“Space Marines are transhuman warriors totally beyond human standards” is a bit of rhetoric thrown around a lot, both IC and OOC. The former is one thing–they certainly believe it–but whenever I hear people buying into it, my mind goes “Nah, they’re just assholes.”

That is, I can think of plenty of people I’ve met in real life who have very similar ideas of their own unconditional rightness in all they do, combined with a complete disregard for anyone else.

In a more general case, they are entirely typical of a warrior-nobility class in any age. Oh, I’m a knight, I have better weapons and armor and training than anyone else and a horse and I can slaughter an infinite number of peasants. That makes me a higher life form and given divine right to be in charge and collect the taxes to finance my way of waging war. Their battle philosophies and styles are drawn from various historical armies or cultures, because you’re hardly going to invent something some dead general or military philosopher hasn’t already believed and tried. About the biggest cultural difference between Space Marines and medieval knights is that they aren’t constantly marrying their cousins, then getting into wars over who should be king of France because of convolution succession laws.

They also have their obsession with honour and personal glory and pride, common features of self-regulation among a noble class to whom mere laws that apply to peasants do not touch–but only in their dealings with others of their own class, none of these rules of behaviour are bothered with for those beneath them. Oh look, they’re so noble and above it all, able to sacrifice vast numbers of people they’ve never met and consider to be meaningless insects, totally unlike anyone in a position of power in real life or even inquisitors or Guard generals within the setting.

They’re constantly going on about their own superiority, but the main thing they have going for them is armour completely impervious to small arms fire, in the fluff, and a couple extras like greater strength and TSKNF, which are nice but hardly game changers when it comes to cost vs. usefulness compared to, say, the Guard. But somehow this armament advantage is translated into inherent superiority as people. If you gave some normal people scaled-down Astartes-grade weapons and power-armour, they wouldn’t be as good as the Astartes with them, but eh, the gap wouldn’t be that meaningful. I can only assume the bioengineering that goes into making Space Marines is a small line item compared to the cost of making and maintaining their mechanical wargear, so might as well, or they’re a complete waste of resources.

(Ooh, someone should write an obvious Agincourt rip-off, where some regiment of the Imperial Guard accidentally gets issued actual guns instead of flashlights due to a Munitorium error. Then when some Chaos Marines decide to charge through a bottleneck uphill through the mud at their fixed position, assuming they are 100% immune to their weapons, they just die like Swiss cheese.)

Now, I’m not an expert in transhumanist theory, but I feel like there ought to be a lot more to it than that. They have implants that let them spit acid and breathe water, sure, okay, that’s perfectly cool, but that’s just toys. In terms of personalities and culture, they are entirely typical of any day-to-day arrogant, empathy-less douchebag in history or on Twitter, who do not have the advantage of being superior transhuman warriors.

So I feel like there ought to be more awareness of the idea that in every time, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same, or writing that actually strikes me as remotely unfamiliar from the humanity I know.

Having read/flipped through a couple books/shorts that are Chaos Marine-centric in too short a timespan, I find myself thinking Chaos really is repetitive.

Protagonist looks around himself and angsts about the degenerate state of his Legion/warband compared to the pre-Heresy glory days. He proceeds to do nothing substantial about this, let alone institute any general changes in policy among his minions. Let’s go beat up some Imperials/xenos/the Chaos warband next door. Somehow this will help the situation in some way! (Spoiler: It does not.) Protagonist has some other character he is a jerk to but secretly has a soft spot for, possible a long-time brother but often the token woman of the book. Somehow this shows he’s not a totally bad person. Other character probably dies, usually as a result of some plan or tactical sacrifice the protagonist made. Protagonist does not want to be in charge, but he’s the only person he believes is competent and not out to get him. Guess there’s nothing to do but sit in his spaceship and listen to Linkin Park.

We’re told this is some meaningful commentary on the nature of Chaos or deep insight into human nature, but eh? Maybe it’s just you, protagonists. Maybe you’re just a shitty person. Maybe your justifications about how this is just the way things are/Chaos is are a lame attempt to avoid blame or self-reflection. Maybe you are personally completely lacking in moral fibre, responsibility, or bravery to upset the status quo. So either strop angsting and accept you are the problem and you’re not going to do anything about it, or do something about the state of the warband around you and tell a different sort of story.

“‘These planets were hells. For generations we have recruited the strong over the weak, in the belief it makes our warriors better. I do not think this is so. Cruel people make cruel warriors make cruel lords. We need to be better. We need to rise over the need for violence and recognise other human qualities in our recruits. Your Chapter has ever understood this. If we do not, then we will fall prey to our worst excesses, the kind of thing that that represents.’ He pointed at Ka’Bandha’s name. ‘It has long been in your capability to transform these worlds. Baal Primus is dead, but you need not let your remaining people suffer unnecessarily. Will they fight any better for dwelling on a world that kills them? By sacrificing their children to the Emperor’s service, they have earned a better life. Once you have torn that blasphemy down, raise up the population of Baal Secundus. Teach them what we are fighting for. A line must be drawn between what is good and what is evil, for if the Great Enemy comes with offers of power to a wretch, what reason does he have to refuse hell if he dwells in it already?’ Guilliman was tense. Dante had not expected that in the Lord of Ultramar. Guilliman was impatient to change things. He was angered by what he had found upon his rebirth, and he was not hiding it.”–The Devastation of Baal

Okay but a Greater Daemon of Khorne showing up to kill some bugs–because clearly these are my playthings and you may not have them, then graffiting the Blood Angels’ moon and fucking off again is just the funniest thing to me. It is the most bar-hopping football fan of a thing to do and that’s really what daemons are, right?

One thing I really like about Devastation of Baal, which I’ve never seen anyone else do such a good job of, is its depiction of tyranids. Actual tyranid POV, such as it is! Making the tyranids seem like a really dangerous foe and making the hive-mind not seem stupid. Yes, it prefers zerg rush strategies because it doesn’t care, but it also is a marvel of bioengineering and does run other strategies as convenient and does understand the wider tactical situation it is engaged in as a whole. Plus balancing this with writing the tyranids as genuinely alien, not humans-with-pointy-ears alien or humans-who-claim-their-Space-Marine-ness-makes-them-special-snowflakes-totally-different-from-other-humans alien.

“He was getting intolerant in his old age. Antros was the same as any psyker. They were all strange, it was in their nature. He forgot, sometimes, that he was no different to his brothers.

‘My eyes glow all the damned time, and I am charmlessly misanthropic,’ he scolded himself.”–The Devastation of Baal

“Mephiston showed not a sign of caring. His will was hard as millennial ice, black as night and strong as iron.”–The Devastation of Baal

Okay, I know this is an actual phrase used in ecology, but it’s even funnier to imagine an ice cube making absurdist memes about how hardcore its indifference and apathy are on the internet, because it’s a millennial.

As a follow-up to the previous topic, I feel like the HH series has written itself into some unfortunate corners. The real early books in the series have a running theme of “so close.” The Imperium almost made it, they were so close, if only, etc. They also tossed in all the various tragic flaws of characters and of the Imperium as an institution that would that lead to ruin, as these characters fell to rather than overcame their personal problems.

This in concept is stuff I’m all for, but then the series started moving away from that. People complained characters’ falls to Chaos came out of nowhere and their personalities got flipped like a switch between “flawed but trying to be good” to “om nom nom babies” in twenty minutes flat. Writing compelling falls from grace requires good, deft writing, and there sure were a lot of stretches of really badly written HH bolter porn or filler books in there. Authors also found it convenient to move their plots further back in the timeline, because once stuff starts happening there’s a pretty short span between Davin and Terra (however dozens of books OOC it will take to advance that far).

So we end up instead/now with a writing philosophy of “everyone is just terrible and always was.” I find this less interesting, personally. As I’ve mentioned before, it really undermines the emotional impact of fratricide when, instead of having previously loved each other, the people killing each other would have been perfectly happy to do so since day one that they met. The people who are surprised and upset by this seem kind of strange and like they’ve overreacting to a thing that was obvious and always true. And then there’s their attempts to be edgy and show how the Imperium as a whole was also always evil and terrible and just as bad as Chaos!!! (depending on the author).

So the whole thing takes on a feeling of inevitability, beyond it already being a prequel series. They were never so close to succeeding at anything. They never had a snowball’s chance in hell. Everything has been so heavy-handedly foreshadowed by things set up earlier in the timeline that by the time they actually do happen, they’re foregone conclusions. Characterization no longer allows for a balance between the possibility a character will overcome a tragic flaw or the possibility he’ll fall to it (even if we always knew OOC)–the former would be completely inconsistent with a character who is by this point 99% flaw. Likewise, almost no one can be bothered to depict the Heresy lowering the Imperial standard of living in any way other than showing a couple individual people/planets going from alive to dead, which could have happened just as easily pre-Heresy for equally arbitrary reasons. Some of the early books try to make a big deal about people doing Exterminatus on a planet and how that wasn’t a thing pre-Heresy, but by a couple books later everyone and their brother, whether they end the Heresy as loyalist or traitor, is tossing virus bombs at any who sneezes as a time that insults their honor. About the only major change between pre-Heresy Imperial policy and post-Heresy is the religion aspect, but honestly the pseudo-religious-but-definitely-not-religious-because-we-disapprove-of-that personality cult around the Emperor pre-Heresy is fooling no one about being different things. Imperial society was already militarized, oppressive, morally bankrupt, etc. Everything just keeps being the way it is, which is the least surprising of developments.

So it’s really weird to hear character talking about how the future’s going to be great, they have this awesome plan, guys, and wondering what the hell they are smoking to not have read the back of the book. Everything has become a straight, clear line from point A to point B and so on to point Z. If you do not like point Z, which has been glaringly obvious for ages, perhaps it was not a good plan in the first place and you should have done differently, way back from the beginning where it might have meaningfully changed the outcome.

So anyway, in conclusion, people thinking they’re really clever writing foreshadowing end up with a series where the characters look like absolute morons for thinking anything could play out any way than exactly how they do, which is badly.

(First Lord of the Imperium) Okay, so a civil war between primarchs being part of the Emperor’s plan all along is not a new theory, given the way canon has been going for awhile. The alternative is everyone being both oblivious and incompetent to an incredible degree, after all.

But on the other hand, I’m still struggling to see how this was supposed to go. I consider myself a decent AU writer, but this one is not coming together for me yet. The primarchs conquer the galaxy for the Emperor, then conveniently kill each other off, which isn’t that difficult to image since most of them would do it for a Klondike bar. But somehow this happens without any inconvenient collateral damage and without Chaos involving itself in any way? And then ??? profit. What was supposed to happen next anyway? Everyone else goes for ice cream? The remnants of the Imperium toss out all the bad parts of 30k-era Imperial philosophy and policy and keep the good parts, rather than doing the opposite of that under adversity? Humanity as a species suddenly realize the error of our ways and become better people, who can be trusted with psychic powers and technology? Meanwhile, having a Webway sounds useful and would fix a number of logistic difficulties that trouble galaxy-spanning civilisation in general and the Imperium in particular, but assuming it would in-and-of-itself neutralise Chaos as a threat seems extremely unlikely–the Old Ones and the eldar had a Webway and then nothing bad ever happened to them again, remember?

I know 40k has always had a strong Dune influence and I know perfectly well what the Golden Path is, but eh, I was never that impressed by Herbert’s version either, if that’s what 40k is going for. Philosophers always say “This will be the war to end all wars” or well-intentioned extremist anime villains say “I’ll make a mistake/empire so awful people will never make this mistake/sort of empire again”, and a generation later go figure it happens again. No shit.

Somehow this does not seem very plausible or well-planned out. When I think of the prompt “write a scene from an AU where everything went exactly according to the Emperor and Malcador’s plan, successfully,” I got nothing. (I mean, I can imagine No Nails AU, for instance, but that involves a) the primarchs still in charge, b) the primarchs going to great lengths not to kill each other even when they fight, and c) lots of people suddenly growing moral fortitude, which is wildly non-canonical.) These are not the useful or relevant details, book, though honestly I doubt BL know the answer or could make up a scenario I would find plausible if they were pushed to. Not to mention that canon only show us this “great” plan crashing and burning hard, hence my sarcastic use of quotation marks.