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I know at this point that much of the actual rage was about how the Custodes Codex was poorly made, contains a lot of nerfs, and lacks new kits. Yet, everywhere on the internet, people have been exploding about how female Custodes are going to ruin Warhammer and how people are canceling their Warhammer+ because of that, rather than because its contents are also pretty underwhelming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcLRqXE7Les&t=5s

I actually like this guy. I think his critiques of modern Hollywood feminism have merits. But Warhammer 40k has never gone in that direction, and never will. Let's break down why I think the backlash is completely dumb.

First, it's not like any major lore is going to get changed. So 1 - 2 female Custodes are out there, how does that affect the wider galaxy? Remember when GW screwed the lore completely like Rising Storm negating previous Black Crusade material or the End Times dumping Storm of Chaos into a cliff? The Oldcrons can still exist in the current setting with some Necrons still clinging to their old gods but GW has never bothered to reconcile the old Necron lore with the new one. The divergence between Newcrons and Oldcrons still frustrates me till this day. Compared to those, it's not like female Custodes are going to matter.

Second, when Warhammer Total War 3 was announced, nobody was complaining about how Cathay had a bunch of women in their army. For supposedly the largest empire in the Old World, Cathay still did not have enough men and had to send daughters and wives into battle. Remember Mulan and how it was extraordinary for her to join the army? Not anymore. There's a million Mulans in Cathay. Nobody cares. It's a game.

Third, I strongly disagree with Warhammer 40k being a thing for the male audience so it should limit the female roster. Gacha games have a lot of female characters. The main audience of gacha games is males. Men like women. It doesn't matter if a Custodes is male or female. As long as they can shove that spear into the Chaos Space Marine's chest, I am happy.

Fourth, and I don't mean to offend anyone here, but some people equate "evil" with being racist, sexist, and all sorts of negative stereotypes. They don't think that the Imperium can be gender liberal and still an evil empire. They don't believe that people who respect all genders and skin colors would go on to commit genocide on things that don't look human. This has to stop. I am done with villains being mustache-twirling imbeciles.

All in all, we all need to shut up about female Custodes being bad and just focus on... playing the game and having fun. You know, what we have always been doing. Because, at the end of the day, the change is immaterial.

This non-issue got purposefully blown up by outrage farmers. They don't actually care about custodes, I doubt most of them could even tell horus from guilliman. Sadly people take this garbage seriously, as evidenced by some truly nasty posts in threads discussing this subject (props to the mods for keeping the threads open and only acting on hateful stuff btw, solid modding imo).

Luckily the outrage mill keeps on churning. These agitators and their followers will soon move on to the next thing. Hopefully that'll leave only those who simply dislike hamfisted retcons to have an actual debate with. Then we won't have to wonder if a poster with an opposing view is being genuine, or if they're just smart enough to not say the quiet part out loud.

I'm not sure of the logic of starting a new thread just to tell people to shut up about it... But we could probably all just move on.