Nature of Adeptus Astartes

[caladancid]

I know this could be a hot button issue but I really got thinking about this today after reading a response to a tweet by one of the BL authors (Mike Brooks).

 

 

 

Normally, I would not be concerned with Twitter comments, but since this was a response by someone with an active role in writing the Warhammer story, I thought it deserved some discussion.

 

Overall the sentiment seems fairly harsh to me.  Sure, some of the astartes are objectively awful.  The Marines Malevolent are meant to exemplify the ultra totalitarian darkness of the 40k universe.  But many other astartes chapters actively respect their home cultures.  In fact, many of the most famous chapters retain so much of their culture it changes how they do their job.

 

Maybe I am looking at things with rose colored glasses?  Sure the 40k universe is grimly dark (or maybe darkly grim) but I don't see it as quite THIS bad.

[Marshal Rohr]

What a stupid man. This is the kind of uneducated hot take you’d see from some rando on the Internet. Not someone who is writing for the license. Hopefully Black Library pulls his contracts or reprimands him for engaging in political commentary that isn’t based on any real world definition of any of those concepts.

[Vykes]

-ponders on that one and taps chin in thought- condensed into a tweet... yeah, I can see the perspective. 

[cheywood]

Isn’t hypno-indoctrination basically forcing knowledge and perspective into a recruit’s mind?

[caladancid]

Isn’t hypno-indoctrination basically forcing knowledge and perspective into a recruit’s mind?

Yeah, there is definitely some level of truth to the ‘template’ comment. But then Scars, Salamanders, Wolves, and others find some way to be good people and very unique culturally.

[Marshal Rohr]

Hypnoindoctrination has never been portrayed as anything but information and ‘downloading’ knowledge. It’s certainly not some someone playing Frankie goes to Hollywood while a crazy man screams ELDAR BAD into your ear.

[caladancid]

Hypnoindoctrination has never been portrayed as anything but information and ‘downloading’ knowledge. It’s certainly not some someone playing Frankie goes to Hollywood while a crazy man screams ELDAR BAD into your ear.

Yeah I thought of it more as the scene from Deathwatch where they learn from the experience of other marines.

[cheywood]

Hypnoindoctrination has never been portrayed as anything but information and ‘downloading’ knowledge. It’s certainly not some someone playing Frankie goes to Hollywood while a crazy man screams ELDAR BAD into your ear.

But it is presenting knowledge from a singular viewpoint and downloading that into the brain of an impressionable and in many cases politically ignorant youth. To me that still counts as brainwashing, though I see what you’re saying.

[Vykes]

Is it just the reference to the 'patriarchy' that is rustling one's jimmies*?  

 

At its core: big god-dude made a process that required prepubescent/pubescent male youth to be implanted with additional genetic material that overwrote their genetic code to some degree (more in the case of Blood Angels, or possibly Word Bearers making them predisposed to listening to authority) to make them post/non/in-human weapons.  Deviation was something that had to be controlled through the apothecarion for correction or through discipline masters, etc.  I'm reminded of, I want to say Now Peals Midnight, with a newly inducted Imperial Fist not remembering his own mostly recent pre-induction past.  The template is based on their primarch, degradation with successors comes with a host of other things, but stabilization was still typically done with primarch genes (EC, BA, etc). 

 

It doesn't make them an army of evil, it doesn't make them sub-human scum, but I think I can see where the perspective comes from in its broadest sense. 

 

* any time THAT subject comes up, there's always screaming... I don't personally get why, but that's not important. 

[cheywood]

 

Isn’t hypno-indoctrination basically forcing knowledge and perspective into a recruit’s mind?

Yeah, there is definitely some level of truth to the ‘template’ comment. But then Scars, Salamanders, Wolves, and others find some way to be good people and very unique culturally.

Is Brooks saying all marines are evil or programmed to hate their cultures though? One can be brainwashed and still a decent, home culture loving individual.

[caladancid]

 

Hypnoindoctrination has never been portrayed as anything but information and ‘downloading’ knowledge. It’s certainly not some someone playing Frankie goes to Hollywood while a crazy man screams ELDAR BAD into your ear.

But it is presenting knowledge from a singular viewpoint and downloading that into the brain of an impressionable and in many cases politically ignorant youth. To me that still counts as brainwashing, though I see what you’re saying.

Both of those viewpoints could be right, and still not as harsh as I read the premise proposed by Brooks. I think of Astartes as, if anything, prizing cultural uniqueness.

Is it just the reference to the 'patriarchy' that is rustling one's jimmies*?

 

At its core: big god-dude made a process that required prepubescent/pubescent male youth to be implanted with additional genetic material that overwrote their genetic code to some degree (more in the case of Blood Angels, or possibly Word Bearers making them predisposed to listening to authority) to make them post/non/in-human weapons. Deviation was something that had to be controlled through the apothecarion for correction or through discipline masters, etc. I'm reminded of, I want to say Now Peals Midnight, with a newly inducted Imperial Fist not remembering his own mostly recent pre-induction past. The template is based on their primarch, degradation with successors comes with a host of other things, but stabilization was still typically done with primarch genes (EC, BA, etc).

 

It doesn't make them an army of evil, it doesn't make them sub-human scum, but I think I can see where the perspective comes from in its broadest sense.

 

* any time THAT subject comes up, there's always screaming... I don't personally get why, but that's not important.

Oh, I’m just sort of ignoring the patriarchy part of the tweet. My concern is the viewpoint expressed by Brooks, not the random internet haha.

[Marshal Rohr]

Is it just the reference to the 'patriarchy' that is rustling one's jimmies*?

 

At its core: big god-dude made a process that required prepubescent/pubescent male youth to be implanted with additional genetic material that overwrote their genetic code to some degree (more in the case of Blood Angels, or possibly Word Bearers making them predisposed to listening to authority) to make them post/non/in-human weapons. Deviation was something that had to be controlled through the apothecarion for correction or through discipline masters, etc. I'm reminded of, I want to say Now Peals Midnight, with a newly inducted Imperial Fist not remembering his own mostly recent pre-induction past. The template is based on their primarch, degradation with successors comes with a host of other things, but stabilization was still typically done with primarch genes (EC, BA, etc).

 

It doesn't make them an army of evil, it doesn't make them sub-human scum, but I think I can see where the perspective comes from in its broadest sense.

 

* any time THAT subject comes up, there's always screaming... I don't personally get why, but that's not important.

It’s because you can’t apply modern political and social conventions to a universe where true evil, alien star gods, xenophobic xenos slavers, intergalactic economic systems exist. It’s reductive, and frankly, self-absorbed to try and use a license like 40k as a commentary on the problems of 2019. It’s like people who believe Tolkien was a fascist because the Shire was idyllic and orks were mean. Those terms have very specific definitions relative to people living today based on emergent political theories that are only a few centuries old. In two hundred years those definitions will be as irrelevant to the people living as political theories and social conventions of four hundred years ago are to us living today. This circles back to the self-absorbed nature of humans believing they are living in the most important part of history to ever happen. It’s a function of the human minds inability to comprehend its own insignificance.

[caladancid]

 

 

Isn’t hypno-indoctrination basically forcing knowledge and perspective into a recruit’s mind?

Yeah, there is definitely some level of truth to the ‘template’ comment. But then Scars, Salamanders, Wolves, and others find some way to be good people and very unique culturally.

Is Brooks saying all marines are evil or programmed to hate their cultures though? One can be brainwashed and still a decent, home culture loving individual.

 

 

I certainly read his comments in total as thinking marines are evil/bad/"fascist" as he says.  And yeah I totally agree (obviously) that they aren't those things.  In fact the ones who are, or who do 'bad thing' like the Grey Knights after Armageddon, or the MM killing civilians, or the Knights of Blood murdering randoms, they are held out as outliers.

 

Fundamentally, despite 40k being the grim darkness of the far future, marines are mostly held out by the IP as heroes. Perhaps very flawed heroes, but they still are a force for good.

 

The more I think about it the more concerning it is that someone who writes using the license is so off base.

[Vykes]

Hmm, I don't fundamentally agree on it, Marshal Rohr, but I can see where you're coming from: of course, comparisons will be made and serve a purpose as a contemporary social reflection.  So events that are shocking, different, heartfelt, or malicious, all have the impact based on our own experience and understanding (I'm still reminded of the food riots in Now Peals Midnight).  The setting is futuristic but the writers are modern, thus the literature and concepts are always going to have hallmarks of certain ethos and conventions that are ingrained at the time of writing regardless of the internal logic and metaphysical truths of the setting (basically: we're never getting away from it until we're actually distanced from the writing.  Besides, historiography is fun).  We can see the differences not only in 100-200 years, but even in the language and social concepts expressed in 15-30 year generational gaps. 

 

So while it is arguably unfair to ascribe judgement to the setting that exists so far outside our recognized bounds, it's posit that it's perfectly fair to use the comparisons in so far as our evaluation of the piece as literary material. 

 

Though I'll 100% admit I'm always wary of anything described as 'fascistic' without a little more evidence given how freely the term is bandied about.  

 

That and I'd say there's a case to be made that the changes that emerged from legion to chapters and 11,000 years of cultural evolution fundamentally changed the purpose of astartes in a lot of ways. Yet, when it comes down to it, the meat and blood of what an astartes is, remains a male youth subjected to extensive mental and physical conditioning preselected by genetic template, created to accomplish militant tasks.  There is no retirement, there is no signing bonus other than the physical traits that get blended into them that was introduced via screened geneseed.

 

As for multi-cultural... I want to say pan-cultural might almost fit better in its most basic form.  I mean, there's a lot of uniquness that gets emphasized within chapters and legions in particular (due to the wider net of recruitment), that showed a lot of fragmentation and cracks in some but not others.  Eh, this is a weird one I kinda want to think about, now .  It's more relative to the nature of the Imperium as well as the recruitment dynamic (Is anyone proud of Bodt, or Cretacia?  I'm seriously wondering how much is social, cultural, and genetic at this point)

 

I dunno, it's all nuanced enough for me to say 'I think I get where the tweet comes from' but when analyzed it'll be open to enough debate to make it a pretty interesting topic on the whole.   

[Marshal Rohr]

Using only in universe illustrations to stay within board rules, I’ll try to explain how the 40k universe can’t be analyzed by modern critical theories with any modicum of accuracy.

 

I’ll use religious tolerance in the Imperium. There have certainly been a vast number of sectarian conflicts in the Imperium that mirror any number of our own in the thousands of years of our history, but by and large the Imperium is exceptionally tolerant of sectarian views beyond anything comparable to our world today. What it is not tolerant of, is worship of things beyond the Emperor. In our own world worshiping different gods would be religious tolerance. In 40k worshipping another god is to act as the portal to a hell dimension through which armies of carnivorous fire breathing monsters and vessels of incurable disease can descend into reality. In our own world, it would be unacceptable to execute a worshipper of another god according to modern sensibilities. In 40k it is a necessity, because even in prison they are still a vessel for an incursion from unreality.

 

Next, let’s take gender roles. In our modern time we are experiencing a realignment of traditional roles. In 40k there are worlds that might be more backwards than we are and more progressive than we are. By and large, there is no overarching social conventional that prioritizes one sex or gender above another. All people are meat for the mills of industry and war, and at the highest level there is no ‘old boys clubs’. The High Lords themselves could be either sex. Lotarra Sarrin could’ve ordered the execution of a legion praetor. The Legio Solaria is a matriarchy. The Death Korps is a patriarchal death cult. The mechanicum actively removes sex from even being a factor in a person. It’s remarkably cosmopolitan in a dark and twisted way.

 

The Military-Industrial complex. In 40k it is an utmost necessity. The Imperium cannot produce enough material to fight just wars of defense from Xenos races and the legions of hell. This one should be obvious and straight forward.

[Vykes]

is it a fair assessment of analyzing a 2019 tweet, though?  

 

I mean, I'd argue the opposite of what you did there and say it's affirming the disjunction: is is true that there is religious tolerance in so far as a large number of ecclestiastical (and machine cult) sects and doctrines are permitted, and they are also by definition sects and sectarian. But they are also denominations rather than independent religions, and non-ecclestiastical worship is denounced even when it would be tied to entities that aren't directly aligned with the ruinous powers. Thus, it's not religious tolerance in the current understanding of the subject.  The logic and relation of the potential that all worship from Imperial to Aeldari or even Old Ones is fundamentally empowering the warp and proportionally empowers chaos as a direct result, is internal logic.

 

All I'm really getting at is that when used offhandedly, is what Brooks labeled as 'the nature of an astartes' (in what we can define as nature versus purpose) fair as of 2019?  If not, what is our current understanding of what an astartes is?  More over, has that changed compared to the evolution of 40K as a setting compared to previous incarnations/benchmarks of the setting?

[Marshal Rohr]

Brooks is applying critical theory to internal logic, and I am arguing the internal logic is immune from modern critical theory because in almost every way it is justified or beyond our own modern conventions. The problem arises when you do this because our own modern conventions are by nature divisive, something is either good or bad and the critical theories he is applying very specifically advocate for eliminating the positions and norms they are opposed to. That is the problem. If you label 40k as fascism, and believe fascism is bad, and are in the camp that fascist fiction and literature enables fascism, the options are change the fiction to not be fascist or stop producing it all together. Since Brooks is writing for the company, he is clearly in the subvert the fiction camp, and using 40k as a medium to push a subversion is ridiculous.

[Arkangilos]

Also, everything he describes fits any totalitarian regime, not just fascism.

[cheywood]

I certainly read his comments in total as thinking marines are evil/bad/"fascist" as he says. And yeah I totally agree (obviously) that they aren't those things. In fact the ones who are, or who do 'bad thing' like the Grey Knights after Armageddon, or the MM killing civilians, or the Knights of Blood murdering randoms, they are held out as outliers.

 

Fundamentally, despite 40k being the grim darkness of the far future, marines are mostly held out by the IP as heroes. Perhaps very flawed heroes, but they still are a force for good.

 

The more I think about it the more concerning it is that someone who writes using the license is so off base.

I can’t speak for Brooks (obviously), but the only word he uses to describe them is ‘fascist’. He never calls them evil. Fascist doesn’t inherently imply any moral value. Many people use it as a shorthand for evil or viewpoints they dislike because fascism’s so repugnant to those born into democracies, but for those born into anarchy a strong central government controlling everything could be very attractive. That contrast of perspectives is part of the appeal of 40k, at least for me. The Imperium’s both a failed state locked in a death-spiral of desperate tyranny and the last great empire of man raging violently against the coming night. Space marines are both ruthless child-soldiers willing to murder anyone set against them and glorious heroes defending the carcass of their grandfather’s realm. All depends on which angle you feel like gazing through.

[Marshal Rohr]

Space marines aren’t really child soldiers in any meaningful context. They are selected and trained at the same ages most armies have selected and trained recruits back into antiquity. We’re not talking about 8 and 9 year olds hooked on meth and given an ak here. We are talking about 13-14 year old boys. The age of maturity in many ancient cultures. Half way to dead before that. Their emotional growth is irrelevant in this context because the Imperium isn’t doing anything cultures did for thousands and thousands of years and produces the best results you can imagine - an army of warriors trained their entire lives like professional athletes and then genetic enhanced into Transhumans. When people use child soldiers as a criticism it’s ahistorical and it’s banking on a popular trope that doesn’t even apply. Space marines aren’t able to socially interact with humans for the same reasons someone from country A has a hard time interacting with someone from country B. It’s culture and socialization. Space marines are socialized into a military as teenagers. Of course they don’t understand humans, but it’s not because of anything special about being taken for military service as a teenager. As an illustration, Aly Raisman spent more time training as a child and teenager than any 18 year old that enlists will spend before they actually join their unit and possible experience combat. Is that tragic? No, her profession since childhood has been to be a world class gymnast. She’s celebrated for it. Space marines are world class warriors.

[caladancid]

 

I certainly read his comments in total as thinking marines are evil/bad/"fascist" as he says. And yeah I totally agree (obviously) that they aren't those things. In fact the ones who are, or who do 'bad thing' like the Grey Knights after Armageddon, or the MM killing civilians, or the Knights of Blood murdering randoms, they are held out as outliers.

 

Fundamentally, despite 40k being the grim darkness of the far future, marines are mostly held out by the IP as heroes. Perhaps very flawed heroes, but they still are a force for good.

 

The more I think about it the more concerning it is that someone who writes using the license is so off base.

I can’t speak for Brooks (obviously), but the only word he uses to describe them is ‘fascist’. He never calls them evil. Fascist doesn’t inherently imply any moral value. Many people use it as a shorthand for evil or viewpoints they dislike because fascism’s so repugnant to those born into democracies, but for those born into anarchy a strong central government controlling everything could be very attractive. That contrast of perspectives is part of the appeal of 40k, at least for me. The Imperium’s both a failed state locked in a death-spiral of desperate tyranny and the last great empire of man raging violently against the coming night. Space marines are both ruthless child-soldiers willing to murder anyone set against them and glorious heroes defending the carcass of their grandfather’s realm. All depends on which angle you feel like gazing through.

You think he meant fascist in a neutral way? I did not read it like that. Maybe I combined that comment and the other but I thought it was pretty negative.

[Marshal Rohr]

He’s definitely not offering a nuanced position on the pros and cons of a militarized central government. He’s quite clearly tying it to real world fascist politics and not fascism as a political theory.

[Roomsky]

Don't know if I can agree with pulling an author's contracts because he pointed out that the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable is just that. The Imperium is an evil empire as envisioned by contemporary people, it is informed by what people in the last 20 years thought was abhorrent. That the Imperium requires a military to exist is not an argument that Space Marines as we know them must exist, no more than the need for starships to have weaponry necessitates using slaves to load ammunition.

[mc warhammer]

readers are in an complex position here, where our protagonists are essentially a product and part of a system we should abhor, but we’re also shown ways to empathise with them

 

i think it’s a really interesting setting mostly for that reason

[SpecialIssue]

Wait, what is so wrong about that tweet? Those are Space Marines (genetically/surgically enhanced fanatically-brainwashed transhuman child-soldiers).

 

Hypnoindoctrination has never been portrayed as anything but information and ‘downloading’ knowledge. It’s certainly not some someone playing Frankie goes to Hollywood while a crazy man screams ELDAR BAD into your ear.

 

More intense and rigorous hypno-indoctrination was listed as one of the main initiatives/standardisations of the Codex reforms, as part of a more drawn-out and careful recruitment process to forestall a degradation in quality and/or loyalty. Doesn't that imply a doctrine/worldview/loyalty being forcibly implanted into recruits, and also partially explain the relatively low mass incidences of Marines falling to Chaos in the past 10 millennia?

 

Space marines aren’t really child soldiers in any meaningful context. They are selected and trained at the same ages most armies have selected and trained recruits back into antiquity. We’re not talking about 8 and 9 year olds hooked on meth and given an ak here. We are talking about 13-14 year old boys. The age of maturity in many ancient cultures. Half way to dead before that. Their emotional growth is irrelevant in this context because the Imperium isn’t doing anything cultures did for thousands and thousands of years and produces the best results you can imagine - an army of warriors trained their entire lives like professional athletes and then genetic enhanced into Transhumans. When people use child soldiers as a criticism it’s ahistorical and it’s banking on a popular trope that doesn’t even apply. 

 

Sidestepping the morality, soldiers in the ancient world were not inducted into the military and expected to hold the line at 13-14, even though they may have been trained from that age. The Roman army's age of recruitment was 20. The Spartans trained their boys for life, but they only joined the line at 18-20 when they actually joined a military barracks. This is not due to morals, but the fact that a teen is less capable than an adult in physical ability and possibly maturity. Space Marines, who undergo an artificially accelerated physical/psychological development are not encumbered by this and are thus expected to be Scouts undergoing combat roles within a few years at most of their initiation (thus perhaps being their late teens on their first few missions, depending on chapter recruitment policies). So yes, you could say that in chronological years, independent of physical maturity, they are child-soldiers. 

 

Space marines aren’t able to socially interact with humans for the same reasons someone from country A has a hard time interacting with someone from country B. It’s culture and socialization. Space marines are socialized into a military as teenagers. Of course they don’t understand humans, but it’s not because of anything special about being taken for military service as a teenager. As an illustration, Aly Raisman spent more time training as a child and teenager than any 18 year old that enlists will spend before they actually join their unit and possible experience combat. Is that tragic? No, her profession since childhood has been to be a world class gymnast. She’s celebrated for it. Space marines are world class warriors.

 

And I wouldn't say that the inability of Space Marines to empathize/interact with their subjects is a purely cultural/societal one, but a deep difference in physio-psychology. During their transformation, they have have been rewired to erase feelings of fear, lessened the ability to doubt or question their loyalties and who knows what else. A large part of the Astartes mythos is/was that they have given up on some of their humanity in order to protect it / become something else. And it is perhaps a cruel irony that the Chaos Marines and survivors of the Heresy are perhaps more 'human' in regards to their personalities than that of their loyalist brethren, who necessarily have traded some of their humanity for purity.

 

Also, a major component of the modern understanding of the term 'child-soldiers' is that these individuals were not given consent as to whether they were to become soldiers; which also certainly fits into SM recruitment modus operandi. I'd bet Aly Raisman had a lot more say in what she wanted to do in life than even a promising Ultramarine prospective recruit, raised from birth on Macragge to bring honour to his noble family by becoming a Space Marine.

 

Now you might look at the novels and such and point to this and that example, but to me this is a central part of my interpretation of the old Adeptus Astartes. They aren't identifiable heroes you can look up to or identify with and nor should they be framed that way, except as in-universe propaganda. The Imperium (and indeed the Emperor Himself) as a whole do/did not let anything get in the way of procurement of more war material, including Space Marines.