How do the dominant cultural narratives in art and mass media affect our politics?

The problem is that most of the Warhammer 40k literature out there is from the POV of Imperium characters.

The whole Screw You, Elves! trope had, honestly, Unfortunate Implications, mainly because the elves usually are pretty efferminate, so the end result is always that our Manly Humans (or dwarves) are better than the self rightereous effeminate elves. Which I feel that is something that the Alt Right feel all the time (our manly patriots are better than the intellectual pussies!!)

I mean W 40 K avoid that by having the eldar being as bad as The Imperium, but the species bias and the fact that the Eldar are played as totally snobish, well, do you see why Fuck the Eldar is a common feeling among the fanbase.

There is any from the Tau POV? I like them, even if they are Wide-Eyed Idealist of the setting and still are fucking morally messed up.

edited 31st Jan '18 7:47:09 PM by KazuyaProta

Not surprising a lot of "the imperium is not that bad honest" tend to be imperial guard fans so there is rhe while Batman syndrone there.

The Tau aren't terribly well-liked in 40K for a few reasons. However, the big reason why they don't work as protagonists IMO is that they're not very well-connected to the plot.

In fact, I was once in a Q&A with TTS's creator, and he stated that he actually likes the Tau and wishes to include them more. However, they don't have much relevance to the rest of the plot.

The point is less that and more the tau is a idealistic factiont hat just sort of works: they never have issue with their alien allies, all their citizen are well fed and respect it thanks to their upper caste and they dont get mauled by chaos.

Consider how the almost two utopian civilization(dark age humanity and aledari empire) got fuck, it come as rather sore taste to many.

There are advantages to being small fish in the pond.

Not even the imperium got that good.

IN short, the tau are the epitome of Born Lucky the avoid much problem it plague other faction because......because.....

because fuck you, that is why.

The Tau are on the receiving end of an Outside-Context Problem. That they're shiny and new and tiny and irrelevant is actually kind of an interesting perspective on the whole setting (moreso than the Orwellian overtones the Ethereals later took on), but the Greater Good's main issue is that it's completely Wrong Genre Savvy about the kind of universe they're living in.

edited 31st Jan '18 9:40:45 PM by Unsung

The in-story explanation is because they cover so little territory in the entire galaxy. They aren't a top priority target for any of the other factions. That's what I mean by them being the small fish.

edited 31st Jan '18 8:10:23 PM by M84

They weren't absurdly pragmatic and worked in a Utopia Justifies the Means at intergalactic scale? Nuking all planets that didn't follow them?

And yeah, I see how the Tau aren't popular, they might be whatever, but they had a almost null connection to the Chaos forces, right? Which means that is impossible to them to be actually relevant.

That's sad, they're one of the few cases where the Totalitarian Utilitarian is played for sympathy

The imperium is the one who blow up worlds when necesary(and by plain stupidity a couple of times but whatever) in fact one codex have the tau found a death world and asking themselve that the hell happen and the text said they encounter a world destroyed by the imperium years ago, it add a really nice twist on the whole ancient astronaut theory.

The tau are not naull to chaos, is just their soul are too weak for demons so they dont mind from most part.

The Tau didn't had their own dystopic elements? And yeah, they seem to small to actually suffer for the inmediate awfulness of the Crapsack World where they live.

Which is obviously boring when the Crapsackness is the selling point. Too bad, I imagined them as the Left authoritarian to the Right Authoritarianism of the Imperium, that's sad.

So, that means that the Imperium, the Orks and the Eldar are the only races that actually have the """nice""" things, right?

Given that the Orks are Crazy Awesome and only that, and the Eldar seems to appeal to the Screw You, Elves! crown, I see why fans like the Imperium so much, to the extend of forgetting the other races

Yes they have but it varies, when they first show up they were a stright up good guys: the etherials were nice and belive the best, the cast really get along, they alien allies didnt mind and so own.

Eventually they get darker and dystopians hints here and there but nothing very overt(which is weird for warhammer), like the mystery of how the etherial cast suddenly showing up out of nowhere, how the tau enter in ominicial rage if the etherial dies and of course the whole nasty issue of O`Shovah....

Thing is, more of the nastiness of the Tau are hints rather than outright explanation, making very easier to sell them as truly good guys, at the same times tau haters really try to dig a lot to lower them, each group missing the point.

edited 31st Jan '18 8:44:10 PM by unknowing

Necrons seem pretty cool from an outsider perspective, not good guys at all, but cool.

I miss Squats.

Moving this back into politics...

The problem with the Imperium and the mixed messages is that it's encouraged and enabled real life fascists. It's an extremely disturbing Misaimed Fandom. I'm giving GW the benefit of the doubt here and assuming that they aren't actually trying to promote a fascist agenda.

First of all: the necrons now can be..."good" or a least not ominicial maniacs like before.

and Second, there is not such things as squats, said that again and you will have to report to your local commissar.

Though of the day: laziness breeds heresy.

I think is just making them workable chararter in a setting so bleak, also to put though in how a system like that can work.

After all the Horus heresy dash any idea the imperium was nice and friendly before the whole show up, like diasporex or the interex....ohhhhhh the interex....

edited 31st Jan '18 8:47:32 PM by unknowing

Next you’ll be telling me there’s not an entire race of evil magic Dwarves east of the world edge mountains.

You’ll take my blunderbuss and my person sized hat when you pry them from my cold head hands.

edited 31st Jan '18 8:50:23 PM by Silasw

At least originally, like with Judge Dredd, it was more of an indictment of fascism (from back when Thatcher was in power), an example of "Here's how shitty life would be if the fascists had their way, even if the world was actually as dangerous and terrifying as they believe."

edited 31st Jan '18 9:39:38 PM by Unsung

I actually did once start a Rogue Trader campaign centered around an Interex ship which got lost in the Warp and found itself in modern 40K.

I mentioned before in this thread that one of the more powerful moments in the Dredd comics was when the founder of the entire Judge system was on his deathbed. His dying wish was for Dredd to restore democracy and the American Dream.

edited 31st Jan '18 10:04:05 PM by M84

The issue is called human bias, the Imperium is fascistic and awful in many levels, but

1) Everyone is a monster in their setting

2) The Imperium is clearly made to appeal to macho badass fans, contrast with the Eldar that are almost the definition of Screw You, Elves! or the Tau, who are both too nice in comparation and also too weak to actually matter, or the Orks that are Crazy Awesome but just that. The Imperium can do both drama and awesomess.

3) MUH HUMANITY

edited 1st Feb '18 4:57:59 AM by KazuyaProta

Going more generally How do you feel about the overuse of certain archetypes such as Ninja, Samurai, Pirates, Knights, etc. Do you think that they reduce the respective professions into shallow costumes in a manner analogous to (or in the case of Ninjas and Samurai actually might be) cultural appropriation? Related; do you think such overuse color our perspectives of the nations or periods where they were or are common? Are certain professions of warrior had influenced or became stereotypes about those warriors or their sources?

edited 1st Feb '18 1:32:59 PM by MorningStar1337

Real world vikings, pirates, and ninjas looked nothing like their stock appearances from popular media, so I would say yes, definitely. Of course since we're talking about purely historical groups, the appearances of which have sometimes been embraced or perpetuated by their home cultures, the solution here I think is to ensure people recognize that these are fictionalized versions and just for fun (real cowboys didn't look or talk quite that way, either, by all accounts), and that you certainly can't extrapolate to a whole national population based on them. Which you'd *hope* people today would know, but of course that's not really the world we live in, is it?

edited 1st Feb '18 1:49:25 PM by Unsung

Well, I would kind of like to see a Shogun-era work marketed to the West where the samurai are portrayed as basically the thuggish serial rapist professional killers that they actually were. There's an odd disconnect where knights and samurai, despite being basically the same figure in two different societies, aren't played or written the same way in Western media. A samurai is wise, powerful, contemplative, in touch with nature, etc. while a knight is a thug who rapes and pillages, is drenched in religious fundamentalism, and follows a code that everyone deep down knows is bunk. I mean, I'm sure there's Japanese media which are like, "Man, the samurai fucking sucked!" just like we do with knights.

That is because Samurais feel foreign, while Knights are close to home and we see their associations with religion.

Plus, I dont really remind a lot of western evil regular Knights unless the work is from Dark Fantasy, which is mostly European medieval.