I choose to ignore all the "Actually the Tau are grimdark brainwashed eugenics North Korea" and just write it off as Imperial propaganda. I like the idea of having one sane faction that's trying to make sense of the horrific universe they've found themselves in. It heightens the drama to have an actual good guy to root for. Plus having noblebright unironic space communists makes the CHUDs seethe.
Sometimes you just have to tell the writers to fuck off and write your own lore.
I choose to ignore all the “Actually the Tau are grimdark brainwashed eugenics North Korea” and just write it off as Imperial propaganda.
I mean my understanding was that they were functionally updated to be more like the actual Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere, which is obviously kinda what they were going for initially anyways with the whole "Caste-Based Society + Coerced Unification w/ dubious degrees of social & economic equality between species", gist.
I guess I never saw Japan because there was always a faux-commie undertone to how they're portrayed.
because there was always a faux-commie undertone to how they’re portrayed.
See that's something that I have always disagreed with strongly. Their society assumes & inscribes into it's basic organizational framework a Social & Economic Caste system that at the very least accepts a basic division between the working classes & the people who are supposed to benefit from & direct their labor.
The "Faux-Commie Undertone" was mostly, in my opinion, racially motivated fanbase memes & headcannon. :shrug-outta-hecks:
People looked at them & the fact that they were Asian-Coded & did not have an explicit program of pan-galactic genocide, and had a social structure that was more historically advanced than that of a Bronze Age Temple Economy (like the Imperium has) & concluded "dae T'au Commiez?"
In terms of their actual economic & social structure in the lore, they're way closer to something like Fully Automated Military Keynesianism, or a bizarre kind of BNW-esque Social Fordism (which, hmm...) However, you & I should know that these kinds of social structures are unsustainable without Imperial Peripheries; which obviously explains the need & desire for the T'au to assimilate other species through Spheres of Expansion, rather than by trying to pull some insane galaxy-encompassing Lebensraum bullshit like the Imperium.
They are certainly a more Rational & more "Egalitarian" social order than that of most other species in WH40K, that doesn't make them "The Good Guys" though.
They were originally supposed to be good guys (by comparison), but people who don't know what grimdark means thought it wasn't grimdark enough. Like, it is bleak for the only good guys to not have a chance of winning, and will probably be eventually wiped out by the Imperium.
The Tau are basically an answer to "but what if a reasonable space empire was thrown into 40k?" The mind control theory is almost certainly Imperial propaganda and the Tau are pretty stable.
The real 40k goodness of the Tau is showing that a reasonable levelheaded empire would naively stumble into the 40k universe and realize that while the major players are all batshit insane they came to be that way because the setting is basically custom built to do that. The fourth expansion and the Tau's first real experience with the horrors of Warp travel are a good example: the Tau that survived had to be sequestered off by the larger empire because they were systematically slaughtering any auxillary races that were even remotely Warp-attuned because they had watched those same races get possessed and turn into literal hellspawn and try to kill them.
They also use the Warp, but they skim along it instead of diving fully in like the Imperium does. Because Tau themselves are just shy of blanks in terms of psychic potential this works out just fine for them without Gellar fields keeping the daemons at bay, but it is a lot slower than traditional Warp travel.
Useless 40k knowledge is one of my many useless skills :im-doing-my-part:
Mind control exists as an idea for the imperium the same way it exists as an idea for the US. It is an explanation for behavior unexplainable by their ideology without magical thinking
It definitely doesn't fit the 40K vibe for their to be a nice good little empire, especially xenos and not some off shoot of ultramarines or cadians or whatever games workshop likes. So you can see why they want to tone down the wholesome energy tau have (also they are canonically soulless and cant use the warp). There are humans that live integrated into tau society
The Taus true strength clearly lies in the dialectical synthesis of communism and anime.
iirc the mind control stuff was also a retcon and that originally they were basically the only objectively good faction.
If Rowboat can come back to life and suddenly make the Empire good and rational or whatever BS they're doing I can have my noblebright space commies.
I dunno, they don't have a connection to the warp for some reason and the warhammer 40k fans always interpret that to mean they're all soulless, lol - the necrons have pariah units that are also described as "soulless" and ignoring the warp, that's probably where it comes from. The tau have individuals like that one commander, at least (commander farsight). We obviously don't get to see much of their normal life and society - it's a war game, so we focus on the disciplined fire caste - I like to imagine the tau basically have FALGSC on their worlds and the same for any humans they've liberated/conquered from the imperium.
The Tau aren't blanks, though. They don't create the instinctive aura of horror and revulsion that Pariahs and human nulls do. From what I remember they have a presence in the warp but it's very faint.
In 40k tau mind control is probably like the least bad thing in the setting. Like, between chaos and the emporium being mind controlled for the greater good seems tame. I think it was introduced because tau where not grimdark enough, but I think its fun to have an underdog as its not like they have a lot of power in the setting. I prefer the theory that they have something to do with the necrons because that's spooky and mysterious.
The fact they have soul signature of plants is strange to me, like what does that mean beyond warp stuff? Does having a small soul effect the way you live? Like what even is a soul?
ethereal mind control
From what I understand it's an allegation of mind control by the Imperium, so the youtuber might be telling it from the Imperium's perspective, but also "it's a proven good idea and they believe it" can be indistinguishable from "they only follow because mind control" to an outsider.
It's also pretty similar to how today sometimes people are like "the only reason you don't like [random racist/misogynist/fascist thing] is because you're an NPC being controller by [...]".
I love the space orks, as a concept and an army. They're hilarious.
