Is 40k satire?

Originally - No, because satire is inherently critical. Original 40k would be better described as an affectionate parody of the material that influenced it.

Modern 40k, tragically, seems to take itself perfectly seriously. Unless Orks are involved. I don't even play Orks, and their codexes are still always the most entertaining to me, fluff-wise.

they would have to be more than guest characters for it to change much about them

No. Used to be parody, now it's just retarded.

Kek.

Nigga, The Beast Arises has Orks bringing death stars to Terra, even at their most terrifyingly powerful, Orks are still silly as fuck.

40k should always remain in the Fallout 1 & 2 style balance between dark and atmospheric but also silly an self-aware. It's hard to keep that balance.

>2000AD/Judge Dredd
The thing is, those can be pretty serious at time.
Judge Dedd have really tragic moments, and it have "fight an evil scientist and his army of anthropomorphic pills" moments.
And so should 40k, I think. There is nothing wrong with it having inconsistent tone between different stories.

So while I agree that today 40k should remember that it can be silly fun, we shouldn't go the other way and pretend 40k shouldn't never be serious.

It used to be. Priestly said that the setting was nothing but ironic. It hasn't really gone that way for a while now, as something had gone terribly wrong amongst GW's writers.

In the 80s and 90s, there was a popular science fiction concept called "ha ha only serious". That's where you straddle the line between extremely graphic and satire. You could have a setting that was both deadly serious and over-the-top self parody at the same time, veering into one or the other as needed.

In the 90s, comics, RPGs, and other media started taking themselves Very Seriously. Dark Knight Returns, Sandman, Vampire the Masquerade. 40k was actually one of the last settings to shed the humor, and I think in the end it was their move toward a much younger demographic. Millennials have no sense of humor.

Of what?

What is it trying to be critical of?

humans

Do freebooters count as diplomats?

>40k is parody/satire meme
Did it ever cross your mind that it's such a big setting parts of it are serious and parts of it aren't

No. Freebooterz are pirates that are slightly more willing than most Orks to negotiate for plunder and a good scrap.

Dredd was the Brits making fun of US law enforcement and systems

Pretty sure the Imperium is a jab at our imperialism as well

Not any more, and the setting is better for that.

It's actually pretty cool now, with all the silliness gone.

The confusion is that people think "satire" just means "stuff to laugh at."

1. the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.
2. a literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule.

Irony and folly are huge, HUGE elements in 40k.

Dredd was an equal parts parody of trigger-happy American police and Thatcherite tools of oppression British riot police.

The Imperium is pretty clearly Nazi-inspired, though. It's far more Third Reich-ish than it is British Empire-y or U.S. invader-y.

Laserburn was almost certainly satire of either American imperialism, British imperialism, or both, with the Red Redemption as radical muslims, except that the West hadn't really done much fighting against radical Islam at the time, so it was oddly prescient.

Ironically, the crime stats in the latest movie case suggest what is, if not a utopia, at least relatively peaceful compared to IRL -- in terms of absolute crime levels Megacity One is huge, but in terms of per capita crime levels Megacity One is less violent than modern cities, likely due to the vigilance of the Judges. And those megacities have HUGE population density to boot.

>Millennials have no sense of humor.

They have been taught that humor is problematic and offensive.

I just don’t get it

The emperor is real and he has the best interest of humanity at heart

Even in the original lore, dictatorship and fascism lead to a period of hope and prosperity for mankind until his anarchist traitor son ruined it all

What was the original message these apparent "Communist" Brit bongs where trying to get across?

Yeha, more writers seem to be taking it too seriously. The Orks and the Dark Eldar seem like the only parts of 40k left with intentional humor to them.

Pretty much.

It is both satire and serious at the same time.

It can be anything you want it to be.

That's half the fun of 40k and where so many other universes fall short. It's so huge you can make up just about anything and it fits in the universe.

It's satire in the same way you can call Fallout satirical. Yes, there are some satirical elements aimed at poking fun at other post-apoc media and American culture, but overall the setting is considered a lot more serious.

They're targeting a younger audience that can't handle satire. 12 year olds, especially in this generation, are way too earnest to laugh and just go with it.

If they were still selling to the grognards, they'd be able to have an ounce of self-awareness and laugh at themselves.

Go onto a college campus and you'll see how people take a joke these days.

>hur muh millennials
>take a joek guies

might be that you're just not that funny

>The Imperium is pretty clearly Nazi-inspired, though. It's far more Third Reich-ish than it is British Empire-y or U.S. invader-y.

How so, British Army had basically commissar level officers who executed grunts for disobeying suicide orders still during WWI? Like jumping out of trenches and marching directly to enemy fortifications while being machine-gunned down.

So are you saying that we should just abandon any attempt to raise people with a sense of humor and self-awareness, and expose them to different, more subtle forms of comedy than silly videos and memes?

Nah, pretty sure you're just an overly analytical faggot.

That's okay, this kind of moral panic happens every other generation or two. It'll pass much like it always does as the activists slowly get their demands and then become insane in an attempt to remain relevant, driving off the moderates and eventually cannibalizing and gutting the movement. Just like Macaroni.

> YFW Foppery was the masculine counter culture to effeminate Macaroni which was an exaggerated aping of the style of French nobles who survived the Revolution.

Was it? Yes.

Is it? No.

you old farts are hilarious

No, I'm just saying that kids these days can't take a joke.

Why do you think I have a solution slotted up?

It has satire IN it, but the setting was always partially serious.

Read Rogue Trader. Please. I beg you.

The obvious solution is to expose them to satire, so that they learn to take a joke.

...

Imperial Guard was absolutely and most certainly inspired by the soviets doe (men worth less than equipment, commiesars, super grimdark, etc), hell even the not-Roman aquila is identical to the Russian double headed chicken. Also super heavy tanks.

Orks are just for fun.

I honestly dont understand what's up with spess muhreens, they seem to be some sort of.. idealism or something, I dont know.

Space elves have Tolkien singing and 'beautiful dying race' thingie. Not sure what are they all about, never finished silmarillion.

Dark space elves are just for more fun and a tiny bit of edginess.

Techpriests are for 'STEM master race' types that are always present with sci-fi cyberpunk thingies, who are basically turning their anti-religion thing into religion.

Chaos is for edgy people I guess.

Oldcrones are also fun/edgy mix I guess.

Whole thing was made so people can have fun I guess, I doubt they were trying to pass on some sort of super big symbolic message or whatever. I cant help but think people saying this are just some sort of pretentious quasi-intellectual bullshitters, thinking that E V E R Y T H I N G has to have some sort of hidden symbolic message that only they can decipher so they can go to bed thinking they arent completely useless or whatever. Give it a rest wankers, some things are simply made to be fun and there's no intentional/important symbolic message.

Pretty sure The Imperium is way more inspired by the roman empire at various points in history
>deified emperor
>empire in decline, ever so slowly
>constant invasions from "barbarians"
>half the enemies are just legions turned traitor by previously-trusted generals

Oh for sure. It has definite humor. "Inquisitor Obi Wan Sherlock Clouseau?" He also looks more like an angry Hippy in a leather coat with a chainsword and bolt pistol than the current model. (He even has a ying-yang symbol on his chest. Not a skull or Rosette)

There is also a persistent recurring enemy in the scenarios that is a douchebag Flash Gordon/Flashman parody. I swear it's a "Gold" something name, but I could be wrong.

I imagine him as being similar to Captain Sternn from Heavy Metal at times myself.

And missions that involve Grox rustling/theft, and the ensuing indignity of your Space Marines getting eaten or mauled to death by Grox. (Likely because Grox are large, and angry, and a good analogy is "more dragon-y looking Dewback from Star Wars. They are basically angry all the time. But can live pretty much anywhere and have delicious, healthy meat. They however, fucking hate well, everything.)

They just get triggered and stage a protest.

Orks are british football hooligans

spess mehreens are a combination of spartan warriors and roman legionaries.

Oldcrons are egyptian terminators.

Chaos is supposed to be the mirror opposite to the Imperium, showing off a more Chaotic (harr harr) Evil as opposed to the Imperiums Lawful Evil.

Sort of like you right now?

You're taking one fairly left-wing part of the population and applying it to all people under a certain age. Even then, most of those sorts of people at least have the common decency to be triggered by something more serious, not by a type of comedy.

>common decency to be triggered by something more serious
>triggered
>serious

If you get triggered, its your fault tho. I mean think about it. Your emotions are your problem, no? I am from a fairly small eastern European country, and no one has ever got triggered by anything around here.....
Lets say someone 'triggers' you, and you get all 'triggered' and in all of your outrage and self righteousness go to a court and sue them.. what if he claims he got triggered by you being triggered?? Now what????

So all accounts of 'being triggered' are clearly bullshit. In case of no actual, factual, objective, testable, measurable damage being done, there's no case. Just bullshit.

Yes, exactly. I keep a squeegee next to my monitor for moments like these.

On the outside, I'm cool and collected, buy on the inside I'm a seething torrent of passion and humorless rage. Very few people pick up on that; good job user!

This applies to republicans, too. Have you tried talking to a Trump supporter lately?

>small eastern eurotrash
>opinions discarded

> "Defending" your obvious millenial status

> Repeatedly taking the goddamn bait

You millenial fags are just unable to resist it, aren't you?

Well, it's not as if most people claim to be triggered by random things. It's usually related some bad experience in the past, sort of like PTSD (or even being actual PTSD). There's no real reason they could justify being triggered by 40k being more satirical.

at this point I'm pretty sure we're all well over the age of 18 dicking around on the internet trying to be clever with minimal success

Oh, come on. Emotional damages are brought up in court all the time. Has it got away from us? Yes, but denying its existence is ridiculous.

>opinions discarded because I dont like you
....ok? how do you even talk with people like you lol

Exactly. Getting triggered by 40k is a mental illness.

Well I doubt it. During the 90's there was plenty of blown up corpses in the streets and rape, half of it is on youtube (look up Yugoslav civil war), I personally know a lot of people who participated (half of my family fought), and no one got PTSD or whatever. People just lead normal lives. My dad gets really hyped every time they make new Hitman game, guy just loves those.

Millennials are those born after 1985.

40K factions are just based on enemies of the United States.
>Imperium: Nazi Germany (Obvious)
>Chaos: Confederacy (People who broke off to do something evil, take lots of slaves)
>Eldar: British Empire (Crumbling empire who insist they're superior)
>Dark Eldar: Canada (Meaningless in the grand scheme of things and related to the British)
>Orkz: Soviet Union (Endless stupidity that doesn't realize its system doesn't work)
>Necron: Imperial Japan (Ancient Evil awakening because the Imperium/America poked at it)
>Tyranids: Mexico (Endless hordes)
>Tau: China (Strict bureaucracies and born-into-your-taskness, great at organization and shitty at war, Eastern philosophies)

No, they're people I don't agree with. Like hipsters.

>hejustthrewtherod.jpg

No, it was Parody. But now it wants to be taken seriously despite it being chock full of retardation.

The best way to enjoy 40K is not take it too seriously.

>le everything is always about united states
This is some Best Korea tier imagination, United States doesnt even have first world standards and quality of life, less than 10% of the people own passports, and somehow you think everything is about you?

And those share the same pages as these guys.

It's more of a pastiche than anything else.

>less than 10% of the people own passports
Of all of the things to pick out, why do Europeans always pick on this? The other shit I can understand, but why this?

>There is also a persistent recurring enemy in the scenarios that is a douchebag Flash Gordon/Flashman parody. I swear it's a "Gold" something name, but I could be wrong.

Abdul Goldberg

inb4 The dude was a super kike and basically always stole your shit and you were always trying to get back at him

>10% own passports

It's not like most people are going to leave the country in the first place.

Eurocountries are closer together and people move between them more. Its a sign of sophistication and culture to go someplace else and decide you hate them for their slight variation on sausages and beer.

>40k lore is the sort of thing that sounds cool when it is just 2 sentences in a blurb, but gets infinitely stupid upon any expanded telling.

Exactly. Most have no recollection of the 80's, grew up in the oh-so-serious 90's, but really came of age after 2000. Hence "millennial".

A typical millennial born in 1990 or so turned 12 in 2002. At that point they started being in GW's target demographic. It was also around then that GW switched from selling broadly to "gamers" to selling "the Games Workshop Hobby" to the 12-16 yr old market segment.

And, not coincidentally, that's when all the snarky kind-of-kidding self-parody elements of 40k started being dropped.

40k is all things to all people.

It's one of the best "kitchen sink" settings ever created, because it's got a 20+ year history, and a whole galaxy to play with. There's plenty of room for satire, and plenty for grimdark played straight, and plenty for whatever else you want to cram in there, and it's all been done and often done well. That's the beauty of it.

>originally it was satire, but the kiddies couldn't handle it, so GW went grimdark

Eh, kind of. The satire elements were stronger and more prominent back in the day, but they're still around, and there have always been serious grim dark tales of heroism going on too, even in the RT days.

Well travelling all over the world is like an unwritten rule, a thing everyone does. By travelling, I mean visiting places that have their own ethnicity, their own language, their own (actual) culture that's different than yours. Not just cruising Euro zone (which have a ton of really nice places to visit), but also visiting Tokyo, Moscow, Abu Dhabi, stuff like that.

And so after traveling all over the world you get some legitimate perspective about a place you live in every day, you dont shout freedom from a world's prison state while being ruled by Kenyans and thinking that is a way it should be.

it's become self-satire

Man, the world makes me feel old but I keep getting reminded I'm still young.

Reminder that there's nothing wrong with serious 40k as long as it doesn't try to be anything but fantasy/non-realistic.

pretty sure I've seen modern marines with the RT beakie proportions in kauyon/mont'ka art

It's a "serious" setting made up of a lot of satirical and cheesy elements. Fallout is the same way. It used to be Command and Conquer Red Alert-tier in its over-the-top satirical nature, but that's toned down a bit and I still am fine with that.

Even Starship troopers had genuine drama amid all the satire.

There's really nothing wrong with taking a 40k story seriously, it's first and foremost a sandbox setting where you can have just about any scenario.

> Implying tau aren't young USA

what/where?

The irony that while trying to destroy religion in human society, le corpse emperor became that very object of worship. Think that waste original message.

it was satire, but much like the disney universe enough people started to believed in it that it became its own thing.

That's the way with most religions. Not meant in a fedora way just that the Buddhism practiced today would horrify Siddhartha, Jesus wouldn't recognize Christianity today outside of a few basic practices, Muhammad would be reeeeing at all the innovations to his faith.

Why is parody good? Serious is the best examples of all human art as the world is serious as well. It's better to have serious 40k with some slight elements of humor retained as absurdism.

>a thing everyone does.

There's that Eurocentricism at play. You guys may not be the imperial superpowers you once were but old habits die hard and (Western/Northern) Europe still has this behavior of thinking everyone in the world should live like them, have the same luxuries and opportunities they do or that life is like it is for them. While we are able to travel more than at any prior point in history it's not as if the vast majority of the population in much of the world is able to travel across the world on a touristic whim. The poorer Africans/South Americans/North Americans/East Asians are going to vacation to some local domestic destination or maybe the neighboring countries that are vacation hot spots (like Mexico is for the states and I'd think the subtropical parts of SE Asia are for the Chinese or Japanese or Koreans).

And don't act so smug that a Briton might go and visit Greece or Tunisia and be so cultured and enlightened and euphoric when they are going because it's cheap and it's sunny and there are good beaches. Costs us a lot more to travel outside of the states unless it's to Mexico or Canada.

I mean for fucks' sake you list Abu Dhabi. If you aren't upper middle class or rich you aren't going to Abu Dhabi on a whim unless you're some South-East Asian migrant laborer.

>Well travelling all over the world is like an unwritten rule, a thing everyone does.
are you actually being serious right now

>The Imperium is pretty clearly Nazi-inspired
It's more like faux-USSR than naziland.
Comissars, human wave tictacs, soviet-like massive purges and planned economy.

user that's why we have Space Wolves

You dont have to be a royalty to do a 15-20 days at some nice place outside of your continent. I am fairly certain ALL kinds of people can (and even should) become a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer or officer or something like that, and while not everyone can get a insta-cushy job because of his dad, if you are any good at what you do for a living you will get there in five to ten years tops, by the time you start a family you will certainly be able to travel where ever once a year. As long as your parents have a relevant education (which is completely 100% free over here) and arent manual laborers or some bullshit you get to live a normal life, and even if your parents didnt make anything out of themselves, doesnt mean you cant push yourself a tiny bit and make yourself a normal life.

...

>You dont have to be a royalty to do a 15-20 days at some nice place outside of your continent
Correct. But it's neither mandatory or all that common.

At least in NA, the bulk of leisure travel is going to be within the continent, because it's fucking massive.

Ork diplomats confirmed.

Well right, not mandatory, but its also not a big deal as long as you are a 'normal person', as long as you are a sensible, responsible, well raised person from a normal family.

If you are one of those shitters who pursued a formal education in something useless, thinking economies work on hobbies, not knowing what a job and what a hobby is, had a baby in your 20ies and are now raising a family while doing a minimum wage manual labor, than yeah its impossible because of 'evil rich and their evil lifestyle that they made possible trough evil stuff and privilege' or some bullshit.
But I didnt count those kind of people when I wrote the post. Those guys are their own category, not a norm. We'd all like formal education in Italian medieval poetry, but that's just not a thing you do..

No, but it's camp. Not very good camp, but still camp.

The brutality and vaguely fascist imagery isn't there because GW wanted to make a point about war or authoritarianism, it's there because a lot of science-fiction and fantasy is about these themes, or unwittingly promotes them, to the point of dark absurdity.

40k embraces that silliness.

Expect a slap at some point in the future.

Verily, the ork diplomats are canon now, thanks to the books.

No more waaagh!, but orks in monocles, followed by snots with banners of the words: facio ut facias.

On a slightly unrelated note, I am curious...

Does there exist something like a tabletop x-com style game set in the wh40k universe?

Like, replacing the skyranger with the thunderhawk, and the commander with the chapter master, and the soldiers with space marines, and the alienes with well xenos.

It is satire on extreme government.

Every Faction is the embodiment of a governmental ideology.