Kollega said:
But i still maintain that 40k would be better if it's canon was populated by the likes of Angry Marines and Comissar Fuklaw.
See, you say that as somebody who doesn't really like the overarching setting much, but I've read
Iron Hands[footnote]The novel that almost certainly spawned the whole "Angry Marines!!!" meme - the protagonist has literally
one response to every possible situation: Become filled with rage. Thinking about things makes him angry, talking to people makes him angry, thinking about talking to people makes him angry, shooting people makes him angry, etc. The rest of the novel was fairly straight forward militaristic fiction with some interesting elements, but Iron Father Gdolkin and his omnipresent anger overshadowed everything else; it is not the worst 40K novel ever written, but it comes darn close (bottom 5 for sure).[/footnote], and a setting where authors are actually encouraged to write characters like Gdolkin would be horrible. 40K novels, on the whole, are actually very good, and the setting as it is now makes for wonderful speculative fiction precisely because it's so very unlike the typical 20th century envisioning of an optimistic future populated with cultures mirroring our modern day values and celebrating the triumph of reason and science.
I don't deny that the 40K parodies are funny - I find them very amusing in fact - but those parodies work because the setting itself, despite all the over the top and frankly ludicrous elements, is actually quite serious (and generally rather well written, even when it's still kind of ridiculous). If the setting was actually filled with the likes of the Angry Marines, they wouldn't be an amusing fan parody anymore, they'd just be terribly written caricatures of... well,
nothing, since 40K can't very well exist as a parody of
itself[footnote]If 40K was a new setting one might reasonably argue that it could successfully exist as a parody of all the other GRIMDARK media franchises, but 40K isn't new and all those other franchises it would be "parodying" are ripping off 40K in the first place.[/footnote].
You'd end up with a universe populated with very poorly written characters that
might work just fine for a mildly humorous table top wargame that nobody takes seriously anyways, but any novels such a setting produces would probably be terrible abominations not fit for print. Considering my primary interest in Warhammer 40,000 resides in the fiction, I cringe at the very thought.
