The precursor of the Leagues weren’t called dwarves in 40K. They were called squats. I somehow doubt that’ll make a comeback.
They were apparently “Space Dwarfs” in 1st edition.
I mean - Norn Queens?
Nobody called them that, though. Everyone knew and loved/loathed them as Squats, which is also how the rest of the rules and miniatures referred to them:
And in canon, at least now, the Leagues are not a separate species from humans, the way dwarfs in WF/OW are.
A lot of people actually do think the Space Marines are the good guys. Imagine you’re a 12-13 year old boy walking into a hobby shop, Barnes & Noble, or god help you a Warhammer store. Or better yet, imagine you’re that kid’s mother. How are the Space Marines depicted on the covers of books, games boxes, posters, cardboard cutouts, life sized statues (in some places), or even the models used in the game? They’re typically depicted striking heroic poses while fighting green skinned menaces, ravenous xenos, or robots.
The same goes for most of the animated trailers GW releases for their tabletop game. The Kill Team trailer from a few years ago shows a bunch of heroic Kriegsman fighting the cruel Orks. The fetish nuns and marines come out looking pretty heroic fighting the Necrons in the trailer for 9th edition.
There’s a dichotomy between how the Imperium is generally depicted on the surface level and what you learn about them if you delve into the fiction. And even then, there are a lot of fans who will flat out tell you the threat of Chaos and the rest of a hostile universe means the Imperium is justified in their burn the heretic, kill the mutant, and purge the unclean attitude.
I’m not one of those people. The Imperium is its own worse enemy.
A few years back, GW got scared because they lost a lawsuit. It’s why the Imperial Guard are the Astra Militarum now and the Eldar are the Aeldari. You can’t really trademark something so generic as Imperial Guard, Eldar, or even Space Marine, so GW really moved towards using more unique words. They’re not going to go back to Space Dwarfs like they did in the 80s because you can’t trademark it. GW tried to claim they had a trademark on Space Marine. The judge laughed at them.
GW’s paint range is the same way. You don’t have orange you have Jokaero Orange. You don’t have different shades of brown you have XV-88, Mournfang Brown, Rhinox Hide, and Dryad Bark. You want purple? Do you want Xereus Purple or Genestealer Purple? Do you want ultramarine blue? That’s Macragge Blue….unless it’s part of their Contrast Paints range then it’s Ultramarines Blue. It gets confusing.
That’s what the Imperium calls them, yes, but they reproduce asexually; I don’t believe they are truly gendered in any meaningful way.
Which is the whole point, isn’t it? That dichotomy is a huge part of the setting, is very intentional, and is to me at least a big part of what I find fun about the setting.
Yep, there are the people who interact with the fandom in that way. Reminds me of Fallout New Vegas fans who are unironic fans of the Legion because they buy Caesar’s bullshit about Hegelian Dialectics and accept that he is the only path forward for the wasteland.
Does the fact that some people interact with media in ways that the creators didn’t intend and align themselves with the villains mean that media creators need to dumb down their villains and make them more mustache twirling evil? I don’t think so.
Yes, the Imperium is clearly very evil. The fact that they have reasons to behave the way that they do doesn’t change that; every well written villain has reasons to behave the way that they do.
I was being silly. I mean, they’re also called Splicer Beasts. I agree 'nids are genderless.
Well, except the Genestealers, those do seem to go through a gendered phase…
It’s like people who read 2000 AD (a definite source for 40K) and think the Judges are good guys.
And as far as female Space Marines, the Astartes aren’t even human anymore, so it would be academic anyway IMHO. Extensive brainwashing means spending time with their brothers and fighting is all they care about every day. They know no fear.
GW is in the business of selling overpriced little pieces of plastic. If people buy them because they appreciate the satire, good; if they buy them because they think the Empire are the good guys, equally good. It’s against their interest to dissuade either point of view.
They put an explicit “The Imperium are not good guys,” disclaimer in the front of their books.
Please. The true believers know a CYA when they see one.
I agree that from a certain perspective it’s ‘against their interests’ but they put out a pretty explicit statement titled “The Imperium is driven by hate, Warhammer is not”.
Maybe you could argue that they’d do even more if they didn’t want to lose some of the CHUD business, but I do think they’ve taken a decently principled stance even when it has gone against their naked business interest.
I’m sure that’s the cope the true believers are telling themselves. But IMHO GW always treated the Imperium this way internally, it was always meant to be flawed and tongue in cheek; they were willing to take the CHUD money silently for a long time, but in the last decade or so they’ve been more and more vocal about it.
When the foundations of the setting were being laid back in the 1980s, nobody thought 40k would become the juggernaut it is today. The problem with a grim dark setting is you can’t really market an evil faction to a bunch of 13 year old boys without having their mothers balk. So the Imperium of Man, including roided up child soldiers, the fetish nuns, and the poor conscripts, is deliberately marketed as the heroes fighting all those nasty threats.
The issue of how they present the Imperium and who can be counted among fans of the game has become something of a problem for GW over the last decade. I won’t name their names, but you could find prominent YouTubers (prominent among those who talk about GW) seriously arguing whether there could be any black Ultramarines. This discussion stemmed from a novel about Ultramarines that featured a black one on the cover. You could find many of those same YouTubers complaining when women or anyone who wasn’t white appeared on the covers of some books, particularly the series of YA novels set in the 40k universe.
In Italy, a player showed up to a 40k tournament wearing clothing with fascist semiotics, and to their credit, many other players refused to play him. Bu the organizers didn’t do anything, declaring his opponents forfeited the match, and he ended up ranking fairly high. The organizers claimed an Italian law prevented them from discriminating based on political belief or something like that.
Of course GW isn’t responsible for what some jerk on YouTube posts nor were they responsible for that tournament in Italy. But it’s just not a good look for the company to have these kinds of people associated with your product as it could damage sales in the long term. GW started sending out messages saying Warhammer is for everyone and telling bigots if they weren’t okay with that they wouldn’t be missed.
As far as I know the Salamanders are black (or at least have black skin) and a lesser-known Chapter called the Celestial Lions are African (or at least seem to have a similar culture).
But the True Believes don’t see themselves as hateful or as bigots, they just see themselves as fans of the lore as written. The way they see it, Exterminatus is regrettable but justified, because a touch of Chaos corruption can topple entire systems. The Emperor needs to consume thousands of psykers a day or he won’t be able to serve as a warp beacon. Corpse-starch is just recycling with fewer steps. I mean, it’s all written right there. Subtext? What subtext?
GW can trim the biggest CHUDs around the edges, but it can’t alienate the vast majority of these people. If it does, it’ll lose at least half of its business.
In a way, Warhammer is Poe’s Law: the Board Game.
I’m not sure how much of their market is actually 13 year old boys. It’s an expensive hobby. I suspect the bulk of the fandom is 30+.
I considered getting into WH40k once, but then I decided it’d be less expensive to just develop a cocaine habit instead. 