Why is Warhammer such a meme fest?

Warhammer is grim and dark it's about a slowly dying galaxy and a human empire of insane fanatics, so why are there so many memes and why are they so effective?

Because the entire universe was originally meant as a parody. It was meant to be funny. Some people (you for instance) for get that and buy into it, but a lot of us realize it's over the top and hammy nature.

/thread

Anything with a sizable fan base will have memes. Even miniatures games.

Because this is what Warhammer looks like.

the focus was never on the grim or the dark, that was more of a background detail
its actually supposed to be about incredible testosterone and manliness like an 80s action film

grimdark is an aesthetic, british comedy where you point and laugh at the obvious over-the-top suffering, like blinged out gaudy generals eating wine and lobster while complaining that the men arent working hard enough, followed by a cutaway to some guardsmen roasting a rat followed by the guardsmen making some kind of rat pun

and of course, a pastiche of existing sci-fi cliches thrown into a blender
the galaxy may be dying, but we can still die FOR THE EMPRAH! and swing a chainsaw blade to kill orkz

Those giant mountain sized mechs are missing giant churches attached to them and there should also be more fire everywhere.

The more serious a setting is/tries to be, the more the silly/over-the-top shit will stand out

Basically this.

I wish it would get back to its roots in just ripping everything off in one giant melting pot of awesome. GW/Warhammer never had unique content. What was unique was the way in which it introduced and combined existing ideas, history and motifs.

Where else do you get the Catholic 16th century inquisition fighting Gigers aliens and Skynet style Terminators, all while being backed up by Stormtroopers and WW1 Wehrmacht?

Pfft, I only wish it still looked like that.

poking fun at super-serious, very powerful people is especially amusing

Because it is true.
/thread

Because the people that made it were children of WW2 veterans, and the violence and trauma that was brought home from Europe manifested in dark and unseen ways throughout their households.

Everyone knew someone whose father, uncle, older brother or cousin died screaming in pain, drowning, writhing in flame or falling from the sky.

The maimed and disfigured walked the streets, impoverished, shunned and feared for the injuries and deformities they sustained to protect the very people that shrank from their gaze.

Industry was collapsing and governments were crushing unions. There was a global recession and at every turn, individual liberty and rights were being eliminated. Governments took 'public property' and renamed it 'Government Property' then sold it, then turned to the taxpayer to make up for the sudden drop in ongoing retinues. Thatcher spent billions going to war against Argentina in what was surely the most pointless war in history.

Against this darkly comic background came a bunch of people living out 40K in real time, culturally speaking, who decided that all their real life needed to cross into bad parody was seven foot tall fanatics in power armour working for an insanely violent, semi-competent government ruled by an autocratic figurehead of dubious provenance.

In short: laugh, lest you cry.

lol talk about edgy and grimdark
lighten up, sport

If you concentrate too hard on the grimdarkness your suspension of disbelief will be shattered extremely quickly.

My point is, having lived through all of the above myself, you pubeless wonders can never truly understand the parody, as they never experienced what was being parodied.

You try spending ten years of your childhood convinced of the inevitability of nuclear war without developing a sense of the absurd and macabre.

I laugh at the 40K setting not only because of where it is, but also because I saw where it came from, and have been walking beside it the whole way.

/thread
everything has memes
op is a dipshit

>you pubeless wonders

kek

try harder grandpa

When were you born? 1995? 1998?

In late 1994 I was sweeping up bodies after the Rwandan genocide. Burned-out churches filled with the remains of people that had been shot dead then set alight- if they were lucky.

Wind back to 1991, I'm 19 and the world and I are watching a war televised like no other before. My military relatives smuggle me a VHS tape of Apache gunship IR gunsight footage in an age before people being topless on TV was a thing.

The thing that worries me the most? That future generations will say we Gen-Xers didn't do enough.

40K is a product of the Gen-X zeitgeist, and only gen-xers can truly understand it for the dark comedy it was.

great analysis.

I bet you voted Corbyn, for the greater good am I right?

It's worth noting that the people who made 40k, your contemporaries, who lived through what you lived through, and who wrote from that same experience, are no longer involved in the production of 40k. In fact, they haven't been involved since about the mid-nineties. Most of them aren't even involved with Games Workshop anymore. They may have started the franchise as a dark comedy, reflecting the absurdity of the time they (and you) were living through, but that is no longer the case.

The people writing for it and creating it now are doing so sincerely. Newcomers who cannot access the comedic elements are not failing to do so because they're young, they're failing to do so because those comedic elements are greatly diminished or non-existent. Those events which inspired it originally are not relevant to the modern writers, and so they are not reflected in the modern product. Where 40k does stray into comedy these days, it does so in different ways, to reflect its updated attitudes.

No matter where it started, it no longer reflects that world. Eighth Edition is to Rogue Trader as Starship Troopers (the movie) is to Starship Troopers (the novel).

>they haven't been involved since about the mid-nineties.


Yes, and the game has suffered as a result.

And you voted for the Field Runner? Pfft, if the next installment matches reality, it should be about how each faction is desperately trying to destroy themselves faster than the others while the Chaos Gods look down on us and whisper..."Cyka."

...

That post...

Corbyn plays Orks, actually.

"Thatcher spent billions going to war against Argentina in what was surely the most pointless war in history."

Found the Argentinian.

>Argentina starts the war by invading Falklands.
>Falklands wants to remain British.
>Britain beats Argentina six ways from Sunday
>Argentina stays salty for the next few decades
>"Britain started it, such a pointless war"

And if you don't think that's the sickest shit ever you can get the fuck out my galaxy

>Thatcher spent billions going to war against Argentina in what was surely the most pointless war in history.
A nation that can't defend its territory isn't a nation at all.