The Imperium isn’t just 39,000 years from now. It’s 39,000 thousand years of technological development and decline from now.
The Leagues of Votann offer a tantalising insight into what that could mean, as we know they’re children of the STC. Not exactly clones, but each and everyone is designed, and not the result of random genetic combination like us modern humans.
Now, the Votann benefit from that for at least one specific reason. The region of space their ancestors were dispatched to was known to be very different from Earth and our solar system. And so the inherent gene editing may have been unique to ensure they could be up and running and shipping those precious minerals back to their masters as soon as possible.
And we’ve seen in other short stories that other Abhumans had similar gene editing - that they’re not just the result of genetic drift.
Now, unfortunately we have to stop short of the conclusion that “therefore all Abhumans are the result of deliberate gene editing and forced evolution and that”, because we can’t rule that out.
But it does raise the prospect that some level of gene editing of colonists was commonplace, even if the tweaks were relatively minor - perhaps a mild increase in standard muscle mass or density for worlds with slightly higher gravity, but not such that it would be noticable off world.
And that in turn begs the question…what is it to be human in the 41st Millenium? Where the descendants of colonists have reproduced freely in the old fashioned way, with populations of different worlds long since intermingled.
And that could be why we’re so prone to random mutation, even where there’s no discernible warp influence. It’s just the result of various technological tweaks and changes combining into a new life in freakish and bizarre ways, unlocking ancestral DNA strands from our long journey from protoplasm to idiots.
As such, we can’t be sure the pretty minor physical differences between men and women still manifest in the same way, even before we account for societal pressures which inform those differences.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Astartes? That would have to be a development of the background, because for decades now the background has been consistent the conversion process is keyed to male chromosomes and that.
Even that is highly negotiable given the sci-heavy aspect of the -fi is considerably less fixed than in the minds of the tranche of white British men that wrote the originating background (he says, as a white British man.)
Automatically Appended Next Post:
stonehorse wrote: GW said that there have always been female Custodians (no problem with female Custodians), however they haven't done anything to even show this.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Astartes? That would have to be a development of the background, because for decades now the background has been consistent the conversion process is keyed to male chromosomes and that.
Even that is highly negotiable given the sci-heavy aspect of the -fi is considerably less fixed than in the minds of the tranche of white British men that wrote the originating background (he says, as a white British man.)
It's been said a few times, including by me: all you have to do is say, "Cawl did it" and the problem is solved.
The Imperium isn’t just 39,000 years from now. It’s 39,000 thousand years of technological development and decline from now.
The Leagues of Votann offer a tantalising insight into what that could mean, as we know they’re children of the STC. Not exactly clones, but each and everyone is designed, and not the result of random genetic combination like us modern humans.
Now, the Votann benefit from that for at least one specific reason. The region of space their ancestors were dispatched to was known to be very different from Earth and our solar system. And so the inherent gene editing may have been unique to ensure they could be up and running and shipping those precious minerals back to their masters as soon as possible.
And we’ve seen in other short stories that other Abhumans had similar gene editing - that they’re not just the result of genetic drift.
Now, unfortunately we have to stop short of the conclusion that “therefore all Abhumans are the result of deliberate gene editing and forced evolution and that”, because we can’t rule that out.
But it does raise the prospect that some level of gene editing of colonists was commonplace, even if the tweaks were relatively minor - perhaps a mild increase in standard muscle mass or density for worlds with slightly higher gravity, but not such that it would be noticable off world.
And that in turn begs the question…what is it to be human in the 41st Millenium? Where the descendants of colonists have reproduced freely in the old fashioned way, with populations of different worlds long since intermingled.
Spoiler:
And that could be why we’re so prone to random mutation, even where there’s no discernible warp influence. It’s just the result of various technological tweaks and changes combining into a new life in freakish and bizarre ways, unlocking ancestral DNA strands from our long journey from protoplasm to idiots.
As such, we can’t be sure the pretty minor physical differences between men and women still manifest in the same way, even before we account for societal pressures which inform those differences.
responding to the highlighted passage: i think that's a really interesting thing to focus on because it shines a light on some interesting commentary. what does and doesn't count as abhuman is entirely a political label born from the imperium's ability to find use in someone and how they want to be used. perhaps it turns out that people of catachan and other deathworlds have had the same level of genetic tampering as squats, but they still look human and are useful as soldiers for the imperium, so they get considered human. this parallels how race works in the real world, which ethnicities being considered part of one race or another based on social convenience— ie, "white" as a concept is created for the convenience of creating a pan-european identity to unit groups which otherwise would have issues amongst each other. ie, various european groups are all "white" despite the significant differences in histories, cultures, and tensions that exist between these groups. much can be said about jews and our relationship to whiteness, where we either are or aren't white depending on one's bigoties and politics, which often comes down to how useful it is for us to be considered white
(oh and also, concepts of whiteness will naturally vary from culture to culture as all of these are social factors so a european's concept of whiteness will be different from a usamerican's, which will be different from a brasilian's)
House Goliath of Necromunda are an example of a proper borderline case.
Explicitly a created variant of humanity, to some they’re Abhuman as a result, the muscle mass of Natborn and Vatborn being far in excess of the norm. That nature uh, found a way, and they’ve developed beyond the intentional limitations (sterile, short life span) is where the question really arises, and why they’ve been accepted, however begrudingly, as a Clan House.
Escher likewise. Something happened to them, which saw any males born to that Clan House withered and imbecilic. Yet nobody, except House Goliath, consider them weak because their fighters are all women. It could be that the men and women are both the result of genetic tinkering going wrong. And where the men are useless, the women are stronger than the average human woman. Because muscle density is a factor as well as mass in terms of strength.
In short? There’s far, far too much weirdness in 40K to claim existing dimorphism is the standard to be applied.
The Imperium isn’t just 39,000 years from now. It’s 39,000 thousand years of technological development and decline from now.
The Leagues of Votann offer a tantalising insight into what that could mean, as we know they’re children of the STC. Not exactly clones, but each and everyone is designed, and not the result of random genetic combination like us modern humans.
Now, the Votann benefit from that for at least one specific reason. The region of space their ancestors were dispatched to was known to be very different from Earth and our solar system. And so the inherent gene editing may have been unique to ensure they could be up and running and shipping those precious minerals back to their masters as soon as possible.
And we’ve seen in other short stories that other Abhumans had similar gene editing - that they’re not just the result of genetic drift.
Now, unfortunately we have to stop short of the conclusion that “therefore all Abhumans are the result of deliberate gene editing and forced evolution and that”, because we can’t rule that out.
But it does raise the prospect that some level of gene editing of colonists was commonplace, even if the tweaks were relatively minor - perhaps a mild increase in standard muscle mass or density for worlds with slightly higher gravity, but not such that it would be noticable off world.
And that in turn begs the question…what is it to be human in the 41st Millenium? Where the descendants of colonists have reproduced freely in the old fashioned way, with populations of different worlds long since intermingled.
And that could be why we’re so prone to random mutation, even where there’s no discernible warp influence. It’s just the result of various technological tweaks and changes combining into a new life in freakish and bizarre ways, unlocking ancestral DNA strands from our long journey from protoplasm to idiots.
As such, we can’t be sure the pretty minor physical differences between men and women still manifest in the same way, even before we account for societal pressures which inform those differences.
There’s a few stories from 30k (the Dorn Primarchs series book is a particularly good example) that highlight in a big way how a lot of the humanity ‘rediscovered’ during the crusade had varying degrees of genetic tampering going on to fit the local conditions and how the Imperium purged those they deemed too far from the baseline.
In the Dorn book:
Spoiler:
Dorn fights a long war against a particularly difficult (human) foe in an anomalous region of space. At the end of the story he eventually lands on their home world and gets them to agree to submit to the Imperium. However when they submit they reveal they’ve had their brains altered to better cope with traversing that region of space. Dorn decides they’re therefore not really human any more and wipes them all out. He then muses on how he was one of the few primarchs with the sense of duty and force of will to do ‘what needed to be done’ and that many of his brothers would have balked at the genocide.
.
The Imperium are bad people. The vast majority of Imperials appear superficially to be like modern humans because the nascent Imperium purged those that didn’t, a few strains of a humans aside.
And the prejudice against abhumans can be rather self defeating. Most pointedly Beastmen getting very badly mistreated and therefore taking solace in Chaos, but there are cases with other abhumans as well. The Warhammer Crime story Wraithbone Phoenix gives some good examples of backfiring consequences of abusing ratlings and ogryns.
Yet pre-Dark Age, humanity seems to have had intergalactic trade.
So the ones Dorn wiped out as you described? Whatever genetic tweaks were made are quite possibly still out there, in the bubbling cauldron of the Imperium’s genetic soup, and could manifest again and again to a greater or lesser degree.
Which for me is a huge part of what makes 40K so fascinating and discussion worthy. Relatively little is truly definitive, which allows for a lot of “what ifs” which aren’t as daft as one might first think.
House Goliath of Necromunda are an example of a proper borderline case.
Explicitly a created variant of humanity, to some they’re Abhuman as a result, the muscle mass of Natborn and Vatborn being far in excess of the norm. That nature uh, found a way, and they’ve developed beyond the intentional limitations (sterile, short life span) is where the question really arises, and why they’ve been accepted, however begrudingly, as a Clan House.
Escher likewise. Something happened to them, which saw any males born to that Clan House withered and imbecilic. Yet nobody, except House Goliath, consider them weak because their fighters are all women. It could be that the men and women are both the result of genetic tinkering going wrong. And where the men are useless, the women are stronger than the average human woman. Because muscle density is a factor as well as mass in terms of strength.
In short? There’s far, far too much weirdness in 40K to claim existing dimorphism is the standard to be applied.
Existing dimorphism seems to be the baseline, and is what is generally portrayed across the majority of the fiction (particularly males being generally larger/stronger).
But it is just that, a baseline, and there’s plenty of examples all over the Imperium where that baseline is pretty firmly deviated from. Plus a lot of the tinkering going on (both genetically and surgically/with bionics like Techpriests) make the baseline fairly irrelevant in a lot of individual cases.
The Custodes treatment seems to take a baby and rewrite them at a genetic level, so frankly is a prime candidate for the latter. Most of the dimorphism in terms of strength/size/etc comes in puberty which who knows if it even happens after all the Custodes tinkering long before it would and in any case has a much smaller effect than whatever they do to Custodes.
The marine process by contrast (as currently written) seems to hijack and enhance male puberty specifically (hence generally only working properly for pre-pubescent boys), which I’d speculate may be an artefact of its rush job/mass production nature, in that it may be easier/less resource intensive to key off something the body is already doing (compared to Custodes which have a much more bespoke process).
Now there have been cases where it’s been made to work on adults, though the (lethal) failure rate is near total so even in the Great Crusade they generally didn’t try and generally did other, lesser, enhancements (Ross’s companions being the main exceptions). Clearly though that means it’s possible the frigg the process (probably with the application of a boat load of drugs). Therefore one could probably similarly frigg the system with a female, especially a prepubescent girl, though the failure rate and resource requirement would presumably be similarly higher for an end result that’s probably pretty much the same (other than their crotch), so it’s probably a bit of ‘why would you bother?’.
Of course ‘Cawl did it’ is potentially a way round this, ultimately the whole Primaris process was to improve on and develop the rushed nature of the original Astartes template.
We also understand why people don't want the change. They don't want women in the hobby.
well, that is sexism if you think woman want only to play with female models or armies containing female models
this change is mostly there for man who want female models because sex sells
from experience, woman chose Eldar/DarkEldar for aesthetics, Orks because they are funny or Chaos Marines rather than imperial factions, simply because the background of what the Imperium is turns them off and not because there are not enough female models
And this is not the first time that woman appear in the background or would be a model in 40k, acting like this is the change needed to bring woman in because somehow all the other female models did not work, you may should think about why it did not work with the other armies
the other point is, "the hobby" as plenty of woman and nobody has a problem with, this is something exclusive to the "warhammer hobby" and it starts looking like those problems are exclusive to the "following exclusive games workshop products" hobby
There is a reason I play eldar.
But I also have a custodes collection.
And I nostalgia bought into Votann too.
And I can assure you, more female models do, in fact, help draw women to the hobby. It's not a shock.
There is also a huge difference between female rep and cheesecake. Sisters of Battle are a bit too cheesecake for me even after the refresh toned that down, partly because I am distinctly aware that they originated out of someone's bondage nun fetish. Craftworld Eldar hit the right balance.
Insectum7 wrote: No no no, jesus no. Don't paint with that broad brush. I'm perfectly happy to enjoy the hobby with women, I just don't think the background has to change to make that happen.
So you're perfectly happy for women to visit the hobby on your terms.
Bad faith much?
women are telling you what makes us comfortable in the hobby, and in return, you're telling us that such things are unacceptable. so we're allowed to exist in the hobby, but only when it's hostile to us
And the woman who likes the lore, paints up a Tyranid army and joins her local club is "just visiting" apparently?
There's a dissonance here.
"A real woman is telling me something, but I have invented a hypothetical one in my head that agrees with me. "
Tyel wrote: I'm pretty sure the reason women weren't involved in war isn't due to the fact they can't jump or culture.
The issue is that suffering significant losses of your tribe's/kingdom's/country's young men is a tragedy - but suffering significant losses of your young women means you rapidly cease to exist.
Yes, powerful men have, since recorded history, attempted to control the bodies and sexuality of women.
JNAProductions wrote: FemMarines
Misters of Battle
The recently announced lady Custodes
General thoughts and feelings on the various genders of 40k forces?
Split off from a news and rumours thread to avoid too much sidetracking.
With where 40k is at right now there only seems to be four factions left that have or in terms of Custodes, had, specific gender bias (as far as I'm aware):
1. Custodes: Most people tend to just lump Custodes in the Space Marines and the whole all Male genetic template thing. However, they are so far beyond and opposite to Space Marines, that while the misconception is understandable, it's also completely wrong. Each Custodian is selected individually and goes through a very personal genetic modification program. Unlike the mass scale Space Marine program that was streamlines by applying it to a single gender (smong many other things), there's no reason the Custodes program needs to be this way. In fact from some lore context about Malcador and Big E debating if the Primarchs should have been female, that certainly implies that they know from experience that you can genetically ascend woman in a similar way, likely from their work with the Custodes.
From what I could dig up in the lore, there were only two references (outside of VERY old lore that has mostly been retconned already) which state Custodes as being specifically male, one of them refers to a region of Terra offering up their "sons" to the program and the other is a colloquial usage similar to "hey guys" referring to a group which doesn't prelude women. Even the first example is only talking about one induction group, so even with a non-retcon interpretation, you could just say that was only one induction group.
Regardless of that though, I would personally think that they are in general more rare than men and after so much genetic modification, you'd get a similar experience to Dwarves in LotR. "It's true that you don't see many Custodes Women, and they're so alike in voice and appearance, that they're often mistaken for Custodes Men. This has given rise to the belief that there are no Custodes Women." That kinda thing.
2. Space Marines: While currently it's templated that they can only be men, it's already been established that Cawl is going far and away above and beyond the original Space Marine template design. There's no reason he couldn't make the ascension process work for women too. Does the hobby NEED it, debatable, but I don't think we loose anything by having it, so why not. Again in a similar vein to Custodes, after so much genetic modification and indoctrination, I don't see them behaving all that different from male Astartes, or even using a different armour set. At most, it would be some head swaps and done.
3. Sisters of Battle: This one is not genetic, but in the setting, is surprisingly more fixed than Space Marines. While you can hand waive some techno mumbo jumbo to get Cawl to make female Space Marines, the sisters are a little trickier. Because their order is based on Faith, and having been established for so long, part of their power comes from the belief that only they can do what they do. Dramatically changing anything about them, would shake those foundations.
That being said, it's not impossible. There have always been male support members to the Sisters of Battle, confessors, crusaders, and others, even though they are in the minority. You'd just need a reasonably sized lore even where one of these characters fights with the Sisters and is very visibly seen tapping into the same faith based power, they become ad hero and then they could then get some kind of sub order within the Sisters that could slowly grow to be a main part of the army. It's a longer road, but certainly doable.
4. Orks: While culturally masculine by human standards, Orks don't really have gender as we know it, and that's fine. Keep them alien. Yeah they may be called Boyz, but I've never heard anyone complaining that this is an issue in any way. These "boyz" are fine just they way they are.
Orks are fine, but they are also a male faction. They have a gender, but not a sex.
AldarionTelcontar wrote: I also believe female Space Marines make no sense for a very good reason.
Why? The physical transformation from human to space marine is so ridiculously large that the differences between male and female humans are basically nil compared to the differences between human and space marine. As such the baseline really shouldn't matter that much as the technology required to make the transformation from human to space marine in the first place makes transforming a female into a male childs play in comparison.
AldarionTelcontar wrote: I also believe female Space Marines make no sense for a very good reason.
Why? The physical transformation from human to space marine is so ridiculously large that the differences between male and female humans are basically nil compared to the differences between human and space marine. A such the baseline really shouldn't matter that much as the technology required to make the transformation from human to space marine in the first place makes transforming a female into a male childs play in comparison.
It is also much less than the differences between recruiting stock used by Chapters in the current lore, with roughly the same output in Marines.
Chapters recruit from a range between well-nourished nobles in formal military academies (Macragge) to irradiated mutant waifs barely clinging to life (Baal) with everything in between. I don't think it is controversial to say that the majority of well-nourished females in a military academy will be stronger than irradiated mutant males that barely survive...
Excellent points. The "but girls can't be soldiers," arguments in the guardsmen thread fell pretty flat. But in the context of transhumans where 99% of your physical strength is the result of the transformation, the 1% of your strength that may or may not have carried over from your time as a human is basically irrelevant.
People can make the point that retcons are awkward in the same way that retcons are always awkward, but trying to use bad science to insist that women can't be guardsmen or marines or custodes always come off as cringe.
BobtheInquisitor wrote:I consider SoB to be like the woman warrior in the cover of Heavy Metal. She’s a badass, but it’s not women she appeals to.
Probably a hot take, but I personally never found sisters to be especially sexualized? Sure, they have boob plate and corsets (do corsets even work as corsets over the top of power armor?), but I don't recall ever seeing them give "fanservice" vibes the way that, for instance, female superheroes often do in comics.
Sisters right now are way less fetish then they were 20 years ago. But they still have artifacts of that time where they were almost straight up some dude's bondage fuel
Don Savik wrote: I disagree that the concepts of Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods are inherently wrong and need changing. Nobody in the real world cares about making female buddhist monks or male nuns. Sisters of Battle and Sisters of Silence aren't Space Marines, and they shouldn't be. And Space Marines shouldn't be Sisters of Silence or Battle either.
And I also disagree with this notion that women are treated with such contempt in the community that the only way to 'fix' it is to add female space marines. Changing that lore isn't going to make those people start playing if they haven't already. If a woman started a 40k army right now, of any faction, im sure 99% of people would encourage them. They aren't being 'kicked out' of the hobby. In fact, many female wargamers I know detest the changing of this lore.
People absolutely care about the overwhelming patriarchal misogyny inherent in most of the world's religions.
Tyran wrote: I would say that yes, agency is a big important part.
I can see the argument that Slaanesh is empowering sexualization... for those that are capable of relating to gender fluid rape daemons of space hell. There is some degree of agency there.
But with Sisters it is harder because they aren't a textually or thematically sexual in-universe. Sure the models are pretty to look and boob armor and all that, but space nuns with guns isn't something that make much sense to be sexual in nature. The few times I have read a Sister character, they don't seem to be people to wield their sexy looks, nor does it seem to add anything to them.
Admittedly I have come around to their boob armor as the IoM being silly dumb IoM and the in-universe need to make it clear to everyone involved the SoB are women because the whole stupidity surrounding the Decree Passive.
Still sometimes their armor is depicted as way too thin to offer real protection, the damn thing almost seems leather in some depictions.
Some LGBT people essentially take back slaanesh as a thing, just like we take back ursula in TLM, but a core pillar of slaanesh has always been about degenerate evil queers. We're just so used to being either rapidly dead (bury your gays) or degenerate villains that we take what we can get. even negative representation is representation for a community starved of it.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: A miniature game that isn’t 90% men: Shadows of Brimstone. Every hero miniature is available in a male and female form, and there are lots of women who paint the minis and play the game.
I don't play it, but Infinity?
\
Infinity has a legacy of women being models in bikinis or miniskirts with the panties peeking out. They have redone all those models, but women are still just a little more cheesecakey then the men, and when your history is literally playboy poster tier, the remaining cheesecake garners scrutiny
robbienw wrote: Women have extensive 'representation' in 40K. Doesn't preclude there being a couple of male only factions just like their are a couple of female only factions.
They don’t, though. And the community is very toxic to women and to any increase in ‘representation’. The vast bulk of 40k minis sold, books sold, armies played, etc. belong to an aggressively no-gurlz faction, and if you remove Space Marines you’re still left with a game that feels old fashioned in its treatment of women and female representation. Granted, a little less old fashioned now.
Yes they do. Armies are replete with female models these days. A couple of male factions doesn't change that, as a couple of female only factions in turn doesn't exclude men.
The community is not toxic to women. The fact is this kind of hobby doesn't and never will appeal to the majority of women no matter how much you change it.
robbienw wrote: Marines are recruited from the most miniscule percentage of the toughest hardest young men on martial or extremely dangerous planets, and only a vanishingly small amount make it through the trials and the surgery to become a marine.
The idea that any young women in any kind of numbers would be able to make it when so few boys can stretches credibility.
House Escher would like a word with you
Also the Sob recruit from the same kind of situation and the SoB aren't restricted on numbers to recruit like Marines are - in theory the SoB could even grow to outnumber the marines .
House Escher are a Hive Gang who lack effective men due to genetic faults.
SoB are all female because of the decree passive, and they are no equal to marines
To the bolded bit? Especially in marketing and presentation.
The poster faction, the one that's in every launch box and has the most lore and subfactions and all manner of other things-that's all men.
That's obviously not what I'm talking about
They aren't physically equal to marines.
Hi, your arguments are in fact pretty toxic to women
Insectum7 wrote: I'm not sure how much it matters how much he knows. It sure seems like a lot of commentators on the either side miss a lot of the nuances in the 40k verse, either out of ignorance or convenience.
I do agree that much of the noise is people trying to cash in on controversy though.
It matters because he accuses others of the same. He's a hypocrite.
Hypocrisy doesn't make him wrong, though.
Besides semantics, in which case people are just being pedantic here about him saying "more elite space marines" (please, guys, stop), he's pretty spot on with everything.
Anyway, I personally do not mind female Custodes. What I DO mind is:
- The insult to players' intelligence w/ the twitter post of "oh, it's always been that way, kid." Okay, clearly their twitter community manager doesn't know the lore and tells us lies.
- Also, why even retcon it? Why not just create NEW lore to include female Custodes? Like, it's beyond me why they didn't just add new lore. This likely all would've been prevented if they just added new lore instead of retconning existing lore.
- Also also, why not just promote Sisters of Silence and Sisters of Battle more? Is it truly just to test homogenizing a single faction to see how well it goes w/ fans?
IF YOU WANT WOMEN SPACE MARINES, YOU ARE A TOURIST: The refrain of 40k twitter bigots since time immemorial
For those who'll be convinced from a woman's perspective to understand the "bigots" who are against this change, for some reason. Or you can just call her a bigot, too, I guess.
Women can, in fact be bigots. As can racial minorities and LGBT people too.
Heck in britain around WW2, there was a rash of former major feminists coming out in support of the British Fascist party.
Miguelsan wrote: It's bitten them in the ass because I'm sure they were not counting with the levels of outrage it has generated. Probably they thought it would be a storm in a teacup, now it's out in the wild, and nobody knows how's it going to end.
There's only a very small segment of the playerbase that's getting pissy about this update, youtube influencers jockeying to cash in on the outrage notwithstanding.
And the bolded part is the key point. If you are a clueless parent that it's looking into 40K for your kids, and suddenly you see a bunch of articles on the internet raging that 40K is all about bigotry/wokism/whatever, and you cannot discern the what, the why, or the how because the only thing you knew about GW was that the miniatures are expensive, would you still let your kid join that kind of enviroment?
Back in my day my mom got warned by a "concerned party" that my brother was playing DnD, and we had to do a lot of explaining. And that was without easy access to all kinds of unhinged articles/videos.
Sometimes no publicity is better than bad publicity no matter what the marketing guy says.
M.
It's a storm here on Dakkadakka, the arse end of the teakettle of the warhammer community.
Hd404 wrote: Well if you're interested I've been playing since fourth edition, have a solid two thirds of Horus heresy in paperback which I've been collecting since high school when I started. Seriously, I could tell you why the fates decreed the Khan be sent to chemos and fulgrim to chogoris and what arcane force prevented it. The reason I never bother posting, aside from crafting queries on bolter and chainsword, is because there's always someone derailing the discussion by trying to shoehorn their annoying outside politics into it.
Which is why I felt compelled to speak out, because as this thread so ably demonstrates, the discussions of the future will be about political BS like this instead of interesting stuff about the setting.
Two third? I'm sorry you had to suffer through that.
Hellebore wrote: I don't think many people would be supporting racial segregation for lore purposes in something like 40k
Why not?
"You're telling me the genocidal space-Nazis who are all about genetic and racial purity might be racist? I'm literally shaking with how triggered I am!"
Racism is a problem in real life, and if it were present in the game most of us never would have stuck around to get to know the lore. The whole point of the 40k satire is to use fake Sci Fi bigotry and religious extremism that lets them comment on real issues without furthering the actual injustices they are lampooning.
Imagine that Star Trek episode where the half black and half white aliens were just a black alien and a white alien (in the human race sense). It wouldn’t work.
If the movie Starship Troopers had the Federation fighting wave after wave of communist Chinese, it wouldn’t work as satire.
Real racism doesn’t belong in a Sci Fi satire of bigotry, and only the kinds of people who want to see that bigotry present in the far future think it does.
I don't gotta imagine, I just remember the TNG season 1 episode where the leader of an all black tribal african dressed aliens tried to coerce the white female head of security to join his harem, It, uh, was bad on many levels.
Right, that is the trash taken out and permanently removed from this site. Again a massive thanks to those who are discussing in good faith and within the rules. For those who struggle to remember what they are the main one is to be polite, and that includes keeping your vile little opinions to yourself.
gak, considering some of what's still up I can't imagine how bad what got taken down was.
stonehorse wrote: I think it is hilarious how GW utter one line, and the Fandon seems to lose ther minds.
We have one side arguing conspiracy theories that it is because of Amazon, or Black Rock.
Then we have the other side who seem to tar everyone who questions this with the same brush as being a bigot.
I have no dog in this, but I do find the whole debate/nerdrage quite bizarre.
GW said that there have always been female Custodians (no problem with female Custodians), however they haven't done anything to even show this. Things should be shown, not told. Until we see female Custodian models, it seems like someone got a bit carried away at Warhammer Community, and the end result is the fandom turns a bit toxic.
Being a bigot doesn't just involve active conscious hatred of a marginalized group. Most bigotry is from passive assumptions, a dedication to the status quo, and general ignorance. While damaging, the active hateful bigot is just rarer than someone who staunchly refuses to see the status quo changed in any way that might benefit people not in their immediate group
I find this whole debate strange, however a reflection of the terrible society and culture we have created.
I think back to film, history, books. And powerful characters of Men, Women, any race etc I have loved to read about, and enjoyed the ride in seeing how these people navigate the trials they face.
I have never been unable to relate, because the 'hero' doesn't carry immutable characteristics like myself. The need to have your exact reflection represented in all you see, is not normal or healthy.
It means you cannot empathise, you cannot support ideas outside of your narrative. It is narcissistic. None of which are good.
We also see many people, coming out to make arguments about 'the lore always changes, why do you care??' It is easy to state such things when the lore has changed to something you are happy with, or indifferent. If the latter, why comment?
The Custodes were created by the Emperor, prior to the 8/9th codexes, there were early references (check youtube) for Custodes being male only. Every single book, story etc only mention male/brothers etc. The only way to bring Female Custodes was to retcon the whole 30k/40k universe, as all living Custodes were made by the Emperor. Hence the perception GW is gaslighting, because we all know otherwise.
I largely dismiss those who state 'the lore is always changing', or refer to Rogue Trader differences to now. You only need to watch videos of the early creators on youtube to know these comments are dishonest. 1st/2nd were in flux, by 3rd it was established. Lore changes were often to iron out errors, refines early assumptions or the change the arc of an new race. To compare these to the custodes question, is blatantly dishonest.
This is an obvious injection of changing established Lore and Canon to bend to pressure groups, and force current social morass into the hobby. Even people supportive of the change, know this by their statements. We live in frail times, and our societies definitely stands on the shoulders of titans (the difference between Firstborn Lore and Primaris Lore shows the decline).
I am not supportive of the change in this way. It is lazy, and has created the worst level of discourse in the hobby. Now every single sex army MUST be changed, this is how pressure groups work.
A story arc could have been amazing, you will always get dissenters, but it brings people with you. The hobby is a people hobby. Its not for those who never leave the only space (they can enjoy it, but their views should be ignored). It is a social hobby, and this kind of poor manipulation of the lore, half-assed social media response has just created division where it needed not be created.
For me, it was a great awakening. GW dont actual 'care' about those who choose to invest their time in the hobby. So for me, Warhammer ended with 7th Edition. However, I know many will come to enjoy it, so do so.
But I’d argue it would require a greater shift in the background.
Right now? Chapters are strictly size limited. And whilst there’s seemingly no upper limit on the number of active Chapters, such is the intensity of the current war zones the Chapters are having to replace losses to maintain themselves as viable forces.
Cawl’s refinements already allow that. Whilst some degradation is once again manifesting, the purified geneseed seems to be making the conversion process more likely to succeed, and so replenishment is in turn easier and more reliable.
Now. If Guilliman, Regent of Terra and author of the second Founding decided “yeah OK we actually need to consider enlarging the headcount of each Chapter”? Then we might see a further refinement, if only to increase the pool of viable candidates.
Which brings me on to another oddity of thought. Being strictly size limited (even those who don’t cleave terribly closely to it don’t completely take the piss), the current selection process may be a direct result. That when you can only recruit 10 new Astartes, you’ve an inherent bias to ensure they’re the best of the best.
Which stands in stark contrast of the rapid recruitment and expansion of the Great Crusade. Which not only saw the Legions grow to comparatively staggering proportions, but did so in a background of constant attrition. Even those Legions involved in the Rangdan Genocides bounced back from horrendous losses in quite a short space of time.
So, degradation of geneseed and the problems that brings notwithstanding, I think we can reasonably say existing Chapters have high standards because of the strict size limitations encourage a super selective recruitment process.
And so (for me at least!) it would take more than Cawl just cracking the problem for it to be widely adopted, when Marines now have a 10,000 year legacy and tradition of being an All Boys Club.
Please note I’m absolutely not opposed to female Astartes. Like. At all. I’d just hope for a super interesting shift in the overall lore as a result of such a development.
But I’d argue it would require a greater shift in the background.
Right now? Chapters are strictly size limited. And whilst there’s seemingly no upper limit on the number of active Chapters, such is the intensity of the current war zones the Chapters are having to replace losses to maintain themselves as viable forces.
Cawl’s refinements already allow that. Whilst some degradation is once again manifesting, the purified geneseed seems to be making the conversion process more likely to succeed, and so replenishment is in turn easier and more reliable.
Now. If Guilliman, Regent of Terra and author of the second Founding decided “yeah OK we actually need to consider enlarging the headcount of each Chapter”? Then we might see a further refinement, if only to increase the pool of viable candidates.
Which brings me on to another oddity of thought. Being strictly size limited (even those who don’t cleave terribly closely to it don’t completely take the piss), the current selection process may be a direct result. That when you can only recruit 10 new Astartes, you’ve an inherent bias to ensure they’re the best of the best.
Which stands in stark contrast of the rapid recruitment and expansion of the Great Crusade. Which not only saw the Legions grow to comparatively staggering proportions, but did so in a background of constant attrition. Even those Legions involved in the Rangdan Genocides bounced back from horrendous losses in quite a short space of time.
So, degradation of geneseed and the problems that brings notwithstanding, I think we can reasonably say existing Chapters have high standards because of the strict size limitations encourage a super selective recruitment process.
And so (for me at least!) it would take more than Cawl just cracking the problem for it to be widely adopted, when Marines now have a 10,000 year legacy and tradition of being an All Boys Club.
Please note I’m absolutely not opposed to female Astartes. Like. At all. I’d just hope for a super interesting shift in the overall lore as a result of such a development.
Yeah, I 100% agree with everything you’ve put here MDG.
The Imperium isn’t just 39,000 years from now. It’s 39,000 thousand years of technological development and decline from now.
The Leagues of Votann offer a tantalising insight into what that could mean, as we know they’re children of the STC. Not exactly clones, but each and everyone is designed, and not the result of random genetic combination like us modern humans.
Now, the Votann benefit from that for at least one specific reason. The region of space their ancestors were dispatched to was known to be very different from Earth and our solar system. And so the inherent gene editing may have been unique to ensure they could be up and running and shipping those precious minerals back to their masters as soon as possible.
And we’ve seen in other short stories that other Abhumans had similar gene editing - that they’re not just the result of genetic drift.
Now, unfortunately we have to stop short of the conclusion that “therefore all Abhumans are the result of deliberate gene editing and forced evolution and that”, because we can’t rule that out.
But it does raise the prospect that some level of gene editing of colonists was commonplace, even if the tweaks were relatively minor - perhaps a mild increase in standard muscle mass or density for worlds with slightly higher gravity, but not such that it would be noticable off world.
And that in turn begs the question…what is it to be human in the 41st Millenium? Where the descendants of colonists have reproduced freely in the old fashioned way, with populations of different worlds long since intermingled.
And that could be why we’re so prone to random mutation, even where there’s no discernible warp influence. It’s just the result of various technological tweaks and changes combining into a new life in freakish and bizarre ways, unlocking ancestral DNA strands from our long journey from protoplasm to idiots.
As such, we can’t be sure the pretty minor physical differences between men and women still manifest in the same way, even before we account for societal pressures which inform those differences.
"There are no wolves on Fenris" also comes to mind when talking about colonists who have had their genes edited to better adapt to a hostile planet.
For absolute clarity? Female Astartes could become a thing even with crap reasons (including, “there just are, deal with it”) I’d still be perfectly fine with it.
Disappointed we potentially missed out on some cool background, never disappointed that female Astartes do an exist.
Please note I’m absolutely not opposed to female Astartes. Like. At all. I’d just hope for a super interesting shift in the overall lore as a result of such a development.
Issues being, the biology of 40k has inherently been linked to our universe. This isn't a galaxy long time ago, far away etc. This is the human timeline of Earth. Only the top 0.1% of men qualify for space marines. It is intentionally created to be the most impossible level of achievement, failure is death. What about the 99.9% of men excluded? How is that fair? (shall we revert Space Marines to RT's Humans in Power Armour?, Thunder Warriors were more powerful than Firstborn, shall we make a crappier version again?) The top 0.1% of female dont cut the grade when compared to the op 0.1% of males. So it is just tokenism. Early 40k did an amazing job of carving out female representation in the imperium, including other models (Inq/DH etc).
SoB - Power Armoured soldiers, as the church wasnt allowed 'Men at Arms', a genius way to circumnavigate archaic laws.
SoS - These needed fleshing out, maybe the emperor could have made them? And could only link the pariah gene to women.
Please note I’m absolutely not opposed to female Astartes. Like. At all. I’d just hope for a super interesting shift in the overall lore as a result of such a development.
Issues being, the biology of 40k has inherently been linked to our universe. This isn't a galaxy long time ago, far away etc. This is the human timeline of Earth. Only the top 0.1% of men qualify for space marines. It is intentionally created to be the most impossible level of achievement, failure is death. What about the 99.9% of men excluded? How is that fair? (shall we revert Space Marines to RT's Humans in Power Armour?, Thunder Warriors were more powerful than Firstborn, shall we make a crappier version again?) The top 0.1% of female dont cut the grade when compared to the op 0.1% of males. So it is just tokenism. Early 40k did an amazing job of carving out female representation in the imperium, including other models (Inq/DH etc).
SoB - Power Armoured soldiers, as the church wasnt allowed 'Men at Arms', a genius way to circumnavigate archaic laws.
SoS - These needed fleshing out, maybe the emperor could have made them? And could only link the pariah gene to women.
See my previous post that the super sniffy elitist selection process of Space Marine Chapters stands in pretty stark contrast to the expansion and replenishment of the Crusade Era Legons.
That “modern” candidates are the top 0.1% or what have you is clearly not entirely a necessity of the process. Now we have to allow for geneseed degradation making a successful conversion less likely than during the Crusade. But I’d still argue the real selection pressure there is a firm cap on how many Astartes can be in a single Chapter.
Now that’s not to therefore say “absolutely anyone can have the worky bits shoved in and it’ll work”. But it does strongly query what percentage of the general populace it would work on. Hence, if there was a background development that now young girls are viable candidates for the selection process, there’d (for me) have to be other shifts, like a major relaxation on 1,000 per Chapter, where such a widening of the recruitment pool was necessary in the first place.
For all the pearl clutching about the sacred immutability of the lore, people forget that GW is models first. Some designer made Custodes models back in like 2014 and just didn't bother to make any female heads, so then the actual lore writers had basically stick to what had been made. ADB even tried to write in female Custodians in Master of Mankind and was told "No" because of the recently sculpted male-only Custodes kit.
Then we get Admech who, on their initial release, didn't have a dedicated transport so the lore writers had to write a whole segment as to why the Adeptus Mechanicus didn't use transports in their armies for 10,000 years. Only for GW to release a dedicated transport for the faction 3 years later and that little segment before was retconned.
It's weird how people weren't up in arms about the lore changing there. Wonder why. It's a mystery really.
To give a hopefully innocent and only slightly crap comparison.
It’s like a kid in a toy shop. If they could? They’d have every toy they wanted. But there are selection pressures introduced by the parent or grandparent.
That could be “only two toys” or “£10 spend limit”. The exact pressure doesn’t matter, only that it’s there, and so the kid has to make choices.
If it’s purely a monetary cap? They could go for the biggest most expensive toy that comes within that limit. If it’s a per-toy cap, and a limit on how many (say, you can have five toys, each individually no more than £10 in price) that’s a different set of selection pressures.
But they’re still pressures, and by hook or by crook will inform the kid’s final selection. Remove or alter those pressures, and you alter said final selection.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Bosskelot wrote: For all the pearl clutching about the sacred immutability of the lore, people forget that GW is models first. Some designer made Custodes models back in like 2014 and just didn't bother to make any female heads, so then the actual lore writers had basically stick to what had been made. ADB even tried to write in female Custodians in Master of Mankind and was told "No" because of the recently sculpted male-only Custodes kit.
Then we get Admech who, on their initial release, didn't have a dedicated transport so the lore writers had to write a whole segment as to why the Adeptus Mechanicus didn't use transports in their armies for 10,000 years. Only for GW to release a dedicated transport for the faction 3 years later and that little segment before was retconned.
It's weird how people weren't up in arms about the lore changing there. Wonder why. It's a mystery really.
I’m trying not to put words in the mouths of others. As it’s more fun to watch them dance around what their point actually is.
stonehorse wrote: GW said that there have always been female Custodians (no problem with female Custodians), however they haven't done anything to even show this. Things should be shown, not told. Until we see female Custodian models, it seems like someone got a bit carried away at Warhammer Community, and the end result is the fandom turns a bit toxic.
I mean, we might not have any models yet, but they *are* shown to exist in prose in the Codex. I'd personally say that's a "shown, not told", myself.
That is quintessentially tell don't show. A single piece of fluff text is not enough to establish a full lore. Especially when we have all 529 books of the Horus Heresy go into exhaustive detail and not once in these 634 (more were written during my message, got to churn that Bolter p0rn) have we heard about a female Custodian. Not once, if they have been there from the start, we would have heard about them.
Again no issue with female Custodians, what makes me go 'hang on', is the very 1984esque 'we have always been at war with Oceania' way of doing this. Yes, it could have been a way to reference that 40k is a authoritarian nightmare that Geaorge Orwell's book no doubt influenced. Just the way it was handled comes off as a bit amateurish. If they had gone with something like, 'due to the on going wars the Custodians need to bolster their ranks, so now include daughters of nobles along side their sons, it wouldn't have got half the response it had received I imagine.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Also, given the extreme differences between a baseline human and a post-conversion Custodes, it’s entirely possible any kind of sexual dimorphism is lost in the process, either due to the enhanced growth and hormones involved, or because boobs are removed, as they’re of no value or purpose to a finished Custodes.
And depending how young the candidate is when the process begins? Mammaries may simply not develop at all.
A bit more Sexual Dimorphisim between the 2 sexes than 'boobs', but yeah those differences are more than likely erased during the process. However the lore has always been 'sons of nobles', not children of nobles, if was quite clear which of the sexes was used, which has been reinforced by all the lore being about male Custodians. Have that changed to include both sexes. GW choose a silly way to go about this needed change.
Nowt wrong with more female representation in the hobby.
conscriptboris wrote:I find this whole debate strange, however a reflection of the terrible society and culture we have created.
I think back to film, history, books. And powerful characters of Men, Women, any race etc I have loved to read about, and enjoyed the ride in seeing how these people navigate the trials they face.
I have never been unable to relate, because the 'hero' doesn't carry immutable characteristics like myself. The need to have your exact reflection represented in all you see, is not normal or healthy.
It means you cannot empathise, you cannot support ideas outside of your narrative. It is narcissistic. None of which are good.
We also see many people, coming out to make arguments about 'the lore always changes, why do you care??' It is easy to state such things when the lore has changed to something you are happy with, or indifferent. If the latter, why comment?
The Custodes were created by the Emperor, prior to the 8/9th codexes, there were early references (check youtube) for Custodes being male only. Every single book, story etc only mention male/brothers etc. The only way to bring Female Custodes was to retcon the whole 30k/40k universe, as all living Custodes were made by the Emperor. Hence the perception GW is gaslighting, because we all know otherwise.
I largely dismiss those who state 'the lore is always changing', or refer to Rogue Trader differences to now. You only need to watch videos of the early creators on youtube to know these comments are dishonest. 1st/2nd were in flux, by 3rd it was established. Lore changes were often to iron out errors, refines early assumptions or the change the arc of an new race. To compare these to the custodes question, is blatantly dishonest.
This is an obvious injection of changing established Lore and Canon to bend to pressure groups, and force current social morass into the hobby. Even people supportive of the change, know this by their statements. We live in frail times, and our societies definitely stands on the shoulders of titans (the difference between Firstborn Lore and Primaris Lore shows the decline).
I am not supportive of the change in this way. It is lazy, and has created the worst level of discourse in the hobby. Now every single sex army MUST be changed, this is how pressure groups work.
A story arc could have been amazing, you will always get dissenters, but it brings people with you. The hobby is a people hobby. Its not for those who never leave the only space (they can enjoy it, but their views should be ignored). It is a social hobby, and this kind of poor manipulation of the lore, half-assed social media response has just created division where it needed not be created.
For me, it was a great awakening. GW dont actual 'care' about those who choose to invest their time in the hobby. So for me, Warhammer ended with 7th Edition. However, I know many will come to enjoy it, so do so.
W40k is Dead, Long Live W40k!
I don't disagree that there could have been more lore explanation to improve the Custodes retcon, but I do disagree that retcons largely dtopped in 3rd edition.
To quote my own post on how GW canit even keep their story straight on something as simple as Guard regiment sizes (only one source is from 2nd and it matches the 5th edition source):
Haighus wrote:For an example of consistency in 40k, I present: the size of an Imperial Guard regiment. These sources cover a spread of 19 years from 1995 to 2014, and are vaguely in publication order to highlight the back and forth nature of the lore.
Spoiler:
Codex: Imperial Guard (2nd edition), pg.6:
"Regiments can consist of a few hundred men or hundreds of thousands..."
40k main rulebook (3rd edition), pg.104:
"Imperial Guard regiments, each numbering tens of thousands of soldiers and tanks..."
Codex: Imperial Guard (3rd edition, 2nd codex), pg.4:
"Most sources concur that the basis for regimental formations is what would fit into the interstellar ships available to the crusades- typically producing three thousand man regiments which can be carried by a single transport vessel or one of the many available classes of cruiser."
Codex: Imperial Guard (3rd edition, 2nd codex), pg.10:
"Shown here are twelve companies (almost 4000 men) of the 8th Cadian Shock Troop regiment... Roughly half of the regiment is present."
40k Apocalypse main rulebook (1st edition), pg.102:
"The Tactica Imperium sets down a basic template around which regiments are to be organised. Each is organised into companies, some with as few as three, others with as many as twenty. Companies are further divided into between three and six platoons, and platoons consist of between two and six ten-man squads lead by a command squad." That works out as a range of 225 to 7800 (this doesn't include the unmentioned company and regimental command elements including heavy weapons squads, which would add a few hundred extra at max size).
Imperial Armour Volume 5: The Siege of Vraks part 1, pg.18:
"...200,000 guardsmen of the Krieg 143rd siege regiment..."
Eisenhorn: Xenos, pg.81:
"...seven hundred and fifty thousand men are being inducted into the Imperial Guard to form the 50th Gudrunite Rifles."
Epic: Armageddon main rulebook, pg.86:
"Each regiment numbers between 2,000 and 6,000 men..."
40k main rulebook (5th edition), pg.138:
"...the number of men in a new regiment can range from a few hundred to several tens of thousands."
Codex: Imperial Guard (5th edition), pg.9:
"Regiments are typically raised with a strength of several thousand but the precise numbers can very enormously. The Valhallan 18th Light Infantry 'Tundra Wolves' consists of over one hundred and twenty thousand men whilst the Vostroyan Heavy Armoured 24th 'Iron Bloods' comprised less than one and a half thousand tank crewmen."
Codex: Astra Militarum (6th edition), pg.18 (ebook page):
"Though each regiment can consist of between three and twenty companies, and may number from a couple of hundred men to tens of thousands..."
So, for those paying attention, that is:
Hundreds to hundreds of thousands
Hundreds to tens of thousands
Ten thousand plus
Typically ~3000, but has an example of ~8000
225-7800 (more or less)
2000-6000
Several of these are mutually exclusive statements. Much consistency.
Also note how they typically say men, despite female troopers being canon throughout this period.
Edit: to flesh this out a little more- this is one example of a basic lore tidbit that would have been trivially easy to keep consistent. Custodes now being mixed gender is definitely on par with this.
Please note I’m absolutely not opposed to female Astartes. Like. At all. I’d just hope for a super interesting shift in the overall lore as a result of such a development.
Issues being, the biology of 40k has inherently been linked to our universe. This isn't a galaxy long time ago, far away etc. This is the human timeline of Earth. Only the top 0.1% of men qualify for space marines. It is intentionally created to be the most impossible level of achievement, failure is death. What about the 99.9% of men excluded? How is that fair? (shall we revert Space Marines to RT's Humans in Power Armour?, Thunder Warriors were more powerful than Firstborn, shall we make a crappier version again?) The top 0.1% of female dont cut the grade when compared to the op 0.1% of males. So it is just tokenism. Early 40k did an amazing job of carving out female representation in the imperium, including other models (Inq/DH etc).
SoB - Power Armoured soldiers, as the church wasnt allowed 'Men at Arms', a genius way to circumnavigate archaic laws.
SoS - These needed fleshing out, maybe the emperor could have made them? And could only link the pariah gene to women.
The thing is, Marines select recruits in bananas circumstances, like chucking a few thousand irradiated, sickly kids into a gladiator contest and selecting the survivors. Very little of it is scientific and psychological factors seem to be the most important recruiting factors (especially given the compatibility with hypnotherapy is the make or break characteristic). When it comes down to it, some ten year old girls would survive the desperate gladiator contests with ten year old boys. Plus, you know, they are ten, when dimorphic changes are much less pronounced.
stonehorse wrote:GW said that there have always been female Custodians (no problem with female Custodians), however they haven't done anything to even show this. Things should be shown, not told. Until we see female Custodian models, it seems like someone got a bit carried away at Warhammer Community, and the end result is the fandom turns a bit toxic.
I mean, we might not have any models yet, but they *are* shown to exist in prose in the Codex. I'd personally say that's a "shown, not told", myself.
That is quintessentially tell don't show. A single piece of fluff text is not enough to establish a full lore. Especially when we have all 529 books of the Horus Heresy go into exhaustive detail and not once in these 634 (more were written during my message, got to churn that Bolter p0rn) have we heard about a female Custodian. Not once, if they have been there from the start, we would have heard about them.
I mean, as much as I find the amount of HH books funny (can you believe I genuinely thought for a moment that there were actually 529 HH books?? madness!), the Custodes don't appear in *that* many. As for those books, we don't see *all the Custodes*. Sure, retroactively, having some non-male Custodes in Master of Mankind or beyond would have been *great*, but we also have a reason for that (no models, no fluff!). Not that I really think having women Custodes really *needs* that much lore. I mean, they're Custodes with different pronouns. I don't think they need much more than that. And I can live with knowing that those previous Custodes texts are products of their time - I can fill in the blanks and assume that there were women Custodes who were simply unnamed in the story who were doing cool stuff off screen.
Ultimately, we're shown two women Custodians. We're told there's more than just those two. I don't mind that so much, however.
Again no issue with female Custodians, what makes me go 'hang on', is the very 1984esque 'we have always been at war with Oceania' way of doing this. Yes, it could have been a way to reference that 40k is a authoritarian nightmare that Geaorge Orwell's book no doubt influenced. Just the way it was handled comes off as a bit amateurish. If they had gone with something like, 'due to the on going wars the Custodians need to bolster their ranks, so now include daughters of nobles along side their sons, it wouldn't have got half the response it had received I imagine.
I'll ask the same question I have earlier - if we're to assume that GW want to retcon Custodes to have *always* had women (aka, no "due to XYZ change in universe, Custodes now have women" excuse), how would you have liked them to do it?
Would you have liked a piece of lore essentially saying "hey, here's some of the Custodes you missed in the Horus Heresy, they were always there, and here's a story about one of them!"?
Would you have liked GW to say "yeah, we're retconning that because this was a product of its time and we're correcting our mistake"?
Issues being, the biology of 40k has inherently been linked to our universe. This isn't a galaxy long time ago, far away etc. This is the human timeline of Earth.
You do realise though, that the science of marine making is not actual science? Like not just in sense that we don't know how to do it, but that most of it literally couldn't work. Yes, it is nominally our future, but it still fiction, and quite fantastic sort at that. 40K is not, nor ever was any sort of hard scifi.
Only the top 0.1% of men qualify for space marines. It is intentionally created to be the most impossible level of achievement, failure is death.
Not men, children. They recruit young teenagers, so manly strength has nothing to do with the selection criteria. Also, as noted many times, irradiated dregs of Baal seem to turn into perfectly adequate space marines, so the physical quality of the recruits certainly isn't a concern.
And to reiterate, it is fiction. The "science" could just as well be magic, so unscientific it is. It can work exactly as the writers want, so if tomorrow GW decides that the process can work on women, it doesn't make it any less plausible.
The children of Baal are a particularly interesting example, because the Geneseed doesn’t just make them well ‘ard, it corrects many low level mutations and that.
Plus, let’s just focus on “men are, on average, naturally possessed of greater strength than women”.
Superficially, that’s true. We do tend to be bigger and bulkier. But how much of that is societal, and discouragement young girls face from taking part in the rough and tumble I recall from my own childhood?
Then, by the time we’ve applied Space Science Magic to make an Astartes, then bunged them into strength enhancing Power Armour? How big do you think that difference is gonna be?
Much of the natural differences in strength can be changed by the application of testosterone and anabolic steroids, let alone strength focussed exercise, and so the line is already pretty blurred.
conscriptboris wrote: Issues being, the biology of 40k has inherently been linked to our universe. This isn't a galaxy long time ago, far away etc. This is the human timeline of Earth. Only the top 0.1% of men qualify for space marines. It is intentionally created to be the most impossible level of achievement, failure is death. What about the 99.9% of men excluded? How is that fair? (shall we revert Space Marines to RT's Humans in Power Armour?, Thunder Warriors were more powerful than Firstborn, shall we make a crappier version again?) The top 0.1% of female dont cut the grade when compared to the op 0.1% of males. So it is just tokenism. Early 40k did an amazing job of carving out female representation in the imperium, including other models (Inq/DH etc).
There are a couple of misconceptions in here.
As others have pointed out, Marine Chapters don't recruit men. They recruit pre-pubescent boys. If your sole criteria is physical strength, up until around age 13, there is very little difference in physical strength between a fit, active boy and a fit, active girl. Marines supposedly select aspirants from around age 10. So if strength is the criteria, there is no reason to exclude girls.
Thing is, the failure rate for implants is nothing to do with physical strength (see Blood Angels, or Space Wolves who recruit warriors who have suffered near-mortal wounds in battle). The failure rate is due to incompatibility with the zygotes, which can't be predicted purely off physical characteristics (because if it could, they wouldn't take so many recruits that are going to fail). And the zygotes are only incompatible with girls because a couple of badly sculpted female marine models didn't sell well in 1992.
SoB - Power Armoured soldiers, as the church wasnt allowed 'Men at Arms', a genius way to circumnavigate archaic laws.
Except, once again, it's not a 'genius' anything. In an era when the Imperium routinely executed entire Space Marine companies or sterilised entire planets for just hearing a rumour of Chaos, we're expected to believe that the High Lords, on hearing of this 'clever' loophole, just said "Oh, jolly well played, old chap!" and let the church keep their standing army?
No, there would have been several prompt executions, and the Sisters would have been disbanded along with the rest of the church's military forces.
SoS - These needed fleshing out, maybe the emperor could have made them? And could only link the pariah gene to women.
Making psychic blanks only women would be another retcon, since we already have male Culexus assassins.
And several male blanks in the Eisenhorn series along with a whole minor collective of them that he created. It's very much given to suggest that blanks are simply rare, but by no means bound to a specific gender.
SoB - Power Armoured soldiers, as the church wasnt allowed 'Men at Arms', a genius way to circumnavigate archaic laws.
Except, once again, it's not a 'genius' anything. In an era when the Imperium routinely executed entire Space Marine companies or sterilised entire planets for just hearing a rumour of Chaos, we're expected to believe that the High Lords, on hearing of this 'clever' loophole, just said "Oh, jolly well played, old chap!" and let the church keep their standing army?
No, there would have been several prompt executions, and the Sisters would have been disbanded along with the rest of the church's military forces.
Actually I disagree. The Imperium does have rules and regulations, indeed many arms of it will follow those rules and regulation to the letter. Often to a scary level of by-the-book.
If there really is an interpretation that can stand the test of argument, then the Imperium will follow it. Be it if it allows Church to have armed women or if it means always using the exact same design of lasgun even if superior ones exist.
If anything you might have more luck arguing that the Church not using women would see executions take place.
The Imperium has rules and regulations; if you find a way to manipulate them or interpret them a certain way; good for you.
It’s suggestive that The Imperium’s rules are very much “of the moment”. That if you can find a loophole for that sort of Gotcha, you need to do it right off the bat.
It probably also helps that their origins is with the Daughters of the Emperor, their particular role in stopping Vandire, and that the least thing The Imperium needed in that circumstance was another round of Civil War.
Taken together? It is quite possibly just poorly written legislation, an immediate exploitation of the wording, an immediate lack of appetite for Round Two, and so it was just accepted. That Sisters have a proven run of loyalty now insulates them from anyone having a “now wait a moment” reaction later on.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: That Sisters have a proven run of loyalty now insulates them from anyone having a “now wait a moment” reaction later on.
Of course, the flip side of that is the argument that if the church has proven that it can maintain its own military without turning against the Imperium, the Decree Passive is no longer required anyway.
Issues being, the biology of 40k has inherently been linked to our universe. This isn't a galaxy long time ago, far away etc. This is the human timeline of Earth. Only the top 0.1% of men qualify for space marines. It is intentionally created to be the most impossible level of achievement, failure is death. What about the 99.9% of men excluded? How is that fair? (shall we revert Space Marines to RT's Humans in Power Armour?, Thunder Warriors were more powerful than Firstborn, shall we make a crappier version again?) The top 0.1% of female dont cut the grade when compared to the op 0.1% of males. So it is just tokenism. Early 40k did an amazing job of carving out female representation in the imperium, including other models (Inq/DH etc).
SoB - Power Armoured soldiers, as the church wasnt allowed 'Men at Arms', a genius way to circumnavigate archaic laws.
SoS - These needed fleshing out, maybe the emperor could have made them? And could only link the pariah gene to women.
I've always found this appeal to realism argument so funny because it just shows off that the people who have it have zero media literacy at all.
People think 40k is this gritty speculative fiction series where all things operate according to reality unless otherwise noted due to said speculative fiction elements ala A Song of Ice and Fire. Only it's not. It's an extremely high fantasy/soft science fiction series where rule of cool is the only consistent law of physics and where women, particularly at the top levels, are just as physically capable as men are when it comes to being fighters (as opposed to real life where that is obviously not the case). It's less Game of Thrones and more DC Comics, where despite being women Lady Shiva and Cassandra Cain/the second Batgirl will beat the fething brakes off of Batman in a fist fight and do so easily despite him being much larger and also a man. We're talking about a setting where enough people believing in something literally makes it true.
In 40k the best unaugmented soldiers in the Imperium are the Sisters of Battle and of Silence (I think some fluff says the latter are somewhat augmented but the majority of fluff says otherwise). Even without their powered armour a Sister of Battle is on par with the skills of a Tempestus Scion, the elite of the Imperial Guard, in terms of statline, and their own elites blow Scions out of the water. Even Repentia, who don't have the powered armour, are much better hand to hand fighters than any Imperial Guardsman unit that doesn't consist of Ogryn.
Funny how the argument of "women 2 weak to be recruited for the spess mehreens" doesn't seem to apply to the similarly augmented Officio Assassinorum who recruits women along with men all the time. And if women are so much weaker than men in 40k why was the hulking melee combatant in Eisenhorn's retinue at the start of the second book Ravenor's seven foot tall Amazonian girlfriend? Why has not a single one of the officially licensed 40kRPGs given a penalty to women in strength, weapon skill, or any other stat?
The argument that recruiting from women is a waste of time because they're weaker is stupid. 40k isn't that kind of setting and hasn't been one for years, maybe decades. And yet I'm largely fine with Spess Mehreens continuing to all be men. I do think the thematic parallels between them and monk/knightly bands of brothers works well. There's a reason beyond just the dumb technobabble for it to be the case.
Which is not the case with Custodes. People post the fluff stating that all Custodes are/were all men, but nobody can provide an excerpt stating why that is. Because there never was a deeper reason beyond either original writers not doing it or current writers like ADB being barred from doing so because the sculptor for the heads didn't do any female ones. So why keep this bit of fluff that has no reason to exist and never really did? It provides nothing to their lore and just keeps 51% of the population from being represented in the faction. That's all the old fluff did. There was nothing of value there and if you disagree you're merely wrong.
It’s suggestive that The Imperium’s rules are very much “of the moment”. That if you can find a loophole for that sort of Gotcha, you need to do it right off the bat.
It probably also helps that their origins is with the Daughters of the Emperor, their particular role in stopping Vandire, and that the least thing The Imperium needed in that circumstance was another round of Civil War.
Taken together? It is quite possibly just poorly written legislation, an immediate exploitation of the wording, an immediate lack of appetite for Round Two, and so it was just accepted. That Sisters have a proven run of loyalty now insulates them from anyone having a “now wait a moment” reaction later on.
Sisters had active support for the loophole from the people making the rule.
There were hoops jumped through to make it happen by everyone at the negotiating table
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Grzzldgamerps5 wrote: Can’t wait to see all the new female armies and minis for Horus heresy miniature line to further justify the retcon!
In the grim darkness of the female Custodes / Space Marines threads, there is only war ...
I have no axe to grind about Custodes in particular, as I tend to ignore most 40K fluff post-4th edition anyway. They already changed the Necrons, the Tyranids and all sorts of other stuff, along with Primaris and other oddness, so by now I just shrug.
Female Marines would discombobulate me a bit more. If they went that way I'd prefer newly revealed Chapters from previously blank spaces of the galactic map, in the same way that GW can plonk down a new planet wherever it likes and say it has ten thousand years of history that we're only just now hearing about. It would be harder to swallow if they said, "Oh yeah, the Space Wolves have always had females among them." But, again, they've mucked around with other things so much that I don't think I could get too worked up about it by this point.
I'll just throw this into the ring for consideration, on the general subject of women in the hobby.
Way back in 1997, in White Dwarf 206, some of GW's big names went to Italy to promote the new Italian translation of Warhammer Fantasy Battle. They attended the Lucca Games and Comics Fair. Nigel Stillman had this to say (I've bolded some of it for emphasis):
Nigel Stillman, White Dwarf 206, pp 55-56 wrote:"The Lucca fair is held during a bank holiday in Italy and so lots of people come to see it from all over the country. There were not only thousands of enthusiasts for the comics and games, but also plenty of local citizens enjoying a day out at the city's best known event. Again it was a busy day for questions. A casual glance across to the Perry twins' stand revealed that Michael was enjoying a deep and prolonged conversation with two fay enchantresses of Tilea. What kind of beguilement had he worked upon them one wonders?
"Indeed, among the most striking impressions of the Lucca show which stuck in our minds was the overflowing passion and enthusiasm that the Italians have for the hobby and the abundance of artistic talent. What impressed us even more was something which is rare to see in our own barbaric islands: at least a quarter of all the visitors at the Lucca games were female, and this included many hobby enthusiasts as well as understanding friends of the male fanatics! Some of the best painted figures were the work of couples sharing their passion for the hobby: La Dolce Vita!
"It seems that in Italy, being cultured and artistic is 'cool' and pursuing an artistic and intelligent hobby is also 'cool'. Here, playing games can be a glamorous and sophisticated pastime, like eating, Remember, this is the heartland of civilisation!"
Comments from Italian Dakkanauts who remember the late 90s would be most welcome.
Tyel wrote: I'm pretty sure the reason women weren't involved in war isn't due to the fact they can't jump or culture.
The issue is that suffering significant losses of your tribe's/kingdom's/country's young men is a tragedy - but suffering significant losses of your young women means you rapidly cease to exist.
Yes, powerful men have, since recorded history, attempted to control the bodies and sexuality of women.
Er, that wasn't the point Tyel was making.
Suppose you have a village of 100 men and 100 women of fertile reproductive age. All the men go off to war. 90 of them die and only 10 come back.
Those remaining 10 could, theoretically, get all 100 women pregnant. Say each man impregnates 10 women. There would soon be 100 children (50 of whom would be boys). A year or two later there could be another 100 children (50 of whom would be boys). In a couple of decades, those 100 boys would have grown up to be men, replenishing the losses from the war. And their sisters would also have grown up to be fertile women.
(In practice, of course, it wouldn't be as neat and tidy as that. e.g. Some men would be jealous and try to keep 'their' women from having sex with anyone else--controlling their bodies and sexuality, as you say. Gaps between pregnancies could occur due to breastfeeding. There would be a lot of inbreeding unless they were careful about who procreated with whom. And so on. But in an idealised thought-experiment world, the community can recover given time. Picture a population of mice or birds or some other animal if you prefer, to remove some of the messy human social factors.)
Now suppose that from that village of 100 fertile men and 100 fertile women, all the women go off to war. 90 of them die and only 10 come back.
Despite their best efforts, those remaining 10 women can only have 10 kids in the first year. Even if a woman has sex with all 100 men, she'll only get pregnant once. More children will have to wait until she's given birth to this one. That means only five girls in the first year, five girls in the second year, five girls in the third year ... and so on. And they'll reach fertile reproductive age in a much more gradual, staggered, drawn-out way over the next 10-20 years, prolonging the scarcity of women and meaning that the next generation will be smaller too.
Besides that, the number of boys being born will also be very few. Only five boys in the first year, five in the second ... It will take much, much longer for the population to recover. And, in practice, you have the risk of a woman dying in childbirth (further reducing the number of fertile women) each time, the damage to her health from churning out babies, and so on. Every death will be a further blow to their chances.
Evolutionarily speaking, males are the expendable sex.
odinsgrandson wrote:On a side note- I have an old Middle Earth Quest book that allows you to make a female "man" (man being a race)
That reminds me ... One curious thing about GW's Lord of the Rings / Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game is that, unlike 40K and WFB, females in LotR do not have the same statline as males. At least they didn't in the original iterations of the game in the 2000s.
It's not obvious, because the only female models in the game back then were Heroes (e.g. Eowyn and Arwen), not rank-and-file Warriors*. And each Hero has his or her own points cost and unique stat line / abilities. But if you use the old points formula to deconstruct and compare them, you find that the baseline stats for the female Heroes are lower than for males.
Maybe that's changed these days. I don't know. My guess is that they were going some Tolkien-inspired realism, albeit quietly and behind the scenes.
Meanwhile over in 40K and WFB it's been standard for a long time to have a basic 'strength 3 toughness 3' statline for a Human or Elf whether you were male or female.
*Though I guess some of the Easterling Warrior models could have been assumed to be female, based on a bit of fluff in the A Shadow in the East sourcebook, which in turn presumably took its cue from that lone scene in the LotR films where an Easterling is seen in closeup and seems to have feminine eyes/brows behind the helmet. But who reads the fluff in LotR SBG sourcebooks? If it ain't Tolkien's own words it ain't happening!
Not exactly what I'd call "way the hell better" than the elite Guardsmen, but interesting. I'd chalk that up to extra training for more CC oriented units, which is not a Guard proclivity, and possibly an advantage given through the power armor.
Insectum7 wrote: No no no, jesus no. Don't paint with that broad brush. I'm perfectly happy to enjoy the hobby with women, I just don't think the background has to change to make that happen.
So you're perfectly happy for women to visit the hobby on your terms.
Bad faith much?
women are telling you what makes us comfortable in the hobby, and in return, you're telling us that such things are unacceptable. so we're allowed to exist in the hobby, but only when it's hostile to us
And the woman who likes the lore, paints up a Tyranid army and joins her local club is "just visiting" apparently?
There's a dissonance here.
"A real woman is telling me something, but I have invented a hypothetical one in my head that agrees with me. "
So the woman who likes the lore, and paints and plays with her local group is not a "real" 40k player, they're "just visiting", whatever that means? That's what seems to have been said. That's a hard one to accept and sounds pretty gate-keepy (god I hate the term, but ok :/ )
Am I "just visiting" when playing a Sisters army because men cannot be Sisters? Am I "just visiting" when I play an Eldar army who looks upon humans as primutive monkeys? Can I not enjoy fictional things that are antithetical to me?
Also, I'd suggest that women as a whole are not a monolith, and can hold varying opinions on the matter.
The Imperium isn’t just 39,000 years from now. It’s 39,000 thousand years of technological development and decline from now.
The Leagues of Votann offer a tantalising insight into what that could mean, as we know they’re children of the STC. Not exactly clones, but each and everyone is designed, and not the result of random genetic combination like us modern humans.
Now, the Votann benefit from that for at least one specific reason. The region of space their ancestors were dispatched to was known to be very different from Earth and our solar system. And so the inherent gene editing may have been unique to ensure they could be up and running and shipping those precious minerals back to their masters as soon as possible.
And we’ve seen in other short stories that other Abhumans had similar gene editing - that they’re not just the result of genetic drift.
Now, unfortunately we have to stop short of the conclusion that “therefore all Abhumans are the result of deliberate gene editing and forced evolution and that”, because we can’t rule that out.
But it does raise the prospect that some level of gene editing of colonists was commonplace, even if the tweaks were relatively minor - perhaps a mild increase in standard muscle mass or density for worlds with slightly higher gravity, but not such that it would be noticable off world.
This is old Space Wolves background, (not sure if it is still there)
the the original settlers were modified to survive the deathworld and evolve if necessary, hence the wolves on Fenris are no wolves but the very first humans to come to Fenris
Adding that any random mutation post heresy is cleansed to prevent the influence of chaos and that Ogryns and Halflings still exist would they are the result of genetic engineering to fulfil certain task rather than being something random that was seen as useful
there should be no "pure" humans left and at least some of the very old background would indicate that only the noble houses are still human while everyone else is genetic engineered (Man of Gold vs Man of Stone)
Ogryns, Halflings, Fenrisian, Cadians, Catachans, Votaan etc. should all be descentants from the Man of Stone
There is a reason I play eldar.
But I also have a custodes collection.
And I nostalgia bought into Votann too.
And I can assure you, more female models do, in fact, help draw women to the hobby. It's not a shock.
There is also a huge difference between female rep and cheesecake. Sisters of Battle are a bit too cheesecake for me even after the refresh toned that down, partly because I am distinctly aware that they originated out of someone's bondage nun fetish. Craftworld Eldar hit the right balance.
my wife would not touch 40k no matter how many female models there are and if she would play 40k, it would be Orks because they are funny
like most other woman I have met who play but not touched 40k it was not the lack of female models but the "grimdark" setting (like a female model for a fascist regime is still a model for the fascist regime)
similar to those not playing WW2 games, which had nothing to do with there being no female SS models available but simple that the setting is beyond of "just being a game"
"the hobby" being wargaming and mini-painting in general, I haven't noticed that there are only man or boys playing, it is certain parts of the hobby that are dominated by man and this is mostly related to the setting
From what I have seen over the years (and I have met plenty of women gamers over multiple genres of the hobby, from RPGs and Larping to board games, miniature wargames and video games) to incentivize more women to join the hobby, you don't need more female models.
Going solely off the flags next to Dakkanauts names, we’re from different parts of the world. And as such, different underlying cultures. And those cultures will influence those living in them.
As such, the mix of persons exposed and encouraged into this peculiar hobby of ours may well vary country to country. And it’s important to keep in mind the Hobby is, and always has been, multi-faceted. Some are just here for the novels. Some only play the game. Some get their pleasure solely from painting, and some of those will strive to make every model Golden Demon worthy.
And not one of us is “doing it wrong” because we perhaps don’t partake of every facet equally or at all.
Do I think an all unpainted army lacks the visual impact of a painted one? Yes. Do I think both armies being painted adds to the overall enjoyment? Yes.
But….you do you. Unless we’re in a tournament or other organised environment where fully painted has been explained as a requirement, they’re your models and you do what you want with them.
Would I like to be able to persuade Painters to get their forces on the table for a truly glorious sight? Of course. But they’re your models, and you do what you want with them.
If someone is just partaking of the artistic side of the hobby, that’s their prerogative, and not really anyone else’s business.
As for those who insist on gatekeeping? Surely you must realise it’s entirely futile. You don’t have the reach, influence or persuasive skills. What are you going to be able to do if you visit a FLGS and see folk enjoying the hobby in a way you and your echo chamber don’t endorse? Other than tut and moan. Because the real world doesn’t behave like the internet. In the real world, people can and will simply tell you to sod off and keep your opinions to your self. And so, gatekeeping is an entirely pointless exercise, and a waste of your time and energy. I at least will get a cheap laugh out of it, but you get nothing except perhaps increased blood pressure.
You want to field an all male army, eschewing any female sculpts? Go for it. Genuinely. Just don’t expect anyone to much care why, or hang around whilst you wibble on and on and on about it.
You will need to help me with this, as I am not a player of these games, but some wargames do have a high representation of female models. For example, I believe in Guild Ball every team in the game has female models and they are always in play, you can hardly ever have a game with no females on both sides (correct me if I'm wrong).
Do these games see a visibly higher percentage of women playing them than, say, Wh40k?
But let me flip that argument around. Let’s say the inclusion of female models in a given game doesn’t increase female players or customers?
You’d then have to demonstrate it’s caused a direct detriment to the game for it to matter.
Unfortunately, you can't flip arguments like that. That's why a defendant in court isn't asked to provide evidence that they didn't commit the crime and why a theist's "counterargument" of "but you don't have evidence that god isn't real" makes no logical sense.
The burden of proof is on the one making a claim.
Btw, I don't care either way. I was just wondering if evidence can be provided to support the claim that increased number of female models increases female participation in a wargame or if it is just a shower thought. I have never played Guild Ball (which I regret!) or a wargame with similar representation of female models so I was wondering if members of these communities can confirm or disprove this correlation.
I stil stand by my (lifelong observation supported) shower thought that increasing the number of cute animal models would do a much better job in that respect.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: That Sisters have a proven run of loyalty now insulates them from anyone having a “now wait a moment” reaction later on.
Of course, the flip side of that is the argument that if the church has proven that it can maintain its own military without turning against the Imperium, the Decree Passive is no longer required anyway.
If i remember correctly didnt saint celestine execute an ecclesiarch for heresy that suggested the decree passive be revoked suggesting in univers is it not viewed as a loop hole but as the will of the emperor?
As for the skill of the sisters they are not mearly on par with the scions they literally are trained together at the schola progenium.
I feel like i havent been adding much to this conversation, mostly commenting on the lore ^^*
stratigo wrote: Sisters of Battle are a bit too cheesecake for me even after the refresh toned that down, partly because I am distinctly aware that they originated out of someone's bondage nun fetish.
The original image was one spike away from being the most the most generic unadorned power armour in existence, they were nuns because marines were monks, and they existed as a political joke.
Dark elves on the other hand were chains and whips from day one but no-one seemed to much mind. Peoples nun fetish is strong I suppose.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’ve absolutely no idea, as it’s not something I keep tabs on, or really have anyway of exploring.
But let me flip that argument around. Let’s say the inclusion of female models in a given game doesn’t increase female players or customers?
You’d then have to demonstrate it’s caused a direct detriment to the game for it to matter.
It would depend on how's it managed, don't you think?
Extra Sisters/Eldar miniatures probably would be well received. But let's say, for the sake of the argument, that female SM are on the menu for 2025. But SKUs, and shop space space is not unlimited, so half the Primaris LTs have to go, and they will be replaced by female models. Now you took something away from a more or less large part of the fan base in exchange for 0 increase of players, and customers, or even a net loss.
Or worse, GW could take notes from Amazon/Netfilx, and start suplanting core characters by female versions. I don't know who that Marneus Calgar fellow you keep mentioning is, there is a Marneix Calgarix, and it's always been that way.
I'd say that's a direct detriment to the game, and it would matter a lot.
But let me flip that argument around. Let’s say the inclusion of female models in a given game doesn’t increase female players or customers?
You’d then have to demonstrate it’s caused a direct detriment to the game for it to matter.
Unfortunately, you can't flip arguments like that. That's why a defendant in court isn't asked to provide evidence that they didn't commit the crime and why a theist's "counterargument" of "but you don't have evidence that god isn't real" makes no logical sense.
The burden of proof is on the one making a claim.
Btw, I don't care either way. I was just wondering if evidence can be provided to support the claim that increased number of female models increases female participation in a wargame or if it is just a shower thought. I have never played Guild Ball (which I regret!) or a wargame with similar representation of female models so I was wondering if members of these communities can confirm or disprove this correlation.
I stil stand by my (lifelong observation supported) shower thought that increasing the number of cute animal models would do a much better job in that respect.
Totally agree, yesterday a friend was asking around our gaming group to trade cute 3d printed minis for his daughters to paint in exchange of his classic style DnD/40K ones. His children want to join the hobby but totally refuse to touch his extensive miniature collection. Apparently Khorne, and DnD monsters have 0 attractive to them.
But let me flip that argument around. Let’s say the inclusion of female models in a given game doesn’t increase female players or customers?
You’d then have to demonstrate it’s caused a direct detriment to the game for it to matter.
Unfortunately, you can't flip arguments like that. That's why a defendant in court isn't asked to provide evidence that they didn't commit the crime and why a theist's "counterargument" of "but you don't have evidence that god isn't real" makes no logical sense.
The burden of proof is on the one making a claim.
Btw, I don't care either way. I was just wondering if evidence can be provided to support the claim that increased number of female models increases female participation in a wargame or if it is just a shower thought. I have never played Guild Ball (which I regret!) or a wargame with similar representation of female models so I was wondering if members of these communities can confirm or disprove this correlation.
I stil stand by my (lifelong observation supported) shower thought that increasing the number of cute animal models would do a much better job in that respect.
We can in this instance. First, nobody is on trial.
Here, the arguments essentially boil down to “visible representation encourages participation” and “go woke go broke”. Both are positive claims. And for clarity I’m not claiming you to have made either.
So, we look at a given game, where visible representation is there. Such as a mix of male and female sculpts, perhaps the option between them, such as the HeroQuest hero expansions. It’s then on those making the arguments to show if that argument holds water based on whatever evidence is available.
And my point here is it’s entirely possible for neither to be correct. Representation may not lead to participation. But even if it doesn’t, we can’t then conclude representation is at all detrimental to the game and its prospects.
Will there be some out there who might see female sculpts and decide “ewww”? Sure. But enough to balance out those who see the same thing and think “oh cool!”? I honestly don’t know.
What we can however point to are GW’s own financials, which show a sustained period of pretty impressive and consistent growth. Now, again we can’t conclude “yay increased diversity!” there, because absolutely nothing happens in a vacuum. But, we can absolutely observe that said growth has occurred alongside increased diversity. So I think we can be confident the increased diversity isn’t detrimental, thus defeating the premise “go woke go broke” in this instance. And that lack of detriment is sufficient reason to continue diversifying things.
And on GW’s financials? For us as prospective investors, they don’t really break down their sales by system, army, kit etc in the reports, instead going into channels and territories and their respective changes. But you can be damn sure GW does have those facts and figures, and will be using them to inform decisions and releases going forward. They’re a business first and foremost, and obliged to provide as much profit and growth as possible for their shareholders. So we can at least argue if their sales data showed female or mixed kits sold less well? They’d take heed of that in some way.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Further thoughts to show I’m trying to be balanced.
Mixed gender kits are currently something of a novelty, being something GW hasn’t historically been that fussed for.
And that novelty in itself holds an appeal for adding variety to an existing army. So any uptick in sales of that unit would have to take that into account.
It’s all very, very complex. And the two extremes try to make it overly simplified, one way or the other, black or white, yes or no binary type stuff.
But, I stand by my assertion that those opposed to diversity have to prove it’s been at all detrimental if their preference is to be enacted. Because whether it’s beneficial or entirely moot (as in it makes no difference either way), it’s gonna continue as it is now, because there’s no reason to change that approach.
And my point here is it’s entirely possible for neither to be correct. Representation may not lead to participation. But even if it doesn’t, we can’t then conclude representation is at all detrimental to the game and its prospects.
Well, absolutely. Correlation does not imply causation. It just provides a piece of evidence increasing the probability.
And all the evidence we have is that since GW started taking steps to diversify their ranges with female sculpts and a greater variety of skintones, they’ve experienced a sustained period of frankly impressive growth. As in more than tripled their takings in 2022/2023 compared to 2014/2015. Source being their Annual Reports https://investor.games-workshop.com/annual-reports-and-half-year-results
So, whilst that doesn’t directly support “representation leads to participation”, it strongly challenges the opposite “go woke, go broke” claim, which is what the extreme of one side claims this is all about. Because as they’ve moved to diversify, takings have gone up. So even if that diversification hasn’t been a factor, minor or major? It’s evidently not hurt them any.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: And all the evidence we have is that since GW started taking steps to diversify their ranges with female sculpts and a greater variety of skintones, they’ve experienced a sustained period of frankly impressive growth.
So, whilst that doesn’t directly support “representation leads to participation”, it strongly challenges the opposite “go woke, go broke” claim, which is what the extreme of one side claims this is all about.
The other thing that muddies the water is that a lot of geeky hobbies - Cardgames, Larping, boardgames, DnD, video games* - experienced a sustained period of considerable growth at the same time GW was treading water during the latter part of the Kirby era. One could argue that some of GW's amazing, more recent growth, is simply the result of them joining the geek-growth-wave late due to policies and marketing choices made before that inhibited growth. Ergo That GW is playing catchup and would have grown as they have now, just over a lower rate over more years if they'd been tapping into modern marketing moves and such much earlier. GW were at least 10years or so behind the Internet really. They never got forums to work during the height of forums and then spent a good number of years avoiding the internet and being hostile toward it. Couple that with things like shutting down sponsoring events and not even running their own annual major gaming event etc.... and it all was strange when at the same time even video games were pushing into the competitive event market.
This might also explain GW's market's slower growth of women, whilst other areas of geeky hobbies have had greater general growth. Ergo part of it isn't the product, the lore or such but simply awareness, outreach and inspiration and so forth. Heck GW still doesn't really have a major female face to the company in any key role that's been sustained to create icons. Almost all the icons and known faces are men - even in their event coverage.
*I'd argue these started earlier than most of the others
For instance? Geeky stuff is now accepted in the wider world. TTRPG, War Games, Board Games are now part of pretty mainstream culture. So that’s going to have some impact.
GW themselves have offered a wider variety of games. Not just classics like Necromunda and Blood Bowl, but new(ish, now) enterprises like Underworlds and WarCry, which whilst still not cheap have a much lower price entry barrier.
But whilst pondering this further? I have to point out that WarCry and Underworlds have shown diversity in the sculpts and paintjobs since they launched. And both seem to be doing pretty well so far as we can reasonably tell.
Now I’d argue that observation is somewhat stronger than anecdote, and may go beyond coincidence even. But. If “go woke go broke” has any merit as an argument? The fact these games have taken off and continue to be well supported again challenges that - even if, again, the diversity of models isn’t itself a particular factor of their popularity compared to relatively modest entry cost, and not having to paint a bajillion models before you can get proper games going.
In conclusion? Whilst I’m inclined to accept “representation leads to participation” holds some merit, the same simply can’t be said of “go woke, go broke” where GW is concerned. And so at the very, very worst? Diversification of sculpt and painted skintones is a completely neutral development, neither helping nor hindering in any meaningful way.
The only way female Astartes would erode male representation would be if they all suddenly and retroactively became women, which no one has suggested happen (except in obvious hyperbole from someone opposed to the idea of female Astartes). Ditto the masculinity.
But please explain to me why you think men should have "control over a popular cultural institution".
What does the Frankfurt School have to do with any of this? You brought that up completely unprompted.
Because Formosa has bought into the Nazi propaganda of cultural marxism (the nazis called it cultural bolshevism, but it is the exact same conspiracy theory of "jews are using marxism to undermine western civilization, so we need fascism to stop that by genociding the jews and murdering all marxists" that the nazis used, just with some more dog-whistles to push the inherent anti-semitism a little bit under the surface).
Racism is a problem in real life, and if it were present in the game most of us never would have stuck around to get to know the lore. The whole point of the 40k satire is to use fake Sci Fi bigotry and religious extremism that lets them comment on real issues without furthering the actual injustices they are lampooning.
Ah yes, racism should not be permitted in 40k because real people have been affected by racism.
Meanwhile, it's perfectly fine for 40k to feature genocide, because no one has ever been affected by that.
Racism is a problem in real life, and if it were present in the game most of us never would have stuck around to get to know the lore. The whole point of the 40k satire is to use fake Sci Fi bigotry and religious extremism that lets them comment on real issues without furthering the actual injustices they are lampooning.
Ah yes, racism should not be permitted in 40k because real people have been affected by racism.
Meanwhile, it's perfectly fine for 40k to feature genocide, because no one has ever been affected by that.
I mean it's the same reason why people in certain places want to ban or restrict access To Kill a Mockingbird over concerns over the fact there's racist content in the book, even though it's addressing the problems of racism but some people get so sensitive over the use of the n-word and the historical aspects of it that they want to memory hole it.
It is of course fine to depict real world bigotry in fiction if the objective of the work is to thoughtfully examine and criticise it.
But shallow tie-in fiction for toy soldiers probably isn't a right place for that. If you want to examine serious topics, you need to do it seriously and with great care.
Racism is a problem in real life, and if it were present in the game most of us never would have stuck around to get to know the lore. The whole point of the 40k satire is to use fake Sci Fi bigotry and religious extremism that lets them comment on real issues without furthering the actual injustices they are lampooning.
Ah yes, racism should not be permitted in 40k because real people have been affected by racism.
Meanwhile, it's perfectly fine for 40k to feature genocide, because no one has ever been affected by that.
I mean it's the same reason why people in certain places want to ban or restrict access To Kill a Mockingbird over concerns over the fact there's racist content in the book, even though it's addressing the problems of racism but some people get so sensitive over the use of the n-word and the historical aspects of it that they want to memory hole it.
I don't think you really understand WHO wants to ban To Kill a Mockingbird. I'll give you a hint: it's the same people who want to ban the book And Tango Makes Three.
Racism is a problem in real life, and if it were present in the game most of us never would have stuck around to get to know the lore. The whole point of the 40k satire is to use fake Sci Fi bigotry and religious extremism that lets them comment on real issues without furthering the actual injustices they are lampooning.
Ah yes, racism should not be permitted in 40k because real people have been affected by racism.
Meanwhile, it's perfectly fine for 40k to feature genocide, because no one has ever been affected by that.
I mean it's the same reason why people in certain places want to ban or restrict access To Kill a Mockingbird over concerns over the fact there's racist content in the book, even though it's addressing the problems of racism but some people get so sensitive over the use of the n-word and the historical aspects of it that they want to memory hole it.
If you read the rest of BobtheInquisitor's quoted post that was conveniently trimmed by Vipoid, and stuff later in the thread, it becomes clear that a distinction is drawn between current, real-world racism and fictional racism that explores the same processes without using real world examples.
To take the 40k example: the Imperium is institutionally racist to abhumans. It is not institutionally racist to dark-skinned humans. Only one of those directly maps onto current issues affecting people on Earth. The other allows the same concept of racism to be explored much more safely without potentially furthering harmful stuff.
40K also benefits from those being “Othered” actually being a quantifiable threat. Not just to the wealth of the powerful, but to planets and systems as a whole.
An untrained, unchecked Psyker is at all times a potential warp breach or possession waiting to happen.
Dealings with Xenos can have far reaching ramifications, in different ways.
Part of the moral quandary is whether The Imperium could go about things in a less unpleasant and oppressive way.
For instance, Chaos Cults. Nobody goes from disaffected citizen to raving loonie over night. Not unless they get possessed. Instead, something as relatively innocuous as a Swinger’s Club can attract the attention of Slaaneshi Daemons. A martial arts school can attract the attention of Khornate Daemons. Someone whose loved ones are suffering from illness can attract the attention of Nurgle Daemons. Those wanting a fairer society can attract the attention of Tzeentch Daemons. The general misery of life in The Imperium amplifies those threats, where even pretty innocent pursuits can easily be twisted and escalated.
Consider the Satanic Panic and its wild claims, including “I was a satanist and I made sure Gary Gygax’s spells in D&D actually summoned demons”. Those are of course utter nonsense. But for The Imperium? Yeah it is possible an AD&D analogous game could contain the secrets of Daemon summoning, either by accident or design. When The Imperium says awful things about alien species? They’re often entirely right about the malign intent and possible outcomes.
That in turn allows it to justify a lot of proper evil, like exterminating a planet of Abhumans for being Not Quite Human Enough, or obliterating a Xenos species which was otherwise content to just mind its own business, and may have had zero capacity to threaten the status quo.
Which in the real world is analogous to claims that because someone convicted of a crime happens to be of a certain, non-majority ethnicity, that it must follow all members of that ethnicity must also be inclined toward criminality.
To take the 40k example: the Imperium is institutionally racist to abhumans. It is not institutionally racist to dark-skinned humans. Only one of those directly maps onto current issues affecting people on Earth. The other allows the same concept of racism to be explored much more safely without potentially furthering harmful stuff.
This applies to other bigotry beyond racism.
And doing it this way makes perfect sense. Even though "fictional bigotry" might be still be uncomfortable for some customers, same real world bigotry they face in their daily lives will definitely be way more uncomfortable. GW doesn't want to write fiction which depicts direct bigotry towards their potential customers.
So, what is the goal? In your opinion. Because you can’t just rubbish the stated intent without providing an alternative like that.
I already stated the intent, control of the institution, its always about control as "there is no truth but power" to these people, "the personal is political" "everything is political" etc.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: 40K also benefits from those being “Othered” actually being a quantifiable threat. Not just to the wealth of the powerful, but to planets and systems as a whole.
I disagree that is a benefit. I think it actually serves to render the satire toothless and makes fascists find 40k more welcoming as they see the others they wish to exterminate as just as much of a quantifiable threat as the imperium does its others.
So, the othering in 40k is not actually satirising the othering of groups by totalitarian regimes. It is just depicting it completely straight from the point of view of the fascists, making them justified in their crimes.
Cyel wrote: From what I have seen over the years (and I have met plenty of women gamers over multiple genres of the hobby, from RPGs and Larping to board games, miniature wargames and video games) to incentivize more women to join the hobby, you don't need more female models.
You need more cute animal models.
I was pretty active in Starship Troopers in the mid-00s, a game where the Mobile Infantry are canonically mixed-gender and the models reflect this. I knew one woman who was into the game. She played Arachnids.
What you're highlighting is that the fictional identity of the models is only a small part of how the game is presented. The super soldier in power armor who beats the gak out of everyone is a quintessentially male power fantasy. The high-heel fetish nuns are a quintessentially male sexual fantasy. The Imperial Guard are a historical military reference (a traditionally male-dominated space). Whether the models themselves are male or female doesn't change that many of the factions are designed to appeal to men, and it has never surprised me at all that I see more women playing Tyranids or Dark Eldar than Imperial Guard or Sisters.
Representation matters, and I like the change to Custodes in that it draws a clear distinction between them and Marines*, but it's also the most superficial form of inclusivity. I don't think female Custodes are going to bring women into 40K- making crochet patterns of assault rifles isn't going to bring men into knitting- but it does at least signal that this isn't meant to be a boy's club and helps draw a line in the sand against the exclusion that keeps many women out of hobby stores, and I think that's valuable.
*Frankly, I wish they'd lean more into the inherent satire of emotionally-stunted, testosterone-poisoned beefcakes, but I don't see that happening to the poster boys.
The only way female Astartes would erode male representation would be if they all suddenly and retroactively became women, which no one has suggested happen (except in obvious hyperbole from someone opposed to the idea of female Astartes). Ditto the masculinity.
But please explain to me why you think men should have "control over a popular cultural institution".
everything about trade offs, if you add here you remove from there, by introducing female marines you remove the male only representation, I have personally seen people openly advocate of the inclusion of females in marines not because of any other reason that it would represent a win for "their side".
Men should have control over their own space in the same manner as woman have control over their own space, both should, do and can fight for that space in an appropriate manner, there are also plenty of shared spaces. Now if we are talking about the lore then this is a male represented space and as such people have every right to advocate for it to remain that way.
The custodes question however is a different one as it never really came across as a brotherhood, more like a group of highly elite warriors as opposed to the Space marines warrior monks.
Yes it does, every time its applied in praxis it results in the exclusion of one out group in favour of another in group.
But, GW owns the background and do whatever they wish with it. On account you can do pretty much whatever you want with your own fictional universe.
That they’re now doing stuff you don’t agree with is, frankly irrelevant, unless you’re a major shareholder of GW’s, and your deciding vote was ignored.
How does Custodes recruiting male and female infants now exclude anyone? Riddle me that at least.
But, GW owns the background and do whatever they wish with it. On account you can do pretty much whatever you want with your own fictional universe.
That they’re now doing stuff you don’t agree with is, frankly irrelevant, unless you’re a major shareholder of GW’s, and your deciding vote was ignored.
How does Custodes recruiting male and female infants now exclude anyone? Riddle me that at least.
Sure they can and just as you get people advocate for one side of things, you get people that advocate for the other, none of them will stop so its irrelevant who owns the IP, its about pressure and how much each can bring to bear, people power matters and has brought low bigger companies than GW, we all know this.
its not "now" they are doing things I disagree with, they have been doing things I disagree with for quite some time, the Australian price hike, 10th edition nearly as a whole, becoming more corporate and moving away from their grass roots, I have a laundry list of things I disagree with. As for being a major share holder, again irrelevant, pressure can and has been brought against such companies and made them change course, the current custodes change could be interpreted as an example of this though I am dubious myself that it is.
I did not say Custodes, I said space marines and was very specific as to why.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: 40K also benefits from those being “Othered” actually being a quantifiable threat. Not just to the wealth of the powerful, but to planets and systems as a whole.
I disagree that is a benefit. I think it actually serves to render the satire toothless and makes fascists find 40k more welcoming as they see the others they wish to exterminate as just as much of a quantifiable threat as the imperium does its others.
So, the othering in 40k is not actually satirising the othering of groups by totalitarian regimes. It is just depicting it completely straight from the point of view of the fascists, making them justified in their crimes.
Yep, fully agreed. "Imperium is horrible, but it is so by necessity" is not something I want to be taken seriously. It of course is what the Imperials in the setting beleive, but it should be shown to be misguided. This is not to say that there cannot be genuine treats, but the narrative should be that by being xenophobic totalitarian pricks the Imperium actually makes the situation worse.
But, GW owns the background and do whatever they wish with it. On account you can do pretty much whatever you want with your own fictional universe.
That they’re now doing stuff you don’t agree with is, frankly irrelevant, unless you’re a major shareholder of GW’s, and your deciding vote was ignored.
How does Custodes recruiting male and female infants now exclude anyone? Riddle me that at least.
Sure they can and just as you get people advocate for one side of things, you get people that advocate for the other, none of them will stop so its irrelevant who owns the IP, its about pressure and how much each can bring to bear, people power matters and has brought low bigger companies than GW, we all know this.
its not "now" they are doing things I disagree with, they have been doing things I disagree with for quite some time, the Australian price hike, 10th edition nearly as a whole, becoming more corporate and moving away from their grass roots, I have a laundry list of things I disagree with. As for being a major share holder, again irrelevant, pressure can and has been brought against such companies and made them change course, the current custodes change could be interpreted as an example of this though I am dubious myself that it is.
I did not say Custodes, I said space marines and was very specific as to why.
Right.
But Space Marines remain a Sosig fest, just as they’ve ever been. So……what’s your point? Becuase if you’re just getting upset at your own imagination, I don’t know how to help you with that.
But you did say inclusion must come with exclusion. And I, using the example of Custards, asked you who exactly has been excluded by that occurrence?
I can't really engage in the whole pseudo military discussion anymore. The positions are so far away from actual military experience, copious evidence (who was it that said western soldiers will just keep fighting if ordered to?) and 30 seconds of thought that its pointless. Changing would require bringing you to work for a few weeks before an appropriate level of sheepishness developed and you were sent home.
No, from where I watched up to it was mostly bonkers.
Though ironically trans stuff that gets a lot of people hot and bothered (man>woman, not the more common woman>man) fits right in, as the setting, whether it is shapeshifting assassins or dodgy medical procedures featuring added laser eyes, doesn't have a problem with it.
I would also genuinely love to know what are 'the other things' people are worried about? We already have main characters who are disabled, extra genders, robots, aliens, etc. GW has already toned the horror down to sell to children more. Would you be upset with more sex, or do you want things to be as asexual as possible (and most of the factions modifications seem to be towards celibacy and new life stringing from the vats, not the kind of large families needed to sustain the low life expectancies). Worried they might start showing every character having a dozen kids to keep the meat grinder going?
I disagree that is a benefit. I think it actually serves to render the satire toothless and makes fascists find 40k more welcoming as they see the others they wish to exterminate as just as much of a quantifiable threat as the imperium does its others.
So, the othering in 40k is not actually satirising the othering of groups by totalitarian regimes. It is just depicting it completely straight from the point of view of the fascists, making them justified in their crimes.
Yep, the single greatest mistake GW ever made with the lore was portraying the Imperium's efforts as in any way justifiable. 40k hasn't been a satire of fascism for a long time. It's essentially capeshit where the majority of the fanbase are expected to cheer when their fascist good guy superheroes beat up their cartoonishly evil and less competent counterparts. In an effort to make 40k more marketable it has accidentally created a fascist power fantasy.
But Space Marines remain a Sosig fest, just as they’ve ever been. So……what’s your point? Becuase if you’re just getting upset at your own imagination, I don’t know how to help you with that.
But you did say inclusion must come with exclusion. And I, using the example of Custards, asked you who exactly has been excluded by that occurrence?
If it does not matter to you then why are you wanting it changed then?
is it because you know symbolism and representation matters? is it just wanting to take away something other people like?
what is YOUR motivation as we know its certainly not representation or inclusion as you are seeking to exclude those who do not want a change and deny them their representation.
as to your question, for decades the Custodes were a male organisation, many liked this for various reasons, now by changing it you are excluding those people who do not like the change when their views are just as valid as yours, are you ok with excluding people in such a manner or will you just label them with some epithet to justify it?
Please point us to where I advocated for female Astartes. The best you’ll find is that I’m not against it, but hope we get some proper crunchy background changes which would necessitate the Chapters expanding the recruitment pools which have served well for the past 10,000 and a smidge years.
Custodes now have male and female members. Folk have every right to dislike that. But, at the end of the day, there’s nothing to say “you must accept that lore or be forever banished”. Because right now? The only person excluding anyone is you, excluding yourself. Nobody is kicking down your door to glue knockers onto your models. Nobody is sneaking around in the FLGS to change the shape of select codpieces on your Custodes. You. You are the one doing the exclusion, and in the words of a most excellent Radiohead song? You do it to yourself. And as such, you’ll get no particular sympathy from me.
Yep, the single greatest mistake GW ever made with the lore was portraying the Imperium's efforts as in any way justifiable. 40k hasn't been a satire of fascism for a long time. It's essentially capeshit where the majority of the fanbase are expected to cheer when their fascist good guy superheroes beat up their cartoonishly evil and less competent counterparts. In an effort to make 40k more marketable it has accidentally created a fascist power fantasy.
Fully agreed. That is the lore change I am upset about!
vipoid wrote: Ah yes, racism should not be permitted in 40k because real people have been affected by racism.
Meanwhile, it's perfectly fine for 40k to feature genocide, because no one has ever been affected by that.
This is certainly a very uncharitable way to understand the argument presented to the point this is almost bad faith.
The idea that real world racism should not be carried in a one for one in a fictional setting like 40K by the flagship and heroes of the setting (the Space Marines and to a lesser extend the Imperium in general) is non-controversial. If it were not the case it would turn off most decent human beings from the setting and the player base would be full of actual fascists which are very unpleasent to say the least to non-fascists driving away further decent human beings and creating a toxic gaming community.
To properly represent the insane and theo-fascist nature of the Imperium fantastical racism is used (racism that cannot be construed as supporting a form of real world racism). The same goes for genocide. The victims of the fictional genocides of 40K cannot be construed to be victims of real genocides and none of the genocide perpetrated in the 40K universe could be construed as supporting a historical or currently ongoing genocide in our world, the victims, means, history and motives for such genocide are completely different. In the same way, the religious fanaticism of 40K is represented through a fictional religion with fictional rules and tenets that aren't even clearly defined.
I think you would probably find it uncomfortable if every Space Marine in the setting was detesting Jews just as much as Goebbels himself and using the same language to talk about them; imagine replacing all reference to the power of Chaos to the schemes of the dirty Jews. It would be the same thing if suddenly instead of having Ork Boyz we had Ork N****** and all Genestealer cultist were suddenly and very explicitly coded as Indian. That would be rather offputting and no amount of "it's satire" or "it's grimdark, every faction is supposed to be evil and insane" would be enough to wash away the bad taste for there is such a thing as humor and satire in bad taste, or worst, schrodinger satire. Generally speaking, having your protagonist being explicitly and radically racist towards the same kind of people of who are victims of racism in the real world is a very stupid and even, in some cases, a very dangerous idea.
The same goes for sexism and other forms of gender discrimination too. Though, since sexism is generally more tolerated in society, especially by men and boys, than racism, some amount of it doesn't impact negatively the perception of the setting in the same way. Even then, the setting of 40K while certainly containing some amount of sexism, is actually fairly benign on that point. Sure, the Sisters of Battle are under the male gaze to a high a degree, but they are still represented, in general, as highly competent and likeable people and there are factions that are explicitly gender equal like the two Eldars. The idea that there might be a handful of female Custodian Guards, in my sense, makes sense. I don't think this tiny, largely aesthetical retcon (if it even was, since I don't think it was ever , is a big issue and only provides with players and writters a greater amplitude to design their characters and fluff. Diversity is always a plus for such thing. That's why Space Marines are so popular; they have a million different flavors and style and GW emphasis on the fact each Chapter can be its own style and culture allows people to make whatever they like and GW itself offers examples for the most common and popular tropes.
But Space Marines remain a Sosig fest, just as they’ve ever been. So……what’s your point? Becuase if you’re just getting upset at your own imagination, I don’t know how to help you with that.
But you did say inclusion must come with exclusion. And I, using the example of Custards, asked you who exactly has been excluded by that occurrence?
If it does not matter to you then why are you wanting it changed then?
is it because you know symbolism and representation matters? is it just wanting to take away something other people like?
what is YOUR motivation as we know its certainly not representation or inclusion as you are seeking to exclude those who do not want a change and deny them their representation.
as to your question, for decades the Custodes were a male organisation, many liked this for various reasons, now by changing it you are excluding those people who do not like the change when their views are just as valid as yours, are you ok with excluding people in such a manner or will you just label them with some epithet to justify it?
Yeah, this is just paradox of tolerance BS. It in fact is fine to exclude exclusionists, and it is not hypocritical.
And of course even if female marines were possible, this in no way would prevent people making their own male-only chapters, if they felt all-male warrior brotherhood was crucial part of the theme of that chapter. And I think it legitimately can be for some, I think it for example make perfect thematic sense for Dark Angels. But as part of appeal of marines is their thematic flexibility, I do not for a moment buy that being all-male is thematically integral to the faction as a whole. If we can have viking marines, samurai marines, vampire marines (none of which BTW require male-only for their themes) we should also be able to have Amazon marines. Or just practical tacticool marines with mixed gender units.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: 40K also benefits from those being “Othered” actually being a quantifiable threat. Not just to the wealth of the powerful, but to planets and systems as a whole.
I disagree that is a benefit. I think it actually serves to render the satire toothless and makes fascists find 40k more welcoming as they see the others they wish to exterminate as just as much of a quantifiable threat as the imperium does its others.
So, the othering in 40k is not actually satirising the othering of groups by totalitarian regimes. It is just depicting it completely straight from the point of view of the fascists, making them justified in their crimes.
Yep, fully agreed. "Imperium is horrible, but it is so by necessity" is not something I want to be taken seriously. It of course is what the Imperials in the setting beleive, but it should be shown to be misguided. This is not to say that there cannot be genuine treats, but the narrative should be that by being xenophobic totalitarian pricks the Imperium actually makes the situation worse.
I also concur with this. The Imperium is supposed to be thoroughly dysfunctional and surviving only through sheer mass and inertia in spite of its utter incompetence. The threats it faces are still not supposed to justify the means it employs.
Hellebore wrote: The amount of hypocrisy in this thread is ridiculous.
Every single person here arguing that this is a retcon and is bad for being a retcon, has accepted without issue plenty of other retcons in 40k, and even in the custodes themselves.
Custodes never left terra until they retconned them in the codex to justify them as an army. They never guarded special people in the imperium, they never had blade guards or terminators.
But then bam they did and everyone lapped it up because it was a change that agreed with their sensibilities.
If they reversed the retcon and made them half naked cone heads again, would people be upset...
I can't help but think how this conversation would have gone if it had been racial rather than gender segregation in 4ok.
Custodes are all white men, no other man may join. But it's ok because we have an all black group called the brothas of violence for you non whites to enjoy. They are not only not super soldiers they're mentally repulsive to everyone around them, but they're your group you get to have so don't complain about not having black custodes.
I think given how wierd peoples identities have become and what they consider core to them, yep you would have. though obviously worded carefully.
There’s a fair chunk of my post excluded there, including that the question is whether the Imperium’s approach to those threats is completely justified, if not outright counter productive, with the general misery of existence playing straight into the hands of Chaos, by providing endless disaffected peons to corrupt and turn against their oppressor.
vipoid wrote: *snip* and all Genestealer cultist were suddenly and very explicitly coded as Indian.
Well we had the poor old Chaos dwarves get axed for being a collection of stereotypes that worried the company. Shame because they are my favourite blood bowl team.
I disagree that is a benefit. I think it actually serves to render the satire toothless and makes fascists find 40k more welcoming as they see the others they wish to exterminate as just as much of a quantifiable threat as the imperium does its others.
So, the othering in 40k is not actually satirising the othering of groups by totalitarian regimes. It is just depicting it completely straight from the point of view of the fascists, making them justified in their crimes.
Yep, the single greatest mistake GW ever made with the lore was portraying the Imperium's efforts as in any way justifiable. 40k hasn't been a satire of fascism for a long time. It's essentially capeshit where the majority of the fanbase are expected to cheer when their fascist good guy superheroes beat up their cartoonishly evil and less competent counterparts. In an effort to make 40k more marketable it has accidentally created a fascist power fantasy.
Of course its justifiable. The imperium is the only thing standing in the way of mankinds extinction, its extremisn is entirely neccessay. The lore on the age of technology and the age of strife makes the point that mankind tried being nice and allying with aliens, letting a myriad of different 'free' societies exist and using AI and tech to do all manner of things, and it all ended up in the fall and near extinction of the human race.
I disagree that is a benefit. I think it actually serves to render the satire toothless and makes fascists find 40k more welcoming as they see the others they wish to exterminate as just as much of a quantifiable threat as the imperium does its others.
So, the othering in 40k is not actually satirising the othering of groups by totalitarian regimes. It is just depicting it completely straight from the point of view of the fascists, making them justified in their crimes.
Yep, the single greatest mistake GW ever made with the lore was portraying the Imperium's efforts as in any way justifiable. 40k hasn't been a satire of fascism for a long time. It's essentially capeshit where the majority of the fanbase are expected to cheer when their fascist good guy superheroes beat up their cartoonishly evil and less competent counterparts. In an effort to make 40k more marketable it has accidentally created a fascist power fantasy.
Yeah, pretty much this. A universe where sexual deviants, religious minorities, and foreign immigrants will actually cause the downfall of the human race if not opposed with wild xenophobia is exactly what an actual fascist would write as fiction. If it's played straight, there's no satire.
Also, using fantasy settings as analogies for real-world social issues is hard to do well in the first place. If you're trying to do an allegory for real-world racism and your stand-in for a marginalized group has a statline that reads -4 Intelligence, there are some crass implications there. And a setting where you're objectively best off just committing genocide against them because otherwise they will become corrupted by demons and rise up to usurp your civilization probably really shouldn't be doing that allegory to begin with.
Formosa wrote: we are talking about "equity" and "Inclusion" which in praxis (as in theory applied in real terms) means exclusion of a desired out group and pre determined outcomes one wants to achieve
No it doesn't.
Yes it does, every time its applied in praxis it results in the exclusion of one out group in favour of another in group.
I don't believe you have fully developed your thinking regarding those terms.
You know what this made me chuckle because this is the EXACT response I get every time when I use these terms from people either denying or downplaying that I am exactly correct in their use, I am using the literal academic terms used by the people that came up with these concepts, I can ping over in a PM the books I got them from if you want mate?
You are using in/outgroup at a very shallow level; expanding an ingroup (the process of inclusion) does not, as you claimed, necessitate identifying an outgroup to subsequently exclude. Participation is not a zero-sum game.
I disagree that is a benefit. I think it actually serves to render the satire toothless and makes fascists find 40k more welcoming as they see the others they wish to exterminate as just as much of a quantifiable threat as the imperium does its others.
So, the othering in 40k is not actually satirising the othering of groups by totalitarian regimes. It is just depicting it completely straight from the point of view of the fascists, making them justified in their crimes.
Yep, the single greatest mistake GW ever made with the lore was portraying the Imperium's efforts as in any way justifiable. 40k hasn't been a satire of fascism for a long time. It's essentially capeshit where the majority of the fanbase are expected to cheer when their fascist good guy superheroes beat up their cartoonishly evil and less competent counterparts. In an effort to make 40k more marketable it has accidentally created a fascist power fantasy.
Of course its justifiable. The imperium is the only thing standing in the way of mankinds extinction, its extremisn is entirely neccessay. The lore on the age of technology and the age of strife makes the point that mankind tried being nice and allying with aliens, letting a myriad of different 'free' societies exist and using AI and tech to do all manner of things, and it all ended up in the fall and near extinction of the human race.
Not when it’s cyclical. Not when the hypothetical fall of The Imperium won’t necessitate the extinction of mankind. Not when The Imperium for all its inertia could be reordered to be less inwardly regressive and oppressive.
The horror is in not what The Imperium does, but how it goes about it, especially to its own citizens, those who’s security it’s claiming to be trying to achieve.
Yes it does, every time its applied in praxis it results in the exclusion of one out group in favour of another in group.
But, GW owns the background and do whatever they wish with it. On account you can do pretty much whatever you want with your own fictional universe.
That they’re now doing stuff you don’t agree with is, frankly irrelevant, unless you’re a major shareholder of GW’s, and your deciding vote was ignored.
How does Custodes recruiting male and female infants now exclude anyone? Riddle me that at least.
Well yes, they own the background and can do as they wish. But they have a large fanbase, so have to bear the consequences of doing whatever they wish.
Custodes recruitment, pre and post current retcon, doesn't exclude anyone as such. Its more that it has put off a lot of existing fans. Its abruplty changed established lore, put in question a large amount of literature on the topic, has been handled badly by GW on social media and has been done for as yet unclear but likely ideological reasons.
I disagree that is a benefit. I think it actually serves to render the satire toothless and makes fascists find 40k more welcoming as they see the others they wish to exterminate as just as much of a quantifiable threat as the imperium does its others.
So, the othering in 40k is not actually satirising the othering of groups by totalitarian regimes. It is just depicting it completely straight from the point of view of the fascists, making them justified in their crimes.
Yep, the single greatest mistake GW ever made with the lore was portraying the Imperium's efforts as in any way justifiable. 40k hasn't been a satire of fascism for a long time. It's essentially capeshit where the majority of the fanbase are expected to cheer when their fascist good guy superheroes beat up their cartoonishly evil and less competent counterparts. In an effort to make 40k more marketable it has accidentally created a fascist power fantasy.
Of course its justifiable. The imperium is the only thing standing in the way of mankinds extinction, its extremisn is entirely neccessay. The lore on the age of technology and the age of strife makes the point that mankind tried being nice and allying with aliens, letting a myriad of different 'free' societies exist and using AI and tech to do all manner of things, and it all ended up in the fall and near extinction of the human race.
Not when it’s cyclical. Not when the hypothetical fall of The Imperium won’t necessitate the extinction of mankind. Not when The Imperium for all its inertia could be reordered to be less inwardly regressive and oppressive.
The horror is in not what The Imperium does, but how it goes about it, especially to its own citizens, those who’s security it’s claiming to be trying to achieve.
The fall of The Imperium would obviously precipitate the extinction of mankind. There is unfortunately no other way it could do what it does, given the nature of its enemies and the nature of warp travel and communication. Not without further progress of the Emperor's plans for the development of mankind anyway.
I mean, has it really put off a lot of existing fans? I've seen allusions to videos that claim it has, but it does not seem to have put off genuine fans more than most retcons do.
Hell, I'm someone who hates retcons and the only thing I feel wrong with it is that this was a golden(no pun intended) opportunity to expand the Talons of the Emperor rather than just saying "female Custodes exist".
Robbienw wrote:Well yes, they own the background and can do as they wish. But they have a large fanbase, so have to bear the consequences of doing whatever they wish.
Custodes recruitment, pre and post current retcon, doesn't exclude anyone as such. Its more that it has put off a lot of existing fans. Its abruplty changed established lore, put in question a large amount of literature on the topic, has been handled badly by GW on social media and has been done for as yet unclear but likely ideological reasons.
What consequences? Given abrupt changes are part and parcel of 40K as a whole. You are aware that Marines weren’t originally post-human, yes? That Custodes once looked like this, yes?
That Dreadnoughts were once battle armour, like a Mecha, which the pilot grew increasingly addicted to and went insane from?
Or any of the dozens, if not hundreds, of tweaks, changes and retcons since 1987?
Shadows of Brimstone has great female mini representation and is much more popular with women, including my wife. And yes, cute animals are also a draw to some degree: the only 40k minis she painted were Tyranids.
Racism is a problem in real life, and if it were present in the game most of us never would have stuck around to get to know the lore. The whole point of the 40k satire is to use fake Sci Fi bigotry and religious extremism that lets them comment on real issues without furthering the actual injustices they are lampooning.
Ah yes, racism should not be permitted in 40k because real people have been affected by racism.
Meanwhile, it's perfectly fine for 40k to feature genocide, because no one has ever been affected by that.
You cut out the rest of my post. Clearly, fantasy racism against fantasy races is part of the setting and an important part of the satire of real life racism. Similarly fantasy genocide of fantasy peoples can satirize real violence and real injustices without depicting the actual genocides of actual people.
Once again, you see this all the time in Sci Fi and fantasy. Gul Dukat works as a genocidal monster character because he is a Cardassian, a made up race who committed war crimes on a made up people. If you made a show with a charismatic antagonist based on a real Nazi who oversaw a real concentration camp, it wouldn’t work.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: 40K also benefits from those being “Othered” actually being a quantifiable threat. Not just to the wealth of the powerful, but to planets and systems as a whole.
I disagree that is a benefit. I think it actually serves to render the satire toothless and makes fascists find 40k more welcoming as they see the others they wish to exterminate as just as much of a quantifiable threat as the imperium does its others.
So, the othering in 40k is not actually satirising the othering of groups by totalitarian regimes. It is just depicting it completely straight from the point of view of the fascists, making them justified in their crimes.
I agree with this. It muddies the satire and makes the fantasy racism look justified.
I disagree that is a benefit. I think it actually serves to render the satire toothless and makes fascists find 40k more welcoming as they see the others they wish to exterminate as just as much of a quantifiable threat as the imperium does its others.
So, the othering in 40k is not actually satirising the othering of groups by totalitarian regimes. It is just depicting it completely straight from the point of view of the fascists, making them justified in their crimes.
Yep, the single greatest mistake GW ever made with the lore was portraying the Imperium's efforts as in any way justifiable. 40k hasn't been a satire of fascism for a long time. It's essentially capeshit where the majority of the fanbase are expected to cheer when their fascist good guy superheroes beat up their cartoonishly evil and less competent counterparts. In an effort to make 40k more marketable it has accidentally created a fascist power fantasy.
Of course its justifiable. The imperium is the only thing standing in the way of mankinds extinction, its extremisn is entirely neccessay. The lore on the age of technology and the age of strife makes the point that mankind tried being nice and allying with aliens, letting a myriad of different 'free' societies exist and using AI and tech to do all manner of things, and it all ended up in the fall and near extinction of the human race.
Not when it’s cyclical. Not when the hypothetical fall of The Imperium won’t necessitate the extinction of mankind. Not when The Imperium for all its inertia could be reordered to be less inwardly regressive and oppressive.
The horror is in not what The Imperium does, but how it goes about it, especially to its own citizens, those who’s security it’s claiming to be trying to achieve.
I feel like these are the two interpretations of Warhammer 40,000 lore that is really quite up in the air. To what extent is 40k a satire?
Fans cannot agree on it- and I think that's in part because the lore writers and GW corporate cannot agree on it consistently (some eras are more satirical, some more dryly presented).
Does Warhammer 40,000's Imperium represent a necessary evil? Is it grimdark because fascism and oppression are the only ways to escape complete extinction in a harsh universe that would enslave or devour all humans? In effect, is the Imperium the "best of all possible governments" because nothing that allows for personal liberty can survive?
Or does that attitude represent the Imperial propaganda machine- and the setting satirically portrays a society of humans stuck in a mindset so reactionary that they double down on their atrocities rather than admit that anything better can be achieved? Could humanity be far better served by a government that values individual lives and allows for personal freedoms as provided by a democratic republic that values scientific progress?
In my opinion, the second is the case. The Imperium is not the best of all possible governments- which I think is partly demonstrated with some of the thriving worlds that were conquered in the Great Crusade. Another big factor for me comes from the portrayal of the technology- it is easy to imagine that if humans had kept inventing things for the past ten thousand years and made their technology available, they could improve the lives of individual humans.
But I think both readings are valid readings of the source materials- I think that many individual sources point more towards the Imperium being the best of only bad options rather than an oppressive machine that continues its oppression out of sheer inertia. I don't think that interpretation necessarily means that you agree with the fascist sentiments (though it is clear that some people on the internet do).
Kanluwen wrote: I mean, has it really put off a lot of existing fans? I've seen allusions to videos that claim it has, but it does not seem to have put off genuine fans more than most retcons do.
I can only go on what I've seen on various forums and social media sites, but it seems to have put a lot of genuine fans off yes. Its seems to have also brought in a lot of non-fans whose sole objective seems to be to gloat over the retcon and abuse people who aren't in favour of it.
The opening text tells us it is the cruelest and bloodiest regime imaginable. All the text after that tells us it is the coolest and funnest regime imaginable.
Robbienw wrote:Well yes, they own the background and can do as they wish. But they have a large fanbase, so have to bear the consequences of doing whatever they wish.
Custodes recruitment, pre and post current retcon, doesn't exclude anyone as such. Its more that it has put off a lot of existing fans. Its abruplty changed established lore, put in question a large amount of literature on the topic, has been handled badly by GW on social media and has been done for as yet unclear but likely ideological reasons.
What consequences?
The consequences of making a decision that some fans don't like. Obviously. The nature of those consequences will depend on the number of fans not in favour and the severity of their dissatisfaction of course.
Of course its justifiable. The imperium is the only thing standing in the way of mankinds extinction, its extremisn is entirely neccessay. The lore on the age of technology and the age of strife makes the point that mankind tried being nice and allying with aliens, letting a myriad of different 'free' societies exist and using AI and tech to do all manner of things, and it all ended up in the fall and near extinction of the human race.
Enjoy your fascist superhero power fantasy little fella.
Hardly. This is not fantasy, the whole point of the Imperium is mankind has to resort to this level of extremism to survive.
I disagree that is a benefit. I think it actually serves to render the satire toothless and makes fascists find 40k more welcoming as they see the others they wish to exterminate as just as much of a quantifiable threat as the imperium does its others.
So, the othering in 40k is not actually satirising the othering of groups by totalitarian regimes. It is just depicting it completely straight from the point of view of the fascists, making them justified in their crimes.
Yep, the single greatest mistake GW ever made with the lore was portraying the Imperium's efforts as in any way justifiable. 40k hasn't been a satire of fascism for a long time. It's essentially capeshit where the majority of the fanbase are expected to cheer when their fascist good guy superheroes beat up their cartoonishly evil and less competent counterparts. In an effort to make 40k more marketable it has accidentally created a fascist power fantasy.
Of course its justifiable. The imperium is the only thing standing in the way of mankinds extinction, its extremisn is entirely neccessay. The lore on the age of technology and the age of strife makes the point that mankind tried being nice and allying with aliens, letting a myriad of different 'free' societies exist and using AI and tech to do all manner of things, and it all ended up in the fall and near extinction of the human race.
And that is exactly what the Nazis said and why they went all in on eugenics. So feth off with that argument. But thanks for turning up and proving my point about the Imperium and its methods being a complete failure of satirical writing that has served to create a fascist state that morons can cheer for.
That remains to be seen. As i just said, the severity of the consequences will depend on the number of fans not in favour and the severity of their dissatisfaction. It will also depend on how the situation develops going forward.
Said consequences will not all be immediately obvious.
I disagree that is a benefit. I think it actually serves to render the satire toothless and makes fascists find 40k more welcoming as they see the others they wish to exterminate as just as much of a quantifiable threat as the imperium does its others.
So, the othering in 40k is not actually satirising the othering of groups by totalitarian regimes. It is just depicting it completely straight from the point of view of the fascists, making them justified in their crimes.
Yep, the single greatest mistake GW ever made with the lore was portraying the Imperium's efforts as in any way justifiable. 40k hasn't been a satire of fascism for a long time. It's essentially capeshit where the majority of the fanbase are expected to cheer when their fascist good guy superheroes beat up their cartoonishly evil and less competent counterparts. In an effort to make 40k more marketable it has accidentally created a fascist power fantasy.
Of course its justifiable. The imperium is the only thing standing in the way of mankinds extinction, its extremisn is entirely neccessay. The lore on the age of technology and the age of strife makes the point that mankind tried being nice and allying with aliens, letting a myriad of different 'free' societies exist and using AI and tech to do all manner of things, and it all ended up in the fall and near extinction of the human race.
And that is exactly what the Nazis said and why they went all in on eugenics. So feth off with that argument.
I think you need to come back to reality and not immediately switch to reductio ad nazium when somebody says something you don't like about 40k. Its a ridiculous position to take. Its a fictional setting, the main threats in which are highly unrealistic aliens and magically corrupted humans which bear no relation to anything in real life.
Orks and Tyranids? Sure, there’s no good coming from trying to bargain with them, and neither are going to respect borders and treaties. Tyranids because there’s nothing to negotiate with. Orks because they’re anarchy incarnate, who do a lot of what they do because, to them, it’s funny.
Craftworld and Exodite Eldar, Necrons and Tau? Those you can, and the Imperium has, allied with in the short term. Sure you’d need to be vigilant, but long term treaties could work.
Votann? Already have trade pacts. And have had such going back to the founding of The Imperium.
Chaos? Yeah just don’t. Nothing good will come of that.
The Imperium’s way is not the only way. It’s not even the most efficient way, as right now they’re at war with everyone everywhere all at once, whilst doing precious little if anything to improve the lives of its citizenry, who are damned to the very worst kind of feudalism, their lives expended mostly to support the power and status of their overlords.
The Ad Mech’s hoarding nature actively holds mankind back. Whilst its superstition has some merit (AI bad, lead to bad things, but where did it begin, when does a Machine Spirit cross that line? Tread carefully), its hoarding of secrets for personal prestige is senseless.
robbienw wrote: I think you need to come back to reality and not immediately switch to reductio ad nazium when somebody says something you don't like about 40k. Its a ridiculous position to take. Its a fictional setting, the main threats in which are highly unrealistic aliens and magically corrupted humans which bear no relation to anything in real life.
And despite being so unrealistic, the idea of a woman being a Marine is a bridge too far?
I think you need to come back to reality and not immediately switch to reductio ad nazium when somebody says something you don't like about 40k. Its a ridiculous position to take. Its a fictional setting, the main threats in which are highly unrealistic aliens and magically corrupted humans which bear no relation to anything in real life.
When you write a setting in which a fascist state is saying that there are insidious elements of society seeking to destroy it entirely and that they must be exterminated, which is exactly what the nazis said about jews, and you then make that fascist state completely justified in that fear and paranoia and their methods, then you are making fascist propaganda, not critique.
Orks and Tyranids? Sure, there’s no good coming from trying to bargain with them, and neither are going to respect borders and treaties. Tyranids because there’s nothing to negotiate with. Orks because they’re anarchy incarnate, who do a lot of what they do because, to them, it’s funny.
Craftworld and Exodite Eldar, Necrons and Tau? Those you can, and the Imperium has, allied with in the short term. Sure you’d need to be vigilant, but long term treaties could work.
Votann? Already have trade pacts. And have had such going back to the founding of The Imperium.
Chaos? Yeah just don’t. Nothing good will come of that.
The Imperium’s way is not the only way. It’s not even the most efficient way, as right now they’re at war with everyone everywhere all at once, whilst doing precious little if anything to improve the lives of its citizenry, who are damned to the very worst kind of feudalism, their lives expended mostly to support the power and status of their overlords.
The Ad Mech’s hoarding nature actively holds mankind back. Whilst its superstition has some merit (AI bad, lead to bad things, but where did it begin, when does a Machine Spirit cross that line? Tread carefully), its hoarding of secrets for personal prestige is senseless.
They can with the Votann because they are a gene engineered varaint of humans. But the rest the Imperium cannot reliably ally or negotiate with. Huamnity learned that lesson in the Age of Strife when everything fell apart, there is no point going revisiting previous failure.
I'm sure the imperium could be made more efficient, but it would probably need a period of respite to acheive this and several more Primarchs or other great hero's, which given the current state of the galaxy is just not achievable. Other changes woud just lead to greater levels of rebellion, fragmentation of humanity and chaos corruption, which all lead to extinction.
The Admech are necessarily holding back mankind. Mankind's unfettered technological development pre-age of strife, with AI and Men of Steel Rebellion and insanely powerful weapons of mass destruction in part lead to mankids pre-imperial downfall and near extinction.
robbienw wrote: I think you need to come back to reality and not immediately switch to reductio ad nazium when somebody says something you don't like about 40k. Its a ridiculous position to take. Its a fictional setting, the main threats in which are highly unrealistic aliens and magically corrupted humans which bear no relation to anything in real life.
And despite being so unrealistic, the idea of a woman being a Marine is a bridge too far?
Yes, given the vanishingly small amount of men who are suitable. Its irrelevant though as the owners of the setting say its not mechanically possible.
Formosa wrote: as to your question, for decades the Custodes were a male organisation, many liked this for various reasons, now by changing it you are excluding those people who do not like the change when their views are just as valid as yours, are you ok with excluding people in such a manner or will you just label them with some epithet to justify it?
Remember that time a bunch of Neanderthals marched down the street with tiki torches chanting, "you will not replace us" and the vast majority of people said, "that's not okay"? Yeah, not all views are valid. Like the Klan's, for example.
And one is saying that if you don't like the change you're not allowed to play 40k anymore. You're just less allowed to tell other people what they can't do, and that is tends upset certain groups of people.
Overread wrote: Don't forget classisms?
Many Imperial worlds have a class tiered society and its VERY evident that many upper classes consider the peasantry to be lesser creatures than them. People who can be killed by the thousands by faulty machinery or cheap food or lack of proper healthcare and those upper classes sleep sound at night.
Yeah, we are allowed to have culture wars over gender, but oddly few people in government and media wants to talk about that class stuff and its implications, so that is fine to put in
Formosa wrote: as to your question, for decades the Custodes were a male organisation, many liked this for various reasons, now by changing it you are excluding those people who do not like the change when their views are just as valid as yours, are you ok with excluding people in such a manner or will you just label them with some epithet to justify it?
Remember that time a bunch of Neanderthals marched down the street with tiki torches chanting, "you will not replace us" and the vast majority of people said, "that's not okay"? Yeah, not all views are valid. Like the Klan's, for example.
And one is saying that if you don't like the change you're not allowed to play 40k anymore. You're just less allowed to tell other people what they can't do, and that is tends upset certain groups of people.
Hey, let's get that right. They were also chanting "Jews will not replace us", and "Blood and soil" which is a literal Nazi slogan that was part of the propaganda to justify Nazi expansion into, and the genocide of the native population of, eastern europe.
robbienw wrote: Of course its justifiable. The imperium is the only thing standing in the way of mankinds extinction, its extremisn is entirely neccessay. The lore on the age of technology and the age of strife makes the point that mankind tried being nice and allying with aliens, letting a myriad of different 'free' societies exist and using AI and tech to do all manner of things, and it all ended up in the fall and near extinction of the human race.
Given ten minutes and a notepad you could probably come up with better alternatives. Indeed the Imperium periodically comes into contact with isolated human factions that are doing quite well in different ways.. and exterminates them. I think though GW either from an in universe point of view of the natural desire to justify things does go out of its way to explain how this is all necessary. (and then contradict it with stuff like grav tanks for everyone.)
Kanluwen wrote: I mean, has it really put off a lot of existing fans? I've seen allusions to videos that claim it has, but it does not seem to have put off genuine fans more than most retcons do.
I can only go on what I've seen on various forums and social media sites, but it seems to have put a lot of genuine fans off yes. Its seems to have also brought in a lot of non-fans whose sole objective seems to be to gloat over the retcon and abuse people who aren't in favour of it.
I've seen the opposite. It seems like a lot of non-fans have entered 40k spaces in order to stoke politically motivated outrage. Ironically, I find that many of these people are accusing us older grognards of being "completely new to the hobby."
The thing is, the movements of right-wing social media activists moving into geek fan communities is documented in other spaces, so all we have to go on right now is anecdotes. But I do get annoyed with people telling us RT vets that we're "brand new to Warhammer."
I also find myself completely unsympathetic to the idea that female exclusion was part of the inherent character of the Custodes. It seems that even experienced fans are getting them confused with Astartes right now.
I think you need to come back to reality and not immediately switch to reductio ad nazium when somebody says something you don't like about 40k. Its a ridiculous position to take. Its a fictional setting, the main threats in which are highly unrealistic aliens and magically corrupted humans which bear no relation to anything in real life.
When you write a setting in which a fascist state is saying that there are insidious elements of society seeking to destroy it entirely and that they must be exterminated, which is exactly what the nazis said about jews, and you then make that fascist state completely justified in that fear and paranoia and their methods, then you are making fascist propaganda, not critique.
In 40k in the imperium, there are insidious elements seeking to end the imperium and mankind, who do need to be destroyed if mankind is to continue existing. But they are not specific ethnic or racial groups of people, and not identifiable to any real life groups. Trying to relate that to real world examples and saying any 40k groups are direct equivalents of real life groups, like nazi germany and the jewish people, and telling people they are wrong because of this is deeply, deeply odd behaviour.
robbienw wrote: I think you need to come back to reality and not immediately switch to reductio ad nazium when somebody says something you don't like about 40k. Its a ridiculous position to take. Its a fictional setting, the main threats in which are highly unrealistic aliens and magically corrupted humans which bear no relation to anything in real life.
But it's not ridiculous to take a misogynistic stance on a game of toy soldiers in a fictional setting because someone made a change you don't like?
RaptorusRex wrote: I feel like this scrum over whether the Imperium is justified could be solved by just linking the "For everyone" post and we could leave it there.
Well. I don't think the writers intended to create allegorical apologism of fascism. But they ended up creating one by accident.
I mostly blame Black Library for this shift. When it was just a wargame, there was certain detachment to it. You could just describe the horrors of the setting, then the tiny toy soldiers fought. But once you start to write novels, you kinda need to have at least somewhat likeable characters, and easiest way to do so is to write such people as heroes. And as everyone likes marines, those heroes will be marines, and so then starts the shift from amoral murder machines to shiny and gallant defenders of humanity. I think the return of Guilliman was the culmination of this trend, where he is portrayed as this noble saviour. Now the de facto leader of this fascist totalitarian hellstate is someone who look like a hero and who is written as one. It is just quite disgusting and has really soured the 40K lore for me.
Kanluwen wrote: I mean, has it really put off a lot of existing fans? I've seen allusions to videos that claim it has, but it does not seem to have put off genuine fans more than most retcons do.
I can only go on what I've seen on various forums and social media sites, but it seems to have put a lot of genuine fans off yes. Its seems to have also brought in a lot of non-fans whose sole objective seems to be to gloat over the retcon and abuse people who aren't in favour of it.
And on the flipside, it also seems to have brought in a lot of non-fans whose sole objective is to complain about it.
robbienw wrote: Of course its justifiable. The imperium is the only thing standing in the way of mankinds extinction, its extremisn is entirely neccessay. The lore on the age of technology and the age of strife makes the point that mankind tried being nice and allying with aliens, letting a myriad of different 'free' societies exist and using AI and tech to do all manner of things, and it all ended up in the fall and near extinction of the human race.
Given ten minutes and a notepad you could probably come up with better alternatives. Indeed the Imperium periodically comes into contact with isolated human factions that are doing quite well in different ways.. and exterminates them. I think though GW either from an in universe point of view of the natural desire to justify things does go out of its way to explain how this is all necessary. (and then contradict it with stuff like grav tanks for everyone.)
Any 'better alternative' you could have come up with was likely in existence pre-age of strife, so is destined for failure as then.
Isolated factions only do well because they are isolated, and need to remain in hiding to do so. If they come into contact with the galaxy at large they don't have the military might to resist things like Tyranid and Ork invasions, and don't have the awareness to resist things like chaos corruption and gene stealer cults.
robbienw wrote: I think you need to come back to reality and not immediately switch to reductio ad nazium when somebody says something you don't like about 40k. Its a ridiculous position to take. Its a fictional setting, the main threats in which are highly unrealistic aliens and magically corrupted humans which bear no relation to anything in real life.
But it's not ridiculous to take a misogynistic stance on a game of toy soldiers in a fictional setting because someone made a change you don't like?
Its not misogynistic, just as someone not liking a change allowing men into the Sisters of Battle would not be misandristic.
Miguelsan wrote:Or worse, GW could take notes from Amazon/Netfilx, and start suplanting core characters by female versions. I don't know who that Marneus Calgar fellow you keep mentioning is, there is a Marneix Calgarix, and it's always been that way.
I'd say that's a direct detriment to the game, and it would matter a lot.
Marneus Calgar has already been changed. He no longer wears Terminator Armour, and his name's not even Marneus Calgar. It's Tacitus.
Formosa wrote:this is why its always about the space marines because its not about "representation" "diversity" or whatever, its about taking away what you have, removing one more barrier to force people to engage in politics, such is living in a post Marcusean world.
huh???
Formosa wrote:Men should have control over their own space in the same manner as woman have control over their own space, both should, do and can fight for that space in an appropriate manner, there are also plenty of shared spaces. Now if we are talking about the lore then this is a male represented space and as such people have every right to advocate for it to remain that way.
There'd be nothing wrong with an all-male faction - IF they didn't happen to be the main face of the setting, with the lions' share of treatment, the most stories, a whole spinoff setting focused on them, the most easily accessible variation of aesthetics, the most beginner friendly, and have the entire weight of GW's cultural inertia behind them. You talk about "plenty of shared spaces", but none of those "shared spaces" have the same clout as Space Marines, do they?
Also, why would having women Space Marines threaten your own all-dudes Space Marines?
And what of the men who want to hand over "their space" to include women?
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: 40K also benefits from those being “Othered” actually being a quantifiable threat. Not just to the wealth of the powerful, but to planets and systems as a whole.
I disagree that is a benefit. I think it actually serves to render the satire toothless and makes fascists find 40k more welcoming as they see the others they wish to exterminate as just as much of a quantifiable threat as the imperium does its others.
So, the othering in 40k is not actually satirising the othering of groups by totalitarian regimes. It is just depicting it completely straight from the point of view of the fascists, making them justified in their crimes.
Yep, fully agreed. "Imperium is horrible, but it is so by necessity" is not something I want to be taken seriously. It of course is what the Imperials in the setting beleive, but it should be shown to be misguided. This is not to say that there cannot be genuine treats, but the narrative should be that by being xenophobic totalitarian pricks the Imperium actually makes the situation worse.
Strongly agreed. If GW are to lean into the "psykers can't be trusted/mutants represent a threat", then they should/could include some fluff about how, on one planet, psykers are treated well and have no risk of Perils, and that those with mutations are treated or welcomed into their culture - and then have them get destroyed by the Imperium who can't understand how such a thing is possible. Make it clear that the psyker-mutant culture *is stable, thriving, and is having no problems* - and then show that the Imperium is working against the ethical survival of humankind.
Formosa wrote:what is YOUR motivation as we know its certainly not representation or inclusion as you are seeking to exclude those who do not want a change and deny them their representation.
You're still represented. You're just not just represented *at the cost of everything else*.
as to your question, for decades the Custodes were a male organisation, many liked this for various reasons, now by changing it you are excluding those people who do not like the change when their views are just as valid as yours, are you ok with excluding people in such a manner or will you just label them with some epithet to justify it?
For decades, the Custodes weren't even on the tabletop, and were oiled up shirtless cone-heads. Them being "male" was predicated simply on the assumption that there were no women. It was only in the 8th ed Custodes codex that anything implied with any clarity that they were all male.
And, more to the point - if you or others like Custodes as a male group of sweaty oiled up homoerotic bodybuilders, then you can still do that! Your own collection can be their own scpcial sausage party. Who cares what other people do with their models, am I right?
robbienw wrote:Of course its justifiable. The imperium is the only thing standing in the way of mankinds extinction, its extremisn is entirely neccessay.
Only because the Imperium *destroys everything else that could provide an alternative*.
The Interex.
The Auretian Technocracy.
Gue'vesa.
Countless other human group destroyed in the Great Crusade.
The Imperium is even *actively* welcomed for negotiation with the Tau, and guess what? The Imperium tries to wipe them out.
The Imperium are not the good guys, and are not justified to do what they do. They never have been. If, for a moment, you think the Imperium are justified, I kindly remind you that even GW disagrees with you, and have told you that you should not be idolising the Imperium in any way.
robbienw wrote: Its a ridiculous position to take. Its a fictional setting, the main threats in which are highly unrealistic aliens and magically corrupted humans which bear no relation to anything in real life.
Kanluwen wrote: I mean, has it really put off a lot of existing fans? I've seen allusions to videos that claim it has, but it does not seem to have put off genuine fans more than most retcons do.
I can only go on what I've seen on various forums and social media sites, but it seems to have put a lot of genuine fans off yes. Its seems to have also brought in a lot of non-fans whose sole objective seems to be to gloat over the retcon and abuse people who aren't in favour of it.
And on the flipside, it also seems to have brought in a lot of non-fans whose sole objective is to complain about it.
Perhaps. Its a hot button issue and its a very popular franchise that a lot of people have some awareness of. These kind of things make people take sides and attract lots of commentary.
The Age of Strife happened because the Eldar fethed up on a monumental scale. The setting in no way suggests the IoM in predestined to exist.
Anyway, aliens are no more perfidous than humanity themselves. Most of the highest profile events in the history of the IoM have been civil wars not alien invasions (until M41 it was pretty much just the War of the Beast vs a bunch of massive civil wars).
robbienw wrote:Of course its justifiable. The imperium is the only thing standing in the way of mankinds extinction, its extremisn is entirely neccessay.
Only because the Imperium *destroys everything else that could provide an alternative*.
The Interex.
The Auretian Technocracy.
Gue'vesa.
Countless other human group destroyed in the Great Crusade.
The Imperium is even *actively* welcomed for negotiation with the Tau, and guess what? The Imperium tries to wipe them out.
The Imperium are not the good guys, and are not justified to do what they do. They never have been. If, for a moment, you think the Imperium are justified, I kindly remind you that even GW disagrees with you, and have told you that you should not be idolising the Imperium in any way.
robbienw wrote: Its a ridiculous position to take. Its a fictional setting, the main threats in which are highly unrealistic aliens and magically corrupted humans which bear no relation to anything in real life.
But women soldiers are a step too far?
I'm not idolising anyone, I'm not sure why you would say that. I'm saying how the imperium in 40k works and why it does what it does, because the other 'alternative' societies have already been proven not to work in pre-imperial times, and the imperium doesn't have time to waste.
robbienw wrote: I think you need to come back to reality and not immediately switch to reductio ad nazium when somebody says something you don't like about 40k. Its a ridiculous position to take. Its a fictional setting, the main threats in which are highly unrealistic aliens and magically corrupted humans which bear no relation to anything in real life.
But it's not ridiculous to take a misogynistic stance on a game of toy soldiers in a fictional setting because someone made a change you don't like?
Seems potentially equally rediculous to demand change of a product designed by men and aimed at boys/men. I would personally feel a bit ridiculous asking for equal representation in Barbie dolls or romance novels. Like, it's just not my space and I'm ok with that.
robbienw wrote: I think you need to come back to reality and not immediately switch to reductio ad nazium when somebody says something you don't like about 40k. Its a ridiculous position to take. Its a fictional setting, the main threats in which are highly unrealistic aliens and magically corrupted humans which bear no relation to anything in real life.
But it's not ridiculous to take a misogynistic stance on a game of toy soldiers in a fictional setting because someone made a change you don't like?
Seems potentially equally rediculous to demand change of a product designed by men and aimed at boys/men. I would personally feel a bit ridiculous asking for equal representation in Barbie dolls or romance novels. Like, it's just not my space and I'm ok with that.
Barbie does have equal representation. You have Barbie, and you have Ken.
robbienw wrote:I'm saying how the imperium in 40k works and why it does what it does, because the other 'alternative' societies have already been proven not to work in pre-imperial times, and the imperium doesn't have time to waste.
The Tau disprove that. Humans live in the Tau Empire without a problem.
Plus, you say "were proven not to work" - yes, because the Imperium *killed them*.
The Imperium are not justified, nor as they the "only chance" for humanity's survival.
RaptorusRex wrote: I feel like this scrum over whether the Imperium is justified could be solved by just linking the "For everyone" post and we could leave it there.
Well. I don't think the writers intended to create allegorical apologism of fascism. But they ended up creating one by accident.
I mostly blame Black Library for this shift. When it was just a wargame, there was certain detachment to it. You could just describe the horrors of the setting, then the tiny toy soldiers fought. But once you start to write novels, you kinda need to have at least somewhat likeable characters, and easiest way to do so is to write such people as heroes. And as everyone likes marines, those heroes will be marines, and so then starts the shift from amoral murder machines to shiny and gallant defenders of humanity. I think the return of Guilliman was the culmination of this trend, where he is portrayed as this noble saviour. Not the de facto leader of this fascist totalitarian hellstate is someone who look like a hero and who is written as one. It is just quite disgusting and has really soured the 40K lore for me.
I think the core issue is just that the original satire isn't particularly interesting anymore. There's not really any further depths of uncaring systematic corruption left to mine out of the setting and attempts to tell new stories are limited by it all pretty much having been done. Yes, yes, we're sacrificing this entire planet due to a greedy governor allowing alien/demonic corruption in for personal gain. Billions dead. So tragic.
I know people don't want the marines to be the good guys, but realistically, its the more interesting story and challenging at this point. The return of relics of better days seeing how far things have fallen trying to make the Imperium into what it once aspired to be. The true hurdles of the setting being superstition and entrenched power structures. Taking accountability for attrocities committed so that different societies can unite against unimaginable threats. There's no end to the horrors, but you can actually frame them as horrible again with a shift in perspective.
robbienw wrote: I think you need to come back to reality and not immediately switch to reductio ad nazium when somebody says something you don't like about 40k. Its a ridiculous position to take. Its a fictional setting, the main threats in which are highly unrealistic aliens and magically corrupted humans which bear no relation to anything in real life.
But it's not ridiculous to take a misogynistic stance on a game of toy soldiers in a fictional setting because someone made a change you don't like?
Seems potentially equally rediculous to demand change of a product designed by men and aimed at boys/men. I would personally feel a bit ridiculous asking for equal representation in Barbie dolls or romance novels. Like, it's just not my space and I'm ok with that.
Barbie does have equal representation. You have Barbie, and you have Ken.
That's incredibly disingenous, you know for a fact that Ken is not the main focus in Barbie and has far less toys and options/outfits, he's basically an accessory to the main line.
Barbie does have equal representation. You have Barbie, and you have Ken.
That's incredibly disingenous, you know for a fact that Ken is not the main focus in Barbie and has far less toys and options/outfits, he's basically an accessory to the main line.
Seems potentially equally rediculous to demand change of a product designed by men and aimed at boys/men. I would personally feel a bit ridiculous asking for equal representation in Barbie dolls or romance novels. Like, it's just not my space and I'm ok with that.
I think this might be part of the direction that's emerging though; YES, in 1987, a game was made by men for boys/men as the primary target. Funny though, once you're approaching four decades, there are societal changes that may have to be addressed.
In the 80's most RPGs and Video Games were also made by men for boys... But holy crap has that changed. World of Darkness blew up male domination of RPGs. Once Anne Rice fans found out there was a roleplaying game for them, and RPG's weren't just "Conan the Barbarian" anymore, other game companies stated to think "Hmmm- these women are not only players... They're customers!"
Video games too.
And it leads to inclusion at the design and conceptual stage. If you look at GW's design ethos since 8th, it's very much been "Get every player: Some will stay and some will not, so get them ALL!" This is why there have been three ways to play since 8th. And this is why core design took cues from TCG's. What, you like nerd card games? Well guess what? We've got cards. Like RPG's? Let me introduce you to Crusade. Want something faster and easier? Let's talk Open/ Combat Patrol.
And women fit in. When's the last all male tale of four gamers/warlords in WD? We've had WH+ Masterclass run by a woman, we've got female WD staff. And I think that things are being designed to appeal to a broader base. A game by men for boys/men can coast on it's considerable inertia for some time. But the writing IS on the wall- eventually, you aren't going to be able to survive with a product that excludes 50% of the market by design. So incremental changes now allow us to arrive at a place where the customer base is as broad as it needs to be before it's too late.
Kinda like the way ALL car companies are now exploring EV's, not just Tesla. Because you've got to be prepared to be nimble enough to adapt to the changing marketplace- and sometimes that means getting ahead of the curve, because if the curve comes and you've done no prep, it's often too late to shift gears.
Grimskul wrote: That's incredibly disingenous, you know for a fact that Ken is not the main focus in Barbie and has far less toys and options/outfits, he's basically an accessory to the main line.
And now you know why anyone who shouts, "But Sisters!" is wrong.
The thing is that the Imperium never aspired to be anything but what it is. The Emperor was a fascist tyrant from day 1, launching his campaign for Lebensraum and an eternal Reich secured by his Ubermensch and with him as it's Fuhrer. Sure he can claim he meant to step back and let others take over later, but people such as Augustus Caesar said the same thing. Here's the spoiler, they never did.
There is still plenty of room for satire in 40k using modern events as inspiration, it is just that GW won't do it because it would threaten their bottom line more to actually turn satire against modern authoritarian movements than just allowing their world to become fascist propaganda.
Grimskul wrote: That's incredibly disingenous, you know for a fact that Ken is not the main focus in Barbie and has far less toys and options/outfits, he's basically an accessory to the main line.
And now you know why anyone who shouts, "But Sisters!" is wrong.
I mean, Ken is a massive afterthought, whilest sisters were one of the oldest incorporated factions, just GW criminaly disregarded them so it's not the gotcha you think it is.
That's incredibly disingenous, you know for a fact that Ken is not the main focus in Barbie and has far less toys and options/outfits, he's basically an accessory to the main line.
So you're saying it is possible to have representation of both sexes in a toy line without it damaging the brands targeting towards its demographic?
So, what is the problem with female custodes again?
Kanluwen wrote: I mean, has it really put off a lot of existing fans? I've seen allusions to videos that claim it has, but it does not seem to have put off genuine fans more than most retcons do.
I can only go on what I've seen on various forums and social media sites, but it seems to have put a lot of genuine fans off yes. Its seems to have also brought in a lot of non-fans whose sole objective seems to be to gloat over the retcon and abuse people who aren't in favour of it.
So we lost a few people? So what? They'll be replaced soon enough twice over with brand new players who don't know anything about a Custodes. Let alone are concerned about female Custodes.....
As for non-fans entering gloating & "abusing"? Pay them no mind. Thier opinions don't matter.
Grimskul wrote: That's incredibly disingenous, you know for a fact that Ken is not the main focus in Barbie and has far less toys and options/outfits, he's basically an accessory to the main line.
And now you know why anyone who shouts, "But Sisters!" is wrong.
Except 40k isn't just about Marines, but Barbie is about Barbie.
The idea that everyone has to play second fiddle to marines is rather disrespectful for those who don't play them or want to play them. I care little for such favoritism, especially when it already resulted in some factions being outright neglected.
Kanluwen wrote: I mean, has it really put off a lot of existing fans? I've seen allusions to videos that claim it has, but it does not seem to have put off genuine fans more than most retcons do.
I can only go on what I've seen on various forums and social media sites, but it seems to have put a lot of genuine fans off yes. Its seems to have also brought in a lot of non-fans whose sole objective seems to be to gloat over the retcon and abuse people who aren't in favour of it.
So we lost a few people? So what? They'll be replaced soon enough twice over with brand new players who don't know anything about a Custodes. Let alone are concerned about female Custodes.....
As for non-fans entering gloating & "abusing"? Pay them no mind. Thier opinions don't matter.
And if we did lose a few people, they're probably the ones the community is better off without.
But let me flip that argument around. Let’s say the inclusion of female models in a given game doesn’t increase female players or customers?
You’d then have to demonstrate it’s caused a direct detriment to the game for it to matter.
Unfortunately, you can't flip arguments like that. That's why a defendant in court isn't asked to provide evidence that they didn't commit the crime and why a theist's "counterargument" of "but you don't have evidence that god isn't real" makes no logical sense.
The burden of proof is on the one making a claim.
Btw, I don't care either way. I was just wondering if evidence can be provided to support the claim that increased number of female models increases female participation in a wargame or if it is just a shower thought. I have never played Guild Ball (which I regret!) or a wargame with similar representation of female models so I was wondering if members of these communities can confirm or disprove this correlation.
I stil stand by my (lifelong observation supported) shower thought that increasing the number of cute animal models would do a much better job in that respect.
In my experience, there was a larger percentage of women playing Warmachine and Confrontation than Warhammer. Both games had better representation thsn 40k (which does not say much)
I have nothing but anecdotal evidence on the matter, and there were still more men than women- especially among the regional competition scenes.
On a similar note, the number of women playing RPGs over my lifetime seems to have increased quite a lot- and it does correspond with an increase in representation in the art and lore.
I can also note that women who are fans of current fantasy novels favor authors with more equal representation, and don't seem very attracted to the new books that are very unequal.
(Notwithstanding that most of those women like Tolkien in spite of his lack of representation- none of them seem to enjoy Tolkien because if it. Go figure).
You cut out the rest of my post. Clearly, fantasy racism against fantasy races is part of the setting and an important part of the satire of real life racism. Similarly fantasy genocide of fantasy peoples can satirize real violence and real injustices without depicting the actual genocides of actual people.
Once again, you see this all the time in Sci Fi and fantasy. Gul Dukat works as a genocidal monster character because he is a Cardassian, a made up race who committed war crimes on a made up people. If you made a show with a charismatic antagonist based on a real Nazi who oversaw a real concentration camp, it wouldn’t work.
I'm scratching my head as to what you're arguing here.
You say that fantasy racism is okay and part of the setting, so long as it involves fictional races. However, the Imperium comprises thousands of worlds. Surely virtually all of them will involve fictional races/ethnicities? Not only that, but race/ethnicity seems to be largely defined by world.
Surely Cadians being racist towards Catachans or Vostroyans would amount to fictional racism?
But let me flip that argument around. Let’s say the inclusion of female models in a given game doesn’t increase female players or customers?
You’d then have to demonstrate it’s caused a direct detriment to the game for it to matter.
Unfortunately, you can't flip arguments like that. That's why a defendant in court isn't asked to provide evidence that they didn't commit the crime and why a theist's "counterargument" of "but you don't have evidence that god isn't real" makes no logical sense.
The burden of proof is on the one making a claim.
Btw, I don't care either way. I was just wondering if evidence can be provided to support the claim that increased number of female models increases female participation in a wargame or if it is just a shower thought. I have never played Guild Ball (which I regret!) or a wargame with similar representation of female models so I was wondering if members of these communities can confirm or disprove this correlation.
I stil stand by my (lifelong observation supported) shower thought that increasing the number of cute animal models would do a much better job in that respect.
On a similar note, the number of women playing RPGs over my lifetime seems to have increased quite a lot- and it does correspond with an increase in representation in the art, lore and creators.
I suspect its because RPGs are more of a social game. You can really get into the character and its just not combat sequence after combat sequence, there's interactions with NPCs and party members as well.
Even when it comes to video games there seems to be a high percentage of women playing CRPGs than women playing TBS or RTS games, and Warhammer is more of a TBS game than a RPG.
According to a quantic foundry survey from 2017, JRPG's female audience is around 33%, Western RPG is around 26%, whereas TBS are only 11% and Grand Strategy is only 7%.
Curiously, there is a huge disparity between High Fantasy MMOs and Sci Fi MMOs, with 36% in the former and 16% in the later. Not sure why that is, just an interesting tidbit.
Would be interesting to see if this correlates with WHFB and AoS; do those systems have more women playing them, compared to 40k?
That's incredibly disingenous, you know for a fact that Ken is not the main focus in Barbie and has far less toys and options/outfits, he's basically an accessory to the main line.
So you're saying it is possible to have representation of both sexes in a toy line without it damaging the brands targeting towards its demographic?
So, what is the problem with female custodes again?
No, what I'm saying is that you're wrong about them being equal in the Barbie brand which frankly I think is fine that Ken is not a major focus of the Barbie toy line given that the target demographic is clearly towards girls and that I wouldn't push for Barbie to overcompensate and funnel resources towards Ken being more marketable towards boys, just like I don't think 40k needs to try and capture this mythical "female market" by making arbitrary changes to existing factions that is clearly happened due to non-in universe reasons. (and yes, I'm not happy about how shoehorned Centurions and other "they were always there" lore-handwave additions that have occurred in 40k as well).
While it is logical to assume that the various peoples and races of humankind would be very different in such a far future, the presentation is that most humans look like white people with western European ancestry. Most of the distict human cultures have very clear cultural parallels to real world cultures.
Contrast this with The Stormlight Archives fantasy series that portrays many different races of humans that seem to actually be different from modern day analogues.
Seems potentially equally rediculous to demand change of a product designed by men and aimed at boys/men. I would personally feel a bit ridiculous asking for equal representation in Barbie dolls or romance novels. Like, it's just not my space and I'm ok with that.
I think this might be part of the direction that's emerging though; YES, in 1987, a game was made by men for boys/men as the primary target. Funny though, once you're approaching four decades, there are societal changes that may have to be addressed.
In the 80's most RPGs and Video Games were also made by men for boys... But holy crap has that changed. World of Darkness blew up male domination of RPGs. Once Anne Rice fans found out there was a roleplaying game for them, and RPG's weren't just "Conan the Barbarian" anymore, other game companies stated to think "Hmmm- these women are not only players... They're customers!"
Video games too.
And it leads to inclusion at the design and conceptual stage. If you look at GW's design ethos since 8th, it's very much been "Get every player: Some will stay and some will not, so get them ALL!" This is why there have been three ways to play since 8th. And this is why core design took cues from TCG's. What, you like nerd card games? Well guess what? We've got cards. Like RPG's? Let me introduce you to Crusade. Want something faster and easier? Let's talk Open/ Combat Patrol.
And women fit in. When's the last all male tale of four gamers/warlords in WD? We've had WH+ Masterclass run by a woman, we've got female WD staff. And I think that things are being designed to appeal to a broader base. A game by men for boys/men can coast on it's considerable inertia for some time. But the writing IS on the wall- eventually, you aren't going to be able to survive with a product that excludes 50% of the market by design. So incremental changes now allow us to arrive at a place where the customer base is as broad as it needs to be before it's too late.
Kinda like the way ALL car companies are now exploring EV's, not just Tesla. Because you've got to be prepared to be nimble enough to adapt to the changing marketplace- and sometimes that means getting ahead of the curve, because if the curve comes and you've done no prep, it's often too late to shift gears.
I get that. I get all of that. But I'm still not miffed about Barbie not being "for" both men and women. And I'm not sure how much of the drive for inclusion in 40k is a genuine desire by women who feel excluded to get into 40k, or just part of the overall inclusivity sweep of broader culture, but amplified because of the click-bait controversy brought on by poking the bear of a largely male subculture.
I'd be curious if there was any data on it. Genuine interest in taking part vs. feather in the cap of the inclusiveness trend.
I'd also be curious to know how many potential players don't play 40k at all because of all male Space Marines, vs players who just choose one of the many other factions. I sure don't like the torture-for-torture's-sake Dark Eldar, or the uberchad (and chadette now) Custodes, or ANY Primaris, but I just choose not to play them.
In the 80's most RPGs and Video Games were also made by men for boys... But holy crap has that changed.
There's some super interesting history behind the video game bit of this specifically. Prior to the Atari crash, video games had a pretty significant female market. The reason arcade cabinets were so common in bars and restaurants was because they had this sort of universal popularity that made them good activities to bond over at date spots.
Post crash, games were more limited to home consoles which is where you saw the industry bend towards being male dominated. Home computers were one of those tech/science hobbies that boys were primarily encouraged to pursue and fatefully, when the NES had to be sold as a robot toy in the US, Sears put it in the boys toy section of the catalog. That first wave of the NES remained pretty gender neutral with a fair number of female protagonists, but by the late 80's the industry had locked in on that "target demographic" and ran it into the ground.
Disney lost money on Star Wars by realigning the story to a new demographic. Games Workshop wants to explore those same waters. They will do so regardless of what anyone has to say.
The only point to threads like these is to generate animus between people who want to love the brand and allow anyone who disagrees to be beaten down and demoralized. It's not worth anyone's time.
If you don't like the new direction, stop spending money with GW. You don't have to stop playing the game, just stop buying new models, paints and books. You can get just about anything for less buying it second hand off eBay or Facebook (amongst the many, many other options modern hobbyists have for getting or making models.) Unsubscribe from their social media and marketing emails, all they really do these days is tell you how to spend your money. Remove any apps from your phone, they provide way more value to the company than anything you get out of using them.
Aside from saving time and money, you get back a little bit of your life. There's something liberating about rejecting any group that's openly resentful towards you, especially one that demands so much of your attention and imagination. Corporations shape and influence the way you look at the world in ways you're not really aware of until you stop giving them your time / talent / money. Once you start to see it, you enter this enlightened state where you wonder why you ever fell for marketing gimmicks in the first place.
Games Workshop is ultimately a business concern where the majority of it's earnings comes from the sales of plastic models. They absolutely rely on the brand equity of their product for people to continue buying models in the face of secondary markets and modern technological trends. The lore is a major part of that brand and future profitability depends on keeping it aligned with consumer sentiment. AB InBev (makers of Bud Light) carried out a similar brand pivot last year and are now spending hundreds of millions annually on sponsorships with UFC, shooting sports, edgy entertainers, and the like trying to get it back. That's not a bad outcome. On the other end of the spectrum, Hasbro's deal volume with Star Wars merch is at about 15% of where it was before Disney acquired the franchise. While I'd rather see a healthy Hasbro / Star Wars franchise, these figures are very much in line with the sentiment expressed above.
This is all a long way of saying: they are right, you don't belong and that's actually a good thing. Sit back and learn to appreciate what happens.
But let me flip that argument around. Let’s say the inclusion of female models in a given game doesn’t increase female players or customers?
You’d then have to demonstrate it’s caused a direct detriment to the game for it to matter.
Unfortunately, you can't flip arguments like that. That's why a defendant in court isn't asked to provide evidence that they didn't commit the crime and why a theist's "counterargument" of "but you don't have evidence that god isn't real" makes no logical sense.
The burden of proof is on the one making a claim.
Btw, I don't care either way. I was just wondering if evidence can be provided to support the claim that increased number of female models increases female participation in a wargame or if it is just a shower thought. I have never played Guild Ball (which I regret!) or a wargame with similar representation of female models so I was wondering if members of these communities can confirm or disprove this correlation.
I stil stand by my (lifelong observation supported) shower thought that increasing the number of cute animal models would do a much better job in that respect.
On a similar note, the number of women playing RPGs over my lifetime seems to have increased quite a lot- and it does correspond with an increase in representation in the art, lore and creators.
I suspect its because RPGs are more of a social game. You can really get into the character and its just not combat sequence after combat sequence, there's interactions with NPCs and party members as well.
Even when it comes to video games there seems to be a high percentage of women playing CRPGs than women playing TBS or RTS games, and Warhammer is more of a TBS game than a RPG.
According to a quantic foundry survey from 2017, JRPG's female audience is around 33%, Western RPG is around 26%, whereas TBS are only 11% and Grand Strategy is only 7%.
Curiously, there is a huge disparity between High Fantasy MMOs and Sci Fi MMOs, with 36% in the former and 16% in the later. Not sure why that is, just an interesting tidbit.
Would be interesting to see if this correlates with WHFB and AoS; do those systems have more women playing them, compared to 40k?
It’s always hard to know why for these, even with fairly good data. I love sci fi, but I rarely find sci fi in gaming that’s for me. So I get way more fantasy and probably am even more aware of what’s going on in the genre.
Grand strategy I could imagine could even just be a time thing, I don’t have enough time for them.. But I enjoy it a lot. As well as just a lack of awareness for the genre in general for a wider audience.
If no women are able to talk about it with other women, just form not knowing its existence is a interesting topic as well.
But going a bit further out, in the gacha market that’s so focused on a Male audience it’s genshin impact that effectively controls the market. And it’s got a massive player base outside of the typical market.
And with HSR being sci fi, that didn’t change. Despite market expectations women are involved intimately across the entire space for the game.
Ironically other games struggle to get that audience attention, often as they lean further into trying to market to men.
On participation? Who’s playing what is a limited metric, as there are plenty of folk who paint, but don’t play. And of those who do play, not everyone is doing so in FLGS or Club.
In the 80's most RPGs and Video Games were also made by men for boys... But holy crap has that changed.
There's some super interesting history behind the video game bit of this specifically. Prior to the Atari crash, video games had a pretty significant female market. The reason arcade cabinets were so common in bars and restaurants was because they had this sort of universal popularity that made them good activities to bond over at date spots.
Post crash, games were more limited to home consoles which is where you saw the industry bend towards being male dominated. Home computers were one of those tech/science hobbies that boys were primarily encouraged to pursue and fatefully, when the NES had to be sold as a robot toy in the US, Sears put it in the boys toy section of the catalog. That first wave of the NES remained pretty gender neutral with a fair number of female protagonists, but by the late 80's the industry had locked in on that "target demographic" and ran it into the ground.
One of the sad cases of "I wonder what could have been?" unfortunately.
The thing is, there's still gaming products aimed at boys though, and some aimed at girls, and some for everybody.
On the RPG thing? When I first started playing Vampire the Masquerade around 2000, the pronouns it used in the rule book were female.
So given the game predates my involvement? That’s at least a quarter century at least some of the more popular RPG settings have been welcoming of women.
Grimskul wrote: That's incredibly disingenous, you know for a fact that Ken is not the main focus in Barbie and has far less toys and options/outfits, he's basically an accessory to the main line.
And now you know why anyone who shouts, "But Sisters!" is wrong.
I mean, Ken is a massive afterthought, whilest sisters were one of the oldest incorporated factions, just GW criminaly disregarded them so it's not the gotcha you think it is.
Ken was released in 61' just two years after Barbie. Proportionally, he's been a part of the franchise for longer than sisters models have been a part of 40k.
The thing is, there's still gaming products aimed at boys though, and some aimed at girls, and some for everybody.
Right. And according to GW, Warhammer belongs to the last category.
I'm sure GW would love to simply check the inclusion checkbox and double the number of people who want to engage with 40k. I think in practice it's a little more complicated then that.
Does it drive away existing players? Do enough new players engage? Do the new players stick around and spend enough to make up for any losses? Does it damage perception of IP stability that manifests in lower continued engagement over time even by players who stick with the product?
Grimskul wrote: That's incredibly disingenous, you know for a fact that Ken is not the main focus in Barbie and has far less toys and options/outfits, he's basically an accessory to the main line.
And now you know why anyone who shouts, "But Sisters!" is wrong.
I mean, Ken is a massive afterthought, whilest sisters were one of the oldest incorporated factions, just GW criminaly disregarded them so it's not the gotcha you think it is.
Ken was released in 61' just two years after Barbie. Proportionally, he's been a part of the franchise for longer than sisters models have been a part of 40k.
Yeah, but what's the ratio of Barbies to Ken dolls?
techsoldaten wrote: Disney lost money on Star Wars by realigning the story to a new demographic.
No they just made some bad films and refused to do anything with the IP that wasn't to do with the Skywalkers.
This is one of those things where people say something "Lost money" when what they mean is "It didn't make as much as we anticipated."
People can be forgiven for doing that, because economists do it all the time (which is one of the reasons I think the "science of economics" is the reason things are so messed up in 2024).
The movies cost 720 mil and made back 4.8 bil. The IP cost 4 bil, but Disney got WAY more out of the IP than the 3rd trilogy, which is the scope of what we're talking about.
As for Skywalkers, looks like Disney knew what they were doing; Solo was the lowest grossing movie. Why? No Skywalkers.
Worth mentioning that some chunk of SW TV is Skywalker free (and successful - Mandolorian and Fett in particular).
PenitentJake wrote: Worth mentioning that some chunk of SW TV is Skywalker free (and successful - Mandolorian and Fett in particular).
And Andor, which is the best (though maybe not from a financial success point) addition to star wars since the original trilogy, was Skywalker-free. In fact, it went further than that and is completely Jedi and Sith free.
Insectum7 wrote:Does it drive away existing players? Do enough new players engage? Do the new players stick around and spend enough to make up for any losses? Does it damage perception of IP stability that manifests in lower continued engagement over time even by players who stick with the product?
As I highlighted earlier, since GW started diversifying their sculpts and skin tones on paint jobs, we’ve also seen an increase in their annual turnover and profit margin.
But as I also highlighted, I don’t think the conclusion there is as straight forward as “diversity = profit”. Because there’s far more moving parts going on.
We can also observe that over the same period (where they more than tripled their income since 2014/2015, so 8 years) they’ve offered up more than 40K and AoS. We’ve seen Necromunda return, WarCry and Underworlds hit the market, ever greater monetisation of the underlying IP via licensing, Heresy move to plastic and so on.
Yet we should also note that out of the gate? Underworlds and WarCry both offered noticably diverse sculpts. Men, wimmins, things and gribblies all.
We’ve also had their significant bump during the pandemic, because who knew an indoors creative activity would prove popular when nobody was going outside!
What I think we can infer here though? Is that at a time they’ve increased the diversity of sculpts and skintones on models? It doesn’t appear to have had a detrimental effect on their bottom line. Outside of the most baseless “but it they kept it a cis-het white Sosig fest they’d be making a billionty pounds a day!” nonsense drivel claims.
So I put it to you all that at absolute worst? The push toward greater diversity and representation in sculpts and paintjobs has been entirely neutral.
Right. And according to GW, Warhammer belongs to the last category.
I'm sure GW would love to simply check the inclusion checkbox and double the number of people who want to engage with 40k. I think in practice it's a little more complicated then that.
Certainly. But that's the mission statement.
Does it drive away existing players? Do enough new players engage? Do the new players stick around and spend enough to make up for any losses? Does it damage perception of IP stability that manifests in lower continued engagement over time even by players who stick with the product?
Or whether the tantrums about inclusion create a perception that the playerbase is full of some sort of bigoted cavemen, thus repelling potential customers. Yeah, it is not easy, but in this they're moving in the correct direction, albeit very, very carefully. They really need to do something to the fascism apologia angle though, as I don't think increased inclusion alone is enough. Albeit that will deter the sort of odious people who would be attracted by it.
Or whether the tantrums about inclusion create a perception that the playerbase is full of some sort of bigoted cavemen, thus repelling potential customers.
This very succinctly sums up my views about the whole female custodes controversy.
It's gotten to the point where I'm more irritated by the reactions to perceived wokeness than I am to the actual wokeness.
I don't come to DakkaDakka often but I was curious to see what people had to say about recent developments and I'm pleased to see that, for the most part, there's a pretty civil and productive discussion here, so that's cool.
Or whether the tantrums about inclusion create a perception that the playerbase is full of some sort of bigoted cavemen, thus repelling potential customers.
This very succinctly sums up my views about the whole female custodes controversy.
It's gotten to the point where I'm more irritated by the reactions to perceived wokeness than I am to the actual wokeness.
I don't come to DakkaDakka often but I was curious to see what people had to say about recent developments and I'm pleased to see that, for the most part, there's a pretty civil and productive discussion here, so that's cool.
On the last part, yeah barring a few... hiccups, I am thrilled that the discussion has gotten this far and has seen so much actual engagement and discussion.
And to everyone reading this you have no idea how nice it is as a mod to be able to say that. Love you people, keep it up!
BobtheInquisitor wrote: From the N&B thread, it sounds like BrookM was having a different experience with the thread. Are they okay?
Frankly, no its been moderately awful the past week for all of us which is why we appreciate all the great posters that are making a true effort to have an honest and civil discussion. Even with all the trimming this thread has made 26 pages which is great! But yah things can get on top of us at times, we are human beings after all and not machines, but just the fact that you thought to ask means a lot.
You cut out the rest of my post. Clearly, fantasy racism against fantasy races is part of the setting and an important part of the satire of real life racism. Similarly fantasy genocide of fantasy peoples can satirize real violence and real injustices without depicting the actual genocides of actual people.
Once again, you see this all the time in Sci Fi and fantasy. Gul Dukat works as a genocidal monster character because he is a Cardassian, a made up race who committed war crimes on a made up people. If you made a show with a charismatic antagonist based on a real Nazi who oversaw a real concentration camp, it wouldn’t work.
I'm scratching my head as to what you're arguing here.
You say that fantasy racism is okay and part of the setting, so long as it involves fictional races. However, the Imperium comprises thousands of worlds. Surely virtually all of them will involve fictional races/ethnicities? Not only that, but race/ethnicity seems to be largely defined by world.
Surely Cadians being racist towards Catachans or Vostroyans would amount to fictional racism?
Fantasy racism is a way to explore racism without actually literally targeting the reader with bigotry. There are no elegothans in reality to be racist to.
But, the ism against women seems to coast through without any fantastical element and it gets defended for 'atmosphere' or 'theme'. 40k doesn't have 4 different human sexes and uses the qunales as a representation for sexism by saying they can't be techpriests.
Unlike racism, there is no fantasy sexism. There is just the reader reading women being treated like gak, or being excluded entirely. And yet that gets defended in a way that real world racism generally wouldn't.
But other than Astartes? There’s seemingly no role or rank closed off to women within The Imperium. From the lowest menial to a High Lord of Terra, women have featured.
Women being dainty precious things to be protected doesn’t seem to be a tenet of the Ecclesiarchy as a whole. So whilst yes, Imperium is huge and some planets will be misogynistic? It’s not centralised or expected.
All non-Astartes armed forces have female members. Assassins, Inquisition, Navy, Guard, Knights, Ad-Mech, Custodes, Rogue Traders, Hive Gang Militia, probably others I can’t think of right now.
And even among the Astartes? Chapter Serfs and fleet crew (up to and including Ship Captains) all include women among their ranks.
techsoldaten wrote: Disney lost money on Star Wars by realigning the story to a new demographic.
No they just made some bad films and refused to do anything with the IP that wasn't to do with the Skywalkers.
...
As for Skywalkers, looks like Disney knew what they were doing; Solo was the lowest grossing movie. Why? No Skywalkers.
I'd argue that Solo was low-grossing because it was just kind of a bad/boring movie.
Worth mentioning that some chunk of SW TV is Skywalker free (and successful - Mandolorian and Fett in particular).
This, I think, supports Bosskelot's point. It's fairly different from a lot of what we've seen with Star Wars, but it's also good. And it's successful.
There's probably something to be said for Ahsoka's inclusion in Clone Wars doing a lot to make the franchise more approachable and marketable to women/girls as well as giving us a great character.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: But other than Astartes? There’s seemingly no role or rank closed off to women within The Imperium. From the lowest menial to a High Lord of Terra, women have featured.
Women being dainty precious things to be protected doesn’t seem to be a tenet of the Ecclesiarchy as a whole. So whilst yes, Imperium is huge and some planets will be misogynistic? It’s not centralised or expected.
All non-Astartes armed forces have female members. Assassins, Inquisition, Navy, Guard, Knights, Ad-Mech, Custodes, Rogue Traders, Hive Gang Militia, probably others I can’t think of right now.
And even among the Astartes? Chapter Serfs and fleet crew (up to and including Ship Captains) all include women among their ranks.
This argues FOR female inclusion in all things they currently don't exist in though, you do see that?
You can't say the imperium isn't sexist to justify when the imperium is sexist...
So, the imperium believes in having women everywhere, so obviously they'd have them in the custodes. Because there was never any 'genes only work on men' fluff in their background.
The women can't be space marines thing, is the only remaining barrier and it uses a silly but far more tangible reason than, we traditionally just picked men (which given your point, seems even more silly).
And, given the happiness with which GW invented primaris marines, it's clear that that barrier isn't as tangible as people want it to be.
As for Skywalkers, looks like Disney knew what they were doing; Solo was the lowest grossing movie. Why? No Skywalkers.
I'd argue that Solo was low-grossing because it was just kind of a bad/boring movie.
I quite liked it, but I tend to rank movies by their fight choreography. People HATED Phantom Menace, but duel of the fates is probably the best lightsaber battle ever filmed, making the movie one of my faves.
The knife fighting and Teras Kasi moves at the end of Solo were straight dope for me.
I'm also still pretty in-touch with my twelve year old self, and I tend to let him watch Star Wars- because who wants to be adulting while you're watching a Star Wars movie?
I think a lot of people who are disillusioned with newer stuff need to remember who they were as children.
Insectum7 wrote: I'm sure GW would love to simply check the inclusion checkbox and double the number of people who want to engage with 40k. I think in practice it's a little more complicated then that.
It's really not.
Does it drive away existing players?
If this drives anyone away, then good riddance - they're the kind of toxic players we're better off without.
Does it damage perception of IP stability that manifests in lower continued engagement over time even by players who stick with the product?
We all know that the only things that really drive away long-time players are prices and the constant flux of the rules. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people ready to flip a table over this or any other retcon.
all the comments about "but why can't we make the female-only factions include men" are living in a magical reality where real world gender politics do not exist
I think a lot of people who are disillusioned with newer stuff need to remember who they were as children.
A Star Trek fan!
As a choreographer, most Trek doesn't have enough fighting. And for all they make of Klingons being hand to hand monsters... I gotta say, if I choreographed Klingons, it would take at least five of any other species to take'm down, and not all five would ever live to tell the tale. I've always wanted a pair of Bat'leth because given a year to train with them, I'm willing to bet my partner and I could come up with better fight sequences than you've seen in any Trek- though to be fair, I haven't seen every episode of every franchise.
Having said that, I have loved Trek... And somewhat relevant to the topic, Janeway was my favourite Captain; Discovery is one of my faves because Michael Burnham (surprise, another woman) is a fist of rage. Even numbered Trek movies are pretty good, odd numbers less so.
techsoldaten wrote: Disney lost money on Star Wars by realigning the story to a new demographic.
No they just made some bad films and refused to do anything with the IP that wasn't to do with the Skywalkers.
This is one of those things where people say something "Lost money" when what they mean is "It didn't make as much as we anticipated."
People can be forgiven for doing that, because economists do it all the time (which is one of the reasons I think the "science of economics" is the reason things are so messed up in 2024).
The movies cost 720 mil and made back 4.8 bil. The IP cost 4 bil, but Disney got WAY more out of the IP than the 3rd trilogy, which is the scope of what we're talking about.
The Disney Star Wars movies made $2.1 billion in profit at the box office. That's $2.9 billion less than they paid to acquire the IP.
Feel free to talk about merchandise, derivative revenue streams, other Lucasfilm IP acquired during the deal, the growth of their streaming service, licensing revenue, etc. But Disney does not claim those as relevant sources of revenue when speaking to shareholders and investors.
As noted in the article, Disney continues to incur expenses related to the films and receive tax reimbursements from the UK government. It is possible they will someday receive $2.9 billion in tax reimbursements, or the cumulative profits of future releases will somehow get them to $4 billion. In this presentation, WDC makes the case that 10 year aggregate revenue streams between theatrical releases, home entertainment, consumer products, etc could someday lead to them making a profit. If they made a profit, they would have no use for mark to market accounting.
12 years in, the Walt Disney has not made enough money to pay for the Star Wars franchise it acquired.
Feel free to talk about merchandise, derivative revenue streams, other Lucasfilm IP acquired during the deal, the growth of their streaming service, licensing revenue, etc. But Disney does not claim those as relevant sources of revenue when speaking to shareholders and investors.
As noted in the article, Disney continues to incur expenses related to the films and receive tax reimbursements from the UK government. It is possible they will someday receive $2.9 billion in tax reimbursements, or the cumulative profits of future releases will somehow get them to $4 billion. In this presentation, WDC makes the case that 10 year aggregate revenue streams between theatrical releases, home entertainment, consumer products, etc could someday lead to them making a profit. If they made a profit, they would have no use for mark to market accounting.
12 years in, the Walt Disney has not made enough money to pay for the Star Wars franchise it acquired.
Well it does sound like you've done more research- I didn't want to turn off the addblocker, so I couldn't read the Forbes article, but they should be reliable. I think Disney probably make as much streaming the stuff as they do from the box office though. A box office run is a few months. Streaming is forever- and sure, drop-off is real- most views will happen in that first year- those that missed it in the Theatre or want to watch it a second time.
The Disney report you dropped suggest that THEY think there's a 2.9% ROI on Star Wars, and 3.3% on Marvel, and I think that those two properties did more for their streaming service than anything else, which is likely why they report a 2.9% ROI.
Anyway, you do seem to know more about this stuff than I do- I liked the movies, personally (although I was really disappointed with the fight against the Royal Guards as a Kir Kanos fan), and I've never thought of the box office as a Star Wars movie's revenue stream. Even in the 70's and 80's they made more off merch than movie. Merch is down compared to the classics, but streaming has risen. I know a fair number who subbed for Mando and Fett. I did.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: As I highlighted earlier, since GW started diversifying their sculpts and skin tones on paint jobs, we’ve also seen an increase in their annual turnover and profit margin.
But as I also highlighted, I don’t think the conclusion there is as straight forward as “diversity = profit”. Because there’s far more moving parts going on.
We can also observe that over the same period (where they more than tripled their income since 2014/2015, so 8 years) they’ve offered up more than 40K and AoS. We’ve seen Necromunda return, WarCry and Underworlds hit the market, ever greater monetisation of the underlying IP via licensing, Heresy move to plastic and so on.
Yet we should also note that out of the gate? Underworlds and WarCry both offered noticably diverse sculpts. Men, wimmins, things and gribblies all.
We’ve also had their significant bump during the pandemic, because who knew an indoors creative activity would prove popular when nobody was going outside!
What I think we can infer here though? Is that at a time they’ve increased the diversity of sculpts and skintones on models? It doesn’t appear to have had a detrimental effect on their bottom line. Outside of the most baseless “but it they kept it a cis-het white Sosig fest they’d be making a billionty pounds a day!” nonsense drivel claims.
So I put it to you all that at absolute worst? The push toward greater diversity and representation in sculpts and paintjobs has been entirely neutral.
Frankly, I don't think it has much of any impact either way.
While female Custodes are a soapbox opportunity for people to either praise GW for inclusivity or rail against 'woke' politics, I strongly doubt that having some of the male power fantasy beefcake murder warriors be female in this military-history-inspired tabletop army battle game is really going to be the thing that draws in more women as players. The identities of the models are the shallowest surface-level veneer on a hobby that is otherwise heavily male-coded. Wargaming, military simulation, the over-the-top violent machismo of the setting, the male-gaze character design like Sisters, the bro-code fraternity of the poster boy faction, these are all things designed to appeal to men. Expecting female models to attract women is like, to paraphrase an analogy used upstream in the thread, expecting Ken dolls to get boys into Barbie. Yeah, it's representation, but there's more to appealing to a demographic than just representing them.
So what has GW been doing that actually has been expanding their demographics? Well, you touched on a couple:
-Smaller-scale games that are quick to play and don't require massive investment in either armies or terrain.
-One-off models intended for painters, and standalone support for painting as a hobby rather than a vehicle for getting armies on the field.
-Licensing into tie-in media like books and role-playing games.
-Selling games people can viably play at home (during the pandemic) and not at hobby shops that can range from 'awkward' to 'hostile' when women are present.
In other words, leaning into products besides the flagship one of building an entire army of little angry masculine soldier dudes to fight against other angry masculine soldier dudes through a byzantine ruleset on a sprawling table probably at a hobby shop. Which primarily appeals to men, specifically nerdy men, either in their teens or post-college and with the disposable income to support it, and comfortable with playing in a public venue. That's a narrow market, and expanding beyond it seems to have paid off.
So yeah, I support diversity and representation in the fictional worlds GW creates. I appreciate their push for inclusivity. I don't think it amounts to much on its own; the greatest value is in sending a clear signal that they do not promote or support intolerance and helping to foster a more welcoming image. But greater diversity in the playerbase comes from making products that appeal to a cater to a greater variety of potential players, and racial and sexual representation in the minis themselves is only a small part of that.
I could not care less that Custodes can be women now. I have a couple of female friends who are into tabletop RPGs but have zero interest in tabletop 40K, and this change isn't going to be what brings them in. GW isn't about to go broke because they went woke or whatever the feth the line is. Storm in a teacup.
As I've been thinking about all this I've come to another realization and just want to post about a shift in the demographic locally that's been really bugging me. And that's that my game shop has gone from blue-collar to white-collar.
When I was showing up to hobby night 10 years ago, we had a security guard or two, an ex boxer, a mailman, a bike repair guy, the shop-keeps, a commission painter, a short-order cook, a nurse, and a smattering of computer engineers along with a number of local students.
These days when I show up to hobby night it's more computer engineers, data analists, marketing strategists, hardware prototypers and other higher-education types. It's been a heck of a shift. There's been more women, and that's nice (none of whom I've seen play, just paint), but the occupational shift has been stark. Incidentally the old crew was more racially diverse, and the new crew is predominently white and asian.
I mostly chalk that up to local demographics shifting about, but I have seen one or two of them show up on nights when cheaper games are being played, Battletech iirc, which makes me think that the aggressive churn of 40k might also be part of it.
I know that stepping into this conversation is just asking for disaster but here I go...
I personally could not care less about female Custodes. Custodes were a background faction for most of the time that I have been apart of the 40k community so when they got a codex and models it was basically square zero for lore. Personally, if they really wanted to push a more "inclusive" angle I would have loved to see Custodes portrayed as a more androgynous group. We talk about how this humans are created rather than born so why on earth do their reproductive organs matter? Lean into that inhuman killing machine lens and make them appear as something else entirely, why does their gender or sex even matter when they are barely human? I think that Mechanicus does a better job at this because we are all culturally conditioned to see things as masculine and feminine. Our language is gendered for better or worse and we as humans look at one another and apply labels in order to better interact with one another so that we aren't starting at zero with every single meeting with another person. We infer things based on appearance and that will never change because that is natural. When you look at Mechanicus they are so far removed from immediate gender that most people don't even consider it.
Hell, I miss when Necrons were just mindless killing machines from space with a touch of eldritch horror thrown over them.
The only thing that I do want to keep as far as gendered lore is all male Space Marines. Yeah, it has absolutely no basis in reality but it is one of the last vestiges of the lore that portrays humanity as a backwards anti-science barely functioning society. Part of the appeal of the setting to me is the fact that humanity as a whole are so backwards and ignorant that they pray to toasters because they don't REALLY understand technology at all. The push to make humanity more heroic and progressive ruins the appeal of the setting for me. I still get a good laugh at how ridiculous the lore is no matter how serious it wants to take itself, a big reason why I am a huge fan of Fabius Bile. He is a grumpy old lens for the reader to look at the world and see how absurd it all is.
As I've been thinking about all this I've come to another realization and just want to post about a shift in the demographic locally that's been really bugging me. And that's that my game shop has gone from blue-collar to white-collar.
When I was showing up to hobby night 10 years ago, we had a security guard or two, an ex boxer, a mailman, a bike repair guy, the shop-keeps, a commission painter, a short-order cook, a nurse, and a smattering of computer engineers along with a number of local students.
These days when I show up to hobby night it's more computer engineers, data analists, marketing strategists, hardware prototypers and other higher-education types. It's been a heck of a shift. There's been more women, and that's nice (none of whom I've seen play, just paint), but the occupational shift has been stark. Incidentally the old crew was more racially diverse, and the new crew is predominently white and asian.
I mostly chalk that up to local demographics shifting about, but I have seen one or two of them show up on nights when cheaper games are being played, Battletech iirc, which makes me think that the aggressive churn of 40k might also be part of it.
Expanding on this?
Who were my friends and I the last time I regularly played? Well, I for one was a shop mook. Minimum wage kind of stuff. Then, after a year of homelessness, I got my lardy arse into a different gear. 15 or so years and not a little luck later? I’m now a professional fraud investigator. Not pulling in megabucks, but on a nicely comfortable wage. So I’m now white collar, when I was blue collar.
As I explained though, the observation that GW has experienced sustained and significant growth at the same time they’ve sought greater diversity isn’t and can’t be the explanation in itself. Nothing in the world is that straight forward. But. It does fly directly in the face of the “go woke go broke” nonsense argument, because the worst we can imply is it’s been completely neutral.
Arbiter_Shade wrote: I know that stepping into this conversation is just asking for disaster but here I go...
I personally could not care less about female Custodes. Custodes were a background faction for most of the time that I have been apart of the 40k community so when they got a codex and models it was basically square zero for lore. Personally, if they really wanted to push a more "inclusive" angle I would have loved to see Custodes portrayed as a more androgynous group. We talk about how this humans are created rather than born so why on earth do their reproductive organs matter? Lean into that inhuman killing machine lens and make them appear as something else entirely, why does their gender or sex even matter when they are barely human? I think that Mechanicus does a better job at this because we are all culturally conditioned to see things as masculine and feminine. Our language is gendered for better or worse and we as humans look at one another and apply labels in order to better interact with one another so that we aren't starting at zero with every single meeting with another person. We infer things based on appearance and that will never change because that is natural. When you look at Mechanicus they are so far removed from immediate gender that most people don't even consider it.
Hell, I miss when Necrons were just mindless killing machines from space with a touch of eldritch horror thrown over them.
The only thing that I do want to keep as far as gendered lore is all male Space Marines. Yeah, it has absolutely no basis in reality but it is one of the last vestiges of the lore that portrays humanity as a backwards anti-science barely functioning society. Part of the appeal of the setting to me is the fact that humanity as a whole are so backwards and ignorant that they pray to toasters because they don't REALLY understand technology at all. The push to make humanity more heroic and progressive ruins the appeal of the setting for me. I still get a good laugh at how ridiculous the lore is no matter how serious it wants to take itself, a big reason why I am a huge fan of Fabius Bile. He is a grumpy old lens for the reader to look at the world and see how absurd it all is.
Sisters are a better army to show the backwards ways of humanity...
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: In what way?
Well equipped, well armed, well trained? Largely independent of the wider Body Politic.
The broader sisterhood spans every tier of humanity in 40k, from scattered hospitallers on backwater worlds to the almost bene gesserit-like famulous amongst the noble houses.
As guards of pilgrim routes and holy sites they interact with civilians on a day to day basis unlike the militarum or marines and by their very nature find themselves both as champion for and against the excesses of Imperial religion and caste, and the sisterhood as a whole works side by side with many other organisations rather than as absolute subordinates or with transhuman aloofness.
It has always been a shame IMO that GW as put so much focus into the demigod-on-demigod endless war of the heresy and so little into eras like the age of apostasy.
As for the custodes, they represent 40k humanity about as well as the men of iron.
But they don’t reject science? Well. No more than the wider Imperium doesn’t apply the scientific method, instead grubbing around for old blueprints and that.\
Though if you’re meaning “the backwards way of humanity in the modern Imperium” I get you. Because The Imperium as it stands was clearly never what The Emperor intended.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: But they don’t reject science? Well. No more than the wider Imperium doesn’t apply the scientific method, instead grubbing around for old blueprints and that.\
Though if you’re meaning “the backwards way of humanity in the modern Imperium” I get you. Because The Imperium as it stands was clearly never what The Emperor intended.
Yeah, I was trying to not come across as attacking religion in general while saying the Imperium has regressed from an age of enlightenment to one of superstitious beliefs...
if you want to talk about the religious themes in 40k, you can't really be sensitive to religious people, because those themes were written with the atheistic zeal of a 14 year old who is forced to attend church multiple times a week. the religious themes in 40k very much are attacking religion in general
StudentOfEtherium wrote: if you want to talk about the religious themes in 40k, you can't really be sensitive to religious people, because those themes were written with the atheistic zeal of a 14 year old who is forced to attend church multiple times a week. the religious themes in 40k very much are attacking religion in general
Actually I think 40k attacks organised religion but not faith in general. Especially given most of the gods are real, divine miracles observably happen, and literal daemons can invade reality but are weakened by faith.
The fact you believe that shows you are incapable of parsing fact from fiction. Like seriously, you've been so conditioned to bark whenever anybody says anything about representation using the buzzwords they teach you to fear (CRT, DEI, Woke etc.) that you didn't even register the patent absurdity of what you just wrote.
Wait till you hear about the Faithful Destruction system they are testing whereby GW will supply recycling points for all Tournaments, but each model that falls in battle must be removed from the game to be recycled. Creating actual loss for players. Part of a move to increase immersion within the game and also make games really feel nailbitingly exciting!
Wait till you hear about the Faithful Destruction system they are testing whereby GW will supply recycling points for all Tournaments, but each model that falls in battle must be removed from the game to be recycled. Creating actual loss for players. Part of a move to increase immersion within the game and also make games really feel nailbitingly exciting!
You're not playing RAW? It says models that fail saving throws suffer damage and are destroyed. I always keep a hammer in my dice bag. It's a lot easier than doing it by hand.
Us reels men use a blender. Under mother’s supervision.
I use a variety of tools to reflect how the model died. Boy Scout Flamethrower for flamer deaths, hammer for models that get crushed underfoot, butcher knife for slicing... Still looking for a good analog for a lascannon, though.
Us reels men use a blender. Under mother’s supervision.
Drink the remains of your dead.
Gain the strength and wisdom that failed them and add it to your own.
It serves as a warning to the rest.
Also, you'll roll better afterwards.
Drink the remains of your dead.
Gain the strength and wisdom that failed them and add it to your own.
It serves as a warning to the rest.
Also, you'll roll better afterwards.
AldarionTelcontar wrote: "Culture and traditional views" are product of society responding to reality.
Culture also says that men correspond with blue, and women with pink, and- oh. Hang on, pink used to be a masculine colour.
Uh, let's see, culture dictated that men wore stockings and skirts? Oh, but now, that's just supposed to be women.
How about cultures around the proliferation of slavery? And those "traditional views"?
No. Culture and tradition are not based in "reality". They are artificial. They are made up by people.
Made up by people in response to real challenges. And I'm not talking about surface-level detail that you are focusing on.
And even with surface-level detail...
Pink used to be masculine color because it is close to red, which is color of blood. Which meant it was color of war. Red and pink only became feminine colors in 1800s and 1900s.
Culture always dictated that women wore dresses, because they were a) too valuable to risk in, and b) not as capable in, a fight. Men by contrast always wore less restrictive clothing - now, "what" that exactly meant differed. It could be trousers, it could be tunics, it could be skirts... but by and large, there was always a significant difference. In some areas men did wear long robes that were not dissimilar to what women wore, but that was a consequence of necessities of climate - long robes can help ventilation and heat control in the desert (which is why Crusaders wore surcoat, a fashion that spread to rest of Europe, but was then gradually abandoned following the fall of the last Crusader strongholds in the Holy Land).
Proliferation of slavery had little to do with culture. In fact, Christian Church had been trying to ban slavery since 4th century AD... yet first general (as opposed to specific - e.g. against enslaving Christians) bans against slavery were in Goryeo Dynasty in Korea (956 AD), Bologna (1256 AD), France (1315 AD), Sweden (1335 AD), Ragusa (1416 AD), Castille (1477 AD)...
And while part of the reason why women were kept out of the military is that it is slowed to sacrifice the childbearing portion of your population in war when you don't know how long any of you will live, part of it is the simple fact that women are, on average, less physically capable than men.
And yet, still capable enough in 40k. Evidently so.
So humans in 40k... aren't actually human?
With Sisters of Battle, you can claim genetic engineering and faith. Not so much with the Imperial Guard.
But as I said - major part of appeal of 40k are its pseudo-medieval aesthetics and attitudes. Adeptus Custodes and Space Marines in particular are akin to medieval religious orders, and you will not have found women in any medieval religious military order, for a large number of disparate reasons.
So why are Sisters of Battle, a religious military order who take stronger aesthetic cues from medieval periods than most Chapters of Space Marines, okay in the setting then? If "pseudo-medieval aesthetics and attitudes" are a "major part of the appeal of 40k", then why are Sisters of Battle, a medieval religious military order, all okay if apparently that's something "you will not have found"?
You won't find men in Sisters of Battle. So why have women in Space Marines?
And yes, Sisters of Battle are perfectly okay within the medieval-themed setting - if you think they shouldn't be based on my logic, I'd suggest you read a bit about the Middle Ages. Female religious orders existed in Middle Ages. Female monasticism was in fact extremely widespread. Sisters of Battle merely expand on that... by using power armor to allow women to fight on par with whatever horrors they are facing. I see no problem with that. Sure, there were no female *military* orders in the Middle Ages... because women are physically extremely disadvantaged in warfare. But give woman a power armor, and that suddenly stops being an issue.
What you will never have found (at least in the Middle Ages) is a religious order that allows *both* men and women to serve together.
Like, do you see the problem in your argument there? If 40k is apparently slaved to this idea that "we must accurately portray historical armies to be true to the appeal of 40k" (ignoring the fact that Custodes and Space Marines are actually technologically augmented supersoldiers in powered armour with firearms and come from all manner of ethnicities and cultures, none of which are accurate to any real world culture or history), then Sisters of Battle shouldn't be permitted either.
I never said 40k is "slaved to the idea". But 40k has several very clear inspirations, one of which are European Middle Ages. You destroy those in favor of whatever, you destroy the setting itself and turn it into something bland and forgettable.
Custodes too are a monastic order. You want female Custodes? Introduce a female order dedicated to protecting the Emperor! Perhaps an Order of Sisters of Battle, or a separate one entirely.
AldarionTelcontar wrote: What you will never have found (at least in the Middle Ages) is a religious order that allows *both* men and women to serve together.
And this isn't inherently relevant to gender-inclusivity in 40k. GW is fully free to make any faction they wish mixed-gender.
AldarionTelcontar wrote: What you will never have found (at least in the Middle Ages) is a religious order that allows *both* men and women to serve together.
So, Sisters (a religious order) should stay female-only, but a non-religious order (most Marine chapters) should be free to mix genders?
Black Templars are pretty religious, but Space Wolves aren't (or at least, not Middle Ages religious). Nor are Ultramarines. Or Blood Angels. Dark Angels? Nah. White Scars, not so much. Need I go on?
What you will never have found (at least in the Middle Ages) is a religious order that allows *both* men and women to serve together.
They also didn't have power armours and plasma guns. Also, marines are not religious orders, they're among the few people who can get away with not thinking that the Emperor is divine.
I never said 40k is "slaved to the idea". But 40k has several very clear inspirations, one of which are European Middle Ages. You destroy those in favor of whatever, you destroy the setting itself and turn it into something bland and forgettable.
Nonsense. Yes, European middle-ages is one inspiration among many. And indeed one can model their space marine chapter after medieval religious knightly order. Dark Angels are such chapter, and so are Black Templars. But Space Wolves are nor are many other chapters. A big part of appeal of marines is that you can customise them with different flavours, so making them women absolutely should be part of that customisation palette.
Nonsense. Yes, European middle-ages is one inspiration among many. And indeed one can model their space marine chapter after medieval religious knightly order. Dark Angels are such chapter, and so are Black Templars. But Space Wolves are nor are many other chapters. A big part of appeal of marines is that you can customise them with different flavours, so making them women absolutely should be part of that customisation palette.
Yes, but people pick specific marines for specific customisation. I play the game only since 8th ed, but I have never seen anyone on any forum or Reddit say they started army X, because it had or didn't have female/male among its members. I have seen people pick SW, because they like Vikings or Varges, WS because they are Tatar, multiple people that started knights and knight crusader armies "in space". No one starts Space Sharks with the idea behind them being like 1980s Triad members or modern frontoviks.
The customisation you are talking about is of the type the majority of the players do not want or ask for. It does not add anything to the faction fantasy, but can very well take away from it. Now there is neutral stuff or armies people just don't care about. If someone turns up with his tyranid army and announces that in his army every model from the biggest monster to the smallest drone is in fact male, will get no reaction, besides potentialy a few odd looks.
Things like space marines, SoB or Custodes are not one of those things. SoB being 100% female is litteraly build in to the faction lore and explantion why they exist at all.
In the end it is the wallets that will decide. If financialy GW changes will have small to no negative impact, GW will keep doing them. It is their IP and can do with it what ever they want. Of course there is this small problem that making your core audiance unhappy/unwilling to buy your stuff, can take a nasty turn. But this is a future thing, we would still have to see if it would happen to GW. The same it happened to the comic industry, movies etc.
Overread wrote: Priests have been part of the Sob army since their very first release. They aren't allies, they are literally part of the composition of the faction.
Of the codex. Organisation wise the convents are separate from the local and over all clergy structures. And this isn't even a one specific thing. Planetary church and the Curates of the Flag are separate etities too, and often come to clash in systems where there is a both a strong navy presance and non navy settlments of any sort. Arco flaglants and crusaders are in the SoB codex too, but they are not part of the faction. Same way servitors aren't space marines in a space marine chapter.
Overread wrote: Priests have been part of the Sob army since their very first release. They aren't allies, they are literally part of the composition of the faction.
Of the codex. Organisation wise the convents are separate from the local and over all clergy structures. And this isn't even a one specific thing. Planetary church and the Curates of the Flag are separate etities too, and often come to clash in systems where there is a both a strong navy presance and non navy settlments of any sort. Arco flaglants and crusaders are in the SoB codex too, but they are not part of the faction. Same way servitors aren't space marines in a space marine chapter.
The difference is Servitors are a tiny part of Marines, usually only taken as accessories to a Techmarine (and currently Legends); while Priests, Crusaders, ArcoFlaggelants, etc. are all reasonable parts of a standard Sisters' army.
Karol wrote: The customisation you are talking about is of the type the majority of the players do not want or ask for.
Just because a handful of people are being very loud does not mean they represent the majority.
So you think the majority of space marine and custodes players want female space marines? And vice versa SoB players are asking for male members of their orders? If that was a fact, I think we would see more talk about that, aside for very specific parts of reddit. Maybe the loud you are hearing is not from a few people, but the voices of the majority of people.
JNAProductions wrote: The difference is Servitors are a tiny part of Marines, usually only taken as accessories to a Techmarine (and currently Legends); while Priests, Crusaders, ArcoFlaggelants, etc. are all reasonable parts of a standard Sisters' army.
You are mixing up two things. Current meta army lists and lore. If we went by "what is a space marine" we would find out a mind blowing thing. Space marines are more followers of the Machine Spirit, then the Ad Mecha themselfs. Because the Ad Mecha lists consists of bucket loads of still partialy fleshy infantry, while space marine list are almost exclusivly vehicle. There for the avarge space marine should be a tank. It is even more fun, if go a bit in to the past. In 8th a space marine army had 2 space marines in it (two heros), minimal scouts and consists of a mix of IG models and a castellan.
Orks at one time were also, not fungoid, but rather buggies and air planes.
And as far as the "servitor consists a tiny part of marine..." well you will be happy to know that one of the GK brotherhood modus operandi (sadly impossible to recreate in game) is dropping 200 combat servitors in to the enemy lines just after an orbital barrage, followed by a mass teleport assault a minute later. BT and the Mentors have a ton of servitors, servo skulls flying like a swarm around the marines and bringing them ammo, new weapons, supplying data etc. Now this is of course only in lore, not in game. But I think we are still talking about lore of GW games here.
So you think the majority of space marine and custodes players want female space marines?
Frankly, I think the overwhelming majority do not really care one way or another. As long as there are cool new models to buy, and codices are not utter trash, they're fine.
Karol wrote: Because the Ad Mecha lists consists of bucket loads of still partialy fleshy infantry, while space marine list are almost exclusivly vehicle. There for the avarge space marine should be a tank.
Um, what?
Orks at one time were also, not fungoid, but rather buggies and air planes.
Just because a bunch of cheese monkeys decided that the best way to play Orks was nothing but vehicles and planes does NOT mean that Orks are suddenly actually biologically vehicles.
Just because a bunch of cheese monkeys decided that the best way to play Orks was nothing but vehicles and planes does NOT mean that Orks are suddenly actually biologically vehicles.
The Sisters of Battle as a faction are the military arm of the Church. Therefore the direct commanders of the Sisters of Battle are the male Priests, Clergy and all. The direct superiors of the Sisters of Battle are the ruling powers of the Church, which are predominantly male. So yes those male models are 100% as much a part of the Sisters of Battle as the Marine Lieutenants and commanders are Marine models.
Yes there are fewer of the clergy on the front lines, but they are an intrinsic part of the SoB faction, not a separate element of the Imperial structure like the Inquisition.
GW just didn't update those models with the major SoB update, however considering most are leader roles I suspect we'll see more of them sneak out now and then as hero/leader models one-off releases over time. You actually get a good idea of their representation in the Dawn of War 1 game.
Custodes too are a monastic order. You want female Custodes? Introduce a female order dedicated to protecting the Emperor! Perhaps an Order of Sisters of Battle, or a separate one entirely.
I'd argue that it's nice that Custodes are integrated in order to set them apart from the religious underpinnings of the Sisters and Marines, given that the Emperor didn't actually want a religion. The Custodes can reflect that break from faith, while stil being ultra-dutiful to the Emperors/Imperial cause.
As I've been thinking about all this I've come to another realization and just want to post about a shift in the demographic locally that's been really bugging me. And that's that my game shop has gone from blue-collar to white-collar.
When I was showing up to hobby night 10 years ago, we had a security guard or two, an ex boxer, a mailman, a bike repair guy, the shop-keeps, a commission painter, a short-order cook, a nurse, and a smattering of computer engineers along with a number of local students.
These days when I show up to hobby night it's more computer engineers, data analists, marketing strategists, hardware prototypers and other higher-education types. It's been a heck of a shift. There's been more women, and that's nice (none of whom I've seen play, just paint), but the occupational shift has been stark. Incidentally the old crew was more racially diverse, and the new crew is predominently white and asian.
I mostly chalk that up to local demographics shifting about, but I have seen one or two of them show up on nights when cheaper games are being played, Battletech iirc, which makes me think that the aggressive churn of 40k might also be part of it.
Expanding on this?
Who were my friends and I the last time I regularly played? Well, I for one was a shop mook. Minimum wage kind of stuff. Then, after a year of homelessness, I got my lardy arse into a different gear. 15 or so years and not a little luck later? I’m now a professional fraud investigator. Not pulling in megabucks, but on a nicely comfortable wage. So I’m now white collar, when I was blue collar.
It's one thing if you see your blue-collar community all individually grow into a white-collar community via life progression. It's another if they simply vanish because prices, in or out of the hobby, are too high.
The Sisters of Battle as a faction are the military arm of the Church. Therefore the direct commanders of the Sisters of Battle are the male Priests, Clergy and all. The direct superiors of the Sisters of Battle are the ruling powers of the Church, which are predominantly male.
Is there a source for the clergy being predominently male?
The Sisters of Battle as a faction are the military arm of the Church. Therefore the direct commanders of the Sisters of Battle are the male Priests, Clergy and all. The direct superiors of the Sisters of Battle are the ruling powers of the Church, which are predominantly male. So yes those male models are 100% as much a part of the Sisters of Battle as the Marine Lieutenants and commanders are Marine models.
Again, that is a false equivalence. An Inquisitor requisitioning a space marine chapter doesn't make them part of that chapter. I get that the Sororitas are subservient to the Adeptus Ministrorum, but male priests are expressly not part of the Sisters of Battle, which is the all-female order of warrior nuns.
The Sisters of Battle as a faction are the military arm of the Church. Therefore the direct commanders of the Sisters of Battle are the male Priests, Clergy and all. The direct superiors of the Sisters of Battle are the ruling powers of the Church, which are predominantly male.
Is there a source for the clergy being predominently male?
Honestly only anecdotal in that most of the models/art/references that I've seen tend to heavily favour males in the positions of power. I'm guessing many women within the Church might get pressed into the SoB themselves (the SoB might also seek them out as well) which might well lead to men rising to the fore more so in the core church. But it could also just be bias in the stories that get told/that I've read.
The Sisters of Battle as a faction are the military arm of the Church. Therefore the direct commanders of the Sisters of Battle are the male Priests, Clergy and all. The direct superiors of the Sisters of Battle are the ruling powers of the Church, which are predominantly male. So yes those male models are 100% as much a part of the Sisters of Battle as the Marine Lieutenants and commanders are Marine models.
Again, that is a false equivalence. An Inquisitor requisitioning a space marine chapter doesn't make them part of that chapter. I get that the Sororitas are subservient to the Adeptus Ministrorum, but male priests are expressly not part of the Sisters of Battle, which is the all-female order of warrior nuns.
I mean aside from them appearing in the SoB codex each time its released; and appearing in stories.
Again they are the direct superiors to the SoB; they tell them where to go; who to shoot; what to do. They are very much part of their Order, they just aren't the women of the Order. The Church and the SoB can't be separated, they are the same entity. The SoB are the warriors of the Church in the setting. This is just a gender variation based on rank/title/position within one larger organisation.
So you think the majority of space marine and custodes players want female space marines?
Frankly, I think the overwhelming majority do not really care one way or another. As long as there are cool new models to buy, and codices are not utter trash, they're fine.
Well if they don't then this means it would be an argument between two minor groups. And I also do agree that if the custodes codex was a good book, the anger directed at it would be much smaller. The fact that GW decided to both make a bad book AND start drasticly changing lore is a bad combo. Plus the fact that custodes, thanks to being a cheaper to buy in to +efficient, being a popular army doesn't help. If GW went wild with votan lore, the reaction would be smaller.
Still I stand on the stand point that the number of people who go "I picked Crimson Fists, because they are so cool, but give me female marines and they would be perfect" is much smaller, then the number of dudes who picked the same army and expected it to be 100% made out of super dudes. Both groups could be a minority, to how much of a degree we can arguee till the end of time, but one of those two groups will be smaller then the other.
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JNAProductions wrote: How many women can you take from the Marines’ Codex?
How many men can you take from the Sisters’ Index?
Zero in both cases. There are zero female marines and there are zero male SoB.
Again, that is a false equivalence. An Inquisitor requisitioning a space marine chapter doesn't make them part of that chapter. I get that the Sororitas are subservient to the Adeptus Ministrorum, but male priests are expressly not part of the Sisters of Battle, which is the all-female order of warrior nuns.
This is technically correct, but not in practice. Yes, it is true that in-universe only the power armoured female warriors of Ecclesiarchy are called Adepta Sororitas, the Sisters of Battle. However, Adepta Sororitas army roster for the game of Warhammer contains a lot of units that are not represented by female models. In comparison, Codex Space Marines doesn't contain a single unit not represented by male models.
I mean aside from them appearing in the SoB codex each time its released; and appearing in stories.
Again they are the direct superiors to the SoB; they tell them where to go; who to shoot; what to do. They are very much part of their Order, they just aren't the women of the Order. The Church and the SoB can't be separated, they are the same entity. The SoB are the warriors of the Church in the setting. This is just a gender variation based on rank/title/position within one larger organisation.
Yeah, no. There is a clear delineation between the orders militant and other subsections of the adeptus ministrorum. Just as an example from 9th ed. codex (emphasis mine):
Decree Passive
The honour of leading the Adeptus Sororitas falls to an officer of the Orders Militant, not to the Priests that accompany them. There is a rule preventing you from taking more priests that sisters characters.
This is technically correct, but not in practice. Yes, it is true that in-universe only the power armoured female warriors of Ecclesiarchy are called Adepta Sororitas, the Sisters of Battle. However, Adepta Sororitas army roster for the game of Warhammer contains a lot of units that are not represented by female models. In comparison, Codex Space Marines doesn't contain a single unit not represented by male models.
Oh, absolutely. I've been arguing this from an in-universe perspective. Which is why I mentioned that, if you were to argue from the rules perspective, at one point you'd have had female Grey Knights in Codex Witch Hunters. Say the next SM codex introduced chapter serfs with 50:50 male to female representation in its kit. Maybe also proliferate said serfs to other kits holding helmets, weapons, reloading heavy weapons or what have you. Would that lay the femarine discussion to rest? I don't think so.
Yeah, no. There is a clear delineation between the orders militant and other subsections of the adeptus ministrorum. Just as an example from 9th ed. codex (emphasis mine):
Decree Passive
The honour of leading the Adeptus Sororitas falls to an officer of the Orders Militant, not to the Priests that accompany them. There is a rule preventing you from taking more priests that sisters characters.
Honestly only anecdotal in that most of the models/art/references that I've seen tend to heavily favour males in the positions of power. I'm guessing many women within the Church might get pressed into the SoB themselves (the SoB might also seek them out as well) which might well lead to men rising to the fore more so in the core church. But it could also just be bias in the stories that get told/that I've read.
That is because of multiple things. First is the problem of large spread nepotism in the imperial church. Second is how members of the church are recruited. To have a female high ranking, which do happen in the lore, the person would have to go through a lot of the same schooling a sister would have to go through. Then every branch of the sisterhood would have to pass on the person. So they would have to be deemed unfit to be diplomat/spy, soldier, caretaker/teacher, and "doctor". The person would have to still be above avarge citizent faithful. Such a person without the protection of higher up clergy members could gain what rank? A missionaries job would be too hard, so a priest, but not in a dangerous or important place. Which more or less leaves some basic clerk position open, and males fullfil those roles better. Now with protection a female future clergy member can do what ever her protectors decided her to be. Aside for one, the clergy can not force someone on to the Sisters, as their recruitment is their own thing.
But not of sisters. Or at least not automaticly. Even if a cardinal calls out for a war of faith, he still has to ask from the convents. It is the same as inqusitors ridding around in Land Raiders. The Land Raiders are not his or inquisitorial, because the imperial edict makes it impossible to be a thing.
The church has multiple branches which have an autonomy or are outright independent. A planetary cardinal can not order a priest who is part of the Navies Curates of the Flag. Same way he can not order a SoB order to act in specific way. In fact one of the jobs SoB have is to check clergy for signs of impurity.
But not of sisters. Or at least not automaticly. Even if a cardinal calls out for a war of faith, he still has to ask from the convents. It is the same as inqusitors ridding around in Land Raiders. The Land Raiders are not his or inquisitorial, because the imperial edict makes it impossible to be a thing.
The church has multiple branches which have an autonomy or are outright independent. A planetary cardinal can not order a priest who is part of the Navies Curates of the Flag. Same way he can not order a SoB order to act in specific way. In fact one of the jobs SoB have is to check clergy for signs of impurity.
Not my point. Perhaps I should have said “accompanied”? Priests provide spiritual and religious indoctrination to groups of people, in this case sisters. It would make no sense to have a priest for every sisters model.
JNAProductions wrote: How many women can you take from the Marines’ Codex?
How many men can you take from the Sisters’ Index?
Zero in both cases. There are zero female marines and there are zero male SoB.
Please reread the question.
It is a disingenuous question. Because it tries to merge GW policy of no model/no rules with lore. Space marines have serfs/thralls etc. That does not mean those are space marines. In the past SoB had access to fratris militia, having those also did not make those part of the sisterhood. The past GK codex had inqusitorial units, but that neither ment GK are inquisition, nor that inquisitorial storm troopers are space marines.
So the anwser is and stands. There is 0 space marine females and there is 0 male SoB. The overlap between priests and SoB is the same as that of imperial navy bomber pilots and IG officers calling them in to do a bombing run.
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DeathKorp_Rider 813538 11662440 wrote:
Not my point. Perhaps I should have said “accompanied”? Priests provide spiritual and religious indoctrination to groups of people, in this case sisters. It would make no sense to have a priest for every sisters model.
The very idea that the sisterhood would requier more spiritual and religious indoctrination is an odd one. They are very much able to do it by themselfs.
Again I think that people mix up stuff like GW leaving model lines in a codex and giving them rules, with lore. Do sisters fight alongside the faithful ? Yes. Are those often led by priests or missionaries? yes. Do SoB sometimes get delegated to join a missionary on a mission? True too. But non of those things make priests members of the sisterhood. They are also not needed for rites and rituals. For that the sister have their own officers. Starting with those responsible in dealing with the SoB novices, to those working with the "rank and file" sisters, to penance officers. And if they REALLY need someone to do sermons etc they draw on to the members of the The Order Famulous&Dialogus members. The sistershood are very closed of in their dealings with the outside.
In one of the Calpurania books, there is even an example of a niece of a Rogue Trader joining the novitiate, and no amount of RT immunity or preasure from the Cardinal could convince the Hydraphur cannoness to let the girl go "free". And the attempt from the RT to use skimers to extract her, was delt with use of force.
JNAProductions wrote: How many women can you take from the Marines’ Codex?
How many men can you take from the Sisters’ Index?
Zero in both cases. There are zero female marines and there are zero male SoB.
Please reread the question.
It is a disingenuous question. Because it tries to merge GW policy of no model/no rules with lore. Space marines have serfs/thralls etc. That does not mean those are space marines. In the past SoB had access to fratris militia, having those also did not make those part of the sisterhood. The past GK codex had inqusitorial units, but that neither ment GK are inquisition, nor that inquisitorial storm troopers are space marines.
So the anwser is and stands. There is 0 space marine females and there is 0 male SoB.
You are correct. There are no male Sisters.
But you've still answered the question incorrectly because that wasn't what was asked.
Tell us the # of male models found within the Adepta Sororitas index. (you might haver to look up the actual kits if you're unsure)
JNAProductions wrote: How many women can you take from the Marines’ Codex?
How many men can you take from the Sisters’ Index?
Since most everyone seems to be splitting hairs and going 'um technically...." in order to avoid answering the question, the answer is 0 women in Marines, and quite a few men in Sisters. Off the top of my head priests, crusaders, arco-flaggelants, and the penitent engine all have male models or male option models.
There's a lot of folks lipping off about sisters who haven't read the Index.
10th makes Missionaries, Preachers, Crusaders and mixed units like Arcos and Pennies closer to actual sisters than they've ever been, because currently every unit in the index has the Adeptus Sororitas Keyword. Every single unit can now use AoF.
Personally, I don't care for that change, but I realize that even though GW says lowly Arcos can perform AoF, mine don't have to if I don't want them to because I am in control of which units appear in my army, which models I use to represent them and how they behave.
Kinda like the way people upset about femmestodes don't have to include include them in their armies (there aren't even models for them). This is why it bothers me when they claim they've lost something- they haven't. If anything, "Their dudes" are even moar "Their dudes" because being dudes is a choice now, not an automatic assumption.
The folks that they want to prevent from using "Their femmes" are the ones who have been losing out.
I'd expect Agents of the Imperium to remedy that particular imbalance to some degree at least. That being said, I just realized there is no female member in the exaction squad KT, which is proposterous. If arco flagellants get damien, why don't arbites get Barbaretta?
Still I stand on the stand point that the number of people who go "I picked Crimson Fists, because they are so cool, but give me female marines and they would be perfect" is much smaller, then the number of dudes who picked the same army and expected it to be 100% made out of super dudes. Both groups could be a minority, to how much of a degree we can arguee till the end of time, but one of those two groups will be smaller then the other.
As has already been pointed out, the latter group wouldn't lose anything and could still have 100% male armies. I can't believe there is anyone fragile enough that they would stop playing a faction just because others have a option to build an army with units they don't want.
People selectively forgetting that Vandire's reign of blood was heavily supported by the daughters of the emperor, because they answered to him directly.
Unlike marines, sisters are the militant wing of an organisation and are thus nestled within the ecclesiarchy's command structure.
The church commands them which is why representatives of the church are found in their army list.
Men and women can both be imperial priests, but let's not pretend the miniatures representing them aren't all men.
The meltdowns we'd see if they drew on the old RT sisters background that had them as purity enforcers on all branches of the imperium, including the marines and allowed you have sisters in charge of marine armies, tracking their purity.
The meltdowns we'd see if they drew on the old RT sisters background that had them as purity enforcers on all branches of the imperium, including the marines and allowed you have sisters in charge of marine armies, tracking their purity.
Not gonna lie, I'd love that. If you can have Ordo Hereticus Inquisitors in charge, why not a particularly fierce canoness? The difference is marginal.
PenitentJake wrote: There's a lot of folks lipping off about sisters who haven't read the Index.
10th makes Missionaries, Preachers, Crusaders and mixed units like Arcos and Pennies closer to actual sisters than they've ever been, because currently every unit in the index has the Adeptus Sororitas Keyword. Every single unit can now use AoF.
Personally, I don't care for that change, but I realize that even though GW says lowly Arcos can perform AoF, mine don't have to if I don't want them to because I am in control of which units appear in my army, which models I use to represent them and how they behave.
Kinda like the way people upset about femmestodes don't have to include include them in their armies (there aren't even models for them). This is why it bothers me when they claim they've lost something- they haven't. If anything, "Their dudes" are even moar "Their dudes" because being dudes is a choice now, not an automatic assumption.
The folks that they want to prevent from using "Their femmes" are the ones who have been losing out.
a lot of people on this forum love to complain about the current edition of the game while having takes that make it clear they know nothing about the current edition of the game
and yeah, this issue is a lot of men complaining that their game is less exclusively men. all this arguing, all this back and forth about the specifics of lore or army composition are just a smokescreen for the seething hatred of women on display. women keep trying to speak up on this issue and tell our part, and we're ignored, talked down, or harassed the whole way through
There's a lot of a cognitive dissonance on display - people who consider themselves reasonable and nice, clinging to perspectives that are not and trying very hard to convince everyone they are.
Yeah, it'd be great if people could just be more upfront and stop beating around the bush. Just say you don't want your Space Marines to be female, that's fine. I certainly don't want my Sisters to be male.
StudentOfEtherium wrote: and yeah, this issue is a lot of men complaining that their game is less exclusively men. all this arguing, all this back and forth about the specifics of lore or army composition are just a smokescreen for the seething hatred of women on display. women keep trying to speak up on this issue and tell our part, and we're ignored, talked down, or harassed the whole way through
Just remember people people that you are called isms and phobes because they have no real argument against you wanting to be left alone and not have your hobbies injected with extremism, we are the moderates Cleese is referencing.
be nice to each other, we will outlast them when they eventually move on to the new thing.
did you watch the video, this is your justification of their position not their own, you are characterising it this way to make yourself feel good and its not a true representation of what multiple people have said multiple times.
Hellebore wrote: People selectively forgetting that Vandire's reign of blood was heavily supported by the daughters of the emperor, because they answered to him directly.
Unlike marines, sisters are the militant wing of an organisation and are thus nestled within the ecclesiarchy's command structure.
The church commands them which is why representatives of the church are found in their army list.
Men and women can both be imperial priests, but let's not pretend the miniatures representing them aren't all men.
The meltdowns we'd see if they drew on the old RT sisters background that had them as purity enforcers on all branches of the imperium, including the marines and allowed you have sisters in charge of marine armies, tracking their purity.
Interestingly enough, Sisters actually do double duty, because they are also still the Chamber Militant of the Hereticus IN ADDITION to being the fighting force of the Ecclesiarchy- this is by design; Thor wanted Sisters to fight FOR the Ecclesiarchy, but also be able to check their power in the event of another Vandire (or Buchariss). It is precisely because they are the fighting force of the Ecclesiarcy that they are the best equipped to report on possible corruption within.
The organization of the Daughters/Brides did change when they became the Sororitas, but little has been written about the exact details, so it's hard to say how much, though I would guess that by the time they became sisters, they knew what a conversion field was. We also know that in the Era immediately following the reign, we know only four militant orders of Sororitas existed- the Roses (be they Sacred or Bloody) came later, and their Matron Saints never were Daughters or Brides.
StudentOfEtherium wrote: and yeah, this issue is a lot of men complaining that their game is less exclusively men. all this arguing, all this back and forth about the specifics of lore or army composition are just a smokescreen for the seething hatred of women on display. women keep trying to speak up on this issue and tell our part, and we're ignored, talked down, or harassed the whole way through
THIS, SO MUCH.
Projection much?
This whole "I don't want female Marines because I hate women" thing is such tiresome BS.
I don't like it because I like lore that retains internal integrity rather than bending to the exterior climate.
More representation in 40k is great. You don't have to make female marines to do that. There's a vast array of opportunities for more representation requiring zero lore adjustments. Seeing female Guard is great. More female Imperial agents would be great. And getting more attention on literally anything other than Space Marines, while we're at it, would also be great.
I will take this as the intention rather than words as written - women existing SHOULDN'T be political or extremism.
The reality of society, is that yes, in virtually every culture on the planet, being a woman is inherently political.
Political in terms of law and policy and political in terms of cultural policing.
From reproductive freedom, clothing choice, unpaid labour, emotional labour, victim blaming and until very recently the inability to vote or (just before I was born!) the ability to control your own finances. The ability for spousal abuse and rape to be even recognised as crimes is also shockingly recent in the west.
This is a distinction that privileged demographics fail to appreciate - no woman, LGBTQIA+ person or person of colour WANTS to be inherently political. Society simply makes them political, and turns any conversation about their existence into a political one.
It's a very effective tool of bigots to shut down social discourse by dismissing any discussion as political, thereby de-legitimising it and stymieing already stifled voices.
I don't like it because I like lore that retains internal integrity rather than bending to the exterior climate.
More representation in 40k is great. You don't have to make female marines to do that. There's a vast array of opportunities for more representation requiring zero lore adjustments. Seeing female Guard is great. More female Imperial agents would be great. And getting more attention on literally anything other than Space Marines, while we're at it, would also be great.
This is the correct position of the majority of people talking on this subject.
the sheer amount of misrepresentation going on is ridiculous and at this point should warrant a mod stepping in to caution those who repeatedly do it.
I don't like it because I like lore that retains internal integrity rather than bending to the exterior climate.
More representation in 40k is great. You don't have to make female marines to do that. There's a vast array of opportunities for more representation requiring zero lore adjustments. Seeing female Guard is great. More female Imperial agents would be great. And getting more attention on literally anything other than Space Marines, while we're at it, would also be great.
This is the correct position of the majority of people talking on this subject.
the sheer amount of misrepresentation going on is ridiculous and at this point should warrant a mod stepping in to caution those who repeatedly do it.
Where is the line between creative freedom and bigotry hidden by entertainment?
And why is it sex segregation that seems to be the one aspect of cultural intolerance we use in fiction unmodified, as some kind of key thematic quality?
I can't see many people supporting this position also supporting a scifi universe that specifically treats say jewish people as second class citizens, denying them rights. No matter how justified in universe it seems or how thematic or retaining of integrity it is. You would look askance at someone that enjoyed that setting and vociferously defended any change to that integral component of the setting's identity. Where it was vitally important all the main characters maintain anti-Semitic beliefs and enforced them in society. Because the setting showed that the genetics of jewish people prevented them from living in space as well as non jewish people, so they were just worse at it and therefore it's ok.
What i don't get is why sex segregation/isms has this free pass in fiction in the first place, not only as an ephemeral theme that is integral to maintaining a setting's identity, but literally translated from reality with no fictional veneer. But other intolerances and exclusions like by realworld race or religion, do not.
I don't like it because I like lore that retains internal integrity rather than bending to the exterior climate.
More representation in 40k is great. You don't have to make female marines to do that. There's a vast array of opportunities for more representation requiring zero lore adjustments. Seeing female Guard is great. More female Imperial agents would be great. And getting more attention on literally anything other than Space Marines, while we're at it, would also be great.
This is the correct position of the majority of people talking on this subject.
the sheer amount of misrepresentation going on is ridiculous and at this point should warrant a mod stepping in to caution those who repeatedly do it.
Okay, but this doesn’t change the fact that many players still want it and that it’s not hard to explain away as a recent development. Imperial technology is always improving, as shown by the emergence of the process to create primaris marines, so why can’t they simply say a way has been discovered that would allow the process to work on women?
I don't like it because I like lore that retains internal integrity rather than bending to the exterior climate.
More representation in 40k is great. You don't have to make female marines to do that. There's a vast array of opportunities for more representation requiring zero lore adjustments. Seeing female Guard is great. More female Imperial agents would be great. And getting more attention on literally anything other than Space Marines, while we're at it, would also be great.
This is the correct position of the majority of people talking on this subject.
the sheer amount of misrepresentation going on is ridiculous and at this point should warrant a mod stepping in to caution those who repeatedly do it.
Where is the line between creative freedom and bigotry hidden by entertainment?
And why is it sex segregation that seems to be the one aspect of cultural intolerance we use in fiction unmodified, as some kind of key thematic quality?
I can't see many people supporting this position also supporting a scifi universe that specifically treats say jewish people as second class citizens, denying them rights. No matter how justified in universe it seems or how thematic or retaining of integrity it is. You would look askance at someone that enjoyed that setting and vociferously defended any change to that integral component of the setting's identity. Where it was vitally important all the main characters maintain anti-Semitic beliefs and enforced them in society. Because the setting showed that the genetics of jewish people prevented them from living in space as well as non jewish people, so they were just worse at it and therefore it's ok.
What i don't get is why sex segregation/isms has this free pass in fiction in the first place, not only as an ephemeral theme that is integral to maintaining a setting's identity, but literally translated from reality with no fictional veneer. But other intolerances and exclusions like by realworld race or religion, do not.
Why the hell are you bringing up Judaism? That’s is completely irrelevant
Why the hell are you bringing up Judaism? That’s is completely irrelevant
your inability to see parallels between various forms of bigotry does not make something irrelevant.
And your claim that it is irrelevant, supports my point that sexist content gets a pass and is apparently invisible, while religious or racial intolerance gets jumped on immediately.
So, thanks.
All of this discourse highlights the very real fact that sex discrimination is not actually seen for the bigotry it is, ignored and marginalised.
It should not be a thematic football to kick around, just as racism or anti-semitism shouldn't be thematic footballs.
Yet here we are, in a thread that has treated it like its own class of lesser bigotry.
If you can articulate why, then I'd love to hear it.
EDIT: If you can empathise with why a jewish person would find trying to engage with and enjoy an entertainment property built on jewish exclusion problematic, then you should be able to empathise with women trying to do the same in entertainment properties with built in female exclusion.
It's not that difficult. Walk a mile in the shoes and all that.
There are literally women in this thread that have tried to provide their experience for you to empathise with. Yet we keep seeing the 'but but buts' come out.
Where is the line between creative freedom and bigotry hidden by entertainment?
Where is the line for whom, for one side there is no such thing as a line, for the other it varies, I just spoke on misrepresentation so why would I wish to misrepresent when the individual person can speak for what they want and why.
I can speak on what perhaps influenced that choice maybe?
And why is it sex segregation that seems to be the one aspect of cultural intolerance we use in fiction unmodified, as some kind of key thematic quality?
its not as this entire thread has shown, there are many examples people have given of things in the lore that were expanded, changed or retconned, this is just the topic we are on currently, hell Primaris were what? 6 years ago? people still do not like that and its nothing to do with "sex segregation"
I can't see many people supporting this position also supporting a scifi universe that specifically treats say jewish people as second class citizens, denying them rights. No matter how justified in universe it seems or how thematic or retaining of integrity it is. You would look askance at someone that enjoyed that setting and vociferously defended any change to that integral component of the setting's identity. Where it was vitally important all the main characters maintain anti-Semitic beliefs and enforced them in society. Because the setting showed that the genetics of jewish people prevented them from living in space as well as non jewish people, so they were just worse at it and therefore it's ok.
.... what are you even on about here, what has this got to do with Judaism, thats another example of zero to a hundred in the opposite direction, stick to the topic mate.
What i don't get is why sex segregation/isms has this free pass in fiction in the first place, not only as an ephemeral theme that is integral to maintaining a setting's identity, but literally translated from reality with no fictional veneer. But other intolerances and exclusions like by realworld race or religion, do not.
It does not, its contextual depending on writer and their artistic vision, some have it, some do not depending on series, universe etc.
Dune for example in, my opinion, the bene gesserit are the central driving force in the setting, not Paul, not Leto II, they are effects to the bene gesserits cause.
there is likely real world influence when we are talking about military matters though, front line soldiers are near universally male depending on nation, so this naturally crops up in books, with Astartes specifically they are a mix of the Warrior, the Monastic monk and the brotherhood of soldiers so naturally when they developed this story and theme they leaned into it and it proved extremely popular.
As a mirror to this we get female warrior monks, nuns, with guns and guess what, they also proved very popular, one played off the other.
then we got Custodes which were somewhat based on the above archetypes but developed in another direction to be more akin to spec ops, the people in the background overseeing the empire and protecting the principle, not a brotherhood or sisterhood but a taskforce of singular individuals working in concert rather than an army, so this new retcon is fine to me, it fits their theme.
I don't like it because I like lore that retains internal integrity rather than bending to the exterior climate.
More representation in 40k is great. You don't have to make female marines to do that. There's a vast array of opportunities for more representation requiring zero lore adjustments. Seeing female Guard is great. More female Imperial agents would be great. And getting more attention on literally anything other than Space Marines, while we're at it, would also be great.
This is the correct position of the majority of people talking on this subject.
the sheer amount of misrepresentation going on is ridiculous and at this point should warrant a mod stepping in to caution those who repeatedly do it.
While I personally don't mind the more inclusive version, I do understand your position. Back somewhere around page 10 I remember someone writing that the problem isn't a male only faction- that's fine. It's that the posterboys of game are all male; the poster suggested that things like normalizing mixed Marine/ Sister armies for example by providing a mixed detachment and including units from both factions in Launch and Starter boxes.
That still isn't as inclusive as just opening up the faction, but it is an interesting compromise which may actually go further toward changing the culture by baby-stepping us into change rather than shocking the monkey. Others have suggested that providing a lore hook for the change might have made it more palatable to people- and it's painfully easy- someone had suggested that the Custodes involvement in Indomitus would require some recruitment to maintain the force on Terra and replace losses in the Crusade.
What i don't get is why sex segregation/isms has this free pass in fiction in the first place, not only as an ephemeral theme that is integral to maintaining a setting's identity, but literally translated from reality with no fictional veneer. But other intolerances and exclusions like by realworld race or religion, do not.
All things that are not legally constrained get a free pass in fiction, and that is the dividing line you were talking about earlier. You can be sure that, if GW were to ever depict sexual violence done to minors, they'd never recover from it. Sexual segregation isn't even particularly ubiquitous in overall fiction, race and religion are much more prevalent.
Just out of interest, because I couldn't find an example off the top of my head: What would a fictional veneer for segregation of human sexes look like? How can you do it in such a way that it does meet your requirements for tolerable fiction?
I don't like it because I like lore that retains internal integrity rather than bending to the exterior climate.
More representation in 40k is great. You don't have to make female marines to do that. There's a vast array of opportunities for more representation requiring zero lore adjustments. Seeing female Guard is great. More female Imperial agents would be great. And getting more attention on literally anything other than Space Marines, while we're at it, would also be great.
This is the correct position of the majority of people talking on this subject.
the sheer amount of misrepresentation going on is ridiculous and at this point should warrant a mod stepping in to caution those who repeatedly do it.
While I personally don't mind the more inclusive version, I do understand your position. Back somewhere around page 10 I remember someone writing that the problem isn't a male only faction- that's fine. It's that the posterboys of game are all male; the poster suggested that things like normalizing mixed Marine/ Sister armies for example by providing a mixed detachment and including units from both factions in Launch and Starter boxes.
That still isn't as inclusive as just opening up the faction, but it is an interesting compromise which may actually go further toward changing the culture by baby-stepping us into change rather than shocking the monkey. Others have suggested that providing a lore hook for the change might have made it more palatable to people- and it's painfully easy- someone had suggested that the Custodes involvement in Indomitus would require some recruitment to maintain the force on Terra and replace losses in the Crusade.
Yeah I get where you are coming from too, as I said I think in the other thread marines are a male representation, the only exclusively male representation in the setting at the moment, as such they should keep that.
so how to solve this as a compromise, change the poster boy to include females or change the poster boy faction to include females, for every marine, show a sister, push that these are factions that work in concert, they are a mirror of each other and cover each others gaps and weaknesses, men and woman working in concert expressing their strengths in different ways, the marines are the shield, the bulwark against the physical threat, the sisters are the bulwark and shield against the spiritual one.
Basically what they failed to do with Custodes and sisters of silence due to lack of support for sisters not lack of interest..... which brings me to another point though it is a tangent.... can they bloody well hurry up and get the sisters of silence range out because looking at the heresy unit entries there is so much missing that sounds really really interesting...
so how to solve this as a compromise, change the poster boy to include females or change the poster boy faction to include females, for every marine, show a sister, push that these are factions that work in concert, they are a mirror of each other and cover each others gaps and weaknesses, men and woman working in concert expressing their strengths in different ways, the marines are the shield, the bulwark against the physical threat, the sisters are the bulwark and shield against the spiritual one.
I rather think that GW should simply release more women in roles that aren't inherently gendered in the lore. I think that'd be a really good way to go overall.
But I think there's still a major issue with 40k representation that isn't easily addressed by this, because Space Marines are the flagship of Games Workshop by a mile, and they WILL be the thing that potential wargamer young girls see first.
I don't know if the number holds true still, but it used to be that HALF of Games Workshop sales were Space Marines (the other half includes all of GW's non 40k games as well as Chaos Space Marines). Which is why, over the years, they've made so many Space Marine codecies for the various different types of Space Marines- they lean into this paradigm and then we see it reflected with the new players as the cycle continues.
When someone considers getting into the hobby and asks what force they should play, someone WILL tell them to play Space Marines (easy to paint, easy to play, etc). GW leans into the idea that marines are a great place to start by putting various flavors of them in starter boxes.
(Sisters of Battle are barely in the running with Space Marines- sometimes they go ages without a codex update while four new flavors of Space Marine get their books).
If Games Workshop wants girls to see the game and not see something that screams "not for girls" they probably need to start encouraging people toward a non-marine entry point (that is, if they don't change Space Marines into a less discriminatory faction with lore changes at least as big as the introduction of Primaris).
- One way to do this might be to try to make the Custodes into the poster boy faction. That seems difficult, but I think it could be doable
so how to solve this as a compromise, change the poster boy to include females or change the poster boy faction to include females, for every marine, show a sister, push that these are factions that work in concert, they are a mirror of each other and cover each others gaps and weaknesses, men and woman working in concert expressing their strengths in different ways, the marines are the shield, the bulwark against the physical threat, the sisters are the bulwark and shield against the spiritual one.
Spoiler:
Exactly but put this EVERYWHERE, see a cardboard cut out of a marine, you also get a sister, see a poster of a marine, there is a sister in there too just as prominent.
Exactly but put this EVERYWHERE, see a cardboard cut out of a marine, you also get a sister, see a poster of a marine, there is a sister in there too just as prominent.
That trailer then being followed by indomitus starter was quite strange. Instead of releasing different sizes of starters, there should have been an option to pick SM vs. Necrons or Sisters vs. Necrons instead, and maybe a third option with a mixed faction force pitted against necrons.
I don't like it because I like lore that retains internal integrity rather than bending to the exterior climate.
Did you forget the time GW completely changed the Necrons, invalidating every Necron player’s list, some of their units, and any background they cared about for their Necrons, all to make the Necrons less niche and more commercial to a wider market?
GE is *constantly* changing the lore for reasons exterior to the lore. The Tau aren’t a reaction to the exterior climate embracing anime? The Voltann and Genestealers aren’t embracing the exterior trans or nostalgia bait? Come on, man.
I repeat my refrain from earlier: it’s not that you have a problem with retcons, is that you have a uniquely outsized problem with *this* retcon that’s the red flag.
Exactly but put this EVERYWHERE, see a cardboard cut out of a marine, you also get a sister, see a poster of a marine, there is a sister in there too just as prominent.
That trailer then being followed by indomitus starter was quite strange. Instead of releasing different sizes of starters, there should have been an option to pick SM vs. Necrons or Sisters vs. Necrons instead, and maybe a third option with a mixed faction force pitted against necrons.
I skipped that box as I was not interested in Primaris or Necrons, had it been Sisters and Necrons I would have bought it like I bought a couple boxes of Leviathan for the nids even though I was not really too interested in nids, the deal was solid enough I was willing to try a new army, glad I did even though I do not really play 10th anymore the models work just as well in any other edition (I mostly play a mix of 3rd codex's with 4th core rules as well as Heresy, Legions and BFG)
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Did you forget the time GW completely changed the Necrons, invalidating every Necron player’s list, some of their units, and any background they cared about for their Necrons, all to make the Necrons less niche and more commercial to a wider market?
Expanded the lore and integrated the old lore into it, you still get the old style Necrons in the setting as mindless automatons, they even explained it all the way up to the recent necron novels with the awaking of different dynasties going badly and the personalities not waking properly or at all.
GE is *constantly* changing the lore for reasons exterior to the lore.
Expanding the lore and delving deeper into aspects of it, true retcons are relatively rare outside of Rogue Trader to 40k proper.
The Tau aren’t a reaction to the exterior climate embracing anime?
Not Anime specifically no, a by product of that anime in the models being produced in the mecha market at the time, Anime in the late 90's was still quite obscure and niche but the models were widely known even if what they were based on was not. Speaking from a UK perspective of course, Americans might have a different experience.
The Voltann and Genestealers aren’t embracing the exterior trans or nostalgia bait?
Votann I agree with you is nostalgia bait but genestealers exterior trans, I do not know what you mean by that ?
I repeat my refrain from earlier: it’s not that you have a problem with retcons, is that you have a uniquely outsized problem with *this* retcon that’s the red flag.
And I repeat that is your misrepresentation of the situation in spite of multiple people telling you multiple times its not the case, the repeated misrepresentation is deliberately antagonistic at this point.
Just out of interest, because I couldn't find an example off the top of my head: What would a fictional veneer for segregation of human sexes look like? How can you do it in such a way that it does meet your requirements for tolerable fiction?
I addressed this a while back - if you're going to apply arbitrary restrictions in your setting, they should serve a narrative purpose. Otherwise, they're pointless, and just get in the way of creativity.
I don't like the Decree Passive as a thing, but it does at least provide a reason for the Sisters of Battle to be women, and provides narrative potential - what happens when a branch of the Eclessiarchy chooses to ignore it, for example.
Space Marines or Custodes being all male, particularly when the reason given for it is 'just because' provides no such narrative purpose, and worse, it makes no sense in a setting where roles are otherwise never restricted by gender. Sure, having them all be men means you can tell stories about 'brotherhood' (assuming that's the sort of story you feel is necessary to tell and is meaningfully different from stories of companionship or friendship with mixed genders, and would even still be a thing in a society that doesn't have segregated gender roles)... but you can still do that if female space marines exist, because male space marines also still exist. So you still have the opportunity to tell stories of a group of men doing manly stuff... you've just also opened up the potential for wider stories involving different groups.
So purely from a fiction point of view, allowing mixed Marines is a better option. And from a modelling point of view, you get the same thing... having restrictions does nothing but restrict modelling options. In a game that has been pushing the idea for 30 years that 'It's your hobby, do what you want with your models', it's just downright odd for it to simultaneously say '...oh, but not that' for no reason other than that badly sculpted female models didn't sell well in the early '90s.
Thanks for this elaboration, but it wasn't what I was referring to.
Hellebore mentioned that sexual segregation is generally adapted from reality as is, contratry to other forms of bigotry, usually without a fictional veneer. I just wanted to know if there is a precedent for such a fictional veneer in this context, and what qualities it would have to bring to make it more tolerable. Narrative merit is not really the core of the issue here, considering it is very much a subjective notion.
No, narrative merit is very much relevant here... because what makes segregation 'tolerable' in a setting is having a valid reason for the segregation. Without a reason for it, it's just someone's power fantasy.
Sexual segregation is used in a lot of fiction, almost always to apply some level of control over the population and their ability to breed. That isn't a factor in 40K, where the vast majority of the human population isn't segregated.
In the real world, religious orders are often segregated because people of the opposite sex are a sinful distraction. Again, that would be a valid reason to use in fiction... except in 40K, Marines aren't interested in sex anyway, so having women around isn't an issue, and we're never given any indication in the setting that sex is bad anyway, other than when it strays into the sort of excess that might attract unwholesome powers.
So we're left with there being no real valid reason for the segregation, which just makes it a creative limitation that would be better removed.
Exactly but put this EVERYWHERE, see a cardboard cut out of a marine, you also get a sister, see a poster of a marine, there is a sister in there too just as prominent.
That trailer then being followed by indomitus starter was quite strange. Instead of releasing different sizes of starters, there should have been an option to pick SM vs. Necrons or Sisters vs. Necrons instead, and maybe a third option with a mixed faction force pitted against necrons.
I skipped that box as I was not interested in Primaris or Necrons, had it been Sisters and Necrons I would have bought it like I bought a couple boxes of Leviathan for the nids even though I was not really too interested in nids, the deal was solid enough I was willing to try a new army, glad I did even though I do not really play 10th anymore the models work just as well in any other edition (I mostly play a mix of 3rd codex's with 4th core rules as well as Heresy, Legions and BFG)
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Did you forget the time GW completely changed the Necrons, invalidating every Necron player’s list, some of their units, and any background they cared about for their Necrons, all to make the Necrons less niche and more commercial to a wider market?
Expanded the lore and integrated the old lore into it, you still get the old style Necrons in the setting as mindless automatons, they even explained it all the way up to the recent necron novels with the awaking of different dynasties going badly and the personalities not waking properly or at all.
GE is *constantly* changing the lore for reasons exterior to the lore.
Expanding the lore and delving deeper into aspects of it, true retcons are relatively rare outside of Rogue Trader to 40k proper.
The Tau aren’t a reaction to the exterior climate embracing anime?
Not Anime specifically no, a by product of that anime in the models being produced in the mecha market at the time, Anime in the late 90's was still quite obscure and niche but the models were widely known even if what they were based on was not. Speaking from a UK perspective of course, Americans might have a different experience.
The Voltann and Genestealers aren’t embracing the exterior trans or nostalgia bait?
Votann I agree with you is nostalgia bait but genestealers exterior trans, I do not know what you mean by that ?
I repeat my refrain from earlier: it’s not that you have a problem with retcons, is that you have a uniquely outsized problem with *this* retcon that’s the red flag.
And I repeat that is your misrepresentation of the situation in spite of multiple people telling you multiple times its not the case, the repeated misrepresentation is deliberately antagonistic at this point.
Exterior trend of….is what I wrote. One wrong button and autocorrect creates madness.
I disagree that the old Necron lore fits in the new Necron lore. I was a fan of the Deceiver and the Dragon-cult-of-Mars background with an emphasis on Pariahs, and the butchering of the C’Tan and Pariahs made it unfeasible. Their lore was replaced more than expanded. Retconned.
The Tau have had some major retcons from the noble bright-yet-doomed to the shady grimdark, from practical tanks-are-smarter to dim bulb giant walkers are cooooolz. Retconned.
Genestealers now try to avoid getting absorbed by the Hive, right? That’s a pretty big retcon.
And I’m not misrepresenting anything. No other retcon has come close to this reaction. This is clearly an issue some men have with expanding the lore of the game…when it includes women.
Just out of interest, because I couldn't find an example off the top of my head: What would a fictional veneer for segregation of human sexes look like? How can you do it in such a way that it does meet your requirements for tolerable fiction?
I addressed this a while back - if you're going to apply arbitrary restrictions in your setting, they should serve a narrative purpose. Otherwise, they're pointless, and just get in the way of creativity.
I don't like the Decree Passive as a thing, but it does at least provide a reason for the Sisters of Battle to be women, and provides narrative potential - what happens when a branch of the Eclessiarchy chooses to ignore it, for example.
Space Marines or Custodes being all male, particularly when the reason given for it is 'just because' provides no such narrative purpose, and worse, it makes no sense in a setting where roles are otherwise never restricted by gender. Sure, having them all be men means you can tell stories about 'brotherhood' (assuming that's the sort of story you feel is necessary to tell and is meaningfully different from stories of companionship or friendship with mixed genders, and would even still be a thing in a society that doesn't have segregated gender roles)... but you can still do that if female space marines exist, because male space marines also still exist. So you still have the opportunity to tell stories of a group of men doing manly stuff... you've just also opened up the potential for wider stories involving different groups.
So purely from a fiction point of view, allowing mixed Marines is a better option. And from a modelling point of view, you get the same thing... having restrictions does nothing but restrict modelling options. In a game that has been pushing the idea for 30 years that 'It's your hobby, do what you want with your models', it's just downright odd for it to simultaneously say '...oh, but not that' for no reason other than that badly sculpted female models didn't sell well in the early '90s.
the comparison I make is to fantastical racism.
You can explore racism in fantasy fiction by using imaginary races, such that the reader doesn't have to suffer being othered by their own entertainment. ie dwarfs vs orcs, flerps vs blerps.
But we don't see fantasy sexes added to settings, so instead of having 4 sexes and using qunales as a way to explore sexism, we literally just use women and then expect those readers to suffer through it.
Not only that, but as I said above, culturally we seem entirely fine with this idea, as if bigotry against 50% of the species is just a minor thing that we can kick around for the vibe.
Thanks for this elaboration, but it wasn't what I was referring to.
Hellebore mentioned that sexual segregation is generally adapted from reality as is, contratry to other forms of bigotry, usually without a fictional veneer. I just wanted to know if there is a precedent for such a fictional veneer in this context, and what qualities it would have to bring to make it more tolerable. Narrative merit is not really the core of the issue here, considering it is very much a subjective notion.
Maybe one could achieve the same thing with restrictions against those weak yet graceful spacers from fighting along size real, gravity-grown humans. Men, women? What’s the difference when we’re talking about them delicate fancy floaters?
Or
Vat born just aren’t the same as us. Something about the tank hormones—they’re just so unstable. With their encephalo-curricula learning, I feel like they have a secret language that lets them all play mind games and laugh about us behind our backs. No way will I fight alongside some crazy vat born.
These are pretty hamfisted, but they allow the fiction to explore inherent fictional differences standing in for real world prejudices. Unlike fictional racism, I’m not sure there’s any unclunky way to convey fantasy sexism not based on real sexism.
Maybe something like Banewreaker, where the bad god responsible for lust and compassion towards the impious had a constantly-bleeding wound in his thigh.
so how to solve this as a compromise, change the poster boy to include females or change the poster boy faction to include females, for every marine, show a sister, push that these are factions that work in concert, they are a mirror of each other and cover each others gaps and weaknesses, men and woman working in concert expressing their strengths in different ways, the marines are the shield, the bulwark against the physical threat, the sisters are the bulwark and shield against the spiritual one.
Spoiler:
Exactly but put this EVERYWHERE, see a cardboard cut out of a marine, you also get a sister, see a poster of a marine, there is a sister in there too just as prominent.
I LOVE this idea- but I think you need to go farther.
You need to have more kinds of Sisters. There are tons of different kinds of space marines, but Sisters don't have that:
Sisters should have diverse orders that each have their own unique warrior philosophies with a range that can compete with Marines:
Space Wolves, Iron Hands, Blood Angels, Lamenters, etc. Different hair styles, different trophies and decorations and different themes. Maybe some have tattoos, dreads, braids, shaved heads, mowhawks, etc.
Right now, there's really only one kind of Sister- and it corresponds to the Black Templars.
On a similar note, the various different Sisters forces should not only look different but play different. Again, mirroring Space Wolves to Imperial Fists to Grey Knights, they should not just have alternate color schemes but diverse battle doctrines that are interesting on the table and makes playing an Order of the Tempest force very different from an Order of the Stolen Leopard force.
Sisters need to normalize the alternative color schemes. Yes, we all know the black armor is the standard one, but Ultramarine is the standard Space Marine colors, but there's nothing even a little surprising about seeing marines in almost any color- even on book covers.
Right now, we pretty much only see the one Sisters scheme outside of a page titled "alternative color schemes." We need to get Sisters to a place where seeing them in green, grey, yellow and blue holds the same normality as various Marine chapters in those colors. And we'll have it right when introducing a bonkers-crazy color scheme like the Storm Lords seems like just another Sisters army and not like a crazy clown regiment (it is truly shocking how normal Storm Lords look to me).
Sisters need to have a lot more lore that makes them included in the battles against Xenos and external chaos threats- since up until now their role as the military arm of the Ordo Hereticus has been emphasized. They need to exist in the lore playing pivotal roles in saving planets from orcs, tyranids, necrons, T'au and demons rather than just witch hunting all day long.
Sisters might need a chaos equivalent to Chaos Space Marines and Traitor Titan Legions- and in that I mean a force that is very present and important to the shaping of the universe like those two forces. Traitor Sisters have a lot of potential, but I don't think they can fit into the background without feeling like quite the insert (at least at first).
Anyway- these are all ways in which I think Sisters are not given anywhere close to as much attention as their Space Marine cousins, and I think that elevating them onto equal footing should include closing that gap quite a lot, and not just including them in more pictures.
And to be clear- I REALLY WANT ALL OF THIS TO HAPPEN. Sisters could really become as interesting and diverse as Space Marines and there could be so many interesting characters and miniatures for them.
I will take this as the intention rather than words as written - women existing SHOULDN'T be political or extremism.
The reality of society, is that yes, in virtually every culture on the planet, being a woman is inherently political.
Political in terms of law and policy and political in terms of cultural policing.
From reproductive freedom, clothing choice, unpaid labour, emotional labour, victim blaming and until very recently the inability to vote or (just before I was born!) the ability to control your own finances. The ability for spousal abuse and rape to be even recognised as crimes is also shockingly recent in the west.
This is a distinction that privileged demographics fail to appreciate - no woman, LGBTQIA+ person or person of colour WANTS to be inherently political. Society simply makes them political, and turns any conversation about their existence into a political one.
It's a very effective tool of bigots to shut down social discourse by dismissing any discussion as political, thereby de-legitimising it and stymieing already stifled voices.
Man, I was going to make a response to them along the lines of 'but ew girls icky", but then you here came and basically gave a great and well thought out response. I know several people who loathe the fact that their very existence is seen as "political" and "shoving their agenda in our faces".
The very fact that we have a 20 some page thread here and a 10+ page thread in the background forum arguing about wuuuuuuumen existing in one of the many genetically modified supersoldier factions of the game is honestly kind of pathetic. It is nice at least that compared to even a few years ago it has gotten a lot more civilized, these threads used to explode in a day then get locked as certain crowds came screaming about women.
Genestealers now try to avoid getting absorbed by the Hive, right? That’s a pretty big retcon.
I'd love to get into this one because I loved 'stealers and still have my RT 'nid list (from White Dwarf) and my 2nd ed codex Imperialis and 'nid Codex:
- Genestealer Cults were simply part of the Tyranid army at first- alongside Squigs, Zoats and Mind Slaves (you could take anyone's units really).
- 2nd edition core box (codex imperialis) made them a separate army list, but they could ally with one another- with 'stealers themselves in both lists. It was useful since 'nids lacked any character models at all at the time.
- 2nd edition Tyranid Codex presented both army lists- but for some reason they could not ally with one another anymore. The lore stated that some 'stealer infested planets featured all of the people happily walking into the mouths of the landed tyranid ships, but they also said that they might fight off the Tyranids when they arrive. But the rules now said that they'd always fight off the 'nids. That was strange.
- Then we went a LOT of editions without having any Genestealer Cults anywhere, and there was much moaning about my army of Brood Brothers.
Men and women are, on average, temperamentally different, which has implications for group dynamics. A group of (even chemically sterilized or castrated) males will behave fundamentally differently than one that includes women. The concepts that can be explored narratively in either case are different. The lack of female influence only detracting from the overall narrative potential is your opinion, and one I disagree with.
In the context of 40k, racial segregation is also a plausible tool to establish a limiting factor. Space Marines are supposed to be rare, relative to the overall human population and its enemies. Establishing that only a fraction of males is even eligible for the transition is one way to reinforce this notion.
Those two are off the top of my head. Neither is any more or less plausible than the linguistic loophole that determines Sororitas to be only female. Both are fairly arbitrary, maybe bordering on silly, but established pillars of the setting.
If you want to get deeper into this, feel free to DM me. I'd rather not derail the original discussion with Hellebore, because they touched on something I was interested to learn more about.
I feel that people saying that "they should keep politics out of it" and "this is shoving politics down my throat" are the ones bringing politics into the discussion.
I mean, the codex just used the term "she" to refer to a Custodes character. That's not a shoving anything anywhere.
I don't like it because I like lore that retains internal integrity rather than bending to the exterior climate.
Did you forget the time GW completely changed the Necrons, invalidating every Necron player’s list, some of their units, and any background they cared about for their Necrons, all to make the Necrons less niche and more commercial to a wider market?
I don't recall my Necron lists ever being invalidated. Some rules shifted, pts changed, some things got better/some things got worse.... You know, normal crap edition to edition.
But everything in my collection continued to be useful/playable.
The only unit to ever become "invalidated" was my lone squad of Pariahs. Oh, oh no, I guess I'll just field them as not-so-cool-looking Lychguard (a role they continue to fill to this day)....
Lore? Eh. Crappy lore vs new crappy lore. Seems like a wash to me. Neither has ever prevented me from enjoying playing my murderous endo-skeletons so
Sounds to me like the lore exists to serve the game for you. For me the game was barely a concern, with the real Warhammer 40,000 being the lore and the minis, the only two of the three that GW put any effort into, back in the day.
Thanks for this elaboration, but it wasn't what I was referring to.
Hellebore mentioned that sexual segregation is generally adapted from reality as is, contratry to other forms of bigotry, usually without a fictional veneer. I just wanted to know if there is a precedent for such a fictional veneer in this context, and what qualities it would have to bring to make it more tolerable. Narrative merit is not really the core of the issue here, considering it is very much a subjective notion.
Maybe one could achieve the same thing with restrictions against those weak yet graceful spacers from fighting along size real, gravity-grown humans. Men, women? What’s the difference when we’re talking about them delicate fancy floaters?
Or
Vat born just aren’t the same as us. Something about the tank hormones—they’re just so unstable. With their encephalo-curricula learning, I feel like they have a secret language that lets them all play mind games and laugh about us behind our backs. No way will I fight alongside some crazy vat born.
These are pretty hamfisted, but they allow the fiction to explore inherent fictional differences standing in for real world prejudices. Unlike fictional racism, I’m not sure there’s any unclunky way to convey fantasy sexism not based on real sexism.
Maybe something like Banewreaker, where the bad god responsible for lust and compassion towards the impious had a constantly-bleeding wound in his thigh.
Ursula K. Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness explores not just masculine and feminine, but everything in between. A human ambassador spends time with an alien whose species changes gender based on the proximity of available mates. I'm horrendously oversimplifying, but it might have been one of my favourite books from the university days.
Anyway, it's achieved via the mechanism of "alien-ness" but it's really a construct for exploring gender relations because the character is never really referred to in words that make them seem "alien."
You can explore racism in fantasy fiction by using imaginary races, such that the reader doesn't have to suffer being othered by their own entertainment. ie dwarfs vs orcs, flerps vs blerps.
But we don't see fantasy sexes added to settings, so instead of having 4 sexes and using qunales as a way to explore sexism, we literally just use women and then expect those readers to suffer through it.
Not only that, but as I said above, culturally we seem entirely fine with this idea, as if bigotry against 50% of the species is just a minor thing that we can kick around for the vibe.
So to you, outsourcing a conflict to, say, orcs is a way of mitigating harm to the reader?
Then what about those cases in which there is no fantastical surrogate but just humans? Fiction absolutely deals with real-world references for concepts like racism, too, it's not purely relegated to the fantastical realm, is it?
You could invent qunales for your story if you felt like that would make it safer, but I don't believe most people approach fiction that way. Fiction is already fairly safe by virtue of being fictional.
I don't like it because I like lore that retains internal integrity rather than bending to the exterior climate.
Did you forget the time GW completely changed the Necrons, invalidating every Necron player’s list, some of their units, and any background they cared about for their Necrons, all to make the Necrons less niche and more commercial to a wider market?
GE is *constantly* changing the lore for reasons exterior to the lore. The Tau aren’t a reaction to the exterior climate embracing anime? The Voltann and Genestealers aren’t embracing the exterior trans or nostalgia bait? Come on, man.
I repeat my refrain from earlier: it’s not that you have a problem with retcons, is that you have a uniquely outsized problem with *this* retcon that’s the red flag.
Your accusation is again misplaced. I hated the Necron retcon, and I loathe Primaris, returning Primarchs etc. And I was certainly vocal about it here, if you want to go digging for it. For Centurions and the various flyers I was vocal about those too, though orobably on Warseer before I migrated here.
And I’m not misrepresenting anything. No other retcon has come close to this reaction. This is clearly an issue some men have with expanding the lore of the game…when it includes women.
The volume is because it's part of a larger cultural context that is a click-generating rage machine. There's money to be made in the culture war. There's much less money to be made on the introduction of Centurions, and very few politically oriented content creators will care that the C'tan have been retconned into enslaved shards. . . Even if it annoys the crap outta me.
Those changes also don't come with the baggage of one side calling the other bigots because they can't fathom the dislike might be something else.
Men and women are, on average, temperamentally different, which has implications for group dynamics.
But the difficulty with this premise is that "temperament" is more of a result of environmental factors than biological ones.
Do boys behave differently than girls because they receive different cues from adults and the media?
We KNOW that the harshness of the 40k universe already breaks that difference in socialization due to female participation in other Imperial organizations, so these "temperamental" differences you speak of would be minimized to some degree or another, if they exist at all. Heck, 40k years might even be long enough for even biological markers to shift.
Either way, I don't think we can really compare the potential "temperaments" between 21st century boys and girls with those raised in the 40k Grimdark. Not by a long shot.
BobtheInquisitor wrote:I repeat my refrain from earlier: it’s not that you have a problem with retcons, is that you have a uniquely outsized problem with *this* retcon that’s the red flag.
Uh, Insectum has publicly and vocally hated the Necron retcon, among others. I did too.
'Here's some bull gak I assume you believe- gotcha, hypocrite!' isn't an incisive blow so much as it is just, well, tiring. Especially when the guy you're arguing with really isn't part of the reactionary 'anti-woke' crowd and has made his position pretty clear a couple of times in this thread.
transhuman having still a gender was net really a thing until it was written down that there are male and female
a planet only recruiting young man because trials have a high death rate and the people are removed from society anyway makes sense
(like you need 100 recruits for 1 Marines, you have 100 people removed for each Marines, with the recruiting planets being a Deadthworld with low population, removing 50.000 woman on a regular basis won't work over 10k years)
that Marines or Custodes are still male and not genderless after the process is a different story and there is no real reason to still call them male or female as they are beyond
and big E saying he only wants male recruits to form his transhuman guard is a valid in-universe reason to do it, no need to make up science for it but simply going clear that the founder of the Imperium hated woman and did not want them around him except when they don't talk
could even go further and came up that the 2 missing Primarchs are woman which was not intended and that being the reason why they were locked up after being found
but going that way the Imperium and the Emperor would be the good guys and less favourable for people to pick and their extensive range of models and keeping everything else a NPC faction would not work out
Marketing and Background have put themselves in a corner they are not getting out easy
They need to make a change to appeal to more people while at the same time they want to grow the Space Marine model range and make 40k much more dependent about them
GW created their own unsolvable problem here with SM making up the majority of models and Datasheets, and being part in each starter set, they are the one faction everyone buys but also the one faction they cannot easily adopt to new marketing strategies
if Marines would be one book upon many with all of them being equal in size and support for models and rules, the whole thing would not be a problem at all and not open to the internet raging about "woke"
Culture always dictated that women wore dresses, because they were a) too valuable to risk in, and b) not as capable in, a fight. Men by contrast always wore less restrictive clothing - now, "what" that exactly meant differed. It could be trousers, it could be tunics, it could be skirts... but by and large, there was always a significant difference. In some areas men did wear long robes that were not dissimilar to what women wore, but that was a consequence of necessities of climate - long robes can help ventilation and heat control in the desert (which is why Crusaders wore surcoat, a fashion that spread to rest of Europe, but was then gradually abandoned following the fall of the last Crusader strongholds in the Holy Land).
yes and no, the very difference in clothing was most of the time based on class and social status
nobility and rich were the ones wearing dresses while the working and fighters those with the less restrictive clothing, it was not based on gender until modern times
looking at the paintings we have from early medieval times, man and woman from the same social class doing the same work have similar clothing
2 nobles, male and female at home with the kids wear both similar dresses, while hose were worn by man and woman (which developed into breeches and stockings that were still not exclusive to a gender until later)
it was not really until the french revolution, were they tried to remove the different social classes that trousers became exclusive male and dresses female
(taking out ancient rome or greece here because there woman were seen rahter differently and not part of the social system and therefore having different clothing)
To this day I look back at the Necrons retcon as being the point where 40k lore started going downhill. And I actually haven't bought anything related to that army since.
If GW wanted more women in the Custodes army they could've given Sisters of Silence the same treatment as what the Kroot just received. They could've sold a bunch of new models, and there wouldn't be any controversy. GW is a strange company sometimes and took the most controversial path, all the while delivering one awkward looking sculpt with the codex and no new female custodes to sell anyway.
There is really cool art of SoS with cyber mastiffs and 2handed power axes with much heavier armor, neither of which have made it into model form. Sadly sisters of silence will have to sit out yet another edition without anything new, until the next edition churn...and perhaps beyond.
To me the lore and aesthetics matter, otherwise i'd be playing something like Stargrave with 3d printed models instead of investing time and $$ into Warhammer.
Inherent in the social contract of a forum is that everything is an opinion unless presented as fact.
It's funny that in 30 pages of opinion, the people triggered by my opinion are ignoring the substance of the opinion and instead using lazy identity branding to discredit, and wanting receipts for opinions. You'll do literally anything to avoid thinking critically about what was actually being said. You just label, categorise and reach for a reddit screenshot that seems the right amount of edgy to virtue signal to your tribe.
Exterior trend of….is what I wrote. One wrong button and autocorrect creates madness.
Haha happens to me a lot too which is why I got to the pc, more spelling errors but less auto correct mistakes.
I disagree that the old Necron lore fits in the new Necron lore. I was a fan of the Deceiver and the Dragon-cult-of-Mars background with an emphasis on Pariahs, and the butchering of the C’Tan and Pariahs made it unfeasible. Their lore was replaced more than expanded. Retconned.
hey fair enough, this is how we are interpreting things and you disagree and I disagree with your disagreement, nothing wrong with that.
as to your point, most of the lore was written from a narrator or a Imperial standpoint it would appear, as the lore expanded we find out they are not full on godlike being but shards of them a theme that is throughout 40k, god like being having shards of themselves broken off, Khaine, Emperor, Magnus etc. the Pariahs I agree appears to be a removal from the setting as does the goal of THOSE awoken dynasties, the ones up to that point had that goal and can literally still have that goal. the sharding and the pariahs are minor changes on the level of custodes compared to the massive expansion of the lore with the higher personalities waking up and asserting character over the necron forces.
The Tau have had some major retcons from the noble bright-yet-doomed to the shady grimdark, from practical tanks-are-smarter to dim bulb giant walkers are cooooolz. Retconned.
Nope this one really is a slow burn expansion more than the others, we saw over time this optimisistic race grow jaded and the reality of the Universe sink in, from Taros to Damocles, encountering the Nids and Dark Eldar, their technology advanced in the direction of mecha over conventional tanks.
Genestealers now try to avoid getting absorbed by the Hive, right? That’s a pretty big retcon.
Was not aware of this one, easily explained by the strong desire to spread build into their genes by the nids and of course the nids do not care either way as either the Stealers win and spread further or the nids win and get the biomass now or later when they come back.
And I’m not misrepresenting anything. No other retcon has come close to this reaction. This is clearly an issue some men have with expanding the lore of the game…when it includes women.
changes/expansions/ retcons that matched or exceeded this backlash.
Newcrons
Primaris
Cawl
13th Black Crusade
Rogue Trader to 40k Yarrick dying off screen
all saw multiple videos and people talking about it in the same manner, the biggest difference between this one and the others was the others did not have GW trying to gaslight people then block them for calling them out, all they needed to do was say "sure its a change we thought needed doing" nothing else and this would have died by now, when you lie and gaslight someone you make the matter worse, you add fuel to the fire, people then start looking for why they are being gaslit and lied to and that sends them down a rabbit hole, we saw this with primaris, people looking for ANY explanation in the background to justify them suddenly turning up, people fighting non stop about whether classic marines are going the way of the dodo (they are), whether this means we will get female marines due to Cawls introduction, Primaris spider webbed our really badly and is STILL an issue to this day.
So no it is not just because it involved woman, that is a misrepresentaton, it is just because people are passionate about their hobby, the lore and the game.
Spoiler:
I LOVE this idea- but I think you need to go farther.
You need to have more kinds of Sisters. There are tons of different kinds of space marines, but Sisters don't have that:
Sisters should have diverse orders that each have their own unique warrior philosophies with a range that can compete with Marines:
Space Wolves, Iron Hands, Blood Angels, Lamenters, etc. Different hair styles, different trophies and decorations and different themes. Maybe some have tattoos, dreads, braids, shaved heads, mowhawks, etc.
Right now, there's really only one kind of Sister- and it corresponds to the Black Templars.
On a similar note, the various different Sisters forces should not only look different but play different. Again, mirroring Space Wolves to Imperial Fists to Grey Knights, they should not just have alternate color schemes but diverse battle doctrines that are interesting on the table and makes playing an Order of the Tempest force very different from an Order of the Stolen Leopard force.
Sisters need to normalize the alternative color schemes. Yes, we all know the black armor is the standard one, but Ultramarine is the standard Space Marine colors, but there's nothing even a little surprising about seeing marines in almost any color- even on book covers.
Right now, we pretty much only see the one Sisters scheme outside of a page titled "alternative color schemes." We need to get Sisters to a place where seeing them in green, grey, yellow and blue holds the same normality as various Marine chapters in those colors. And we'll have it right when introducing a bonkers-crazy color scheme like the Storm Lords seems like just another Sisters army and not like a crazy clown regiment (it is truly shocking how normal Storm Lords look to me).
Sisters need to have a lot more lore that makes them included in the battles against Xenos and external chaos threats- since up until now their role as the military arm of the Ordo Hereticus has been emphasized. They need to exist in the lore playing pivotal roles in saving planets from orcs, tyranids, necrons, T'au and demons rather than just witch hunting all day long.
Sisters might need a chaos equivalent to Chaos Space Marines and Traitor Titan Legions- and in that I mean a force that is very present and important to the shaping of the universe like those two forces. Traitor Sisters have a lot of potential, but I don't think they can fit into the background without feeling like quite the insert (at least at first).
Anyway- these are all ways in which I think Sisters are not given anywhere close to as much attention as their Space Marine cousins, and I think that elevating them onto equal footing should include closing that gap quite a lot, and not just including them in more pictures.
And to be clear- I REALLY WANT ALL OF THIS TO HAPPEN. Sisters could really become as interesting and diverse as Space Marines and there could be so many interesting characters and miniatures for them.
Sold, a Chamber for each chapter, it works so perfectly!
Please, please learn how to words. A statement of intent is not gaslighting. A single social media post, advising the intent is now “there’s always been male and female Custodes” isn’t trying to challenge and alter your memories of events. It’s not trying to blame someone else for your own actions and the consequences thereof.
It was a clarifying statement made to answer questions about the circumstances of a female Custodes being mentioned in the Codex. A brief confirmation not to expect a background development, as it’s not a lore advancement, but a retcon, and as of now, should be taken as there having always been male and female Custodes.
Please learn how to words, because that is not gaslighting,
