My god, they literally are just sad nerds who desperately want Warhammer 40k to be real and latch on to a cobbled together real life facsimile
Imagine wanting to live in the fucking Imperium instead of Star Trek
It's like my dad who thinks he was le born into the wrong age. He thinks he would have been a badass viking or a roman gladiator, no you'd be a deadbeat just like you are now.
I like to imagine myself as a Scottish turnip farmer on some northern croft. probably illiterate and I make it be a very old, wise 29 through a combination of dumb luck, charm and the low cunning men of my countenance often have. my spouse died of some sickness a decade ago and my children were taken by bailiffs to work in southern mills.
neighbors ask my opinion because I always have one, but rarely take my advice or keep my council.
I go for walks with a three legged dog, to look out over the north sea to let my mind quiet.
it's bleak, but not Amazon warehouse bleak.
If they lived in the world they want they’d be fucking trampled lol
They're not strong enough to be space marines, not smart enough to be mechanicus, not disciplined enough to work at a forge world, not charismatic enough to work at a pleasure world, and most likely wouldn't even be psykers so they couldn't just be fed to the Golden Throne.
So like, where does that leave them in the 40k world? Cannon fodder? Experiments?
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the blessed machine. Your kind cling to your flesh as if it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call a temple will wither and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved. For the Machine is Immortal.
There are two types of dudes that like Rome (The Kingdom, Republic and/or the Empire), one that has genuine interest about the Romans and reads serious books with good sources on them. And then there is the cringelord that screams ROMA INVICTA! without even understanding what it means and just likes the aesthetic of the Roman Empire, these people also oddly cheer for the Germans in WW2 saying "Oh no no I actually like Waffen SS uniforms!"
The Goths and the Huns say hi, though.
People who go nuts for Rome are so funny. They're all like "we must go back to this beautiful cradle of civilisation" and you read any history and it's like "the Emperor's bodyguard just keep assassinating the Emperor".
Imagine knowing about the Third Century Crisis or the Year of Four Emperors and being like "we have to go back".
The only good thing about the Roman Empire is that if you messed up bad enough you were basically just expected to kill yourself. Maybe that should come back for our glorious leaders.
The history of Roman republic reformers like the Gracchi brothers is actually very interesting and a direct foreshadowing of later failures of electoralism.
