#citizenry

So often, GW (Games Workshop) goes straight where the money is. Where are people spending their money? On Space Marines, of course. It's the poster boy of the franchise, so the number one thing that they're gonna do is make as many space marines as they can because it's essentially guaranteed revenue for the company. Every noob to the 40k franchise wants a space marine army. It's just how it goes.

The problem I have is that within the franchise, there's so much more they can do with it than just the most powerful guys in the galaxy. rather than make the biggest, baddest guy in the room the posterboy, the citizenry of the imperium should take center stage to really introduce people to the universe, and to make neofascists understand that THIS IS NOT FOR THEM.

The problem with Space Marines is that they already know everything. They study up on all the enemies of the Imperium, which means a lot of the mystique of the factions is lost. Save for the Tyranids, of course, because they’re from another galaxy so nobody *really* knows what their deal is. If you are introduced to 40K by getting to know a bunch of Mary Sues like the Ultramarines, you wouldn't be remiss for thinking that humanity wins all of the time.

That statement couldn't be further from the truth.

In %80 of battles, wars, and any other conflict in the Imperium, people are fighting tooth and nail for inches of the battlefield, often with catastrophic losses on both sides because of just how desperate and how pissed the factions are at each other. This is one of the main messages that 40k as a whole is directly screaming into people's faces: War Has No Winners. What better way to introduce people to the concept who look at the battles and cant see that about the universe than looking at it from the perspectives of people who are practically destined from birth to lose?

Under the crushing power of the Imperium, scuttling around the piles of garbage, among all the soot and shit and piss and rust that EVERYONE generates; what are their little victories that help them to live another day in the Underhive? What keeps them from driving themselves to drink in a place where it's likely they've never even heard of the Sun before? In a world without hope, what gives them life?

This applies to whatever Cavill's cinematic project is in the universe as well. In order to make people understand that the viewpoint of the protagonist is bad, we have to start small. Dumping an audience in a place where there is practically infinite scale makes it meaningless, and kills off any serious stakes. A Necromunda story is the perfect starting point for people who have no Idea what the word 'grimdark' even means and by keeping it "small", we have a baseline for just how huge everything is.