One of the funniest things about warhammer 40k is that so much of its worldbuilding relies on an idea of 'the human psyche, its desires, fears, drives, insecurities, triumphs, dysfunctions.'

And on one level, the grim darkness of the setting is due to IN-UNIVERSE complete misunderstanding of that thing. Like the way that religious fundamentalism, fascism, reactionary politics, mistake the structures that enfranchise wealth and power for natural law. And then mistake observing how different classes react to living under such brutal conditions as 'human nature.'

But on another level, the misunderstanding ALSO comes from OUTSIDE the fictional universe. Like, OKAY, I'm not some kind of all-knowing superbrain that knows exactly how all people think and why. But even I can see that:

the archetypes baked into the Chaos Forces,

the paranoia of the Imperium,

the genres of power fantasies represented by different space marine chapters,

the repression of the Aeldari,

Drukhari hyperviolence,

etc. etc.

they have nothing to do with deep memes in the human psyche. They have everything to do with the projection of some specific British guys in 1987... underneath layers of collectable/toy marketing and the hangups of licensed paperback authors.

(I still don't know what the fuck is up with Bill King. Why is he like this???)

BUT, I think this element of shallow unreality actually works to Game Workshop's benefit a little because there is this... unspoken smugness that follows Warhammmer 40k around. A little self-superiority transcends what faction you prefer or if you care about books or games or the tabletop or whatever. There are two expressions and it exists in both:

you kind of know that this fictional universe's emotional core is based on silly bogus grounds. you feel better than its characters, more hinged, with a more realistic relationship with desire and self-actualization. You're on the outside looking in and it's preposterous, or,

you are a silly person who thinks the universe IS accurate to the thoughts and feelings of human people and this gives you CONFIDENCE because whatever you believe you also FEEL you are 'built different' because you ARE built differently than its model.

It's almost unbearably easy to roll your eyes and be like, how eldritch can the warp be??? if its just some thatcher era people being weird about gender and self-security???? Especially when much of the media outside tabletop battles you could 'win' styles that the universe's hazards are basically a calvinball heads-I-win-tails-you-lose situation. We're told that scary feelings and a bad relationship with self-esteem are as unconditionally deadly as machine gun fire, like 'you just explode, don't pass go, no argument, you're done.'

But to me, that frustration is also part of its charm. And part of its potential to connect to our real world despite being so goofily misfit. because every day political interests that have no true objective but making sure you stay put and perpetuate the conditions that benefit them, to your own destruction... they are gonna try to mow you down with your feelings. They ARE going to take advantage of the insecurities you feel and abstract them until they're such an unrecognizable shape that pursuing their goals is synonymous with what you think your desires are, to your eternal dissatisfaction. And not for the normal reason that desires can never be satisfied without fading away into emptiness. In real life too, powerful and stagnant structures leave futile placebo actions as the only option in dilemmas they themselves create: ones that will frustrate you and cause you to escalate your efforts that in the end reproduce those structures themselves. We have a relationship with phantasmic catnip. We're attracted to round hole square peg when our reality is difficult to reconcile and 40k is the universe of square pegs sold at ludicrous prices to ineffectively jam through the hole of your heart