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.
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.
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.
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.
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Sometimes you just have to tell the writers to fuck off and write your own lore.
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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.
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.