Comment by throaway198521 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throaway198521 | Hacker News Reader

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Saying somethings subtly done but "definitely," identified as a certain character is in no way a contradiction lol. It just means its subtly done.

40k is not a satire of "Jesus," its a satire of Jesus-obsessed materialist Britain. How can you say that 19th century Britain wasn't obsessed with worshipping a dead god? They worshipped Jesus, put him into every part of everyday life, said that if you didnt worship him you'd end up in hell being tortured forever, etc etc...

There doesn't need to be an entire 1:1 translation of the Bible into 40k for it to be a satire. A carrion-God Emperor of (white) Mankind who is "apparently" watching out for all of us, at all times, and gives us manifest destiny to rule all other races? That's the modern political Euro conception of Jesus, ensconced the same way into an Imperial state.

The British Empire was extremely secular? You might want to brush up on your history. The COE (Britain's State religion) was not friendly to other religions inside the Empire. Especially at home. The British Empire was a devout place. You couldn't own property as a non-Anglican Christian until 1846! And they said their Jesus-God was responsible for everything, everywhere, at all times.

Outside of Egypt and Ethiopia, Christianity exists in Africa why exactly? India they found it was too difficult to break their faith, so it wasn't worth the bother when they could extract resources anyways. But Africa is heavily Christian for no reason other than British missions.

Bourgeois & wealth-focused is exactly how the Imperium is set up. They don't care about anything other than control and wealth being sent back to Terra. That's part of the satire too.

> How can you say that 19th century Britain wasn't obsessed with worshipping a dead god?

I think the burden of proof goes the other way? Obviously there were christians in England. But the British Empire really just was not a "Christian Empire" in any way that works in fiction. All the archetypes are secular! Tweedy bemonacled professors, Victorian romantics sharing cucumber sandwiches with their love triangles, gritty-but-cultured naval officers sipping tea and exploiting natives, Sherlock Holmes, for Christ's sake! (pun intended).

Like, this is a very deep well of narrative source material and like none of it is explicitly religious in even the most minimal way. Like, where outside of 40k is anyone trying to construct an explicitly "British" cult warrior along the lines of a Space Marine[1]? I just don't see it. And if this is the only example, maybe it's just a bad example.

Basically: the idea that 40k is based around British ennui about its imperial history is mostly a meme. It just fails as analysis in my eyes. 40k is about drunk nerds laughing too hard about weird stuff, and the analysis was a retcon picked up by atheists like us to flog our own particular culture wars.

[1] And to the extent you can find better analogs, they're to American grunts in the 20th century and certainly not redcoats!

All those "archetypes" were explicitly Christian, including Holmes, who frequently refers to Providence (not talking about the BBC reboot here). Are you American by chance? Im not an atheist.

Victorian Britain was heavily Christian, you are missing many archetypes such as the archbishop, vicar, the missionary, the good wife...Victorian Britain was an extremely Christian place.

Why do you bring up redcoats? Those were the land soldiers. I guess you aren't aware that British Imperial Marines wore blue uniforms? And the Imperium's marines serve in its Navy. British Imperial Marines were a ROUGH lot, and some of their finest soldiers.

I think we need to agree to disagree here. The kinds of things you view as evidence for literary analysis just aren't what I'm looking at, and frankly to me they look like coincidence and prestigitation. Holmes using christian-derived rhetorical idioms is, needless to say, not evidence that Conan Doyle was describing a religious cult! Basically everyone (except you, I guess) views Holmes as an almost perfect expression of the Victorian secular rennaisance man archetype. I mean, duh.

And FWIW, "redcoats" were a pun on the fact that I'd introduced americans into the argument (to spell it out, since that's seeming more necessary at this point: redcoats are the bad guys in american revolutionary mythology). But that said, if your argument for the British Empire being a christian totalitarian cult hangs on the fact that the infantry and marines wore different uniforms...

We're done, basically. You're wrong, but I won't be able to convince you here.

In The Hound of the Baskervilles: When he shoots the hound just in time to save Sir Henry, Watson notes that Holmes "breathed a prayer of gratitude."

In "The Adventure of the Empty House": He attributes his survival over Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls to "the blessing of God."

Finally, in "His Last Bow," "There's an east wind coming," he tells Watson. "Such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared."

"Basically everyone (except you, I guess) views Holmes as an almost perfect expression of the Victorian secular rennaisance man archetype. I mean, duh."

Like I posted above, Sherlock Holmes is a Christian in the books. Have you read them? He just doesn't belong to a denomination.

"Holmes using christian-derived rhetorical idioms is, needless to say, not evidence that Conan Doyle was describing a religious cult!"

I didn't say it was, I was pointing out to you that all your supposedly irreligious Victorian archetypes were explicitly religious. Your tweedy professors from Oxford were the ones leading the charge against secularization, irl.

Not to mention that you left out a ton of Victorian archetypes that are all directly related to religious professions, probably cause you didn't know they existed. You seem to have a very shallow pop culture view of the actual character archetypes that came out of the British Empire.

" But that said, if your argument for the British Empire being a christian totalitarian cult hangs on the fact that the infantry and marines wore different uniforms..."

This is just stupid. Obviously my point was that British Marines wore blue, just like the original Marines in Rogue Trader did. Im sure thats just a coincidence coming from a UK game maker.

I also never said the British Empire was totalitarian. I said it was a Christian Empire under a Christian God, unfriendly to other religions. That is fact. 40k is a satire, which means they embellish certain aspects in order to show their ridiculous nature. That's what satire is! You obviously don't understand it.

You have no idea what you're talking about. American soldiers did not fight under an Empire that modelled itself after the Roman one. British soldiers did.

You really think British Marines were eating cucumber sandwiches and talking the finer points of philosophy? What on earth makes you think US marines are closer than the British Imperial ones were.

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