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Exactly but put this EVERYWHERE, see a cardboard cut out of a marine, you also get a sister, see a poster of a marine, there is a sister in there too just as prominent.
That trailer then being followed by indomitus starter was quite strange. Instead of releasing different sizes of starters, there should have been an option to pick SM vs. Necrons or Sisters vs. Necrons instead, and maybe a third option with a mixed faction force pitted against necrons.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2024/04/24 00:33:12
I don't like it because I like lore that retains internal integrity rather than bending to the exterior climate.
Did you forget the time GW completely changed the Necrons, invalidating every Necron player’s list, some of their units, and any background they cared about for their Necrons, all to make the Necrons less niche and more commercial to a wider market?
GE is *constantly* changing the lore for reasons exterior to the lore. The Tau aren’t a reaction to the exterior climate embracing anime? The Voltann and Genestealers aren’t embracing the exterior trans or nostalgia bait? Come on, man.
I repeat my refrain from earlier: it’s not that you have a problem with retcons, is that you have a uniquely outsized problem with *this* retcon that’s the red flag.
Exactly but put this EVERYWHERE, see a cardboard cut out of a marine, you also get a sister, see a poster of a marine, there is a sister in there too just as prominent.
That trailer then being followed by indomitus starter was quite strange. Instead of releasing different sizes of starters, there should have been an option to pick SM vs. Necrons or Sisters vs. Necrons instead, and maybe a third option with a mixed faction force pitted against necrons.
I skipped that box as I was not interested in Primaris or Necrons, had it been Sisters and Necrons I would have bought it like I bought a couple boxes of Leviathan for the nids even though I was not really too interested in nids, the deal was solid enough I was willing to try a new army, glad I did even though I do not really play 10th anymore the models work just as well in any other edition (I mostly play a mix of 3rd codex's with 4th core rules as well as Heresy, Legions and BFG)
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Did you forget the time GW completely changed the Necrons, invalidating every Necron player’s list, some of their units, and any background they cared about for their Necrons, all to make the Necrons less niche and more commercial to a wider market?
Expanded the lore and integrated the old lore into it, you still get the old style Necrons in the setting as mindless automatons, they even explained it all the way up to the recent necron novels with the awaking of different dynasties going badly and the personalities not waking properly or at all.
GE is *constantly* changing the lore for reasons exterior to the lore.
Expanding the lore and delving deeper into aspects of it, true retcons are relatively rare outside of Rogue Trader to 40k proper.
The Tau aren’t a reaction to the exterior climate embracing anime?
Not Anime specifically no, a by product of that anime in the models being produced in the mecha market at the time, Anime in the late 90's was still quite obscure and niche but the models were widely known even if what they were based on was not. Speaking from a UK perspective of course, Americans might have a different experience.
The Voltann and Genestealers aren’t embracing the exterior trans or nostalgia bait?
Votann I agree with you is nostalgia bait but genestealers exterior trans, I do not know what you mean by that ?
I repeat my refrain from earlier: it’s not that you have a problem with retcons, is that you have a uniquely outsized problem with *this* retcon that’s the red flag.
And I repeat that is your misrepresentation of the situation in spite of multiple people telling you multiple times its not the case, the repeated misrepresentation is deliberately antagonistic at this point.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2024/04/24 00:57:30
Just out of interest, because I couldn't find an example off the top of my head: What would a fictional veneer for segregation of human sexes look like? How can you do it in such a way that it does meet your requirements for tolerable fiction?
I addressed this a while back - if you're going to apply arbitrary restrictions in your setting, they should serve a narrative purpose. Otherwise, they're pointless, and just get in the way of creativity.
I don't like the Decree Passive as a thing, but it does at least provide a reason for the Sisters of Battle to be women, and provides narrative potential - what happens when a branch of the Eclessiarchy chooses to ignore it, for example.
Space Marines or Custodes being all male, particularly when the reason given for it is 'just because' provides no such narrative purpose, and worse, it makes no sense in a setting where roles are otherwise never restricted by gender. Sure, having them all be men means you can tell stories about 'brotherhood' (assuming that's the sort of story you feel is necessary to tell and is meaningfully different from stories of companionship or friendship with mixed genders, and would even still be a thing in a society that doesn't have segregated gender roles)... but you can still do that if female space marines exist, because male space marines also still exist. So you still have the opportunity to tell stories of a group of men doing manly stuff... you've just also opened up the potential for wider stories involving different groups.
So purely from a fiction point of view, allowing mixed Marines is a better option. And from a modelling point of view, you get the same thing... having restrictions does nothing but restrict modelling options. In a game that has been pushing the idea for 30 years that 'It's your hobby, do what you want with your models', it's just downright odd for it to simultaneously say '...oh, but not that' for no reason other than that badly sculpted female models didn't sell well in the early '90s.
Thanks for this elaboration, but it wasn't what I was referring to.
Hellebore mentioned that sexual segregation is generally adapted from reality as is, contratry to other forms of bigotry, usually without a fictional veneer. I just wanted to know if there is a precedent for such a fictional veneer in this context, and what qualities it would have to bring to make it more tolerable. Narrative merit is not really the core of the issue here, considering it is very much a subjective notion.
No, narrative merit is very much relevant here... because what makes segregation 'tolerable' in a setting is having a valid reason for the segregation. Without a reason for it, it's just someone's power fantasy.
Sexual segregation is used in a lot of fiction, almost always to apply some level of control over the population and their ability to breed. That isn't a factor in 40K, where the vast majority of the human population isn't segregated.
In the real world, religious orders are often segregated because people of the opposite sex are a sinful distraction. Again, that would be a valid reason to use in fiction... except in 40K, Marines aren't interested in sex anyway, so having women around isn't an issue, and we're never given any indication in the setting that sex is bad anyway, other than when it strays into the sort of excess that might attract unwholesome powers.
So we're left with there being no real valid reason for the segregation, which just makes it a creative limitation that would be better removed.
Exactly but put this EVERYWHERE, see a cardboard cut out of a marine, you also get a sister, see a poster of a marine, there is a sister in there too just as prominent.
That trailer then being followed by indomitus starter was quite strange. Instead of releasing different sizes of starters, there should have been an option to pick SM vs. Necrons or Sisters vs. Necrons instead, and maybe a third option with a mixed faction force pitted against necrons.
I skipped that box as I was not interested in Primaris or Necrons, had it been Sisters and Necrons I would have bought it like I bought a couple boxes of Leviathan for the nids even though I was not really too interested in nids, the deal was solid enough I was willing to try a new army, glad I did even though I do not really play 10th anymore the models work just as well in any other edition (I mostly play a mix of 3rd codex's with 4th core rules as well as Heresy, Legions and BFG)
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Did you forget the time GW completely changed the Necrons, invalidating every Necron player’s list, some of their units, and any background they cared about for their Necrons, all to make the Necrons less niche and more commercial to a wider market?
Expanded the lore and integrated the old lore into it, you still get the old style Necrons in the setting as mindless automatons, they even explained it all the way up to the recent necron novels with the awaking of different dynasties going badly and the personalities not waking properly or at all.
GE is *constantly* changing the lore for reasons exterior to the lore.
Expanding the lore and delving deeper into aspects of it, true retcons are relatively rare outside of Rogue Trader to 40k proper.
The Tau aren’t a reaction to the exterior climate embracing anime?
Not Anime specifically no, a by product of that anime in the models being produced in the mecha market at the time, Anime in the late 90's was still quite obscure and niche but the models were widely known even if what they were based on was not. Speaking from a UK perspective of course, Americans might have a different experience.
The Voltann and Genestealers aren’t embracing the exterior trans or nostalgia bait?
Votann I agree with you is nostalgia bait but genestealers exterior trans, I do not know what you mean by that ?
I repeat my refrain from earlier: it’s not that you have a problem with retcons, is that you have a uniquely outsized problem with *this* retcon that’s the red flag.
And I repeat that is your misrepresentation of the situation in spite of multiple people telling you multiple times its not the case, the repeated misrepresentation is deliberately antagonistic at this point.
Exterior trend of….is what I wrote. One wrong button and autocorrect creates madness.
I disagree that the old Necron lore fits in the new Necron lore. I was a fan of the Deceiver and the Dragon-cult-of-Mars background with an emphasis on Pariahs, and the butchering of the C’Tan and Pariahs made it unfeasible. Their lore was replaced more than expanded. Retconned.
The Tau have had some major retcons from the noble bright-yet-doomed to the shady grimdark, from practical tanks-are-smarter to dim bulb giant walkers are cooooolz. Retconned.
Genestealers now try to avoid getting absorbed by the Hive, right? That’s a pretty big retcon.
And I’m not misrepresenting anything. No other retcon has come close to this reaction. This is clearly an issue some men have with expanding the lore of the game…when it includes women.
Just out of interest, because I couldn't find an example off the top of my head: What would a fictional veneer for segregation of human sexes look like? How can you do it in such a way that it does meet your requirements for tolerable fiction?
I addressed this a while back - if you're going to apply arbitrary restrictions in your setting, they should serve a narrative purpose. Otherwise, they're pointless, and just get in the way of creativity.
I don't like the Decree Passive as a thing, but it does at least provide a reason for the Sisters of Battle to be women, and provides narrative potential - what happens when a branch of the Eclessiarchy chooses to ignore it, for example.
Space Marines or Custodes being all male, particularly when the reason given for it is 'just because' provides no such narrative purpose, and worse, it makes no sense in a setting where roles are otherwise never restricted by gender. Sure, having them all be men means you can tell stories about 'brotherhood' (assuming that's the sort of story you feel is necessary to tell and is meaningfully different from stories of companionship or friendship with mixed genders, and would even still be a thing in a society that doesn't have segregated gender roles)... but you can still do that if female space marines exist, because male space marines also still exist. So you still have the opportunity to tell stories of a group of men doing manly stuff... you've just also opened up the potential for wider stories involving different groups.
So purely from a fiction point of view, allowing mixed Marines is a better option. And from a modelling point of view, you get the same thing... having restrictions does nothing but restrict modelling options. In a game that has been pushing the idea for 30 years that 'It's your hobby, do what you want with your models', it's just downright odd for it to simultaneously say '...oh, but not that' for no reason other than that badly sculpted female models didn't sell well in the early '90s.
the comparison I make is to fantastical racism.
You can explore racism in fantasy fiction by using imaginary races, such that the reader doesn't have to suffer being othered by their own entertainment. ie dwarfs vs orcs, flerps vs blerps.
But we don't see fantasy sexes added to settings, so instead of having 4 sexes and using qunales as a way to explore sexism, we literally just use women and then expect those readers to suffer through it.
Not only that, but as I said above, culturally we seem entirely fine with this idea, as if bigotry against 50% of the species is just a minor thing that we can kick around for the vibe.
Thanks for this elaboration, but it wasn't what I was referring to.
Hellebore mentioned that sexual segregation is generally adapted from reality as is, contratry to other forms of bigotry, usually without a fictional veneer. I just wanted to know if there is a precedent for such a fictional veneer in this context, and what qualities it would have to bring to make it more tolerable. Narrative merit is not really the core of the issue here, considering it is very much a subjective notion.
Maybe one could achieve the same thing with restrictions against those weak yet graceful spacers from fighting along size real, gravity-grown humans. Men, women? What’s the difference when we’re talking about them delicate fancy floaters?
Or
Vat born just aren’t the same as us. Something about the tank hormones—they’re just so unstable. With their encephalo-curricula learning, I feel like they have a secret language that lets them all play mind games and laugh about us behind our backs. No way will I fight alongside some crazy vat born.
These are pretty hamfisted, but they allow the fiction to explore inherent fictional differences standing in for real world prejudices. Unlike fictional racism, I’m not sure there’s any unclunky way to convey fantasy sexism not based on real sexism.
Maybe something like Banewreaker, where the bad god responsible for lust and compassion towards the impious had a constantly-bleeding wound in his thigh.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2024/04/24 01:40:28
so how to solve this as a compromise, change the poster boy to include females or change the poster boy faction to include females, for every marine, show a sister, push that these are factions that work in concert, they are a mirror of each other and cover each others gaps and weaknesses, men and woman working in concert expressing their strengths in different ways, the marines are the shield, the bulwark against the physical threat, the sisters are the bulwark and shield against the spiritual one.
Spoiler:
Exactly but put this EVERYWHERE, see a cardboard cut out of a marine, you also get a sister, see a poster of a marine, there is a sister in there too just as prominent.
I LOVE this idea- but I think you need to go farther.
You need to have more kinds of Sisters. There are tons of different kinds of space marines, but Sisters don't have that:
Sisters should have diverse orders that each have their own unique warrior philosophies with a range that can compete with Marines:
Space Wolves, Iron Hands, Blood Angels, Lamenters, etc. Different hair styles, different trophies and decorations and different themes. Maybe some have tattoos, dreads, braids, shaved heads, mowhawks, etc.
Right now, there's really only one kind of Sister- and it corresponds to the Black Templars.
On a similar note, the various different Sisters forces should not only look different but play different. Again, mirroring Space Wolves to Imperial Fists to Grey Knights, they should not just have alternate color schemes but diverse battle doctrines that are interesting on the table and makes playing an Order of the Tempest force very different from an Order of the Stolen Leopard force.
Sisters need to normalize the alternative color schemes. Yes, we all know the black armor is the standard one, but Ultramarine is the standard Space Marine colors, but there's nothing even a little surprising about seeing marines in almost any color- even on book covers.
Right now, we pretty much only see the one Sisters scheme outside of a page titled "alternative color schemes." We need to get Sisters to a place where seeing them in green, grey, yellow and blue holds the same normality as various Marine chapters in those colors. And we'll have it right when introducing a bonkers-crazy color scheme like the Storm Lords seems like just another Sisters army and not like a crazy clown regiment (it is truly shocking how normal Storm Lords look to me).
Sisters need to have a lot more lore that makes them included in the battles against Xenos and external chaos threats- since up until now their role as the military arm of the Ordo Hereticus has been emphasized. They need to exist in the lore playing pivotal roles in saving planets from orcs, tyranids, necrons, T'au and demons rather than just witch hunting all day long.
Sisters might need a chaos equivalent to Chaos Space Marines and Traitor Titan Legions- and in that I mean a force that is very present and important to the shaping of the universe like those two forces. Traitor Sisters have a lot of potential, but I don't think they can fit into the background without feeling like quite the insert (at least at first).
Anyway- these are all ways in which I think Sisters are not given anywhere close to as much attention as their Space Marine cousins, and I think that elevating them onto equal footing should include closing that gap quite a lot, and not just including them in more pictures.
And to be clear- I REALLY WANT ALL OF THIS TO HAPPEN. Sisters could really become as interesting and diverse as Space Marines and there could be so many interesting characters and miniatures for them.
I will take this as the intention rather than words as written - women existing SHOULDN'T be political or extremism.
The reality of society, is that yes, in virtually every culture on the planet, being a woman is inherently political.
Political in terms of law and policy and political in terms of cultural policing.
From reproductive freedom, clothing choice, unpaid labour, emotional labour, victim blaming and until very recently the inability to vote or (just before I was born!) the ability to control your own finances. The ability for spousal abuse and rape to be even recognised as crimes is also shockingly recent in the west.
This is a distinction that privileged demographics fail to appreciate - no woman, LGBTQIA+ person or person of colour WANTS to be inherently political. Society simply makes them political, and turns any conversation about their existence into a political one.
It's a very effective tool of bigots to shut down social discourse by dismissing any discussion as political, thereby de-legitimising it and stymieing already stifled voices.
Man, I was going to make a response to them along the lines of 'but ew girls icky", but then you here came and basically gave a great and well thought out response. I know several people who loathe the fact that their very existence is seen as "political" and "shoving their agenda in our faces".
The very fact that we have a 20 some page thread here and a 10+ page thread in the background forum arguing about wuuuuuuumen existing in one of the many genetically modified supersoldier factions of the game is honestly kind of pathetic. It is nice at least that compared to even a few years ago it has gotten a lot more civilized, these threads used to explode in a day then get locked as certain crowds came screaming about women.
Genestealers now try to avoid getting absorbed by the Hive, right? That’s a pretty big retcon.
I'd love to get into this one because I loved 'stealers and still have my RT 'nid list (from White Dwarf) and my 2nd ed codex Imperialis and 'nid Codex:
- Genestealer Cults were simply part of the Tyranid army at first- alongside Squigs, Zoats and Mind Slaves (you could take anyone's units really).
- 2nd edition core box (codex imperialis) made them a separate army list, but they could ally with one another- with 'stealers themselves in both lists. It was useful since 'nids lacked any character models at all at the time.
- 2nd edition Tyranid Codex presented both army lists- but for some reason they could not ally with one another anymore. The lore stated that some 'stealer infested planets featured all of the people happily walking into the mouths of the landed tyranid ships, but they also said that they might fight off the Tyranids when they arrive. But the rules now said that they'd always fight off the 'nids. That was strange.
- Then we went a LOT of editions without having any Genestealer Cults anywhere, and there was much moaning about my army of Brood Brothers.
Men and women are, on average, temperamentally different, which has implications for group dynamics. A group of (even chemically sterilized or castrated) males will behave fundamentally differently than one that includes women. The concepts that can be explored narratively in either case are different. The lack of female influence only detracting from the overall narrative potential is your opinion, and one I disagree with.
In the context of 40k, racial segregation is also a plausible tool to establish a limiting factor. Space Marines are supposed to be rare, relative to the overall human population and its enemies. Establishing that only a fraction of males is even eligible for the transition is one way to reinforce this notion.
Those two are off the top of my head. Neither is any more or less plausible than the linguistic loophole that determines Sororitas to be only female. Both are fairly arbitrary, maybe bordering on silly, but established pillars of the setting.
If you want to get deeper into this, feel free to DM me. I'd rather not derail the original discussion with Hellebore, because they touched on something I was interested to learn more about.
I feel that people saying that "they should keep politics out of it" and "this is shoving politics down my throat" are the ones bringing politics into the discussion.
I mean, the codex just used the term "she" to refer to a Custodes character. That's not a shoving anything anywhere.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/04/24 01:54:05
I don't like it because I like lore that retains internal integrity rather than bending to the exterior climate.
Did you forget the time GW completely changed the Necrons, invalidating every Necron player’s list, some of their units, and any background they cared about for their Necrons, all to make the Necrons less niche and more commercial to a wider market?
I don't recall my Necron lists ever being invalidated. Some rules shifted, pts changed, some things got better/some things got worse.... You know, normal crap edition to edition.
But everything in my collection continued to be useful/playable.
The only unit to ever become "invalidated" was my lone squad of Pariahs. Oh, oh no, I guess I'll just field them as not-so-cool-looking Lychguard (a role they continue to fill to this day)....
Lore? Eh. Crappy lore vs new crappy lore. Seems like a wash to me. Neither has ever prevented me from enjoying playing my murderous endo-skeletons so
Sounds to me like the lore exists to serve the game for you. For me the game was barely a concern, with the real Warhammer 40,000 being the lore and the minis, the only two of the three that GW put any effort into, back in the day.
Thanks for this elaboration, but it wasn't what I was referring to.
Hellebore mentioned that sexual segregation is generally adapted from reality as is, contratry to other forms of bigotry, usually without a fictional veneer. I just wanted to know if there is a precedent for such a fictional veneer in this context, and what qualities it would have to bring to make it more tolerable. Narrative merit is not really the core of the issue here, considering it is very much a subjective notion.
Maybe one could achieve the same thing with restrictions against those weak yet graceful spacers from fighting along size real, gravity-grown humans. Men, women? What’s the difference when we’re talking about them delicate fancy floaters?
Or
Vat born just aren’t the same as us. Something about the tank hormones—they’re just so unstable. With their encephalo-curricula learning, I feel like they have a secret language that lets them all play mind games and laugh about us behind our backs. No way will I fight alongside some crazy vat born.
These are pretty hamfisted, but they allow the fiction to explore inherent fictional differences standing in for real world prejudices. Unlike fictional racism, I’m not sure there’s any unclunky way to convey fantasy sexism not based on real sexism.
Maybe something like Banewreaker, where the bad god responsible for lust and compassion towards the impious had a constantly-bleeding wound in his thigh.
Ursula K. Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness explores not just masculine and feminine, but everything in between. A human ambassador spends time with an alien whose species changes gender based on the proximity of available mates. I'm horrendously oversimplifying, but it might have been one of my favourite books from the university days.
Anyway, it's achieved via the mechanism of "alien-ness" but it's really a construct for exploring gender relations because the character is never really referred to in words that make them seem "alien."
You can explore racism in fantasy fiction by using imaginary races, such that the reader doesn't have to suffer being othered by their own entertainment. ie dwarfs vs orcs, flerps vs blerps.
But we don't see fantasy sexes added to settings, so instead of having 4 sexes and using qunales as a way to explore sexism, we literally just use women and then expect those readers to suffer through it.
Not only that, but as I said above, culturally we seem entirely fine with this idea, as if bigotry against 50% of the species is just a minor thing that we can kick around for the vibe.
So to you, outsourcing a conflict to, say, orcs is a way of mitigating harm to the reader?
Then what about those cases in which there is no fantastical surrogate but just humans? Fiction absolutely deals with real-world references for concepts like racism, too, it's not purely relegated to the fantastical realm, is it?
You could invent qunales for your story if you felt like that would make it safer, but I don't believe most people approach fiction that way. Fiction is already fairly safe by virtue of being fictional.
I don't like it because I like lore that retains internal integrity rather than bending to the exterior climate.
Did you forget the time GW completely changed the Necrons, invalidating every Necron player’s list, some of their units, and any background they cared about for their Necrons, all to make the Necrons less niche and more commercial to a wider market?
GE is *constantly* changing the lore for reasons exterior to the lore. The Tau aren’t a reaction to the exterior climate embracing anime? The Voltann and Genestealers aren’t embracing the exterior trans or nostalgia bait? Come on, man.
I repeat my refrain from earlier: it’s not that you have a problem with retcons, is that you have a uniquely outsized problem with *this* retcon that’s the red flag.
Your accusation is again misplaced. I hated the Necron retcon, and I loathe Primaris, returning Primarchs etc. And I was certainly vocal about it here, if you want to go digging for it. For Centurions and the various flyers I was vocal about those too, though orobably on Warseer before I migrated here.
And I’m not misrepresenting anything. No other retcon has come close to this reaction. This is clearly an issue some men have with expanding the lore of the game…when it includes women.
The volume is because it's part of a larger cultural context that is a click-generating rage machine. There's money to be made in the culture war. There's much less money to be made on the introduction of Centurions, and very few politically oriented content creators will care that the C'tan have been retconned into enslaved shards. . . Even if it annoys the crap outta me.
Those changes also don't come with the baggage of one side calling the other bigots because they can't fathom the dislike might be something else.
Men and women are, on average, temperamentally different, which has implications for group dynamics.
But the difficulty with this premise is that "temperament" is more of a result of environmental factors than biological ones.
Do boys behave differently than girls because they receive different cues from adults and the media?
We KNOW that the harshness of the 40k universe already breaks that difference in socialization due to female participation in other Imperial organizations, so these "temperamental" differences you speak of would be minimized to some degree or another, if they exist at all. Heck, 40k years might even be long enough for even biological markers to shift.
Either way, I don't think we can really compare the potential "temperaments" between 21st century boys and girls with those raised in the 40k Grimdark. Not by a long shot.
BobtheInquisitor wrote:I repeat my refrain from earlier: it’s not that you have a problem with retcons, is that you have a uniquely outsized problem with *this* retcon that’s the red flag.
Uh, Insectum has publicly and vocally hated the Necron retcon, among others. I did too.
'Here's some bull gak I assume you believe- gotcha, hypocrite!' isn't an incisive blow so much as it is just, well, tiring. Especially when the guy you're arguing with really isn't part of the reactionary 'anti-woke' crowd and has made his position pretty clear a couple of times in this thread.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2024/04/24 03:51:39
transhuman having still a gender was net really a thing until it was written down that there are male and female
a planet only recruiting young man because trials have a high death rate and the people are removed from society anyway makes sense
(like you need 100 recruits for 1 Marines, you have 100 people removed for each Marines, with the recruiting planets being a Deadthworld with low population, removing 50.000 woman on a regular basis won't work over 10k years)
that Marines or Custodes are still male and not genderless after the process is a different story and there is no real reason to still call them male or female as they are beyond
and big E saying he only wants male recruits to form his transhuman guard is a valid in-universe reason to do it, no need to make up science for it but simply going clear that the founder of the Imperium hated woman and did not want them around him except when they don't talk
could even go further and came up that the 2 missing Primarchs are woman which was not intended and that being the reason why they were locked up after being found
but going that way the Imperium and the Emperor would be the good guys and less favourable for people to pick and their extensive range of models and keeping everything else a NPC faction would not work out
Marketing and Background have put themselves in a corner they are not getting out easy
They need to make a change to appeal to more people while at the same time they want to grow the Space Marine model range and make 40k much more dependent about them
GW created their own unsolvable problem here with SM making up the majority of models and Datasheets, and being part in each starter set, they are the one faction everyone buys but also the one faction they cannot easily adopt to new marketing strategies
if Marines would be one book upon many with all of them being equal in size and support for models and rules, the whole thing would not be a problem at all and not open to the internet raging about "woke"
Culture always dictated that women wore dresses, because they were a) too valuable to risk in, and b) not as capable in, a fight. Men by contrast always wore less restrictive clothing - now, "what" that exactly meant differed. It could be trousers, it could be tunics, it could be skirts... but by and large, there was always a significant difference. In some areas men did wear long robes that were not dissimilar to what women wore, but that was a consequence of necessities of climate - long robes can help ventilation and heat control in the desert (which is why Crusaders wore surcoat, a fashion that spread to rest of Europe, but was then gradually abandoned following the fall of the last Crusader strongholds in the Holy Land).
yes and no, the very difference in clothing was most of the time based on class and social status
nobility and rich were the ones wearing dresses while the working and fighters those with the less restrictive clothing, it was not based on gender until modern times
looking at the paintings we have from early medieval times, man and woman from the same social class doing the same work have similar clothing
2 nobles, male and female at home with the kids wear both similar dresses, while hose were worn by man and woman (which developed into breeches and stockings that were still not exclusive to a gender until later)
it was not really until the french revolution, were they tried to remove the different social classes that trousers became exclusive male and dresses female
(taking out ancient rome or greece here because there woman were seen rahter differently and not part of the social system and therefore having different clothing)
Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise
To this day I look back at the Necrons retcon as being the point where 40k lore started going downhill. And I actually haven't bought anything related to that army since.
If GW wanted more women in the Custodes army they could've given Sisters of Silence the same treatment as what the Kroot just received. They could've sold a bunch of new models, and there wouldn't be any controversy. GW is a strange company sometimes and took the most controversial path, all the while delivering one awkward looking sculpt with the codex and no new female custodes to sell anyway.
There is really cool art of SoS with cyber mastiffs and 2handed power axes with much heavier armor, neither of which have made it into model form. Sadly sisters of silence will have to sit out yet another edition without anything new, until the next edition churn...and perhaps beyond.
To me the lore and aesthetics matter, otherwise i'd be playing something like Stargrave with 3d printed models instead of investing time and $$ into Warhammer.
Inherent in the social contract of a forum is that everything is an opinion unless presented as fact.
It's funny that in 30 pages of opinion, the people triggered by my opinion are ignoring the substance of the opinion and instead using lazy identity branding to discredit, and wanting receipts for opinions. You'll do literally anything to avoid thinking critically about what was actually being said. You just label, categorise and reach for a reddit screenshot that seems the right amount of edgy to virtue signal to your tribe.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2024/04/24 07:02:24
Exterior trend of….is what I wrote. One wrong button and autocorrect creates madness.
Haha happens to me a lot too which is why I got to the pc, more spelling errors but less auto correct mistakes.
I disagree that the old Necron lore fits in the new Necron lore. I was a fan of the Deceiver and the Dragon-cult-of-Mars background with an emphasis on Pariahs, and the butchering of the C’Tan and Pariahs made it unfeasible. Their lore was replaced more than expanded. Retconned.
hey fair enough, this is how we are interpreting things and you disagree and I disagree with your disagreement, nothing wrong with that.
as to your point, most of the lore was written from a narrator or a Imperial standpoint it would appear, as the lore expanded we find out they are not full on godlike being but shards of them a theme that is throughout 40k, god like being having shards of themselves broken off, Khaine, Emperor, Magnus etc. the Pariahs I agree appears to be a removal from the setting as does the goal of THOSE awoken dynasties, the ones up to that point had that goal and can literally still have that goal. the sharding and the pariahs are minor changes on the level of custodes compared to the massive expansion of the lore with the higher personalities waking up and asserting character over the necron forces.
The Tau have had some major retcons from the noble bright-yet-doomed to the shady grimdark, from practical tanks-are-smarter to dim bulb giant walkers are cooooolz. Retconned.
Nope this one really is a slow burn expansion more than the others, we saw over time this optimisistic race grow jaded and the reality of the Universe sink in, from Taros to Damocles, encountering the Nids and Dark Eldar, their technology advanced in the direction of mecha over conventional tanks.
Genestealers now try to avoid getting absorbed by the Hive, right? That’s a pretty big retcon.
Was not aware of this one, easily explained by the strong desire to spread build into their genes by the nids and of course the nids do not care either way as either the Stealers win and spread further or the nids win and get the biomass now or later when they come back.
And I’m not misrepresenting anything. No other retcon has come close to this reaction. This is clearly an issue some men have with expanding the lore of the game…when it includes women.
changes/expansions/ retcons that matched or exceeded this backlash.
Newcrons
Primaris
Cawl
13th Black Crusade
Rogue Trader to 40k Yarrick dying off screen
all saw multiple videos and people talking about it in the same manner, the biggest difference between this one and the others was the others did not have GW trying to gaslight people then block them for calling them out, all they needed to do was say "sure its a change we thought needed doing" nothing else and this would have died by now, when you lie and gaslight someone you make the matter worse, you add fuel to the fire, people then start looking for why they are being gaslit and lied to and that sends them down a rabbit hole, we saw this with primaris, people looking for ANY explanation in the background to justify them suddenly turning up, people fighting non stop about whether classic marines are going the way of the dodo (they are), whether this means we will get female marines due to Cawls introduction, Primaris spider webbed our really badly and is STILL an issue to this day.
So no it is not just because it involved woman, that is a misrepresentaton, it is just because people are passionate about their hobby, the lore and the game.
Spoiler:
I LOVE this idea- but I think you need to go farther.
You need to have more kinds of Sisters. There are tons of different kinds of space marines, but Sisters don't have that:
Sisters should have diverse orders that each have their own unique warrior philosophies with a range that can compete with Marines:
Space Wolves, Iron Hands, Blood Angels, Lamenters, etc. Different hair styles, different trophies and decorations and different themes. Maybe some have tattoos, dreads, braids, shaved heads, mowhawks, etc.
Right now, there's really only one kind of Sister- and it corresponds to the Black Templars.
On a similar note, the various different Sisters forces should not only look different but play different. Again, mirroring Space Wolves to Imperial Fists to Grey Knights, they should not just have alternate color schemes but diverse battle doctrines that are interesting on the table and makes playing an Order of the Tempest force very different from an Order of the Stolen Leopard force.
Sisters need to normalize the alternative color schemes. Yes, we all know the black armor is the standard one, but Ultramarine is the standard Space Marine colors, but there's nothing even a little surprising about seeing marines in almost any color- even on book covers.
Right now, we pretty much only see the one Sisters scheme outside of a page titled "alternative color schemes." We need to get Sisters to a place where seeing them in green, grey, yellow and blue holds the same normality as various Marine chapters in those colors. And we'll have it right when introducing a bonkers-crazy color scheme like the Storm Lords seems like just another Sisters army and not like a crazy clown regiment (it is truly shocking how normal Storm Lords look to me).
Sisters need to have a lot more lore that makes them included in the battles against Xenos and external chaos threats- since up until now their role as the military arm of the Ordo Hereticus has been emphasized. They need to exist in the lore playing pivotal roles in saving planets from orcs, tyranids, necrons, T'au and demons rather than just witch hunting all day long.
Sisters might need a chaos equivalent to Chaos Space Marines and Traitor Titan Legions- and in that I mean a force that is very present and important to the shaping of the universe like those two forces. Traitor Sisters have a lot of potential, but I don't think they can fit into the background without feeling like quite the insert (at least at first).
Anyway- these are all ways in which I think Sisters are not given anywhere close to as much attention as their Space Marine cousins, and I think that elevating them onto equal footing should include closing that gap quite a lot, and not just including them in more pictures.
And to be clear- I REALLY WANT ALL OF THIS TO HAPPEN. Sisters could really become as interesting and diverse as Space Marines and there could be so many interesting characters and miniatures for them.
Sold, a Chamber for each chapter, it works so perfectly!
god damn why are they not doing this !
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2024/04/24 07:05:03
Please, please learn how to words. A statement of intent is not gaslighting. A single social media post, advising the intent is now “there’s always been male and female Custodes” isn’t trying to challenge and alter your memories of events. It’s not trying to blame someone else for your own actions and the consequences thereof.
It was a clarifying statement made to answer questions about the circumstances of a female Custodes being mentioned in the Codex. A brief confirmation not to expect a background development, as it’s not a lore advancement, but a retcon, and as of now, should be taken as there having always been male and female Custodes.
Please learn how to words, because that is not gaslighting,
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