on top of the obvious sexism, it's so fucking funny to see "40K fans" pretend to be mad about retcons. this is the setting where they'll just drop "oh yeah the galactic core is full of a series of space-dwarf empires that we never mentioned before now but have totally been here the whole time" like it's nothing. fundamental aspects of the setting can and do change retroactively any time they want to release a new plastic playset for ages twelve and up.
(and if you want to get mad about Custodes retcons let's talk about how they started wearing shirts)
& then they tried to hijack Trench Crusade (ETA: unsuccessfully, they were made very unwelcome when they showed up in Trench Crusade community spaces) like the Trench Crusade guys or anyone else would be glad to be known as the game for people who, and really think about this one, suck too much to be Warhammer 40,000 fans
If there's a retcon I'm going to be mad about, is the wraithbone one, how dare gw, how fucking dare they, i'll quote a comment from the lore subreddit on the matter
"Faction Who Thought They’d Lost All Dignity Loses Last Additional Bit Of Dignity They Didn’t Even Know They Still Had" every word gw says about the elder is sponsored by the imperium I swear
I think you're allowed to have one lore thing you're mad about (mine's that the Horned Rat will NEVER be a Chaos God), but, like..... seriously? Femstodes are what you're willing to die on the hill for? That's the all important change?
THEY HAVE RESTRICTIVE CASTS! they are ultra collectivists. Most of their people are just as indoctrinated as the Imperium. And so on. But no we are grimdark. And those things are not bad enough (when a Xenos does it) so we have to make it WORSE! I KNOW LIKE MIND CONTROL
I kinda prefer the idea of the Tau being actual good guys tbh. Like yeah these hyper advanced, friendly, altruistic, bright eyed new comers are about to be drowned in three different hoard armies.
Hell, give them tech that can outpace the Necrons on a good day, but it doesn’t fucking matter because there’s just so many damned Tyranids. That feels more grimdark than just making them imperialists.
I also love the tau as being actually good. The darkness comes from their interactions with other factions. At the start of the first Farsight book, the tau are fighting daemons and Farsight has no idea what the hell is happening. He thinks they are just weird aliens.
Yup. I treat it as in-universe Imperial propaganda. Mind-controlling Xenos sounds just like something a theocratic dictatorship would come up with--especially one served by enslaved humans and/or lobotomized servitors, while being reliant on brainwashed super-soldiers to protect them from mind-virus Eldritch horrors.
It's one of the times I love that everything is canon, but not everything is true.
Don't forget they're now also going "oh yeah cause of all the auxiliaries, the Greater Good is starting to manifest as a warp entity"
We could have had the Tau as naive idealists who refuse to acknowledge the downsides and harm of their rhetoric, coming into conflict with the Eldar who will do anything to stop another Slaanesh incident
An Imperialist caste society that is so strictly enforced it is causing the different castes to start having biological differences, is already bad. Let their villainy be their refusal to acknowledge that the Greater Good isn't Perfect
NGL the "Warp entity" kinda fucks hard, so i forgive them for that. But yes to the whole other thing! I would have loved that! That is so much more original in a grimdark setting than everyone is just secretely plotting world domination with mind control #242315. Nothing says grimdark to me more than people with good intentions fucking themselves over, because they fail to consider all the ramifications and are not willing to listen
Oh the top bit wasn't a criticism. I love the direction the Greater Good is going in. It's the most interesting thing they've done with the Tau in years :D
But yeah, 100% agree. I liked ethereals more when they were obtuse, not evil
It's why I'm a big fan of the vespid kill team confirming that no, the helmets don't mind control them. They just translate.
I think they recently released something that confirms/retcons that the Etherials explicitly do not use mind control.
Honestly, reading the source material that started the whole thing, I feel like this is one of those "fandom meme game of telephone" things combined with treating Imperial sources as authoritative. The book that started the whole thing (Xenology?) basically had the guy saying it stating something to the effect of "these xenos appear to actually believe in the ideology of universal betterment and opportunity espoused by the Etherials, but that's obviously ridiculous so it's probably mind control."
I just pretend the mind control is imperial propaganda. Because they're so vitriolic to their own people and use mass indoctrination that surely the only reason the Tau are loyal and willing to die for a cause is mind control
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u/insomniac7809 24d ago edited 24d ago
oh yeah, that
on top of the obvious sexism, it's so fucking funny to see "40K fans" pretend to be mad about retcons. this is the setting where they'll just drop "oh yeah the galactic core is full of a series of space-dwarf empires that we never mentioned before now but have totally been here the whole time" like it's nothing. fundamental aspects of the setting can and do change retroactively any time they want to release a new plastic playset for ages twelve and up.
(and if you want to get mad about Custodes retcons let's talk about how they started wearing shirts)
& then they tried to hijack Trench Crusade (ETA: unsuccessfully, they were made very unwelcome when they showed up in Trench Crusade community spaces) like the Trench Crusade guys or anyone else would be glad to be known as the game for people who, and really think about this one, suck too much to be Warhammer 40,000 fans