Editing Grimdark (section)

==== Warhammer 40K ====
The mother of Grimdark gets called out as this by some. Certainly it's a valid criticism of certain parts, but as we said earlier, [[Skub|you could argue about what is and is not grimderp in 40k for weeks without conclusion]]. For example, the Imperium is excessively self-destructive and tyrannical to its own people, but in the hands of a good writer, it's meant to underline how corrupt and desperate the Imperium has become without the Emperor's guidance, and how even those who are neither incompetent nor malicious still have to make brutally difficult choices. In the hands of a lesser writer, it's unnecessary evil purely for the sake of evil. We should call our next book "[[C.S. Goto|Darkness of Darkest Dark!]]"
*The greater part of the 'lost technology' problem. Logically speaking, it should be something that was either being phased out or introduced during whatever cataclysm got it lost. If the technology in question was used widely at the point of its loss (like a large part of [[Horus Heresy]]-era tech), it makes no sense at all because it is ''very improbable'' (if possible at all) to lose all data on making/maintaining something in ''widespread use'', especially if a [[Adeptus Mechanicus|galactic-scale organization whose religion is built around preserving and/or rediscovering knowledge]] exists in the same time/space.
*Historically, the Grail myths drift, not from [[Ecclesiarchy|Christian sources]], but Celtic ones (and beyond the Celts, older civilizations), and a typical feature of these myths happens to be the healing of a King through forces of restoration and regeneration (i.e. to put one in touch with his sources, with his roots), and the King was typically seen in agrarian societies as the King of a land, avatara of a Sky-Father, and [[Alarielle|the Queen as the Earth Goddess]]. The [[Warhammer 40,000/7th Edition Tactics/Psychic 101|Geokinesis psychic discipline]] has a power called '''Earth Blood''' who would do just that; if only [[Adeptus Custodes|someone]] let Librarians enter the Imperial Palace to do some Perceval style healing.
**Even more egregious, since some [[Adeptus Custodes]] are psykers, and not weak ones either. Multiple of them are strong enough to cast Earth Blood; and it's pretty much guaranteed that ''at least someone'' of them can cast Earth Blood. So, why they don't heal the God-Emperor-Of-Man themselves?
*[[Khornate Knights]].
*The [[Grey Knights]]' (who seem to get this a lot, really) equipment and how it is made. Specifically, every bolt shell that the Grey Knights use is consecrated by the blood sacrifice of a righteous man or woman in a borderline Khornate ritual (and it has to be a ''good'' person, not just anyone. How the Imperium determines if someone is sufficiently "good" or not remains an open question). Those Aegis armors? Made from thousands of psykers (including ''children'') burned alive in a furnace to channel their power to the armor. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people have to die to make ''one'' Grey Knight combat-effective. This has caused a lot of [[skub]] as to whether it is grimderp or not, as it raises the question of where the Grey Knights find enough good people to consecrate all of the bolter rounds they go through every battle (especially in the 42nd millennium, considering the monstrous spike in Chaos activity post-Rift).
*[[Gellar Field]]s being powered by the dreams of a comatose psyker being used as a battery (which also burns out and has to be replaced regularly). While very dark, it crosses the line into grimderp when one realizes 1) that Gellar Fields were said to be invented long before psykers began appearing among humanity, and 2) psykers are apparently rare enough in the Imperium that the Imperium has [[Black Ships|an entire institution]] dedicated to rounding up psykers and bringing them back to Terra to make use of them, like making [[Astropath]]s or feeding the [[Astronomican]] and the [[Golden Throne]]. And according to recent editions, the Black Ships are just barely meeting the quota to keep the [[Golden Throne]] going, so it's not like there are a lot of spare psykers around to be made into Gellar Field batteries.
*Originally, the [[Black Templars]] were treated as refusing to suffer the witch no matter who they were, to the point of refusing to ally with any Imperial institution that made use of them. This got retconned to only hate ''enemy'' psykers in 6th edition after it was pointed out it would be really hard for the Black Templars to do anything if they refused to tolerate Astropaths or Navigators, and thus have no Warp travel or faster-than-light communication.
*[[Imperial Worlds#Agri-World|Agri-Worlds]]. Seemingly in response to the common fandom sentiment that [[The Imperium of Man#However, is the Imperium really that bad?|most worlds in the Imperium are actually quite decent places to live]], just so long as you don't get invaded by [[Orks]], [[Chris Wraight]] in ''Lords of Silence'' outlines a typical Agri-World, describing a horrific hellscape wracked by permanent Dust Bowl conditions and so much pesticides that the sky turns orange and it is not safe to walk around outside without a biohazard suit, and goes on to say that all Agri-Worlds are like this. This has caused a lot of [[skub]] within the community. Some say that this practice is perfectly acceptable grimdark, and that unsustainable farming practices aren't exactly unusual in human history (look at slash-and-burn farming practices in Brazil, or aquifer use in the United States). However, what people find issue with is the claim that ''all'' agri-worlds are invariably like this, when [[Your Dudes|the fact that conditions on various planets in the Imperium vary massively from world to world as needed for the plot and there is almost no standardization]] has always been considered one of the big selling points of the setting (not to mention contradicting descriptions of Agri-Worlds in [[Ciaphas Cain]] and the [[Last Chancers]]). The other aspect that people tend to find unbelievable is that the Imperium is claimed to not even use crop rotation in their Agri-Worlds, simply farming the same crop over and over again until the soil gives out and the planet becomes a [[Death World]]. The Imperium may have lost a lot of its ancient knowledge, but crop rotation as a practice goes back to the freaking ''Stone Age''. [[Derp|It's absurd to see knowledge that basic being lost in the horrors of Old Night]], or not being rediscovered in the time after. This also means the Imperium would literally have run out of planets thousands of years ago if this was true.
* The nature of how Imperial ships work has caused a great deal of [[skub]]. Namely the fact that the weapons of Imperial ships are loaded by hundreds of chem-bulked, rabid slaves dragging them into place while being whipped, the exertion being so great that many die frothing at the mouth by the effort or have their hands crushed by chains. They do this completely by hand, hauling the munitions across the ship with chains. This despite the fact that hydraulic power systems have existed since the 18th century. They don't even use inclined planes or levers, something which humanity has been using to haul large objects where they want them to go since the days of Stonehenge, the Pyramids, and Easter Island. Or they could literally just use a [[Chimera Transport|Chimera]] or a team of grox to do the job, you know, the reason why humanity built large vehicles and domesticated large animals? Meanwhile, the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] is using autoloaders, and is deliberately keeping the technology from the rest of the Imperium so they will have an advantage in case another civil war ever breaks out. Some say this is perfectly acceptable grimdark, others say that this is just too ridiculously inefficient to take seriously, even for the Imperium.
*The Marneus Calgar comic has caused a shitstorm with the recent revelations that the average life expectancy of the BEST place in the Imperium is in the mid-thirties, which is fucking <u>[[FAIL|'''STUPID''']]</u>. Because that means that the life expectancy of other non-Ultramar worlds are drastically shorter, which makes the machinations on how the Imperium is run fucking unsustainable. If child mortality rates are ''that high'', then entire worlds would have quite literally run out of humans, especially in warzones, while entire sectors' worth of economies would collapse or stagnate as more kids die before they grow up and be a productive member of society. This creates a drain in resources and long-term stability; it was already considered unsustainable during MEDIEVAL times, so you could just extrapolate this to a million worlds and the Imperium should collapse under its own inertia and weight by this point. I don't care how 'disposable' human life is, it is still a resource and the [[Emprah]] fucking hates wasting resources. We get that the comic writer is trying to shoehorn even more feudalist themes in the comics, but the problem is, this is not Krieg we're talking about, but fucking ''Ultramar''. So either the author does not know what sense of scale is, or he does not understand the works of [[Roboute Guilliman|Guilliman]], because Grandpa Smurf [[Rage|'''WOULD. NOT.''' let this shit fly under the radar.]] The author has confirmed, however, that it was added to make Ultramar feel more grimdark. To give you some context, Somalia in the mid 1960s has a higher life expectancy than this. This is not grimdark, this is just fucking stupid that breaks the suspension of disbelief. It is one of the few things that both 4Chan and Reddit concurrently agree upon as fluff breaking.
*To be honest, the whole idea of humans being the "teeming multitudes" faction [[Imperial Guard|winning battles by sheer weight of numbers]] and which [[Skaven|breed quickly and are easily replaced]] is kind of silly if you know anything about human reproduction. Among species on Earth, humans are notable for being one of the ''slowest'' reproducing species out there. It takes nine months for a human to gestate to maturity in the womb, more than any other animal aside from elephants and whales, and even after birth, humans take longer to reach maturity. Additionally, it takes a huge amount of parental care to care for a child and raise them to functional adulthood, more than any other animal. On top of this, pregnancy is incredibly crippling for human females, and women have a one in three chance of dying in childbirth if giving birth without any external aid or midwives (as would be the case for a citizen of the underhives), something almost no other species has to deal with. The way our species generally works is we breed incredibly slowly but live an incredibly long time and invest a lot of resources to make sure those few that are born survive to adulthood, which basically makes us the [[elves]] of the animal kingdom. Heck, we got to a population of over 6 billion on Earth mainly through dramatically reducing early-life mortality rates, not accelerated birth rates (if anything, birth rates have ''declined'' in most developed nations). Barring some major technological breakthrough like artificial wombs or genetic engineering to reduce the crippling side effects of human pregnancy or long adolescence, humans are unlikely to be able to outbreed ''anything'' (except maybe [[Eldar]]). And while some factions in the Imperium do have access to artificial wombs (like the [[Mechanicus]]), most of humanity in 40k are shown to still be reproducing the old fashioned way. Even if humanity starts out with a huge population it can throw at any problem, that population is going to be depleted pretty fast because humanity [[Eldar|can't replace their losses]]. Even if they are the greatest resource the Imperium has, they're still trying to fight a war of attrition against foes including [[Daemons|ones who can't even be properly killed]] and two races who can easily outbreed humanity; [[Orks|one reproduces by fighting]] and [[Tyranids|the other are a rapidly reproducing horde of space locusts who go from conception to combat-ready within a Terran week]]. However, fans tend to ignore this because of the whole “to be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions” thing that is part of the general lack of regard for human life that makes 40k 40k, so people give it a pass.
** Actually, [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WMG/Warhammer40000 there is a theory that explains this]. [[TL;DR]]: Imperium Of Man humans are '''not''' ''Homo Sapiens'', but superior ''Homo Vitiosus''; this (sub)species of Humans is more tough, strong, agile, aggressive, and generally superior to modern humans — and it '''breeds more rapidly than modern humans'''. While it takes a long time to grow ''Homo Sapiens'' to adulthood, ''Homo Vitiosus'' reaches it much quicker — presumably, in less than 4 years, and '''most likely''' in a few months — birthing a dozen children (or ''multiple dozens'') at the same time is considered '''normal''', and children themselves can take care of themselves from the get-go, as they can walk, orient in space, work at factory, and fight '''from birth''' (basically, newborn ''Homo Vitiosus'' is at least as capable as 8-10 years old ''Homo Sapiens''; in other interpretation, they behave as '''smaller adults''', have adult mentality, and are just as violent and aggressive as adult ''Homo Vitiosus'').
** There's some quick math. As for "Fifteen Hours" WH40K book (about misadventures of guardsman), the average guardsman lives for about 15.7 hours on the battlefield. Therefore, to supply a single job with manpower, you need ≈558 (actually 558,34729201563372417643774427694) guardsmen per year. Therefore, to make sure ''a single'' 1000000-men strong army is running, it would require ≈558347292 guardsmen per year; obviously, there will be ''multiple'' such armies running around. And in WH40K, wars go for thousands of years non-stop. Mind you, each one of those guardsmen must be equipped, trained, fed, healed — that's '''an awful lot''' of people working on this. You need full industry chains from ore to weapons, farmers to make food, logistics to move all this around, training center where guardsmen train, police and garrison to protect all this, Mechanicus to make sure tech doesn't regress faster than normally, bureaucracy to manage all this, etc. And all those "supports" in the rear also die like flies — so, they also need lots of replacement workers and technicians... All in all, [[Scale Inconsistency|the amount of people required seems to be a lot bigger than the amount of people available]]. 
*** More math: some 40k sources claim that millions if not billions of guardsmen are killed EVERY SECOND. A year is 31557600 seconds. Therefore, '''every year''', either ≈3155760000000000000000 (315576 * 10^16; if "millions die"; number is Sextilions Short Scale or Trilliards Long Scale), ≈3155760000000000000000000000 (315576 * 10^19; if "billions die", Short Scale; number is Septillions Short Scale or Quadrillions Long Scale) or ≈3155760000000000000000000000000000 (315576 * 10^21; if "billions die", Long Scale; number is Octillions Short Scale or Quadrilliard Long Scale) of guardsmen die every year. That's enough to constantly field either ≈5651966160000010000, or ≈5651966160000010000000000, or ≈5651966160000010000000000000000 guardsmen respectively. That's ''just guardsmen alone'' — as explained above, for every guardsman, there's countless "supports" who work, research, and produce. Imperium has over 1 million known worlds; therefore, on average, '''each world''' must yearly provide either ≈3155760000000000 (315576 * 10^10; if "millions die") or ≈3155760000000000000 (315576 * 10^13; if "billions die", Short Scale) ≈3155760000000000000000 (315576 * 10^16; if "billions die", Long Scale) guardsmen. For comparison: modern day Earth has total population of ≈8221439045 (≈822143,9045 * 10^4; ''at least'' 6 orders of magnitude less than required). This doesn't take the "unknown" worlds into account - but at the same time, it doesn't take "unknown" armies into account either. And all that is just the [[Astra Militarum]] - we didn't yet factor in the Marines, Mechanicus, PDF Troopers, and all other military organizations of Imperium.
* Some 40k sources claim that millions if not billions of guardsmen are killed EVERY SECOND. Even with the scale of the Imperium taken into the account, having many times the current population of the Earth die every minute would be ridiculous for the whole of the Imperium, let alone just the Imperial Guard. As with many things [[GW]], the scale is either way too small to believably make a difference or blown well out of proportions.
*[[Deathwatch|Watch Captain Artemis]] saying [[Heresy|better to let the galaxy burn and allow the Imperium to fall to Chaos than allow the xenos to live]], right before [[Battle of Coheria|fucking up an eldar ritual that would have awakened Ynnead early and fucked over Slaanesh]], indirectly [[Gathering Storm|causing all of the ruckus of 8th Edition]]. Granted, while this does come from the [[Deathwatch]], who tend to be rabidly anti-xenos even by the Imperium's standards, this is for ''Chaos'', the Archenemy, the [[Big Bad Evil Guy]] of the Warhammer 40k setting, the one faction that even the notoriously xenophobic Imperium will begrudgingly admit is a bigger threat than the xenos and will team up with them to fight against it. A loyalist saying they ''prefer Chaos'' over anything, even as the lesser of two evils, should be grounds for an insta-[[BLAM]]ing and a red flag for Chaos corruption. And no, Watch Captain Artemis was not [[BLAM]]-ed for this, nor is this treated as the beginnings of his corruption and a slow fall to [[Chaos]]. And so a loyalist Space Marine managed to [[Fail|single-handedly save Slaanesh]]. Seriously, Chaos champions have been elevated to [[Daemon Prince|Daemon Princehood]] for less.
* The whole thing reached the lowest point by 3rd edition, considered the Darker and Edgier version of 40k, this is when some of the silliest things mentioned in this wiki were added or accentuated, after that 40k required more than 5 EDITIONS of fluff update, novels, characters and additional background to finally come back from "we no longer care" to an actual war with stakes and actual chances for all sides involved.
* On [[Catachan]], half the population doesn't survive infancy. Of the ones that do, half don't survive past 10 years. Its not even a guarantee that people past ten years of age survive into adulthood. Between the amount of kids EACH WOMAN would be required to have just to SUSTAIN the population, the amount of care that would be required for the pregnant women and her kids, along with (at absolute best) a precarious battle against nature itself, the Catachan population would be completely unsustainable. It's an honest to God-Emperor miracle that the planet even managed to accumulate a population of 12 million people, and even more miraculous that the Space Rambos were the byproduct (instead of, for example, "grumpy bunker dwellers who live 40 kilometers under the ground and hate going outside").
* The backstory for the [[World Eaters]] Traitor Legion's downfall starts when the Emperor forcibly teleports their [[Primarch]], [[Angron]], away from his final stand with his gladiator comrades, leaving them to die and telling Angron to get over himself when he is understandably pissed off about this. He also does absolutely nothing to ease Angron's suffering from the combination of the rage-inducing brain implants and the survivor's guit, or convince him of the necessity of the Great Crusade. When asked by Angron why He would do something like this in spite of the wealth of other options, the only excuse Big E gives is that He's the Emperor and has more important shit to do on a much wider scale. This was so ''stupid'' on so many levels that it's regarded as one of the only times when the [[Horus Heresy]] novels actually '''fixed''' a plot hole instead of making one when they [[retcon]]ned Angron's backstory by stating that the Emperor did this because the High Lords Angron was rebelling against had already voluntarily surrendered to amalgamation into the Imperium, so the Emperor ''preferred'' the established status quo be preserved to minimize any delay in the planet contributing to the Great Crusade. The only reason he saved Angron at all was because Angron, as a Primarch, was the only rebel whose life was of actual value to the Emperor. Incredibly selfish, and sitting firmly on the line between cruelty and pragmatism? Sure. But it at least makes the Emperor's thinking ''somewhat'' believable.
* The story of the [[Brazen Drakes]] and their fall to Chaos will make you facepalm yourself with a [[Tyberos the Red Wake|Lightning Chainfist]]. During the opening of the Great Rift and the Psychic Awakening, members of the chapter began exhibiting psychic powers. Rather than legally making them Librarians, Chapter Master Corian felt the need to hide this from the Imperium to maintain their image and [[Blam|execute]] any battle brother suddenly displaying psychic abilities. Considering he was a latent psyker himself, the impulse to do this makes even less sense and is quite hypocritical. The mental strain of murdering one's own battle brothers, along with misplaced fears at how the Imperium would react to his chapter's growing psychic potential, eventually caused them to turn traitor. To sum it up, the Brazen Drakes turned traitor due to the trauma and bitterness that came with [[What|murdering their own battle brothers for something that never needed to be hidden and could be legally resolved quite easily]]. Make sense? No? Good, because it gets WORSE. Primaris Greyshield reinforcements were with a Torchbearer fleet and on their way to the Brazen Drakes homeworld. It was devastated by war, and half the chapter had fallen to Chaos. Upon seeing this, the Custodes judged the Primaris Marine reinforcements as tainted. Not once did it dawn on said Custodians that the Primaris being tainted would be completely fucking impossible due to them being created TEN MILLENNIA ago and had no relation to their chapter aside from color scheme and parent legion. They were ordered to disarm and submit to examination, but the Primaris had the bright idea of disobeying the living embodiment of the Emperor's authority (whether it was [[Skub|justified or not]], you DO NOT say no to the Custodes) and fighting them. Ironically, had the Primaris complied they likely would've been cleared later on and allowed to fight again. The resulting conflict tore apart the fleet, and engulfed 3 systems. The entire war was a colossal waste thanks to everyone responsible being fuckstupid for no reason, and was the derpiest way of proving the Primaris weren't these super duper incorruptible warriors as the fanbase had feared/speculated on.
* Mechanicus hoarding good stuff, and not giving any to wider Imperium - despite the fact, what it could make Imperium stronger, and possibly save it.
** Mechanicus locked itself into dysfunctional ideology, claiming what inventing things is heresy because everything was already invented during [[Dark Age of Technology]]. In actuality, if "everything was already invented before" - then, no matter ''what'' you come up with, it's actual legit thing from DAO (since no matter how smart you are, you're stupider and less educated than than DAO scientists - if you come up with something, then DAO scientists did invent this too); therefore, by repeatedly "re-inventing the wheel", you would eventually reach DAO tech levels without committing any tech-heresy. As such, such sane ideology variation could actually allow Mechanicus to research (re-invent) things, moving science forwards - yet they deliberately use detrimental interpretation of dogma, regressing Imperium's tech and potentially dooming it. 
** Yet another point is Mechanicus obsession with machines and machine spirits, while hating AI's - basically, engaging in hypocrisy (we hate AI, and adore "mechanical non-AI") and hating intellects far more mechanical and smart (=good) than them; they would be a lot better if they instead decided what "AI's and Robots and Omnissiah's chosen! Bow to your metal overlords!" idea, build AI computer the size of skycraper, and used it to kick-start technological progression.
** Many sorts of power tools and machinery double as extremely powerful weapons, often stronger than actual weapons - as demonstrated by [[Genestealer Cult]]. Yet, all those tools aren't used by loyalist Imperium, nor are they used by [[Chaos]] followers. Besides, these tools were designed long before Tyranid invaded; so, how workers are supposed to operate them, if tool requires 3 arms, and they only got 2 arms?