Ok, so I'm not being funny or anything, this is a genuine question, but why are there no black people in the 41st Millennium? I never see any models painted in darker shades, most are a pale white, with some a healthy pink at best.

Have I missed a memo or something?

Gw don't paint many miniatures with varying skin tone. In the same way they have very few women. The Salamanders are all black and the White Scars are Mongolian, but even here you see that different races are segregated. The imperial guard, where you would expect the greatest human diversity, also sees minis painted exclusively white.

Personally my human models are painted a mix of different races, as I find monochrome human groups weird and off putting, I've seen plenty of private collections painted as different races too. Much as I've seen many private collections with more women. GW as a company, though, seems to have a bit of a racism and sexism problem.

There are a few black characters, Vulkan being the obvious one. Without going too PC or anything like that, I guess it's beause GW's main market is Europe and N. America, both of which are white-majority. However, there's also the fact that depending on which army you collect, most of them barely show any flesh anyway, you wouldn't be able to tell a black Marine from a white Marine if they're both in full armour.

That being said, there's obviously nothing stopping you from having a fully black army.

Drager wrote:
GW as a company, though, seems to have a bit of a racism and sexism problem.

Kind of odd in this day and age isn't it.. Anyway, I've plans to have a variety when I start painting my fleshier models.

This is something I've thought about in relation to TV writers etc, and applies here. I reckon there are more white models, as people tend to lump imaginary people in with themselves, unless it is expressly stated otherwise. For example when people say 'a person did X' women imagine them to be women, and men imagine them as men. In a white male dominated studio, white male models are going to be more prevalent than others

GW just builds and offers what it is made up of: middle-age white guys. If you ask why units aren't painted as African American/black/any racial background other than white, they'll just say "hey, paint them however you want!" It's a pretty normal thing with game companies, especially the traditional ones. And GW is about as traditional as you get!


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 statu wrote:
This is something I've thought about in relation to TV writers etc, and applies here. I reckon there are more white models, as people tend to lump imaginary people in with themselves, unless it is expressly stated otherwise. For example when people say 'a person did X' women imagine them to be women, and men imagine them as men. In a white male dominated studio, white male models are going to be more prevalent than others

Exactly.

The company has very low internal diversity in staff and a poor to non existent handle on the idea that this is even relevant. Many (although far from all) GW staff will tend to wave it off and point out the Salamanders and White scars, without realising that segregation is also racist. They will also point to the Sisters and Eldar, without taking into account the concept that sexualisation through the use of innapropiate armour designs (Sisters/Banshees/etc) is also sexist, paritcularly combined with all women being very chesty.

Oddly the BDSM space elves of the Dark Eldar are among the least sexist miniatures with their fetish glad warriors being an equal opportunity bunch and the current iteration of the Incubi having gotten rid of the boobplate (you can't tell whether a given Incubi is male or female by any metric anymore, unless a female head is used.) Additionally, whilst some areas of the army still have large breasts sculpted onto the models, this makes sense in the context of someone wearing skintight mesh as opposed to 'proper' armour.

They don't have any line I can point to where they managed to do racial diversity even half as well.

Aren't the salamanders/vulkan not even black? They always seemed to be Caucasian to me, only with black skin, like literally black.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Drager wrote:
The company has very low internal diversity in staff and a poor to non existent handle on the idea that this is even relevant. Many (although far from all) GW staff will tend to wave it off and point out the Salamanders and White scars, without realising that segregation is also racist. They will also point to the Sisters and Eldar, without taking into account the concept that sexualisation through the use of innapropiate armour designs (Sisters/Banshees/etc) is also sexist, paritcularly combined with all women being very chesty.

Oddly the BDSM space elves of the Dark Eldar are among the least sexist miniatures with their fetish glad warriors being an equal opportunity bunch and the current iteration of the Incubi having gotten rid of the boobplate (you can't tell whether a given Incubi is male or female by any metric anymore, unless a female head is used.) Additionally, whilst some areas of the army still have large breasts sculpted onto the models, this makes sense in the context of someone wearing skintight mesh as opposed to 'proper' armour.

They don't have any line I can point to where they managed to do racial diversity even half as well.

To be fair, sisters and eldar are among the least sexist armourmodels out there. Apart from boob plates (which I happen to like, otherwise I might as well play templar) there isn't really anything sexist about them. They are fully armoured after all.

Yeah, Salamanders are mutant-black, not African-black.

I think you could paint your minis black and they'd look alright.

I don't remember GW having answered a question like this in a publication or at a Games Day. It is a good question though. Just let me show something that at least in my case helped a bit with this topic. The following pictures are from White Dwarf 123 and show Space Marine Salamanders for 1st Edition 40k painted by GW's 'eavy Metal team:





You can - even in the printed original - hardly make out much of the detail of the faces. The contrast, even in case of otherwise colored armours, doesn't work well if at all. Painting faces like this, and I don't think there is anything else about it, did just not work out well back in the days. Especially if photographed it was not really good to show the miniatures' details.

Here is another example from Codex: Armageddon (3rd Edition Supplement)



Compare it with the Sergeant with 'white skin'



That's my understanding of why this wasn't done much. The first images are from 1990 and clearly show they had invented other skin tones for Marines but did not use them much afterwards. The Armageddon pics are from 2000.

There were lots of articles in White Dwarf were they talked about why they use strongly contrasting colours for their work in this and that case. Mike McVey is one of those I remember choosing colours with this in mind.

I've seen it a lot with Catachans, but I think that has more to do with stereotypes (i.e. the whole army is the cast of Predator than interest in diversity.

I would think of it as less segregation, and more like the 40,000 years of breeding. If we as a planet sent out a colonizing group to another planet, and didn't mix much with them, then standard everyday breeding would slowly blend things together to the point where any given planet ends up as one type. It's not something that can be shown IRL, mainly because we haven't had the mixing of races until fairly recently, and we haven't been around very long. Give us another few millennium, and we'll probably be looking pretty much the same on good ol' earth too. Hell, take 2 wildly different people, and use your punnet squares to mix them, then do it for even 10 generations of inter mixing using average available populations statndards for your area, things will come together.

TLDR: genetic mixing over time results in sameness

Why is almost everyone obssesed with "diversity"... Does it really matter?

There his a video on youtube on how to paint black or asian people on GW channel. It's rather easy and effective. You can play with washes if you want to have very black people like Congolese or lighter black like afro-american. Personnaly, I am starting to wonder if one day we will have a Space Marine with a descent air-cut. But, that's another debate.

@Hawky

If you think almost everyone is obsessed with diversity (racial, sexual, cultural or otherwise), don't you think you answered your own question? Yes, it does matter to a lot of people that their favorite hobby match their core values and the world in which they live. Some will be rather millitant, other much less, but it is important to a significant portion of the gamming community and I don't see anything wrong with it. It can seem a little bit to political at times, but such his life in the democratic world. Anything can become very political.

I can't speak for others but I try and keep my guard units diverse, but even still, 90% of them are white. My reason, I have to go extra work/painting to make non-white soldiers as I paint each squad in a batch. If they aren't all the same skin color then it's extra painting for me. That and anything other then white, I'm just not to sure how to paint right. The examples just look artificial or not right to me. Another reason is probably because I'm white myself, so I just default to that. I'm not trying to be racist in my painting (wow, that just sounds horrible to say). Definitely going to check out that video that epronovost posted about.

 Hawky wrote:
Why is almost everyone obssesed with "diversity"... Does it really matter?

Yes.

I got exactly 3 guys with skin, I am not about to buy extra pots just for that.

Edit: Make it 8 with the 5 new stormtroopers, point still stands, I might have some browns I could use, but if I don't, I am spending money for 2-3 face, and anyone calling me racist because of it can stuff it.

I agree with what has been said previously. But IMO, the real thing to point at in GW's range is that there are no genuine black/chinese/arabic guys heads. Same thing for girls, who are supposed to fight in the IG just like men.

The exception of Salamanders is just not one; their faces are actually caucasians, but their skin is ash-black. Nothing to do with African people.

As it was stated, GW studio is as it is and there is no real demand for diversty among the main cohort of customers, i.e. 10-15 yo white upper/middle class guys. Why GW would bother as they just have to say "paint it as you want" to avoid criticism?

 dpal666 wrote:
I would think of it as less segregation, and more like the 40,000 years of breeding. If we as a planet sent out a colonizing group to another planet, and didn't mix much with them, then standard everyday breeding would slowly blend things together to the point where any given planet ends up as one type. It's not something that can be shown IRL, mainly because we haven't had the mixing of races until fairly recently, and we haven't been around very long. Give us another few millennium, and we'll probably be looking pretty much the same on good ol' earth too. Hell, take 2 wildly different people, and use your punnet squares to mix them, then do it for even 10 generations of inter mixing using average available populations statndards for your area, things will come together.

TLDR: genetic mixing over time results in sameness

Your understanding of genetics is a little off. For starters 40,000 years is a much shorter time period than that which modern humans have existed for. Additionally we have all developed from an initially fairly homogenous small population, with variations building over time. If we look at the way the worlds of the imperium formed and their relative technology levels I would, as a biologist, suggest it would be more likely that we would see increased rather than decreased variation. This would be particularly true on an interplanetary scale, but would be likely even on the scale of individual planets, provided diverse populations were the original settlers (a reasonable assumption I hope). Even with a small, homogenous group of settlers it would not be surpirsing over the time scales involved to find large degrees of variation have developed on many of the planets, although these variations would be different to the ones we currently see.

TLDR: A sufficiently large population with multiple survival and selection pressures doesn't work that way

Because very few people paint them that way because they don't want to as simple an answer as it is. The fact you care is bit fecked up you don't see pink orks where is the equality in that lmao. No women imperial guard squats have also not been added.

Let's face it gw gave you all the equality they can by telling you to paint them any which way you want. Equality is when people are treated equally without notice of colour sex or creed not when people see only white people and claim its wrong because there is no black people or if its all Asian people and there is no white people and so on be like me colour blind. I see people most dumb as feck. No such thing as raciest we all belong to one race the human race any thing else is pointless.

As for complaining about women models with large breasts or such like where is the complaints about the guys with all muscles or the guys that are all meant to be 6-7 foot it can go on and on accept the game for what it is a game which you can personally convert paint to look like anything you want and stop the guff its all a political nightmare people are people end of story and sod anyone who thinks them selves belonging to a sub group just because of something stupid as skin colour.

If you want to think about all the races in the book are xenophobic true raciest or religious nut jobs you don't like it don't play the game

Small unimportant rant over

 RazgrizOne wrote:

As it was stated, GW studio is as it is and there is no real demand for diversty among the main cohort of customers, i.e. 10-15 yo white upper/middle class guys. Why GW would bother as they just have to say "paint it as you want" to avoid criticism?

Perhaps to attract people from outside that demograph and expaned their customer base?

Either way, I wasn't trying to start any kind of great political debate, I was just curious as I'm thinking of painting a couple of models different colours is all.

Well, the reason all the guard are white is because there are literally like two cadian face sculpts. I actually just recently painted Colonel Schafer's Last Chancers box (which was absolutely awesome) and it came with 2 girls (1 chinese), 1 native american, and 1 black guy. Of course, one of the girls had special-issue flak miniskirt and Imperial Guard Carapace Tank Top, but you get what you can get I guess.

I suppose the real reason is it's a british company? So their models are predominantly...sort of british? Toodle Pip Cheerio White Guys and every woman is there at least partially for sex appeal and other races don't exist.

Honestly, that's pretty standard in industries like this one. Products aimed at "nerds" almost always follow that same sort of style. I mean, count the white male video game protagonists.

Either way, I wasn't trying to start any kind of great political debate, I was just curious as I'm thinking of painting a couple of models different colours is all.

Yes sure. But generally, gender/race topics are most likely to trigger burning debates, even if it is done casually, just like now.

Regarding audience and marketing, I really don't know, to be honest. Why are most of GW customers white? Would girls be attracted to the hobby if they would be more targeted ? I know most of actual players don't care but I would be curious to read a sociology of the Hobby.

theres this funny Black Legion parody video on youtube where black legion members are all black (at least speak in ebonics) I think the video was made by Bruva Alfabusa but for the life of me I cant find it anymore.

 Sir Arun wrote:
theres this funny Black Legion parody video on youtube where black legion members are all black (at least speak in ebonics) I think the video was made by Bruva Alfabusa but for the life of me I cant find it anymore.

Pretty sure that's miniwargaming.

10penceman wrote:
Because very few people paint them that way because they don't want to as simple an answer as it is. The fact you care is bit fecked up you don't see pink orks where is the equality in that lmao. No women imperial guard squats have also not been added.

Let's face it gw gave you all the equality they can by telling you to paint them any which way you want. Equality is when people are treated equally without notice of colour sex or creed not when people see only white people and claim its wrong because there is no black people or if its all Asian people and there is no white people and so on be like me colour blind. I see people most dumb as feck. No such thing as raciest we all belong to one race the human race any thing else is pointless.

As for complaining about women models with large breasts or such like where is the complaints about the guys with all muscles or the guys that are all meant to be 6-7 foot it can go on and on accept the game for what it is a game which you can personally convert paint to look like anything you want and stop the guff its all a political nightmare people are people end of story and sod anyone who thinks them selves belonging to a sub group just because of something stupid as skin colour.

If you want to think about all the races in the book are xenophobic true raciest or religious nut jobs you don't like it don't play the game

Small unimportant rant over

I'd just like to break this down a bit.

"you don't see pink orks where is the equality in that lmao" - The overrepresentation of green people in the ork community is not a problem, because (and I can't stress this enough) there are no green people.

"No women imperial guard squats have also not been added. " - quite a few gamers complain about the lack of female imperial guard, and there are several third party companies which do very well out of the fact. I can only imagine that no-one complains about the lack of female squats because of the lack of squats in general.

"Let's face it gw gave you all the equality they can by telling you to paint them any which way you want". Except that people's faces are different shapes, and all of the human faces that GW models are caucasian in shape - often in an exaggerated fashion. They also chose to set an example in the 'eavy metal team by painting nearly all of their models white.

" Equality is when people are treated equally without notice of colour sex or creed not when people see only white people and claim its wrong because there is no black people " - surely equality is what people are represented in the media proportionally. We cannot make all of our characters white and then complain when people think that there is something dodgy with that (because there is something dodgy with it).

"As for complaining about women models with large breasts or such like where is the complaints about the guys with all muscles" - in a wargame, large muscles are useful. They make the character look strong, intimidating. Occasionally, they are over-emphasised i.e. catachans, marauders. Large breasts are completely useless in war. I would far rather see a female model with over-emphasised musculature. It would be refreshing.

"sod anyone who thinks them selves belonging to a sub group just because of something stupid as skin colour." - except that society constantly treats people as being different because of their skin colour; when people of ethnic minorities constantly get a raw deal in our society, I think that it is incredibly hypocritical to then say that they should not identify with others of their minority as a mark of solidarity.

I'll let you google why 'colourblindness' is a useless ideology in a racially biased society for yourself.

Unfortunately I can only remember black characters in WH40K in the novels. I don't think I've ever seen a black Space Marine apart from Jonah Orion in Dawn of War (I definitely don't count the Salamanders, I mean "black" as in having the same skin tones as real black people). You never see any black Eldar either, despite their human-like appearance (Forge Fathers in Deadzone are the only example that comes to mind of different ethnicities being shown in a "dwarf" or "elf" species...no, wait, I think there was a Squat model who was black in the 2nd edition rulebook).

I'd like to see more examples of and painting guides for all types of skin tones in army books, etc, and by "more" I really mean "any." The Imperium is evil, but it's at least supposed to be about the whole of humanity banding together.

What I don't get is how people can say "No, GW is absolutely not racist and sexist!" When they clearly and obviously are. It's not like they're sitting around going "how can we screw minorities today, heh heh heh..." But it's the standard "bunch of white men sitting around designing all the characters"

Which means by default, all the characters will be white men, and if they are women/a different race, that fact will be a major chunk of their character.

There are... Let's see, three female named characters in 40k currently with rules (Lelith Hesperax, Saint Celestine, And the banshee Pheonix lord, Jaim Zar?). I can think of one non-white named character, and it's the guy in the guard codex with the fu Manchu mustache and the "Look at me I'm ASIAN" hat.

You can argue that you can paint them however you like and GW never "intended" them all to be white, but look through their catalog, and look at the characters they've created. One or two kits that come with optional bodies with breasts on them (I laughed particularly hard at the new harlequins where they carefully included enough parts in all the kits to make all your harlequins male if the breast torsos were too scary) does not make them not as a company "white male by default".

I tend to think it's just because white skin contrasts more than black skin and is easier to paint to a good standard (at least I find it is, others may not).


Anyway, I tend to feel complaining about equality in sex/race at the end product is the wrong way to go about it. We should be focusing on why there aren't more black/asian/female/whatever in game/miniature design studios, not worrying about why there aren't more black/asian/female models.

The fact that this basic question sparks as much debate and touchy feely feels is exactly why GW's position of "paint them how you want" is probably the best answer they can give.

If they go out of their way to add in diversity to armies they created back in the 70's, with peoples current feelings in mind, then they risk looking like they're admitting to having been obtuse or even changing their own ways for others when they may not have necessarily done anything wrong or malicious in the first place, ie: looking like apologists.

On the other hand specifically deciding "not to" change anything and leaving levels of segregation in their games, or just setting things up for the majority playerbase as they see it (white males), would then risk them looking like they either have a racial bias or at least aren't keeping up to date with modern social thought and pressures.

By choosing to "not" address the issue at all and say "Look guys, we provide the playground, play in it as you wish" they essentially walk away from the ensuing argument with as much dignity as they can muster. Personally I feel like this is actually the best coarse of action they could take. They aren't attempting to offend anyone or appear racist or apologetic either. They're just making a game and trying to make a profit.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I tend to think it's just because white skin contrasts more than black skin and is easier to paint to a good standard (at least I find it is, others may not).


Anyway, I tend to feel complaining about equality in sex/race at the end product is the wrong way to go about it. We should be focusing on why there aren't more black/asian/female/whatever in game/miniature design studios, not worrying about why there aren't more black/asian/female models.

I think it is easier to paint white skin using GW paints ranges because they don't really make other skin tones. They make earthy browns, and they used to make 'dark flesh', but that was more of a tanned colour for shading purposes.

I'm inclined to agree that we need to examine why there aren't more black/asian/female/whatever in game/miniature design studios, but I think part of that problem is that there is very little representation for them in the hobby as it stands, and thus little to draw them to play the game (never mind move towards an artistic role in a studio).

It is basic that we paint what we want. And there is diversity in the galaxy. We have photographic evidence

Here we have a female Ork - a rarity, yes, but Gwendyln Gutzmass is living proof. Behind her is her personal
plastic surgeon. Miss Gutzmass is wearing a Needlemek skirt in Russian beige, accessorized with a Gak skin vest.
We believe she is asking for the keys to the Lexus.



Next we have an example of ethnic diversity within the ranks of the Ork mobs



Two Blud Angel scouts on watch duty



A truly dark Eldar Talos

Why aren't there any coloured folk?

Because the game was written by middle class ENGLISH whiteboys who went to an ENGLISH public school. You write what you are familiar with.

More of an unconscious omission than a conscious one. It just didn't occur to them since there weren't a lot of non-white gamers who played their game back then.

 Psienesis wrote:

 Hawky wrote:
Why is almost everyone obssesed with "diversity"... Does it really matter?

Yes.

Actually, that strongly depends on the country you live in. It is not an issue in much of Europe.

I wonder how people get the idea there are no dark-skinned people in 40k. They are in the BL novels and with the miniatures it just depends on how you paint them.
But most importantly, I think it has to do with the way sci-fi works. In most sci-fi, 40k too, worlds and societies are incredibly monotone and unvaried. A planet has only one single biome (forest planets or desert planets), it usually is a single political entity, its people all speak the same single language and all have the same culture. And since everything is the same, it also makes sense to have the whole population look similar, rather than to depict the hundreds or thousands of different cultures, languages and peoples that would realistically evolve on a single world.

-

And heres my personal answer.

Who cares

If you want black Orks, PAINTEM BLACK if you want fething asian woman imperial guardsmen then have at it.

Keep in mind these heads are often smaller than the end of the average pinkie finger, trying to sculpt on subtle features in the face that tend to vary slightly would have to be done very obviously. This would result in almost cartoon like and offensive heads. That's the explanation i heard anyway, and I would not a like a catachan that looked an ethnic character from a mid 20th century Warner brothers or Disney cartoon.

Think of it like the reason that most old European christian works depict the people of the Bible as white, the artists painted what was around them, white people. GW is a british company that does its sculpting in britain, the miniatures are painted like generic british people.

One could ask the same question about blond models, there are very few I have seen that are painted blond by 'eavy metal.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:

 Hawky wrote:
Why is almost everyone obssesed with "diversity"... Does it really matter?

Yes.

Actually, that strongly depends on the country you live in. It is not an issue in much of Europe.

Australian and British universities have been infected with it but other than that its a VERY American mindset.

As for GW there is a VERY obvious lack of diversity, not because of a lack of black/asian/female models but because there is only a single chest in the cadian line, maybe two different heads and all of 3 different legs. The models are just crappy. Then the painting is the same problem, they have a VERY limited line so there will be the one set of 3 paints to do Caucasian skin and then tough luck, buy Vallejo and you'll have some choice. Actually while you're at it Vic minis and Dreamforge have some great female models.

Partly it's because it's a lot harder to shade darker skin, but they have done dark-skinned Catachans before. They don't do faces modeled to look like non-caucasians because they are worried about being accused of stereotyping. At least that's the reason they gave when they got this question at an event years back.

As for the people saying "it's not a big deal", shouldn't that be "it's not a big deal to ME"? Just because you personally don't care about it doesn't mean nobody should or that the issue is blown out of proportion. Some people would like to see themselves represented in 40k the same way that caucasians can. If you don't share the problem, you should at least be able to understand it. If you think it doesn't matter, why are all the space marines not canonically African women? Because they make the models look like their major demographic, because people like to look at models that look the same as they do. Non-caucasians (at least some of them) clearly want the same thing.

 office_waaagh wrote:

As for the people saying "it's not a big deal", shouldn't that be "it's not a big deal to ME"? Just because you personally don't care about it doesn't mean nobody should or that the issue is blown out of proportion. Some people would like to see themselves represented in 40k the same way that caucasians can. If you don't share the problem, you should at least be able to understand it. If you think it doesn't matter, why are all the space marines not canonically African women? Because they make the models look like their major demographic, because people like to look at models that look the same as they do. Non-caucasians (at least some of them) clearly want the same thing.

I say its not a big deal without specifying 'for me' because while I am sure it is a problem for some people I've very rarely seen it brought up as an issue by anyone in any form of media except for a very small minority that, ironically, seem to be predominantly white and getting offended on behalf of others. I'd also point out very few Caucasians (especially those into nerdy stuff like 40k) actually look anythig like the ridiculously muscular, grizzled, bald, action heroes of 40k.

And, again, with poorly detailed faces how the hell do you even tell outside of how you paint the skin. GWs line isn't great for skin in general but get any other line and you can make anything work.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:

 Hawky wrote:
Why is almost everyone obssesed with "diversity"... Does it really matter?

Yes.

Actually, that strongly depends on the country you live in. It is not an issue in much of Europe.

You mean yet.

Given the number of people being displaced by violence and lack of resources in Africa and the Middle East, Europe is a prime destination. And most countries in Europe are not integrated very well. A fact that will come to bite you in the ass in the coming decades.

I did research on this topic when I was in the process of getting my degree and what I came back with was that money was the reason for most decisions.

It has been a couple years since I read the paper, but my memory is telling me that the general attitude was that diversity for the sake of diversity was not financially smart. The amount of white males who played the game and invested money into it far outstripped the amount of women or non-white customers by a large amount. There was also some feelings conveyed that marketing and altering an established group towards someone other than those currently invested in it could alienate their current consumer base as they attempted to bring in a more diverse crowd.*

I will look for the paper over the next couple of days and see if I can find it.

*No real numbers were gathered by any people who were spoken with. Everything was opinions and anecdotal. Every person interviewed was anonymous and did not want to be tied to their company in the paper.

GW does paint models in darker skin-tones, like the LotR Haradrim range which is a light brown middle-eastern style (Abrakhan Guard are strangely pale though), and several Uruk-Hai are depicted with quite dark brown skin.

While I understand that people want miniatures that look like them, it makes me wonder what kind of people play Nurgle daemons and Skaven in whfb

I find white people really hard to paint for some reason, and as a white person this amuses me. So when I had my old SM army they were all black and asian.

 General Kroll wrote:
Ok, so I'm not being funny or anything, this is a genuine question, but why are there no black people in the 41st Millennium? I never see any models painted in darker shades, most are a pale white, with some a healthy pink at best.

Have I missed a memo or something?

Vulkan He'stan?

That isn't He'stan, that's just Vulkan.

He'stan is a Space Marine.

I am also not sure if Vulkan counts, given that I do not know a lot of people who are pitch black IRL.

 Talys wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
Ok, so I'm not being funny or anything, this is a genuine question, but why are there no black people in the 41st Millennium? I never see any models painted in darker shades, most are a pale white, with some a healthy pink at best.

Have I missed a memo or something?

Vulkan He'stan?

Paint Vulkan with caucasian skin tones and I'd guarantee you his head would be a dead ringer for a white dude.

 General Kroll wrote:
Kind of odd in this day and age isn't it.

Not if you live in the US South.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Basically GW is run by a bunch of middle-aged-to-old white men. There's not necessarily any form of malicious, active racism-- but there is a lot of unconscious bias within their company.

I don't think there's much point saying that you yourself can paint your own miniatures with a variety of skin tones. It's what I and many others do. I think the question is more about why official GW materials don't do it.

I don't buy the excuse that darker skin tones are harder to paint. GW employs professional painters - "it's too hard" is not something they should be saying, and anyway, it isn't even that hard! If I can do it, pro painters certainly can.

It also makes no sense from a fluff perspective. We are talking about the Imperium here, trillions of people. I can walk through the streets of a city of 300,000 now and see people of many different races, so it seems ridiculous to me that in the armies of a million-world futuristic empire everyone looks the same.

I suppose what I'm saying is, GW could just make more of an effort. It certainly wouldn't do any harm.

Could somebody tell me why is this diversity such a self obvious thing that has to be everywhere? Also, for those people that insist on making a diverse army there already exists one that has been shown in artwork and fluff to employ a very heterogenous army composition, which is black templars.

It's a game made by white English dudes, so it's chiefly populated by white English dudes. It's just people writing what they know.

Paint your mans whatever color you want, they're only as diverse as you want to make them.

 Sienisoturi wrote:
Could somebody tell me why is this diversity such a self obvious thing that has to be everywhere? Also, for those people that insist on making a diverse army there already exists one that has been shown in artwork and fluff to employ a very heterogenous army composition, which is black templars.

Because diversity is a self-obvious thing that is pretty much everywhere?

Walk down a street. Count the ratio of women:men (probably 50% or close if you don't live in the 3rd world) and count the ratio of nonwhite people:white people. Can change depending on where you live, I grew up in one of the more white areas of the USA and it was probably around 20%.

Now crack open a comic book. Play a video game. Watch a movie. And look at the model range of 40k.

Do the same count. For 40k, models that are sculpted to be female: Even building the max number of female models in kits that have optional female torsos, I'm going to estimate 10% of the total model range? And models sculpted to be/canonically not white: 1 currently in production, actually I don't know if the AM Khan guy has a sculpt. 2 if you count mutant Hestan. There's a Space Wolf terminator head modeled to be Mr. T, so maybe 3?

I'm not saying "OMG GW is so oppressive to women and minorities maaaaan" because it's not like they're going out of their way to create just caucasian models, they're just creating what they know. Making a character your race by default is what people have been doing for thousands of years. I mean, when was the last time you saw a picture of Jesus that looked like he walked out of the middle east?

And as to "paint them how you like" I don't know if you've tried painting a black 40k model before, but it rarely works very well. For one thing, you're going to have to do a lot of color mixing, because as others have said, there's no dark flesh tones from GW or really any company. Second, he's basically got to be bald, because I can't find a single head in my bitz box here that has even curly hair. Now try to find one without a big strong saxon chin and browline, a thin nose, and thin or nonexistant lips? There isn't one because most GW dudes all have the exact same face. For reference, I'm talking about locating a head that doesn't look like this: http://17rg073sukbm1lmjk9jrehb643.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/gaston1.png in bald or crewcut.

Honestly, it is probably the single least important issue that this game currently has. EVERYTHING ELSE is more important. If GW publicly apologized for that tomorrow and said 'we pinky swear we will now adhere 100% perfectly to racial and gender demographics from now on guys' I would be right up there with everyone else asking why THIS was one thing they decided to fix.

But, like it is everywhere else, it is here too, and tbh it's probably the reason this game has less traction the smaller percentage of a population in any given area of the world is something other than white males.

You know, we have a unique opportunity to do something positive here in an artistic way. What about a dakka painting/modeling competition based on practicing painting various ethnicities and skin tones?

Drager wrote:
The company has very low internal diversity in staff and a poor to non existent handle on the idea that this is even relevant

Honestly though, is it? Who really needs enforced diversity standards in a game?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sienisoturi wrote:
Could somebody tell me why is this diversity such a self obvious thing that has to be everywhere?

Because we're on the Internet which is where the PC police tend to soap box their views


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
Kind of odd in this day and age isn't it.

Not if you live in the US South.

A thread about diversity acceptance wouldn't be complete with a completely unironic cheap shot at the US South. Have you even been to the South?

My Space Marines were various ethnicities... mostly because I just used whatever paint I had on hand at the time. Also, Space Marines with dark complexions look really awesome! In all honesty, it's easier to paint the various darker skin-tones as there is a greater variety of brown colours provided by GW, allowing for shading without the need for doing too much mixing of paints.

There's no need to model various ethnicities in 40k, because they're all grey plastic. You paint them however you imagine. There's a certain sense of self-portraitism in 40k. You envision yourself doing the acts that the models are doing, or that you are closely connected to them. As such, when you paint them, you'll likely paint them in ways that remind you of what you would envision them to be like. That doesn't fully excuse it, but it's not like players are bad people for not painting all the different ethnicities.

lustigjh wrote:

Drager wrote:
The company has very low internal diversity in staff and a poor to non existent handle on the idea that this is even relevant

Honestly though, is it? Who really needs enforced diversity standards in a game?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sienisoturi wrote:
Could somebody tell me why is this diversity such a self obvious thing that has to be everywhere?

Because we're on the Internet which is where the PC police tend to soap box their views

We don't want to 'enforce' them; no-one is proposing sanctions, or a quota. If there was a touch more representation in the game, it might have attracted a few more customers from different ethnicities/genders, and the company might not be in such dire financial straights as it is today. Unless of course, more BME toy soldiers would have scared off some of the white customers, but I'm not sure than I want them in my wargame.

Same with policing; some of us are voicing the opinion that a bit more diversity would be a good thing, which means that we're soap boxing. There's plenty of representation (there's that word again, because we're all nice here) of the other point of view i.e. the game is fine as it is. I just don't agree.

It worries me slightly that, given infinite scope when creating a fantasy universe, we made one with three black people in it.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Sir Arun wrote:
theres this funny Black Legion parody video on youtube where black legion members are all black (at least speak in ebonics) I think the video was made by Bruva Alfabusa but for the life of me I cant find it anymore.

Pretty sure that's miniwargaming.

Miniwargaming is not a good exampel in any way shape or form, when it comes to tolerance and such. You would be hard pressed to find any more narrow minded religious nutjobbs than that compay( look no further than Sitt6 talk with Mathew)

 Psienesis wrote:

 Hawky wrote:
Why is almost everyone obssesed with "diversity"... Does it really matter?

Yes.

How?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Trondheim wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Sir Arun wrote:
theres this funny Black Legion parody video on youtube where black legion members are all black (at least speak in ebonics) I think the video was made by Bruva Alfabusa but for the life of me I cant find it anymore.

Pretty sure that's miniwargaming.

Miniwargaming is not a good exampel in any way shape or form, when it comes to tolerance and such. You would be hard pressed to find any more narrow minded religious nutjobbs than that compay( look no further than Sitt6 talk with Mathew)

You're wrong, all I have to do is come on dakka and read your posts if I want narrow minded nutjobs. Have you actuality listened to him when he repeatedly says "this is just my belief..." or are you just assuming he's a bigot because he's Mormon?

You know why racial diversity in this game and in many games doesn't matter? Because if you slapped full body armor and helmets on every single model it would not matter what ethnicity or gender the individual was. Characters in 40k are not defined in the slightest by their ethnicity or gender, they are defined by their race and/or what kind of planet they are from. There are no multicultural nations in 40k, you are human, you are from the Empire of Man. Your own personal head canon of fluff is just fine, encouraged even, but the company producing the game takes no stance in any direction based on ethnicity or gender. They could make models that have definitive ethnic traits but they tend to only do that with special characters because it might help to define them, the basic rank and file get a generic as possible face. You can try and claim that they are Caucasian but I would have to disagree, they don't really have an definitive traits that identify them as anything.

Could they make more ethnically diverse models? Yes. Should they? Maybe. The issue is that making the distinction and saying that a potato headed Catachan is Caucasian seems odd to me because they just look liked horrible heroic scaled human heads rather than any identifiable group.

Crystal-Maze wrote:

lustigjh wrote:

Drager wrote:
The company has very low internal diversity in staff and a poor to non existent handle on the idea that this is even relevant

Honestly though, is it? Who really needs enforced diversity standards in a game?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sienisoturi wrote:
Could somebody tell me why is this diversity such a self obvious thing that has to be everywhere?

Because we're on the Internet which is where the PC police tend to soap box their views

We don't want to 'enforce' them; no-one is proposing sanctions, or a quota. If there was a touch more representation in the game, it might have attracted a few more customers from different ethnicities/genders, and the company might not be in such dire financial straights as it is today.

That's doubtful. I don't see people being "scared away" from Tau, Necrons, Daemons, or Eldar because they're not white people.

Fair point on the "enforced" statement. My political rants are starting to influence my gaming rants.

Actually it's kinda logical that human population became a huge melting pot, mostly resulting in most of the population having one skintone. As this is in the far, far future. It seems possible.

It would differentiate for people on all kind of planets and all that as not all habitats are the same.

Still, I doubt that this is what they had in mind when they went "Just use one skintone!"

Arbiter_Shade wrote:
You know why racial diversity in this game and in many games doesn't matter? Because if you slapped full body armor and helmets on every single model it would not matter what ethnicity or gender the individual was. Characters in 40k are not defined in the slightest by their ethnicity or gender, they are defined by their race and/or what kind of planet they are from. There are no multicultural nations in 40k, you are human, you are from the Empire of Man. Your own personal head canon of fluff is just fine, encouraged even, but the company producing the game takes no stance in any direction based on ethnicity or gender. They could make models that have definitive ethnic traits but they tend to only do that with special characters because it might help to define them, the basic rank and file get a generic as possible face. You can try and claim that they are Caucasian but I would have to disagree, they don't really have an definitive traits that identify them as anything.

Could they make more ethnically diverse models? Yes. Should they? Maybe. The issue is that making the distinction and saying that a potato headed Catachan is Caucasian seems odd to me because they just look liked horrible heroic scaled human heads rather than any identifiable group.

I think the giant boob plates, combat miniskirts and tactical high heels of the sisters of battle would still give them away as female even with helmets.

But it's sure a good thing that being female isn't a huge part of the character of the SISTERS of battle. Or units like the Howling Banshees or Bloodbrides, or Daemonettes of the Sexy Sexy God.

Is there an all female unit in 40k where "all female" isn't called out in their unit/army name?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 The Grumpy Eldar wrote:
Actually it's kinda logical that human population became a huge melting pot, mostly resulting in most of the population having one skintone. As this is in the far, far future. It seems possible.

It would differentiate for people on all kind of planets and all that as not all habitats are the same.

Still, I doubt that this is what they had in mind when they went "Just use one skintone!"

Yes, but they'd be brown. There would be no non-dark hair and no white skin, especially seeing as white skin would be a disadvantage on any world that saw more sunlight.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Sienisoturi wrote:
Could somebody tell me why is this diversity such a self obvious thing that has to be everywhere? Also, for those people that insist on making a diverse army there already exists one that has been shown in artwork and fluff to employ a very heterogenous army composition, which is black templars.

Because diversity is a self-obvious thing that is pretty much everywhere?

Walk down a street. Count the ratio of women:men (probably 50% or close if you don't live in the 3rd world) and count the ratio of nonwhite people:white people. Can change depending on where you live, I grew up in one of the more white areas of the USA and it was probably around 20%.

Now crack open a comic book. Play a video game. Watch a movie. And look at the model range of 40k.

Do the same count. For 40k, models that are sculpted to be female: Even building the max number of female models in kits that have optional female torsos, I'm going to estimate 10% of the total model range? And models sculpted to be/canonically not white: 1 currently in production, actually I don't know if the AM Khan guy has a sculpt. 2 if you count mutant Hestan. There's a Space Wolf terminator head modeled to be Mr. T, so maybe 3?

I'm not saying "OMG GW is so oppressive to women and minorities maaaaan" because it's not like they're going out of their way to create just caucasian models, they're just creating what they know. Making a character your race by default is what people have been doing for thousands of years. I mean, when was the last time you saw a picture of Jesus that looked like he walked out of the middle east?

And as to "paint them how you like" I don't know if you've tried painting a black 40k model before, but it rarely works very well. For one thing, you're going to have to do a lot of color mixing, because as others have said, there's no dark flesh tones from GW or really any company. Second, he's basically got to be bald, because I can't find a single head in my bitz box here that has even curly hair. Now try to find one without a big strong saxon chin and browline, a thin nose, and thin or nonexistant lips? There isn't one because most GW dudes all have the exact same face. For reference, I'm talking about locating a head that doesn't look like this: http://17rg073sukbm1lmjk9jrehb643.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/gaston1.png in bald or crewcut.

Honestly, it is probably the single least important issue that this game currently has. EVERYTHING ELSE is more important. If GW publicly apologized for that tomorrow and said 'we pinky swear we will now adhere 100% perfectly to racial and gender demographics from now on guys' I would be right up there with everyone else asking why THIS was one thing they decided to fix.

But, like it is everywhere else, it is here too, and tbh it's probably the reason this game has less traction the smaller percentage of a population in any given area of the world is something other than white males.

To me making every single part of the world have the exact same demographic percentages simply for the sake of it would be quite silly. Can you tell me what immediate advantage could this bring?

the_scotsman wrote:

Arbiter_Shade wrote:
You know why racial diversity in this game and in many games doesn't matter? Because if you slapped full body armor and helmets on every single model it would not matter what ethnicity or gender the individual was. Characters in 40k are not defined in the slightest by their ethnicity or gender, they are defined by their race and/or what kind of planet they are from. There are no multicultural nations in 40k, you are human, you are from the Empire of Man. Your own personal head canon of fluff is just fine, encouraged even, but the company producing the game takes no stance in any direction based on ethnicity or gender. They could make models that have definitive ethnic traits but they tend to only do that with special characters because it might help to define them, the basic rank and file get a generic as possible face. You can try and claim that they are Caucasian but I would have to disagree, they don't really have an definitive traits that identify them as anything.

Could they make more ethnically diverse models? Yes. Should they? Maybe. The issue is that making the distinction and saying that a potato headed Catachan is Caucasian seems odd to me because they just look liked horrible heroic scaled human heads rather than any identifiable group.

I think the giant boob plates, combat miniskirts and tactical high heels of the sisters of battle would still give them away as female even with helmets.

But it's sure a good thing that being female isn't a huge part of the character of the SISTERS of battle. Or units like the Howling Banshees or Bloodbrides, or Daemonettes of the Sexy Sexy God.

Is there an all female unit in 40k where "all female" isn't called out in their unit/army name?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 The Grumpy Eldar wrote:
Actually it's kinda logical that human population became a huge melting pot, mostly resulting in most of the population having one skintone. As this is in the far, far future. It seems possible.

It would differentiate for people on all kind of planets and all that as not all habitats are the same.

Still, I doubt that this is what they had in mind when they went "Just use one skintone!"

Yes, but they'd be brown. There would be no non-dark hair and no white skin, especially seeing as white skin would be a disadvantage on any world that saw more sunlight.

If Sisters of Battle were changed to Brother Militant and changed to absurdly religious zealots who bathed heretics in the holy flame of the Emperor would it really change anything about the army? I am not saying there are no female models in the line, what I am saying is that their distinction as female doesn't define who or what they are. Howling Banshees could just as well be a group of men as a group of women. Same thing with any of the female units in the game. Hell, Daemonettes are ANDROGYNOUS in the fluff being neither male nor female.

40k doesn't deal with the social problems that we deal with in todays world, it is purely a fantasy world where everything is all about war all the time. People need to stop looking for what isn't there, no one in the GW design team is putting that much thought into the social implications of a game based on the far future where everything is grim dark. Hell, implying they put much thought into anything seems to be a bit of a stretch past how much money will X bring in?

An army doesn't have to reflect the person playing it, that is purely your choice and what you want to do with the models. If it were the other way then who the hell are Tyranids for?

lustigjh wrote:Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
Kind of odd in this day and age isn't it.

Not if you live in the US South.

A thread about diversity acceptance wouldn't be complete with a completely unironic cheap shot at the US South. Have you even been to the South?

lustigjh wrote:

Crystal-Maze wrote:

lustigjh wrote:

Drager wrote:
The company has very low internal diversity in staff and a poor to non existent handle on the idea that this is even relevant

Honestly though, is it? Who really needs enforced diversity standards in a game?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sienisoturi wrote:
Could somebody tell me why is this diversity such a self obvious thing that has to be everywhere?

Because we're on the Internet which is where the PC police tend to soap box their views

We don't want to 'enforce' them; no-one is proposing sanctions, or a quota. If there was a touch more representation in the game, it might have attracted a few more customers from different ethnicities/genders, and the company might not be in such dire financial straights as it is today.

That's doubtful. I don't see people being "scared away" from Tau, Necrons, Daemons, or Eldar because they're not white people.

Fair point on the "enforced" statement. My political rants are starting to influence my gaming rants.

The 'scared away' comment was somewhat hyperbolous, but in that case the defining characteristic of the tau etc. whould be 'not black people'.

Its probably easy to see from my comments history how much my political rants leak into my gaming rants too. We're all fallible, right?

 Crimson Devil wrote:

lustigjh wrote:Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
Kind of odd in this day and age isn't it.

Not if you live in the US South.

A thread about diversity acceptance wouldn't be complete with a completely unironic cheap shot at the US South. Have you even been to the South?

Having grown up in Texas and given my family still lives in the south; its a valid criticism.

lustigjh wrote:
You're wrong, all I have to do is come on dakka and read your posts if I want narrow minded nutjobs. Have you actuality listened to him when he repeatedly says "this is just my belief..." or are you just assuming he's a bigot because he's Mormon?

I have lived in Utah for the past twenty years I can say being Mormon doesn't make you a bigot, but I have yet to meet a Utah bigot who wasn't Mormon.

You realize the South has greater diversity in all levels of education, political office holders, and law enforcement than the North, right? Oh, no? Shocker. Check out Nate SIlver's graphs on segregation integration ratings for different communities. Maybe prepare a fainting couch first....

This reminds of the episode of South Park with the town flag.

That being said, I have a mostly black Catachan force. I didn't paint them, and the colour of their skin didn't influence my purchase.
The first time I got them out at my FLGS with pride and joy that I finally get to play a game with them, the first thing I heard was "Oh cool they're all black guys!" To me that is bizarre and questionable on a few levels (both to the person who said it and the culture that made it so people may have cause to say such a sentence).
In regards to relating yourself to your plastic guys on the table top, again the skin colour doesn't make a difference.
Someone pointed this out too me (saying something along the lines of "You're not a black guy!").
My response was - "No, and you're not an angry Egyptian themed robot with the soul of an Ancient being trapped inside."

Diversity isn't just non existent in GW, the vast majority of mass/consumable media plays along to the same tune.
It's how you as an individual deal with it that matters - *cue South Park reference from the beginning*

I find this more amusing - some companies good-naturedly have actually tried producing models with features of different nationalities.

This just resulted in over-emphasis on certain features in an attempt to differentiate them from the standard Caucasian models you see.

The results were horrific and if anything mini-metal parodies that could be considered more racist then if someone had just used paint to signify race.


Your models, you paint them how you like.

My models all come in grey out of the box. It's up to the painter to decide what skin color they are. So in my opinion, any type of perceived racism is just that; perceived.

In the official books, I assume the models are painted in light colors to show off the detail, as it's very well known that dark colors make it hard to see.

Pretty sure there was a very large threat about this topic that was locked that got out of hand


Automatically Appended Next Post:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/450/627340.page#7553285

This one

General Knoll are your armies painted white?

The one guy who's showing any flesh that's currently painted is yes. But the main reason I asked the question was because I was thinking of mixing things up a bit with some of the other models. Have plans for a pretty bad ass inquisitor, think I will paint him to be a black dude.

 Crimson Devil wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:

 Hawky wrote:
Why is almost everyone obssesed with "diversity"... Does it really matter?

Yes.

Actually, that strongly depends on the country you live in. It is not an issue in much of Europe.

You mean yet.

Given the number of people being displaced by violence and lack of resources in Africa and the Middle East, Europe is a prime destination. And most countries in Europe are not integrated very well. A fact that will come to bite you in the ass in the coming decades.

Britain was labelled as the 'world's social experiment' during the 50's to the present day due to the wide range of people who have emigrated from their own countries to settle in Britain. From Near and Far East Asia, to the Middle East, Africa, and Western and Eastern Europe. Believe me when I say - we are a VERY diverse nation, and so much the stronger for it, no matter what our UKIP party would have us believe.

I'm going to see if some darker skinned guardsmen are easier than white, when I base coat light brown anyways skipping the pink and using darker washes should yield faster results...and it's only racist if you put the darker models at the front.

Black skin is significantly less forgiving when highlighting and shadowing than white.

I think the only correct answer in this situation is "Who Cares" and a further answer to that question would be something along the lines of "If you care then you may be a racist" or "If your really that butt hurt by the color people paint plastic/metal figures then you need some psychological help."

of course in the BRB it specifically says you have to paint all humans white or tan is kind of a racist rule....ohh wait that doesn't exist.

Don't make something out of nothing, frigging racism hate mongers.

 Sienisoturi wrote:
for those people that insist on making a diverse army there already exists one that has been shown in artwork and fluff to employ a very heterogenous army composition, which is black templars.

Hi, I'm just wondering if you could explain what you meant by this. I know BT doesn't have a home planet, but I kinda got the feeling that they were all essentially... Germanic.

Probably because they recruit from the planets they encounter, and to my knowledge they do not discriminate based on the skin colour of the recruit. Therefore they are likely to be diverse.

Crystal-Maze wrote:

10penceman wrote:
Because very few people paint them that way because they don't want to as simple an answer as it is. The fact you care is bit fecked up you don't see pink orks where is the equality in that lmao. No women imperial guard squats have also not been added.

Let's face it gw gave you all the equality they can by telling you to paint them any which way you want. Equality is when people are treated equally without notice of colour sex or creed not when people see only white people and claim its wrong because there is no black people or if its all Asian people and there is no white people and so on be like me colour blind. I see people most dumb as feck. No such thing as raciest we all belong to one race the human race any thing else is pointless.

As for complaining about women models with large breasts or such like where is the complaints about the guys with all muscles or the guys that are all meant to be 6-7 foot it can go on and on accept the game for what it is a game which you can personally convert paint to look like anything you want and stop the guff its all a political nightmare people are people end of story and sod anyone who thinks them selves belonging to a sub group just because of something stupid as skin colour.

If you want to think about all the races in the book are xenophobic true raciest or religious nut jobs you don't like it don't play the game

Small unimportant rant over

I'd just like to break this down a bit.

"you don't see pink orks where is the equality in that lmao" - The overrepresentation of green people in the ork community is not a problem, because (and I can't stress this enough) there are no green people.

"No women imperial guard squats have also not been added. " - quite a few gamers complain about the lack of female imperial guard, and there are several third party companies which do very well out of the fact. I can only imagine that no-one complains about the lack of female squats because of the lack of squats in general.

"Let's face it gw gave you all the equality they can by telling you to paint them any which way you want". Except that people's faces are different shapes, and all of the human faces that GW models are caucasian in shape - often in an exaggerated fashion. They also chose to set an example in the 'eavy metal team by painting nearly all of their models white.

" Equality is when people are treated equally without notice of colour sex or creed not when people see only white people and claim its wrong because there is no black people " - surely equality is what people are represented in the media proportionally. We cannot make all of our characters white and then complain when people think that there is something dodgy with that (because there is something dodgy with it).

"As for complaining about women models with large breasts or such like where is the complaints about the guys with all muscles" - in a wargame, large muscles are useful. They make the character look strong, intimidating. Occasionally, they are over-emphasised i.e. catachans, marauders. Large breasts are completely useless in war. I would far rather see a female model with over-emphasised musculature. It would be refreshing.

"sod anyone who thinks them selves belonging to a sub group just because of something stupid as skin colour." - except that society constantly treats people as being different because of their skin colour; when people of ethnic minorities constantly get a raw deal in our society, I think that it is incredibly hypocritical to then say that they should not identify with others of their minority as a mark of solidarity.

I'll let you google why 'colourblindness' is a useless ideology in a racially biased society for yourself.

While you are absolutely right about societies views on the matter (thusly making it matter), this is the whole problem. Colourblindness is the way society should treat it. Minority groups do not "get the raw end of the deal" in most situations, they themselves do not try to better themselves and get above their situation in lives. Every person in the USA has the ability to go to school and work; they also have the choice to not commit crimes and to make connections with people to better their life. If they dont do that, thats on them.

If everyone had the chance to start life in the same circumstances than your attitude might be valid. Not everyone can afford school. And being part of a minority group doesn't make you predeposed towards crime.

Oddly as a long time british colonials player, and darkest africa themed war gamer I usually have the opposite problem of armies full of figures with nary a white soul to be seen anywhere. In darkest africa even forces that are "european" will not have a large white presence. Your typical british DA force will include african tribals with bows/spears, levy african askari musket men, units of colonial elites like sikhs and then lead by a few white officers/hero types. Historical representations kind of make the decision for us when it comes to skin color on the models and people scratch their heads if you african tribals all have white skin.

Outside of the historical context in a sci-fi setting paint your models what you like. Diversity in life is significant. Worrying about diversity in painted toy soldiers is really kind of pointless.

The main reason Colourblindness deosn't work is Unconcious Racial Bias its the same reason that higher diversity alone doesn't solve racial bias problems. Racial bias is a fascinating area of social study, as are other areas of bias and privilege, but they are very uncomfortable if you are in a powerful, privileged group, because you will find bigoted behaviours in yourself, even if you think you have none when you take a proper look.

That link takes you to a google scholar search on racial bias, so you can look at some journal articles on the subject if you are so inclined.

I see lots of people saying paint your models how you like, but I don't think that solves the initial problem as brought up. That was representation in the fluff and official materials, how you paint your collection won't influence that.

Honestly, in terms of institutional racism there are far worse offenders than GW. It would be good for them to represent people outside of their own demographic from a moral and fluff perspective, but in the end they're just model makers. When there are institutions in positions of power causing direct social harm, I think GW gets a free pass on this. In the mean time go to town and paint your models however you want.

I saw this post, read a few comments, them scrolled down to comment, so pardon me if I just repeat something that has already been said.

I think the reason GW has a basically only white model force, its because they probably want a uniform force.

Witch makes sense for selling models, although female and black imperial guard don't really fit with the overall army, and that looks bad.

and in responce to Drager -

What?

I have never considered banshees or sisters to be over sexualized.

Although these models have boobs, is that a bad thing?

There needs to be a way to differentiate the female models from the male, and really are armoured boobs that bad, because in my opinion, thats not a bad thing.

I like boobs!

Personally I paint my regiments mixed race because realistically if you take 40-70 people from one planet, they're not even gonna be the same colour of white skin as one another amongst them.
I have been criticised for this to my face, before. More than once. Not the paint job, but, "You can't have black [x]."

Bewilderingly there's a lot of women and IIRC a few non-white folks in the Only War rulebook, despite there being sweet F A in the actual 40K figure range. Look at the prices that 3rd party female imperial figures go for, and tell me there's not a market.

 Hawky wrote:
Why is almost everyone obssesed with "diversity"... Does it really matter?

Diversity for diversity's sake, no.
For the sake of inclusion and the sense of belonging in a hobby? Abso-fething-lutely.

If there are few or no examples of diversity to begin with, you cannot expect to engage diverse people.

To over-simplify, 40K is to wargaming what James Bond classically was for film and literature (stick with me here).
In an imagination-based heroic setting, we want to imagine ourselves as part of that world, right? These amazing characters, powerful or flawed, folks sympathise and deeply relate to them.
Going back to the example: Who in early James Bond films or lit anyone who isn't a caucasian male easily picture themselves as?
Who can an Asian fella easily picture himself as? Who is a young lady watching the film going to want to be? There's no powerful or heroic figure to relate to for either of them.

That's pretty much how 40K feels looking at it from the outside if you're not in the typical demographic.

You guys do realize that these sculpts they create and paint is an ART and you are trying to tell them they need to change their art?

How about you go create your own art instead of trying to censor/PC/change someone else's?

Being offended has done nothing for anyone. Ever.

jSewell wrote:
You guys do realize that these sculpts they create and paint is an ART and you are trying to tell them they need to change their art?

How about you go create your own art instead of trying to censor/PC/change someone else's?

Being offended has done nothing for anyone. Ever.

No one here seems offended besides you.

Something being art doesn't automatically make it above criticism. Making art doesn't automatically justify the consequences it creates.

Personally I really don't consider GW models art, or at least not on the same level as "high art." That's a pretty mercurial topic though and pretty subjective so I'll leave it at that.

Anyways, GW sees itself as a company, not an artist. As a company it is reliant on the customers to support it. Seems to me a lot of customers want a greater diversity of models. I really don't see what's wrong with this.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
Look at the prices that 3rd party female imperial figures go for, and tell me there's not a market.

Couldn't you just as equally say the demand isn't great so they have to charge a lot of money to make it worth their while?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
Look at the prices that 3rd party female imperial figures go for, and tell me there's not a market.

Couldn't you just as equally say the demand isn't great so they have to charge a lot of money to make it worth their while?

You could say that, but not equally.

If you undercoat your figures in Imperial Primer, then all of your models will be black on the "inside".
And that's what matters, racial awareness and sensitivity painted into your force subtly.
Basically, if you exclusively undercoat your plastic soldiers in white, then you're a racist sir/madam!

Does race matter in wargaming? I say no. I say that when race becomes such a big issue that people complain about minis... they themselves have racism problems. Anyone can paint minis as they see fit.

Most minis are white as the designers are white and wrote characters that they could see themselves relate to. This is not intentional biased racism, it is what the human race and all living things do. Well, and the war game population is mostly white and smart marketing would say appeal to the majority. After all would you want a majority of the cash or a small amount of cash?

Whatever

Generally I am more concerned about the lack of female models than what skin tones the GW paints when they promote their miniatures. Painting your models differently is far easier than not having available models unless you want to go 3rd party and kit bash together something. Even of the lack of non-caucasian skintones on humans and elves might be a bit weird.

Sure, there is fluff reasons for all Space Marines to look like body builders past their prime, but that fluff is a part of the problem. Then there is also no reason for there being no female guardsmen and whatnot.

In the end, I do not care overly much. I can live with my Necrons all looking like terminator skeletons, I model as many of my Space Marines with helmets as I can and likewise with my Tau.

However, I do sort of wish there was more diversity in both the fluff and the model ranges.

Drager wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
Look at the prices that 3rd party female imperial figures go for, and tell me there's not a market.

Couldn't you just as equally say the demand isn't great so they have to charge a lot of money to make it worth their while?

You could say that, but not equally.

Given there's no solid numbers one way or the other, equally is the only way you could say it.

I play aliens and I rarely have any faces to show. Not even an issue. Haha. Still one would think there should at least be the odd female Tau Firewarrior. They don't seem to be the type to care about gender roles.

 Gamgee wrote:
I play aliens and I rarely have any faces to show. Not even an issue. Haha. Still one would think there should at least be the odd female Tau Firewarrior. They don't seem to be the type to care about gender roles.

A model covered in armour can be female. Often with male and female modern armour the external differences are small. It figures any firewarrior could be female. Compare the Shadowsun figure to shas'o kais from dawn of war. the armoour on the outside is the same.

Isn't the primarch of the Iron hands a black guy?

and he died...

Nevermind.

He looks pretty pink to me.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
For the sake of inclusion and the sense of belonging in a hobby? Abso-fething-lutely.

That's strange, most of the people I know have non-people armies yet no one feels excluded because their army doesn't have nerdy white guys in their ranks.

I don't have to have white men in my army of evil daemons to feel some sense of commonality. I feel included because we both like to stand against the self-righteous and annoying bully that is the Imperium. Heck, I even feel included because Tzeentch shares my curious and trolly personality. There's more to inclusion than, "My army looks like me!".

Besides, it's not GW's job to make everyone feel happy and included in their product.

So first off, spot on noticing that OP. I agree and I think that line of thinking extends to females in 40k model lines as well. This is going to go off on a slightly-related tangent:

I've been in the hobby almost exactly one year now. I love it and I love the people that play this game. But one of the things that has always really bothered me about playing 40k is that GW has never addressed the lack of females in any model line (besides SoB which has since disappeared).

I would really love to see GW make a push to get away with how ridiculously manly/macho every space marine chapter is and find a way to include badass women. In fact, keep how over the top it is - but why can't there be some named female chapter masters on par with Calgar? Co-ed chapters? I think it damages the 40k brand and more importantly, is a big reason why women don't participate in 40k. Rewriting lore to make the game more accessible while at the same time not watering down way it plays is a huge win to me.

I think there is something wrong with walking into a GW store and the only people in there are dudes every single time.

Every once in awhile (about once a week-ish), a parent will come in with her daughter and they will geek the f out - like seriously geek out! - over some of the miniatures. And then they see the 6 dudes hovering around a table making dick jokes and they moonwalk away from the store as fast as they can. Which is a somewhat unrelated, off-topic issue (sorry).

Girls are awesome, so why not create ways to get them into wargaming?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:Given there's no solid numbers one way or the other, equally is the only way you could say it.

I was thinking more when folks put them up for bids on eBay. But yeah, that could swing both ways, I'm not pretending I know for facts.
However if you look at companies like Hasslefree, they're hardly struggling to trade on powerful female minis. They even fill some gaps themselves and do so affordably.
Stepping back from 3rd party - the original female commissar, even recast, fetches £15-30, the female Tanith trooper who wields an identical gun to all the others, fetches £18-30
People want these things, for whatever reason, and it's not necessarily rarity.

lustigjh wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
For the sake of inclusion and the sense of belonging in a hobby? Abso-fething-lutely.

That's strange, most of the people I know have non-people armies yet no one feels excluded because their army doesn't have nerdy white guys in their ranks.

I'm pretty sure that's not how it works, and it certainly wasn't what I meant. I apologise if I gave that impression.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:Given there's no solid numbers one way or the other, equally is the only way you could say it.

I was thinking more when folks put them up for bids on eBay. But yeah, that could swing both ways, I'm not pretending I know for facts.
However if you look at companies like Hasslefree, they're hardly struggling to trade on powerful female minis. They even fill some gaps themselves and do so affordably.
Stepping back from 3rd party - the original female commissar, even recast, fetches £15-30, the female Tanith trooper who wields an identical gun to all the others, fetches £18-30
People want these things, for whatever reason, and it's not necessarily rarity

It's always hard to say. Aeronautica Imperialis stuff goes for a high price on eBay as well, but I don't think it's because there's a huge market, rather it's because the few people who want them are willing to pay through the nose.

Well from a female point of view I must that the model range is oddly separate from the fluff. In the books there are interesting females characters, strong female characters, some realy stupid cliche ones. But at least they exist. In w40k they don't. No female IG models, no new sob, no new banshees, no female culists, no female tau, no female necron. Also I don't know what is it with GW and female models, but they are butt ugly most of the time. They make some sort of man faced things with boobs. They can't even do pinup models, which I personaly don't like, which other firms have no problems producing.

The thing with diversity is: why not? It detracts nothing and helps under-represented people relate to/feel included in the setting. As a gay man, i can tell you that whenever I see a badass/interesting/compelling/likeable gay dude in the media, it genuinely means something to me. It makes me feel as if I'm part of world with just as much agency and dynamism as anyone else. Diversity is important, and it costs nothing, except for igniting the ire of bigots...

In the grim darkness of the far future, most races (black, white, asian, latino, etc) have all inter-married and you have a more homogeneous look to people. There will still be a spectrum of white to brown to black, but I would imagine they would all look Filipino.

There is no reason, other than the obvious difficulty of wearing a helmet, that one wouldn't see an Afro here or there.

Makumba wrote:
no female necron

Well skeletons don't have breasts. They're machines. They may very well be 50-50.

There is a female phaeron among the Necron SCs as well. FW I think?

Drager wrote:
They will also point to the Sisters and Eldar, without taking into account the concept that sexualisation through the use of innapropiate armour designs (Sisters/Banshees/etc) is also sexist, paritcularly combined with all women being very chesty.

Not sure I agree with this, GW are generally very good with not making sexualised minis (the exception being the scantily clad DE from WFB but that's kinda part of their culture if I recall correctly). I was actually reading something relating to this recently and the reason we don't have all the sexualisation is thanks to John Blanche as he complained when sexualised images started appearing on the cover of WD, good on him I say.
As for racial issues, the models are painted they way they are because of the fan base, however in the novel Blood of Asaheim(if you haven't read it, give it a go its a great read) Palatine Bajola is mentioned to have dark skin (of course she may just be very tanned but I guess that depends on how you interpret it). and lets not forget that humaniod races like elves and eldar cannot be black becuase of genetics. of course if you are really bothered by it there is nothing to stop you painting your minis to have varying skin tones.
And to adress the issue of why there ie no female marines; space marines cannot be female as the process of creating a space marine requires the subject to be male as the gene seed only works with male hormones, this is the accepted fluuf, sure it can be changed but when fluff gets retconned people get more upset than before and there is no point in solving a problem if the solution causes a bigger problem than before.

 Glasdir wrote:
GW are generally very good with not making sexualised minis

Repentia.

Hell, I think every female 40k model except O'shaserra have some serious boobplate.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Glasdir wrote:
GW are generally very good with not making sexualised minis

Repentia.

Hell, I think every female 40k model except O'shaserra have some serious boobplate.

yeah fair point, however at least it is far, far more tastefull than bikinis made out of almost nothing and over sized, anti-gravity boobs that don't look like they can be contained by what is covering them for too long that have become common in most fantasy/sci-fi imagery today.

Bad is still bad, even though worse also exists. Boobplate is still sexualised. This is not.

GW make cartoon models.

Cartoons almost always exaggerate features so that readers can quickly identify objects or characters.

Hence why guns are huge in 40k, so you can tell its a gun. Hence why Armour is crazy, so you can tell that its Armour.
And the list goes on.

There are many styles of cartoon, but they all make sure things are very obvious to the viewer. Because unlike real life, cartoons aren't easily seen and understood.

Google cartoon woman. All these images have blatant clues that they are female. A company that makes cartoon models will be doing the same.

@Swastakowey

Well you are right in your interpretation of GW models has a cartoon (or at least cartoonish) in some way. That's a bit part of the genre. But you also touch the core of the problem. Mainstream media directed at children, teenagers and young adults have issues with representation of women and other minorities (asian more than black people these days thow in my experience). In that regard, GW is far from being the worst offender and even has some dignity.

Sanguinary Guard is the only exception I know of, otherwise there's not really much in the way of sexualised male models.

Meanwhile, boobplate is everywhere.

Why is that?

 Ashiraya wrote:
Sanguinary Guard is the only exception I know of, otherwise there's not really much in the way of sexualised male models.

Meanwhile, boobplate is everywhere.

Why is that?

You assume the boob plate is sexual. The boob plate is so anybody can tell its a women. No boobs would have to mean they would need to give it a dress, or long hair in a womanly style. Otherwise it would look like a man and therefore assumed to be a man.

Hence my cartoon example.

Or why not look at it from this perspective:

It has no visible dickplate, therefore it would look like a woman and would be assumed to be a woman.

The dickplate is not sexual after all. It's just so you can tell it's a man. The other gender differences are not visible at that scale, right?

 Ashiraya wrote:
Bad is still bad, even though worse also exists. Boobplate is still sexualised. This is not.

Spoiler:

true bad is still bad (I don't encourage sexism of either sex in any way) however Swastakowey makes a great and interesting point, which is true, try googling cartoon woman and then google cartoon man, all defining features for both sexes are exaggerated/made obvious, ie. breasts and long hair for women/short hair, beards and good physique for men. To back this up the kabalite warriors are male and female but because of the lack of 'boobplates' as you call them they can be hard to identify as female. and while we're at it it could be pointed out that GW sexualise men, after all I don't see any overweight/underweight men featured in their games just those bristling with muscle.
also another example of macho chestplates would be en the new blood angels tactical squad captain. (those nip plates are pretty funny though)

I look forward to your reply, this is an interesting discussion.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Or why not look at it from this perspective:

It has no visible dickplate, therefore it would look like a woman and would be assumed to be a woman.

The dickplate is not sexual after all. It's just so you can tell it's a man. After all the other gender differences are not visible at that scale, right?

Thats would be true, except people dont look for penis armour when identifying men, they look for short hair, suits and pants etc along with a certain body shape.
When looking at women its usually a certain body shape, boobs, long or tied up hair (on woman style) and so on.

Both genders are generalized in cartoons for easy and accurate portrayal of a character. That way a female character isnt mistaken as a male, especially if the gender is part of the skit, story or comic etc.

Pretty obvious I think...

 Glasdir wrote:
GW sexualise men, after all I don't see any overweight/underweight men featured in their games just those bristling with muscle.

That is power fantasy. It's an entirely different type of sexualisation.

It's also possible that many people need obvious and exaggerated indications to indicate that something could be anything else than a man, but that is still bad! Why should male be the default gender to be assumed unless otherwise clearly stated?

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Glasdir wrote:
GW sexualise men, after all I don't see any overweight/underweight men featured in their games just those bristling with muscle.

That is power fantasy. It's an entirely different type of sexualisation.

It's also possible that many people need obvious and exaggerated indications to indicate that something could be anything else than a man, but that is still bad!

How is that bad?

People like to know things at a glance. Unless you simply want gender neutral models, which will ultimately look like men anyway.

So when women buy calendars of sexy firemen (who... have lots of muscle) they are dreaming of a power fantasy? Which is different to when men by calendars of sexy life guards with large breasts? Not really, its all based upon the sexual stuff. Only difference is men with large boobs arent desired. If they are desired, then you will see this reflected in how men are drawn.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Glasdir wrote:
GW sexualise men, after all I don't see any overweight/underweight men featured in their games just those bristling with muscle.

That is power fantasy. It's an entirely different type of sexualisation.

It's also possible that many people need obvious and exaggerated indications to indicate that something could be anything else than a man, but that is still bad! Why should male be the default gender to be assumed unless otherwise clearly stated?

because men don't usually have obvious defining features unless they have a beard or are nude, women however do have defining features ie breasts, body shape etc so
no features = man
breasts, hourglass figure = woman
it's no-ones fault people are the way they are, we just evolved to be that way. maybe men should evolve to have more obvious defining features in order to solve this problem (pointed ears/ enlarged foreheads would be neat).

 Ashiraya wrote:
Sanguinary Guard is the only exception I know of, otherwise there's not really much in the way of sexualised male models.

Catachans. Eldar aspect armor also emphasizes the gender of the wearer as well.

http://www.myfreewallpapers.net/fantasy/pages/warhammer-40000-eldar.shtml

 Swastakowey wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Or why not look at it from this perspective:

It has no visible dickplate, therefore it would look like a woman and would be assumed to be a woman.

The dickplate is not sexual after all. It's just so you can tell it's a man. After all the other gender differences are not visible at that scale, right?

Thats would be true, except people dont look for penis armour when identifying men, they look for short hair, suits and pants etc along with a certain body shape.
When looking at women its usually a certain body shape, boobs, long or tied up hair (on woman style) and so on.

Both genders are generalized in cartoons for easy and accurate portrayal of a character. That way a female character isnt mistaken as a male, especially if the gender is part of the skit, story or comic etc.

Pretty obvious I think...

But why? Gender has a lot more to do that body shapes and genitalia. Why should it require exaggerated female anatomy? I'm pretty sure if you give the character female pronouns and more feminine proportions, people will be able to tell that they're female. A lot of my skitarii are female; hell, one of my magi is a woman and she resembles a hovering pile of inhumanoid machinery!

(Also, there are more than two genders, by the by)

The reason say, Kabalites look like they do, is because they've taken male arms and legs and just slapped boobs onto it. Same with guardians. It's because it is easier for GW.

It's entirely possible to do it properly instead. The body has countless gender differences aside from the breasts, and contrary to popular belief, it is NOT impossible to represent this on a 28mm scale.

Allow me to bring in an excellent example.



See how she looks female even though her breastplate features zero hints of visible breasts?

You don't need the HD detail of a video game to show it either. There's waist-hip ratio, leg length vs body height, leg thickness vs arm thickness...

Boobplate is an ugly and lazy excuse that is also bad from a design standpoint.

She looks female because of her sexually enhanced lips...

Her hair is the most obvious give away.

Those are the first things I look at when seeing a female character (if they for some reason have no boobs).

The hair looks quite androgynous, I'd say. I have seen plenty of men with it.

The lips? Really?

 Swastakowey wrote:


Those are the first things I look at when seeing a female character (if they for some reason have no boobs).

And, of course, you are not representative of anything at all. If you only see the breasts does not mean it's the same for anyone else.

If she had a helmet on she would be very hard to differentiate from a man. Samus is a good example of that, no one knew it was a woman under all that power armor until years after her creation.

There are ways to differentiate a man and a woman in full-body armor, like flared out waists, but what's the difference between boob-plate and an hour-glass shaped body armor? They're both exaggerations of the female form.

Why does heavy armour need to be sexualised at all? The point of heavy armour is to protect you with a lot of plating, and a lot of plating tends to hide the breasts very well.

Shadowsun is a great example of this.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Why does heavy armour need to be sexualised at all? The point of heavy armour is to protect you with a lot of plating, and a lot of plating tends to hide the breasts very well.

Shadowsun is a great example of this.

...

So that you can tell what the gender is underneath. That's.... that's what the discussion over the last page and a half has been about, yes?

nudibranch wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Or why not look at it from this perspective:

It has no visible dickplate, therefore it would look like a woman and would be assumed to be a woman.

The dickplate is not sexual after all. It's just so you can tell it's a man. After all the other gender differences are not visible at that scale, right?

Thats would be true, except people dont look for penis armour when identifying men, they look for short hair, suits and pants etc along with a certain body shape.
When looking at women its usually a certain body shape, boobs, long or tied up hair (on woman style) and so on.

Both genders are generalized in cartoons for easy and accurate portrayal of a character. That way a female character isnt mistaken as a male, especially if the gender is part of the skit, story or comic etc.

Pretty obvious I think...

But why? Gender has a lot more to do that body shapes and genitalia. Why should it require exaggerated female anatomy? I'm pretty sure if you give the character female pronouns and more feminine proportions, people will be able to tell that they're female. A lot of my skitarii are female; hell, one of my magi is a woman and she resembles a hovering pile of inhumanoid machinery!

(Also, there are more than two genders, by the by)

Think about what you said mate...

In a model (you know, the stationary, unmoving object with no context) there is no character beyond what you put on that model. What does that mean? It means boobs = female, no boobs = male (or other easy identifiers, such as hair or clothing). Cartoons show their story through pictures and so on, no via text. You thinking a model is a female is not their character or a part of the model/picture. Cartoons and models shouldn't rely on extra context. You would fail and model making or cartooning because of this. No point drawing a picture then writing "this is a female, she likes ice cream and cake". In a cartoon these things need to be shown on the character or shown as part of the character.

I am talking about male and female genders, I care not for the rest. They are irrelevant for descussion and will end up looking like a male or female when portrayed in a cartoon.

 Ashiraya wrote:
The reason say, Kabalites look like they do, is because they've taken male arms and legs and just slapped boobs onto it. Same with guardians. It's because it is easier for GW.

It's entirely possible to do it properly instead. The body has countless gender differences aside from the breasts, and contrary to popular belief, it is NOT impossible to represent this on a 28mm scale.

Allow me to bring in an excellent example.

Spoiler:

See how she looks female even though her breastplate features zero hints of visible breasts?

You don't need the HD detail of a video game to show it either. There's waist-hip ratio, leg length vs body height, leg thickness vs arm thickness...

Boobplate is an ugly and lazy excuse that is also bad from a design standpoint.

yeah if you take time to look it is obvious (when you are playing a game you should be able to tell from a glance or at distance what the gender is as a glance is usually all you will get, hence the 'boobplate'). In pic one there is some very obvious 'boobplate' and in the 2nd to last image she could easily be mistaken for a he, the only way you can tell the difference is that your character's armor is clearly more feminine than the nearby male characters. many people mistake the character samus for male as her armor has no obvious female features, going back to my explanation
no features=male
breasts,female figure=female.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Why does heavy armour need to be sexualised at all? The point of heavy armour is to protect you with a lot of plating, and a lot of plating tends to hide the breasts very well.

Shadowsun is a great example of this.

...

So that you can tell what the gender is underneath. That's.... that's what the discussion over the last page and a half has been about, yes?

Why do you have to?

Men don't have to make some kind of statement either.

 Ashiraya wrote:

Shadowsun is a great example of this.

female tau are not shown to have breasts, plus stealth suits are hugely bulky which would conceal gender very well.

 Glasdir wrote:
you should be able to tell from a glance or at distance what the gender is as a glance is usually all you will get

Why? Heavy armour doesn't do that.

 Glasdir wrote:
In pic one there is some very obvious 'boobplate'

No. That is an additional armour plate. It is not boob-shaped. It is a functional, ablative slab of armour.

many people mistake the character samus for male as her armor has no obvious female features

I expected many to assign the very thin waist with women, but then, women in that role is so rare so nobody even entertained the possibility.

no features=male
breasts,female figure=female.

Male features/male shape: Male
No features (such as when in heavy armour): Unknown
Female features/female shape: female

Is there something problematic with the above? It's the realistic and plausible case, as has been argued.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Glasdir wrote:

female tau are not shown to have breasts, plus stealth suits are hugely bulky which would conceal gender very well.

She is a perfect example showing that you do not need to exaggerate sexual characteristics on women's armour. There is no need other than eyecandy, and it comes at the cost of plausible functionality.

Google cartoon man. Every picture is an example of a statement that they are male.

As said earlier, all cartoons exaggerate everything so they are obvious to the viewer at a glance.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Google cartoon man. Every picture is an example of a statement that they are male.

As said earlier, all cartoons exaggerate everything so they are obvious to the viewer at a glance.

I denounce this as unnecessary. I also argue that any value of such instant identification is lesser than the value of proper and plausible design.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Why do you have to?

I don't, but if I want to have an army of badass super-women, I want that to be easily (visually) identifiable.

To turn that question around, why should't I be able to have that? Do you have a reason for condemning gender-identifiable models beyond pure preference? An appeal to reality doesn't work here- 40K is a fantasy universe. It's not science-fiction, so much of the universe is implausible that it's explicitly fantasy.

Men don't have to make some kind of statement either.

Don't follow you. What do you mean here?

 Glasdir wrote:
many people mistake the character samus for male as her armor has no obvious female features

And I'd argue that's a problem with the viewer, not the armour design...

 Ashiraya wrote:
That isn't He'stan, that's just Vulkan.

He'stan is a Space Marine.

I am also not sure if Vulkan counts, given that I do not know a lot of people who are pitch black IRL.

Well, it depends. Some people definitely do have a near coal-black complexion. But FW in particular seems to push a bit more to them looking like freaking Drow, with ash black/grey skin. Which I'm pretty sure is not physically possible for any normal human to have.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Glasdir wrote:
you should be able to tell from a glance or at distance what the gender is as a glance is usually all you will get

Why? Heavy armour doesn't do that.

 Glasdir wrote:
In pic one there is some very obvious 'boobplate'

No. That is an additional armour plate. It is not boob-shaped. It is a functional, ablative slab of armour.

1. my point was that the 'boobplate' helps you identify gender of a mini from a quick glance or from a distance because you don't tend to pick up minis in the middle of a game.
2. yeah, it is 'boobplate', while it is not in the shape of breasts it accentuates them plus I noticed that male characters in the same images seem to lack the same plate where their chest is.

If you want an army of badass super-men, don't you want that to be easily identifiable?

I have 5500ish points of Chaos Space Marines. They all have helmets. They wear so much armour so any or all of them could be women. I have never seen this be mentioned as a problem, by anyone.

In fact, the best way to make them look more feminine would be to make the hips wider. Boobplate is grating and over the top, and comes at the cost of plausibility. We should not need to cater to people who won't bother to look properly if they want to identify the gender of a heavily armoured character.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
An appeal to reality doesn't work considering 40K is an inherently unrealistic universe.

Plausible, not realistic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Glasdir wrote:

1. my point was that the 'boobplate' helps you identify gender of a mini from a quick glance or from a distance because you don't tend to pick up minis in the middle of a game.

Why is this necessary?

2. yeah, it is 'boobplate', while it is not in the shape of breasts it accentuates them plus I noticed that male characters in the same images seem to lack the same plate where their chest is.

They wear different armour sets, that is why. The exact same armour is available to a male player character, in which case that large ablative plate is also present.

Also, it definitely has to do with location of the founding members of GW. From what I've heard about the UK- it for the most part is filled with Saxons and Normans, and a small population of various African and Indian ethnicities. However as a Californian, it is INCREDIBLY weird for there not to be widespread diversity in something, as in my State whites are no longer a majority. I'd dare say we're probably the future of American demographics (and in a good way), because just walking down the street here you can see practically every ethnicity on the bloody planet.

Plus given our Yankee history... we're a bit more sensitive to issues of diversity, same with South Africa. It's a fresh wound that still smarts decades after the fact. We notice such oddities to a greater degree than most Brits or other Northern Europeans probably would.

 Ashiraya wrote:
If you want an army of badass super-men, don't you want that to be easily identifiable?

Yes, and they are. I can always distinguish my male soldier minis from my female ones.

In fact, the best way to make them look more feminine would be to make the hips wider. Boobplate is grating and over the top, and comes at the cost of plausibility.

Why is flared out hips more appropriate than boobplate? It has many real-life impracticalities as well, which is why body-armor in real life does not incorporate exaggerated hip-ratios.

Plausible, not realistic.

Most of 40K is neither realistic nor plausible.

 Ashiraya wrote:
If you want an army of badass super-men, don't you want that to be easily identifiable?

I have 5500ish points of Chaos Space Marines. They all have helmets. They wear so much armour so any or all of them could be women. I have never seen this be mentioned as a problem, by anyone.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
An appeal to reality doesn't work considering 40K is an inherently unrealistic universe.

Plausible, not realistic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Glasdir wrote:

1. my point was that the 'boobplate' helps you identify gender of a mini from a quick glance or from a distance because you don't tend to pick up minis in the middle of a game.

Why is this necessary?

2. yeah, it is 'boobplate', while it is not in the shape of breasts it accentuates them plus I noticed that male characters in the same images seem to lack the same plate where their chest is.

They wear different armour sets, that is why. The exact same armour is available to a male player character, in which case that large ablative plate is also present.

1. I would make them identifiable as me by not putting 'boobplates' on them.
2. space marines cannot be female due to the gene seed only reacting to male hormones
4.it's not, but if you want your mini to be easily identified as female (by others not just yourself) they need to have a defining feature
5. it's more masculine than the female version though. the male version is clearly male as it is broader, the female version is clearly female as it accentuates the breasts

I can't be the only one who would love GW to retcon the 'no female space marines' fluff...

this discussion has plateaued and is starting to circle, I'm going to bed, night all.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Yes, and they are. I can always distinguish my male soldier minis from my female ones.

Because GW has not put breasts on the male ones, yep. Always that 'unless very expressly stated as female, assume male with no questions asked' mindset. Why?

Why is flared out hips more appropriate than boobplate? It has many real-life impracticalities as well, which is why body-armor in real life does not incorporate exaggerated hip-ratios.

Modern soldiers don't use plate armour, either. Point taken though. The best way to show femininity is to not do it at all, because it's heavy armour! It's not supposed to look gendered!

Most of 40K is neither realistic nor plausible. It's part of the fluff that the universe is filled with idiots who do things backasswards.

And people still argue that SoB are professional soldiers despite willingly going to war in incredibly idiotic armour designs, perhaps garbed to be eyecandy for the male priests who accompany their squads. I find that implausible.

 Glasdir wrote:

2. space marines cannot be female due to the gene seed only reacting to male hormones

And yet there's plenty of female space marine armies around. Headcanon is a wonderful thing.

4.it's not, but if you want your mini to be easily identified as female (by others not just yourself) they need to have a defining feature

If you want that, they should not be in heavy armour.

5. it's more masculine than the female version though. the male version is clearly male as it is broader, the female version is clearly female as it accentuates the breasts

Bad angle. From the same angle, the female version simply is more narrow.

I'd also like to point out that in any decent armor that actually protects you and doesn't have shot traps, it should take you more than a second to tell if it's actually a woman. As 40K borrows heavily from Medieval history, for ease of movement and more comfort in armor, when women did don maille or plate, they'd want to bind their breasts to prevent chaffing. If you were a French Infantryman during the end of the Hundred Years War, you wouldn't even know the commander was a girl until she took off her helmet.

I would consider getting a Sisters army, but only if they removed the stupid boobplate. It doesn't look cool or sexy. All I see are two shot traps directing munitions into the face and sternum of the wearer.

 Ashiraya wrote:
If you want an army of badass super-men, don't you want that to be easily identifiable?

I have 5500ish points of Chaos Space Marines. They all have helmets. They wear so much armour so any or all of them could be women. I have never seen this be mentioned as a problem, by anyone.

In fact, the best way to make them look more feminine would be to make the hips wider. Boobplate is grating and over the top, and comes at the cost of plausibility. We should not need to cater to people who won't bother to look properly if they want to identify the gender of a heavily armoured character.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
An appeal to reality doesn't work considering 40K is an inherently unrealistic universe.

Plausible, not realistic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Glasdir wrote:

1. my point was that the 'boobplate' helps you identify gender of a mini from a quick glance or from a distance because you don't tend to pick up minis in the middle of a game.

Why is this necessary?

2. yeah, it is 'boobplate', while it is not in the shape of breasts it accentuates them plus I noticed that male characters in the same images seem to lack the same plate where their chest is.

They wear different armour sets, that is why. The exact same armour is available to a male player character, in which case that large ablative plate is also present.

You seem to arguing for the sake of arguing at this point.

Boob plate exist in many settings so that you can instantly identify a character as a woman, no other reason, no demeaning quality, no hidden messages.

In a video game you can make a character model that accurately represents a human being. In a 28mm miniatures game you need to accentuate things in order to portray things about them. If you want to run a space marine army in full armor as sisters of battle no one is stopping you and if you explain your reason why most people aren't going to care. You can not just make a heroic scale model with slightly wider hips and other small changes to make them look female because the male models in this game STILL don't look like human beings, so changing slight things about their physique wouldn't make them look any more feminine. All it is going to do is make them look like slightly different guys in power armor. Boob plate is used on SoB because in your perfect view of things they would just look exactly like Space Marines with different icons, which I would be fine with but it wouldn't change anything.

A video game is not a table top game and there is a reason that female units in table top games look the way they do, so that someone standing around the table can easily identify them. Does it need to be this way? No, but that is the design decision many companies have made to make their female characters stand out from the male characters. It is why named characters often have over the top weapons or icons on them, so you can tell who they are from a distance.

 Wyzilla wrote:
I'd also like to point out that in any decent armor that actually protects you and doesn't have shot traps, it should take you more than a second to tell if it's actually a woman. As 40K borrows heavily from Medieval history, for ease of movement and more comfort in armor, when women did don maille or plate, they'd want to bind their breasts to prevent chaffing. If you were a French Infantryman during the end of the Hundred Years War, you wouldn't even know the commander was a girl until she took off her helmet.

I would consider getting a Sisters army, but only if they removed the stupid boobplate. It doesn't look cool or sexy. All I see are two shot traps directing munitions into the face and sternum of the wearer.

All of this. The exact same thing keeps me away from a Sisters army.

The ones at the bottom here are a huge step in the right direction, they just need more 40k bling.

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/02/plastic-sisters-wait.html

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
I'd also like to point out that in any decent armor that actually protects you and doesn't have shot traps, it should take you more than a second to tell if it's actually a woman. As 40K borrows heavily from Medieval history, for ease of movement and more comfort in armor, when women did don maille or plate, they'd want to bind their breasts to prevent chaffing. If you were a French Infantryman during the end of the Hundred Years War, you wouldn't even know the commander was a girl until she took off her helmet.

I would consider getting a Sisters army, but only if they removed the stupid boobplate. It doesn't look cool or sexy. All I see are two shot traps directing munitions into the face and sternum of the wearer.

All of this. The exact same thing keeps me away from a Sisters army.

The ones at the bottom here are a huge step in the right direction, they just need more 40k bling.

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/02/plastic-sisters-wait.html

Those last ones look really nice... Though yeah, more shiny bits!

So you are saying = "heavy Armour isnt gendered so why have boobs on them"

We are saying = "So they look female at a glance"

You say = "its not supposed to tell the gender"

In that case whats the solution? Make the Armour gendered or not bother making gendered models. Neither result is gonna make you happy. Because you need context to show a model is female.

But we have told you repeatedly, most people dont give a damn about context and just want whatever it is they are looking at to be obvious. I would be fired if I expected people to read my adverts. I need to make things obvious at a glance (as with all media). Commander Shepard has a voice. Thats the obvious giveaway its female or male (armour depending). Sisters of battle dont have voices, or character, they are merely an object. So to make them female they have the obvious female things.

Models have no context unless you want to look deeper. Your video game characters have context from the second you make your character. Hence the huge differences.

Arbiter_Shade wrote:
In a 28mm miniatures game you need to accentuate things in order to portray things about them.

Except, as has been pointed out, nobody seems to see any need to have exaggerated pants bulges to portray male characters. If you discard the sexist "always assume a character is male unless explicitly told otherwise" rule and just look at the models there's no hint at all that a space marine/DKoK guardsman/etc is male. So why is it that female characters need to work differently?

I am questioning the necessity of revealing the gender at a glance on a heavily armoured model.

Why is it necessary?

You could say 'my taste.'

In which case I say, take green stuff and model on a pair of blobs if it's so important to distinguish it. Why is your taste more important than both the taste of others and plausible design?

There's far more ways to distuinguish SOB PA than a pair of breasts. It is baroque and stylised in design, compared to the flat plating of the Space Marines.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

Arbiter_Shade wrote:
In a 28mm miniatures game you need to accentuate things in order to portray things about them.

Except, as has been pointed out, nobody seems to see any need to have exaggerated pants bulges to portray male characters. If you discard the sexist "always assume a character is male unless explicitly told otherwise" rule and just look at the models there's no hint at all that a space marine/DKoK guardsman/etc is male. So why is it that female characters need to work differently?

Exactly.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Always that 'unless very expressly stated as female, assume male with no questions asked' mindset. Why?

Because human beings are visual creatures. Lack of defining female cues means it's a male until proven otherwise. Alternatively if I saw an individual with noticeable lumps on their chest beneath their clothing and flared hips, I would assume female with no questions asked.

The best way to show femininity is to not do it at all, because it's heavy armour! It's not supposed to look gendered!

In a fictional universe it's supposed to look cool. Nothing else matters.

And people still argue that SoB are professional soldiers despite willingly going to war in incredibly idiotic armour designs, perhaps garbed to be eyecandy for the male priests who accompany their squads. I find that implausible.

Sure, just like how people argue that Catachans are proffesional soldiers despite willingly going to war in tank-tops and t-shirts, and people argue that Space Marines are professional soldiers despite going to war with no helmets, depriving them not just of physical protection but also the important information granted by a HUD.

I don't care though. Catachans don't bother me and neither do Space Marines without helmets, because at the end of the day 40K is an inherently silly universe where nothing makes sense.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Because human beings are visual creatures.

You consider male the default gender, okay. I don't.

Sure, just like how people argue that Catachans are proffesional soldiers despite willingly going to war in tank-tops and t-shirts, and people argue that Space Marines are professional soldiers despite going to war with no helmets, depriving them not just of physical protection but also the important information granted by a HUD.

Catachans are just as bad as SoB BTW, and EVERYONE goes to war without helmets in 40k. v.v At least you can leave the helmeted heads on. Can't leave the breasts off, eh?

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Lack of defining female cues means it's a male until proven otherwise.

And that's the problem! Assuming that every character is male until proven otherwise is incredibly sexist. Yes, it's also incredibly common, but that doesn't mean that we should approve of it.

 Peregrine wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Lack of defining female cues means it's a male until proven otherwise.

And that's the problem! Assuming that every character is male until proven otherwise is incredibly sexist. Yes, it's also incredibly common, but that doesn't mean that we should approve of it.

Exactly!

 Ashiraya wrote:
You consider male the default gender, okay. I don't.

See my edit.

Catachans are just as bad as SoB BTW,

What's actually wrong with Catachans, beyond your personal fetish for "plausible" combat?

EVERYONE goes to war without helmets in 40k.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Silly universe that's dysfunctional by design.

At least you can leave the helmeted heads on. Can't leave the breasts off, eh?

Personally I wouldn't have an issue at all with Sisters models that were designed to be androgynous when fully armored.

So long as I can have my Sisters that are easily definable (visually) as being female, too.

@Blaxican, Ashiraya and Swastakowey

While this discution on how could one produce clearly feminine and masculine models without resorting to boobplates or other very sexualising trait is quite intersting, I think you have reached a point were you will have trouble reaching a middle ground. While I do think the SoB could do without boobplate and still be recognised has women and that most cartoonish representation of both female and male anathomie are overdone a bit especially in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy media, I think you will quickly be forced to enter the murky waters of gender stereotypes, representations and inequality. While this debates needs to be adressed frequently by has much people has possible, I wouldn't adivise it on this thread. Despite this, I would sincerly thank you for the small debate for it was at east intertaning and interesting from an intellectual point of view.

Hey man, thanks.

 Peregrine wrote:

Arbiter_Shade wrote:
In a 28mm miniatures game you need to accentuate things in order to portray things about them.

Except, as has been pointed out, nobody seems to see any need to have exaggerated pants bulges to portray male characters. If you discard the sexist "always assume a character is male unless explicitly told otherwise" rule and just look at the models there's no hint at all that a space marine/DKoK guardsman/etc is male. So why is it that female characters need to work differently?

I don't care. I really don't. Every suit of armor could be a space slug for all I care, gender does not matter to me.

I am telling the people who care so much about having their gender/race portrayed in a game that if that is what you want, you have to accept that they are going to accentuate the things that identify them as that gender/race.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
What's actually wrong with Catachans, beyond your personal fetish for "plausible" combat?

Obscene proportions, leather jackets that apparently work as full armour, absence of armour.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Silly universe that's dysfunctional by design.

At least that one is consistent.

Personally I wouldn't have an issue at all with Sisters models that were designed to be androgynous when fully armored.

So long as I can have my Sisters that are easily definable (visually) as being female, too.

And since we're probably never going to be given that as an option, I am still going to argue that given the choice between boobplate and armour that looks like it mighty justify a 3+ save, the latter is preferable.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
What's actually wrong with Catachans, beyond your personal fetish for "plausible" combat?

Stupid concept, horrible sculpts, and getting a 5+ armor save for wearing a few tiny scraps of cloth. TBH I'm surprised that GW didn't kill them off when they got rid of all of their other IG lines.

epronovost wrote:
@Blaxican, Ashiraya and Swastakowey

While this discution on how could one produce clearly feminine and masculine models without resorting to boobplates or other very sexualising trait is quite intersting, I think you have reached a point were you will have trouble reaching a middle ground. While I do think the SoB could do without boobplate and still be recognised has women and that most cartoonish representation of both female and male anathomie are overdone a bit especially in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy media, I think you will quickly be forced to enter the murky waters of gender stereotypes, representations and inequality. While this debates needs to be adressed frequently by has much people has possible, I wouldn't adivise it on this thread. Despite this, I would sincerly thank you for the small debate for it was at east intertaning and interesting from an intellectual point of view.

Fair enough. I have said mine.

I am still of the belief that 'male unless proven otherwise' is an absurd stance. But that has been stated. So, done here.

Ashiraya out. o7

 Peregrine wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
What's actually wrong with Catachans, beyond your personal fetish for "plausible" combat?

Stupid concept, horrible sculpts, and getting a 5+ armor save for wearing a few tiny scraps of cloth. TBH I'm surprised that GW didn't kill them off when they got rid of all of their other IG lines.

Horrible sculpts is inarguable, I think the concept of an armry of Rambo's is awesome though, and they aren't the only ones who get saves despite wearing almost nothing.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Obscene proportions, leather jackets that apparently work as full armour, absence of armour.

A good 80% of 40K has nonsensical aspects like these.

And since we're probably never going to be given that as an option, I am still going to argue that given the choice between boobplate and armour that looks like it mighty justify a 3+ save, the latter is preferable.

Your entitled to like what you like. I think it's very strange to hate on what other people like though.

That's the difference between our mindsets. My argument is that I like my female minis to be easily identifiable as women, but at the end of the day I wouldn't mind seeing androgynous character designs as well if that's what some people want. Your argument (as I understand it) is that there's something inherently wrong with wanting identifiable minis beyond you simply preferring otherwise. I don't understand that.

 Peregrine wrote:

Arbiter_Shade wrote:
In a 28mm miniatures game you need to accentuate things in order to portray things about them.

Except, as has been pointed out, nobody seems to see any need to have exaggerated pants bulges to portray male characters. If you discard the sexist "always assume a character is male unless explicitly told otherwise" rule and just look at the models there's no hint at all that a space marine/DKoK guardsman/etc is male. So why is it that female characters need to work differently?

When it comes to regular GW models, the exaggerated scale almost always exaggerates features we associate with men. Thicker arms/torsos/legs, broader faces and hands. There could be a female under all that stuff, but you can't really claim it's a sexist thing to assume they're men when they tend to exaggerate male proportions.

Take the Cadian models.... it's a stretch to call them men given how squat and broad they are.... it's a much larger stretch to call them female. Because DKOK are more realistically scaled, when you place a DKOK next to a Cadian it's more believable that the DKOK might be female

I tend to think that's part of the reason you have to exaggerate female features in models like GW's, if you took the typical heroic scale and transferred it to be female, they'd still look like dudes because a thickened up female tends to look like a male (assuming your goal is to have them identifiable as female).

Its the 41st Millennium here guys... Let's not forget the setting now.

40k. A setting where 90% of the conflicts are caused directly by Humans killing anything that is not human, simply for not being human. A place where an entire race speaks like football hooligans and exists solely to fight others, for fun. A place ruled by a religion that demands total obediency and punishes all transgressors with death. A place where, if you are lucky, you will be taken from your home forcibly, surgically enhanced to remove all your human flaws, indoctrinated, and sent to kill others who don't fit your image of human.

We are talking about grimdark here guys (and gals, and Blacks and Asians) where everything is turned up to 10, sometimes 11! You reeeeally wanna start using 40k as a vehicle for discussion about equality? That just seems absurd. What purpose does it serve to demand equal representation from a game company? The game company isn't here to alleviate white liberal guilt, just provide a game. If you feel racist because you've painted all your toys a certain color then the problem is probably not the game company. If you feel sexist because you bought IG, well then... Is it the toys fault you feel funny inside? And by the way what's up with the whole "they're racist by accident because they are english and old and white and men" thing? Isn't that attitude a little oh I dunno... Racist?

I always thought that these days the Salamanders skin is pitch black ( as in the black-grey-white spectrum ) rather than an actual dark human skintone. As in, more in the alien/mutation side of things than just normal dark skin you can actually have. That's what I see from many pictures atleast ( or is it just a poor paint job? )

Good if that's not the case though, I always facepalmed at it in a way. "Really, you couldn't just make dark skinned people, you had to make them concretically inhumanly jet black to avoid some sort of outrage?"

Why is it that every time a thread about "why are there no black people in 40k?" Usually ends up with talking about female armor at some point.

@ OP - there are they are just not depicted in writing or models all that often.

 Runic wrote:
I always thought that these days the Salamanders skin is pitch black ( as in the black-grey-white spectrum ) rather than an actual dark human skintone. As in, more in the alien/mutation side of things than just normal dark skin you can actually have. That's what I see from many pictures atleast ( or is it just a poor paint job? )

Good if that's not the case though, I always facepalmed at it in a way. "Really, you couldn't just make dark skinned people, you had to make them concretically inhumanly jet black to avoid some sort of outrage?"

Well, that's the funny thing, they apparently used to be black, as in having a realistic dark skin tone. Then with the release of the 5th edition codex GW retconned it so that they were pitch black with white hair, like drow elves from D&D. And then threw in red, glowing eyes while they were at it for reasons.

So yeah, they did change them to be more like mutants instead. Don't really see what the problem was before, and it just makes the models look stupider.

 fox-light713 wrote:
Why is it that every time a thread about "why are there no black people in 40k?" Usually ends up with talking about female armor at some point.

@ OP - there are they are just not depicted in writing or models all that often.

Because on a scale of things there is a larger population of females then black people. Also female>everyone else.

 Sidstyler wrote:

 Runic wrote:
I always thought that these days the Salamanders skin is pitch black ( as in the black-grey-white spectrum ) rather than an actual dark human skintone. As in, more in the alien/mutation side of things than just normal dark skin you can actually have. That's what I see from many pictures atleast ( or is it just a poor paint job? )

Good if that's not the case though, I always facepalmed at it in a way. "Really, you couldn't just make dark skinned people, you had to make them concretically inhumanly jet black to avoid some sort of outrage?"

Well, that's the funny thing, they apparently used to be black, as in having a realistic dark skin tone. Then with the release of the 5th edition codex GW retconned it so that they were pitch black with white hair, like drow elves from D&D. And then threw in red, glowing eyes while they were at it for reasons.

So yeah, they did change them to be more like mutants instead. Don't really see what the problem was before, and it just makes the models look stupider.

No. Salamanders were originally inhuman black, then changed to human black, and now have been changed back to inhuman black. They flip-flop around a lot.

Arbiter_Shade wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Arbiter_Shade wrote:
In a 28mm miniatures game you need to accentuate things in order to portray things about them.

Except, as has been pointed out, nobody seems to see any need to have exaggerated pants bulges to portray male characters. If you discard the sexist "always assume a character is male unless explicitly told otherwise" rule and just look at the models there's no hint at all that a space marine/DKoK guardsman/etc is male. So why is it that female characters need to work differently?

I don't care. I really don't. Every suit of armor could be a space slug for all I care, gender does not matter to me.

I am telling the people who care so much about having their gender/race portrayed in a game that if that is what you want, you have to accept that they are going to accentuate the things that identify them as that gender/race.

darkcloak wrote:Its the 41st Millennium here guys... Let's not forget the setting now.

40k. A setting where 90% of the conflicts are caused directly by Humans killing anything that is not human, simply for not being human. A place where an entire race speaks like football hooligans and exists solely to fight others, for fun. A place ruled by a religion that demands total obediency and punishes all transgressors with death. A place where, if you are lucky, you will be taken from your home forcibly, surgically enhanced to remove all your human flaws, indoctrinated, and sent to kill others who don't fit your image of human.

We are talking about grimdark here guys (and gals, and Blacks and Asians) where everything is turned up to 10, sometimes 11! You reeeeally wanna start using 40k as a vehicle for discussion about equality? That just seems absurd. What purpose does it serve to demand equal representation from a game company? The game company isn't here to alleviate white liberal guilt, just provide a game. If you feel racist because you've painted all your toys a certain color then the problem is probably not the game company. If you feel sexist because you bought IG, well then... Is it the toys fault you feel funny inside? And by the way what's up with the whole "they're racist by accident because they are english and old and white and men" thing? Isn't that attitude a little oh I dunno... Racist?

These two posts got it right.

For those people that complain that the models are defaultly thought to be male, it is a reasonable assumption, considering that a huge majority of frontline troops has been male for the last 10 000 years, so it would be safe to assume that they will be so in the next 38 000. Also, the models in which are said to be in the fluff male or female often look very masculine, as in for example guardians have very broad shoulders, and therefore if you wish to make them appear feminine, you need them to have an obvious feminine feature like long hair.

 Wyzilla wrote:

No. Salamanders were originally inhuman black, then changed to human black, and now have been changed back to inhuman black. They flip-flop around a lot.

People keep saying that, but I've never seen any credible citation for it. They were African black in RT.

Can the mods just closes down these type on threads.You can't appease racial & gender ideologues.

Find a game that craters to your racial & gender views & play that instead.

No, just because it is a subject you don't like doesn't mean those talking about it need to shut up and get out.

 Nakor The BlueRider wrote:
Can the mods just closes down these type on threads.You can't appease racial & gender ideologues.

Find a game that craters to your racial & gender views & play that instead.

Great attitude.

Curtail free speech, and if you don't like it go away?

I have to say, I never started this thread as some kind of campaign, I was simply curious about why there wasn't a huge amount of diversity. I wondered perhaps if there was something in the fluff I was missing, or if it was super hard to paint dark skin tones.

It does seem to have gotten a lot of people's backs up though, and there are quite a few posts that seem to be more annoyed with the idea that someone has even mentioned diversity than actually address the OP. I think that's pretty telling.

Yes it is a grim dark universe, and yes it's produced by a load of middle class white guys. But just because none of them are black or Asian or women, it doesn't mean they can't make models that are diverse. None of them after all are green skinned orks from space are they? Or immortal elf men from a dying race? You may say that none of this matters, it's just toy soldiers. I guess on many levels it doesn't, but I can't accept that it's completely irrelevant.

Anyway, like the thread title says. It's a sensitive issue which is probably why GW avoid it.

Two of the Space Marine scouts painted on the back of the box have a dark complexion. One is a White Scars scout, and one is a Dark Angels scout.

With today's awesome shades and washes it should be pretty easy to get different skim tones.

The 4th ed catachan codex had a lot of diversity in both artwork and minis.

On a side note look through any of FFG's Only War books and you'll see pretty good representation of all genders and races.

I think one reason it's hard to achieve a certain degree of ethnic diversity in Guard units is that their facial features and/or hair types are often exaggeratedly European. I try to throw some diversity into my armies when it makes visual sense, but some Cadian and SM characters just end up looking like they're wearing blackface. That said, I'll still mess around with mixing and washes to make sure I don't seem to have an army of clones.

 Owain wrote:
I think one reason it's hard to achieve a certain degree of ethnic diversity in Guard units is that their facial features and/or hair types are often exaggeratedly European. I try to throw some diversity into my armies when it makes visual sense, but some Cadian and SM characters just end up looking like they're wearing blackface. That said, I'll still mess around with mixing and washes to make sure I don't seem to have an army of clones.

Honestly talking the faces that gw models usually have have no features that would make them definetely european. With a slight modification to the paint scheme they could aswell be far-east asian, indian or hispanic.

Most people are bald, crew cut, or just bearded.

Far from excessively European.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For clarification most IG and SM models have the hairstyles listed above.

Last i checked GW sold grey plastic you could paint however you wanted.

Salamanders are genetically dark skinned.

Paint an army of africans, asians, swedes, middle eastern, etc. Its a highly customizeable system when it comes to paint.

 Sienisoturi wrote:

 Owain wrote:
I think one reason it's hard to achieve a certain degree of ethnic diversity in Guard units is that their facial features and/or hair types are often exaggeratedly European. I try to throw some diversity into my armies when it makes visual sense, but some Cadian and SM characters just end up looking like they're wearing blackface. That said, I'll still mess around with mixing and washes to make sure I don't seem to have an army of clones.

Honestly talking the faces that gw models usually have have no features that would make them definetely european. With a slight modification to the paint scheme they could aswell be far-east asian, indian or hispanic.

Honestly GW faces usually don't have any defining caracteristics of any ethnicity, they are just very generically 'heroic scale human male'.

GW aren't racist, they just suck at realistic facial features.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Sienisoturi wrote:

 Owain wrote:
I think one reason it's hard to achieve a certain degree of ethnic diversity in Guard units is that their facial features and/or hair types are often exaggeratedly European. I try to throw some diversity into my armies when it makes visual sense, but some Cadian and SM characters just end up looking like they're wearing blackface. That said, I'll still mess around with mixing and washes to make sure I don't seem to have an army of clones.

Honestly talking the faces that gw models usually have have no features that would make them definetely european. With a slight modification to the paint scheme they could aswell be far-east asian, indian or hispanic.

Honestly GW faces usually don't have any defining caracteristics of any ethnicity, they are just very generically 'heroic scale human male'.

GW aren't racist, they just suck at realistic facial features.

Pretty much sums it up, never mistake incompetence for malice.

 Glasdir wrote:
and lets not forget that humaniod races like elves and eldar cannot be black becuase of genetics.

Okay so i am really very curious where this is coming from. Has GW actually come out and said "Eldar do not have melanin and thus are all white"? I am pretty sure WFB does not have the genetics of the elves discussed in length, nor their skin tone

 General Kroll wrote:
Anyway, like the thread title says. It's a sensitive issue which is probably why GW avoid it.

Not including black characters can be a controversial decision. But having a bunch of miniature painted as black in the middle of miniatures painted as white? I certainly cannot see why anyone would ever feel the need to complain about that.

Also painting black seems easy to me. I have never tried painting white skin though, I went from my blue and green skinned lizardmen to my black sisters of battle to my blue-skinned (again) trollbloods.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
Anyway, like the thread title says. It's a sensitive issue which is probably why GW avoid it.

Not including black characters can be a controversial decision. But having a bunch of miniature painted as black in the middle of miniatures painted as white? I certainly cannot see why anyone would ever feel the need to complain about that.

Also painting black seems easy to me. I have never tried painting white skin though, I went from my blue and green skinned lizardmen to my black sisters of battle to my blue-skinned (again) trollbloods.

Any tips for someone thinking of adding a few black guys to their army?

 General Kroll wrote:
Any tips for someone thinking of adding a few black guys to their army?

It has been a while since I painted some Sisters, but iirc I used bestial brown, then some brown ink, highlighted with bestial brown again, maybe some extra highlight with some yellow added to the brown, and done. Not that hard, really.

I've heard justifications that marines are all one race as they are recruited from the same world, however that doesn't make sense for some worlds should be as diverse as earth. Also (I'm completely making this up mostly so feel free to call me on my shshenanigans) but space marines look like their primarchs so perhaps they their skins pigment change when implanted with their gene seed to match their primarch's. If that were the case perhaps we should request more diversity amongst the Primarchs.

 chazz huggins wrote:
I've heard justifications that marines are all one race as they are recruited from the same world, however that doesn't make sense for some worlds should be as diverse as earth. Also (I'm completely making this up mostly so feel free to call me on my shshenanigans) but space marines look like their primarchs so perhaps they their skins pigment change when implanted with their gene seed to match their primarch's. If that were the case perhaps we should request more diversity amongst the Primarchs.

Their skin does not change, possibly except for Salamanders.

For example, in the Ultramarines books, Uriel Ventris' ship captain is an Astartes, and has brown skin.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 chazz huggins wrote:
I've heard justifications that marines are all one race as they are recruited from the same world, however that doesn't make sense for some worlds should be as diverse as earth. Also (I'm completely making this up mostly so feel free to call me on my shshenanigans) but space marines look like their primarchs so perhaps they their skins pigment change when implanted with their gene seed to match their primarch's. If that were the case perhaps we should request more diversity amongst the Primarchs.

Their skin does not change, possibly except for Salamanders.

For example, in the Ultramarines books, Uriel Ventris' ship captain is an Astartes, and has brown skin.

Also there's Jonah Orion from DoW.

I deliberately omitted Dawn of War due to its... oddities.

For example, both times the Alpha Legion appear as antagonists, they use Goff tactics, which does not suit them very well.

Salamanders (who are the best damn chapter ever! )! Thats it! Also one lots of books have ebony skinned guardsmen.

 Ashiraya wrote:
I deliberately omitted Dawn of War due to its... oddities.

Are those oddities hiding in METAL BOXES? The cowards! The fools! Dawn of War is totally canon, and marines actually do pop up in the middle of their squad like magic .

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
I deliberately omitted Dawn of War due to its... oddities.

Are those oddities hiding in METAL BOXES? The cowards! The fools! Dawn of War is totally canon, and marines actually do pop up in the middle of their squad like magic .

And Battle Sisters' nerve breaks because they are being shot by a burna (that barely scratches their armor).

Is that canon, too?

This thread is still alive?

The subject changed a little, so I figured I'd return.

It's not a sensitive issue unless you believe every vision of the future should be political correctness in space, American style. Censorship of sf and space fantasy, sounds pretty crazy. Uncle Joseph would be proud though.

I guess the reasons for such extreme measures can be very convincing. Racism is bad and racist ideas lead to ku klux klan and Hitler and people get killed. But then, didn't ideas of equality kill multiple times more people? Sure not poor black guys only Russian, Polish and Ukrainian pest but still. So why dont we all enjoy some freedom of speech and thought instead.

Now to real reasons for lack of racial diversity, and I'm quite sure it never had anything to do with painting. Questions to people who want more diversity in the Imperium:

- how would you convey the message of facist, oppresive empire if it was shown as full of care for woman equality, minorities etc. It's all about connotations and bald white men sell it best, also women should be either psycho nuns, baby factories or cannon fodder in IG at best because that's supposedly what oppresive empires do. Or did I miss something and Imperium became good guys already?

Really bald white men as a driving force for racist empire is fitting to 11 unless you take it all at face value.

- how would you retain the mood of the medieval knights/ medieval monks/ elite Romans in spaace while simultanously showing them as racialy diverse. Sure you could try but it would be just as ridiculous as black Heimdall (and I love Ezra as an actor tbh). Salamanders and white scars are nice cop outs and other chapters are not ruined by out of place and logic pc

- shouldn't we remove comissairs asap? Is slaneesh an insult to sexualy active people? Is it nice to compare football fans to mindless barbarians? Are DE a demonisation of sadomasochism community? Where are black eldar? Why is being gay a "terrible secret"?

- how would you like Imperium as flying little wooden churches full of power armoured gospel chapters spreading love and hope throughout the galaxy? 40k is super offensive to religion especialy Christianity and I'm sure your social sensibilities make you tremble in disgust just at the thought of people worshipping rotting corpses etc. Let's just contact Christian anti deflamation league or whatever their name is and get it all in, 40k galaxy a great place for everyone! Just as it was meant to be.

Also anyone is free (at leats atm) to make a cool black people only sf universe, or the one where jihad succeded and all white people are dead. I'd actualy love to play the latter if the designs were good, cyber camel riders in space power scimitars not to mention the helmets potential.

Plumbumbarum wrote:

- how would you retain the mood of the medieval knights/ medieval monks/ elite Romans in spaace while simultanously showing them as racialy diverse.

You could just... have them not all be of the same race and gender. Nobody is asking for so-and-so group to be portrayed in a positive light, all that anybody is wondering is why the models do such a poor job of showing that the Imperium has managed to crush racism and sexism through an ideology of general human supremacy. Armed forces that draw upon all of humanity should reasonably be expected to show this.

Is slaneesh an insult to sexualy active people?

Didn't GW replace realy nice slanesh models with realy ugly ones, like the deamonetts for example?

why the models do such a poor job of showing that the Imperium has managed to crush racism and sexism through an ideology of general human supremacy

Because it didn't crush anything? If the imperium looks anything like the fluff in necromunda books I downloaded, then sexism is alive and kicking. Sure women can have a rank, even a high one. But their rank is either based on the organisation they are in or they are freaking mutants, or both at the same time. Not that I don't like yolanda or jerichos mom and sister. They are fun characters, specialy his mom.

Rosebuddy wrote:

Plumbumbarum wrote:

- how would you retain the mood of the medieval knights/ medieval monks/ elite Romans in spaace while simultanously showing them as racialy diverse.

You could just... have them not all be of the same race and gender. Nobody is asking for so-and-so group to be portrayed in a positive light, all that anybody is wondering is why the models do such a poor job of showing that the Imperium has managed to crush racism and sexism through an ideology of general human supremacy. Armed forces that draw upon all of humanity should reasonably be expected to show this.

You mean like all those women Roman legionnaires or black chivaleric knights? Or rather black girl monks? Ok.

Way to ruin some of the best references in 40k with ridiculous pc, if you ask me.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Uncle Joseph would be proud though.

Uncle Adolf is very proud of your fight for a black-people free future .

Plumbumbarum wrote:
- how would you convey the message of facist, oppresive empire if it was shown as full of care for woman equality, minorities etc.

I am sorry, are my zealous psychotics space nuns trying to kill anyone with different religious opinions or with mutations any less fascist because they are black? You have me confused here. Are you saying women cannot be fascists and black people cannot be oppressive?

Plumbumbarum wrote:
also women should be either psycho nuns, baby factories or cannon fodder in IG at best because that's supposedly what oppresive empires do.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but women can also be Inquisitors, or bad-ass assassins, or high-ranked officer in the guard, or in the mechanicus, or even High Lords, and this has literally always been the case. Now that you have lost every interest in the game, can I buy your models for a dollar?

Plumbumbarum wrote:
- how would you retain the mood of the medieval knights/ medieval monks/ elite Romans in spaace while simultanously showing them as racialy diverse.

Easily.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
- shouldn't we remove comissairs asap?

No, they are too cool for that. And Ciaphas Cain is a commissar, so NO WAY.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Is slaneesh an insult to sexualy active people?

No, and neither is she the goddess of sex.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Is it nice to compare football fans to mindless barbarians?

Orks are not football fans and never, ever speak about football. They can speak a bit about Blood Bowl, though, but mostly in fantasy.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Are DE a demonisation of sadomasochism community?

No, because they have basically no link to the sadomasochism community.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Why is being gay a "terrible secret"?

I have no idea what this is about.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
40k is super offensive to religion especialy Christianity and I'm sure your social sensibilities make you tremble in disgust just at the thought of people worshipping rotting corpses etc.

Actually that is why I play Sisters of Battle. Perfect representation of religion .

Plumbumbarum wrote:
or the one where jihad succeded and all white people are dead.

You do realize that the aim of Jihad is arguably about killing non-Muslims, but has never, ever, even in your wilder fantasies, been about killing white peoples?

Plumbumbarum wrote:
I'd actualy love to play the latter if the designs were good, cyber camel riders in space power scimitars not to mention the helmets potential.

Are you aware that there is at least one Arab-inspired Guard regiment?


Nice mix of all-flavored ignorance there, buddy .

Uncle Adolf is very proud of your fight for a black-people free future .

not realy. The thing is for him and for me, and anyone from our cultur circle there is no problem of black people , not in the past , not now and not in the future. It also ties in to why lacking the race difference is not seen as a problem in creating a sci fi fascist empire.

Are you aware that there is at least one Arab-inspired Guard regiment?

I though they were laurence of arabia inspired and british

Plumbumbarum wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:

Plumbumbarum wrote:

- how would you retain the mood of the medieval knights/ medieval monks/ elite Romans in spaace while simultanously showing them as racialy diverse.

You could just... have them not all be of the same race and gender. Nobody is asking for so-and-so group to be portrayed in a positive light, all that anybody is wondering is why the models do such a poor job of showing that the Imperium has managed to crush racism and sexism through an ideology of general human supremacy. Armed forces that draw upon all of humanity should reasonably be expected to show this.

You mean like all those women Roman legionnaires or black chivaleric knights? Or rather black girl monks? Ok.

Way to ruin some of the best references in 40k with ridiculous pc, if you ask me.

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. Roman centurions didn't have plasma rifles, and chivalric knights didn't zip around with jet packs strapped to their backs. So whether or not they were women or black shouldn't matter either right?

If it does, why?

Hey mr. Hybrid Son of Oxayotl, for a post exposing my ignorance there's a lot of ignorance and reading comprehension failure

@Plumbumbarum

The «sensitive issue» pressed here is rather simple. From what the fluff has presented us, the Imperium isn't fascist or communist. Neither is the Imperium racist in the polygenist sense of the term (AKA the post 18th century racism frequently associated with skin colour), the Imperium isn't sexist either or at least not as it would have been defined by early feminist thinker besides Virgina Wolf. Many cultures in the Imperium may be sexist, fascist, communist, racist or any other variation of intolerence of your choice, but this isn't a trait shared by the Imperium at large.

The Imperium is a theocratie, ruled by a plutocratic and aristocractic regime. The «sensitive issue» is derived form the fact that the fluff exposes us to a very varied group of human beings. We know there is a lot of black and asian people in the Guard, Sisterhood and Adeptus Astartes, yet the otherwise excellent paint of GW aren't very good to make these skin colours and there isn't much tutorial on making non caucasian skin colour (there is one for black skin, but it could be improved). In the same vein, we know there is a lot of women in the Guard, yet there is no model for female Imperial Guard beside a few unique disconniued models (hopefully, other companie produce good proxie models for these).

If you don't have any problem with black, asian, women and other kind of people, why are you arguing against the fact that some people would like to have an easier time having some in their army?

Makumba wrote:
The thing is for him and for me, and anyone from our cultur circle there is no problem of black people , not in the past , not now and not in the future.

If you have no problem, why all the cries of “B-b-b-but PC is ruining 40k!!!!”

Makumba wrote:
I though they were laurence of arabia inspired and british

Does Al'rahem sound British-inspired to you?

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Hey mr. Hybrid Son of Oxayotl, for a post exposing my ignorance there's a lot of ignorance and reading comprehension failure

Good point, buddy.

@Plumbumbarum

The idea that diversity is good is NOT a politically correct idea in America. It's more of a moral issue than a political one anyways. Also, no one here has said anything about censoring GW or is suggesting that GW should in anyway face restrictions because their models aren't diverse enough. Please stop with the straw man fallacies.

Also, you should understand that the long and complicated history of race relations in the U.S. make things like this a very relevant issue which you should not dismiss so lightly.

I guess the reasons for such extreme measures can be very convincing. Racism is bad and racist ideas lead to ku klux klan and Hitler and people get killed. But then, didn't ideas of equality kill multiple times more people? Sure not poor black guys only Russian, Polish and Ukrainian pest but still. So why dont we all enjoy some freedom of speech and thought instead.

Are you suggesting that racism is good?

Also, if you're talking about Joseph Stalin, I really don't think he cared much about equality... if he did it was because he cared about other people equally little which is really a different thing from what I mean when I talk about equality. There's also a difference between equality of outcome and equality of opportunity. In the U.S. people typically mean equality of opportunity.


Edit: There's also equality of circumstance I forgot that one.

Mustela wrote:
Are you suggesting that racism is good?

I think he is suggesting that equality is bad, and putting women and black people in 40k is motivated by equality and therefore bad. If it does not make any sense to you, yeah, it is normal.

Still on about this? Jeez Laweez!

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

Makumba wrote:
The thing is for him and for me, and anyone from our cultur circle there is no problem of black people , not in the past , not now and not in the future.

If you have no problem, why all the cries of “B-b-b-but PC is ruining 40k

@Plumbumbarum

You might want to eddit your last sentence a bit. Taken at face value like that, it does sound a lot like a White Supremacist line and I am pretty shure that you don't want to be affiliated with those kind of people. It's the phrasing that makes you seem to say the two following enormities.

1) That Muslim are, one, non white (which is false for many of them) and that Jihad is motivated by racial supremacist goals instead of religious ones.

2) That you fight for a future where all black people are dead.

A second language can be very tricky. It's a pain I know very well.

Mustela wrote:
@Plumbumbarum

The idea that diversity is good is NOT a politically correct idea in America. It's more of a moral issue than a political one anyways. Also, no one here has said anything about censoring GW or is suggesting that GW should in anyway face restrictions because their models aren't diverse enough. Please stop with the straw man fallacies.

Also, you should understand that the long and complicated history of race relations in the U.S. make things like this a very relevant issue which you should not dismiss so lightly.

Ofc that Stalin didnt care about equality but he rode on ideas of equality. If you cant show racism in connotation with cool, by that logic you cant show communism as cool either. Or promote equality, because it led to bandits in rule killing millions. The trap of censorship, it never ends.

No it's not strawman. If anyone said GW should face restrictions that would be outwolrdly ridiculous and I wasnt about that. Still in many threads like this I saw enough posts about GW being misogynist racist white bigots and how 40k should change. Which is missing the point obviously.

Now to slavery. So you think that because your country flourished on black people's backs is a good reason for all the rest to get conscience fits. Dont like 40k dont buy it go for Mass Effect instead and dont ruin the former for the rest of us.

USA was not a victim, it was a perpetrator so I dont give rat's arse about you being sorry now in crazy ways. If on the other hand you are a black descendant of enslaved people then Im truly sorry for you. If it's any consolation, commisairs who are clearly a reference to soviets and are showed as cool heroes in 40k did such things to my people in such numbers that slavery could look like a good alternative for them. 40k is offensive all around and racism fits great.

I guess the reasons for such extreme measures can be very convincing. Racism is bad and racist ideas lead to ku klux klan and Hitler and people get killed. But then, didn't ideas of equality kill multiple times more people? Sure not poor black guys only Russian, Polish and Ukrainian pest but still. So why dont we all enjoy some freedom of speech and thought instead.

Are you suggesting that racism is good?

Yes. Racism is great, I love racism. I cant get enough of racism these days.

Again, what I suggest is that racism fits the Imperium. I dont know if it's mentioned somewhere in the fluff that racism is no more but I think racial tensions would be still alive in such a scumbag society. Maybe the best black people get is either working on the field on sone God forsaken planet or joining the line breaker lasgun squad for IG. Maybe not. But GW is consistent in showing Imperium as aging bald white men and it works, I see no reason to change it. Not every society is diverse, or has to be.

I have never seen someone manage to string so many sentences together with such little logic. Nor be so hypocritical about missing the point.

epronovost wrote:
@Plumbumbarum

You might want to eddit your last sentence a bit. Taken at face value like that, it does sound a lot like a White Supremacist line and I am pretty shure that you don't want to be affiliated with those kind of people. It's the phrasing that makes you seem to say the two following enormities.

1) That Muslim are, one, non white (which is false for many of them) and that Jihad is motivated by racial supremacist goals instead of religious ones.

2) That you fight for a future where all black people are dead.

A second language can be very tricky. It's a pain I know very well.

If you go back to mr. Hybrid Son of Oxyotl post a page back, I'm just repeating his lines. Dont take them at face value, just follow the discussion. I don't want to be rude but I don't think it's that bad. It's not a second language problem (though I do have them at times ofc), I know what I wrote.

Ok though, I dont want all black people dead in the future. Not all muslism are non white and it is not motivated by racial motives.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mustela wrote:
I have never seen someone manage to string so many sentences together with such little logic. Nor be so hypocritical about missing the point.

You've not seen much then.

*facepalm*

Plumbumbarum wrote:
I for one dont have a problem with black people, I have a problem with mixing black people into 40k Imperium art, marines chapters etc. It would kill a few visual messages it tries to convey.

It would not, just as it has not in the few existing artworks with black people in them.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
You fragmented my post to single sentences, used at least a few cheap discussing techniques, misinterpreted half of it and failed to make a single relevant point.

Sure. If the fact women had held positions of power completely unrelated to the roles you assigned to them in 40k since the very beginning of the game was not a relevant. And if neither was multiple other examples showing you do not even know the 40k universe so well.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Ofc that Stalin didnt care about equality but he rode on ideas of equality. If you cant show racism in connotation with cool, by that logic you cant show communism as cool either. Or promote equality, because it led to bandits in rule killing millions.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I think he is suggesting that equality is bad, and putting women and black people in 40k is motivated by equality and therefore bad. If it does not make any sense to you, yeah, it is normal.

Ta-Daaaam !
For someone “misinterpreting” you, I feel I was pretty spot on!

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Again, what I suggest is that racism fits the Imperium. I dont know if it's mentioned somewhere in the fluff that racism is no more but I think racial tensions would be still alive in such a scumbag society.

And this just shows your ignorance of the setting. Again. Your whole point is based on your ignorance of the setting and you filling the holes this ignorance cause by your own prejudice. Does that sentence fits as a “single relevant point”?

Plumbumbarum wrote:
I for one dont have a problem with black people, I have a problem with mixing black people into 40k Imperium art, marines chapters etc. It would kill a few visual messages it tries to convey.

The Ultramarines have a fleet commander (who is also an Ultramarine) who has dark skin. His name is Lazlo Tiberius.

He still fills all the criteria for Ultramarine-dom.

So what's the problem?

I don't see how having diverse human populations kills any of the visual messages GW tries to convey with their art. I think that you're arguing that there would still be racial tension in the 41st millennium, but I don't really agree with it so much since the feeling I get from GW's fluff and art is that if humanity is united in anything, it's their hate and distrust of everything that isn't human. I can buy human beings setting their own differences aside when there are mutants, heretics, and aliens that they can focus all of their energy on instead. I don't imagine race being an issue unless we're talking about some stupid little backwater planet with nothing better to do.

Oh no, please let's not get all "social-justicey".

 General Kroll wrote:
Ok, so I'm not being funny or anything, this is a genuine question, but why are there no black people in the 41st Millennium... Have I missed a memo or something?

Yeah, I think you have.

As a franchise, the "core" of Warhammer 40k is a Gothic Medieval-Europe-In-Space setting, with armored warriors, an Inquisition, an all powerful king, etc. It's fair to have the racial content of its people reflect the historical setting it was based on.

So, for example, if I made a game based on Samurai dynasties in space most people would be Asian. If I made a setting which borrowed heavily off Polynesian culture or religion, I'd try to have the people with features like Pacific Islanders.

Warhammer isn't some high-tech Star Trek style diverse society. The center of its mythos (Terra, the Emperor, and the Space Marines) is mostly white, because that's what you'd see in a medieval society.

Drager wrote:
GW as a company, though, seems to have a bit of a racism and sexism problem.

It's racist if you depict black people in your media as a bunch of vicious, watermelon-eating savages.

If you depict them reasonably, just not with enough frequency (by your subjective rules), can you really consider that racist?

@Mysterious Pants

That's a fair explanation. However, 40K is fantasy, a place that people escape to. Not everyone's perfect escape involves a single race and a gender imbalance. It seems a little messed up to me if you escape to a reality where there is arbitrarily only white people and a gender imbalance. Some people, like you, have offered speculation as to why there might only be white people. While I don't think there's anything wrong with that, there are just as many explanations for why there would be racial diversity. And honestly, why not have more racial diversity? I don't see what that changes. I'm pretty sure a little creativity can solve whatever potential issue people throw out.

I can see how social justice can be annoying when you're trying to have fun but I try to follow the tenets of: real world > fake world and real people > fake people.

And the bottom line which I support is that you can paint your models any way you want and anyone who actually cares how you paint them can go themselves.

 Mysterious Pants wrote:
Oh no, please let's not get all "social-justicey".

 General Kroll wrote:
Ok, so I'm not being funny or anything, this is a genuine question, but why are there no black people in the 41st Millennium... Have I missed a memo or something?

Yeah, I think you have.

As a franchise, the "core" of Warhammer 40k is a Gothic Medieval-Europe-In-Space setting, with armored warriors, an Inquisition, an all powerful king, etc. It's fair to have the racial content of its people reflect the historical setting it was based on.

So, for example, if I made a game based on Samurai dynasties in space most people would be Asian. If I made a setting which borrowed heavily off Polynesian culture or religion, I'd try to have the people with features like Pacific Islanders.

Warhammer isn't some high-tech Star Trek style diverse society. The center of its mythos (Terra, the Emperor, and the Space Marines) is mostly white, because that's what you'd see in a medieval society.

Drager wrote:
GW as a company, though, seems to have a bit of a racism and sexism problem.

It's racist if you depict black people in your media as a bunch of vicious, watermelon-eating savages.

If you depict them reasonably, just not with enough frequency (by your subjective rules), can you really consider that racist?

The White Scars are Asian-flavored, always have been. The Dark Angels were originally Native American-flavored (Ezekiel's original name was "Cloud Runner"). The Salamanders have alternated between genetic-mutation-black and African-heritage-Black since they were introduced. SoB art going back like 4 editions has depicted Black Sororitas.

40K is *not* "We took the Dark Ages and put them in space", it's "we drew on a lot of themes from medieval European institutions and put them in a sci-fi setting, but took pains to talk about the diversity of humanity spreading across the stars and forming colonies based on religious, ethnic and interest variations. We also made the badasses of our setting, the Space Marines, as diverse as we could think of, including having one guy who was half-alien. We also, for the lols, ripped off a bunch of other franchises and made grimly-funny characters out of them, like Inquisitor Karamazov, Obi-Wan Sherlock Clousseau and a whole army of Rambos with one guy named Marbo. Again, for the lols. Later, we added a line of models for an all-female Imperial Guard regiment called the Xenans, because a television show was popular."

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

Plumbumbarum wrote:
I for one dont have a problem with black people, I have a problem with mixing black people into 40k Imperium art, marines chapters etc. It would kill a few visual messages it tries to convey.

It would not, just as it has not in the few existing artworks with black people in them.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
You fragmented my post to single sentences, used at least a few cheap discussing techniques, misinterpreted half of it and failed to make a single relevant point.

Sure. If the fact women had held positions of power completely unrelated to the roles you assigned to them in 40k since the very beginning of the game was not a relevant. And if neither was multiple other examples showing you do not even know the 40k universe so well.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Ofc that Stalin didnt care about equality but he rode on ideas of equality. If you cant show racism in connotation with cool, by that logic you cant show communism as cool either. Or promote equality, because it led to bandits in rule killing millions.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I think he is suggesting that equality is bad, and putting women and black people in 40k is motivated by equality and therefore bad. If it does not make any sense to you, yeah, it is normal.

Ta-Daaaam !
For someone “misinterpreting” you, I feel I was pretty spot on!

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Again, what I suggest is that racism fits the Imperium. I dont know if it's mentioned somewhere in the fluff that racism is no more but I think racial tensions would be still alive in such a scumbag society.

And this just shows your ignorance of the setting. Again. Your whole point is based on your ignorance of the setting and you filling the holes this ignorance cause by your own prejudice. Does that sentence fits as a “single relevant point”?

No, not really and in general you failed yet again. Few woman inquisitors or one black Ultramarine crammed in for pc sake or whatever sake or the odd black guy in the art are rather exceptions showing the rule. There can be millions of them in the fluff but they're not in the art and that's good. Also I didn't even say that women ARE treated like I described but that they SHOULD be treated like that for the sake of integrity of the vision.So, a reading comprehension fail.

I'm not saying equality is bad. I'm saying that if you want censor to ideas with connotations to racism (ie future society dominated by white people) then by the same logic you should censor ideas with connotations to communism (ie forcing equality), so I said an entirely different thing. I like equality in real life, I dont like equality in a marxist sense. But yes you accdently got one thing right (in a different post though heh and I was specificaly about the first one), some people want to put women and black people into 40k out of misplaced sense of equality and are on some weird pc crusade. Just above me you have a quote from someone accusing GW of a racist problem.

My 'ignorance' of the setting, what do you mean? The few odd examples? Books so canon defining that all those black and women characters never make it to the art? White scars or Salamanders that I acknowledged in first post? 40k has no canon as said by GW. Going by the art though which is closest to showing what they actualy want for the setting, women and non whites don't exactly flourish.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mustela wrote:
@Mysterious Pants

That's a fair explanation. However, 40K is fantasy, a place that people escape to. Not everyone's perfect escape involves a single race and a gender imbalance. It seems a little messed up to me if you escape to a reality where there is arbitrarily only white people and a gender imbalance. Some people, like you, have offered speculation as to why there might only be white people. While I don't think there's anything wrong with that, there are just as many explanations for why there would be racial diversity. And honestly, why not have more racial diversity? I don't see what that changes. I'm pretty sure a little creativity can solve whatever potential issue people throw out.

I can see how social justice can be annoying when you're trying to have fun but I try to follow the tenets of: real world > fake world and real people > fake people.

And the bottom line which I support is that you can paint your models any way you want and anyone who actually cares how you paint them can go themselves.

Oh Jesus. I find it messed up that in the all around offensive setting full of ridiculous bloodshed, you'd pick white people and gender imbalance as problems. No offence really but for me it's exactly the kind of misplaced overreaction pc brainwashing induces.

Not everyone's perfect escape involves a single race etc, exactly. That's why there's choice in form of mass effect or sth. If you want 40k anyway, don't expect it to change according to your sensibilities or it's censorship already, soft one (or rather 'social') ofc as it's still only train of people whining but still. 40k offends a few of my very beliefs/ ideas but I dont go and post how they have this or that problem.

But yes paint it as you wish.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

Plumbumbarum wrote:
or the one where jihad succeded and all white people are dead.

You do realize that the aim of Jihad is arguably about killing non-Muslims, but has never, ever, even in your wilder fantasies, been about killing white peoples?

Sorry to hijack your post for this but I've already blocked the offending poster because... Are you kidding me? As a white Muslim that is possibly the most mind numbingly wrong thing I've ever read.
First, jihad means struggle. Usually the struggle to be a better Muslim against your more base desires. It can also cover defending yourself & the faith from people trying to persecute/kill you for your beliefs.
Second, people like these unislamic state only aim to kill or convert the entirety of the كفر so even the worst people to insult الله by using his name aren't pushing for anything like what you think they are. سلام.

@Plumbumbarum

Are you saying that you have a problem with a dystopian society being portrayed as equal? If so that explains a lot, and then I could understand your logic. However, the Imperium in 40K isn't Marxist. It is certainly totalitarian, and akin to Stalin's government however.

Honestly, there is a language barrier. You said you fight for a "black free future." This means that you fight for a future in which there are no black people. What it seems that you meant is that you fight for a "free black future," which is something entirely different. Can you understand why I would ask you if you think racism is good? You are consistently unclear. Honestly, this would be easier to sort out if you didn't A) automatically assume that everyone not understanding what you meant was a result of their stupidity, B) you actually know anything about global race relations and how that affects people on a macro level, and C) that you actually know what politically correct means. I assure you that Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl is not trying to gain political favor by posting on Dakka.

I'm saying that if you want censor to ideas with connotations to racism (ie future society dominated by white people) then by the same logic you should censor ideas with connotations to communism (ie forcing equality), so I said an entirely different thing.

No one here has suggested anyone be censored. Find me a quote of anyone in this thread saying that someone should not be allowed to produce media. That would be someone suggesting censorship. This is a straw man.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Weirdly enough your insistence on using politically correct as a term for everything you don't like is an extremely Animal Farm use of language.

And honestly it's not messed up that I chose those things. More people have died in the 20th century from genocide than war.

Mustela wrote:
@Plumbumbarum

Are you saying that you have a problem with a dystopian society being portrayed as equal? If so that explains a lot, and then I could understand your logic. However, the Imperium in 40K isn't Marxist. It is certainly totalitarian, and akin to Stalin's government however.

Honestly, there is a language barrier. You said you fight for a "black free future." This means that you fight for a future in which there are no black people. What it seems that you meant is that you fight for a "free black future," which is something entirely different. Can you understand why I would ask you if you think racism is good? You are consistently unclear. Honestly, this would be easier to sort out if you didn't A) automatically assume that everyone not understanding what you meant was a result of their stupidity, B) you actually know anything about global race relations and how that affects people on a macro level, and C) that you actually know what politically correct means. I assure you that Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl is not trying to gain political favor by posting on Dakka.

I'm saying that if you want censor to ideas with connotations to racism (ie future society dominated by white people) then by the same logic you should censor ideas with connotations to communism (ie forcing equality), so I said an entirely different thing.

No one here has suggested anyone be censored. Find me a quote of anyone in this thread saying that someone should not be allowed to produce media. That would be someone suggesting censorship. This is a straw man.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Weirdly enough your insistence on using politically correct as a term for everything you don't like is an extremely Animal Farm use of language.

And honestly it's not messed up that I chose those things. More people have died in the 20th century from genocide than war.

It's not language barrier, it's you picking on words and not following conversation. It's also me being overly vague and not explaining myself enough but that's because I'm posting on the phone. It's a chore to answers quotes directly also I hevere headache from using internet on it so I have to limit myself to one racist rant a day.

I never said I fight for black free future. It's what hybrid son of Oxyotl suggested I do among and I confirmed, in a flippant way or how do you say that.

It's not strawman, my suggestion of censorship. If enough people cry about lack of racial diversity GW might do it (and they will imo) because USA is a big market for them. It's not censorship in form of a commision not allowing books to be printed but there are many kinds of censorship. Call it social pressure or sth if you want, for me the suggestion of changing sf vision of future because it is not in line with current social trend is as close to censorship as enjoying white bald 40k Imperium seems to be close to joining ku klux klan for some.

It's not 40k that is marxist, it's correcting works of fiction according to some political/ social ideas that is marxist, as in marxist TV theory etc.

But yes I do have a problem with dystopian society described as equal, thank you. Especialy and xenophobic society, it just doesn't make sense.

If it's not messed up that you chose those thing, why dont you choose the extremly negative portrayal of religion. Or soviet based commisairs being shown as heroes of mankind. It's all about black people and women now apparently and that's in line with what political correctness nowadays is, extremly selective overeaction.

Less semantics please.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
There can be millions of them in the fluff but they're not in the art and that's good.

Sure. Do not forget to showcase your ignorance in every possible occasion. There are not one, not two, but three female Inquisitor models for 40k, and female Inquisitors are displayed in a lot of artwork. You just have no idea what you are talking about.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Also I didn't even say that women ARE treated like I described but that they SHOULD be treated like that for the sake of integrity of the vision.So, a reading comprehension fail.

I love it when people go out of their way to contradict creators on what their vision is. Plain and simple, you demonstrated very well you have no idea what the vision for 40k is.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
I like equality in real life, I dont like equality in a marxist sense.

Ah. So, displaying female Inquisitors is equality in a Marxist sense. Who cares about things like “meaning” when you can use buzzword and random bad associations.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
My 'ignorance' of the setting, what do you mean?

I mean that from the inception of 40k, there has never been any racism associated to the Imperium, ever, and the hate has always been directed at mutants and abhumans. I mean that basically as soon as the High Lord were introduced, some of them have been women.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
The few odd examples? Books so canon defining that all those black and women characters never make it to the art?

Rather, I mean all the art that display them and that you have never seen. That is your ignorance.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
If you want 40k anyway, don't expect it to change according to your sensibilities

So, why are you trying to change 40k to fit your own perceived “integrity of vision” delirium?

3dog wrote:
As a white Muslim that is possibly the most mind numbingly wrong thing I've ever read.

Yeah, it is pretty damn wrong.

Mustela wrote:
@Mysterious Pants

That's a fair explanation. However, 40K is fantasy, a place that people escape to. Not everyone's perfect escape involves a single race and a gender imbalance. It seems a little messed up to me if you escape to a reality where there is arbitrarily only white people and a gender imbalance. Some people, like you, have offered speculation as to why there might only be white people. While I don't think there's anything wrong with that, there are just as many explanations for why there would be racial diversity. And honestly, why not have more racial diversity? I don't see what that changes. I'm pretty sure a little creativity can solve whatever potential issue people throw out.

I can see how social justice can be annoying when you're trying to have fun but I try to follow the tenets of: real world > fake world and real people > fake people.

And the bottom line which I support is that you can paint your models any way you want and anyone who actually cares how you paint them can go themselves.

I think, there are plenty of problems with that approach to fiction.

1) If you take it seriously, then every fictional work ever has to follow this rule. That means, if I create a fictional setting, no matter how far away into the future or how far away into the past, no matter how fundamentally different it is from our world, it HAS to represent 21st century US demographics. This idea alone is pretty ridiculous in my opinion.

2) I'm not even sure, what the problem is.

You say, some people might not be comfortable to escape to a place with a single race and gender imbalace. So apparently they are still confortable escaping to a place, where human life has absolutely no worth and is thrown away by the millions just to have minor military victories. Where there is exactly one religion and if you don't follow it, you're going to get killed. Where people are hoarded to planet earth like animals, so the one true ruler of mankind can consume their souls... but gender imbalance really is a deal breaker!
Doesn't make sense to me.

Others have said, there should be people that look like you, so everyone feels represented. The thing is, there is nobody in 40k that looks like me! I'm 5 ft 7, 155 lbs and wear glasses. Who exactly looks like me. You pick ONE external characteristic, skin color, ignore everything else and then make representation about this one thing. That's arbitrary.

3) Building on the last point: It's a slippery slope. You want black people represented in 40k, fine. But now obviously you need hispanic, asian and arabic people as well, so you put in those. Now you've got all the big ethnicities covered, but what about the smaller ones? What about the native americans and polynesians, that don't feel represented? Ok, so we put in every possible ethnicity, that exist today and we're done right?
But what about the disabled people? Shouldn't they be represented as well? What about transgender people? And gay people? What about people with autism? What about Little People? What about amputees?
So we are not done, until we have a gay 4 ft 5 transgender autistic Space Marine, that may or may not have native alaskan heritage...

4) To me this approach to fiction KILLS immersion. And I'm convinced, that most people of the affected groups feel the same way. When you see this happening (and most of the time it's blatantly obvious) you're starting to think of real-world politics and stop thinking about the world you're trying to experience, which kills the fun.

This is one of the worst problem of "everything is political". TV shows are political, books are political, music is political, movies are political and 40k is political. Ironically the people suffering the most from this, are the ones trying to push this agenda. Can they even enjoy ANY media anymore? How can you enjoy something, when all you're thinking about is "Let's see how well everyone is represented in this"? How can you get lost in a work of fiction, when all you do, is trying to judge how well this supports your political goals?

In short: Keep politics where they belong! There are more than enough real-world issues in need of solving, where your commitment to social justice is well placed and productive (Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, etc.) But if you're taking your politics to places, that are supposed to be a fun escape from the real world, and taking them back into the real world in the process, all you're doing is alienating people and hurting your cause. (especially as it might not even be a problem, see point 2)

Plumbumbarum wrote:

I never said I fight for black free future. It's what hybrid son of Oxyotl suggested I do among and I confirmed, in a flippant way or how do you say that.

You literally did. Seriously, go back and look. Those are your exact words.

It's not strawman, my suggestion of censorship. If enough people cry about lack of racial diversity GW might do it (and they will imo) because USA is a big market for them. It's not censorship in form of a commision not allowing books to be printed but there are many kinds of censorship. Call it social pressure or sth if you want, for me the suggestion of changing sf vision of future because it is not in line with current social trend is as close to censorship as enjoying white bald 40k Imperium seems to be close to joining ku klux klan for some.

That's not censorship. Them not earning a profit from their fiction is entirely different from them not being able to express it.

It's not 40k that is marxist, it's correcting works of fiction according to some political/ social ideas that is marxist, as in marxist TV theory etc.

But yes I do have a problem with dystopian society described as equal, thank you. Especialy and xenophobic society, it just doesn't make sense.

That clears up a lot. Thank you.

If it's not messed up that you chose those thing, why dont you choose the extremly negative portrayal of religion. Or soviet based commisairs being shown as heroes of mankind. It's all about black people and women now apparently and that's in line with what political correctness nowadays is, extremly selective overeaction.

Less semantics please.

Code this goes for you as well.

I honestly don't care that much about what color GW paints their models. However, I don't think there's anything wrong with people wanting some more diversity in their game. There are very understandable reasons for why that might be. Not sure now I'm overreacting. Not sure how I'm saying everything has to represent 21st century demographics. Honestly diversity is still pretty rare in most parts of the world, so 21st century demographics are well represented. Part of it, as Plumbumbarum as suggested is that 40K is a hell hole of an epic scale. It's not portraying all the bad things as good, it's portraying them as truly terrible. When it comes to being mono-race there is no mention. If there was some sort of state sponsored cleansing or whatever reason, no one seems to care that most of the non white people and women are gone. It is NEVER portrayed as an important part of the 40K universe. If you can have your own personal interpretation are others allowed to theirs?

Quite frankly if that ruins 40K for you you have no creativity.