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I saw on a website called Spikey bits that GW have been trying to increase women player/customer numbers.

But then I saw this the other day: https://pp.userapi.com/c841334/v841334710/b3d1/wHmLr4jRX0Y.jpg

There aren't many female special characters in 40k, I can just think of Lelith Hesperax, Jain Zar, Celestine and Inquisitor Greyfax.

So you'd think in terms of writing, GW would want to protect them somewhat?
As opposed to having probably the strongest female character in the setting job to, and get horribly butchered by one of the many uber tier male characters?

Why would they put over Kharn and have Celestine job when Celestine's army is coming out soon?

Does GW think this kind of story attracts women? Cos what happened with Kharn reads like some domestic violence level ****.

I don't get it. Maybe they wanted her out the way t be re-released for the SoB, but there were better ways to do it that doesn't make her look like such a victim.

Celestine revives. That's her gimmick. If she didn't do that, you wouldn't show the gimmick.

It's like having nothing about Kharn kinda hurting his own dudes.

Here's the thing: we used to have more female characters before GW had to can them for not having models.

And "protecting" characters based on sex is brainless pandering, not equality. If you want a stronger female customer base you speak to them, you don't speak down to them.

Lastly, Celestine wasn't rereleased for Sisters as much as for the Imperium in general (hence why she can buff Imperium units). They needed a shining beacon of hope and faith in the story and she's the most well known one they can use. Considering they were giving us Cawl and Greyfax at the same time it makes sense to give us someone who could both be there, and was well recognizable both in and out of the setting itself.

Seriously, you're just stirring a pot for no real reason other than to promote outrage for something that was FAR more reasonable to most of us to read than the Bloodtide was (and that's a story I stand by could have been well done if they had tweaked a few details, such as mindwiping the Sisters into Servitors or serfs to serve the Grey Knights since their purity was proven, or just killing them to silence them when they purged the evidence).

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Celestine revives. That's her gimmick. If she didn't do that, you wouldn't show the gimmick.

It's like having nothing about Kharn kinda hurting his own dudes.

My problem isn't that she died. It's how it was done. Why's she gotta be victimized like that? How an army will be treated in the setting starts from the top down. If the best sister of battle gets such disrespect than the rest of the army will follow suit as far as I'm concerned , we'll be seeing more Matt Wardian SoB bloodbaths. So no point buying any. Great marketing that.

Handmaiden wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Celestine revives. That's her gimmick. If she didn't do that, you wouldn't show the gimmick.

It's like having nothing about Kharn kinda hurting his own dudes.

My problem isn't that she died. It's how it was done. Why's she gotta be victimized like that? How an army will be treated in the setting starts from the top down. If the best sister of battle gets such disrespect than the rest of the army will follow suit as far as I'm concerned so no point buying any. Great marketing that.

Why would a Chaos Marine of one of the Legions known for their brutality be "respectful" of an Imperial Saint? I mean the whole premise is laughable from the outset.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Celestine revives. That's her gimmick. If she didn't do that, you wouldn't show the gimmick.

^

Celestine's glorious inspiring martyrdom and arising to once more do battle the enemies of Mankind is her whole core concept.

Falling to the Chosen of the Blood God in battle only to rise again seems rather fitting. There's a horrifying death to show how the martyr suffers and show how evil and powerful the bad guy is (literally mythical in this case, there is no shame in losing a contest of blades with the blood gods mortal avatar), but the heroine takes it all in stride through her faith, which can then be rewarded with resurrection and righteous vengeance.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Handmaiden wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Celestine revives. That's her gimmick. If she didn't do that, you wouldn't show the gimmick.

It's like having nothing about Kharn kinda hurting his own dudes.

My problem isn't that she died. It's how it was done. Why's she gotta be victimized like that? How an army will be treated in the setting starts from the top down. If the best sister of battle gets such disrespect than the rest of the army will follow suit as far as I'm concerned so no point buying any. Great marketing that.

Why would a Chaos Marine of one of the Legions known for their brutality be "respectful" of an Imperial Saint? I mean the whole premise is laughable from the outset.

And she had to be written to die fighting him...why?
And even if she was, why's it a curbstomp? Not too long ago she was holding her own against Abaddon where it was implied she'd have taken him if it weren't for the pylons.

Why would this make women want to play 40k?

Handmaiden wrote:
As opposed to having probably the strongest female character in the setting job to, and get horribly butchered by one of the many uber tier male characters?

This is 40k. Everyone gets butchered by everyone. The solution to improve gender balance is not to "protect" characters by keeping them alive, it's to have Kharn get horribly butchered by a bunch of female guardsmen making a bayonet charge.


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Handmaiden wrote:
And she had to be written to die fighting him...why?

Because everyone dies in 40k. And, as stated, because Celestine's character gimmick is that she dies and is reborn over and over again. You can't be reborn through faith in the Emperor if you don't die.

And even if she was, why's it a curbstomp? Not too long ago she was holding her own against Abaddon where it was implied she'd have taken him if it weren't for the pylons.

Because GW sucks at writing. Celestine is hardly the only character to look pathetic when GW decides it's their time to die against the designated Best Fighter Ever of the particular story they're in.

And "protecting" characters based on sex is brainless pandering, not equality. If you want a stronger female customer base you speak to them, you don't speak down to them.

When I can count the number of female special characters on more than one hand, then lets talk about pandering and having no protection in terms of the writing. How is this speaking to us? It's victimisation of a strong female character.




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This is 40k. Everyone gets butchered by everyone. The solution to improve gender balance is not to "protect" characters by keeping them alive, it's to have Kharn get horribly butchered by a bunch of female guardsmen making a bayonet charge.

Oh really? Then why couldn't she butcher him back with him barely winning? Why's it a curbstomp? Didn't have to be. Why is it? Why's she written as a victim when the goal is to attract female players?

Because everyone dies in 40k. And, as stated, because Celestine's character gimmick is that she dies and is reborn over and over again. You can't be reborn through faith in the Emperor if you don't die.

I didn't ask why she has to die. I asked why she had to die fighting him. As a victim. What does that gain GW when they're trying to attract female players.

Because GW sucks at writing. Celestine is hardly the only character to look pathetic when GW decides it's their time to die against the designated Best Fighter Ever of the particular story they're in.

But Celestine's army is coming out and this book came out fairly recently. So doesn't it make sense to put her over in THIS instance? I would have thought so. These are fictional characters. They're as strong or weak as the writer demands. I'm aware of that. My point is that I don't think it was a smart decision in terms of business. GW already has a reputation of being extremely male focused and woman unfriendly in their fiction. This perpetuates that stereotype and keeps female players away. Take it from a woman telling you this.

Basically if this snipped of text can be one of a few things. It can be a teaser for the resurrection of Celestine and then her going for round two against Kharn, a classic revenge plot like there has been so many. It can be cheap low quality shock value gore just for edgy sake (look this well known special character gets killed, this means special characters can die in books, not just exclusively Black Library character!). It can also be the classic setup for a "woman in the refregirator" routine. Celestine gets butchered so Guilliman gets really pist and fights Kharn. Sisters of Battle have a rather long history of being used as punching bags for the villains to look tough and mean. The entire shtick of the Sister of Battle is pretty much getting horribly killed and achieve martyrdom because they were neither afraid or corrupted when they got massacred. That's one of the reason Sisters are so unpopular in my opinion (that and the fact they were never truly supported in the first place). GW placed them in a corner where their only use is to be martyred and rarely achieve anything cool and awesome in the process, neither are they humanised or comical like Guardsmen and Orks respectively. While this particular instence isn't terrible, it does fit in a already well established pattern of killing Sisters for shock value only and not exactly to further a character story or promote the Sister of Battle brand.

Handmaiden wrote:
Oh really? Then why couldn't she butcher him back with him barely winning? Why's it a curbstomp? Didn't have to be. Why is it? Why's she written as a victim when the goal is to attract female players?

Because "everyone gets butchered" does not mean "everyone kills each other equally in the same scene". Celestine gets her ass kicked here, in some other scene she (presumably, I don't bother reading most of the books) kicks another character's ass and butchers them horribly. You're taking one partial scene where she loses out of context and assuming that this means that she loses every fight when you should be looking at her entire presence in the fluff.

I didn't ask why she has to die. I asked why she had to die fighting him. As a victim. What does that gain GW when they're trying to attract female players.

Because this is 40k, and "die so you can be resurrected by faith in the Emperor" means dying in combat? What do you expect, Celestine to die peacefully in bed of old age before resurrecting?

And who says she's a victim here? This is a short fragment of a scene that clearly happens at the end of a fight, with explicit references to her strength finally failing. It's pretty clear that she has been fighting up until this point and has simply lost the fight. Dying in combat, sword in hand, against a powerful enemy is hardly being a helpless victim.

But Celestine's army is coming out and this book came out fairly recently. So doesn't it make sense to put her over in THIS instance? I would have thought so. These are fictional characters. They're as strong or weak as the writer demands. I'm aware of that. My point is that I don't think it was a smart decision in terms of business. GW already has a reputation of being extremely male focused and woman unfriendly in their fiction. This perpetuates that stereotype and keeps female players away.

Are you seriously arguing that GW should make the latest new releases also win in the fluff, purely for cynical marketing purposes? Making "smart business decisions" with the fluff is something people already hate, and you're asking for more of it.

Take it from a woman telling you this.

Take it from a woman telling you this in return.

Nobody wins in 40k, everybody is a victim of something stronger. Kharn might come across as a badass in that particular scene, but he's a tortured soul, given over to a higher power. As others have said, Celestine is a living saint who comes back from the dead to bring emperor's justice to the galaxy. If you don't think that is equally badass then you I think you're probably just looking for a point to pick at.

It should also be noted that Kharn himself has been offed in rather unceremonious ways more than once, including being impaled on a Rhino's hedgecutter.

Handmaiden wrote:

And "protecting" characters based on sex is brainless pandering, not equality. If you want a stronger female customer base you speak to them, you don't speak down to them.

When I can count the number of female special characters on more than one hand, then lets talk about pandering and having no protection in terms of the writing. How is this speaking to us? It's victimisation of a strong female character.




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This is 40k. Everyone gets butchered by everyone. The solution to improve gender balance is not to "protect" characters by keeping them alive, it's to have Kharn get horribly butchered by a bunch of female guardsmen making a bayonet charge.

Oh really? Then why couldn't she butcher him back with him barely winning? Why's it a curbstomp? Didn't have to be. Why is it? Why's she written as a victim when the goal is to attract female players?

Because everyone dies in 40k. And, as stated, because Celestine's character gimmick is that she dies and is reborn over and over again. You can't be reborn through faith in the Emperor if you don't die.

I didn't ask why she has to die. I asked why she had to die fighting him. As a victim. What does that gain GW when they're trying to attract female players.

Because GW sucks at writing. Celestine is hardly the only character to look pathetic when GW decides it's their time to die against the designated Best Fighter Ever of the particular story they're in.

But Celestine's army is coming out and this book came out fairly recently. So doesn't it make sense to put her over in THIS instance? I would have thought so. These are fictional characters. They're as strong or weak as the writer demands. I'm aware of that. My point is that I don't think it was a smart decision in terms of business. GW already has a reputation of being extremely male focused and woman unfriendly in their fiction. This perpetuates that stereotype and keeps female players away. Take it from a woman telling you this.

It is not up to games workshop to play identity politics with you or for you. The amount of females in the setting (while small) is not or should not be a factor in storytelling. Identity politics ruin everything. Thankfully GW has avoided them......up to now. As for Kharne "victimizing" your favorite character? Well, its kinda what he does. It makes little difference that he does it to a female, male or his own squadmate. He is the mortal avatar of Khorne, god of butchery. He is gonna butcher most things that encounter him. And often times he is as much of a danger to his own faction as he is to the imperium. Abbadon had to trick him into a literal cage to keep him from murdering the entire ship he was on (traitors hate). The man is a death machine. Would it have bothered you if it was Marbo that got shanked by him? Or Vect? The gender of the shankie is irrelevant.


She had to die fighting him because that is what the author thought was called for. When you write a book or story you are free to victimize Kharne. You will probably get smack for it however. Fans tend to dump on mary sues or gary stu's, and for good reason. Very few people in the fluff can take on Kharne in close combat (primarchs?) so almost everyone is going to lose. That includes your girl. In the end, "putting over" someone for sales is a terrible idea. What you are asking for is to be pandered to. Literally. Im not touching the identity politics in play here but I am going to give you a suggestion. Stop doing this (what you are doing) every time you feel you are not being catered to. It just makes GW not want to include girls because if they do, they step into this hole of pandering. I think what you want to do and is the proper way of handling your issue is to ASK for a SoB book with Celestine as the focus.

Another suggestion is to play a non-imperial faction. You will get good practice at being "victimized" by GW's favortism. Look at the poor Orcs and their players.

GW is pretty poor at writing female characters but they tend not to fall into the pure fantasy that video games do. I'd imagine that the staff is largely made up of white geeky British boys.



Note: there is no judgement here, please no-one bring a toxic American culture war reply to this post.

Dai wrote:
GW is pretty poor at writing female characters but they tend not to fall into the pure fantasy that video games do. I'd imagine that the staff is largely made up of white geeky British boys.



Note: there is no judgement here, please no-one bring a toxic American culture war reply to this post.

Pandering and identity are not a "toxic American culture war". When a post is about pandering, then the replies will be about pandering.

In addition.



Saint Celestine is a revered Living Saint of the Adepta Sororitas' Order of Our Martyred Lady.

What do martyrs do? They die. Get used to her dying. And probably horribly.

Table wrote:
The amount of females in the setting (while small) is not or should not be a factor in storytelling.

Why not? Why aren't women part of the story? Why is it taken for granted that women are few in number?

Identity politics ruin everything. Thankfully GW has avoided them......up to now.

Only if you declare "things I agree with" to not be identity politics. GW's chosen identity politics just happen to be very white, male, and often immature.

What you are asking for is to be pandered to. Literally. Im not touching the identity politics in play here but I am going to give you a suggestion. Stop doing this (what you are doing) every time you feel you are not being catered to. It just makes GW not want to include girls because if they do, they step into this hole of pandering.

Why is it "pandering" to ask for more women in the story, but not "pandering" to ask for a new ork codex?

Because crunch is more important than fluff

 Peregrine wrote:

Table wrote:
The amount of females in the setting (while small) is not or should not be a factor in storytelling.

Why not? Why aren't women part of the story? Why is it taken for granted that women are few in number?

Identity politics ruin everything. Thankfully GW has avoided them......up to now.

Only if you declare "things I agree with" to not be identity politics. GW's chosen identity politics just happen to be very white, male, and often immature.

What you are asking for is to be pandered to. Literally. Im not touching the identity politics in play here but I am going to give you a suggestion. Stop doing this (what you are doing) every time you feel you are not being catered to. It just makes GW not want to include girls because if they do, they step into this hole of pandering.

Why is it "pandering" to ask for more women in the story, but not "pandering" to ask for a new ork codex?

For once Peregrine I agree with everything you say here.

 Peregrine wrote:

Table wrote:
The amount of females in the setting (while small) is not or should not be a factor in storytelling.

Why not? Why aren't women part of the story? Why is it taken for granted that women are few in number?

Identity politics ruin everything. Thankfully GW has avoided them......up to now.

Only if you declare "things I agree with" to not be identity politics. GW's chosen identity politics just happen to be very white, male, and often immature.

What you are asking for is to be pandered to. Literally. Im not touching the identity politics in play here but I am going to give you a suggestion. Stop doing this (what you are doing) every time you feel you are not being catered to. It just makes GW not want to include girls because if they do, they step into this hole of pandering.

Why is it "pandering" to ask for more women in the story, but not "pandering" to ask for a new ork codex?

Let me refine my statement. A character should not win,lose or live or die due to sex. That is sexist. I thought we were trying to go away from that?
Identity politics are what they are. The OP invoked them, the rest is in answer. Im not sure GW has chosen to engage in Identity politics. But we could probably has a conversation about it.
I dont have a dog in this fight. I dont like Kharne as a character so whom he abuses or is abused by means little to me. I am confused by your statement. Elaborate. Not being snarky, im very open to self introspection and admiting wrong. But im not seeing what you are saying here.
She did not ask for more wemon in the story. Now you are moving the goal posts because you didnt like what I typed.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Stux wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Table wrote:
The amount of females in the setting (while small) is not or should not be a factor in storytelling.

Why not? Why aren't women part of the story? Why is it taken for granted that women are few in number?

Identity politics ruin everything. Thankfully GW has avoided them......up to now.

Only if you declare "things I agree with" to not be identity politics. GW's chosen identity politics just happen to be very white, male, and often immature.

What you are asking for is to be pandered to. Literally. Im not touching the identity politics in play here but I am going to give you a suggestion. Stop doing this (what you are doing) every time you feel you are not being catered to. It just makes GW not want to include girls because if they do, they step into this hole of pandering.

Why is it "pandering" to ask for more women in the story, but not "pandering" to ask for a new ork codex?

For once Peregrine I agree with everything you say here.

Yea for once I don't. Funny that .

Literally the entire point of 40k is pandering; this is not high literature, the things GW does do not have any motivation more complex than what they think would be cool, or fun. Their games used to be a sausage fest because GW is run by a bunch of dudes who's idea of cool and fun is macho men and macho men exclusively. We're getting more female models in both 40k and Sigmar because GW realized that there are, in fact, women who play these games who think it'd be nice if the concept of "cool and fun" was expanded a bit.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Literally the entire point of 40k is pandering; this is not high literature, the things GW does do not have any motivation more complex than what they think would be cool, or fun. Their games used to be a sausage fest because GW is run by a bunch of dudes who's idea of cool and fun is macho men and macho men exclusively. We're getting more female models in both 40k and Sigmar because GW realized that there are, in fact, women who play these games who think it'd be nice if the concept of "cool and fun" was expanded a bit.

This basically.

I feel like the politicisation of identity is not as strong in the UK as it is in North America. Might be wrong, but that's the impression I get.

As such, when GW adds women characters I do not believe it is to make a political stand or to bow to political pressure. It's because either they think it would be cool to do, or because they think there's a market for it. Probably both.

The question shouldn't be 'why add women to the setting?' and rather 'why not?'

As peregrine pointed out, 40k being a setting light on female characters is not really a defining factor of the setting, ruined if we change that.

Rather, it's because at the time it was created no one thought to introduce many females. But now they are, so why not?

Dai wrote:
GW is pretty poor at writing female characters but they tend not to fall into the pure fantasy that video games do. I'd imagine that the staff is largely made up of white geeky British boys.



Note: there is no judgement here, please no-one bring a toxic American culture war reply to this post.

GW have good female characters too. Koriel Zeth and Linya Tychon at least.

Table wrote:
Let me refine my statement. A character should not win,lose or live or die due to sex. That is sexist. I thought we were trying to go away from that?

Not disagreeing with that. But you were originally talking about the number of women in the setting, which is an entirely different question.

Im not sure GW has chosen to engage in Identity politics.

Of course they have. Choosing to make the setting a bunch of white dudes (with occasional token non-white-dude characters) is identity politics. It just happens to be identity politics in a different direction.

Now you are moving the goal posts because you didnt like what I typed.

Perhaps you can clarify then, because your reference to "amount of females in the setting" sure seems to suggest that you're also talking about the general question of including more women (and identity politics in general), not just the OP's specific objection to Kharn killing a particular character in one scene. If this wasn't intended then I'll drop the argument in your direction.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Literally the entire point of 40k is pandering; this is not high literature, the things GW does do not have any motivation more complex than what they think would be cool, or fun. Their games used to be a sausage fest because GW is run by a bunch of dudes who's idea of cool and fun is macho men and macho men exclusively. We're getting more female models in both 40k and Sigmar because GW realized that there are, in fact, women who play these games who think it'd be nice if the concept of "cool and fun" was expanded a bit.

Basically this. Warhammer defined the "Rule of cool". Thats a rule based around the idea of pandering to the lower and most mundane tastes of the fans ignoring everything else: Coherence, sense, reason, etc...


About the topic at hand. As others have said, GW has the problem that Blizzard has, where to make some character look good, they need to make all characters around them look sad and pathetic, instead of making the character they are centering the history about stand on his own merits.
But in this specific instance Khârn is a bad beast, that is famous for killing many people and dying a ton of times in the process. Actually the fight couldn't be more meaningless because both characters are resureccted when they die, so who wins was irrelevant.

Handmaiden wrote:
IWhy would they put over Kharn and have Celestine job when Celestine's army is coming out soon?

Don't worry about it. I'm sure she'll heal up just fine in time for the release.
It's like when Marvel/DC screws up a character in their books. You'll get about a two year stretch of crap & then about a month before the character hits the screen again in their next movie, SURPRISE! Suddenly everything resets and is made right.

Besides, at least she got her ass kicked by Kharn. In actual play she's just as likely to get taken out by a grot blaster, a las-pistol, shrapnel from an exploding vehicle, or any other # of stupid random dice rolls. Heck along time ago (3e?) I saw her get killed by PLANT LIFE. Twice. Once by some man eating plant that got rolled up from a terrain chart - she landed too near it, dice were rolled & "gulp", she became a snack. The second time? She impaled herself on a tree. In that edition if you jumped/flew into terrain you had to make a check upon landing or take an un-savable wound. Dice were rolled, dead saint.
So at least she fell to Kharn, not slipped & drowned in a muddy crater or such.

Did Khârn really win though? It's not as though Celestine will stay dead. Much like Draigo's victories against Daemons are fleeting and temporal, Celestine getting her head chopped off by Khorne's favoured son but coming back as though she didn't care later through the Grace of the Emperor (TM) is more or less telling Khorne that he has no power over her or the Emperor. Chop off her head as much as you like, she'll be back.

BTW what book/story is this extract from? Because right now we have a single page of a larger story, that's not a whole lot of room for CONTEXT. I mean "Kharne runs up and butchers celestine, the end" is a biiiiiiiiig differance from "they've been fighting for a dozen pages, both getting their hits in, and this is just finally Kharn winning"

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Did Khârn really win though? It's not as though Celestine will stay dead. Much like Draigo's victories against Daemons are fleeting and temporal, Celestine getting her head chopped off by Khorne's favoured son but coming back as though she didn't care later through the Grace of the Emperor (TM) is more or less telling Khorne that he has no power over her or the Emperor. Chop off her head as much as you like, she'll be back.

For Kharn it's a win as he shed blood. Win or lose that's all that matters, although with Kharn it's usually win.