How Warhammer 40,000 abandoned anti-authoritarianism for comfortable cowardice
  • PiraHxCx@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    1 month ago

    The exact same critique aimed at Warhammer 40k in that text could be made to Judge Dredd. The author either doesn’t know Dredd stories or is just cutting it a slack because of personal preference. I personally know people who look at Dredd and Rorschach and think they’re great. When writers censor their own work because they’re afraid stupid people won’t understand it, well, we get the mainstream entertainment industry.
    Every aspect of Warhammer 40k is absurd and terrifying, and that’s the point. Just because some deranged person is inspired by it, or because the writer of that text doesn’t like it, doesn’t make it any less of a satire… the Emperor crusades to destroy religions and ends up being considered a god, humanity degenerates so hard into fanaticism it loses its scientific knowledge and priests pray to machines to see if they work, they have a super brotherhood of honorous people where everyone has to whisper because everyone is suspicious of everyone, shit is hilarious.

    • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      4·
      1 month ago

      They author went into great lengths to point out why your argument rings hollow. Your should probably read the rest of it first before commenting.

      • PiraHxCx@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        I did read, and nope, the author just went into great lengths to say it doesn’t like anything that is not didactical with in-your-face morals (the part the author try to say the right way to write the story, painful to read - and I’m pretty sure in those comics I’ve read there have been plenty stories people were fed up with being enslaved and Space Marines just showed up and called everyone heretic and purged the city). I’ve read similar texts about Starship Troopers as well, as a “glorification of fascism” that inspire fascists… one of these days I will be seeing someone writing the same about Rorschach…

        ps: I started reading Warhammer 40k with the 1998 comics, so it’s after that third edition mentioned. I’m not super deep in the lore, I’ve just read the comics (including the modern ones) and played a few of the video games, but “Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau” sounds very wacky. I’m glad they shifted focus.
        Judge Dredd, however, I probably have read about 2k issues so far counting 2000ad and Megazine, and although it’s more “didactical” nowadays, the first 30 years of it the majority of times the judges were the only defense against dinosaurs, giant flying man-eating fish, cannibal mutants, weird cults, robots, aliens, ultra dimensional supernatural beings… the main recurring villain is Judge Death for fucks sake. So yeah, they live in under a fascist regime, but without its fascists heroes they would have perished long ago… however, it’s one’s choice to see them (or the Space Marines) as heroes, just because they are the main characters they don’t need to be heroes nor do you have to be sympathetic, even though that’s what the American entertainment industry have trained you to believe. So I’ll double down: Everything the author said could be said about Judge Dredd as well, but he called it “biting critiques of authoritarianism and xenophobia”.
        Also, “maintained a dedicated fan base without needing to ask Nazis to stop showing up at meetings” is not real, I remember reading this 1988 interview with Wagner and Grant talking about the story Letter from a Democrat: “The story you mention there is one that we wrote to set the record straight, to show what a bastard Dredd really is. That people should come out of that thinking that he’s the good guy surprises me” “We wanted to leave the reader with a bad taste in his mouth about Dredd, and make him wonder if all the other things Dredd has been doing are right. Obviously it didn’t work.”, and you will easily find to this day bootlickers who don’t see Dredd as a satire at all.