdark is the overall description of the genre (from Wikipedia "particularly dystopian, amoral or violent") and has nothing inherent to do with mankind's doom or final hours. 

 

For me the definition of grimdark has always been the endless nightmare of religiously bureaucracy where the Administratium extends to every aspect of life and the single (or millions) life don’t matter as long as the Imperium keeps going on. The Imperium is so massive it is simply impossible to apply such a concept as "winning and losing" in the overall picture since the it might bleed a hundred billion souls away as a dozen systems fall to Chaos, but a thousand light years away a dozen more systems is being reclaimed. The Imperium isn't stagnant either; it is perpetually in motion, rediscovering lost technology as quickly as older knowledge was forgotten. The bureaucracy is so vast so it has a life on it own so if the high lords of Terra died the Administratum would roll on anyways. The sectors and worlds keeps going on as they have done before since they are self governed. The life for the average human is not overall an oppressed nightmare with endless toil and no pleasure. It depends more what type of planet type and ruler they have. This is akin to many examples like “The trial by Kafka, Brazil and A brave new world to name a few.

 

Combined with the art of Blanche his makes (in my opinion) a grimdark and somewhat  believable setting. In this Narrative the story also have the freedom of both victories and defeats and you can advance the plot as much as you want since it's all cyclical. That gives me a suspension of disbelief for the overall setting.

[carlisimo]

Theres also the issue of space wolves and blood angels recruitment. For homeworlds with relatively small populations on death worlds, combined with the low success rate of aspirants. With the aspirants being the strongest of the young males in the populations. How have the people of these planets been able to maintain the population numbers?

 

Ah yes, the induction process.  Praetorian of Dorn goes into it in some detail, and I hope it's a lot easier in legions other than the Imperial Fists.  First, they pick a small proportion of boys out of those available.  Then, "one in a hundred survives the first phase."  "Most" die in the next phase (let's assume 2/3).  Training kills off another... dunno how many; in the story, one aspirant in a team of three dies, so let's say 1/3.

 

For a legion of 100,000, that means churning through 45 million little boys.  I don't know how often marines died (i.e. how many total marines the Fists inducted) but say it's twice that, spread over 200 years... 450,000 boys picked per year.  Imagine the logistics!  A hive world like Necromunda can handle it.  It's equivalent to taking every boy from a planet of nearly 20 million, or 1% of boys from a planet of 2 billion, etc.  Probably dumbs down the planet if it isn't a very big one.

 

 

would you say those issues are specific to BL or can they be found in popular sci fi generally?

 

 

It's worse in codexes than BL novels, but I think it's common in sci-fi franchises because authors don't want to repeat stories so they either have to go smaller or bigger, and blowing planets up is bigger.  The Last Jedi comes to mind, with that hyperspace ramming move.  In a one-off you can just have something normal happen.  That's been done already, so someone came up with something that makes you wonder why they don't always do it.

[Rob P]

I think people forget that it's not science-fiction but science-fantasy. It's generally low fantasy in space, though sometimes it becomes high fantasy in space.

 

As long as each book is internally consistent and interesting, it's fine by me.

[Roomsky]

As for my own opinion, I haven't yet encountered anything included for the sake of perpetuating a depressing/horrific atmosphere that pulls me out of things. Certainly, there's plenty of stupidity in BL, Horus' actions in Vengeful Spirit being one of the worst offenders for me, but they usually seem to be in service to making things "cool" rather than grimdark. I agree with Phoebus, both in that I'd like to see things pushed further, and that we need more endemic societal insanity rather than more contemporary figures in awful situations. Space Marine is probably the crowning achievement in this, I just love how insane everyone acts, and how such insanity is treated as perfectly logical.

 

 

 

The Last Jedi

 

Oy, none of that.

[Indefragable]

With the luxury of time and hindsight, we look back at World War I and call the generals on both sides callous butchers. Yet, for them, they had never experienced anything like they faced in that conflict. Their collective experience in the previous wars, combined with their training, and the input of the war academics all said that a decisive tactical breakthrough was what won battles and a enough breakthroughs on a given front was what could give way to a strategic breakthrough which was all that was needed to really turn the war. Every single day in the trenches was one charge away from that tactical breakthrough that would snowball into strategic victory.

 

Likewise, they were employing new machines and weapons that were not entirely understood. The machine gun up to that point was mainly used in colonial enforcement against native uprisings

Hidden Content

“Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim gun, and they have not.”

-Hilaire Belloc

and of course it would be devastating against indisciplined savages! But some good European soldiery should be able to easily overcome a machine gun...

Likewise chemical warfare, airplanes, submarines, and even the “weapon” of mass industrial output and logistics. All of these were barely understood and employed to degrees we still can’t quite comprehend. But then again, the end of the war was just one more charge away...

 

Take that mindset, that utter inurement to what is happening because the fight-or-flight part of your brain has got its gears stuck in “just one more step...just one more effort and this will be done...” and stretch it to 10,000years and you start get a sense of what is happening in the setting of Wh40k.

 

But what’s more...they can’t even screw in a lightbulb because 20,000 years ago that lightbulb came alive and tried to suck their brains out through their nostril. Or so they are told...and even if you have your doubts, better stay on the safe side...especially when you need to finish writing this order so it can be sent via astropath to the front because the end of the war is just one more charge away...

 

And they need to win the war. They so desperately need to win the war because this is a world where the Heroes of Mythology EXIST. They walked these very steps and fought these same foes. And you know what? They’re all dead or missing now. That’s right, Hercules himself stepped in to help save us from this :cuss -tastic existence ...and he got killed doing so. That’s right, even the gods themselves couldn’t save us. But what are we going to do, give up? Roll over on the plains and blow out yer brains? It’s always an option...but we do believe that we can win some shred of hope for ourselves. Every day we buy ourselves is another moment to cherish, another statement that to death we say “not today.” If not for us, then for our grandchildren’s grandchildren. If not for our grandchildren, then for some other poor schmuck’s then. There’s something biological built into humanity that wants us to have some sort of meaning. Even if it is just to say that there is an oasis on the horizon or that cake really is at the end of the test. Something to keep us going, one foot in front of the other, one report signed off on after another, one shipping crate inspected after the other.

 

After all, achieving that breakthrough may just need one more charge....

[Tarvek Val]

That's very well said, Indefragable. Hats off to you for putting that so eloquently in words.

 

If I may add to the ongoing discussion: 

​a huge, huge problem within the 41st Millennium is a complete lack of trust and equality amongst the different branches of the Imperium. The commoners are kept suppressed and in fear, and on most worlds, are little better than slaves. This isn't even turning an eye to feral worlds, where humans still live like cavemen, despite the wondrous technology that the Emperor sought to bring to the galaxy. As such, lower-caste humans are often quick to join xenos such as the tau when they are offered a chance at a better life; even joining the forces of Chaos is better than getting beaten to death on a factory floor so that the latest shipment of lasguns is sent out in time! When people are willing to betray each other because literally anything is better than the life they are currently living, that's going to cause problems. 

 

​These issues are hardly confined to mere mortals, too! The mighty Space Marines are often petty, vindictive, and cruel. They are oftentimes more concerned with concepts such as honor and glory than they are with the Imperium there are supposed to protect. That, or they are sadistic lunatics (Marines Malevolent, anyone)?

 

And yet, the human race must fight on, for if they stop to focus on technology and the advancement of life for the common citizens, they would be obliterated by their foes. It's a cruel cycle, but the Far Future just has to be dark and dreary if the human race is to stand any chance at survival. 

 

In my humble opinion, the last chance the Imperium had for an era of peace, stability, and advancement was during the Great Crusade. When the Emperor sought to unify mankind amongst the stars... but that is not to be.

[mc warhammer]

Space Marine is probably the crowning achievement in this, I just love how insane everyone acts, and how such insanity is treated as perfectly logical.

 

 

one of the reasons it remains a fav of mine

 

i mean...where else are you gonna get this kinda stuff?

[Huggtand]

I normally don’t have a problem with stupidity or insanity in the 40k universe because the inbuilt stupidity is usually set up rather nice in the basic lore.

 

We know that the standard Imperial guard is modeled on the first word war concept/mentality, where the mass of bodies is more important than brilliant strategies. Spattered among this is more advance special units based on world war two or modern warfare. So, when we have generals that don’t care about their men or make stupid decisions to advance their careers we recognize it as appropriate for the setting. The Gaunt's Ghosts series is wonderful for showing the whole range of both stupidity and brilliance of the Imperial Guard.

 

We know that the technology is unfathomable for most men and is seen as mysticism and madness. There is no technological degradation in itself, new technologies are discovered as soon as old are forgotten, just that people describes the effects and workings to religion and spirits. Of course, that there is a fair bit of spirits in the tech make it is somewhat justified   So, when people are making a prayer to the machine god to change a lightbulb or that repairing an engine requires priests with  incense and holy unguent, we see this as perfectly normal in the setting.

 

We know that the Administratum is a Kafka-like nightmarish byzantine religious maze-like bureaucracy  that normally moves at a snail’s pace. Here are so many branches, institutions, layers and offices that no one have the whole picture (or even close to it). For an ordinary citizen to process something may take a lifetime or generation. Luckily local planetary administrations can be somewhat more manageably. So, when it takes a hundred years for the Imperium to react to the Tau expansion we perceive it as an apt description of how the Imperium functions (or not).

 

It’s when the author breaks the above lore without a good explanation that it takes me out of the story and question it. For me personally it’s often about numbers and logic and not so often about stupidity. 

 

It would be nice to see more consistency and realism in certain areas. Some examples are:

• Space marine’s recruitment, where authors seems to top one another both in how few of the prospects survives and on the other end how many chapters almost gets annihilated in different conflict. The numbers don’t add up in any way or form, and make you question if the author knows anything about logistics
   
• The numbers of troops to accomplish anything. When I read that Chapter or a Cabal of Dark Eldar kills everybody in a whole world in one night I just roll my eyes. Just to find millions or billions of people hiding on a whole world is ludicrous from the start and doesn’t feel believable
   

I just wish that a basic knowledge of military logistic was a little more prominent when writing about war stories 

 

[mc warhammer]

 There absolutely are qualities about the setting that are absurd when compared to our understanding of how the world works - The mysticism surrounding technology and the religious ritual that precedes operating any complex machinery - but I don’t think there’s any denying that these are being presented as tragic, not comic, in introductory texts such as the main rulebook.

the tragicomedic aspect was definitely part of the early 40k charm, but i agree that as its presented now, we're meant to read it as straight up tragedy

 

on your point of mysticism and religious ritual, coupled with huggtand's:

 

For me the definition of grimdark has always been the endless nightmare of religiously bureaucracy where the Administratium extends to every aspect of life and the single (or millions) life don’t matter as long as the Imperium keeps going on.

 

not to derail the thread, but it reminds me of class when we were studying the spanish conquest of the aztecs. jacques soustell and nigel davies made the case for the aztec's adherance to ritual and magic in warfare alongside their completely different ( to european) moral and social conception of war as being as important in their defeat as "germs, steel and guns". soustell and davies ideas were contentious, but they made a credible case for a powerful and indoctrinated belief system at odds with the "logic" and "reality" of a situation, to a whole civilisation's detriment.

 

a lot of students found it hilarious, seeing the aztec approach to war as "silly". i don't agree with that reaction, though i guess i can understand it in the context of 19 year old university students.

[mc warhammer]

 

It would be nice to see more consistency and realism in certain areas. Some examples are:

• Space marine’s recruitment, where authors seems to top one another both in how few of the prospects survives and on the other end how many chapters almost gets annihilated in different conflict. The numbers don’t add up in any way or form, and make you question if the author knows anything about logistics

   

• The numbers of troops to accomplish anything. When I read that Chapter or a Cabal of Dark Eldar kills everybody in a whole world in one night I just roll my eyes. Just to find millions or billions of people hiding on a whole world is ludicrous from the start and doesn’t feel believable

   

I just wish that a basic knowledge of military logistic was a little more prominent when writing about war stories 

 

 

y'know, it's funny...a big part of my job is logistics and numbers (hey, is that why i like guilliman?) but this stuff doesn't bother me. for me, and yes this is entirely personal, i just take it as atmospheric. it's to create a sense of drama and scale and i don't sweat the actual sums

 

that being said, i get the impression there's a lot of war buffs here who have a head for this stuff, so i can understand the gripe. again, maybe because my work involves make-believe police that real cops scoff at and fictional journalists who don't do anything an irl reporter would ever recognise as proper journalism...ii'm just not phased.

 

has warhammer 40k ever tried to position itself as realistic in terms of the nitty gritty of war? in the same way historical fiction or actual war novels might? honest question.

[Huggtand]

We all have our personal gripes  For me it´s mostly ridiculous numbers or crazy logistics that doesn't add up. I have no problems with the fantasy sci-fi bit 

 

 

has warhammer 40k ever tried to position itself as realistic in terms of the nitty gritty of war? in the same way historical fiction or actual war novels might? honest question.

 

There may be other examples but for me Dan Abnett is the one of the only BL author that really approaches the nitty gritty of war. He can make the whole organization from a crusade high command to the single guardsman and the whole logistic system making the whole thing work behind the fighting forces. In my humble opinion the Gaunt's Ghosts series is the best description of warfare in 40k.

 

 

the tragicomedic aspect was definitely part of the early 40k charm, but i agree that as its presented now, we're meant to read it as straight up tragedy

 

I do miss a pinch of comedy in the setting 

 

 

 

on your point of mysticism and religious ritual, coupled with huggtand's:

 

For me the definition of grimdark has always been the endless nightmare of religiously bureaucracy where the Administratium extends to every aspect of life and the single (or millions) life don’t matter as long as the Imperium keeps going on.

 

not to derail the thread, but it reminds me of class when we were studying the spanish conquest of the aztecs. jacques soustell and nigel davies made the case for the aztec's adherance to ritual and magic in warfare alongside their completely different ( to european) moral and social conception of war as being as important in their defeat as "germs, steel and guns". soustell and davies ideas were contentious, but they made a credible case for a powerful and indoctrinated belief system at odds with the "logic" and "reality" of a situation, to a whole civilisation's detriment.

 

a lot of students found it hilarious, seeing the aztec approach to war as "silly". i don't agree with that reaction, though i guess i can understand it in the context of 19 year old university students.

 

That's a really good observation. This is why it's so important to have a good background knowledge of a culture before you can criticize any decisions in their context. That's why many things feels stupid or wrong if you don't have at least a passing knowledge of 40k lore.