Institutional Capture: My Prediction of the fall of Warhammer 40k
How yet another fandom will fall to the woke mob
Note for Readers: You do not have to know anything about Warhammer 40k to understand this essay.
“Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods”
-Warhammer 40k
I have come to a simple understanding about me and my hobbies: by the time I hear about a hobby, whether that is a book series, tv show, video game, board game, movie, etc., it means that the hobby is approaching the end of its golden era. I am the harbinger of the end. I am the armageddon of your favorite fandom. I am the doom of your precious sci-fi/fantasy/action/adventure universe. I don’t mean to be. And it’s not anything I myself actually do, but my entry point signals the terminal decline of a franchise. Usually within a year.
With that in mind, I regret to say that I have recently become fascinated with Warhammer 40k!
But before we get into the grimdark of the 41st millennium, a little background:
I usually think of myself as someone who is able to read the tea leaves of culture. This might be one of those prideful copes that everyone suspects themselves of (such as men saying they have a “high pain tolerance” or teachers saying they have “the most important job in the world”), but whether its real or imagined, it’s something I at least spend a lot of time doing. I like to think that I have some ability to observe the social phenomenon of the present and envision the trajectory of those phenomenon and what they will look like flung forward in time.
I think (or again, I “like to think”) that I have a pretty good degree of accuracy in this, although it is rarely acknowledged by anyone but me, and few people are welcoming to some smug asshole saying “I told you so,” especially when the thing I told you about is an objectively shitty thing that you are presently enduring. It is a lonely sport to think yourself a soothsayer, and I’m not sure it has any utility at all other than allowing me to rapidly give others a bad impression of myself. For some of you, that bad impression came about just by reading this paragraph.
So if you haven’t puked yet, I’ll continue.
For whatever skills I may or may not have regarding cultural clairvoyance, I have no such skills when it comes to my “lifestyle” stuff. While most of you recognize the word “lifestyle” as the vague category of podcasts that are too specific to warrant a more precise categorization, I am using the word to denote anything relating to things humans do to pass the time or invest their non-compensated effort. So under this umbrella I place fashion, music, popular books, that one movie on Netflix that is “actually good,” and of course - hobbies. Time and again I encounter something, thinking that I have discovered a “hidden gem,” only to later understand that this thing came to my attention as a mere consequence of a social mechanism that had been happening for months or years prior to that point.
I got into D&D “out of nowhere,” but then realized it was surging in popularity because it was featured on Stranger Things. I started reading Jung “for no reason at all,” except that this was in 2017 when Jordan Peterson was blasting Jung back into the public consciousness. I even thought that I “totally randomly” and “completely on my own” discovered the amazing brain-enhancing powers of mushrooms, only to hear Tim Ferris giving out promo codes for 10% off lion’s mane nootropic coffee. Each time I did that pathetic self-congratulation that “people who are into quirky stuff” like to do. And then, each time I did the hipster’s self high-five, I discovered that - yes - you are just a lame lemming like everyone else.
I almost always eventually come to discover that the special pearl I’ve snatched from the proverbial oyster only came to my conscious attention because of some stirrings out there in the ether. I am rarely a first mover, nor am I a second or third mover. I am in fact late to the party, and as soon as I arrive things start to go downhill. That new video game I love? No more updates. That band I like? Lead singer decided to go solo. Most tragically, however, I have the unfortunate habit of showing up right before the (fun) police arrive.
Such is the case with my latest fascination, the world of Warhammer 40k. If you’re anything like me (and you have to be a little bit like me, considering you’re perusing the daily anathema offered here on Substack) then you’ve probably heard of Warhammer before. But if you’re really like me, then you probably also confused Warhammer with Warcraft, a computer game that involves casting spells, clanking swords, and clicking on innocent sheep until they explode.
It was only in the past few months that I realized there was a difference between the two. While Warcraft is a swords and sorcery, high-fantasy strategy game, Warhammer 40k is an extremely elaborate sci-fi universe of books, video games, tabletop competition, and miniature figurines that also happens to possess probably the most badass lore possible. I’m not kidding.
It takes place in the future, but unlike other sci-fi there is no good guy. There is no alternate past. There is no “galaxy far far away.” Warhammer 40k happens in our universe, but in the 41st millenium. And let me tell you, things are bad. In fact, things are so bad that no one there even has the delusion anymore that things will ever get better. The entire galaxy is locked in an unending war that is the norm rather than the exception.
The “good guys” are not good; humans might seem good but only because you’re also a human and therefore biased. The “Imperium of Man,” as they are called, work at the behest of a decaying psychic emperor who has been locked in a coma for 10,000 years. His armies - now viewing him as a God - fight for the glory of his name and for mankind. Their fights happen all over the galaxy, but their main priority is to conquer the forces of “xenos, psykers, and mutants.” In other words, they kill anyone who is “different.”
But that’s okay, because those xenos (aliens), psykers (psychic people), and mutants (mutants) will happily kill us humans too, if given the chance. This is a universe in which faster-than-light space travel is carried out by traveling through essentially hell. That’s right: warp speed is not accomplished through hypothetical engines or futuristic fuel sources, but by traveling through “The Warp,” an immaterial parallel reality that reflects the emotional energy of the “real world.” There are literal demons there that try to make you insane or even kill you every time you pass through it. Puts a little bit of a different spin on Captain Jean-Luc Picard saying “engage!”
Picard and the rest of those Star Trek losers would get smoked in the 40k universe in minutes. I can’t stress how hostile this worldbuilding is. Remember that Emperor I mentioned? The one in the coma? Well he’s in that coma because one of his genetic “sons” tried to kill him, and mortally wounded him so badly that he can only be kept alive in a vegetative state by sacrificing 1,000 psychics A DAY. Take that, all of you noobs who thought GoT was extreme because they killed Ned Stark. For the glory of the Emperor, they would decapitate 1000 Ned Starks a day.
Not convinced? Well how about this. There is an Earth (called “Terra” in 40k) faction called the Ecclessiarchy who are basically the Holy Roman Empire. They have had an Inquisition going on for about 10,000 years, finding all of the heretics, demons, and aliens who refuse to believe in the Emperor and exterminating them. The main agents of the Inquisition are known as Inquisitors, who basically fly around the millions of planets in the Imperium of Man and eliminating threats with no oversight. They can do whatever they want, whenever they want. They are like if the Catholic Church had a group of intelligence officers running around toppling governments and assassinating people. But you see, toppling governments and assassinating people in 40k is something Inquisitors do only when they have the time. Sometimes, out of ease or convenience, the inquisitor will approach a new planet, take a peek down at their populace, and make the unilateral decision that they really aren’t even worth the time. When this happens, they order “Exterminatus,” which…yeah which basically means their ship just blows up the entire planet with no notice.
How fucking awesome is that???
Everyone is a piece of shit in the 40k universe. Everyone. Each race - elves (“Aeldar”), orcs (“Orks”), arachnids (“Tyranids”), demons, men, super-humans, and others - they all want to kill everyone but their own race. In other words, the galaxy is racist as all hell! But like…against aliens. Well, against everyone I guess.
Anyway…
I am smitten by the universe of Warhammer 40k in a way I have not been smitten since first reading A Song of Ice and Fire or The Expanse or even watching Star Wars or playing Castlevania. There is so much to learn and read about, so much on which to form ridiculous theories, so many youtube lore videos to watch. The universe of WH40k is unspeakably brutal and unfair and…awesome. It is the most metal setting I’ve ever seen, and that’s because it pulls no punches. There is no moralizations, no underlying ideology, no “message.” Everyone in the fictional universe just does what they might do if we were to project the human situation forward 40,000 years. Did you expect people to live in utopias? Hell no. The whole galaxy is one big dystopa.
And it fucking rules.
What I love most about it is that it is untainted by “the message.” Unlike Star Wars or Marvel Comics, Warhammer did not seem corrupted by the infiltration of busy-bodies demanding silly things that they either A.) don’t actually care about or B.) won’t satisfy them no matter how much effort is invested in doing so. A great example of B, by the way, is the notion of “representation.” Sounds good, and no complaints from me if you want to represent all different types of people in a fictional universe. But part of this feels like filling a bucket with a hole in the bottom. Does anyone really think there is a number of black or female stormtroopers that we can have that will actually satisfy the busy-bodies?
(For the answer to this, you’ll just need to use the logic of the busy-body. If you want to understand the busy-body mindset, please take a look at the current commentary about a black man in Memphis beat to death by five black police officers. You may be surprised to find that these five black police officers were not only brutalizing someone to death for a traffic stop, they were also reinforcing white supremacy. Five black officers were products of white supremacy. I’m not kidding).
But I don’t want to get bogged down. For anyone who’s been paying attention, the news cycles over the last three years have felt a lot like Warhammer 40k’s own penitent engine:
That’s right; it’s a walking war machine powered on the shame and humiliation of those who defy the will of the Emperor. Those judged as heretics or cowards go into battle plugged into these contraptions and endure hours of bullets and blades piercing them…and they feel everything. They feel all the pain, but are simultaneously pumped full of drugs that keep them alive despite profound physical injury. This means by the end of the battle they are usually nothing more than a head, most of a torso, and maybe half of one arm. And they feel ALL OF IT. You know, so they can…well…repent. Duh
(I told you this shit rules).
Since coming into contact with this amazing sci-fi property, I have spent almost every waking hour of the day absorbing the horror and violence of this fictional universe. I am not lying when I say that this has made me happier than I’ve been in awhile. Not because I’m a sadist, but because I love things that feel real. And yes - I know that a 10 meter tall death penalty machine isn’t realistic, but the universe it dwells in feels like a product of real imagination, rather than ideology cloaked in fiction. The things that happen in the universe are a product of the laws, customs, and psychology of that universe, not mine. Because of this, I can escape into it without having to be reminded of all the nonsense happening in January of 2023. This used to be something that most if not all fiction offered. Unfortunately, it is now rare.
The ideology of the WH40k universe is not informed by the petty turf wars of the day. What happens in the novels is not a reflection on NAFTA or a condemnation of the Ukraine invasion. I can enjoy it without considering the deeper ideology of it. Or perhaps I do consider the deeper ideology of it, but the ideology is actually deep. It’s the ideology that is supposed to drive fiction; the honest reflection on human nature and the deep uncaring void of the mostly empty universe. It deals with the ideology of man’s weaknesses, of our misguided craving for power, of brotherhood and the glory of battle alongside betrayal and the horrors of war. It is the stuff that being alive and being a thinking person is all about. A lot deeper than things like Moana, a recent ideological vehicle that presented the endlessly interesting hypothetical proposition of: “what if women aka boss bitches were in charge???”
Meanwhile the women in the Warhammer 40k universe are stomping skulls and slugging exploding rounds into the chests of heretics. They don’t need you to encourage them, they don’t give a fuck about you. If you were actually to meet one of them, they’d probably explode your head before you could shout, “wassup mami!”
Which do you prefer? If you said Moana, I think we will never agree on anything. But don’t just take my word for it, check out the Adepta Sororitas aka “Sisters of Battle” for yourself:
Hell yes.
I’m not just using them as a cherry-picked example either; this is not a marginalized faction that serves as an exception that proves the rule. Hands-down, they are my favorite unit in the game and I “play” this group on the tabletop. The battle sisters are known for their unyielding faith in the Emperor, and cannot be turned against the Imperium no matter what. Unlike even the most loyal male soldiers of the Imperium, the Sisters cannot be corrupted. Most enemies don’t even try. They sing battle hymns as they march toward certain death, they arm themselves with flamethrowers and chainsaw swords, and the mere presence of the sisters on the battlefield inspires faith in all of those around them, spurring their allies to victory even when defeat seems inevitable.
Put simply, the Battle Sisters FUCK SHIT UP.
What I like most about them is that they aren’t mere palette swaps for other male characters. Usually when a franchise comes under fire for “representation,” they merely substitute a woman’s head onto a man’s body (Marvel is the most disgusting example of this, spitting in the face of loyal fans by gender-swapping beloved characters rather than creating new ones, and then either accusing fans of misogyny and racism or just straight up gaslighting them after their obvious provocations).
Even worse, these “strong female leads” prove their superiority over men by - you guessed it - employing the same toxic behaviors and personality traits that made people hate all men in the first place! In a real “you go girl” moment for many fictional universes, the obnoxious, uncompromising, violent men are replaced with obnoxious, uncompromising, violent women! The future is female, y’all!
Not the case with the Adepta Sororitas. They don’t have the genetic augmentations of the male-only counterparts the “Space Marines” (8 foot tall meta-humans who undergo gene therapy and have 22 extra organs installed so that they can be the perfect soldiers). But the sisters don’t need that shit - their faith emboldens them, their devotion fortifies them, and sometimes both of these are so deep that they perform miracles - they sprout wings, heal wounds, get surrounded by forcefields, or even resurrect. In other words, they are different from the men but their “thing” is just as cool and interesting. Few franchises get this right, but 40k is one of them.
But that’s all gonna be gone soon. I’m calling it now. Why? Because I just got into the hobby. I’m sorry..
I hate to say it, because I don’t want this to happen, but the moment I get interested in something, it’s about to collapse. Like I said, I think it was total happenstance that I became aware of Warhammer 40k. But this is actually not the case…it was already penetrating in the wider public consciousness, especially with news that Henry Cavill left both The Witcher and his role as Superman to work on a 40k adaptation for Amazon Prime. Most 40k fans are excited about this, and I wish I could be too, but I know that it will surely be the beginning of the end.
Again, it’s not anything I do. It’s just what I represent. You see, I represent the first phase of institutional violation. My phase is a harmless one. While I have my nerdy hobbies, I am certainly not someone who could rightly be considered a nerd. Which means that when I’ve heard about it, it first must have some event that broadcasts it to a larger audience. As I am naturally curious and open-minded and terminally online, I am part of the first wave of people who venture into a hobby store asking about the right paintbrushes and rulebooks to play by.
During my phase, the hobby loyalists are usually pretty excited; the game is growing, which means more people will be buying the products, and more money will be cycling around the milieu. In other words, I represent more updates, more editions, and more video game releases. But once my phase is in the door, the seal is broken. What comes next is where the trouble starts.
Although this essay seems to have been widely shit upon, I think it does a good job of explaining institutional capture, and it employs high fantasy (“Tolkienesque?”) terms to do so, and therefore it’s fitting for the purposes of this essay. If you don’t feel like clicking over, I can give the long and short of it:
Basically things like 40k pop up and, for various reasons, it attracts a small subset of people with the money, time, obsessiveness, and nerdiness to invest in it. These people - the so-called “neckbeards” - are true nerds. As I often discuss with my true nerd friends, these are not the nerds from Big Bang Theory. In fact, I can’t find the essay now (please write it in comments if you remember), but I read a succinct piece about how Big Bang Theory conflated “nerds” with “geeks.” Though this may sometimes be true, they are generally two distinct species. One of them represented by people who wear pocket protectors and take AP Calculus as freshman, and the other the obese man-children who collect action figures and argue about the correct pronunciation of “Abbaddon” for hours.
Anyhow, the geeks really want people to see how cool their hobby is, but they’re geeks. They’re not good at explaining stuff and also they’re a little too fanatical and specific, and so it turns most people off. Then something happens that gives these geeks and their hobby a little time in the spotlight, and a first new wave of people jump on board (that’s me). We seem to represent good news - we are people a little more situated in the “mainstream” and we bring new money and ideas and (maybe) women (probably not). Everyone seems happy.
But then…the second wave comes in. These are the ideas people. They can talk about the hobby enough to pass as a fan, but their understanding is only surface level. They really have interest in monetizing the hobby, bringing it to a wider audience, updating it to have more appeal. The geeks are a little skeptical of these guys, but the promise of more exposure and interest convinces them to go along with it.
And they go along with it until they figure out that the thing they created, the thing they love, the thing they built, the thing that made people bully them and make fun of them is no longer their thing. It belongs to the new guys now, and they are really cookin’ with gas. There’s a new Netflix show and for some reason they just played Warhammer on Jimmy Kimmel’s show. This should be good news, right? I mean, yeah…the geeks kind of get pushed aside, but now way more people get to enjoy the thing, right?
Right? Not so fast. The second wave people want to bring this to a wider audience, and a wider audience they shall have. Now come the dreaded third wave. These people don’t give a shit about fantasy or sci-fi or tabletop gaming, but they love the idea of “being into things.” These people are the NPR crowd, the Marvel crowd, the “maker” crowd, the “Nextdoor Super-User” crowd. They want to play Warhammer too!
The game is so cool, they’ll say.
The game is “so badass,” they’ll say.
The game is “super engrossing,” they’ll say.
“But just one problem…” they’ll say. Although it’s never just one problem.
You see, this third wave doesn’t care about the nearly 40 years that Warhammer spent in obscurity, they don’t care about the careful interlocking pieces of lore or the backstory of why the characters are the way they are. They don’t care that the point of the universe is to be “GrimDark,” and that no one would be dumb enough to want the reality of 40k to be our actual reality.
But the third wave can’t stand fiction that supports fascism. Now - you may be wondering how a game about fascism supports fascism. You may want to say, “just because I watch Law & Order doesn’t mean I want senseless murders to happen.” But you see…the only reason you’re defending it, is because you yourself are a fascist. Just like the Emperor.
The third wave also doesn’t like that this game, this fictional universe, doesn’t have the right representation. After all, how would you feel if you were a young Asian transgendered individual and you saw exactly ZERO Space Marine factions that was comprised of transgendered Asian warriors?
Now you might say that this isn’t possible, because they tried giving the gene seed to women in the universe to make them space marines, but women’s body’s rejected it because of their delicate hormone composition. That the women in 40k that they experimented on would die when they got the gene seed. But the third wave doesn’t care. They want Space Marines of all genders.
Are you catching my drift here? They’re coming. They’re coming to Warhammer and there is nothing you can do to stop it. They will trample your lore, they will roast your wikis on spits, they will impale the heads of your favorite characters on spikes. They will not stop until they use massive and rapid social media boycotts to bully Games Workshop into giving into their demands.
And Games Workshop will do it. They already have. They released some cut and paste statement on bigotry and hatred and racism (you’ve seen so many by now I don’t even have to link it), and they promised to increase the diversity of their fictional universe. Fair enough. If only it stopped there.
Why am I so certain this institutional capture cannot be stopped? Well, that’s simple - you just have to ask yourself what you would do if you were in the shoes of any employee at Games Workshop. Imagine that some fuckhead from marketing comes upstairs to the operations department and presents a few slides on how 40k urgently needs to diversify their cast of characters and “uphold anti-racist values in their storytelling.” Everyone in that room knows that’s bullshit. This person from marketing is 22 years old, parroting bullshit they heard in some undergrad “leadership” class at Swarthmore. But are you gonna speak up? Are you going to be the one to say that this is as ridiculous as it is unnecessary?
Will you be the one that sticks your neck out, that speaks truth to power that Warhammer 40k is as good as it is precisely because it is not interested in the politics of today, that it stands on its own as a true fictional universe untainted by the miserable squabbles of today? Are you going to say the obvious thing here, that fiction does not need to reflect cultural ideology, that if anything it should hold a mirror to that sort of thing, that doing so is one of the actual purposes of fiction, subservient only to the grander purpose of ENTERTAINING PEOPLE.
No, you wouldn’t. Some of you might claim you would, but if you’re like me, you can’t. You don’t have enough money to achieve “escape velocity,” the privilege of those who could get fired and disbarred from just about everywhere and still make ends meet on the patronage of those loyal to you. Most of you are like the Games Workshop people, stuck in a room with one person - perhaps the person least invested in the whole thing - who proclaims that everything you’ve done for this company and this story and these characters is an act of racism and white supremacy and misogyny. It doesn’t matter that the 22 other people in this room - all of them likely once social outcasts who are the most tolerant and least judgmental of all social groups - completely disagree with this one dipshit with the slide deck. It doesn’t matter. They’ll all agree. If they speak up, it will be tepidly. They will be punished with those “words” that the busy-bodies use to punish those who don’t say the right things and give their stamp of approval for the agenda. They will be called racist, bigoted, close-minded. They will be accused in think-pieces of being crypto-fascists, of “supporting a culture of sexual assault,” of “sitting idly by as the community is overrun by literal nazis.”
You already know the playbook, I won’t bore you with the motions. It will happen in the heart-breakingly predictable way it always happens. The more you fight, the more fuel they will have for their fires. The less you fight, the faster you get steamrolled. So what to do? If there is no stopping this tide, then what choice do you have?
For this, I return to the 41st millennium. One of the things I love about entering the mindscape of the 40k universe is thinking about the scale of time that stretches between now and the year 40,000 A.D. What is happening now is a blip, a little aberration, a small kink getting ironed out for five or six years. History does not remember blips. History remembers institutions.
So my suggestion is this, Warhammer fans: when the new “all-female” Space Marine unit is released, when the Emperor is one-shot killed by a single black woman (employing, of course, the arcane art of “black girl magic”), you’re going to be tempted to argue. You’re going to be tempted to make whiney Youtube videos with your models in glass cases in the back. You’re going to want to write essays on how the retconns don’t make sense.
Don’t.
Just ignore it. Keep building this lore. Dislocate Games Workshop from the lore. They don’t get to tell you what happens to the Emperor. Nor do all the busy-bodies. This is your game. Games Workshop might have created it, but you are the blood that runs through it. In five years, when the tyranid-swarm of woke psychos move to their next target, sweep off the table, touch up your Angron figurine with a fresh coat of paint, and get back to it. Don’t do anything. Don’t complain, don’t give in, don’t argue, don’t lament. Just wait.
Five years is nothing in the long history of the Imperium of Man.
Good stuff. In general your assessment of the historical pattern is correct. However, no pattern lasts forever, and I'm not sure it will prove true for 40k.
Every fandom is different, because it attracts a different personality type. Trek fans tend towards being liberals, this being the ideology of the universe. Ditto Marvel fans. Those fandoms therefore proved as powerless to prevent woke takeover as liberals in general have been. Harry Potter? They started as SJWs so 'nuff said.
However, the woke took it on the chin with the Rings of Power. Tolkien fans tend towards high IQ traditionalists, with a not insignificant faction who are at the very least quietly hostile towards wokeness - or modernity in general for that matter. Trying to insert The Message into Prof Tolkien's carefully constructed mythology was interpreted not just as crass vandalism, but as blaspheming. Result: Rings flopped, and was acknowledged only for purposes of savage mockery.
So, 40k. Here we have a fandom who positively revel in the grimdark savagery of the wartorn future. More, 40k was adopted years ago as the unofficial flagship franchise for the online right. These are people who don't just have qualms about the woke, they loathe them on a visceral level. They've been fighting them for years. They've gotten good at it. They LIKE it. They wage memetic warfare for funsies.
So when the woke come for 40k I think they'll get more than they expect.
Excellent essay. I hope it is wrong, that the 40k fandom is anti-woke enough at its core and in its content (a world where paranoia and hatred of outsiders is the only safe bet leans against woke) that woke nonsense will just be pushed out the same way the body rejects foreign objects.
On the other hand, I am worried you are right. GW has been a shitty company for years, and I doubt they have the spine to push back on demands from the outside. When it was just man dollies, some books and some video games, that was probably ok. But if a big budget, wide release show or film catches on, the sharks will circle as they always do. I am not confident that GW will resist ruining their IP, the only really valuable thing they have, if some danger hairs argue it will help the company and the world, and they are racists if they say no.