st-just:

The French Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars honestly make a lot more sense when you remember that the British literally operated on the principle of ‘officer’s commissions are pieces of property we auction out to rich failsons with literally zero competency checking besides making sure the check clears’.

In an island country where the Navy is the outward-facing force, the Army largely exists to preempt the possibility of any other army taking over, in which capacity “alignment with existing dynamics of social power” is an advantage against potential subversion.

Like, the Napoleonic army very explicitly represented untethered officers as a power base capable of displacing the established social order, which the British system had very explicitly been arranged to prevent since the New Model Army in the English Civil War.

argumate:

right, if paper and signatures were vital to the magic ritual then we wouldn’t be able to use apps for stuff

This is why bullshit unilateral “we agree to do this” contracts and deals will formally be in exchange for $1, to make them legally valid and binding. Scots law, at least, recognizes binding unilateral “promises” without this requirement, I was looking forward to seeing that come up somehow if Scotland became independent.

You know, there must have been serial killers among British colonials in India.

kontextmaschine:

st-just:

txttletale:

i’m gonna have to disagree with you on this, tbh–i think the fascists who love the empire are ‘getting it’ just fine.

sure, the stuff that comes out about the empire and space marines is clear that they are cruel and violent. but they are cruel and violent and right. but they’re also very very big on the heroism of the space marines, the glorious power of the god-emperor, how real the threat of chaos is. chaos as it exists in warhammer 40k is basically the fantasy of the fascist made reality–a creeping, ever-infiltrating, ontologically evil force that will take root and destroy everything if perfect purity and control are maintained for even a second. like, yes, the empire is very clearly fascist, but they exist in a setting in which fascist propaganda is fundamentally true. fascists are able to see themselves in the empire because empire is, again and again, justified and vindicated by 40k’s writing.

and tbh this was barely better in the early days, as much as people like to cry 'well it was meant to be satire’, but at least the empire used to be also extremely fucking textually useless and incompetent to the point where they were doing more harm than good. but over the years this has entirely given way to the hypercompetent Tough Men Doing What Needs Doing space marine wank that makes up 99% of 40k output nowadays

Honestly I even think ‘a universe where the premises of fascist mythology are true’ isn’t, like, an impossible conceit to do something interesting and worthwhile with. But 'and our protagonists are the literal spartinate unbermensch action heroes’ does kind of close off like 99.99% of them.

The Empire is totalitarian continental Europe as seen from late-20cen Great Britain: the Space Marines, all technologically-advanced ubermenschen stormtroopers but not enough of them, are the Nazis; the Imperial Guard, all masses of tanks and infantry kept in line by ruthless commissars, are the Red Army; and all the rococo gold-filigreed God-Emperor stuff and heresy-hunting are the Catholic Church

The British themselves are… the orks, as a spirited, rowdily violent bunch of football casuals and assorted lads

animentality: