It puts the “cool” in gherkin!

To be fair, the response would be sustained las/bolter/plasma/melta/whatever fire and the occasional Exterminatus in 96.7% of attempts to communicate with the Mon-keigh.

Eggy farts. Eggy farts aaall day long! Especially during the company meeting!

I tell myself that it’s not less hair, it’s more forehead! It doesn’t really help!

As the other commenters have already said, I, too, recommend seeing a therapist about this. But I want to offer an alternative perspective, from personal experience.

A lot of what you’ve said is very similar to something I went through and partially am still currently going through. I used to feel a deep sense of not belonging, of being a misfit, which saturated me so much so that at one point I fell into a deep, self-loathing depression.

Just like you’ve stated, it wasn’t necessarily a static thing, like depression frequently seems to be, it felt active, like a response to a real ‘something,’ but my comorbid childhood trauma made me believe I was the problem.

I started going to therapy when enough became enough, and therapy helped me understand that, yes, I am a misfit, but a misfit in the context of this society and its state. My values do not match what society deems important. My beliefs don’t match the common dogma. I don’t have ambitions in the traditional sense, because my ambitions are centered around concepts like fairness and justice, around comprehension, not status and/or possessions.

Therapy didn’t help me get over these because there was nothing, really, to get over. But it did help immensely in the sense that I felt understood for the first time in a long time. it encouraged me to redirect my frustrations toward trying to be the change I want to see. I got into politics for the first time, I started actually reading the people and theories which matched my values to understand as much as I can of them. Basically, it helped me accept myself as a misfit for everyone but myself. And slowly but surely, that also started filtering people with whom I actually had common subjects. And it turned that general dejection at seeing the world as it is into a motivating anger.

It also heped me understand that all of this was causing me immense emotional discomfort precisely because I, too, love life and everything living. How could one not suffer when seeing that which one loves is suffering?

Maybe this is not the case for you, I dunno. Not offering this up as a solution, just as a different example. Still highly recommend therapy, talking to someone who’s open to listening and understanding always helps.

Every time I see this guy’s face I think: lobster social hierarchies. And then I laugh my ass off.

I truly hope you’re right, and that we’re just seeing a loud minority… Would be a pity otherwise…

I have a single, objective reason: narrative integrity. To expand upon this, the more varied the people who are utterly suffering, the more it underlines and amplifies that suffering and the context which generates it. That should be enough even just from a literary perspective.

Also, edit to add: the dystopia in 40k isn’t concerned with who you are, just that you accept full servitude to the Imperium. I honestly couldn’t see most Black Ship attendants hating a trans psyker any more than a cis one. Nor would the Astra Militarum ever turn its nose on fodder just because one uses different pronouns.

And that’s exactly the point! Let it be a fully inclusionary dystopia! Let the Imperium’s complete and utter disregard for a person’s individuality oppress everyone. This dystopia is literally religious cyberpunk, where they’ve replaced The Corporation with The Religion. And Big E didn’t care who or what you were as long as you obeyed orders, that is clear throughout all existing doctrines across the Imperium’s infrastructure. Everyone is meat.

Very, very good highlight! They did both the fans and the concept itself a disservice by introducing it through a hand-wavey half a paragraph’s worth of retcon…

But that just tracks with James Borkshop’s slew of highly questionable decisions as of late. Imagine how much new blood (and fresh cash) they would’ve drawn in with a proper expansion to the story which would open up augmentation to basically anyone. How hard is it to attribute it as a modification of the process made by Cawl, who’s already at near Mary-Sue levels of big-brainedness? And it’d add more flavour to Guilliman’s rather rational take on doing things as well! Plus it’d reinforce the long-term tragedy of the entire universe itself, that everything is doomed even when Humanity’s not being as big of a bunch of regressive zealots because we already made things bad beyond the point of resolution. Poignant message, imho…

Agreed, I don’t want inclusion for inclusion’s sake, either! It’d be like the current issue with movies being rebooted to be inclusive. Inclusivity’s not the problem, it’s that the stories themselves are both unfit and have grown stale. Make something new, make those characters actual characters, give’em their own history, make’em their own entities!

Late edit: to clarify, I still thoroughly believe there’s no reason why we can’t have diverse characters in 40k! But don’t just shove’em in there for the sake of it.

Thank you for the reality check, you’re entirely correct! And, to be fair, the “other end” of the fanbase have so far been some of the most genuinely friendly people, simply excited to share the gloom and doom of 40k with anyone who’s interested!

Couldn’t quit even if I wanted to, my Pile of Shame makes sure of that…

Y’know, I had a moment of reflection while reading some of the impressions people had about Space Marine 2. Found one specifically praising it because “it has no wokeness.”

I don’t get it… I mean, this setting is clearly a dystopian sci-fi horror where pretty much everyone is either an asshole, or cannon fodder, right? What the hell does it matter what gender said characters identify as? Why would it matter if we had all types of Space Marines (yeah, yeah, lore, yadda-yadda, but c’mon…the Rubicon Primaris itself contradicts a whole lotta lore… it’s 40k, its lore is as stable as melted cheese), or trans characters, or agender, or anything else?

It’s one of those situations when one realises they like the same thing a lot of very unpleasant people like. And even though the reasons for liking said thing are diametrical opposites, it still leaves one with that sort of… icky feeling… Speaking personally, I almost feel guilty for loving 40k when seeing how a lot of assholes genuinely simp for Big E’s Genocidal Utopia…

Ritualistic masturbation on top of a grave. The Greeks never disappoint, I swear!

Wow, what a healthy relationship. Also, thank you!

Which end of it, the putting cigarettes out, or the choking?

Oh, wow, this is an actual thing! Thank you kindly!

Thoroughly!

According to what I managed to find, Bieber put out his cigarette on Post Malone, so Malone choked him.

Now with even less life satisfaction?

Y’know… If I were just a liiittle bit more paranoid, this would start looking like it’s all planned out. Make the other guy so bad that people will basically have to choose between ‘mild’ genocide and a complete lunatic who wants to create a Theo-Fascistic Middle Ages kingdom.

I’m honestly not chipping into the debate, firstly because this particular moral quandary is a Kobayashi Maru type deal, secondly because I’m not American so it’s not my place. Just random thoughts…