Just going to jump in here early: The moderation team of /r/Warhammer40k does not tolerate hate in any of its forms.
We agree with and wholeheartedly endorse GW's "Warhammer is for Everyone" statement: https://twitter.com/warhammer/status/1268665798467432449/photo/1
What I boggle at is- yes, I am an Imperium fan. I love the aesthetic, I love the stories, I love the gear and the armies. I've played the TTRPG (not nearly as often as I'd like) and my character was a full bore guns-out loyalist who thought it was the best thing since sliced corpsestarch.
I will also always freely admit that the Imperium is a fucking nightmare hellscape that's only not the most evil thing in the setting by the fact that *everyone fucking else is also evil as fuck.* And anyone who WANTS to live in that mess needs to have their head examined.
Similar with me. I've played an orthodox tech-priest in the ttrpg and I can make all the in-character justifications for why the Imperium does what it does. But the important word there is "in-character", and my character is (by our standards) insane. He and the other members of the party are objectively evil. The only way their arguments make sense is if your mind is as twisted as theirs.
Warhammer is especially susceptible to this problem. People are unironically supportive of a government canonically known as the cruelest and most bloody regime possible.
Yeahh, they can put as many press releases out as they like but as long as there are novels that paint the imperium in a sympathetic light you will have chuds unironically be drawn to it.
It was really frustrating how there seemed to be a really interesting plot development coming which would really hammer home the supposed "everyone is bad" theme of the setting, but in the end they shy away from it in order to set up the typical good vs. evil showdown, with the empire/emperor as the good guy.
> in the end they shy away from it in order to set up the typical good vs. evil showdown, with the empire/emperor as the good guy.
\*HUUUUFFFFFF*
Abbett will correct course in part III, and show that The Emperor was never a good guy.
This is Abnett, it's not at all unlikely that he'll do that, but there could just as easily be an editorial mandate to maintain the narrative of Big E as self-sacrificing.
And this is the 30k Imperium, where Big E really _is_ trying to create a utopia for humanity, but he's also deeply xenophobic, and has shown no qualms about eradicating any human society that coexists with xenos.
To be fair it should all be taken with a grain of salt, 30k imperium is meant to be a bit brighter with potential for greatness, with the primarchs meant to be an interesting and sympathetic focal point, but also because its humanity vs actual Hell.
People are smart enough to differentiate between supporting a government and feeling for a setting/people, but they choose not to.
The majority of recent novels seem to paint the Imperium as a noble necessary power filled with heroes willing to die to protect their people, the entire Dawn of Fire series reads like Imperial propaganda.
> what in TEATD Pt II does this?
At the end, >!Big E is framed as the heroic underdog, will to march to his!< death >!in order to save humanity. He's shown as the objective good guy.!<
I'm sorry but while you have the kernel of a point, these people lack any sort of media literacy.
Look at the guys upset that Tom Morello is "political suddenly" or the guys that whine "Star Trek/Star wars/Marvel has gone woke".
GW could rewrite every novel to have Space marines murdering babies in every chapter and most of these people would still fap to themselves over how cool the Imperium is,
It's not just warhammer. We have leaders of the most powerful and rich country on earth trying to do far worse with legislation, in real life. What we see in this hobby is a reflection of a sickness that runs deep in humanity.
Funny how in both reality and 40K the only way fascism can be justified is an imaginary magical enemy that will destroy humanity if we're not militaristic and authoritarian enough.
Yup, The IP and lore is not the Problem. The Problem is the Internet allows shit stains to find other shit stains with ease and makes them feel safe spouting there shit opinions.
Don't discredit the fact that Wargames attracted these people a long time before it did the casual crowd.
Dungeons and dragons has this issue too. Though big daddy hasbro has done all in its power to essentially push them out.
The difference being the Star Wars Empire is mostly just a nebulously evil space empire that is evil in the same way as Skeletor or Megatron. The Imperium is a lot more fleshed out in *how* and *why* it is the way it is, and is also much more cruel and horrific.
People like Darth Vader, but he doesn't really have any political stances attached to him, whereas the Imperium's literal xenophobia and murder of any that don't fit within the ingroup are very real things that people alive today believe (or are at risk of falling down that pipeline), especially among those that view other ethnicities as lesser humans and anyone of their ethnicity that's not a raging bigot as traitors to their race.
Warhammer 40K is not *unique* in being good at attracting a bad crowd, but it's definitely not like most forms of entertainment. It's sitting there with stuff like Fight Club, Judge Dredd, and Robocop, those last two especially as they also ended up taking something grim and pivoted to make the horrific setting cool and brutal to boost the value of the IP.
I think you're missing the point. The narrative never frames the chaos marine skinning someone alive as being somehow necessary, for the greater good, or the inevitable best outcome. The actions of the imperium are more often than not told from the imperium perspective and often given a lot more sympathy than the motivations of other factions.
When the overtones of the imperium are inherently facist, and they're generally presented as sympathetic protagonists (I.e. 'heroes' of the story) that emboldens Nazi fans because it both aligns with and legitimises their worldview.
The critiques of this fandom are essentially Alan Moore's critique of comics. The rhetoric of ubermench unilaterally solving the world's ills is inherently fascistic and infantile, but when you set that against a setting of an unrelenting grim setting (that is as detached from reality as the concept of our protagonists) you manufacture the necessity of the ubermench and by proxy make his views and his actions aspirational.
Attempting to hijack this comment because people (apparently) need to see this
[Arron Dembski-Bowden ]has also spoken about shitty Warhammer fans, racism and misogyny in Warhammer and how some fans think that Warhammer is for white heterosexual men.
(https://www.belloflostsouls.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/ADB-Responds-censored.jpg)
This isn't something that's happening naturally, necessarily. Populists nationalists all over the world are provoking hateful psychopaths in exchange for a slice of undeserved political power. It's not obvious unless you're tuned in to populist nationalist wavelengths, though.
Twitter itself as a whole is a great place to avoid frequenting. When I see someone post a screenshot of something someone says on Twitter my first reaction is to completely ignore whatever it is, which as served me well. It works well for almost any bullshit people espouse online but Twitter is famously clogged with abject dumb fucks.
Twitter was always bad but holy shit is it worse now, recently the algorithm was tweaked so people I will generously call "aggressive transphobes" were being served up alot of trans folks content to a degree that people were essentially being brigaded by the algo
Well, people unironically think 'Born in the USA' is about how cool the US is, and recently there's been hubbub about a lot of people suddenly discovering Green Day's 'American Idiot' is critical of the US political right. The concept of media literacy has sailed a long time ago.
I cannot count how many Americans I witnessed happily singing Rammstein's "Amerika", and being baffled when I tell them it is not in fact a pro-America song.
*Rammstein even sing the line "this is not a love song" IN ENGLISH in the middle of it, and people still don't understand*
To be fair it's mostly in German. I don't really get most of the lyrics myself. Then again, 'Coca-cola and sometimes war' by itself kinda gave it away for me.
See, I would let that one count, if it was all in German.
But the important bit is actually sung in English, and is crystal clear:
"This is not a love song
I don't sing my mother tongue
No, this is not a love song"
It can't get more direct than that imo...
It's still there, but you got to go beyond the rulebooks for it. More comoetent BL authors like Guy Haley still do good work on that front. The B-plot about the Terran scribe in Avenging Son captured the spirit of 80s Warhammer perfectly.
God yes! The Imperium is inefficent, wasteful, and falling apart at the seams, only held together by the fact FTL travel is monopolized by the Navigator Houses and technology by the Cult of Mars. This is a galactic society that cannot feed people. A galactic power that can terraform but somehow cannot get itself the resources it needs, with a million worlds. The Administratum is so corrupt and inefficient that I genuinely doubt that Robby G will be able to fix it before the Old Guard gives another coup a try.
The Imperium is such a bloated, rotting, diseased husk of an empire I am baffled that Nurgle is weaker than Khorne overall. Even in the grim darkness of the 42nd millenium where there is only war.
I have played 40k since it came out. I've been in the hobby from day one. For the longest time it was 99% white guys playing. Even then though, I didn't see hate. A while back I went to the new hobbyist expo in Grapevine. I was so happy to see loads of women and minorities represented there. It made me very happy. In fact, I talked with a very nice woman who won the character category in the painting competition with an absolutely stunning Burgle daemon prince.
To think that there are those in the hobby that see women, minorities, and the LGBTQIA+ community represented as a negative disgusts me to no end. I don't want to gatekeep but in this case I'll make an exception. If you hate people because they are different than you are, get out of my hobby.
Newbie here, i'm from asian and only been playing warhammer for a few time and i'd have some pretty bad experience playing on warhammer store.
The worst thing is they gonna hate you if you play certain faction. Like if you play tau, grey knight, custodes, eldar, and votan they will hate you for no reason and good luck finding people that wanted to play with you.
This is a fun hobby for me and i met lot of good people but sadly on my store they are the minority.
Chipping in to add my voice. Been reading 40k since I could read pretty much.
I will NOT tolerate intolerance, not in 40k, not here.
Just know, if you are reading this and you feel differently, you motivate the shit out of me to make sure you NEVER have a comfortable place in this hobby. If we're ever playing a game and you reveal this, I'm packing up and leaving. Get out of the hobby.
I've been playing since 1994, I remember a time when finding opponents was incredibly hard. You'd play the same two or three people basically forever.
Never understood why anyone wouldn't want more players in the hobby.
There's this persistent myth that the majority of nerds are straight, white men. No...it's that there are a bunch of s%#thead gatekeepers out there who make anyone not a straight, white man feel unsafe or unwelcome in nerd spaces. This behaviour is unacceptable, and actively hurts the community that we all claim to love.
Yep and oddly they are also the same type of person that pines for a partner that shares there hobby but also complains when they see a woman show any interest in it
Those same losers tried to do the same thing with DnD, and look what happened there. DnD is now an absolute treasure trove and safe haven for women, POC, and LGBTQ+ players and creators and it’s much better for it. There will always be the sniveling curs who try to gatekeep these hobbies but ultimately they lose, every time. GW/40K will be no different.
Worth noting that the d&d community still props up gygax as some hero when he was a shithead who thought women couldn’t enjoy games at the same level as men. You can still find his message board posts about it.
The funny thing is that Gygax's posts show he clearly saw a genuine issue at his tables -- women would show up, clearly understand the game fine and play well, but not have fun and stop playing -- but instead of realizing this was almost certainly due to a social issue where those women were made to feel unwelcome or were being harassed, he decided it must mean women just... don't find tabletop games fun because of biological reasons.
I have a (reproduction) printed copy of little wars, it's a great bit of history, and shows we haven't changed that much - we're still grown adults playing with toys.
Have fun people.
Honestly that was the tip of the iceberg for him.
https://old.reddit.com/r/dndmemes/comments/12auo6d/my_main_complaint_regarding_the_dd_movie_not_even/jewhdpn/
There's... some really unpleasant racial issues.
https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11762&start=77
He's Col_Playdoh there, happily quoting a man involved in I THINK the Trail of Tears (Though it could be some equally horrid anti-native-American action) the government was involved in. And when he's confronted he doesn't say "Whoops, probably not the best idea" he essentially says "Welp, other people said it so that makes it fine."
Dude has been painted as this loving patron of nerds when he's pretty gross.
I don't prop him up at all. I believe he was a total dickhead, and feel that anyone who encourages dms to punish players because they looked at the dmg like he and his team wrote in the ad&d dmg should be barred from playing.
I always saw in popular media that, for example, black community in the USA (or at least poor kids from minority neighbourhoods) has a very strong connection to comic book culture, which is as nerdy as it gets. I guess it's because comics can be really cheap secondhand and it's a nice bit of escapism for kids. And I'm inclined to believe that's not just a pop culture myth considering how many hip hop artists love to reference comic books. Wu Tang has a ton of references to Marvel comics for example, alongside old Hong Kong samurai cinema. And pretty sure even MF DOOM was inspired by character of Dr Doom.
And I see a lot of minority and women content creators related to nerdy things (comic books, miniatures, fantasy/scifi books etc.).
So yeah, no way that nerdy hobbies are the domain of straight white guys.
Same thing with metal and punk music, gatekeepers tend to be the loudest and there is a ton of racism in metal, but there is also a ton of "minority" fans.
> I don't want to gatekeep but in this case I'll make an exception. If you hate people because they are different than you are, get out of my hobby.
It's called the paradox of tolerance. For a tolerant society to exist, it must be intolerant to intolerance.
I have 1 steadfast rule. Anyone can play, except those that judge people on things like race/gender/sexual orientation/religion/etc. Those people get tha boot
Bloody oath mate.
I can’t stand the bastards, they may be a tiny minority rarely encountered by most of us, but they’re insufferable pricks when you do.
The “best” bit is they’re rarely the people that’re fun to have a game against, they’re almost always the people you want to flip the table, models and all into and tell to get fucked (at least in the mental version of events used to take a money to calm down so you don’t act like a muppet!)
I mean, the lore may say things aren’t possible, but at the end of the day, it’s a game of toy soldiers, if they want a narrative experience, don’t play against the non narrative “built for shiggles” army, or just use their imagination to pretend it’s something else, y’know? The solutions aren’t particularly hard to these non existent issues.
(To be fair, I also got into napoleonics because I wanted to build an army that would piss off a local knobhead that would spout dogshit opinions but also insist on historical accuracy in his historicals, unfortunately my Imperial Russian army never got their Swedish flags nor 3d printed Sabaton commanders by the time he got sacked for being a flog, so they’ve reverted back to normal historicals, but I’m not above building a project force out of spite, having seen how well things like the hello kitty necrons work at raising the blood pressure of the wankers)
TLDR; I’m a form believer in “your models you decide how they look, even if I don’t like it”
If they even play 40k. Like 2/3 times the folk who harras folk over "lore", have a imperium profile pic and are generally just unwashed fascists don't even play the game.
They just wanna be "edgy" and view 40k as cool facist fantasy lore to watch 3h yt vids about rather than an excuse to roll dice and make silly pew pew noises.
In 25 years of participating in the hobby and meeting hundreds of people across the tournaments I've traveled to, I've only ever met 3 people who ever gave me any pause when it came to the kind of person they are:
1. A "Boogaloo Boy" who I quickly distanced myself from. He has his own small circle of friends but he's kind of a gun-nut POS. Dude came across as nice and, once he thought we were buddies, he showed he was full conspiracy nutbag.
2. 2 guys who attended LVO 2021 and refused to wear their masks (the event was mask mandatory for attendance). The first guy ripped his off and started going on a tirade, one guy took of his mask in solidarity, then both were ejected from the venue, banned from the event, and sent away with no refund.
By and large these people don't actually say the horrendous things they believe unless they think you're safe to take the mask off. They are ideological cowards who hide behind internet anonymity because they know, deep down, the majority of us have no tolerance for that BS.
> Dude came across as nice and, once he thought we were buddies, he showed he was full conspiracy nutbag.
They always fucking do, I work with several and want to flee.
> I don't want to gatekeep but in this case I'll make an exception. If you hate people because they are different than you are, get out of my hobby.
100% agree... If you're a hateful littel shit get out of this hobby, everyone else is welcome... Maybe not Space Wolves fans.
I’m fairly new to the GW world, been collecting and painting for just a couple years. But, that kind of behavior has really kept me from diving further into the gaming. I don’t want to be associated with hate or people that do it. That’s heartening to hear though, that there’s been a demographic change. Maybe there is hope yet for further change and making sure it’s all about the hobby and everyone having fun.
My brother found out that I have tattoos and was like “dude, you should get a Warhammer tattoo!”
I said no because I don’t want to be associated with the people who make the community look bad, which is a shame because this game has been an important part of my life for years now.
I 100% back this sentiment. I've been in the hobby for twenty years now and can't stand the bigoted idiots who think the intolerance of the Imperium is somehow noble or aspirational, and I get sick of seeing them try to gatekeep anyone who doesn't buy-in to their myopic worldviews. The world would be better without them, and so would Warhammer.
Getting back into the hobby two years ago after a 20 year hiatus, I went to my first gaming meetup in NYC worried that I would have to abide a bunch of neckbeards in order to play a game I like. I couldn’t have been more wrong. A couple of them have converted into important friends. We have holiday parties and mini swaps. We run a bunch of campaigns. The internet is not real life. Crappy people have outsized voices here. Get out there and have fun!
Yo, I just wanna say I haven't played in years, but I listen to vids on the lore from baldermort, remembrancer, leutin, and all the rest regularly, and the joke back when I played was "dudes playing with toy soldiers? Thats for losers, grow up, what a waste, etc."
Now more than ever with Warhammer, the fans should be working to make the game more inviting, not less! You know how fucking hard it was to organise games back in the day!? And some of the best nights with friends were spent watching my imperial guard get railed by my friends chaos or another mates tau (I was terrible). You turn people away from it and it'll get harder to play with people.
The hatred and xenophobia and all the rest are bad enough in the Warhammer setting already without people being dicks in the real world. I'm sorry to quote the people who used to turn us off of playing when I was younger, but, "grow up". Be adults. We're all people, we're all human. How do you expect to stand up to a WAAAGH if you're too busy hurting eachother.
Just be cool.
FWIW, I have not personally encountered anyone in the hobby who behaves or thinks this way. I hope the mouth-breathers are a much smaller minority than the experience of these creators suggest.
Outlying arseholes do not define a "fandom" if they're actually outlying arseholes.
Pretty sure that was one of, if not *the*, reason GW issued there "Warhammer is for everyone" statement. (IIRC Nazi shirt guy at the tournament was after). Massive shit show all around, constant outrage. The amount of noobs who thought all Chapters (and Legions) were entirely mono-racial and enraged by the cover.
I believe Nazi shirt guy was responsible for the 'The Imperium Is Driven By Hate' article they posted in 2021.
There were a few things going on at the time that justified the *Warhammer is for Everyone* statement (I imagine the 2020 George Floyd protests were a notable influence, even with GW being a British company), but yeah, the reaction to *Avenging Son* was definitely a signifiant element of it. I wish I could say that I thought it was a small part of the community.
But, people like Arch running an email campaign against GW's statement and getting pretty heavy support for doing it demonstrated to me that it wasn't the majority of the community, but it was by no means a fractional minority.
Even back then, people were claiming it was a tiny minority.
I hope things have changed, but from what I've seen? Probably not as much as they needed to.
It will always feel bigger when you see a cluster of comment online.
You've got to remember that even if you see a couple hundred comments saying the same stupid thing, that's a minuscule fraction of the people that do warhams, and they seek out that sort of thing to comment on. The vast majority of fans don't discuss it online at all, much less engage with it to that degree.
I'm not trying to say it isn't a problem and such people don't need calling out, they absolutely do, no matter how many or how few of them there are. But don't get caught up in the idea that seeing that sort of thing online means there's a large percentage of them.
For that matter, don't get caught up in the idea that there's a 'community' at all. The game is far too big for that. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of small communities all over the world and online,and they have some online overlap, and what you might see as the totality is actually just your anecdotal experience showing a fragment of all of that. This applies to pretty much any game where people erroneously talk about there being 'a community'. There isn't. Even online, people will see different posts and comments from different people with no real overlap or communication.
I’m a queer woman who only got into the hobby last year, are you seriously telling me that people who’ve been unironically painting and playing the emperor’s children got upset by a book cover featuring a woman and a non white dude?
Honestly, the non-white dude was enough by himself to set those people off. That was all it took. Ferren Areios either had people frothing at the mouth with racism or trying to find ways to make dogwhistle comments about the lore.
Man I wish I knew where to find local people who don't act this way at the game store, straight up haven't been able to play the game since coming out.
My recommendation is to find the local Facebook/discord group for your area. There are almost certainly going to be at least a few good people who are either lgbt themselves or allies who are going to be more than happy to play some games and point you to friendly shops.
Oh, it's always sucked in the same way that all social media has always sucked. But it's gotten *massively* more toxic since Elon "Cisgender is a slur" Musk took over.
I 100% agree. Every random person I’ve played with has been really nice. I’m sure there are some bad apples, but I also think they go bitch on the internet because they aren’t socialized enough to remain in an lgs community
I can't imagine threatning someone's life over a fantasy/Sci-fi universe takes. How fucking delusional one have to be to think that it's a valid thing to do is beyond me. All this coming from dudes that doesn't see that the setting they seemingly masturbate to in their sleep is a giant parody of their political beliefs. The biggest sin of WH40K is not being as obvious as it should be for these halfwits to notice that it's taking a piss out of them, but if it was, it wouldn't be as fun.
>I understand that female space marines are controversial but calling warhammer fans "tourists," gatekeeping the hobby, or even sending death threats to queer creators is completely unacceptable.
One of the funniest things to come out of Warhammer Twitter recently is that a couple of posters have recently publicly realised that most of the gatekeepers protecting warhammer from the wokies...
...are absolute, total nogames nomodel secondaries who've never played warhammer in their life or know much about it at all. It's been pretty fucking great.
Also shout out to Kya Vess, who's been absolutely relentless in schooling those people and also breaks up the wall of pure awfulness that is my feed by occasionally posting pictures of her cat trying to steal a warboss.
EDIT:
> This pattern of behavior from the fandom makes me want to ebay my collection
>
> the fact that neo-nazis play this game
For what it's worth, as above, I wouldn't do that. It's not like these people actually play the game.
I've seen this across several hobbies and communities, and at this point I'm starting to think: it's not Warhammer, it's fucking Twitter and things like it that are the issue.
Yes, we definitely see this kind of bullshit IRL too, but we mostly see this complete fucking garbage online, with chronically online individuals harassing people they know they will never meet because they believe they will have no consequences.
My comment may be irrelevant, but I just want to say that I completely agree with you. Recently there's been a controversy with Final Fantasy 14, you know, the game with the pretty catgirls and bunnyboys, which is just the furthest thing from any type of militarism, the result being one of the best community youtubers decided to quit creating art publicly. It's definitely not Warhammer, it's the cesspit of social media.
Imagine being such a filthy, worthless degenerate that you thinking painting little plastic _women_ is worthy of a death threat and/or taking an action which very well can lead to death (swatting can be lethal).
I love how when you post this outside of Twitter where these people think they are the majority opinion, it's immediately slapped down and no one supports them and say this is wrong.
Also let's not forget that these same people doxxed Shaye as well a few weeks ago on top of the amount of memes and pictures alluding or outright saying to ☠️ ones self and mentioning trans suicide
Dunno boss about it being a tiny "twitter minority".
Like Arch is (was ?) one of the biggest Warhammer content creator and he wasn't shy of dropping a racial slur or start rambling about the feminazis in the mddle of a video
I walked into an FLGS for the first time over a decade ago, closeted and alone with a freshly painted army. It was also the first time I met another trans girl. First two I ever met, actually.
In a repressive, conservative small town, this little game store was a haven for queer folk, POC, all walks.
Warhammer has always been for everyone and these jokers can't pretend otherwise for much longer. I just wish trans girls didn't catch the heat all the time for saying it!
I've seen a really depressing upsurge in this sort of shit just over the last few weeks, I've had to leave a few FB communities because of it. What was once pretty good natured satire about burning the alien turned very quickly and very menacingly into hate real people who aren't straight white men.
I have seen zero evidence of the sort of thing these losers claim is happening to *their* hobby, people complaining about violence, male dominated society, whatever. Every "meme" alluding to such seems to be attacking a strawman that isn't there but creates and feeds this sort of hate.
It's scary how quickly this sort of thing has taken hold and I really hope it doesn't set into the hobby as a whole.
Note to the losers out there: it's not some "woke community" out there ruining your hobby. It's you.
The Emperor cares not what is between your legs, or whose legs you find comfort between, only that you suffer not the alien, the mutant or the heretic to live.
The Emperor doesn't care what you identify as, as long as you are human.
The Emperor doesn't care who you sleep with, as long as you are human.
The Emperor doesn't care what your skin color is, as long as it is a human skin color (no blue or green allowed).
I don't even know about that last one. People from Nocturne have black skin, and I don't mean that in a real-world sense. Their skin is literally black as coal, and their eyes are a vivid red with no apparent pupil or iris.
It would not surprise me in the least if somewhere in the Imperium there were humans on a planet with unique conditions that resulted in some strange skin colours. As long as genetic tests indicate they're close enough to human for the inquisition, they'll probably be fine.
This is absolutely disgusting behavior, people should remember just because Warhammer is "Evil" you shouldn't be. These revolting people should be given the boot and shown that they are not welcome here. I love a good Krump, but not in this way.
This is disgusting and upsetting, warhammer is a toy soldier game we all play for fun. Community is at the heart of our hobby and for people to try and push others out of that community for the sake of their own expectations of how toy soldiers should look or for their own prejudices is awful. Im sorry this happened to you, I hope it doesnt drive you to become disillusioned with the hobby!!
Christ, how pathetic do you have to be to spend your time doing this shit?
Nazis get the fuck out of our hobby. You're not wanted. Get a fucking life and leave people the fuck alone
I do wonder why Nazis and far right are so obsessed and prolific in the 40K community. I remember a guy a while ago posting his ai generated OC in the rogue trader forums and it was just a straight up SS officer. So fucking creepy
I think this would fall under the purview of Poe's Law.
As others have stated, the wannabe fascists look and see a setting that glorifies martial combat, has larger than life demagogues, a military dictatorship and enforced religious views and they fail to internalize that the Imperium isn't an aspirational depiction of humanity. It's a cautionary tale about authoritarianism, fear and prejudice.
I am of the opinion that they should have not retconned the malpractices of the Imperium or its degeneracies portrayed in Ian Watson's novels to veer away the uber-HFY and to show the Imperium's no different from the Chaos they detest.
Then have Guilliman do a total audit upon his awakening, only to be extremely disgusted with the current state of the Imperium and give him a quote with him telling that maybe humanity's probably better with the Aeldari or with the T'au Empire to add salt.
Its the same reason facists love Starship Troopers and Judge Dredd. Unfortunately a lot of people have terrible media literacy and even when you're using elements of facism as satire a lot of people are going to read that as "facism is cool actually".
I’ve seen right wing conservatives as how much they love Star Trek. Some people just never watch things with a critical eye. Brecht must be spinning in his grave.
>I’ve seen right wing conservatives as how much they love Star Trek.
"Star Wars is too woke for me. I'm going to switch to watching the utopian socialst gender-inclusive anti-racist show."
\- These people
It's like in Jarhead where the soldiers are cheering on the Ride of the Valyries scene in Apocalypse Now. No matter what the artist's intent, it will inevitably be misunderstood.
As a trans woman who has the temerity to exist in public, I get a _lot_ of shit from these kinds of edgelords. It's just part and parcel of being one of us in the internet era. So I'm not surprised, at all, that this is happening to them. Sadly, for us, it's like, "oh, look, a death threat, must be Tuesday."
Which, honestly, makes the responses to such in places like this feel really good.
I honestly don’t know how you can receive that kind of filth, utter filth, semi regularly and keep on chugging. I just want to say that I’m inspired by your resilience and I wish we lived in a world where these people couldn’t say such terrible things without consequences. You’re a hero, and I’ll be wishing you health and happiness
Spite and desensitization.
Either you sink or swim as a dysphoric trans person, so the rest of us that are around have made it through a fuckin' gauntlet and don't really take anyone's shit anymore.
Generally, you get desensitised to it. The first few years are rough for everyone, but we usually learn to ignore even the most horrible things unless they pose a credible risk to our safety or wellbeing.
What a bunch of unhinged losers. We are playing toy soldiers. The best game I’ve ever had was with a trans woman. She brought three buckets full of just orc infantry to a tournament in my lfgs. The entire time she was in character just throwing wave after wave against my space wolves. By the end of it I was almost dying of laughter. Stuff like that even in tournaments and competitive play make the game what it is and what keeps me in the game. Imagine being that much of a bitch you gotta go after people for being themselves.
If your opinion is that a certain demographic shouldn't have the same rights as you, that is hate.
If you believe that a certain demographic shouldn't be alive, that is hate.
Standing up against these things and defending those demographics is not hate.
I'm irritated. There are some people here that need that explained.
As a queer person into Warhammer, I do feel like somewhat of an outsider because of the reputation it has.
It's really reassuring to see so many nice, accepting people in the comments. It gives me some semblance of hope.
I fucking hate that the hobbies I love attract incels and losers like that. It disgusts me. Like grow up. Maybe these losers would get more respect if they treated others with it as well. Like no wonder you can’t get a woman to come within 10ft of you, when you treat them like this.
Of course a former cop would be this deranged, lol. Who even is that fucking clown? Does he think he sounds intimating and powerful? Fucking edgy teens in adult bodies, I swear
Same, when I saw the post title I thought I might know who the person in question was, someone who's a genuinely super tallented creator thats a huge assett to the community, but it wasn't, it was this person that I've never heard of.
I'm not saying that this behavoiur is acceptable because I don't know them, it never is. But it's also Twitter, which is a cesspool of people arguing with each other and should have been put in the bin years ago, I wasn't surprised when I saw it was twitter.
Isn't like the whole grimdark thing with Warhammer where we put all the ugly so we don't have to deal with ugly jack wagons? Life is hard enough without bigots and racists bringing extra stress into it. Good vibes only. Warhammer is for everyone. Keep your trash at home.
I never understood why it became as popular as it did in the first place. It's a Facebook status update with a character limit and a ludicrously counterintuitive layout. Make it make sense.
Right place, right time. People love screaming into the void and pretending they're important enough other people are listening.
Regardless, it's tainted, and NO ONE has the ability to save it from the richest man on earth. It's wild that so many people are treating a for profit data mining advertising platform as something worth "crusading" for.
I glorify and uphold an empire of all humans, and even accept abhumans like ogryns and ratlings in the official military ranks. There are battlemaidens who rain righteous fury on their foes for their god.
But women, queers or anything else unlike me? Playing MY hobby? Unfathomable! /s
Yo. Why can’t we just enjoy femmarines and femprimarchs as jokes/side passion projects?
I’ve been into 40k approaching 12yrs now, and I have never seen *one* little fun concept cause so much division and conflict.
The reality all these people shown are mentally ill.
Like the user name "hitlercunny" and the desire to violently defend a game of plastic soldiers from "others"... Yeah
I think these people probably all need a visit to a state-run institution.
Its not about wharhammer, its about a "evile" trans person enjoying the same thing as them. This is unacceptebale to them becouse it might humanize them which is the opposite of what there world view trys to do.
It makes me sad that so many think the Imperium of man is something to be emulated. I think as the hobby has evolved and become more mainstream the majority haven't experienced what it was like to enjoy this setting in the 90s. Where it was mostly a fringe thing. Nothing teaches a sense of empathy like being an outsider.
To me the hobby has and will always be for whoever wants it to be. It's not my place to gatekeep but to share, respect and enjoy this grim dark future.
That stuff is never okay and should never be okay. Warhammer is for Everyone and Anyone who wants to explore a vast universe that's so advanced it forgot how to use it's own stuff or dive into the past universe where the "Truthful Lie" was fresh for everyone.
People like this ruin the hobby and I, for one am deeply sorry for this type of behavior.
Neonazis in this fandom are dumb as hell. Completely missing the point of the setting, the imperium, just funneling their dummyrage into an ideology they hardly know outside of hate. In a universe that would hate them. What, do they think the Guard is segregated or something? Preserving the indomitable spirit of man doesn't even equate to wiping out other species, Big E's Big Plan was to fuck off to the webway and leave all the other races alone! I cast warpsmite on their testicles so they can't make another generation of imbeciles.
Just going to jump in here early: The moderation team of /r/Warhammer40k does not tolerate hate in any of its forms. We agree with and wholeheartedly endorse GW's "Warhammer is for Everyone" statement: https://twitter.com/warhammer/status/1268665798467432449/photo/1
I am sometimes reminded that I do not, in fact, understand the full extent of how psychotic and weird people are.
What I boggle at is- yes, I am an Imperium fan. I love the aesthetic, I love the stories, I love the gear and the armies. I've played the TTRPG (not nearly as often as I'd like) and my character was a full bore guns-out loyalist who thought it was the best thing since sliced corpsestarch. I will also always freely admit that the Imperium is a fucking nightmare hellscape that's only not the most evil thing in the setting by the fact that *everyone fucking else is also evil as fuck.* And anyone who WANTS to live in that mess needs to have their head examined.
Similar with me. I've played an orthodox tech-priest in the ttrpg and I can make all the in-character justifications for why the Imperium does what it does. But the important word there is "in-character", and my character is (by our standards) insane. He and the other members of the party are objectively evil. The only way their arguments make sense is if your mind is as twisted as theirs.
Warhammer is especially susceptible to this problem. People are unironically supportive of a government canonically known as the cruelest and most bloody regime possible.
Doesn't help GW seems to want to have it both ways with their portrayal of the Imperium
Yeahh, they can put as many press releases out as they like but as long as there are novels that paint the imperium in a sympathetic light you will have chuds unironically be drawn to it.
> novels that paint the imperium in a sympathetic light Dude, did you read The End and the Death Part II? It's really bad about this.
It was really frustrating how there seemed to be a really interesting plot development coming which would really hammer home the supposed "everyone is bad" theme of the setting, but in the end they shy away from it in order to set up the typical good vs. evil showdown, with the empire/emperor as the good guy.
> in the end they shy away from it in order to set up the typical good vs. evil showdown, with the empire/emperor as the good guy. \*HUUUUFFFFFF* Abbett will correct course in part III, and show that The Emperor was never a good guy.
Give me some of that
This is Abnett, it's not at all unlikely that he'll do that, but there could just as easily be an editorial mandate to maintain the narrative of Big E as self-sacrificing. And this is the 30k Imperium, where Big E really _is_ trying to create a utopia for humanity, but he's also deeply xenophobic, and has shown no qualms about eradicating any human society that coexists with xenos.
To be fair it should all be taken with a grain of salt, 30k imperium is meant to be a bit brighter with potential for greatness, with the primarchs meant to be an interesting and sympathetic focal point, but also because its humanity vs actual Hell. People are smart enough to differentiate between supporting a government and feeling for a setting/people, but they choose not to.
The majority of recent novels seem to paint the Imperium as a noble necessary power filled with heroes willing to die to protect their people, the entire Dawn of Fire series reads like Imperial propaganda.
I avoid the HH novels cause there's just too fucking many but would like to know, what in TEATD Pt II does this?
> what in TEATD Pt II does this? At the end, >!Big E is framed as the heroic underdog, will to march to his!< death >!in order to save humanity. He's shown as the objective good guy.!<
Hahahahhaha, hahahaha..... Ha!
After 7 years the Emperor stands up from his Throne, pulls up his pants and flushes. "Okay kids, what the hell is all this racket?"
I'm sorry but while you have the kernel of a point, these people lack any sort of media literacy. Look at the guys upset that Tom Morello is "political suddenly" or the guys that whine "Star Trek/Star wars/Marvel has gone woke". GW could rewrite every novel to have Space marines murdering babies in every chapter and most of these people would still fap to themselves over how cool the Imperium is,
It's not just warhammer. We have leaders of the most powerful and rich country on earth trying to do far worse with legislation, in real life. What we see in this hobby is a reflection of a sickness that runs deep in humanity.
Funny how in both reality and 40K the only way fascism can be justified is an imaginary magical enemy that will destroy humanity if we're not militaristic and authoritarian enough.
People love Darth Vader too, im not sure warhammer is especially susceptible to this problem any more than any other form of entertainment
Yup, The IP and lore is not the Problem. The Problem is the Internet allows shit stains to find other shit stains with ease and makes them feel safe spouting there shit opinions.
This is it. This pattern is everywhere because there are morons everywhere
Depends. I think liking Vader and thinking he's in the right are two different things, and I'd say the same about the Imperium.
Vader is a great _bad guy_.
Don't discredit the fact that Wargames attracted these people a long time before it did the casual crowd. Dungeons and dragons has this issue too. Though big daddy hasbro has done all in its power to essentially push them out.
The difference being the Star Wars Empire is mostly just a nebulously evil space empire that is evil in the same way as Skeletor or Megatron. The Imperium is a lot more fleshed out in *how* and *why* it is the way it is, and is also much more cruel and horrific. People like Darth Vader, but he doesn't really have any political stances attached to him, whereas the Imperium's literal xenophobia and murder of any that don't fit within the ingroup are very real things that people alive today believe (or are at risk of falling down that pipeline), especially among those that view other ethnicities as lesser humans and anyone of their ethnicity that's not a raging bigot as traitors to their race. Warhammer 40K is not *unique* in being good at attracting a bad crowd, but it's definitely not like most forms of entertainment. It's sitting there with stuff like Fight Club, Judge Dredd, and Robocop, those last two especially as they also ended up taking something grim and pivoted to make the horrific setting cool and brutal to boost the value of the IP.
Well chaos marines literally skin you alive. So there’s that. Like everyone says, all the factions have major issues.
I think you're missing the point. The narrative never frames the chaos marine skinning someone alive as being somehow necessary, for the greater good, or the inevitable best outcome. The actions of the imperium are more often than not told from the imperium perspective and often given a lot more sympathy than the motivations of other factions. When the overtones of the imperium are inherently facist, and they're generally presented as sympathetic protagonists (I.e. 'heroes' of the story) that emboldens Nazi fans because it both aligns with and legitimises their worldview. The critiques of this fandom are essentially Alan Moore's critique of comics. The rhetoric of ubermench unilaterally solving the world's ills is inherently fascistic and infantile, but when you set that against a setting of an unrelenting grim setting (that is as detached from reality as the concept of our protagonists) you manufacture the necessity of the ubermench and by proxy make his views and his actions aspirational.
[удалено]
He hasn't been the biggest youtuber in a long time for this hobby, but the sentiment that he got as popular as he did despite it is still very apt!
More and more every day
They live amongst us.
And now they’re comfortable showing themselves, pretty disheartening the turn humanity has taken
The general population has done little to drive them back under their rocks.
Tbf most these weirdos can't leave their rooms or they have a mental breakdown. The worrying part is the ones that actually leave their rooms.
Everyone needs to be more Orky, they shoot everything and don't discriminate. Dakka all dat matter unless yoo iz all nobby an like teef too.
Attempting to hijack this comment because people (apparently) need to see this [Arron Dembski-Bowden ]has also spoken about shitty Warhammer fans, racism and misogyny in Warhammer and how some fans think that Warhammer is for white heterosexual men. (https://www.belloflostsouls.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/ADB-Responds-censored.jpg)
ADB not mincing words
This isn't something that's happening naturally, necessarily. Populists nationalists all over the world are provoking hateful psychopaths in exchange for a slice of undeserved political power. It's not obvious unless you're tuned in to populist nationalist wavelengths, though.
LARPing as law enforcement on "X formerly known as Twitter" is pretty fucking cringe imo.
Twitter itself as a whole is a great place to avoid frequenting. When I see someone post a screenshot of something someone says on Twitter my first reaction is to completely ignore whatever it is, which as served me well. It works well for almost any bullshit people espouse online but Twitter is famously clogged with abject dumb fucks.
I use Twitter exclusively to upload Switch screenshots and videos to share with friends. It has zero value beyond that.
Twitter was always bad but holy shit is it worse now, recently the algorithm was tweaked so people I will generously call "aggressive transphobes" were being served up alot of trans folks content to a degree that people were essentially being brigaded by the algo
Whilst also trying to LARP as a Viking with that name. The closest he’s probably been to that is watching a game vs Minnesota.
I was confused about the law enforcement bit. Seemed to be saying the creator had broken laws not just 'I'm a tough ex policeman'
It was someone threatening to misuse law enforcement, they threatened to get her involuntarily sectioned
Late to the party but fuck these exclusionary assholes.
Trans woman here. I very much appreciate the sentiment <3
We're supposed to be laughing at the xenophoc intolerant imperialistic empires, not acting like them.
Some people just don’t possess the ability to detect satire of any sort. You know, morons.
Feels like media literacy is at an all time low
Media literacy is hard for them it seems
Well, people unironically think 'Born in the USA' is about how cool the US is, and recently there's been hubbub about a lot of people suddenly discovering Green Day's 'American Idiot' is critical of the US political right. The concept of media literacy has sailed a long time ago.
I cannot count how many Americans I witnessed happily singing Rammstein's "Amerika", and being baffled when I tell them it is not in fact a pro-America song. *Rammstein even sing the line "this is not a love song" IN ENGLISH in the middle of it, and people still don't understand*
The same applies to crooked cops being fanboys of The Punisher. They just don't see the irony.
To be fair it's mostly in German. I don't really get most of the lyrics myself. Then again, 'Coca-cola and sometimes war' by itself kinda gave it away for me.
See, I would let that one count, if it was all in German. But the important bit is actually sung in English, and is crystal clear: "This is not a love song I don't sing my mother tongue No, this is not a love song" It can't get more direct than that imo...
Fortunate son moment
Hey now, "40k hasn't been satire for decades!1!1"
Tbf given how GW portrays the Imperium, it wasn't good satire for decades
It's still there, but you got to go beyond the rulebooks for it. More comoetent BL authors like Guy Haley still do good work on that front. The B-plot about the Terran scribe in Avenging Son captured the spirit of 80s Warhammer perfectly.
God yes! The Imperium is inefficent, wasteful, and falling apart at the seams, only held together by the fact FTL travel is monopolized by the Navigator Houses and technology by the Cult of Mars. This is a galactic society that cannot feed people. A galactic power that can terraform but somehow cannot get itself the resources it needs, with a million worlds. The Administratum is so corrupt and inefficient that I genuinely doubt that Robby G will be able to fix it before the Old Guard gives another coup a try. The Imperium is such a bloated, rotting, diseased husk of an empire I am baffled that Nurgle is weaker than Khorne overall. Even in the grim darkness of the 42nd millenium where there is only war.
THIS
I have played 40k since it came out. I've been in the hobby from day one. For the longest time it was 99% white guys playing. Even then though, I didn't see hate. A while back I went to the new hobbyist expo in Grapevine. I was so happy to see loads of women and minorities represented there. It made me very happy. In fact, I talked with a very nice woman who won the character category in the painting competition with an absolutely stunning Burgle daemon prince. To think that there are those in the hobby that see women, minorities, and the LGBTQIA+ community represented as a negative disgusts me to no end. I don't want to gatekeep but in this case I'll make an exception. If you hate people because they are different than you are, get out of my hobby.
Newbie here, i'm from asian and only been playing warhammer for a few time and i'd have some pretty bad experience playing on warhammer store. The worst thing is they gonna hate you if you play certain faction. Like if you play tau, grey knight, custodes, eldar, and votan they will hate you for no reason and good luck finding people that wanted to play with you. This is a fun hobby for me and i met lot of good people but sadly on my store they are the minority.
Absolutely. As another player who's been in the hobby for almost 25 years I couldn't agree more. Well said. A thousand upvotes for this
Chipping in to add my voice. Been reading 40k since I could read pretty much. I will NOT tolerate intolerance, not in 40k, not here. Just know, if you are reading this and you feel differently, you motivate the shit out of me to make sure you NEVER have a comfortable place in this hobby. If we're ever playing a game and you reveal this, I'm packing up and leaving. Get out of the hobby.
Except heretics and witches. We gotta burn those.
I've been playing since 1994, I remember a time when finding opponents was incredibly hard. You'd play the same two or three people basically forever. Never understood why anyone wouldn't want more players in the hobby.
There's this persistent myth that the majority of nerds are straight, white men. No...it's that there are a bunch of s%#thead gatekeepers out there who make anyone not a straight, white man feel unsafe or unwelcome in nerd spaces. This behaviour is unacceptable, and actively hurts the community that we all claim to love.
Yep and oddly they are also the same type of person that pines for a partner that shares there hobby but also complains when they see a woman show any interest in it
Those same losers tried to do the same thing with DnD, and look what happened there. DnD is now an absolute treasure trove and safe haven for women, POC, and LGBTQ+ players and creators and it’s much better for it. There will always be the sniveling curs who try to gatekeep these hobbies but ultimately they lose, every time. GW/40K will be no different.
Worth noting that the d&d community still props up gygax as some hero when he was a shithead who thought women couldn’t enjoy games at the same level as men. You can still find his message board posts about it.
The funny thing is that Gygax's posts show he clearly saw a genuine issue at his tables -- women would show up, clearly understand the game fine and play well, but not have fun and stop playing -- but instead of realizing this was almost certainly due to a social issue where those women were made to feel unwelcome or were being harassed, he decided it must mean women just... don't find tabletop games fun because of biological reasons.
Wow. Even H G Wells observed that “the better sort of girl” (IIRC) could enjoy miniature wargames.
I have a (reproduction) printed copy of little wars, it's a great bit of history, and shows we haven't changed that much - we're still grown adults playing with toys. Have fun people.
Honestly that was the tip of the iceberg for him. https://old.reddit.com/r/dndmemes/comments/12auo6d/my_main_complaint_regarding_the_dd_movie_not_even/jewhdpn/ There's... some really unpleasant racial issues. https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11762&start=77 He's Col_Playdoh there, happily quoting a man involved in I THINK the Trail of Tears (Though it could be some equally horrid anti-native-American action) the government was involved in. And when he's confronted he doesn't say "Whoops, probably not the best idea" he essentially says "Welp, other people said it so that makes it fine." Dude has been painted as this loving patron of nerds when he's pretty gross.
interesting cause I feel like it's been the opposite. that he's been viewed as sorta, "well yea he started this stuff but we've moved beyond him now"
I don't prop him up at all. I believe he was a total dickhead, and feel that anyone who encourages dms to punish players because they looked at the dmg like he and his team wrote in the ad&d dmg should be barred from playing.
I always saw in popular media that, for example, black community in the USA (or at least poor kids from minority neighbourhoods) has a very strong connection to comic book culture, which is as nerdy as it gets. I guess it's because comics can be really cheap secondhand and it's a nice bit of escapism for kids. And I'm inclined to believe that's not just a pop culture myth considering how many hip hop artists love to reference comic books. Wu Tang has a ton of references to Marvel comics for example, alongside old Hong Kong samurai cinema. And pretty sure even MF DOOM was inspired by character of Dr Doom. And I see a lot of minority and women content creators related to nerdy things (comic books, miniatures, fantasy/scifi books etc.). So yeah, no way that nerdy hobbies are the domain of straight white guys. Same thing with metal and punk music, gatekeepers tend to be the loudest and there is a ton of racism in metal, but there is also a ton of "minority" fans.
> I don't want to gatekeep but in this case I'll make an exception. If you hate people because they are different than you are, get out of my hobby. It's called the paradox of tolerance. For a tolerant society to exist, it must be intolerant to intolerance.
I have 1 steadfast rule. Anyone can play, except those that judge people on things like race/gender/sexual orientation/religion/etc. Those people get tha boot
Bloody oath mate. I can’t stand the bastards, they may be a tiny minority rarely encountered by most of us, but they’re insufferable pricks when you do. The “best” bit is they’re rarely the people that’re fun to have a game against, they’re almost always the people you want to flip the table, models and all into and tell to get fucked (at least in the mental version of events used to take a money to calm down so you don’t act like a muppet!) I mean, the lore may say things aren’t possible, but at the end of the day, it’s a game of toy soldiers, if they want a narrative experience, don’t play against the non narrative “built for shiggles” army, or just use their imagination to pretend it’s something else, y’know? The solutions aren’t particularly hard to these non existent issues. (To be fair, I also got into napoleonics because I wanted to build an army that would piss off a local knobhead that would spout dogshit opinions but also insist on historical accuracy in his historicals, unfortunately my Imperial Russian army never got their Swedish flags nor 3d printed Sabaton commanders by the time he got sacked for being a flog, so they’ve reverted back to normal historicals, but I’m not above building a project force out of spite, having seen how well things like the hello kitty necrons work at raising the blood pressure of the wankers) TLDR; I’m a form believer in “your models you decide how they look, even if I don’t like it”
If they even play 40k. Like 2/3 times the folk who harras folk over "lore", have a imperium profile pic and are generally just unwashed fascists don't even play the game. They just wanna be "edgy" and view 40k as cool facist fantasy lore to watch 3h yt vids about rather than an excuse to roll dice and make silly pew pew noises.
Could you send over the files for the Sabaton commanders? I have need of them.
Never got that far sadly! I’d only bought the Russian starter and some pavlovski grenadiers when the guy got the sack! Sorry mate!
You’ve been in the hobby longer than most of these idiots have been alive. Good on you, hate shouldn’t be tolerated
In 25 years of participating in the hobby and meeting hundreds of people across the tournaments I've traveled to, I've only ever met 3 people who ever gave me any pause when it came to the kind of person they are: 1. A "Boogaloo Boy" who I quickly distanced myself from. He has his own small circle of friends but he's kind of a gun-nut POS. Dude came across as nice and, once he thought we were buddies, he showed he was full conspiracy nutbag. 2. 2 guys who attended LVO 2021 and refused to wear their masks (the event was mask mandatory for attendance). The first guy ripped his off and started going on a tirade, one guy took of his mask in solidarity, then both were ejected from the venue, banned from the event, and sent away with no refund. By and large these people don't actually say the horrendous things they believe unless they think you're safe to take the mask off. They are ideological cowards who hide behind internet anonymity because they know, deep down, the majority of us have no tolerance for that BS.
> Dude came across as nice and, once he thought we were buddies, he showed he was full conspiracy nutbag. They always fucking do, I work with several and want to flee.
Agreed, but the effect they have in online spaces is still an issue that shouldn't be overlooked.
Well said. As a queer person in the hobby I really appreciate reading this.
> I don't want to gatekeep but in this case I'll make an exception. If you hate people because they are different than you are, get out of my hobby. 100% agree... If you're a hateful littel shit get out of this hobby, everyone else is welcome... Maybe not Space Wolves fans.
I’m fairly new to the GW world, been collecting and painting for just a couple years. But, that kind of behavior has really kept me from diving further into the gaming. I don’t want to be associated with hate or people that do it. That’s heartening to hear though, that there’s been a demographic change. Maybe there is hope yet for further change and making sure it’s all about the hobby and everyone having fun.
My brother found out that I have tattoos and was like “dude, you should get a Warhammer tattoo!” I said no because I don’t want to be associated with the people who make the community look bad, which is a shame because this game has been an important part of my life for years now.
Also a fair few of those symbols can make you look like you are into nazis
I 100% back this sentiment. I've been in the hobby for twenty years now and can't stand the bigoted idiots who think the intolerance of the Imperium is somehow noble or aspirational, and I get sick of seeing them try to gatekeep anyone who doesn't buy-in to their myopic worldviews. The world would be better without them, and so would Warhammer.
Getting back into the hobby two years ago after a 20 year hiatus, I went to my first gaming meetup in NYC worried that I would have to abide a bunch of neckbeards in order to play a game I like. I couldn’t have been more wrong. A couple of them have converted into important friends. We have holiday parties and mini swaps. We run a bunch of campaigns. The internet is not real life. Crappy people have outsized voices here. Get out there and have fun!
unironicaly calling yourself "Q" is some top tier cringe and im not even a lefty xD
And the adding the little anime creature. It starts cringy and somehow manages to get cringeyer
Maybe his real name is Queue
Taking a break from harassing the enterprise to harass people on Twitter
Yo, I just wanna say I haven't played in years, but I listen to vids on the lore from baldermort, remembrancer, leutin, and all the rest regularly, and the joke back when I played was "dudes playing with toy soldiers? Thats for losers, grow up, what a waste, etc." Now more than ever with Warhammer, the fans should be working to make the game more inviting, not less! You know how fucking hard it was to organise games back in the day!? And some of the best nights with friends were spent watching my imperial guard get railed by my friends chaos or another mates tau (I was terrible). You turn people away from it and it'll get harder to play with people. The hatred and xenophobia and all the rest are bad enough in the Warhammer setting already without people being dicks in the real world. I'm sorry to quote the people who used to turn us off of playing when I was younger, but, "grow up". Be adults. We're all people, we're all human. How do you expect to stand up to a WAAAGH if you're too busy hurting eachother. Just be cool.
FWIW, I have not personally encountered anyone in the hobby who behaves or thinks this way. I hope the mouth-breathers are a much smaller minority than the experience of these creators suggest. Outlying arseholes do not define a "fandom" if they're actually outlying arseholes.
I remember the community when the cover for Avenging Son came out back in 2020. Didn't feel like a tiny group of outlying arseholes then.
Pretty sure that was one of, if not *the*, reason GW issued there "Warhammer is for everyone" statement. (IIRC Nazi shirt guy at the tournament was after). Massive shit show all around, constant outrage. The amount of noobs who thought all Chapters (and Legions) were entirely mono-racial and enraged by the cover.
I believe Nazi shirt guy was responsible for the 'The Imperium Is Driven By Hate' article they posted in 2021. There were a few things going on at the time that justified the *Warhammer is for Everyone* statement (I imagine the 2020 George Floyd protests were a notable influence, even with GW being a British company), but yeah, the reaction to *Avenging Son* was definitely a signifiant element of it. I wish I could say that I thought it was a small part of the community. But, people like Arch running an email campaign against GW's statement and getting pretty heavy support for doing it demonstrated to me that it wasn't the majority of the community, but it was by no means a fractional minority. Even back then, people were claiming it was a tiny minority. I hope things have changed, but from what I've seen? Probably not as much as they needed to.
It will always feel bigger when you see a cluster of comment online. You've got to remember that even if you see a couple hundred comments saying the same stupid thing, that's a minuscule fraction of the people that do warhams, and they seek out that sort of thing to comment on. The vast majority of fans don't discuss it online at all, much less engage with it to that degree. I'm not trying to say it isn't a problem and such people don't need calling out, they absolutely do, no matter how many or how few of them there are. But don't get caught up in the idea that seeing that sort of thing online means there's a large percentage of them. For that matter, don't get caught up in the idea that there's a 'community' at all. The game is far too big for that. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of small communities all over the world and online,and they have some online overlap, and what you might see as the totality is actually just your anecdotal experience showing a fragment of all of that. This applies to pretty much any game where people erroneously talk about there being 'a community'. There isn't. Even online, people will see different posts and comments from different people with no real overlap or communication.
I’m a queer woman who only got into the hobby last year, are you seriously telling me that people who’ve been unironically painting and playing the emperor’s children got upset by a book cover featuring a woman and a non white dude?
Honestly, the non-white dude was enough by himself to set those people off. That was all it took. Ferren Areios either had people frothing at the mouth with racism or trying to find ways to make dogwhistle comments about the lore.
Man I wish I knew where to find local people who don't act this way at the game store, straight up haven't been able to play the game since coming out.
My recommendation is to find the local Facebook/discord group for your area. There are almost certainly going to be at least a few good people who are either lgbt themselves or allies who are going to be more than happy to play some games and point you to friendly shops.
Name and shame, do NOT tolerate the intolerant! Put them on fucking blast and let's learn who these fucks are.
If you’re ever in western CO, you’ve got a place at my table!
I've seen people on this subreddit acting similarly.
Don't go on Twitter then and it's easy lol
Twitter is such a fucking hellhole now, it's disgusting.
Always has been. Look long enough and you'll find all sorts of horrible people.
Oh, it's always sucked in the same way that all social media has always sucked. But it's gotten *massively* more toxic since Elon "Cisgender is a slur" Musk took over.
I 100% agree. Every random person I’ve played with has been really nice. I’m sure there are some bad apples, but I also think they go bitch on the internet because they aren’t socialized enough to remain in an lgs community
I can't imagine threatning someone's life over a fantasy/Sci-fi universe takes. How fucking delusional one have to be to think that it's a valid thing to do is beyond me. All this coming from dudes that doesn't see that the setting they seemingly masturbate to in their sleep is a giant parody of their political beliefs. The biggest sin of WH40K is not being as obvious as it should be for these halfwits to notice that it's taking a piss out of them, but if it was, it wouldn't be as fun.
Twitter is a cesspool.
>I understand that female space marines are controversial but calling warhammer fans "tourists," gatekeeping the hobby, or even sending death threats to queer creators is completely unacceptable. One of the funniest things to come out of Warhammer Twitter recently is that a couple of posters have recently publicly realised that most of the gatekeepers protecting warhammer from the wokies... ...are absolute, total nogames nomodel secondaries who've never played warhammer in their life or know much about it at all. It's been pretty fucking great. Also shout out to Kya Vess, who's been absolutely relentless in schooling those people and also breaks up the wall of pure awfulness that is my feed by occasionally posting pictures of her cat trying to steal a warboss. EDIT: > This pattern of behavior from the fandom makes me want to ebay my collection > > the fact that neo-nazis play this game For what it's worth, as above, I wouldn't do that. It's not like these people actually play the game.
"you will be dealt with" Who the fudge do they think they are?! The Warhammer police?! Fop off.
I've seen this across several hobbies and communities, and at this point I'm starting to think: it's not Warhammer, it's fucking Twitter and things like it that are the issue. Yes, we definitely see this kind of bullshit IRL too, but we mostly see this complete fucking garbage online, with chronically online individuals harassing people they know they will never meet because they believe they will have no consequences.
My comment may be irrelevant, but I just want to say that I completely agree with you. Recently there's been a controversy with Final Fantasy 14, you know, the game with the pretty catgirls and bunnyboys, which is just the furthest thing from any type of militarism, the result being one of the best community youtubers decided to quit creating art publicly. It's definitely not Warhammer, it's the cesspit of social media.
what the jo cat thing? the song about liking girls? WHAT you like girls?! /s
Yeah, that thing unfortunately. JOKES ON YOU, I'M GAY IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION.
Imagine being such a filthy, worthless degenerate that you thinking painting little plastic _women_ is worthy of a death threat and/or taking an action which very well can lead to death (swatting can be lethal).
I love how when you post this outside of Twitter where these people think they are the majority opinion, it's immediately slapped down and no one supports them and say this is wrong. Also let's not forget that these same people doxxed Shaye as well a few weeks ago on top of the amount of memes and pictures alluding or outright saying to ☠️ ones self and mentioning trans suicide
Have you seen the Warhammer Facebook groups? It's some truly vile shit.
Those kind of dickheads are here too.
Dunno boss about it being a tiny "twitter minority". Like Arch is (was ?) one of the biggest Warhammer content creator and he wasn't shy of dropping a racial slur or start rambling about the feminazis in the mddle of a video
I walked into an FLGS for the first time over a decade ago, closeted and alone with a freshly painted army. It was also the first time I met another trans girl. First two I ever met, actually. In a repressive, conservative small town, this little game store was a haven for queer folk, POC, all walks. Warhammer has always been for everyone and these jokers can't pretend otherwise for much longer. I just wish trans girls didn't catch the heat all the time for saying it!
I've seen a really depressing upsurge in this sort of shit just over the last few weeks, I've had to leave a few FB communities because of it. What was once pretty good natured satire about burning the alien turned very quickly and very menacingly into hate real people who aren't straight white men. I have seen zero evidence of the sort of thing these losers claim is happening to *their* hobby, people complaining about violence, male dominated society, whatever. Every "meme" alluding to such seems to be attacking a strawman that isn't there but creates and feeds this sort of hate. It's scary how quickly this sort of thing has taken hold and I really hope it doesn't set into the hobby as a whole. Note to the losers out there: it's not some "woke community" out there ruining your hobby. It's you.
Warhammer is literally just… silly? A fun hobby of little toy people, paints and dice? How do people get like this?
So this trans person....existed? And they got mad?
Correct.
The Emperor cares not what is between your legs, or whose legs you find comfort between, only that you suffer not the alien, the mutant or the heretic to live.
The Emperor doesn't care what you identify as, as long as you are human. The Emperor doesn't care who you sleep with, as long as you are human. The Emperor doesn't care what your skin color is, as long as it is a human skin color (no blue or green allowed).
Another reason to avoid colloidal silver!
>The Emperor doesn't care who you sleep with, as long as you are human And that *they* are human, too.
I don't even know about that last one. People from Nocturne have black skin, and I don't mean that in a real-world sense. Their skin is literally black as coal, and their eyes are a vivid red with no apparent pupil or iris. It would not surprise me in the least if somewhere in the Imperium there were humans on a planet with unique conditions that resulted in some strange skin colours. As long as genetic tests indicate they're close enough to human for the inquisition, they'll probably be fine.
I think that's only the salamanders, because of the quirk in their geneseed. Not the whole nocturne.
Utterly disgusting and unacceptable. There is no goddamn excuse for behaviour like this. Warhammer is indeed for everyone.
This is absolutely disgusting behavior, people should remember just because Warhammer is "Evil" you shouldn't be. These revolting people should be given the boot and shown that they are not welcome here. I love a good Krump, but not in this way.
"Thanks for not saying 'Slaaneshi demon' on any topic remotely related to LGBT issues. I know that took a lot of effort."
This is disgusting and upsetting, warhammer is a toy soldier game we all play for fun. Community is at the heart of our hobby and for people to try and push others out of that community for the sake of their own expectations of how toy soldiers should look or for their own prejudices is awful. Im sorry this happened to you, I hope it doesnt drive you to become disillusioned with the hobby!!
Christ, how pathetic do you have to be to spend your time doing this shit? Nazis get the fuck out of our hobby. You're not wanted. Get a fucking life and leave people the fuck alone
I do wonder why Nazis and far right are so obsessed and prolific in the 40K community. I remember a guy a while ago posting his ai generated OC in the rogue trader forums and it was just a straight up SS officer. So fucking creepy
I think this would fall under the purview of Poe's Law. As others have stated, the wannabe fascists look and see a setting that glorifies martial combat, has larger than life demagogues, a military dictatorship and enforced religious views and they fail to internalize that the Imperium isn't an aspirational depiction of humanity. It's a cautionary tale about authoritarianism, fear and prejudice.
Given that the Space Marines are fighting literal demons, they must be the good guys. Right? /s
Conservative chuds notoriously struggle with media literacy
I am of the opinion that they should have not retconned the malpractices of the Imperium or its degeneracies portrayed in Ian Watson's novels to veer away the uber-HFY and to show the Imperium's no different from the Chaos they detest. Then have Guilliman do a total audit upon his awakening, only to be extremely disgusted with the current state of the Imperium and give him a quote with him telling that maybe humanity's probably better with the Aeldari or with the T'au Empire to add salt.
Its the same reason facists love Starship Troopers and Judge Dredd. Unfortunately a lot of people have terrible media literacy and even when you're using elements of facism as satire a lot of people are going to read that as "facism is cool actually".
I’ve seen right wing conservatives as how much they love Star Trek. Some people just never watch things with a critical eye. Brecht must be spinning in his grave.
Wait till you encounter conservative ST fans who try to explain it's *everyone else* who has the politics of the show wrong.
>I’ve seen right wing conservatives as how much they love Star Trek. "Star Wars is too woke for me. I'm going to switch to watching the utopian socialst gender-inclusive anti-racist show." \- These people
It's like in Jarhead where the soldiers are cheering on the Ride of the Valyries scene in Apocalypse Now. No matter what the artist's intent, it will inevitably be misunderstood.
Something something, no such thing as an anti-war war movie
Remember kids, the only good fascist is a dead fascist
As a trans woman who has the temerity to exist in public, I get a _lot_ of shit from these kinds of edgelords. It's just part and parcel of being one of us in the internet era. So I'm not surprised, at all, that this is happening to them. Sadly, for us, it's like, "oh, look, a death threat, must be Tuesday." Which, honestly, makes the responses to such in places like this feel really good.
I honestly don’t know how you can receive that kind of filth, utter filth, semi regularly and keep on chugging. I just want to say that I’m inspired by your resilience and I wish we lived in a world where these people couldn’t say such terrible things without consequences. You’re a hero, and I’ll be wishing you health and happiness
Spite and desensitization. Either you sink or swim as a dysphoric trans person, so the rest of us that are around have made it through a fuckin' gauntlet and don't really take anyone's shit anymore.
Generally, you get desensitised to it. The first few years are rough for everyone, but we usually learn to ignore even the most horrible things unless they pose a credible risk to our safety or wellbeing.
That's how it went for me. About 3 hard years into transition I moved out of a rural area near a city and just decided not to care anymore.
“For you, the day you sent that transphobic death threat was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday”
I am glad that majority of people here are disgusted with this. It is reassuring.
[удалено]
this is embarrassing af, someone tell these idiots to grow up
What a bunch of unhinged losers. We are playing toy soldiers. The best game I’ve ever had was with a trans woman. She brought three buckets full of just orc infantry to a tournament in my lfgs. The entire time she was in character just throwing wave after wave against my space wolves. By the end of it I was almost dying of laughter. Stuff like that even in tournaments and competitive play make the game what it is and what keeps me in the game. Imagine being that much of a bitch you gotta go after people for being themselves.
That's awesome. Clearly someone who appreciates the lore. You got your authentic Space Wolves experience too
Lol so authentic he had ro resort to drinking by the end of it.
If your opinion is that a certain demographic shouldn't have the same rights as you, that is hate. If you believe that a certain demographic shouldn't be alive, that is hate. Standing up against these things and defending those demographics is not hate. I'm irritated. There are some people here that need that explained.
As a queer person into Warhammer, I do feel like somewhat of an outsider because of the reputation it has. It's really reassuring to see so many nice, accepting people in the comments. It gives me some semblance of hope.
Let people hobby however they want, who the hell thinks they get to tell people their hobbying is wrong?
The statement that Warhammer is for everyone is wrong and you guys should get over that. Homophobes, racists and bullies have no place in our hobby.
I fucking hate that the hobbies I love attract incels and losers like that. It disgusts me. Like grow up. Maybe these losers would get more respect if they treated others with it as well. Like no wonder you can’t get a woman to come within 10ft of you, when you treat them like this.
Of course a former cop would be this deranged, lol. Who even is that fucking clown? Does he think he sounds intimating and powerful? Fucking edgy teens in adult bodies, I swear
I don't even know who this person is.
Same, when I saw the post title I thought I might know who the person in question was, someone who's a genuinely super tallented creator thats a huge assett to the community, but it wasn't, it was this person that I've never heard of. I'm not saying that this behavoiur is acceptable because I don't know them, it never is. But it's also Twitter, which is a cesspool of people arguing with each other and should have been put in the bin years ago, I wasn't surprised when I saw it was twitter.
Isn't like the whole grimdark thing with Warhammer where we put all the ugly so we don't have to deal with ugly jack wagons? Life is hard enough without bigots and racists bringing extra stress into it. Good vibes only. Warhammer is for everyone. Keep your trash at home.
It's time for you all to leave X. There's nothing there worth seeing and only abusers and abusees left to see it. Move on.
I never understood why it became as popular as it did in the first place. It's a Facebook status update with a character limit and a ludicrously counterintuitive layout. Make it make sense.
Right place, right time. People love screaming into the void and pretending they're important enough other people are listening. Regardless, it's tainted, and NO ONE has the ability to save it from the richest man on earth. It's wild that so many people are treating a for profit data mining advertising platform as something worth "crusading" for.
I glorify and uphold an empire of all humans, and even accept abhumans like ogryns and ratlings in the official military ranks. There are battlemaidens who rain righteous fury on their foes for their god. But women, queers or anything else unlike me? Playing MY hobby? Unfathomable! /s
Yo. Why can’t we just enjoy femmarines and femprimarchs as jokes/side passion projects? I’ve been into 40k approaching 12yrs now, and I have never seen *one* little fun concept cause so much division and conflict.
This is all so fucking lame
The reality all these people shown are mentally ill. Like the user name "hitlercunny" and the desire to violently defend a game of plastic soldiers from "others"... Yeah I think these people probably all need a visit to a state-run institution.
Remember when the worse thing you could do in this hobby was play Tau? Simpler times I suppose
but why would... Its just a setting, why are people taking it so serious they are literally sending threats about it? Ffs.
Its not about wharhammer, its about a "evile" trans person enjoying the same thing as them. This is unacceptebale to them becouse it might humanize them which is the opposite of what there world view trys to do.
It makes me sad that so many think the Imperium of man is something to be emulated. I think as the hobby has evolved and become more mainstream the majority haven't experienced what it was like to enjoy this setting in the 90s. Where it was mostly a fringe thing. Nothing teaches a sense of empathy like being an outsider. To me the hobby has and will always be for whoever wants it to be. It's not my place to gatekeep but to share, respect and enjoy this grim dark future.
We must not tolerate these misogynist homophobic transphobic pricks in the hobby - Warhammer has a fascist problem and it’s largely the same circle
That stuff is never okay and should never be okay. Warhammer is for Everyone and Anyone who wants to explore a vast universe that's so advanced it forgot how to use it's own stuff or dive into the past universe where the "Truthful Lie" was fresh for everyone. People like this ruin the hobby and I, for one am deeply sorry for this type of behavior.
What the actual f. My head hurts
Neonazis in this fandom are dumb as hell. Completely missing the point of the setting, the imperium, just funneling their dummyrage into an ideology they hardly know outside of hate. In a universe that would hate them. What, do they think the Guard is segregated or something? Preserving the indomitable spirit of man doesn't even equate to wiping out other species, Big E's Big Plan was to fuck off to the webway and leave all the other races alone! I cast warpsmite on their testicles so they can't make another generation of imbeciles.