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I've been seeing a lot of good conversation in the #warhammer40k community on this site over weather or not the series requires any kind of 'good' faction or a degree of hope. There's no real wrong answer of course, but I thought I've talk about my own thoughts on that...
Now it's worth bearing in mind that 40k is an inherently nihilistic series. It's right there in it's opening description. There's no hope. There's no progress. There's only war...
The thing is, there's nothing wrong with nihilism, in actual fact it's an important part of our development through growing into adults. As children we are told a useful lie that the world is an inherently moral place, that wrongdoing is always punished and good always wins...
As we grow into teenagers and young adults we soon learn that this is not the case. It's critical to our survival to understand that the world is not black and white. That the institutions and individuals that claim to love and protect us can be flawed or outright malevolent...
This is why 40k, like Nine Inch Nails, is ideal for teenagers, it teaches them that religious dogmatism is dangerous, that there is no glory in the massed death of warfare, that there's nothing heroic or even anti-heroic in causing the pain of others...
But the thing about nihilism is that you have to go through it, you can't stay there. It's just as important to our development that we come out the other side. That with live through a world with 'like... no purpose... no meaning... maaan' and find the light is still there...
For those who go through their nihilistic phase in their youth, and never come out of it, become armchair philosophers who can't understand empathy at best, and serial killers or war criminals at worst...
And as we have so recently learned #WarhammerIsForEveryone . So, good as it is for nihilistic teenagers, it also has to be for those of us who have found the light to hold on to again, as well as serve as one for those who desperately need to see it...
So should 40k have a good guy faction? I don't think so. 40k is there to teach the important lesson that sometimes good doesn't always find a way. In life there isn't going to be a hero there to swoop in and save us, no good faction that just needs to win, no noble revolution...
The freedoms we treasure often only accumulate so slowly you don't even see it. The American Revolution, The English Civil War, The Russian Revolution were all important steps towards a civilised world, and they all precluded great periods of violence an genocide...
If there is to be hope in the dark future of Warhammer 40k, then it has to be a slow one. That liberation will not come in one swoop but slowly, over years, decades, centuries, millennia, but it's no less worth fighting for...
So, long story short, yes, I do like the presence of hope in 40k. I like the idea that some day the bloodshed will end, but it's important for the setting that it be nothing more than a speck on the horizon. That peace can only come about through gargantuan effort and patiance...
But one day it will come, because even though we ourselves feel as though we're going through times as grim and dark as the 41st Millennium, hope is there, because if we believe otherwise, only war is all we'll have.
As an addendum, I'm going to say this is why I really like @laylowthetyrant 's #warhammerM60 ideas. It gives us a potential future where peace exists between the factions, but it was hard won, and came about due to great periods of unrest and upheaval.
Also, I'm just going to bring this around and connect it to Judge Dredd, because I am contractually obliged by @judgeanon to talk about Judge Dredd, but this is one of the things that the Dredd Comics get right, just on a personal level rather than a universal one...
All through the years, but particular over the recent ones, there have been instances where Dredd has begun to become truely aware of the horrors of the justice system and his role in it, but they've only ever been glimmers, inklings. A suggestion that he MIGHT change...
And Dredd has changed, in big ways on some issues, but they have been slow to happen, and often fraught with tension and tragedy. When Dredd develops as a character, it's like a tectonic shift, huge, but only as a result of slow, gradual movement...
So there's an thin ray of hope that Dredd may eventually change from anti-hero to genuine hero, and god knows a story where Dredd completely throws down the justice system and decides to fight for liberation and democracy would be a wild and crazy thing to see...
It's important to the strip's themes that this is something that only MIGHT happen, but only through great change and effort, particularly on Dredd's own part. But that ray of hope has to be there, otherwise the strip would be just too relentlessly grim to keep reading.
