I’ll be honest, I thought this was gonna be a thoughtless rage-bait click getter. Instead, it was a fascinating examination of what a Space Marine really is, through the lenses of history, politics, and culture. I’m glad I read that.
I agree. I only have shallow knowledge of 40k, but the exploration of the history around the universe was very fascinating. I also think it’s interesting that this issue seems to occur with satire, particularly when involving fascism. It brings to mind starship troopers and the more recent helldivers, how so many miss the point. I can’t help but feel the glorification of the military and military service in many of today’s societies lends itself to this problem. The military is inherently authoritarian, against diversity (including diversity of thought), and intentionally dehumanizes “the enemy” (turns out, it isn’t easy to kill people). Couple this with an image of masculinity that centers around adversity at best, and violence at worst along with so many men who feel they have missed opportunities to meet this standard and you have a recipe for fascists. How do we address this within our society? I don’t have the answers, but we should all be thinking about it.
It can be pleasing to inhabit a fiction where all the pieces are smoothly bolted together, working in lockstep. But teaching people to favour the consistency of imaginary worlds may also teach them to vilify disagreement and the entire practice of interpretation.
I can sometimes feel this pressure when running a tabletop game in a big setting like 40k or Star Wars. Can’t imagine how magnified that is when you’re working on something thousands of people with play, let alone in a fan base with such obnoxious reactionaries in the mix
relatively new to the 40k lore. mechanicus was my introduction, the voice acting and dialogue perfectly captured the mechanicus clan and personalities. you can feel a resemblance of humanity in their mechanoid bodies. not too familiar with space marines outside of Dawn of War and the tcg games where they are constantly shouting cliche military slogans
