Just making a preemptive mod post here, if this thread goes the same way as the last dozen or do we will look very unkindly upon the posters doing so.
So keep it civil, keep it polite and remember you are speaking to other human beings not random avatars on the internet.
My point is that the Emperor was sexist. The non-sexist nature of the IoM is a happy accident, just like how its theocratic nature is a blatant deviation from the Emperor's blatant radical and violent atheism.
Expanding on the above, the core lore reason is that FSM cannot exist is because the geneseed doesn't work on women for "reasons". Those reasons aren't technological limitations, as all other trans-human augmentations work on women just fine. FSM doesn't exist because the Emperor didn't want FSM to exist.
And the Emperor does have a documented preference of men over women, I mean all the Primarchs, who were literally custom built down to their genetic level if not even deeper, are male.
Expanding on the above, the core lore reason is that FSM cannot exist is because the geneseed doesn't work on women for "reasons". Those reasons aren't technological limitations, as all other trans-human augmentations work on women just fine. FSM doesn't exist because the Emperor didn't want FSM to exist.
That's a reason for there to be no female Space Marine at the time of the Horus Heresy. In an Imperium where the will of the Emperor is subject to creative interpretation where necessary, and where in the older background at least the Emperor was never perceived as divine by the Marines anyway, it's not a particular impediment to having female marines in the 'current' timeline.
My point is that the Emperor was sexist. The non-sexist nature of the IoM is a happy accident, just like how its theocratic nature is a blatant deviation from the Emperor's blatant radical and violent atheism.
Expanding on the above, the core lore reason is that FSM cannot exist is because the geneseed doesn't work on women for "reasons". Those reasons aren't technological limitations, as all other trans-human augmentations work on women just fine. FSM doesn't exist because the Emperor didn't want FSM to exist.
And the Emperor does have a documented preference of men over women, I mean all the Primarchs, who were literally custom built down to their genetic level if not even deeper, are male.
^Expanding on that, an entertaining framework for interpreting the Imperium is as the very faulty product of a hyoer-patriarchy.
But as for Space Marines in particular, I think it's fine to
A: make products/product lines aimed at young men/boys
B: make products that draw upon historical/real world precedents
But make no mistake, I'm sympathetic to the pro-FSM side as well. I like that Custodes are both, and was pro-female Custodes before it happened/was officially acknowledged.
Expanding on the above, the core lore reason is that FSM cannot exist is because the geneseed doesn't work on women for "reasons". Those reasons aren't technological limitations, as all other trans-human augmentations work on women just fine. FSM doesn't exist because the Emperor didn't want FSM to exist.
That's a reason for there to be no female Space Marine at the time of the Horus Heresy. In an Imperium where the will of the Emperor is subject to creative interpretation where necessary, and where in the older background at least the Emperor was never perceived as divine by the Marines anyway, it's not a particular impediment to having female marines in the 'current' timeline.
The Emperor is so obnoxious and autocratic that I wouldn’t put it past him to hardcode in ‘no gurlz allowed!’ into the geneseed if that was his design…
Though the Cursed Founding and Primaris both show that suitably motivated tech priests are not above trying to brute force past the Emperor’s design of it takes their fancy.
The Imperium is a big place, I’m sure someone’s done it somewhere.
My point is that the Emperor was sexist. The non-sexist nature of the IoM is a happy accident, just like how its theocratic nature is a blatant deviation from the Emperor's blatant radical and violent atheism.
Expanding on the above, the core lore reason is that FSM cannot exist is because the geneseed doesn't work on women for "reasons". Those reasons aren't technological limitations, as all other trans-human augmentations work on women just fine. FSM doesn't exist because the Emperor didn't want FSM to exist.
And the Emperor does have a documented preference of men over women, I mean all the Primarchs, who were literally custom built down to their genetic level if not even deeper, are male.
^Expanding on that, an entertaining framework for interpreting the Imperium is as the very faulty product of a hyoer-patriarchy.
But as for Space Marines in particular, I think it's fine to
A: make products/product lines aimed at young men/boys
B: make products that draw upon historical/real world precedents
But make no mistake, I'm sympathetic to the pro-FSM side as well. I like that Custodes are both, and was pro-female Custodes before it happened/was officially acknowledged.
The issue isn't the existence of an all-male faction.
The issue is that the only all-male faction is the poster faction, getting the lion's share of releases, promotional work, exposure, etc.
If GSC could only be male, that'd be dumb, but also not nearly the issue that Marines being a boys-only club is.
JNAProductions wrote: The issue isn't the existence of an all-male faction.
The issue is that the only all-male faction is the poster faction, getting the lion's share of releases, promotional work, exposure, etc.
If GSC could only be male, that'd be dumb, but also not nearly the issue that Marines being a boys-only club is.
Exactly this. Also, one the big strengths and selling points of marines is their thematic flexibility. There are Viking marines, Mongol marines, knightly marines, vampire marines etc. and you're allowed to invent your own... as long as that is not girl marines!
Expanding on the above, the core lore reason is that FSM cannot exist is because the geneseed doesn't work on women for "reasons". Those reasons aren't technological limitations, as all other trans-human augmentations work on women just fine. FSM doesn't exist because the Emperor didn't want FSM to exist.
That's a reason for there to be no female Space Marine at the time of the Horus Heresy. In an Imperium where the will of the Emperor is subject to creative interpretation where necessary, and where in the older background at least the Emperor was never perceived as divine by the Marines anyway, it's not a particular impediment to having female marines in the 'current' timeline.
Current Space Marines have no idea how geneseed works to the point they have to rely on the slow process of harvesting it from Marines instead of simply artificially making more.
And the "no girls allowed" is explicitly coded into the geneseed.
Expanding on the above, the core lore reason is that FSM cannot exist is because the geneseed doesn't work on women for "reasons". Those reasons aren't technological limitations, as all other trans-human augmentations work on women just fine. FSM doesn't exist because the Emperor didn't want FSM to exist.
That's a reason for there to be no female Space Marine at the time of the Horus Heresy. In an Imperium where the will of the Emperor is subject to creative interpretation where necessary, and where in the older background at least the Emperor was never perceived as divine by the Marines anyway, it's not a particular impediment to having female marines in the 'current' timeline.
Current Space Marines have no idea how geneseed works to the point they have to rely on the slow process of harvesting it from Marines instead of simply artificially making more.
And the "no girls allowed" is explicitly coded into the geneseed.
But Cawl hasn't been able to fully crack the geneseed, which is why geneseed flaws are still present in Blood Angel Primaris.
The Dark Eldar could, and maybe Fabious Bile, but lol at the idea of asking the Dark Eldar and lmao at asking Bile.
There were no Primaris Marines until there were.
There were no Blade Champions in Custodes until there were.
Centurion suits (as dumb as you might think they are) didn't exist until suddenly they did.
Changing the lore is as easy as a writer at GW saying it's changed. There is no real scientific basis for something like Marine-ification to not work on women.
And the "no girls allowed" is explicitly coded into the geneseed.
...because of one line of text in older books, that was inserted to provide an in-universe explanation for why the models were all male, which was a situation created by sales, rather than the needs of the setting.
With how much in universe 'factual' information turns out to be subject to interpretation or just flat out wrong, it wouldn't be a particularly huge leap to 'everyone thought it was coded to male physiology, but then some enterprising techpriest realised that 'male physiology' isn't actually an absolute and therefor that whole concept was flawed, and tried it on some female subjects...'
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JNAProductions wrote: There were no Primaris Marines until there were.
There were no Blade Champions in Custodes until there were.
Centurion suits (as dumb as you might think they are) didn't exist until suddenly they did.
Changing the lore is as easy as a writer at GW saying it's changed. There is no real scientific basis for something like Marine-ification to not work on women.
There was also no Cawl, until he had suddenly always been there, tinkering away in the background...
Lathe Biosas wrote: Would it be considered offensive if the FSM were Chaos Marines at first?
Chaos has always struck me as a meritocracy (even if it's mercurial at best). I don't think the Chaos gods - or even mortal lords - care what's in your pants if you can get the job done. I've got a model that I use as a Chaos Lord to represent the leader of my Chaos Knights when she's not in her Rampager, and I've also got some female Thousand Sons awaiting paint jobs.
...because of one line of text in older books, that was inserted to provide an in-universe explanation for why the models were all male, which was a situation created by sales, rather than the needs of the setting.
The idea is repeated in The Last Days of Ector that is a relatively recent novella.
As for the lore changing and Cawl developing FSM, sure. I'm not actually opposed to the idea of FSM, I was talking more how I have come to accept and reconcile 40k's lore regarding Marines and gender (it is all Emps' fault like always).
The blood angels geneseed already does things to scrawny misshapen mutants that make a girl space marine look boring by comparison.
As JNA says, there is no fictional limitation that will prevent the story changing, the limitations are all self imposed and supported for a variety of reasons.
To mix and mash some memes, if you don't want female space marines then don't get gay married.
ie, adding them does nothing to your doods if you choose to make your doods all doods. No one will force you to have girlmarines, it will just give ' lore permission' to people who would like to.
And for better or worse, the GW fandom is now absolutely bound by its lore. The days of 'do whatever you want' are long gone and people get ganged on line for working with ideas that don't 'fit' the lore. Down to using the wrong shade of blue for your ultramarines.
The social pressure to conform to 'correctness' means that no matter how 'do what you want' you try to be, large portions of the fanbase that you have to interact with in this inherently social hobby, will deny you, decry you, or abuse you for daring to go against lore.
All adding them does is provide an inclusive throughline for other members in the audience who would appreciate it, and GW's 'lore accurate approval' TM that people won't be doing anything wrong if they do.
JNAProductions wrote: The issue isn't the existence of an all-male faction.
The issue is that the only all-male faction is the poster faction, getting the lion's share of releases, promotional work, exposure, etc.
Personally, I'd far rather see GW address this.
Reason being it would have a far more positive effect on the game as a whole.
JNAProductions wrote: The issue isn't the existence of an all-male faction.
The issue is that the only all-male faction is the poster faction, getting the lion's share of releases, promotional work, exposure, etc.
Personally, I'd far rather see GW address this.
Reason being it would have a far more positive effect on the game as a whole.
I can agree to that, but I can also see that that's much less realistic for GW to do than adding women as Marines.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Would it be considered offensive if the FSM were Chaos Marines at first?
Chaos has always struck me as a meritocracy (even if it's mercurial at best). I don't think the Chaos gods - or even mortal lords - care what's in your pants if you can get the job done. I've got a model that I use as a Chaos Lord to represent the leader of my Chaos Knights when she's not in her Rampager, and I've also got some female Thousand Sons awaiting paint jobs.
Cool. Is she the pilot of the green Chaos Knight you posted?
JNAProductions wrote: The issue isn't the existence of an all-male faction.
The issue is that the only all-male faction is the poster faction, getting the lion's share of releases, promotional work, exposure, etc.
Personally, I'd far rather see GW address this.
Reason being it would have a far more positive effect on the game as a whole.
You aren't wrong, but it's also a similar position that we see in modern social discussions - stop immigration/refugees until we fix our own homeless problem.
Which in effect is, dont do this thing until we fix this other thing that we won't be fixing. Which results in 2 things not being done.
Theory and practice are different things, and in this instance, Cawl finding the girl switch and turning it on in the geneseed is far easier and quicker for them to implement than a complete reworking of their business model.
JNAProductions wrote: Blood Angels (one of the biggest Marine subfactions) takes cripples for their initiates.
And I'd like to point out that your exclusions are either something that's not inherent or even real (melee units and pyskers) or so broad as to encompass literally every human (breathing units). Except for women.
Do you have a source for that claim? I'd take anything, Youtube video, Lexicanum, something you remember reading in an old Codex or White Dwarf. The only thing I could find was an old Reddit thread were one aspirant had been accepted despite being crippled or something like that.
To answer this question here rather than in the other thread, the information was there in the first BA codex text and hasn't changed.
On physical strength? The Astartes conversion process would sort that out, as would their standard issue power armour.
Because, say it with me, Astartes Are No Longer Human. They’re post-human. Not Abhuman. Post-human.
Nor are they something I’d willingly aspire to be. Because they’re turbo-eunuch-combat-nutters, who from the time of selection are doomed to die a horrific death, one way or another. They don’t live anything remotely approaching a human life, even in the sheer hell that is The Imperium.
And keep in mind aspirants are young. Ideally pre-pubescent, with increasing risk even in the original Heresy setting, the older the candidate was. So the initial selection likely isn’t terribly fussed for raw physical muscle, so much as will and physical endurance.
The genhancements and relentless ‘rest of your now considerably unnatural life’ physical training will see to the rest of it.
You aren't wrong, but it's also a similar position that we see in modern social discussions - stop immigration/refugees until we fix our own homeless problem.
Which in effect is, dont do this thing until we fix this other thing that we won't be fixing. Which results in 2 things not being done.
Eh, I'd equate it more to fixing immigration vs. painting a zebra crossing in rainbow colours. One is something that has a significant effect, while the other is purely cosmetic and doesn't really mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.
I get that some people want female SMs. However, even if GW granted that wish, the game would still be in a bad place in a lot of other ways. And if you're one of the many people who doesn't care about SMs (female or otherwise), then this is basically irrelevant. Meanwhile, making SMs more equal to the other factions in the game would solve not only this issue but a myriad of other issues as well.
I do take your point in that GW don't seem inclined to remove SMs off their pedestal anytime soon. Though both are out of our hands, so this is all hypothetical anyway.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: On physical strength? The Astartes conversion process would sort that out, as would their standard issue power armour.
Because, say it with me, Astartes Are No Longer Human. They’re post-human. Not Abhuman. Post-human.
Serious question - does gender even mean much at that point?
I suppose what I'm asking is what people actually want.
Is it about getting female heads for SMs (even though, given what has been said about the process, I would think they would be barely distinguishable from male SM heads).
Is this about changing the lore?
Is it about getting SM models with literal breastplate armour?
Lathe Biosas wrote: Would it be considered offensive if the FSM were Chaos Marines at first?
Chaos has always struck me as a meritocracy (even if it's mercurial at best). I don't think the Chaos gods - or even mortal lords - care what's in your pants if you can get the job done. I've got a model that I use as a Chaos Lord to represent the leader of my Chaos Knights when she's not in her Rampager, and I've also got some female Thousand Sons awaiting paint jobs.
The novel Storm of Iron, published back in 2002, featured a Khornate champion's female slave who kills him and takes his armour (with a little boost from her newly adopted patron), with nobody being any the wiser...
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: On physical strength? The Astartes conversion process would sort that out, as would their standard issue power armour.
Because, say it with me, Astartes Are No Longer Human. They’re post-human. Not Abhuman. Post-human.
Nor are they something I’d willingly aspire to be. Because they’re turbo-eunuch-combat-nutters, who from the time of selection are doomed to die a horrific death, one way or another. They don’t live anything remotely approaching a human life, even in the sheer hell that is The Imperium.
And keep in mind aspirants are young. Ideally pre-pubescent, with increasing risk even in the original Heresy setting, the older the candidate was. So the initial selection likely isn’t terribly fussed for raw physical muscle, so much as will and physical endurance.
The genhancements and relentless ‘rest of your now considerably unnatural life’ physical training will see to the rest of it.
Strength difference is pretty irrelevant as you say, the process adds most of that and the aspirants are all pre-pubescent and it’s male puberty that introduces the bulk of the strength difference from bone and muscle growth anyway.
Tbh marinification is to some extent male puberty turned up to 11, with the result being something monstrous, which makes some sense given the two seem to be linked some how (hence also it doesn’t work on adults).
But even now we can make someone without a Y chromosome go through male puberty, and that’s without space magic or the Imperium’s near peerless bio engineering. The Imperium definitely can and the only in-universe technical blocker would be if Emps hard coded it in with the space magic he used to make them originally.
Is it about getting female heads for SMs (even though, given what has been said about the process, I would think they would be barely distinguishable from male SM heads).
Is this about changing the lore?
Is it about getting SM models with literal breastplate armour?
Outside of the grimier parts of Reddit and 4chan, very few people want boobplate on any of their models.
Most just want to see female characters represented.
Cheesecake certainly still has a market (although I'm not sure those linked sculpts qualify for that description)... but it's not what most gamers want on the table, from my experience.
Serious question - does gender even mean much at that point?
Well, it also seems to matter to people who oppose it awfully lot for some reason.
Is it about getting female heads for SMs
That would be very nice. There currently are no GW female heads that would fit that purpose particularly well. They're too small, and marines have very distincrive "collars." A lot of people use third party heads, which is not money GW could be getting.
Is this about changing the lore?
Yes, that is the most important part. It is making it officially OK to have female marines and deny the cover of "but lore" from bigots who attack you if you make female marines.
Is it about getting SM models with literal breastplate armour?
Absolutely not. That is definitely not something I would want and I would be disappointed if that was the excecution. I don't think female marines should have different armours than the male ones. Basically with helmet, you wouldn't know.
Serious question - does gender even mean much at that point?
I suppose what I'm asking is what people actually want.
So i think this question answers more than you think for many people, but not in the way you might mean. I tend to analogise a lot in these conversations because I find it helps to see things from different angles, so for another one, I'm going to analogise 'does gender mean much' with the idea that 'guys is gender neutral'.
Now in theory there's no issue. But in reality, the practical issues society has means everything has baggage and context is more important than theoryhammer. So I've seen a lot people (men) try to say that guys is a gender neutral phrase, to justify them not changing their terminology when talking to rooms of mixed people. However, those same men will be very uncomfortable if you asked them if they went down on guys, or made love to guys. Because the word is clearly not neutral, but is often used in a neutral way, which isn't the same thing. And they know that.
Similarly, 'gender doesn't matter' suddenly does matter to many men, if the default assumed gender of every character they read is now female. For it to actually not matter, it needs to not affect you as well. If all marines were now just default female but their gender didn't matter, it would not be an acceptable solution for many of the men that don't want FSM.
And that's the main issue - society is by default male and all men have grown up with the unconscious assumption of male is default. Women never see themselves as the default, to the point where 'female' is still used as a trait in fantasy (we are still talking about female space marines because the default marine is male). When people talk about guard, they have to say it would be cool to see female guard, because guard are not assumed female by default. And on and on and on. And sometimes women are 'given' a spot, designed for them, by men, and then everyone pats themselves on the back like they did a good job, deciding they've now solved the 'woman issue'. Which they haven't because nothing has changed.
Until the underlying fabric is truly neutral, no theoryhammer equivalences will ever actually be equal, because the context underpinning it is inherently unequal.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Would it be considered offensive if the FSM were Chaos Marines at first?
Chaos has always struck me as a meritocracy (even if it's mercurial at best). I don't think the Chaos gods - or even mortal lords - care what's in your pants if you can get the job done. I've got a model that I use as a Chaos Lord to represent the leader of my Chaos Knights when she's not in her Rampager, and I've also got some female Thousand Sons awaiting paint jobs.
Cool. Is she the pilot of the green Chaos Knight you posted?
She is!
I haven't finished painting her Marine version, but I'll post her when I do.
Nope. Because they’re no longer human, and are entirely removed from the regular human experience.
Depends what definition of 'matter' you are using and for whom.
because it certainly seems to matter in every fictional portrayal of space marines ever published by GW, where being men and male is intrinsic to their identity. Where they are very clearly NOT portrayed as asexual agendered individuals.
And it then matters to the readers who have only encountered marines as power fantasy men, space spartans ala 300. We would have definitely heard the complaints if Dante wanted to be referred to with they/them and mused about how he didn't like his doodle because it wasn't how he saw himself.
There's a difference between saying it doesn't matter and then actually seeing the consequences of it not mattering. Otherwise it's 'dont ask don't tell' levels of lip service.
Nope. Because they’re no longer human, and are entirely removed from the regular human experience.
They might not be running off to get married and have kids, but they're not so far removed from the 'human condition' that they can't fathom a difference of gender. They might be honed to be perfect warriors, but they still suffer human failings - the Heresy proves that much, at least.
My point is that the Emperor was sexist. The non-sexist nature of the IoM is a happy accident, just like how its theocratic nature is a blatant deviation from the Emperor's blatant radical and violent atheism.
Expanding on the above, the core lore reason is that FSM cannot exist is because the geneseed doesn't work on women for "reasons". Those reasons aren't technological limitations, as all other trans-human augmentations work on women just fine. FSM doesn't exist because the Emperor didn't want FSM to exist.
And the Emperor does have a documented preference of men over women, I mean all the Primarchs, who were literally custom built down to their genetic level if not even deeper, are male.
^Expanding on that, an entertaining framework for interpreting the Imperium is as the very faulty product of a hyoer-patriarchy.
But as for Space Marines in particular, I think it's fine to
A: make products/product lines aimed at young men/boys
B: make products that draw upon historical/real world precedents
But make no mistake, I'm sympathetic to the pro-FSM side as well. I like that Custodes are both, and was pro-female Custodes before it happened/was officially acknowledged.
The issue isn't the existence of an all-male faction.
The issue is that the only all-male faction is the poster faction, getting the lion's share of releases, promotional work, exposure, etc.
If GSC could only be male, that'd be dumb, but also not nearly the issue that Marines being a boys-only club is.
I understand that tension, but I think it also falls into the category of "Can products exist that cater to young men or a male fantasy?". Because I'd argue that that's ok.
I would love it if SMs weren't constantly in the spotlight though. That'd be great.
Crimson wrote: Mate. They use chainsaws as weapons. It is made up and never made any sense. If the writer says that female marines work, then that doesn't lessen the sensemakery of the setting one bit.
Would you argue that nothing needs to make sense within the setting then? Either the game then just becomes a vehicle for pushing politics trying to remain within the rule of cool only enough so that people still play the game. Or is it just that Femarines are less nonsense than most of the fantastical gak in the game? How nonsensical does something have to be before it cannot be included on the grounds of progressive politics alone and needs to actually make more sense (as Femarines being one in a hundred thousand idea I had) or further the art of the thing by being faction-appropriate like having female Inquisitors, Eldar, Astra Militarum.
Hellebore wrote: The blood angels geneseed already does things to scrawny misshapen mutants that make a girl space marine look boring by comparison.
As JNA says, there is no fictional limitation that will prevent the story changing, the limitations are all self imposed and supported for a variety of reasons.
To mix and mash some memes, if you don't want female space marines then don't get gay married.
ie, adding them does nothing to your doods if you choose to make your doods all doods. No one will force you to have girlmarines, it will just give ' lore permission' to people who would like to.
And for better or worse, the GW fandom is now absolutely bound by its lore. The days of 'do whatever you want' are long gone and people get ganged on line for working with ideas that don't 'fit' the lore. Down to using the wrong shade of blue for your ultramarines.
The social pressure to conform to 'correctness' means that no matter how 'do what you want' you try to be, large portions of the fanbase that you have to interact with in this inherently social hobby, will deny you, decry you, or abuse you for daring to go against lore.
All adding them does is provide an inclusive throughline for other members in the audience who would appreciate it, and GW's 'lore accurate approval' TM that people won't be doing anything wrong if they do.
Thank you for posting me to the new thread and posting this. If there are Femarines on the cover of the Space Marines book, if I lose helmets that could have been male to make room for more female helmet or if the boxes become bigger and more expensive to fit the extra sprues needed for Femarines then it does cost all the players that want to play manly macho Marines something. Maybe I am awful, I'll have a think about it, I am glad these threads got separated.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Would it be considered offensive if the FSM were Chaos Marines at first?
Chaos has always struck me as a meritocracy (even if it's mercurial at best). I don't think the Chaos gods - or even mortal lords - care what's in your pants if you can get the job done. I've got a model that I use as a Chaos Lord to represent the leader of my Chaos Knights when she's not in her Rampager, and I've also got some female Thousand Sons awaiting paint jobs.
The novel Storm of Iron, published back in 2002, featured a Khornate champion's female slave who kills him and takes his armour (with a little boost from her newly adopted patron), with nobody being any the wiser...
This is cool, Valkia is cool, welcoming women into the hobby is cool, pushing different factions to market the game towards women is cool. Not a fan of female Space Marines being a major thing, making it possible in the lore is fine if GW did it quietly, playing against someone once with a Femarine army is fine. Not a fan of progressive politics trying to change everything all the time. Not a fan of one in ten Marines being women, children or stunted in growth.
Crimson wrote: Well, it also seems to matter to people who oppose it awfully lot for some reason.
Eh, it barely matters, but if you let progressives change everything that barely matters then they will change a whole lot and ultimately ruin a lot of things even if each individual thing was only marginally wrong. So a little pushback against every encroachment against things being artistic and making sense might help in the grand scheme. I deleted my original reply on the topic of Femarines until someone said they didn't feel I was welcome in the hobby for having a different opinion than them on the subject. The hobby should be inclusive to a broad population, that means we cannot have Nazis since they will try to exclude anyone who isn't of European ethnicity and do so just by being allowed to be part of the hobby while openly espousing their affiliation with Nazism, but extremists will want to not just exclude Nazis but everyone who isn't super progressive and at that point they really should just make a private club, Reddit and Facebook group for themselves if they cannot tolerate regular people being a part of the hobby.
vict0988 wrote: "Girl Space Marines doesn't make logical sense"
Crimson wrote: Mate. They use chainsaws as weapons. It is made up and never made any sense. If the writer says that female marines work, then that doesn't lessen the sensemakery of the setting one bit.
Would you argue that nothing needs to make sense within the setting then? Either the game then just becomes a vehicle for pushing politics trying to remain within the rule of cool only enough so that people still play the game. Or is it just that Femarines are less nonsense than most of the fantastical gak in the game? How nonsensical does something have to be before it cannot be included on the grounds of progressive politics alone and needs to actually make more sense (as Femarines being one in a hundred thousand idea I had) or further the art of the thing by being faction-appropriate like having female Inquisitors, Eldar, Astra Militarum.
Hellebore wrote: The blood angels geneseed already does things to scrawny misshapen mutants that make a girl space marine look boring by comparison.
As JNA says, there is no fictional limitation that will prevent the story changing, the limitations are all self imposed and supported for a variety of reasons.
To mix and mash some memes, if you don't want female space marines then don't get gay married.
ie, adding them does nothing to your doods if you choose to make your doods all doods. No one will force you to have girlmarines, it will just give ' lore permission' to people who would like to.
And for better or worse, the GW fandom is now absolutely bound by its lore. The days of 'do whatever you want' are long gone and people get ganged on line for working with ideas that don't 'fit' the lore. Down to using the wrong shade of blue for your ultramarines.
The social pressure to conform to 'correctness' means that no matter how 'do what you want' you try to be, large portions of the fanbase that you have to interact with in this inherently social hobby, will deny you, decry you, or abuse you for daring to go against lore.
All adding them does is provide an inclusive throughline for other members in the audience who would appreciate it, and GW's 'lore accurate approval' TM that people won't be doing anything wrong if they do.
Thank you for posting me to the new thread and posting this. If there are Femarines on the cover of the Space Marines book, if I lose helmets that could have been male to make room for more female helmet or if the boxes become bigger and more expensive to fit the extra sprues needed for Femarines then it does cost all the players that want to play manly macho Marines something. Maybe I am awful, I'll have a think about it, I am glad these threads got separated.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Would it be considered offensive if the FSM were Chaos Marines at first?
Chaos has always struck me as a meritocracy (even if it's mercurial at best). I don't think the Chaos gods - or even mortal lords - care what's in your pants if you can get the job done. I've got a model that I use as a Chaos Lord to represent the leader of my Chaos Knights when she's not in her Rampager, and I've also got some female Thousand Sons awaiting paint jobs.
The novel Storm of Iron, published back in 2002, featured a Khornate champion's female slave who kills him and takes his armour (with a little boost from her newly adopted patron), with nobody being any the wiser...
This is cool, Valkia is cool, welcoming women into the hobby is cool, pushing different factions to market the game towards women is cool. Not a fan of female Space Marines being a major thing, making it possible in the lore is fine if GW did it quietly, playing against someone once with a Femarine army is fine. Not a fan of progressive politics trying to change everything all the time. Not a fan of one in ten Marines being women, children or stunted in growth.
Crimson wrote: Well, it also seems to matter to people who oppose it awfully lot for some reason.
Eh, it barely matters, but if you let progressives change everything that barely matters then they will change a whole lot and ultimately ruin a lot of things even if each individual thing was only marginally wrong. So a little pushback against every encroachment against things being artistic and making sense might help in the grand scheme. I deleted my original reply on the topic of Femarines until someone said they didn't feel I was welcome in the hobby for having a different opinion than them on the subject. The hobby should be inclusive to a broad population, that means we cannot have Nazis since they will try to exclude anyone who isn't of European ethnicity and do so just by being allowed to be part of the hobby while openly espousing their affiliation with Nazism, but extremists will want to not just exclude Nazis but everyone who isn't super progressive and at that point they really should just make a private club, Reddit and Facebook group for themselves if they cannot tolerate regular people being a part of the hobby.
Why do you put women in the same category as children and cripples? (Which are, respectively, the main source of Marines and the main source of Blood Angels.)
Either the lore matters or it doesn't, if it is infinitely malleable then nothing matters and we may as well just ignore it entirely.
What I can not stand is people comparing the ridiculous concept of a chainsword to a female space marine, it is not the same thing because for what ever reason the choice was made in the early concepts of the game to make chainsaw swords. Female marines are something explicitly unknown/not allowed in the lore. It was an arbitrary choice just like all choices are arbitrary but it is a part of a foundation for a setting older than a lot of the people in this thread. I am not arguing that things should be kept the same just for the sake of it but for me personally, it plays into the dystopian hateful atrocity that is the Imperium of Man.
I hate the reintroduction of loyalist Primarchs, I hate Primaris marines, the concept of moving forward is the antithesis of the Imperium that I grew up with and how I perceive the setting. I don't like the push for heroism that has pervaded the setting in the past few editions as I think that 40k worked best when it was highlighting the hypocrisy of all of the factions that tried to prove their own moral superiority. Maybe because I am a heretic at heart but I liked Chaos factions because they were honest about who and what they are, which was a stark contrast to the delusion of the Imperium.
The introduction of Primaris and loyalist Primarchs is just part of an effort to turn the setting into a boring Good vs Evil stereotypical fantasy setting. Female marines would just be a continuation of that - on the same hand I would LOVE for Fabius Bile to create female chaos marines because that would fit the established lore. Well, Fabius Bile wants to progress past Astartes but my point remains...
I get that this is no longer the game for me. 10th edition is so unpalatable to me that I've never made it past trying to make a list to actually play the game. List crafting to fit the lore of my own created factions was a huge part of the game for me and now there are no meaningful ways to make my dudes, My Dudes. The lore is continuing in ways to create more stories of good vs evil when I want evil vs evil. I can already hear someone coming along and saying that, I can still do all of that, I just use my imagination! Well if I wanted to create my own setting I always have that option but I much more enjoy taking part in something larger, a shared fantasy setting that I can relate to people with.
I accept that I am likely the minority, I had a similar argument recently over the wheel chair in DnD thing that made rounds. I can not wrap my head around the concept of a setting where you can bring people back from the dead but somehow can not heal someones injuries requiring a wheel chair. In the end I understood that some people are looking to see themselves in their fantasy, I just want to immerse myself in a world outside of myself.
Or it's not actually a binary issue, and the background material can be important while also not being completely immune to change. Which is how things have to be for a game to evolve. And games that don't evolve generally don't last as long as 40K has.
vict0988 wrote: The hobby should be inclusive to a broad population, that means we cannot have Nazis since they will try to exclude anyone who isn't of European ethnicity and do so just by being allowed to be part of the hobby while openly espousing their affiliation with Nazism, but extremists will want to not just exclude Nazis but everyone who isn't super progressive and at that point they really should just make a private club, Reddit and Facebook group for themselves if they cannot tolerate regular people being a part of the hobby.
I don't think any of that means what you think it means.
If you think I don't want Nazis in my hobby, you're absolutely correct. Does not wanting Nazis in my hobby make me an extremist? Does wanting lore-official female Space Marines make me an extremist?
And just how do you define 'normal people'? Are you implying that people who want lore-official female Space Marines aren't 'normal'? What is normal?
And why does opening up the poster faction to a broader audience offend you so?
It’s never been fixed. It has always been mutable and changing.
‘Member when GW introduced female Custards the other months? And how there was an attempt to whip up controversy over how precious the lore is?
Funny how those decrying that change had nothing to say about that same faction going from skinny blokes in pointy helmets, wearing cloaks, yoga pants and posing pouches to Auramite Clad Hand Crafted Super Duper Wuper Soldiers. Because surely if one retcon is bad and wrong and indeed…..badong, they all are?
Think my description of the original Custodes might be hyperbolic? I’ve got two words and a pic for you!
Word. Up.
And do not get me started on everything else that’s a change in the lore and so, by the same logic, should be consigned to the dustbin. No. Really. Don’t. You’ll cry, I’ll cry, the Mods’ will cry. Everyone will cry.
Regarding seeing male as the default, it makes sense in 40k, given it's a wargame, and in current human history, 99,9999% (and a lot more 9's, probably) of soldiers are/were male, the setting defaulting to that makes sense, given the world's history. Funnily enough, there's probably more % of female soldiers representation in 40k as a whole than in history as a whole, even with the overwhelming presence of the Marines in the lore.
Women get excluded from Warhammer 40k because there are no female Space Marines. This is objectively false. GW itself stated that Warhammer is for everyone. There are no shop guidelines or laws that keep women out of 40k. Non-representation is not the same as exclusion. I get the feeling some people are mixing these two things up. Humans can like things without seeing themselves represented in something.
Some people use the official canon to gatekeep or ridicule others because there are no female Space Marines. Does anybody here think these people would become shining paragons of the community if FSM were introduced? Would you suddenly want to play games with a person that was making fun of you just last week for the female head you put on your Captain? Everybody is responsible for their own community, so go ahead and make it a better place. You already have your legitimation from the highest entity in the game (GW approval from above). Bad people will find other things to latch onto and be dicks to you.
Warhammer would be more appealing to women if the "hero" of the story was female / mixed gender. Yes, probably. But this can be achieved without eroding a long standing faction identity. Everybody who is not (exclusively) playing Space Marines would benefit from the lore and following support (miniatures, video games, novels, audio books, merch, boardgames, ...) switching the focus equally to other factions. Just because this would take more effort does not automatically make the other option better or correct.
Lore has been changed before, why is this one so important? It does not change much about the feeling of a faction to retcon certain new weapons or units. I can live with Space Marines suddenly having Sternguard and Vanguard along with Relic blades and some other stuff. I do not agree to substantial changes to a factions identity. I would not approve of Khorne suddenly using psykers, I would not approve of SoB suddenly ignoring the "no men at arms" law and I would not approve of SM suddenly using female recruits.
The only real life reason for no FSM existing in the lore was the poor reception of the models 40 years ago. I'm aware of that and it does not change anything of what I wrote above.
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All of this aside, I even wrote on this forum that I saw avenues for an (imo) proper introduction of female Space Marines into the setting without just saying "they have always been there".
BUT I have an issue with people who not only want to introduce FSM, but then actually telling everybody who had a problem with it, regardless of the reason, to no longer be welcomed in the hobby. THIS is what actual exclusion looks like and is just despicable:
F) Female space marines would be a thing on the spot, I dont care the in-universe reason, but I would be sure to have a nice and clear public announcement that anyone that has a problem with that is no longer welcome anywhere in the GW ecosystem.
It’s the weird little gatekeepers. Those self appointed guardians of something not in fact theirs. The sort to throw around the term “hobby tourist” in place of anything approaching a rational, cohesive argument.
I don’t disagree that should such a change come? It needs to be covered in the lore. Whilst I’d prefer it to be a Cawl development, if it was “and there always has been” let’s just say Teddy would still be snuggled up in my personal pram.
As for your quote? I see where you’re coming from, but keep the context of the originating thread in mind. Because context is crucial. Here? Of a “power trip” thread where we’ve the power as an individual to run GW for a day, with the implication what gets done stays done.
Note I’m not accusing you of quote mining, or deliberately presenting something outside of its context, here. Just providing the correct context for the quote.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Think my description of the original Custodes might be hyperbolic? I’ve got two words and a pic for you!
For people who are not knowledgable about it, I think it would only be fair to mention that "Rogue Trader" lore was very, very different from the rest of everything else that came, starting with Warhammer 40k, 2nd edition. It was a time when the Warhammer universe was not defined and refined, yet. Everybody including Eldar and Orks were running around with lasguns, Space Marines were convicts, we had a half eldar half human psyker Ultramarine and Leman Russ was just an Imperial general among other things. IIRC the guy you are showing was sold as "Imperial Bodyguard", I can't remember if "Custodes" was a word being used at all.
The "modern" Custodes have been depicted in heavy armor shortly afterwards already in "Codex Imperialis" during 2nd edition. Arguably the edition where GW started putting everything they had come up with so far in place and made a coherent setting out of it.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: As for your quote? I see where you’re coming from, but keep the context of the originating thread in mind. Because context is crucial. Here? Of a “power trip” thread where we’ve the power as an individual to run GW for a day, with the implication what gets done stays done.
Emphasis mine. Sorry, but I don't see how this makes the quoted part from my post better.
Ah yes. Space marines in rogue trader had actual female sculpts. Then that was changed to marines being a power armored sausage fest (that change doesn't count though, for completely non-arbitrary reasons!). So now introducing female space marines would be an unprecedented retcon and destroy their lore.
So some people have expressed fear that this would be watering down the grimdark and that the "progressives" want to turn the Imperium into good guys and the setting into simplistic good vs evil.
I absolutely do not want that. In the other thread most of my lore changes were explicitly about emphasising the grimdark satire. But I what I don't want is the accidental fascist propaganda the current 40K lore often comes way too close to.
And whilst the one comment about getting rid of everyone who has a problem with female marines was harsher than how I would have put it, it would definitely send a message to to the alt-right-bros plaguing the hobby that identify with the Imperium.
Arbiter_Shade wrote: I get that this is no longer the game for me. 10th edition is so unpalatable to me that I've never made it past trying to make a list to actually play the game. List crafting to fit the lore of my own created factions was a huge part of the game for me and now there are no meaningful ways to make my dudes, My Dudes. The lore is continuing in ways to create more stories of good vs evil when I want evil vs evil. I can already hear someone coming along and saying that, I can still do all of that, I just use my imagination! Well if I wanted to create my own setting I always have that option but I much more enjoy taking part in something larger, a shared fantasy setting that I can relate to people with.
Yeah, this is where I'm at at the moment, and one of the reasons I'm rather dispassionate on this topic (the other being that I don't play SMs, and making them women won't change that).
For me, 10th poured a dumptruck of sand on the already dwindling spark of enthusiasm I had for 40k. My favourite army has been neglected for over a decade, and virtually everything I enjoyed about my armies and the game in general has been systematically hammered into paste. So now all that's left is a bland, grey slop that feels less like a wargame and more like playing a bad Magic The Gathering clone with some models involved.
Thus, seeing people arguing for female space marines is akin to watching someone painstakingly measure out 3ml of water for their house-plant, while the rest of the house burns around them.
Anyway, I'll leave some final thoughts on this topic:
As a few posters noted previously, men and women are different. Not just physically but mentally. For example, women will generally try to avoid conflict and mediate situations that could lead to such.
This isn't a bad thing, but one might expect it to have an impact on how SMs operated if a significant number of women were made into Astartes. Would this be something you would want to see explored?
Now, the obvious alternative would be to argue that the process of becoming Astartes would make up not only for any physical differences but also any mental ones - so by the end of the process, they'll be every bit as trigger-happy and violent as their male counterparts.
However, if GW was to say "SMs were female all along and it made no difference whatsoever", then this would seem to hand a big question mark over the point of making such a change in the first place. Even from the standpoint of representation, I would question how many women want to see women represented in name only, being physiologically and psychologically indistinguishable from men.
At that point, it seems you might as well just ask GW to make SM models with girlier hair.
On men and women and alleged psychological differences?
How do you know that has a physiological root, and not a sociological root? Because your wording suggests it’s the former, which is gonna need evidence as a claim.
How do you know that has a physiological root, and not a sociological root? Because your wording suggests it’s the former, which is gonna need evidence as a claim.
Such differences are almost certainly mostly or completely sociological. Even in supposedly gender equal nations boys and girls are brought up differently and different expectations are placed upon them. There has been numerous studies about this. The thing being specifically mentioned, the women being less confrontational, totally a sociological. It is trait that is far more tolerated in boys than girls, far more encouraged in men in than women. But in 40 000 years, on many different worlds, this is not necessarily true any more.
The Sisters of Battle are infamous for their round table meetings to quietly and politely discuss the finer points of theology in search of a comfortable compromise.
shortymcnostrill wrote: Ah yes. Space marines in rogue trader had actual female sculpts. Then that was changed to marines being a power armored sausage fest (that change doesn't count though, for completely non-arbitrary reasons!). So now introducing female space marines would be an unprecedented retcon and destroy their lore.
I never understood this argument.
It helps reading the actual arguments instead of putting one together in your head.
When people object to changes to the background? Where do we draw that line?
The Horus Heresy began its life as literal, genuine Filler. A tiny snippet of text written to fill out a page layout. And now it’s I don’t know how many novels long, and the setting for three games.
Why are some things held up as completely sacrosanct when others aren’t? Why is the topic of female Astartes considered so contentious?
When people object to changes to the background? Where do we draw that line?
The Horus Heresy began its life as literal, genuine Filler. A tiny snippet of text written to fill out a page layout. And now it’s I don’t know how many novels long, and the setting for three games.
Why are some things held up as completely sacrosanct when others aren’t? Why is the topic of female Astartes considered so contentious?
I addressed that point in my previous post.
To quote myself:
Lore has been changed before, why is this one so important? It does not change much about the feeling of a faction to retcon certain new weapons or units. I can live with Space Marines suddenly having Sternguard and Vanguard along with Relic blades and some other stuff. I do not agree to substantial changes to a factions identity. I would not approve of Khorne suddenly using psykers, I would not approve of SoB suddenly ignoring the "no men at arms" law and I would not approve of SM suddenly using female recruits.
The Horus Heresy is filling out blind spots that have not been mentioned before. We know it happened. We know some bigger events like the Siege of Terra. We don't know what Sgt. Iolus had for lunch one week after the Dropside Massacre. If the Heresy tells me it was baked beans and toast, it doesn't change anything about the legion he belonged to, because there is no mention anywhere that Ultramarines don't eat beans and it is not part of their identity.
Personally, I would not take Rogue Trader into consideration for anything canon. We all know that it was a wild era where GW just threw stuff at the wall to see what stuck. If Rogue Trader never existed and Warhammer started with the 2nd edition and its lore, you would not notice a difference.
I acknowledge that there is no official ruling from GW in regards to what is considered canon or no longer valid, though. So others can feel free to put their argumentation based on Rogue Trader as a source.
One thing people who want gendered marines (male/female) forget is that if you actually apply all that muscle, bone and chemically enhanced growth, the end result would be very odd if it looked like a normal person, male or female. So GW made the decision to show men, perhaps to appeal to young boys who were their market and area of expertise for their writers, painters and sculptors, and they are oddly unaffected looks wise from this process they have undergone.
The background changes whenever convenient, if they decided there was money to made more than there was to be lost we would end up with strange female sterotypes shoehorned in.
I really don't think it is. Putting aside the specific issue here for a moment, Rogue Trader lore might as well be for a different game. In the context of the history of 40k it existed for about 5% of the lifespan of the game and accounts for about 0.05%, if that. We had half-Eldar Ultramarine librarians and Primarchs as just random generals of Space Marines who were essentially penal troops. It was a "throw everything at the wall" period as far as the background is concerned and it more or less wasn't until we started getting Codices in 2nd edition that the lore as it stands today really started to take shape.
When people object to changes to the background? Where do we draw that line?
Probably some time around the middle of 2nd edition, maybe later for some of the lore that was kind of forgotten about until GW realised they could monetise it. Even then it's not like there's a definite point we can all take as the start of the "real" lore, but I do think it's massively disingenuous to bring up the early RT lore as any sort of justification for anything in modern 40k.
The_Real_Chris wrote: So GW made the decision to show men, perhaps to appeal to young boys who were their market and area of expertise for their writers, painters and sculptors, and they are oddly unaffected looks wise from this process they have undergone.
It all pre-dates the gene editing stuff.
Rogue trader (the pre 1st edition space trading rpg) used whatever models were available, at the time including power armour from the various 'pacific war in space' model lines.
One faction to emerge from cobbled together set this were the astartes who were given a monk background for GM convenience - it gave an in-verse reason for them to pop up in unlikely places due to the scattered and often hidden nature of their monasteries.
In the lore there were humans of both sexes in power armour along with the sororitas 'nuns in space' faction - but when the 1st edition tabletop game came along citadel had a couple of dozen sculpts and the marines got pride of place as the cover faction alongside early plastic models and the whole 'battle brothers' theme became a brand identity that would be shifted over time from convicts to superhumans with all the lore being back-fitted to the models rather than the other way around.
That's why all marines are male. A monk faction became their big seller and the world was built flanderized around them.
My point is that the Emperor was sexist. The non-sexist nature of the IoM is a happy accident, just like how its theocratic nature is a blatant deviation from the Emperor's blatant radical and violent atheism.
Expanding on the above, the core lore reason is that FSM cannot exist is because the geneseed doesn't work on women for "reasons". Those reasons aren't technological limitations, as all other trans-human augmentations work on women just fine. FSM doesn't exist because the Emperor didn't want FSM to exist.
And the Emperor does have a documented preference of men over women, I mean all the Primarchs, who were literally custom built down to their genetic level if not even deeper, are male.
I would posit an alternative theory. The Emperor was not sexist, at least, not misogynist. The nature of war as fought by humanity is inherently misandrist. War is anti-man. Men fight in wars, men die in wars, men are used as the sacrificial soldiers in the workings of kings, leaders, and tyrants alike. If you were genetically designing a soldier to build an army from, you'd use men as the basis. A human population of 1000 men and 1000 women could lose 900 men and still survive as a culture, but that same population couldn't lose 900 women and still survive as a culture/population, that culture would be devastated for generations if it even still could survive. That's kind of the nature of humanity and why war is misandrist.
And that falls apart when you can clone, have massive over population, etc. Even our total war mobilisations have put small % of people under arms. If you were designing a perfect soldier for a technological battlefield there are an awful lot of useful traits that are often displayed by women. The traditional advantages of men (bigger, stronger, etc.) in military roles have massively eroded.
JNAProductions wrote: Why do you put women in the same category as children and cripples? (Which are, respectively, the main source of Marines and the main source of Blood Angels.)
I searched for underprivileged groups or something like that. I am not saying that women are crippled men
vict0988 wrote: The hobby should be inclusive to a broad population, that means we cannot have Nazis since they will try to exclude anyone who isn't of European ethnicity and do so just by being allowed to be part of the hobby while openly espousing their affiliation with Nazism, but extremists will want to not just exclude Nazis but everyone who isn't super progressive and at that point they really should just make a private club, Reddit and Facebook group for themselves if they cannot tolerate regular people being a part of the hobby.
I don't think any of that means what you think it means.
If you think I don't want Nazis in my hobby, you're absolutely correct. Does not wanting Nazis in my hobby make me an extremist? Does wanting lore-official female Space Marines make me an extremist?
And just how do you define 'normal people'? Are you implying that people who want lore-official female Space Marines aren't 'normal'? What is normal?
And why does opening up the poster faction to a broader audience offend you so?
Explain to me how I am wrong.
I'm not making any claims about whether you want Nazis in the hobby. I am saying that as a community we should exclude Nazis, but include normal people. Normal people are not Nazis. If you want to exclude normal people and not just Nazis or if you think normal people are Nazis you are the problem.
Approximating the statistical average or norm for the 40k community is what I think is normal. I have yet to meet a Nazi in the 40k community, I've read about a few, but they are not normal 40k players and if you think they are why would want to be a part of the community?
How does adding Femarines open the faction to a broader audience? It's already the primary faction in the game.
How does adding Femarines open the faction to a broader audience? It's already the primary faction in the game.
Being the primary faction of the game is the point. Having males and females in the primary faction of the game, that is vastly over-represented in terms of models and GW's time and effort, is a much bigger deal for inclusivity than 'yeah there is this almost-all female faction that GW care about so much it literally went 30 years without any attention whatsoever'. We all know Space Marines are the primary faction in the game, and if we play anything else we're just the bloody NPCs.
I would posit an alternative theory. The Emperor was not sexist, at least, not misogynist. The nature of war as fought by humanity is inherently misandrist. War is anti-man. Men fight in wars, men die in wars, men are used as the sacrificial soldiers in the workings of kings, leaders, and tyrants alike. If you were genetically designing a soldier to build an army from, you'd use men as the basis. A human population of 1000 men and 1000 women could lose 900 men and still survive as a culture, but that same population couldn't lose 900 women and still survive as a culture/population, that culture would be devastated for generations if it even still could survive. That's kind of the nature of humanity and why war is misandrist.
A human population of 2k shouldn't be waging wars, period.
But also that doesn't seem to stop anyone else in the setting.
It doesn't stop Bile, whose New Men and Gland-Hounds can be female. It doesn't stop Cadia, Catachan, Krieg or any of the other war obessesed IG worlds. It doesn't stop the Admech from making female Skitarii. Eldar who have real population concerns still enlist females into their military. The current supreme comander of the Tau Fire Caste is a female.
Gender isn't an issue for 99.999% of the militaries in the setting. It is only an issue for Space Marines because "reasons" (and Sisters of Battle because a very stupid loop hole).
In my personal headcanon, The Emperor is gay, which perfectly explains why he only wanted to see muscular men around, and made women mute (SoS). GW has never admitted it to being true, but they should, that would give the real life nazis something to think about
This thread just inspired me to make my CSM into female/mixed gender. I was already thinking of building some 28mm DG, to mirror with my LIDG forces, now I have to add daemonette heads to some of the models. Just because Chaos does not care about trivialities such as gender.
One thing I would like to add to people who consider that RT era lore isn't "canon" - Your knowledge of RT era lore must be different from mine. Read Realm of Chaos? Ere We Go? etc. Yall love to remind us about the goofy lil bits while conveniently ignoring everything established at that time which still remains. Like it or not, RT era lore is inseparable from modern 40K.
One thing I would like to add to people who consider that RT era lore isn't "canon" - Your knowledge of RT era lore must be different from mine. Read Realm of Chaos? Ere We Go? etc. Yall love to remind us about the goofy lil bits while conveniently ignoring everything established at that time which still remains. Like it or not, RT era lore is inseparable from modern 40K.
If this is directed at me, let me clear up some confusion. I don't think the RT lore can't be canon. I simply point out that much of it no longer is, and hasn't been for literal decades. I'm simply pointing out that invoking RT lore isn't the winning argument many seem to think it is. A little more nuance is needed when dealing with anything from the RT era.
This thread just inspired me to make my CSM into female/mixed gender. I was already thinking of building some 28mm DG, to mirror with my LIDG forces, now I have to add daemonette heads to some of the models. Just because Chaos does not care about trivialities such as gender.
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Straying well outside 40k - arguably women in various contexts are a bridge too far through lots of history. And considering 40k comes after recent history when you would have had women still barred from many pubs and clubs, needing a husbands support to open a bank account etc... British society has gone through a lot of change in a short period of time and many of the satirical or otherwise lore in 40k are artefacts of views encountered in the 70's and 80's.
Even the comment above about defining a woman. The scientific one is too much detail to repeat, people tend to mean the current social construct but do so with no knowledge of how that is different around the edges through time and different cultures.
So you are down to do you want female marines to drive sales? To reflect current views in fantasy where most things are assumed to be equal before adding class, armour, abilities etc? To better reflect Sci Fi science views of what it would mean to be trans or post human? To get rid of people whose views you dislike? To drive a culture change which you hope will increase your market reach and penetration, even if it doesn't mean core sales?
I think most would agree if they were launched today they would be like other science fantasy groups like admech, stormcast, etc. Them being all male is an artefact of the time they were thought up and moved to be the face of a product line. Is it worth retconning that to change that product line face?
Bobthehero wrote: Regarding seeing male as the default, it makes sense in 40k, given it's a wargame, and in current human history, 99,9999% (and a lot more 9's, probably) of soldiers are/were male, the setting defaulting to that makes sense, given the world's history. Funnily enough, there's probably more % of female soldiers representation in 40k as a whole than in history as a whole, even with the overwhelming presence of the Marines in the lore.
Because you conflate current and past, the numbers may work out.
But the world of the present does not match the world in your head. Here is a link to a post from the US Department of Defense, which states that in 2022, the American military across all of its various fighting forces, was 17.5% women, and at that time, the stat was rising (though if Hegseth is confirmed, that may change). Look at nations with mandatory military service: women are not excluded.
Now as I said, the slippery tactic of combining ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY with the present will have the desired effect of making that 99% closer to accurate, but even history and mythology give us at least some women warriors; the Tale of the Genji and the Shura Noh stories of Tomoe Gozen, the impact of Joan of Arc, and the presence of Athena and Artemis to balance out Aires; Kali the destroyer, etc.
Arbiter_Shade wrote: The lore is continuing in ways to create more stories of good vs evil when I want evil vs evil.
This is an interesting one in the context of this argument... and yes, I know I'm isolating a single line from its larger context... But for me, FSM make the world MORE Grimdark, not less. No one in 40k is exempt from participation in war. Men women and children ALL must be killers, because if they aren't, humanity will cease to exist. That is some hardcore gak right there.
For me, 10th poured a dumptruck of sand on the already dwindling spark of enthusiasm I had for 40k. My favourite army has been neglected for over a decade, and virtually everything I enjoyed about my armies and the game in general has been systematically hammered into paste. So now all that's left is a bland, grey slop that feels less like a wargame and more like playing a bad Magic The Gathering clone with some models involved.
It's a bit outside the intended topic, but I had to reply to this, and it also gives back some of the context to Shade's quote above. 10th is far from my favourite edition too, and I do believe that valuable game elements were lost- personally, I'm having a hard time forgiving them for what they did to psychic powers, and units once were far more customizable. And yes, strats do seem like something out of Magic, and even datacard special rules can feel that way. So we don't disagree.
But what I've done to keep the game alive for me is lean into the role-playing elelments, and I've been doing that since Rogue Trader. And 9th and 10th DO give you a lot of roleplaying elements to lean into if you can find players to do it. Playing the "Drukharimunda" mini-game of 9th ed Crusade did more to bring the Dark Eldar to life for me than playing with the better dexes- I think 5th might have been the best dex for army composition, but it doesn't bring Commorragh into the game and develop the backstabbing ruthlessness of Drukhari society as well as 9th's Crusade rules do. I miss Sathonyx and Khedadruahk, and I wish my Archon could ride a jetbike, but if I had to choose between those things and Drukharimunda, I'm leaning Drukharimunda every time.
Of course, as I've said many times, this is mostly because I prefer roleplaying games to tabletop miniature wargames and I've kinda been playing Inquisitor 28 since 1989, using whatever 40k rules were available to facilitate that. I hope that Drukhari get a good glow-up this time around. A new Court, new beasts, new Grotesques and hopefully Kheradruahk now that he has plastic Mandrakes to lead. Maybe a Vect centrepiece; it won't address your valid concerns about rules, but it may give you back enough to keep you with us. We don't always agree, but if you gave up and disappeared, you would be missed.
As a few posters noted previously, men and women are different. Not just physically but mentally. For example, women will generally try to avoid conflict and mediate situations that could lead to such.
Others have already said it, but this is purely down to environmental factors. You might be able to argue that specifically maternal instincts fall into the category of epigenetics (ie. traits which, though genetic, require an environmental trigger to manifest), but conflict avoidance is learned behaviour, as is self advocacy and assertiveness. What freaks me out is that I'm pretty sure you know that, because whether I've agreed with all your posts in the past or not, they've usually been fairly intelligent.
Last post to reply to (though I might break it into chunks):
All of this aside, I even wrote on this forum that I saw avenues for an (imo) proper introduction of female Space Marines into the setting without just saying "they have always been there".
I chose to go out of sequence and start with this chunk, because I want to remember it- I think it is reasonable; like you, I would prefer a Lore way in, rather than a retcon, and I don't think it's unreasonable to want that.
BUT I have an issue with people who not only want to introduce FSM, but then actually telling everybody who had a problem with it, regardless of the reason, to no longer be welcomed in the hobby. THIS is what actual exclusion looks like and is just despicable:
F) Female space marines would be a thing on the spot, I dont care the in-universe reason, but I would be sure to have a nice and clear public announcement that anyone that has a problem with that is no longer welcome anywhere in the GW ecosystem.
So I agree that the piece you quoted was a bit heavy handed. I think most of us don't want to see the exclusion be this bold or explicit. Personally, one of the things I like about the Lore-based inclusion of FSM is that players who don't want FSM in their chapter could have the option of creating/ playing an all male chapter, an all male company, or even just an all male army.
However I do believe that at least some of the percentage of people who might take the inclusion of FSM as cause to quit probably ARE at least some of the people who are making actual women players uncomfortable... And with that percentage of people, letting them choose to leave because their male power fantasy is now an option and not the default might actually be a good thing. Again, GW doesn't have to explicitly tell them to GTFO, but if they would be sufficiently offended by FSM to leave, they might not have been all that positive an impact on the community in the first place.
Women get excluded from Warhammer 40k because there are no female Space Marines. This is objectively false. GW itself stated that Warhammer is for everyone. There are no shop guidelines or laws that keep women out of 40k. Non-representation is not the same as exclusion. I get the feeling some people are mixing these two things up. Humans can like things without seeing themselves represented in something.
Most people who aren't members of a marginalized population don't get it, because marginalization is a complex process that involves many moving parts. It was never as simple as Non-representation = Exclusion; there may be a few amongst us who are saying that, but I'd argue that they aren't seeing the complexity of the issue either.
It's more like "Non-representation in the poster faction supports certain player attitudes, and those attitudes can lead to the marginalization of certain demographics within the potential player base, encouraging them to self-exclude rather than face the discomfort caused by those attitudes." That's a better articulation of what people close to the argument are actually saying, and trying to make it simpler than that doesn't really work.
Some people use the official canon to gatekeep or ridicule others because there are no female Space Marines. Does anybody here think these people would become shining paragons of the community if FSM were introduced?
No, but again, those who would be offended enough by the inclusion of FSM in the range to choose to leave the hobby are likely some of the worst offenders, so the environment would likely become at least somewhat less toxic.
Would you suddenly want to play games with a person that was making fun of you just last week for the female head you put on your Captain?
With an actual handful of official GW FSM straight out the box? Hell yes, because though I wouldn't directly point this out to them, playing that game with those official models would be proof beyond the shadow of doubt that their previous behaviour was inconsistent with the worldview held be the game designers, players and store owners. I would think it more likely that the person in question would feel uncomfortable playing ME knowing that their behaviour could no longer hide behind any semblance of legitimacy.
Everybody is responsible for their own community, so go ahead and make it a better place. You already have your legitimation from the highest entity in the game (GW approval from above). Bad people will find other things to latch onto and be dicks to you.
Again, putting an actual, official GW FSM model on the table would do more than calling someone out for their behaviour ever would. When you call people out for their behavior, they just dig in deeper. You have to present tangible, physical evidence that their premise is flawed.
Warhammer would be more appealing to women if the "hero" of the story was female / mixed gender. Yes, probably. But this can be achieved without eroding a long standing faction identity. Everybody who is not (exclusively) playing Space Marines would benefit from the lore and following support (miniatures, video games, novels, audio books, merch, boardgames, ...) switching the focus equally to other factions. Just because this would take more effort does not automatically make the other option better or correct.
It isn't 100% clear (to me) what you mean here. You've already said you're okay with FSM being introduced in a way that is lore consistent, which would EVOLVE (not ERODE) the "longstanding faction identity," so are you saying that is the alternative, or are you referencing others who have said that the problem would be less of an issue if Marines weren't the poster faction, and advocating that the diminishment of the Marine privilege is the ideal alternative, or are you saying that a combination of those two approaches is the ideal.
Either way, I would probably agree, because I'm not the biggest fan of the "there have always been FSM" retcon either, though depending upon implementation, I'd probably prefer it to the boys club status quo.
Lore has been changed before, why is this one so important? It does not change much about the feeling of a faction to retcon certain new weapons or units. I can live with Space Marines suddenly having Sternguard and Vanguard along with Relic blades and some other stuff. I do not agree to substantial changes to a factions identity. I would not approve of Khorne suddenly using psykers, I would not approve of SoB suddenly ignoring the "no men at arms" law and I would not approve of SM suddenly using female recruits.
Sure... but since other parts of your post seem to imply that you ARE okay with change being introduced to a faction over time via lore, and if that is truly the case, then I'm not sure why you need this piece in your post, because it does seem (in isolation) to be at odds with what you've said elsewhere, though I suppose your repeated use of the word "suddenly" does leave room for gradual, lore based change.
The only real life reason for no FSM existing in the lore was the poor reception of the models 40 years ago. I'm aware of that and it does not change anything of what I wrote above.
This is more to object to the person you're quoting than to object to your response, because again, I think the original premise is oversimplified. Sales are also a matter of promotion. To say that the two FSM models from the RT era didn't sell well is "truthy" but not "true" - it's more accurate to say that they were never promoted our incorporated into the army in the same we the better selling marines were. There was never a full squad of FSM, nor a mixed FSM/ MSM unit, nor were were there ranking FSM characters or FSM with specialized roles. All of those things may have actually pushed sales up above the threshold for greater inclusion, but none of them were ever attempted.
Yes, two FSM models were created as a curiousity. They were never taken seriously be the designers, sculptors or marketers. It's like arguing that the reason there are no Chibi style marines in the actual 40k range because Chibis didn't sell as well.
All in all, I'd like to see FSM added via lore over time. I'd like players to be able to choose how far they go in adopting FSM into their chapter/ company/ army lore. And I would like to see marines become less of a poster faction over time. I've ALWAYS believed marine popularity is a matter of promotion and support rather than lore or aesthetics.
What are the Centurions and Mariocarts of the Eldar range? There aren't any. The Eldar are consistently better models than Marines (which is not to say that there aren't a lot of amazing marine models... of course there are- but also a lot of lemons). If the launchbox for 10th had been NIds vs the Eldar previews we've just seen, Space Marine 2 had been the siege of Biel Tan 1, and hence the Amazon show had featured Eldar fighting nids, if Joy Toy made Eldar toys for a year and if the Horus Heresy novels had been "Fall of the Eldar" novels do you think Desolators and Supressors would outsell Warpspiders and Swooping Hawks?
I mean, I even like the Lion, but he ain't winning a contest for model of the year against Lhykis.
Marines are popular because GW did everything in their power to make them popular and continues to do everything in their power to keep them popular.
The_Real_Chris wrote: I think most would agree if they were launched today they would be like other science fantasy groups like admech, stormcast, etc. Them being all male is an artefact of the time they were thought up and moved to be the face of a product line. Is it worth retconning that to change that product line face?
Yes, it absolutely is worth it. GW constantly changes and retcons lore for far worse reasons.
I still don’t get why Marines are considered so sacrosanct. Particularly as with the long view? They’ve probably been subject to the most lore changes since 40K began.
They’ve gone from elite infantry to genhanced post-human ubermensch. The structure of their armed forces through history have been chopped and changed.
The character of some Legions has been redefined by the Horus Heresy novels. They have more units added over the years than some armies have ever received.
Yet for some, the idea that it’s an all male thing is just background and could be changed is reason to get the pitchforks out. That’s just weird to me. And I genuinely feel those folk need to give their heads a wobble.
As said, if such a change came, I’d want some background to go with it, because I’m a right slag for background. And I reserve the right to be disappointed in such potential background if it’s a bit ropey. But even if it is “oh actually they’ve always taken both sexes as recruits now”? Teddy isn’t gonna be launched from my pram.
BTW, what is the last marine codex that even mentioned that they cannot be women? I don't think that it has even been mentioned for several editions. There are probably a lot of newer gamers that don't even know of this limitation. Perhaps there just could be female marines in the next codex, no justification, and the "always men" thing can just be considered forgotten early edition weirdness like half-eldar Ultramarines or the Oldcrons?
To me the ass-backwards manner of the imperium approach to marine recruitment is exactly why it's quite valid for the setting.
I'm not going to have a hissy fit over femarines if they suddenly exist, but I do think it would devalue the anachronistic mentality of the imperium.
That said, they logically can't call a female marine brother, they also can't call them sister as that's already a different thing, so what would the be called?
Dudeface wrote: To me the ass-backwards manner of the imperium approach to marine recruitment is exactly why it's quite valid for the setting.
I'm not going to have a hissy fit over femarines if they suddenly exist, but I do think it would devalue the anachronistic mentality of the imperium.
Like it has been said, one of the strengths of marines is their thematic customisability. So whilst your argument might makes sense for the themes of some chapters, it would not for the themes of some others.
That said, they logically can't call a female marine brother, they also can't call them sister as that's already a different thing, so what would the be called?
I'm going to toss my two thrones into this mess...
Looking at the Female Custodes as an example...
We had gamer outrage for a month or two... then most everyone has moved on.
I think this could be handled in the same way, and talking to other Custodes fans, there are those that don't like women, and if female Custodes sculpts come out they can choose not to put them in their armies.
Then there are some people like me, who thinks it will be cool not to paint angsty bald dude #145 and will enjoy a better mix of humanity in my forces, and if it gets new players to build Custodes, I'm all for it.
So I say, let's do it. It's nice to let everyone in on the fun, and if you don't like the models you don't have to use them.
EDIT: In retrospect, I don't believe I should have put in my thoughts as this issue affects women more than me, we should be seeking their opinions on the material.
No, there weren't. There were however a pair of women wearing power armor in the "Adventurers" line - "female warrior Jayne & female warrior Gabs". (dire sculpts btw...)
But as we all know, simply wearing power armor (wether way back then or today) does not make one a Space Marine. If it did we could just call the SoB Marines & be done with all this.
Or just Brother. Because Astartes are no longer human.
As for the hypothetical background change? The male only candidate thing is easily pinned on the disruption of the Primarch project, and that the subsequent Astartes project was a bodge job. And just as that all shook out? The Warp Storms cleared, The Emperor was out planning time, and so The Great Crusade was on, with limited if any time to further work on the by now “good enough” Astartes conversion process.
Cawl is the only person since then to not only have the information and skills to further develop it, but the resources and time.
What isn’t clear is how long it took Cawl to get the Primaris to where they are now. We know he was beavering away for 10,000 years - but that included stockpiling Primaris in suspended animation and their kit. So whilst I don’t it was immediate, it couldn’t have been the entire 10,000 years before the upgrades were perfected.
The next step could well be to effectively double the potential pool of recruits by sorting out the Y Chromosome keying issue.
Nor would such work be necessarily against The Emperor’s own intentions. Because as I said? Post abduction of the Primarchs, everything else was a bodge job. A pretty successful bodge job I’ll grant you, but most definitely not the intended final product. And we’ve no real way of knowing what the original “ideal world” aim and outcome truly was, and so we can’t rule out part of the plan was to extend the Astartes conversion process to include young female candidates.
What we can say is there’s no evidence of discriminatory practices in the wider Imperial War effort. Otherwise we wouldn’t have lady Princeps, Captains, Admirals etc.
Bobthehero wrote: Regarding seeing male as the default, it makes sense in 40k, given it's a wargame, and in current human history, 99,9999% (and a lot more 9's, probably) of soldiers are/were male, the setting defaulting to that makes sense, given the world's history. Funnily enough, there's probably more % of female soldiers representation in 40k as a whole than in history as a whole, even with the overwhelming presence of the Marines in the lore.
Because you conflate current and past, the numbers may work out.
But the world of the present does not match the world in your head. Here is a link to a post from the US Department of Defense, which states that in 2022, the American military across all of its various fighting forces, was 17.5% women, and at that time, the stat was rising (though if Hegseth is confirmed, that may change). Look at nations with mandatory military service: women are not excluded.
Now as I said, the slippery tactic of combining ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY with the present will have the desired effect of making that 99% closer to accurate, but even history and mythology give us at least some women warriors; the Tale of the Genji and the Shura Noh stories of Tomoe Gozen, the impact of Joan of Arc, and the presence of Athena and Artemis to balance out Aires; Kali the destroyer, etc.
Okay modern numbers. Male still default by a huge margin, furthermore, GW uses history as a basis for this and that all the time. Now, with that said, hat's the stats for combat trades? Since 40k is excellent at ignoring anything logistical or admninistrative, and most women go for those trades over Infantry/Armored/Artillery/Combat Engineers and others. And yeah, history gives us women warrior, 40k has women warrior, too. Probably in great proportions in terms of models sold/lore given than the IRL ratio of warrior women in history.
JNAProductions wrote: Why do some people consider being male to be essential to Marine's theme?
They're genetically modified super soldiers wearing tank-like armor, fighting for the Imperium. Why does that require them to be male?
Edit: Put another way, you can have Marines with almost any theme.
Vikings, tactical and smart soldiers, vampires, angels, knights of various stripes...
But women are a bridge too far?
Do you not feel why a faction that is inspired by Roman legions, is (now) organised into (knightly) orders/chapters, lives in monasteries, addresses each other as "Brothers" and calls themselves "Sons of their Primarch" is seen as having "male" being part of their identity? They are not required to be male, they simply have been written like it.
Women are not a bridge too far, it just collides with what is already established. Where "female" is the direct opposite of a "male", a "Viking" is an addition.
If Space Marines have been written with male and female recruits from the start, I would not have an issue with it. Halo is one of my favourite franchises, by the way. Spartans are both male and female and the universe up to and including Halo: Reach is awesome. (Haven't really spent much time with everything that came afterwards from 343 Studios)
PenitentJake wrote: I chose to go out of sequence and start with this chunk, because I want to remember it- I think it is reasonable; like you, I would prefer a Lore way in, rather than a retcon, and I don't think it's unreasonable to want that.
Cawl was a missed opportunity to have a somewhat logical explanation why it became possible now, without it feeling too forced as an insert. Bile is another angle that is still there. I'm open for better explanations, but this is the least GW should do.
PenitentJake wrote: So I agree that the piece you quoted was a bit heavy handed. I think most of us don't want to see the exclusion be this bold or explicit. Personally, one of the things I like about the Lore-based inclusion of FSM is that players who don't want FSM in their chapter could have the option of creating/ playing an all male chapter, an all male company, or even just an all male army.
However I do believe that at least some of the percentage of people who might take the inclusion of FSM as cause to quit probably ARE at least some of the people who are making actual women players uncomfortable... And with that percentage of people, letting them choose to leave because their male power fantasy is now an option and not the default might actually be a good thing. Again, GW doesn't have to explicitly tell them to GTFO, but if they would be sufficiently offended by FSM to leave, they might not have been all that positive an impact on the community in the first place.
I don't see how people who share the poster's opinion from my quote are any better than those who harass others for their (harmless) headcanon of FSM. Just because they have some common ground with one's own ideas should not and does not make the posted opinion tolerable. If I made a thread with the sole expression "to kick everybody out of the hobby who got a problem with MALE ONLY SPACE MARINES", I would expect the thread to be locked and my account to be suspended. This is clear bigotry on display.
While I see myself more on the "contra" side for this specific argument, but I'm open for it under specific conditions. Doesn't matter, I would be kicked out, just as someone who is openly harrasing FSM collectors. I can't sympathise with the quoted attitude.
PenitentJake wrote: It isn't 100% clear (to me) what you mean here. You've already said you're okay with FSM being introduced in a way that is lore consistent, which would EVOLVE (not ERODE) the "longstanding faction identity," so are you saying that is the alternative, or are you referencing others who have said that the problem would be less of an issue if Marines weren't the poster faction, and advocating that the diminishment of the Marine privilege is the ideal alternative, or are you saying that a combination of those two approaches is the ideal.
Either way, I would probably agree, because I'm not the biggest fan of the "there have always been FSM" retcon either, though depending upon implementation, I'd probably prefer it to the boys club status quo.
Ideally the focus would shift away from Marines, so other factions that are "naturally" more diverse get more attention.
PenitentJake wrote: Sure... but since other parts of your post seem to imply that you ARE okay with change being introduced to a faction over time via lore, and if that is truly the case, then I'm not sure why you need this piece in your post, because it does seem (in isolation) to be at odds with what you've said elsewhere, though I suppose your repeated use of the word "suddenly" does leave room for gradual, lore based change.
I'm not against the evolution of the lore, but against hamfisted decisions. Just retconning lore with that big of an impact with "it was always this way", when it is clearly written "to not have always been this way", is unacceptable to me. Female Custodes? Fine, they were basically a blank slate before their model introduction in 7th edition. GW should have taken the chance to say "everything about these guys was written decades ago, we start fresh with the first mainline model they ever receive and take the opportunity to change some parts of the lore from earlier publications". Trying to gaslight people on social media about it was and is an awful way to handle it. The fan comic with Tzeentch indoctrinating that one Guardsman that there always were female Custodes, in order to keep whatever he is doing a secret? Absolutely awesome.
Brothers of Battle? The Ecclesiarchy found another, interesting way to loop around it. The new soldiers they enlist into their armies are clearly not classified as male, regardless of any aesthetical resemblance.
The "sudden" is in my head from the original post I quoted, as that was the posters way of introduction. And my preferred way would be to switch the attention to other factions that already support male and female models.
The post is long enough as is, so forgive me if I'm not replying to everything. I acknowledge+appreciate your input on these matters and have nothing to add or argue against it, so I leave the other parts out.
What boggles my mind the most about this whole thing is that there are people who absolutely straighfaced seriously tie their enjoyment of marines with the explicit absence of women.
It's apparently not good enough to say, well anyone can be a marine, but if you want an all male force you can, no issues there at all.
No, they actually need to have women explicitly excluded from the faction, actual lore and text written to say 'girls can't be this', or their enjoyment of the faction is somehow ruined.
This idea is very definitely a them problem, because women being in the faction doesn't change how you can enjoy them, it changes how others can. Not being able to enjoy them because a girl COULD be one, is such an infantile position to take.
And it's also amazing that in this day an age, we wouldn't ever consider publically saying 'well I can only enjoy my army men if there are no black people in it', but sex exclusion still just fine.
Those water fountains were absolutely ruined for white people when they knew someone not white could use them.
They’ve gone from elite infantry to genhanced post-human ubermensch. The structure of their armed forces through history have been chopped and changed.
Hard disagree. They were extremely stable for over 20 years. They became post-human ubermench somwhere before 2nd edition, and their basic chapter setup held firm from a similar era until the horrible introduction of Primaris. I don't know the timeline exactly, but this is a time period spanning form 1992-3ish up to 2017 maybe? 25 years of stable "core marine identity", if you will. Certain things were expanded in that time, such as individual chapter variation in relation to that structure (like when the Salamanders and Black Templars were expanded upon), but these were always introduced as being exceptions to the codex norm.
They’ve gone from elite infantry to genhanced post-human ubermensch. The structure of their armed forces through history have been chopped and changed.
Hard disagree. They were extremely stable for over 20 years. They became post-human ubermench somwhere before 2nd edition, and their basic chapter setup held firm from a similar era until the horrible introduction of Primaris. I don't know the timeline exactly, but this is a time period spanning form 1992-3ish up to 2017 maybe? 25 years of stable "core marine identity", if you will. Certain things were expanded in that time, such as individual chapter variation in relation to that structure (like when the Salamanders and Black Templars were expanded upon), but these were always introduced as being exceptions to the codex norm.
And yet GW was more than happy to change them with the primaris, which I know you don't like. But the point is that GW is more than happy to change it however they want.
It is an entirely artificial line to draw at one point within 40k's history and it's only done for these kinds of conversations - to justify sticking religiously to an interpretation of 40k lore like it's sacrosanct unchanging. Because if you accept that GW will change what they want when they want, and that 40k has looked different throughout it's history, then it doesn't hold water.
Being relatively stable for however long doesn't make it definitive as GW has been more than willing to show.
a_typical_hero wrote: The Horus Heresy is filling out blind spots that have not been mentioned before. We know it happened. We know some bigger events like the Siege of Terra. ..
We know, from post-RT fluff, that the 2 missing legions were still around at the time of the Horus Heresy, and most likely fought on Horus' side.
But nobody seems to be screaming from the rooftops about that particular change to the inviolable 'lore'...
Hellebore wrote: What boggles my mind the most about this whole thing is that there are people who absolutely straighfaced seriously tie their enjoyment of marines with the explicit absence of women.
It's apparently not good enough to say, well anyone can be a marine, but if you want an all male force you can, no issues there at all.
No, they actually need to have women explicitly excluded from the faction, actual lore and text written to say 'girls can't be this', or their enjoyment of the faction is somehow ruined.
This idea is very definitely a them problem, because women being in the faction doesn't change how you can enjoy them, it changes how others can. Not being able to enjoy them because a girl COULD be one, is such an infantile position to take.
And it's also amazing that in this day an age, we wouldn't ever consider publically saying 'well I can only enjoy my army men if there are no black people in it', but sex exclusion still just fine.
Those water fountains were absolutely ruined for white people when they knew someone not white could use them.
I don't think it's about "enjoyment" per se, but more a stance on a principle of whether or not such a thing can exist in a fictional universe. Is it ok for a faction to be all male? I think it should be. It seems ok to have an all-female faction. I understand that these two factions within the 40k franchise aren't treated equally, but there's probably other fictional universes in which the "position of dominant attention" is gender swapped.
They’ve gone from elite infantry to genhanced post-human ubermensch. The structure of their armed forces through history have been chopped and changed.
Hard disagree. They were extremely stable for over 20 years. They became post-human ubermench somwhere before 2nd edition, and their basic chapter setup held firm from a similar era until the horrible introduction of Primaris. I don't know the timeline exactly, but this is a time period spanning form 1992-3ish up to 2017 maybe? 25 years of stable "core marine identity", if you will. Certain things were expanded in that time, such as individual chapter variation in relation to that structure (like when the Salamanders and Black Templars were expanded upon), but these were always introduced as being exceptions to the codex norm.
And yet GW was more than happy to change them with the primaris, which I know you don't like. But the point is that GW is more than happy to change it however they want.
It is an entirely artificial line to draw at one point within 40k's history and it's only done for these kinds of conversations - to justify sticking religiously to an interpretation of 40k lore like it's sacrosanct unchanging. Because if you accept that GW will change what they want when they want, and that 40k has looked different throughout it's history, then it doesn't hold water.
Being relatively stable for however long doesn't make it definitive as GW has been more than willing to show.
I don't have the time to argue this point right now, but a franchise being dismissive of it's own established canon can really mess with the fandom and the reputation of the IP holders. You can't treat it as nothing. Or, you CAN, but that can be risky and have adverse effects.
a_typical_hero wrote: The Horus Heresy is filling out blind spots that have not been mentioned before. We know it happened. We know some bigger events like the Siege of Terra. ..
We know, from post-RT fluff, that the 2 missing legions were still around at the time of the Horus Heresy, and most likely fought on Horus' side.
But nobody seems to be screaming from the rooftops about that particular change to the inviolable 'lore'...
I mean, that's really not a lot of additional info.
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LunarSol wrote: I'd honestly stick with Brother. Officers might be referred to as "my Lady" though.
I think in the US armed forces women officers are still addressed as "sir".
But the point being made is that it HAD established canon and you are deciding that the retcon of THAT was ok because you prefer the new established canon.
It's a hypocritical position to take. Either canon matters or it doesn't.
In which case, the current version of space marines is definitively a retcon of how they were.
And you are ok with retcons, because you like that retcon more.
You can't say 'well the new version is definitive because X', the original was definitive as well. they didn't publish it and say 'gee whiz, this is crap filler until we come up with something new'.
Even the comment above about defining a woman. The scientific one is too much detail to repeat, people tend to mean the current social construct but do so with no knowledge of how that is different around the edges through time and different cultures.
I honestly don't think the social construct definitions are part of how most people think of "man" or "woman", fundamentally. I think (though I'd love to see some data on it) most people are going with the biological definition of "man" = adult human male, and "woman" = adult human female. As in, you could slap as many layers of gender expression as you like on top of it, but if the underpinning biology is still there then that's where the label will ultimately lay. (for most people)
You can't get more definitive than the literal first time something was ever published, space marines were introduced to the world in RT as was the 40k universe. And if you go back and look at it, most of that universe survives intact to today. They didn't completely scrub it out of existence and write a new setting. 40kRT is still pretty much the same setting it is today. Even Space marines were still gene enhanced super soldiers and modern 40k still has some chapters recruiting in exactly the same way as they did in RT. The Imperial Fists still recruit from gangers in necromunda.
And that was that, for several years until they started to retcon bits here and there. No one getting into 40k at that point had aspirations of space knight ubermasc warriors, because GW wasn't selling them that. You're fine telling the fans of those that their preferred version of space marines, literally the FIRST version, is wrong, but don't want the same thing to happen to your preferred version.
But you also tell people primaris suck and they shouldn't have done them. So sorry, it's a hypocritical position that you've taken, where a particular version of something has struck a chord with you personally and you've decided that is the objective definitive version in general.
And the overarching point is that you take your particular slice of GW's presentation of space marines more seriously than they do, because you don't like the old and discount it and don't like the new and discount that. But it also means any argument used from the 'canon is important' perspective can't be taken seriously.
Hellebore wrote: But the point being made is that it HAD established canon and you are deciding that the retcon of THAT was ok because you prefer the new established canon.
It's a hypocritical position to take. Either canon matters or it doesn't.
In which case, the current version of space marines is definitively a retcon of how they were.
And you are ok with retcons, because you like that retcon more.
You can't say 'well the new version is definitive because X', the original was definitive as well. they didn't publish it and say 'gee whiz, this is crap filler until we come up with something new'.
That's a drastic oversimplification. Rogue Trader is clearly an experimental time in the formation of the 40k universe, and within a few years Space Marines in particular became largely the thing which they were for that 20 years, and by many accounts fueled the company into what it became. I wouldn't call it "retconning" but rather "clarification" or some similar term.
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Hellebore wrote: You can't get more definitive than the literal first time something was ever published, space marines were introduced to the world in RT as was the 40k universe. And if you go back and look at it, most of that universe survives intact to today. They didn't completely scrub it out of existence and write a new setting. 40kRT is still pretty much the same setting it is today. Even Space marines were still gene enhanced super soldiers and modern 40k still has some chapters recruiting in exactly the same way as they did in RT. The Imperial Fists still recruit from gangers in necromunda.
And that was that, for several years until they started to retcon bits here and there. No one getting into 40k at that point had aspirations of space knight ubermasc warriors, because GW wasn't selling them that. You're fine telling the fans of those that their preferred version of space marines, literally the FIRST version, is wrong, but don't want the same thing to happen to your preferred version.
But you also tell people primaris suck and they shouldn't have done them. So sorry, it's a hypocritical position that you've taken, where a particular version of something has struck a chord with you personally and you've decided that is the objective definitive version in general.
And the overarching point is that you take your particular slice of GW's presentation of space marines more seriously than they do, because you don't like the old and discount it and don't like the new and discount that. But it also means any argument used from the 'canon is important' perspective can't be taken seriously.
I'm curious as to what changes in Space Marines from their RT inception to their late RT-2nd incarnation you're trying so hard to pin me with are. Because, honestly, there's really not much I can think of beyond the half-Eldar librarian and that Leman Russ was an "Imperial Commander". I think there are some gear options? I know there was a stat-shift in game terms too.
Even the comment above about defining a woman. The scientific one is too much detail to repeat, people tend to mean the current social construct but do so with no knowledge of how that is different around the edges through time and different cultures.
I honestly don't think the social construct definitions are part of how most people think of "man" or "woman", fundamentally. I think (though I'd love to see some data on it) most people are going with the biological definition of "man" = adult human male, and "woman" = adult human female. As in, you could slap as many layers of gender expression as you like on top of it, but if the underpinning biology is still there then that's where the label will ultimately lay. (for most people)
Is it about getting female heads for SMs (even though, given what has been said about the process, I would think they would be barely distinguishable from male SM heads).
Is this about changing the lore?
Is it about getting SM models with literal breastplate armour?
Outside of the grimier parts of Reddit and 4chan, very few people want boobplate on any of their models.
Most just want to see female characters represented.
We are gonna have to disagree on this point.
Since FSM came into my radar I have seen a LOT of smexy FSMs on various social media platforms. And I do mean a lot. Sure, that's anecdotal evidence but so is yours.
Now, I do wonder why the FSM would retain secondary sexual characteristics given the enhancements and the completely removal of primary sexual characteristics... but I have seen quite a bit of art what has rather turned me off of the idea.
We know, from post-RT fluff, that the 2 missing legions were still around at the time of the Horus Heresy, and most likely fought on Horus' side.
But nobody seems to be screaming from the rooftops about that particular change to the inviolable 'lore'...
I mean, that's really not a lot of additional info.
Neither is 'Some Space Marines are women, actually...'
In quantity yes, but in quality no. I don't think (though correct me if I'm wrong) any revelations about the missing legions contradicted anything from preexisting lore.
Although, to clarify, you're talking to somebody who doesn't like a lot of the information brought to us with the HH novels.
We are gonna have to disagree on this point.
Since FSM came into my radar I have seen a LOT of smexy FSMs on various social media platforms. And I do mean a lot. Sure, that's anecdotal evidence but so is yours.
Now, I do wonder why the FSM would retain secondary sexual characteristics given the enhancements and the completely removal of primary sexual characteristics... but I have seen quite a bit of art what has rather turned me off of the idea.
There is a difference between what people who enjoy that sort of art choose to draw, and what players actually want on the table.
But even in the art, from my experience, there was far more 'sexy' space marine art around ten or fifteen years ago than there is now. The sensibly dressed marine is by far more common, these days.
How much of it you see will obviously be down to what the algorithm thinks of your viewing preferences...
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Insectum7 wrote: In quantity yes, but in quality no. I don't think (though correct me if I'm wrong) any revelations about the missing legions contradicted anything from preexisting lore.
How is 'they were gone well before the Heresy kicked off' not a contradiction of 'they fought on Horus' side, at least at the start of the Heresy'...?
Insectum7 wrote: In quantity yes, but in quality no. I don't think (though correct me if I'm wrong) any revelations about the missing legions contradicted anything from preexisting lore.
How is 'they were gone well before the Heresy kicked off' not a contradiction of 'they fought on Horus' side, at least at the start of the Heresy'...?
Oh fair enough. Thanks for the info.
I offer no comment other than to reiterate my general feeling that the HH novels talk too much.
We are gonna have to disagree on this point.
Since FSM came into my radar I have seen a LOT of smexy FSMs on various social media platforms. And I do mean a lot. Sure, that's anecdotal evidence but so is yours.
Now, I do wonder why the FSM would retain secondary sexual characteristics given the enhancements and the completely removal of primary sexual characteristics... but I have seen quite a bit of art what has rather turned me off of the idea.
Of course some people will interpret it like that. But that is true for everything. Rule 34 and all that.
But try searching #femalespacemarines #femalespacemarine #femalespacemarineshowcase on Instagram. (The last one is particularly good as it is mostly limited to people who genuinely like the concept.) There are some "pin up" interpretations, but overwhelming majority is not that.
LunarSol wrote: I'd honestly stick with Brother. Officers might be referred to as "my Lady" though.
I think in the US armed forces women officers are still addressed as "sir".
I'm not opposed to sticking to "my Lord" either. I'd certainly be interested in hearing different perspectives on the matter. Mine isn't terribly important.
From my low level understanding, women serving in most factions (imperial guard, eldar, i dunno others) are still able to have babies. There's probably new factions I don't know about since I stopped paying a lot of attention back in 5th/6th edition. Women space marines could not have children. The imperium needs more babies to feed the grimdark. The eldar are a dead/dying race that are decadant and have fallen in many ways.
Space marines seem to rely on gang fights and harsh contests to recruit, they don't just have a recruitment center in an office in a shopping mall to get aspirants. And even before puberty there's a big difference in physical ability between boys and girls, it gets more pronounced the closer you get to puberty, when you've got your plucky gang soldiers doin ritual combat to the death to earn the honor of becoming a space marine scout you would have weeded out any of the very few girls crazy enough to be in that situation.
And of course, people who want FSM always say "why do you care so much about not letting it happen?" to which I say "why do you care so much about changing almost 40 years of history and everything that comes with it in order to make a change you say is not a big enough deal for people to care about being against it."
I have yet to really hear any good explanation, "the flagship faction needs to represent men and women" is a valid opinion to have, but its a bad explanation to change so many things. Women are represented in 40k in many many factions already, heck tyranids and orks are 100% female.
And I mean, goodness, I remember people complaining about space marines being the "main poster faction" back in 3rd edition, sure you can still be tired of it, but if you're tired of it then quit already, I basically quit 40k in 6th edition, you can quit too.
BanjoJohn wrote: From my low level understanding, women serving in most factions (imperial guard, eldar, i dunno others) are still able to have babies. There's probably new factions I don't know about since I stopped paying a lot of attention back in 5th/6th edition. Women space marines could not have children. The imperium needs more babies to feed the grimdark. The eldar are a dead/dying race that are decadant and have fallen in many ways.
Space marines seem to rely on gang fights and harsh contests to recruit, they don't just have a recruitment center in an office in a shopping mall to get aspirants. And even before puberty there's a big difference in physical ability between boys and girls, it gets more pronounced the closer you get to puberty, when you've got your plucky gang soldiers doin ritual combat to the death to earn the honor of becoming a space marine scout you would have weeded out any of the very few girls crazy enough to be in that situation.
And of course, people who want FSM always say "why do you care so much about not letting it happen?" to which I say "why do you care so much about changing almost 40 years of history and everything that comes with it in order to make a change you say is not a big enough deal for people to care about being against it."
I have yet to really hear any good explanation, "the flagship faction needs to represent men and women" is a valid opinion to have, but its a bad explanation to change so many things. Women are represented in 40k in many many factions already, heck tyranids and orks are 100% female.
And I mean, goodness, I remember people complaining about space marines being the "main poster faction" back in 3rd edition, sure you can still be tired of it, but if you're tired of it then quit already, I basically quit 40k in 6th edition, you can quit too.
Orks are not 100% female.
Nor are Tyranids.
Orks are agender (in-universe) that present (out of universe) as masculine.
Tyranids are also largely agender, with some (like the Tervigon) qualifying as female, but they are very distinctly not human or even close.
And gangs in 40k have plenty of women. Look at Necromunda, for example.
JNAProductions wrote: Tyranids are also largely agender, with some (like the Tervigon) qualifying as female, but they are very distinctly not human or even close.
I always saw the Tervigon less as 'giving birth' and more like running at the enemy with a cyst full of Termagants
JNAProductions wrote: Tyranids are also largely agender, with some (like the Tervigon) qualifying as female, but they are very distinctly not human or even close.
I always saw the Terviogon less as 'giving birth' and more like running at the enemy with a cyst full of Termagants
Fair view as well.
But Nids are definitely NOT female representation for anything remotely resembling human, whether or not you could class them scientifically as female or not.
I'm not sure I've heard the problems of tradition so well summarized as I did when I read that people of today should be beholden to the ideas of people 40 years ago, so that it remains unchanged to someone who hasn't participated for 12 years.
Insectum7 wrote: In quantity yes, but in quality no. I don't think (though correct me if I'm wrong) any revelations about the missing legions contradicted anything from preexisting lore.
How is 'they were gone well before the Heresy kicked off' not a contradiction of 'they fought on Horus' side, at least at the start of the Heresy'...?
The latest Lexicanum articles still list them as "vanishing" before the HH. Where does the part come from that they likely fought on Horus side?
The big thing about them always was that nowhere is it stated why the records were expunged, when even traitor legions were not treated that harshly. Wether they fought during the HH or not is not affecting that mystery, personal opinion aside.
BanjoJohn wrote: From my low level understanding, women serving in most factions (imperial guard, eldar, i dunno others) are still able to have babies. There's probably new factions I don't know about since I stopped paying a lot of attention back in 5th/6th edition. Women space marines could not have children. The imperium needs more babies to feed the grimdark.
Pro-tip - women generally don't enjoy seeing themselves represented in fantasy as nothing more than baby-making machines. There's room for more than that.
There are a thousand chapters of Space Marines, each with (in theory) a thousand marines. There are hive cities with larger populations than we currently have on the entire planet. even if we reduce a woman's importance down to whether or not she can have children, the number of women recruited for Marine Chapters would be a mere drop in the ocean, well and truly eclipsed by those recruited for the Sororitas, or sacrificed to keep the Emperor alive, amongst other things.
Space marines seem to rely on gang fights and harsh contests to recruit, they don't just have a recruitment center in an office in a shopping mall to get aspirants. And even before puberty there's a big difference in physical ability between boys and girls, it gets more pronounced the closer you get to puberty, when you've got your plucky gang soldiers doin ritual combat to the death to earn the honor of becoming a space marine scout you would have weeded out any of the very few girls crazy enough to be in that situation.
Can you post the different statlines in Warhammer 40K for male and female guardsmen, please?
JNAProductions wrote: Tyranids are also largely agender, with some (like the Tervigon) qualifying as female, but they are very distinctly not human or even close.
I always saw the Terviogon less as 'giving birth' and more like running at the enemy with a cyst full of Termagants
Fair view as well.
But Nids are definitely NOT female representation for anything remotely resembling human, whether or not you could class them scientifically as female or not.
Yes I know none of the women in my life would be happy being represented by a house sized monster than spits babies, for some reason.
Insectum7 wrote: In quantity yes, but in quality no. I don't think (though correct me if I'm wrong) any revelations about the missing legions contradicted anything from preexisting lore.
How is 'they were gone well before the Heresy kicked off' not a contradiction of 'they fought on Horus' side, at least at the start of the Heresy'...?
The latest Lexicanum articles still list them as "vanishing" before the HH. Where does the part come from that they likely fought on Horus side?
Codex: Ultramarines.
The big thing about them always was that nowhere is it stated why the records were expunged, when even traitor legions were not treated that harshly. Wether they fought during the HH or not is not affecting that mystery, personal opinion aside.
The most likely explanation from before the HH series was that they took Horus' side but were completely destroyed during the Heresy - deleting them from all records would have been an ultimate punishment for their betrayal, as it made it as if they had never even existed. That couldn't be done with the other traitor legions, because they were still running around causing a ruckus. (Although I vaguely recall another theory floating around that at least one of them became the Grey Knights)
Changing their story to having been eliminated for some unspecified but vaguely hinted reasons sometime during the Great Crusade keeps the mystery and avoids GW having to come up with two more legions on the fly, but is still a change to established background material, which I'm told is a heinous thing worthy of hate and derision.
BanjoJohn wrote: And of course, people who want FSM always say "why do you care so much about not letting it happen?" to which I say "why do you care so much about changing almost 40 years of history and everything that comes with it in order to make a change you say is not a big enough deal for people to care about being against it."
The real-life United States of America is still struggling to improve upon the inequities of 400 years of history. Just because something has always been a certain way doesn't mean it should always be that way.
Edit: apologies to mods for my now-deleted post. I posted that reply without reading the rest of the thread, yet - including the warning.
Meh - have never really been bothered by this topic as I haven't really ever considered it adding any value to the storyline but potentially adding big old plotholes if it were changed.
On gender in 40k - it is already pretty much the most diverse fictional setting of any setting in any form of fiction. I can't think of any other fictional universe that has pretty much every corner of the gender spectrum filled in naturally without pandering to anyone, yet in 40k there is already everything (multiple non-binary races, all male factions, all female factions, gender neutral factions). If someone asked you to recommend a table top game where you could play as different gender identities, you would tell them 40k is the game for you.
On Marines (and I guess Custodes) specifically - it has come up repeatedly in the existing lore that everyone (Imperium and Chaos) is using every tool available to mass produce super soldiers, whether it's Bile and his clones or the Raven Guard trying to replenish their legion, or Guilliman and Cawl's excellent adventures. Adding female superhumans into the mix is inevitably going to raise the question of "can they have super babies?", which requires an answer of no (which is equally silly to no girl marines because hormones) in order to stop the whole lore come crashing down. If Custodes can have babies, why bother with marines? And why hasn't the Imperium made enough Custodes to replace marines yet and win the galactic war on easy mode? Likewise, if marines could reproduce via good old sex, that would surely be easier than the weird and often fatal rituals for transitioning a human, and why bother with the Guard or Sisters?
It's a lot easier to just accept there's nothing wrong with marines being male, and as far as representation goes - engaging with real people and expanding into different game formats to appeal to them > toy soldiers with boob plate.
Insularum wrote: Adding female superhumans into the mix is inevitably going to raise the question of "can they have super babies?", which requires an answer of no (which is equally silly to no girl marines because hormones) ...
Do you consider it silly that the process sterilises men?
Because I'm not really seeing a difference. Aspirants go through some pretty extreme surgical and genetic modifications. The idea that they can't reproduce afterwards isn't much of a stretch, particularly if it was deliberately built into said process precisely to force their reliance on Imperial resources to replenish their numbers.
Insularum wrote: Adding female superhumans into the mix is inevitably going to raise the question of "can they have super babies?", which requires an answer of no (which is equally silly to no girl marines because hormones) ...
Do you consider it silly that the process sterilises men?
Because I'm not really seeing a difference. Aspirants go through some pretty extreme surgical and genetic modifications. The idea that they can't reproduce afterwards isn't much of a stretch, particularly if it was deliberately built into said process precisely to force their reliance on Imperial resources to replenish their numbers.
Not to mention, the work is done after they're already born. Even if Marines and Custodes weren't sterile, there's every chance that their kids would be regular humans. They could get the same work done to make them a Marine/Custode, but there's no guarantee that said kid will be the best candidate.
Edit: Also, 40k doesn't have any prominent non-binary characters to my knowledge. Or any prominent trans characters.
If there are some and I just missed them, please let me know.
Insularum wrote: Adding female superhumans into the mix is inevitably going to raise the question of "can they have super babies?", which requires an answer of no (which is equally silly to no girl marines because hormones) ...
Do you consider it silly that the process sterilises men?
Because I'm not really seeing a difference. Aspirants go through some pretty extreme surgical and genetic modifications. The idea that they can't reproduce afterwards isn't much of a stretch, particularly if it was deliberately built into said process precisely to force their reliance on Imperial resources to replenish their numbers.
Yes I do consider it silly. If asked to name one single part of a Custode or Astarte that is inferior to a regular unaugmented human, there is nothing, and if asked to name an organ that is forcibly removed to make a Custodes or Astartes, there is likewise nothing - so it is silly to say that their bones are denser, their skin is tougher, their muscles are stronger, their lungs can filter poisons from the air, but their genitals don't work for reasons. It is equally silly to no girls allowed, but at least doesn't create plot holes that could potentially invalidate large parts of the setting.
Tyran wrote: It doesn't stop Bile, whose New Men and Gland-Hounds can be female. It doesn't stop Cadia, Catachan, Krieg or any of the other war obessesed IG worlds.
Quick fact check request here - I was under the impression that Krieg essentially supplies vat-born clones for its Regiments, and the clone profiles are all male - has that been retconned somewhen?
There's also the Vostroyans, who I believe recruit firstborn sons as their troops, I think?
Insularum wrote: Adding female superhumans into the mix is inevitably going to raise the question of "can they have super babies?", which requires an answer of no (which is equally silly to no girl marines because hormones) ...
Do you consider it silly that the process sterilises men?
Because I'm not really seeing a difference. Aspirants go through some pretty extreme surgical and genetic modifications. The idea that they can't reproduce afterwards isn't much of a stretch, particularly if it was deliberately built into said process precisely to force their reliance on Imperial resources to replenish their numbers.
Yes I do consider it silly. If asked to name one single part of a Custode or Astarte that is inferior to a regular unaugmented human, there is nothing, and if asked to name an organ that is forcibly removed to make a Custodes or Astartes, there is likewise nothing - so it is silly to say that their bones are denser, their skin is tougher, their muscles are stronger, their lungs can filter poisons from the air, but their genitals don't work for reasons. It is equally silly to no girls allowed, but at least doesn't create plot holes that could potentially invalidate large parts of the setting.
Because the process certainly will never have unintended side effects.
And the children of Astartes will definitely be Astartes from birth, and not just humans.
Well, just because your Mum and Dad were genhanced, it’s doesn’t necessarily mean the worky bits of their rude bits had their gubbins altered.
However, given a female aspirant would be just as pumped full of artificial hormones such as testosterone and Emperor knows what other fictional “made in a lab” synthetic hormones, it may well render her infertile.
And that’s before we consider whilst some lady rude parts might need to be retained (human gonads don’t just produce gametes, but help regulate hormone levels), the womb isn’t necessarily part of that.
So whilst I’m not gonna say no (life, uh, finds a way, as House Goliath stand as absolute direct proof of) I’d say it’s very unlikely to be possible, and even if it was? First you’d need to have two Marines Who Love Each Other Very Much, their gametes to have had their respective worky bits altered to the new superhuman standard, and for the resulting zygote to survive in the womb. Which is to say - exceptionally rare.
Edit: Also, 40k doesn't have any prominent non-binary characters to my knowledge.
Wait, surely Tyranids would qualify?
To my knowledge, they don't have separate sexes (unless I'm mistaken, they don't even reproduce sexually), so surely they would be non-binary by definition?
You could also make a case for Necrons. Granted, they were probably male/female at one point in their lives. However, after countless millennia trapped in mechanical bodies, with no hormones, no ability to reproduce etc., I would imagine the distinction between the sexes would have faded substantially, if not completely.
Edit: Also, 40k doesn't have any prominent non-binary characters to my knowledge.
Wait, surely Tyranids would qualify?
To my knowledge, they don't have separate sexes (unless I'm mistaken, they don't even reproduce sexually), so surely they would be non-binary by definition?
You could also make a case for Necrons. Granted, they were probably male/female at one point in their lives. However, after countless millennia trapped in mechanical bodies, with no hormones, no ability to reproduce etc., I would imagine the distinction between the sexes would have faded substantially, if not completely.
Different members of the Mechanicus will have different outlooks on that sort of thing.
Some will be entirely beyond the concept of gender and humanity, fully embracing the machine. Some will be non-binary (possibly as a way to seek new insight by wearing different bodies). Some will be a gender. Some will be male or female. They’re not a cohesive whole as an organisation.
On Marines (and I guess Custodes) specifically - it has come up repeatedly in the existing lore that everyone (Imperium and Chaos) is using every tool available to mass produce super soldiers, whether it's Bile and his clones or the Raven Guard trying to replenish their legion, or Guilliman and Cawl's excellent adventures. Adding female superhumans into the mix is inevitably going to raise the question of "can they have super babies?", which requires an answer of no (which is equally silly to no girl marines because hormones) in order to stop the whole lore come crashing down. If Custodes can have babies, why bother with marines? And why hasn't the Imperium made enough Custodes to replace marines yet and win the galactic war on easy mode? Likewise, if marines could reproduce via good old sex, that would surely be easier than the weird and often fatal rituals for transitioning a human, and why bother with the Guard or Sisters?
This is complete non sequitur. This has nothing to do female marines, as marines are sterile.* No one (except perhaps you, by saying it is silly) has suggested changing the being sterile part. You have literally invented this additional change to justify your opposition of the concept. And not only that, you have also invented some bizarre Lamarckian inheritance, where surgically crafted extra organs are passed to the offspring! This is pretty much grasping at straws territory.
(* Far more likely on female superhuman BTW, than on male one, as the female body obviously has far bigger part to play in producing the offspring, so the processes are far easier to disturb.)
The smartest, best looking, and greatest fighters in the universe (because they defended their worlds for tens of thousands of years before the Imperium even existed) are Knights... and both Barons and Baroness, King and Queen all are equal.
So if the royals can be equal I'm sure the proletariat can be equal too. If you need a royal decree, we can work on that.
Another foul xenos to consider is ye Olde Necron. I'm sure the Necrons are pretty genderless for the most part.
I'm not even sure the Silent King will sire any offspring.
The smartest, best looking, and greatest fighters in the universe (because they defended their worlds for tens of thousands of years before the Imperium even existed) are Knights... and both Barons and Baroness, King and Queen all are equal.
Which, BTW, was not the case in their first codex. It was said that the pilots were sons of the noble houses. But it was wisely changed in the next codex, and I don't remember anyone having a fit over that.
The smartest, best looking, and greatest fighters in the universe (because they defended their worlds for tens of thousands of years before the Imperium even existed) are Knights... and both Barons and Baroness, King and Queen all are equal.
Which, BTW, was not the case in their first codex. It was said that the pilots were sons of the noble houses. But it was wisely changed in the next codex, and I don't remember anyone having a fit over that.
Which was exactly how they did custodes, because the archaic language is on theme for 40k, but there was never any information that said the specific genetic changes were sex locked like geneseed is supposed to be. People just assumed that 'recruited from the sons of nobility' was the same as 'only men can be recruited because the process doesn't work on women'. And subsequently the whiners were misusing the term gaslighting to describe GW saying that custodes can be recruited from men and women...
It still just boils down to some peoples' enjoyment somehow directly affected by whether other people can enjoy the same thing or not - like, unless you can't have girls, I can't enjoy space marines. Never mind that you can play your army without any girls in it whatsoever without it at all contravening the existence of female marines. Don't like female space marines, don't play with them. But no, it has to be precluded as an option for other people or it's ruined for them. The height of privilege to require other people's fun be prevented so you can have yours. A limitation entirely self imposed. Like people that refused to watch american football after it was integrated because the very idea that there COULD BE non whites on the team ruined their ability to have fun.
I think in the US armed forces women officers are still addressed as "sir".
I work on a US Army installation and see soldiers every day. Female officers are still addressed as ma'am. It may be different in other services, but I doubt it.
I think in the US armed forces women officers are still addressed as "sir".
I work on a US Army installation and see soldiers every day. Female officers are still addressed as ma'am. It may be different in other services, but I doubt it.
Oh really? My info might be bad then. I'll try to figure out where I got that from.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Different members of the Mechanicus will have different outlooks on that sort of thing.
Some will be entirely beyond the concept of gender and humanity, fully embracing the machine. Some will be non-binary (possibly as a way to seek new insight by wearing different bodies). Some will be a gender. Some will be male or female. They’re not a cohesive whole as an organisation.
Honestly, I'd expect the AdMech to be pro-binary...
On Marines (and I guess Custodes) specifically - it has come up repeatedly in the existing lore that everyone (Imperium and Chaos) is using every tool available to mass produce super soldiers, whether it's Bile and his clones or the Raven Guard trying to replenish their legion, or Guilliman and Cawl's excellent adventures. Adding female superhumans into the mix is inevitably going to raise the question of "can they have super babies?", which requires an answer of no (which is equally silly to no girl marines because hormones) in order to stop the whole lore come crashing down. If Custodes can have babies, why bother with marines? And why hasn't the Imperium made enough Custodes to replace marines yet and win the galactic war on easy mode? Likewise, if marines could reproduce via good old sex, that would surely be easier than the weird and often fatal rituals for transitioning a human, and why bother with the Guard or Sisters?
This is complete non sequitur. This has nothing to do female marines, as marines are sterile.* No one (except perhaps you, by saying it is silly) has suggested changing the being sterile part. You have literally invented this additional change to justify your opposition of the concept. And not only that, you have also invented some bizarre Lamarckian inheritance, where surgically crafted extra organs are passed to the offspring! This is pretty much grasping at straws territory.
(* Far more likely on female superhuman BTW, than on male one, as the female body obviously has far bigger part to play in producing the offspring, so the processes are far easier to disturb.)
Lamarckian inheritance would mean that a space marine/custode is still human, and the processes they go through are no different than steroid abuse. I thought that geneseed implantation altered the entire physiology of the recipient, if it didn't the human parts of the body would struggle to keep up with the practically immortal bits.
I'm not asking you to like my position on this, I just think it's an issue that can never be satisfactorily addressed - for example I wasn't aware that marines are sterile/or if you've just invented that, but it's irrelevant as all you do is promote solving the sterility issue as the number 1 priority of Cawl instead of primaris or Bile instead of his new men. The most efficient means of mass production of super humans is a major advantage for whoever achieves it first.
But there are things we can point to which may prevent it. And the presence of Abhumans made that way by design (and borderline cases such as House Goliath) which breed true, we can’t necessarily rule it out.
But, that’s still on the assumption that a hypothetical female Astartes first retains all the bits and pieces necessary to conceive and carry a child, that the modification and necessary hormonal changes don’t prevent conception and gestation, and then that Astartes (with all their psychic and hypnotic indoctrination ) would even be interested in making babies in the first place.
That first part is the main difference between Astartes, and Abhumans.
Abhumans are born that way, and their DNA is fundamentally altered. But, an Astartes begins life as a baseline human, with stuff added later. So we can’t say for certain their DNA is altered on the same fundamental level as Abhumans, so it doesn’t follow the differences between Human and Astartes are reflected in gamete production.
Insularum wrote: . The most efficient means of mass production of super humans is a major advantage for whoever achieves it first.
This is still predicated on the idea of natural birth being the most efficient means of reproducing Astartes which (1) speaking as a parent, seems like a stretch and (2) would have been the process used by the Emperor in the first place, if that were so.
Given the horrors of 40K? I can easily see the eggs from any successful female candidate being harvested, and then fertilised and gestated artificially. That way, each female Astartes could, fairly reliably, provide a couple of dozen Super Kids, without being out of action for any of it.
That would also allow for screening of the zygotes and embryos throughout gestation, checking for purity, aberration and that.
And I still argue given the Astartes Project was a “save what we can” bodge job, we can’t say with any certainty such wasn’t the original Ideal Outcome of the Primarch Project.
Female Primarchs may have been a few more centuries of work for The Emperor at some point. But now we’ll never know, as all that went rapidly out the window when everything spiralled out of control.
insaniak wrote: Changing their story to having been eliminated for some unspecified but vaguely hinted reasons sometime during the Great Crusade keeps the mystery and avoids GW having to come up with two more legions on the fly, but is still a change to established background material, which I'm told is a heinous thing worthy of hate and derision.
Are you reading about the same topic on a different website? Because I don't see this written here anywhere.
What I do see are sentences like this who supposedly try to give their own opinion more weight by misrepresenting what was said by "the opposition". Feels exhausting to read after a few times.
We know of course that the implants come from germ cells, harvested from Geneseed, and it’s those which allow the organs necessary for making more Astartes to be cultured and grown.
But, we also know Geneseed degradation is an issue - likely due to the Geneseed being a form of cloning, and so likely some form of genetic bottleneck.
I’d propose that Female Astartes may offer a fix for that? I’m struggling to put into words why, but for now I’m putting that down to my lack of knowledge about genetics than it being outright wrong. But essentially blending the Geneseed harvested from male and female Astartes might allow greater genetic variation, alleviating if not outright solving degradation?
No matter what we all may disagree on, I think we can agree (having lived through many many price hikes) that GW loves to make money. If they though they could make money by having FSM, I think they would have done so already. The fact that they haven't done it probably means they wont. If they felt like they could make more money using a faction other than space marines as the "poster boys", then they already would have done so.
Honestly I think this is getting further into biology than any of the GW writers did when they came up with this in the first place, but... Regarding fertility of current marines? We know that steroid use affects sperm count and testicle size. The sort of steroids required to produce a space marine? Poof, those little nadgers are gone!
Female marines could be introduced as simply as "Oh damn, turns out the Primaris process works on birds too. We never bothered checking for hundreds of years because Imperial dogma and inefficiency, whoops!"
Crispy78 wrote: Honestly I think this is getting further into biology than any of the GW writers did when they came up with this in the first place, but... Regarding fertility of current marines? We know that steroid use affects sperm count and testicle size. The sort of steroids required to produce a space marine? Poof, those little nadgers are gone!
Female marines could be introduced as simply as "Oh damn, turns out the Primaris process works on birds too. We never bothered checking for hundreds of years because Imperial dogma and inefficiency, whoops!"
Not to mention whilst rare, XY or XX Chromsomes don’t necessarily result in a man and a woman respectively. And there are other, again fairly rare, combinations possible. Because biology is weird.
For more learning on this, I can recommend the Professor Dave Explains video on confusion about trans persons. It’s balanced, and rooted in science as well might expect from Professor Dave. I won’t link to it here, but it’s easy enough to find on YouTube
Insularum wrote: Lamarckian inheritance would mean that a space marine/custode is still human, and the processes they go through are no different than steroid abuse.
It is advanced form of that, combined with transplant surgery.
I thought that geneseed implantation altered the entire physiology of the recipient, if it didn't the human parts of the body would struggle to keep up with the practically immortal bits.
Hormones affect your whole body, They however do not rewrite your genes. Nothing in the marine creatiopn process implies that the DNA is affected.
I'm not asking you to like my position on this, I just think it's an issue that can never be satisfactorily addressed - for example I wasn't aware that marines are sterile/or if you've just invented that,
You were not aware of that? How is tat possilbe? It has been similarly part of the lore for ages, like them not being women. And has there ever been a single instance of a space marine having fathered a child?
Anyway, actual GW quote on marines and custodes:
"Both are subject to extensive psychological and cognitive conditioning, and are physically and mentally reworked to render most of their baser drives inert and their beings rechanneled towards aggression, goal acquisition and the fulfillment of duty, and as a further safeguard against distraction and as a biological control, both are of course incapable of procreation. In both cases all that is left are beings of singular purpose"
but it's irrelevant as all you do is promote solving the sterility issue as the number 1 priority of Cawl instead of primaris or Bile instead of his new men. The most efficient means of mass production of super humans is a major advantage for whoever achieves it first.
This relies on the absurd assumption that the enhancements would be inherited and that this form of marine creation would be more effective than the current one. Neither are assumptions one needs to make. This is just you adding weird additional assumptions to the female marines that are not part of the concept, so that you have an excuse for rejecting it.
They may not be the same but they are also not mutually-exclusive.
Again, Tyranids do not have a gender binary. Thus, they are non-binary literally by definition.
Tyranids don't have a concept of gender.
Someone that is non-binary is non-binary because their concept of their gender is non-binary. Even agender still have a concept of gender (they are still humans raised in human society), they just have defined themselves as being outside it.
Tyranids don't have a concept of gender, don't need a concept of gender, because they aren't human, they don't have a society and they aren't even individuals. They aren't people, they are things.
To bring pronouns into it, you refer to an individual non-binary as they, you refer to an individual agender as they.
You refer to one individual Tyranid as it.
Space marines are dangerous. The Imperium needs to disrupt their ability to procreate in order to keep itself safe from from renegade marines hidden at birth to eliminate the potential for another Horus.
Even if FSM existed, and even if the process of Marine creation did rewrite DNA, the Imperium would still need to control procreation in some other way.
Boyz is a gendered term, but one denoting rank, not defining sex or gender. Similar to Private. Oddboyz denotes a given profession/proclivity.
No males. No females. Just Orks. It’s even doubtful Orks really understand or care other species have different genders. You’re not an Ork, so you’re not as good, unless you can put up a good fight. If you can’t put up a good fight, that’s because Orks is best.
Some men have XX, some women have XY. And I’m not meaning transgendered persons.
Your wedding tackle. That’s what I’m referring to. Whilst it is rare, you can be physically male, but have XX Chromosomes, and physically female with XY Chromosomes.
Here’s a link to well cited Wikipedia summaries should you care to do further reading.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Some men have XX, some women have XY. And I’m not meaning transgendered persons.
Your wedding tackle. That’s what I’m referring to. Whilst it is rare, you can be physically male, but have XX Chromosomes, and physically female with XY Chromosomes.
Here’s a link to well cited Wikipedia summaries should you care to do further reading.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Some men have XX, some women have XY. And I’m not meaning transgendered persons.
Your wedding tackle. That’s what I’m referring to. Whilst it is rare, you can be physically male, but have XX Chromosomes, and physically female with XY Chromosomes.
Here’s a link to well cited Wikipedia summaries should you care to do further reading.
And people ALWAYS forget Intersex- the "I" in 2SLGBTQIA.
These folks were once referred to using the term hermaphrodite, which like so many other terms has been replaced with the more inclusive term Intersex. These folks run an anotomical spectrum; some have both sets of reproductive organs, some have a dominant organ and a less developed organ, others don't necessarily have either in a way that would be recognized by cis-folks. I don't know the gentics behind these conditions- XXY, YY, XYY.... I just know that people with these conditions do in fact exist.
And while I don't want to go too deep down the politics rabbit hole for obvious reasons, these folks often choose treatment options to help them transition to the gender with which they identify, which is just one more reason why blanket laws against gender affirming care are an atrocity.
But again, people don't know what they don't know, and they tend to make their decisions in the voting booth based on "Well it should work for me, who cares about anyone else."
Sorry- feel free to take away my soapbox. Here endeth the rant.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Some men have XX, some women have XY. And I’m not meaning transgendered persons.
Your wedding tackle. That’s what I’m referring to. Whilst it is rare, you can be physically male, but have XX Chromosomes, and physically female with XY Chromosomes.
Here’s a link to well cited Wikipedia summaries should you care to do further reading.
Boyz is a gendered term, but one denoting rank, not defining sex or gender. Similar to Private. Oddboyz denotes a given profession/proclivity.
No males. No females. Just Orks. It’s even doubtful Orks really understand or care other species have different genders. You’re not an Ork, so you’re not as good, unless you can put up a good fight. If you can’t put up a good fight, that’s because Orks is best.
Are you suggesting that orks don’t present as masculine in miniature form or artwork? Do you also contend that their attested behaviors are not meant to invoke stereotypes closely associated with the behavior of male dominated subcultures?
I’m asking because it seems like your point is that orks should appeal equally to everyone regardless of gender since they technically aren’t male despite being basically He-Man shaped.
If we were to flip this, do you think an army of Hagz with Karen haircuts, yoga pants and soccer mom bodies whose sole purpose is defeating “the manager” while sipping red wine would also appeal to young men because technically they reproduce asexually?
If we were to flip this, do you think an army of Hagz with Karen haircuts, yoga pants and soccer mom bodies whose sole purpose is defeating “the manager” while sipping red wine would also appeal to young men because technically they reproduce asexually?
You could definitely mix some Hagz in with the Boyz just fine
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’m suggesting Orks present as….Orks. An entirely alien species in biology and society.
Are the resulting models masculine coded? Sure. But lore wise, Orks is Orks, neither male nor female. Just Orks.
I’m not sure where the relevance to this discussion is. Anyone new to the hobby, or even casual players, will see orks as another male faction based on minis, artwork, and surface level fluff. Only people who are elbow deep into the lore of the hobby will be aware that orks aren’t really male. By that point, they’re either already committed or they’ve bounced. In terms of popular perception of the game, orks are male. When it comes to player attitudes towards their armies (which often spill over into interactions with other GW customers), orks are overwhelmingly male.
Insularum wrote: Lamarckian inheritance would mean that a space marine/custode is still human, and the processes they go through are no different than steroid abuse. I thought that geneseed implantation altered the entire physiology of the recipient, if it didn't the human parts of the body would struggle to keep up with the practically immortal bits.
Hormones affect your whole body, They however do not rewrite your genes. Nothing in the marine creatiopn process implies that the DNA is affected.
Further to this, the genetic changes also have to specifically affect the gametes to be passed on to offspring. Life undergoes genetic changes constantly, but the vast, vast majority of these in humans do not get passed to offspring because they occur in cells that have nothing to do with reproduction and die with the person. Cancer (generally) happens due to acquired genetic changes and is not passed to offspring, although some genetic predispositions are passed on.
If geneseed rewrites genetics, it specifically would have to do so in gametes to even have a chance of being passed on.
It's also important to remember that Marines are a little more important to have equity in than other factions like Orks and Boyz. Narratively they might have all this dark backstory of horrific surgeries that make them inhuman freaks, etc, etc, etc, but that's not how they're presented.
Marines are, like it or not, the self insert power fantasy faction. They are absolutely without a doubt intended to allow people to see themselves as larger than life heroes who dominate the battlefield and save humanity from all the horrors that assail them on all sides. That's the sales pitch, that's why they sell, and that's what most people buy them for.
So yes, it absolutely matters when the self insert faction doesn't let people insert themselves in a way that just isn't as important for other factions.
LunarSol wrote: It's also important to remember that Marines are a little more important to have equity in than other factions like Orks and Boyz. Narratively they might have all this dark backstory of horrific surgeries that make them inhuman freaks, etc, etc, etc, but that's not how they're presented.
Marines are, like it or not, the self insert power fantasy faction. They are absolutely without a doubt intended to allow people to see themselves as larger than life heroes who dominate the battlefield and save humanity from all the horrors that assail them on all sides. That's the sales pitch, that's why they sell, and that's what most people buy them for.
So yes, it absolutely matters when the self insert faction doesn't let people insert themselves in a way that just isn't as important for other factions.
I get your point, but Marines are way more fitting to your average male fantasy. (Dark) Eldar and Custodes would be more appealing to traditional female fantasies imho. Which hearkens back to the point that other factions should be given more attention to solve the "representation problem".
LunarSol wrote: It's also important to remember that Marines are a little more important to have equity in than other factions like Orks and Boyz. Narratively they might have all this dark backstory of horrific surgeries that make them inhuman freaks, etc, etc, etc, but that's not how they're presented.
Marines are, like it or not, the self insert power fantasy faction. They are absolutely without a doubt intended to allow people to see themselves as larger than life heroes who dominate the battlefield and save humanity from all the horrors that assail them on all sides. That's the sales pitch, that's why they sell, and that's what most people buy them for.
So yes, it absolutely matters when the self insert faction doesn't let people insert themselves in a way that just isn't as important for other factions.
I get your point, but Marines are way more fitting to your average male fantasy. (Dark) Eldar and Custodes would be more appealing to traditional female fantasies imho. Which hearkens back to the point that other factions should be given more attention to solve the "representation problem".
But what's easier - elevating every other faction to match the status and presentation of Space Marines, or adding a few women to the Space Marine range?
It's not like you would need to make new units for Marines - maybe a sprue's worth of heads and some feminine Scouts, and the job's a good'un.
Also, I think you vastly underestimate how many women might want to strap on some power armor and start curb-stomping some xenos.
But what's easier - elevating every other faction to match the status and presentation of Space Marines, or adding a few women to the Space Marine range?
It's not like you would need to make new units for Marines - maybe a sprue's worth of heads and some feminine Scouts, and the job's a good'un.
Also, I think you vastly underestimate how many women might want to strap on some power armor and start curb-stomping some xenos.
Not to make light of the situation, but I would actually look forward to a new primaris lieutenant if it was a female model.
I say, add some new models. If you don't like em, don't play with them.
But if it adds a new player to the grand game, and someone new gets to have some fun, then it was all worth it.
I've recently had a renewed interest in Warhammer 40,000 and this is a topic that has always fascinated me: why are there no female Space Marines? Whilst we are at it, the League of Votann also appear to have no female members, having all male models. Whilst having female Space Marines (or Leagues of Votann units) may indeed be nice, if we are wanting to encourage the other 50-51% of the population to take more of an interest in our hobby, talking about female Space Marines feels like a bit of 'red herring' to me.
I was having a look around the official Warhammer World website and I took it upon myself to count up the number of people in the promotional photograph they supply on the home page of the website for the Events Hall (this photograph). There are between seventy and eighty people in that photograph and at most, only two of them lack male anatomy, and one of those two is a member of staff. Why might this be?
I personally know several ladies who enjoy Warhammer 40,000 but it's a stereotype (and sadly a broadly accurate one) that the sorts people who are drawn to such hobbies as trading card games, role playing games (e.g. Dungeons and Dragons) or other hobbies typically classed as "geeky" or "nerdy" tend to be quite awkward around humans of the opposite gender. Given the old saying "the fish rots from the head down", could it be that community leaders need to find ways of making wargaming environments more friendly and welcoming to new players, especially those who are female? The seriousness with which some people take the game can be quite off-putting to a typical casual player? I know it would be off-putting to me.
I am reminded of that episode of The Simpsons where Homer Simpson fielded questions from Itchy and Scratchy fans. I saw the scene of him taking questions on YouTube recently and I took it upon myself to read some of the comments. People were bemoaning how accurately the scene portrays nerdy fanboys.
It’s always worth noting that utterly awful as The Imperium is? The Administratum, Astra Militarum, Adeptus Mechanicus, Ecclesiarchy etc aren’t institutionally sexist, racist, homophobic etc.
Will some sects of the Imperial Creed be worse due to sexism etc? Sure.
Are Abhumans (viewed as stable strains of mutation) sidelined? Yes.
But the relatively petty squabbles of the modern day just don’t manifest in the same way. Nobody much cares about the colour of your skin, who you prefer to have in your bed at night etc. They’ve Actually Threat To Society others to pin all that distracting hate on.
And in the meantime? They’ll treat the general human populace equally awfully as The Imperium continues its crusade to simply maintain its own awful, awful status quo.
Manfred von Drakken wrote: But what's easier - elevating every other faction to match the status and presentation of Space Marines, or adding a few women to the Space Marine range?
It's not like you would need to make new units for Marines - maybe a sprue's worth of heads and some feminine Scouts, and the job's a good'un.
Only because something is easier doesn't make it the better choice overall. Everybody would benefit from other factions becoming more popular and if it is only because you won't see Marines as often on the opposite side of the table. A female character model and some upgrade sprues is all that is needed for most factions to increase the appeal to women. That is especially true for Custodes, now that they already have women in the lore.
Manfred von Drakken wrote: Also, I think you vastly underestimate how many women might want to strap on some power armor and start curb-stomping some xenos.
But if that would be the only requirement, then Sisters of Battle would already satisfy this need more than enough. Space Marines are missing characteristics that typically appeal to women.
SpaceDenizen wrote: I was having a look around the official Warhammer World website and I took it upon myself to count up the number of people in the promotional photograph they supply on the home page of the website for the Events Hall (this photograph). There are between seventy and eighty people in that photograph and at most, only two of them lack male anatomy, and one of those two is a member of staff. Why might this be?
Some things are simply more appealing to one gender over the other. Even if every single faction in the game would get equal attention and is equally appealing to men and women, you would still have more men picking up Warhammer.
Lathe Biosas wrote: I did a cursory search, and found in these forums threads about female orks for AoS armies (A female warboss and her Mama's Boyz)...
I also found pictures from Blood Bowl of Orc Cheerleaders, that are probably female.
Orcs (WHFB & AoS) and Orks (40k) are not the same creatures, despite their physical similarity.
You got proof for that, Hero?
Actual scientific proof that women are inherently (and NOT just socially) predisposed towards not liking 40k as much as men?
And GW should put less emphasis on Marines. That’s a thing they should do-but while Marines are THE faction? They should be open to everybody in the same way they’re open to men.
As for the Sisters tangent, they have the battlenun aesthetic. If you don’t want that in your power armored ladies, too bad.
Marines have a much, much wider pool of themes to draw on, both visually and in lore.
SpaceDenizen wrote: I was having a look around the official Warhammer World website and I took it upon myself to count up the number of people in the promotional photograph they supply on the home page of the website for the Events Hall (this photograph). There are between seventy and eighty people in that photograph and at most, only two of them lack male anatomy, and one of those two is a member of staff. Why might this be?
Some things are simply more appealing to one gender over the other. Even if every single faction in the game would get equal attention and is equally appealing to men and women, you would still have more men picking up Warhammer.
Ultimately, you may well be correct in your assessment of Warhammer 40,000 as a hobby. As a counterpoint, most of people who write, say, Yu-Gi-Oh TCG fanfiction tend to be women and yet when I was a child going to events for game, I remember there being a distinct lack of women playing the game at these events, despite knowing how much fanficiton women write about the game and it was obvious to me that many of them had intimate knowledge of the lore. Even if women may never outnumber men at Warhammer 40,000 events, I still believe more could be done to encourage female participation.
All GW, like any company, can do is take steps to ensure their core offering has as broad an appeal as possible.
And for a long time, GW presented as a white, typically middle class, male hobby. The characters on book covers were near universally white males. The example models in Codexes, Army Books and White Dwarf were near exclusively painted as Caucasian.
Intended or not, that does send a message regarding your intended audience.
In recent years, we’ve seen a concerted effort to change that. Greater variety of ethnicities in art and model paint jobs*, male and female characters on book covers and as lead characters in fiction.
Does that therefore mean there’s now a societally representative mix of gamers? I dunno. And it ain’t necessarily so. But what it has done is allow a wide a section of society as possible to see itself as being actively welcome.
And its cost GWnothing. The books and art were gonna be released anyways, being an intrinsic part of the wider hobby. So even if it hasn’t had a particularly dramatic impact in their customer demographic? It’s absolutely a case of “no harm, no foul”.
Now, one could point to their sustained pretty stellar year on year growth as evidence the move to greater diversity has had the intended effect - and we can’t rule that out. But, we don’t have anything like the right information to say for certain. But we absolutely, beyond any shadow of a doubt, no matter how much Weird Internet Men might like to tell their sad little droogs to the contrary? It. Hasn’t. Hurt. Their. Takings.
*thankfully, GW’s face and body sculpts, possibly due to Heroic Scale requiring some level of exaggeration, are pretty ethnically ambiguous. Because even well intentioned attempts to have specific racial facial features can go very racist very quickly, when characterisation turns to caricature.
I remember seeing a lot of complains over the years whenever a non white character appeared in artwork. I've seen the gamut of arguments from the arian eugenic the only surviving 'race' is 'white', to 'well this faction/force is based on this historical thing which was european, so no black kriegers'. and so on.
I recall the dawn of fire cover with the black marine drawing huge amounts of ire in the guise of 'well he can't be because geneseed makes you look like your primarch and guilliman is white'.
But it left quickly and hasn't really popped up in 40k social media since.
And few people would consider other people having black marines preventing me from having fun seriously.
Whilst nobody can be compelled to partake in your hobby, showing a more diverse offering harms nothing - and people are more interested in joining in when they feel welcomed.
JNAProductions wrote: You got proof for that, Hero?
Actual scientific proof that women are inherently (and NOT just socially) predisposed towards not liking 40k as much as men?
First of all: No, there is no explicit study that clearly states who plays 40k for what reasons.
Second: Why would you exclude the social factor? Are we talking about some fictional women who never interact with the current human society until it is time for them to pick a hobby or what? Third: Men and women simply gravitate towards different interests. Things like "military", "action", "gore", "violence", "conflict" are typically more attractive for males. For whatever reason. And all those things are aplenty in Warhammer 40k.
SpaceDenizen wrote: [spoiler]Ultimately, you may well be correct in your assessment of Warhammer 40,000 as a hobby. As a counterpoint, most of people who write, say, Yu-Gi-Oh TCG fanfiction tend to be women and yet when I was a child going to events for game, I remember there being a distinct lack of women playing the game at these events, despite knowing how much fanficiton women write about the game and it was obvious to me that many of them had intimate knowledge of the lore. Even if women may never outnumber men at Warhammer 40,000 events, I still believe more could be done to encourage female participation.
Isn't it actually more of an additional, anecdotal proof for what I said? Only based on your own assesment, it seems that while both genders enjoyed Yu-Gi-Oh, they were interested in very different aspects of it. Playing40k might just be like that. I wouldn't be surprised if - speaking about all current, female 40k enthusiasts - more are into collecting / painting than playing. On Youtube there doesn't seem to be shortage of painting channels run by women, compared to channels with battle reports. At least thats what the Youtube algorithm leads me to believe.
a_typical_hero wrote: Playing40k might just be like that. I wouldn't be surprised if - speaking about all current, female 40k enthusiasts - more are into collecting / painting than playing. On Youtube there doesn't seem to be shortage of painting channels run by women, compared to channels with battle reports. At least thats what the Youtube algorithm leads me to believe.
So what? Even if that would be the case, why would it matter to the issue at hand? Like they still buy the models, so if having female marines would make more people to buy models, even if some of them bough them just to paint, then why does it matter?
And as for "it just is a thing women are not interested in," I think it is probably bollocks. People kept saying the same about D&D and other tabletop RPGs, and that turned out not to be true. Turns out if people feel welcome and represented in the game, they will participate.
See my previous comments about showing inclusivity being a net positive.
Are many women of any age gonna be jazzed by 40K? Who knows.
But, if you show your setting includes them, what harm have you done?
And it is a “By Degrees” change. You can’t just say “this is Minsa Lensk, badass Guardswoman” and then expect every woman who sees it to throw money at you. Nothing works that way.
But it will attract some. Usually nerdy women. Who will have nerdy women friends. Who, like nerdy boys who have nerdy boy friends that discover 40K and GW, those other nerdy girls will be encouraged to see what the fuss is about.
Maybe they’ll get into the full hobby. Maybe they’ll just enjoy the artistic sides of it, or the fiction side of it. GW likely doesn’t care, because however limited their involvement is? That’s still fresh revenue in the till.
And over a few years, it will become Just Another Regular Nerd Thing, as TTRPG and even LARP has become.
Then, looking at GW’s financials over the past what, seven or eight years? It may not be directly responsible, but it’s clearly not hurt it any,
And the funniest thing to me? The absolute futility of Weird Internet Men As Self Appointed Gate Keepers. Because it is absolutely futile. Their echo chambers are not the entirety of the hobby, and absolutely no business is gonna refuse service to someone, just because some smelly little nerk says they shouldn’t be made welcome.
a_typical_hero wrote: Playing40k might just be like that. I wouldn't be surprised if - speaking about all current, female 40k enthusiasts - more are into collecting / painting than playing. On Youtube there doesn't seem to be shortage of painting channels run by women, compared to channels with battle reports. At least thats what the Youtube algorithm leads me to believe.
So what? Even if that would be the case, why would it matter to the issue at hand? Like they still buy the models, so if having female marines would make more people to buy models, even if some of them bough them just to paint, then why does it matter?
Did you actually see that the quoted part was specifically in response to someone else asking why there are only few women shown on pictures from GW? Probably not, since it would answer your question "what it got to do with the topic at hand". Did I say GW should not release FSM because women would only buy them to paint and never play? No, I didn't. Your reply is arguing about something I didn't even write.
And as for "it just is a thing women are not interested in," I think it is probably bollocks. People kept saying the same about D&D and other tabletop RPGs, and that turned out not to be true. Turns out if people feel welcome and represented in the game, they will participate.
You are welcome to your opinion, though I would challenge you to prove the surge in female D&D players being due to representation rather than general popularity in pop culture. As far as I know, you could create a female hero ever since first edition, after all. Statistics show a 60:40 ratio for male and female players, just fyi.
a_typical_hero wrote: Playing40k might just be like that. I wouldn't be surprised if - speaking about all current, female 40k enthusiasts - more are into collecting / painting than playing. On Youtube there doesn't seem to be shortage of painting channels run by women, compared to channels with battle reports. At least thats what the Youtube algorithm leads me to believe.
So what? Even if that would be the case, why would it matter to the issue at hand? Like they still buy the models, so if having female marines would make more people to buy models, even if some of them bough them just to paint, then why does it matter?
Did you actually see that the quoted part was specifically in response to someone else asking why there are only few women shown on pictures from GW? Probably not, since it would answer your question "what it got to do with the topic at hand". Did I say GW should not release FSM because women would only buy them to paint and never play? No, I didn't. Your reply is arguing about something I didn't even write.
And as for "it just is a thing women are not interested in," I think it is probably bollocks. People kept saying the same about D&D and other tabletop RPGs, and that turned out not to be true. Turns out if people feel welcome and represented in the game, they will participate.
You are welcome to your opinion, though I would challenge you to proof the surge in female D&D players being due to representation rather than general popularity in pop culture. As far as I know, you could create a female hero ever since first edition, after all. Statistics show a 60:40 ratio for male and female players, just fyi.
Women not participating in these hobby’s could be for a number of factors, from being pushed out or neglected as a market.
But a significant reason could be financial, in a lot of countries women have only had control of their own financial control for a two generations now.
The bank I use here only removed men from women’s accounts in 2011 as software was updated, with software often before then assuming that the men on the account where in control.
It’s similar to gaming, I grow up being told constantly by boys that we don’t play video games, now women and girls are a growing market for video games.
So an expensive and time consuming hobby would probably take a long time to even out naturally.
More men probably pass on there hobby to friends and family, why only now are women able to do that.
For representation it’s both, as women get into the hobby they want to be able to create and use characters as well as see better representation they find interesting.
As for marines, I actually prefer them staying male only. But I think that’s an issue as they are more and more being represented as heroic, rather than tragic and quite a dark creation. To much a power fantasy over the themes I think make 40K interesting. So you end up with a shiny these are the heroes faction, and if you want to play that you got little choice.
This also leads to much of every other faction being difficult to do a similar thing with, and all Female craftworld army is doable. But you ether skip a lot of minis or say some are female,
Tau also, but it’s annoying having to effectively say constantly since people assume your characters are male, as it’s just taken as default.
A lot of factions fall into this, options that should be available are not.
Sisters of battle are hard , or a lot of work to do other themes. Sisters of silence are kinda just in need of some love.
This is why Tyranids are best.
Really I just think it’s that so much of its neglect being reflected in what some people want.
English is tough, but hopefully I got some of my thoughts down well.
If I can add a small personal view, the two things that my wife dislikes about 40K (and she likes fantasy, sci-fi and board gaming in other areas), is that the Space Marines are boys only, and that the female faction are BDSM nuns.
Whilst nobody can be compelled to partake in your hobby, showing a more diverse offering harms nothing - and people are more interested in joining in when they feel welcomed.
What is added though as you already can kitbash female heads on spacemarines, or just buy the (again superior) custodes or sororitas.
Why do existing armies (and lore) need to be changed, what about the people who feel unwelcome or estranged by that?, it looks to me its always one way, like with this thread existing, I make one post and am already called a troll just for my opinion worded respectfully, go figure.
Can you imagine people requesting male sororitas and going ape the moment there is someone stating "but that breaks the lore and I like the lore".. it's the exact same thing.
Cap'n Facebeard wrote: If I can add a small personal view, the two things that my wife dislikes about 40K (and she likes fantasy, sci-fi and board gaming in other areas), is that the Space Marines are boys only, and that the female faction are BDSM nuns.
For her, that ruins the whole universe.
Spacemarines are more bdsm than the adeptus sororitas actually, type/copypaste "is it painful to become a spacemarine" into google.
As it stands background wise, Astartes and Sororitas are mono-gendered for purely background reasons.
I’ve already explored in this thread that there are various plausible ways to alter it for Astartes. Very brief recap? Loss of Primarchs rendered the Astartes Project a Bodge/Salvage job, which got to “good enough” in time for the warp storms to clear, when it was off to the races.
Therefore, Astartes were never a finished project, or even a particularly intended one. And the whole chromosomal limitation can comfortably be interpreted not as a conscious decision, but one brought about by time constraints.
Cawl has already developed that project further, producing the superior Primaris Astartes.
Given time and resources? It is possible Cawl could address and work around the chromosomal limitation issue, effectively doubling the pool of potential recruits.
Sororitas? Oh no, it’s a fatal semantic error! The Ecclesiarchy, in the wake of Goge Vandire’s nonsense, was subject to the Decree Passive, preventing them having men under arms. That linguistic oversight essentially greenlit the Daughters of the Emperor to become the Chamber Militant of the Ecclesiarchy, albeit one with greater oversight and lesser independence.
Could the Decree Passive be overturned? Sure. Why has no attempt been made? I’m not entirely sure, but I’d wager it’s the balancing act of “if we kick up a stink, it could go either way, we might end up being able to have Men Under Arms, or the linguistic oversight will be clarified and we’ll lose our own standing army”
Either way? I wouldn’t be terribly mad about either change, and it’s not cool to go making arguments just to support your own position.
But in terms of Imperial Politics “oh yeah, the Chapters can now convert young boys and girls into Astartes” is a lot less troubling to others than the risk of the Ecclesiarchy expanding its own not insignificant armed forces, as the Ecclesiarchy has a far greater impact on day to day Imperial lives than the Astartes (a non-political element) ever have.
The conclusion that the current status quo is fine because you can buy 3rd party bits that will make your models unusable in certain GW stores or to simply play another faction, one which currently has no female presenting head options or the faction that wears sexualised armour and has half naked women as a unit option, is hardly discussing in good faith.
The idea that there would be some sort of mass exodus because suddenly women can be Space Marines leads to the implication that most of the people who collect Space Marines only do so because they are a male only faction which is just absurd.
GW made more female models for Astra Militarum, no exodus despite people whinging online. GW made Sororitas look like soldiers with scars and such instead of pinup posters, no exodus despite people whinging online. GW put a black Space Marine on the cover of a novel series, no exodus despite whinging online. GW makes female custodes canon, no exodus despite people whinging online. Non-binary and trans characters are featured in various novels, no exodus despite whinging online.
It's almost like people don't actually care all that much and changes to the background doesn't really effect anything.
Sororitas are also recruited from the Schola Progenium. That is, they’re the children (and not always Orphans) of Imperial commanders and that, brought up from a young age in an institution which promotes loyalty over all.
The Schola also produces recruits for the Administratum, Commisariat, Storm Trooper corps and for a ‘lucky’ few, Inquisitorial agents. All of whom are famed for their loyalty to the throne.
Other all female armed forces?
Callidus Temple. This is because their signature thing, Polymorphine, works better on female physiology. Exactly why isn’t explained, but like a lot of 40K stuff we just have to accept that’s the case. And given the importance of Assassins completing their missions, whilst men can use Polymorphine, it does make sense to ensure your recruits are as adept with it as possible, hence all female.
Sisters of Silence. Now those fascinate me, because they’re all Blanks, and Blanks are stupendously rare. There also doesn’t seem to be a correlation with sex and chance of being a Blank. And given their crucial role? There must be a reason why they’re all female, when their apparent rarity makes such discrimination daft. I’ve long speculated that’s because they’re not naturally born. That there’s something (cloning, cloneskein aka Kin, something akin to a Primarch and Geneseed) involved. And by culture or technological limitation, it’s only women that are brought in/manufactured.
Leopold Helveine wrote: Why do existing armies (and lore) need to be changed, what about the people who feel unwelcome or estranged by that?
Gert wrote: The idea that there would be some sort of mass exodus because suddenly women can be Space Marines leads to the implication that most of the people who collect Space Marines only do so because they are a male only faction which is just absurd.
And once again, the opinion of someone who is on the "contra" side is grossly misrepresented. For what reason, exactly?
Since it is established background that hasn't been altered for decades, SM being male only is as much part of their identity as Sororitas being female only, Nids being a faceless threat and Orks being green. If you don't put enough effort into changes that feel natural and as improvements to the narrative, you run the risk of alienating your existing fans, undermine the narrative consistency and risk the dilution of themes. Hint: "FSM now exist, go suck it" is not the way to go, but was the initial proposition in the other thread.
Edit:
And I can spin your argument around: Did the inclusion of female Custodes lead to a mass influx of female players into the game? I can tell you that we had 0 new female members for our Warhammer group in the local club ever since the Custodes dex was released. So if it doesn't lead to the desired outcome, why bother?
Gert wrote: It's almost like people don't actually care all that much and changes to the background doesn't really effect anything.
This is true until it isn't. While not directly a retcon, just look at what happened to the fanbases of Star Wars and Game of Thrones, when episodes 7-9 and the final season respectively went into story directions that didn't resonate at all with the core audience.
Please, then: enlighten us as to how GW saying, "Cawl was able to figure out how make girl Marines so that Chapters could double their recruiting pool in the face high attrition" would offend you. It's not a retcon like it was with the Custodes.
Well, the Star Wars sequels brought in a cumulative $4,400,000,000 at the box office alone. With who knows how much on home media and merch (with merch long since being the real power behind the Star Wars throne).
So not the disaster many say. Like….at all. By any metric they were very successful and lucrative movies.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Well, the Star Wars sequels brought in a cumulative $4,400,000,000 at the box office alone. With who knows how much on home media and merch (with merch long since being the real power behind the Star Wars throne).
So not the disaster many say. Like….at all. By any metric they were very successful and lucrative movies.
It's funny you say merch because it's demonstrated quite strongly that the movie merch sales for the sequels sold very, very poorly in comparison to the toys and other tie-in promotionals that were sold for the original trilogy or prequel trilogy, even for stuff that is released long after the movies were made. Lots of those toys left in the aisle that were quickly marked down given lack of sales and you can't forget the fact that there's so few spin off sequel stuff that they were able to create compared to the abundance of merch that was made for clone wars (especially since the Resistance TV series was so short lived and almost universally dismissed by the larger fandom).
No one cares about having a General Hux or Snoke figure compared to a General Grievous or Maul, and I would say one of the sequel's greatest failures is creating meaningful or distinct villains that didn't harken back to a previous design (Kylo Ren being bargain bin Vader and literally bringing back Palpatine in wheelchair mode for the final movie).
The box office for the sequel trilogy comes from the sheer inertia of the dearth of mainline SW content that drove people to see what the next trilogy was a bout, and given how poorly received recent SW D+ offerings have been despite Disney apologists, it's pretty apparent that if they did release another movie trilogy it would not fare very well now that the cat's been out of the bag, both for the quality of the recent releases and the oversaturation of poor SW content. Otherwise Disney would have already followed through on all the supposed major movie trilogies that were should have come out by now for people like Rian Johnson, Benioff and Weiss, and so many other directors that were told they would get to set up movies.
It's why the main thing that's been able to sell well at all and Disney has been crazy in trying to shoe-horn him into everything is Baby Yoda/Mando, that was the initial sleeper hit that they weren't expecting to sell like gangbusters and because of that they ruined the whole plotline of the 2nd season of Mandalorian just to bring him back for the 3rd season because he's like their main money maker for merch.
Like let's be real, I highly doubt you have multiple merch of Rose Tico and Maz Kanata in your closet.
Manfred von Drakken wrote: Please, then: enlighten us as to how GW saying, "Cawl was able to figure out how make girl Marines so that Chapters could double their recruiting pool in the face high attrition" would offend you. It's not a retcon like it was with the Custodes.
It's okay - I'll wait.
It wouldn't. I even proposed this myself as a possible angle to introduce the change. But GW didn't when Primaris and Cawl were revealed. If they now said "btw. we nearly forgot to mention it, but Cawl also fixed the issue that geneseed was only compatible with boys" it would feel cheap to me. Just as the Custodes change feels cheap.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Well, the Star Wars sequels brought in a cumulative $4,400,000,000 at the box office alone. With who knows how much on home media and merch (with merch long since being the real power behind the Star Wars throne).
So not the disaster many say. Like….at all. By any metric they were very successful and lucrative movies.
I fully expected this reply when I decided to mention Star Wars. Yes, Disney was successful with it, despite producing three very mediocre to bad stories. The numbers for "The Force Awakens" are likely inflated though, since it was the first Star Wars movie after 10 years, while both "The Last Jedi" and "The Rise of Skywalker" made ~50% less at the worldwide box office already, showing a constant negative trend. I bet even Game of Thrones was still lucrative for Sky or whoever produced it. But I have yet to find a person in real life who is happy with how the legacy characters were portrayed, first and foremost Luke. Personal opinion that I can't back up with any statistics: SW lost its magic. It went from "I hope they make another movie someday, SW is so cool" to "they just announced another SW, who cares". <- I feel this borders on being off-topic, so if you want to continue talking about SW, feel free to write me a PM.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: As said, if such a change came, I’d want some background to go with it, because I’m a right slag for background. And I reserve the right to be disappointed in such potential background if it’s a bit ropey. But even if it is “oh actually they’ve always taken both sexes as recruits now”? Teddy isn’t gonna be launched from my pram.
Given the whole Primaris thing, I can't imagine the background would be good...
We had gamer outrage for a month or two... then most everyone has moved on.
I think there is a cultural thing as well. I have had yank friends tell me I can't understand the depth of feeing over woke/trans/feminist/drag/whatever issues in the US. While the last government in the UK did its best to highlight those issues it never took off like it did over there. And most of the efforts in the UK were laughable. I still remember the attempt to import anger about men in drag, only for Paul Grady (a famous entertainer who liked drag and animals) to die and the various media outlets realise they had to pick a different topic to bash people with.
In retrospect, I don't believe I should have put in my thoughts as this issue affects women more than me, we should be seeking their opinions on the material.
And that is an odd one. Yes of course we should - but this is a non essential product. You sell it by making people want it. So if they don't currently want it, you won't get good engagement. How do you make them want it when it is aimed at boys? Are you confident enough salemen to sell it as is (not that much luck), or to sell it if you change it?
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Hellebore wrote: What boggles my mind the most about this whole thing is that there are people who absolutely straighfaced seriously tie their enjoyment of marines with the explicit absence of women.
Given they are aimed at adolescent boys, adding in females to a force makes the writing harder, harder to read for some young men and no doubt resulting in things like space marine romances. Now that would undoubtedly sell - hell I am sure same sex space marine romance comics would sell in some countries - but would it detract from core sales and appeal?
In a real world aside for a moment allowing women into the armed forces both changed those services but also changed their relationship with wider society.
a_typical_hero wrote: I fully expected this reply when I decided to mention Star Wars. Yes, Disney was successful with it, despite producing three very mediocre to bad stories. The numbers for "The Force Awakens" are likely inflated though, since it was the first Star Wars movie after 10 years, while both "The Last Jedi" and "The Rise of Skywalker" made ~50% less at the worldwide box office already, showing a constant negative trend. I bet even Game of Thrones was still lucrative for Sky or whoever produced it. But I have yet to find a person in real life who is happy with how the legacy characters were portrayed, first and foremost Luke. Personal opinion that I can't back up with any statistics: SW lost its magic. It went from "I hope they make another movie someday, SW is so cool" to "they just announced another SW, who cares". <- I feel this borders on being off-topic, so if you want to continue talking about SW, feel free to write me a PM.
What I find hilarious is that this almost exactly describes the situation and my personal feelings with the prequel trilogy. Yes, the Disney trilogy is bad, but it didn't "ruin Star Wars," Lucas already did that himself. I have literally never been as disappointed with a film than I was with Phantom Menace. At least the dialogue and acting in the Disney trilogy is not actively painful to watch most of the time, even though the plot makes no sense whatsoever.
And to get back to 40K, I think GW already ruined the lore by bringing back the loyalist primarchs. The setting has already been changed in far more fundamental and theme-destroying way than adding female marines ever could. So let's at least change the setting in positive way then!
Third: Men and women simply gravitate towards different interests. Things like "military", "action", "gore", "violence", "conflict" are typically more attractive for males. For whatever reason. And all those things are aplenty in Warhammer 40k.
I do love to add that in the history of wargaming in the Victorian period it was popular amongst both men and women in the middle classes. Now why people do things in whatever period is interesting, and no doubt here the UK being a militaristic empire played a part. Post WW1 though women wargames disappeared. And has barely recovered. I tried to get my daughter into wargaming (the professional planning/testing/training serial stuff) as companies like Rand will hire women on the spot with the basics (Kings do a wargaming masters for example) already learnt as existing gamers think in very similar ways and that is terrible for design and running serials.
a_typical_hero wrote: I fully expected this reply when I decided to mention Star Wars. Yes, Disney was successful with it, despite producing three very mediocre to bad stories. The numbers for "The Force Awakens" are likely inflated though, since it was the first Star Wars movie after 10 years, while both "The Last Jedi" and "The Rise of Skywalker" made ~50% less at the worldwide box office already, showing a constant negative trend. I bet even Game of Thrones was still lucrative for Sky or whoever produced it. But I have yet to find a person in real life who is happy with how the legacy characters were portrayed, first and foremost Luke. Personal opinion that I can't back up with any statistics: SW lost its magic. It went from "I hope they make another movie someday, SW is so cool" to "they just announced another SW, who cares". <- I feel this borders on being off-topic, so if you want to continue talking about SW, feel free to write me a PM.
What I find hilarious is that this almost exactly describes the situation and my personal feelings with the prequel trilogy. Yes, the Disney trilogy is bad, but it didn't "ruin Star Wars," Lucas already did that himself. I have literally never been as disappointed with a film than I was with Phantom Menace. At least the dialogue and acting in the Disney trilogy is not actively painful to watch most of the time, even though the plot makes no sense whatsoever.
And to get back to 40K, I think GW already ruined the lore by bringing back the loyalist primarchs. The setting has already been changed in far more fundamental and theme-destroying way than adding female marines ever could. So let's at least change the setting in positive way then!
Also, Disney made The Mandalorian and from that Grogu (baby yoda) which is just a license to print money from merchandise.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: As said, if such a change came, I’d want some background to go with it, because I’m a right slag for background. And I reserve the right to be disappointed in such potential background if it’s a bit ropey. But even if it is “oh actually they’ve always taken both sexes as recruits now”? Teddy isn’t gonna be launched from my pram.
Given the whole Primaris thing, I can't imagine the background would be good...
Oh no dear reader, an evil chaos fleet just plopped out of a warp rift in segmentum solar and is currently nearing Terra. And while our brave defenders are boltering as hard as they can, they may not be able to bolter hard enough! Oh the humanity!
But wait, what's that? The ground on Venus erupts in a furious warcry, reopening a long-forgotten cave. Forth springs Femisarius Cawl, Belisarius' twin sister thought dead for 10000 years, with a band of heroic Femarines following in her wake...
Whilst nobody can be compelled to partake in your hobby, showing a more diverse offering harms nothing - and people are more interested in joining in when they feel welcomed.
What is added though as you already can kitbash female heads on spacemarines, or just buy the (again superior) custodes or sororitas.
"Buy third party kits and deal with people screaming about how their army is non-canon and heresy, or play a completely different faction which doesn't have what you want?" Not good enough.
Imagine if someone said "You want to play a viking themed guardsmen army? Well, too bad, go play Space Wolves".
Why do existing armies (and lore) need to be changed, what about the people who feel unwelcome or estranged by that?
Lore is constantly changed. Nearly all army ranges have been changed in some way. That doesn't mean *your* models need to be changed in any way, like how someone with 2nd ed squatmarines needs to go out and buy new ones.
I make one post and am already called a troll just for my opinion worded respectfully, go figure.
You weren't called a troll. You were trolling and arguing in bad faith, like your comment below:
Spacemarines are more bdsm than the adeptus sororitas actually, type/copypaste "is it painful to become a spacemarine" into google.
That's... that's not how BDSM works, and entirely misses the very obvious aesthetic leanings that elements of the Sisters have which are completely absent in the Space Marine range.
You were warned already: quit your trolling.
Mlea79 wrote:Removed.
Hi. I'm non-binary, and I think those fumes have gone to your head. At least, I'm going to assume that's why you're making clearly bad faith arguments, and not because you're bigoted.
This is your opportunity to correct yourself and your absurd statement, and engage with respect for other forum members.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: it does make sense to ensure your recruits are as adept with it as possible, hence all female / And by culture or technological limitation, it’s only women that are brought in/manufactured.
That is the current space marine lore, yes.
With the talk of head swaps i'd be curious to see the results of a poll on female representation vs feminine representation. Like the unisex Skitarii there is no particular reason why a female space marine would look any different to a male one beneath the armour and gene-editing.
If GW went down the old dwarf path of 'half of them are already female, beards and all' would that be enough for people, if not why not?
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: it does make sense to ensure your recruits are as adept with it as possible, hence all female / And by culture or technological limitation, it’s only women that are brought in/manufactured.
That is the current space marine lore, yes.
With the talk of head swaps i'd be curious to see the results of a poll on female representation vs feminine representation. Like the unisex Skitarii there is no particular reason why a female space marine would look any different to a male one beneath the armour and gene-editing.
If GW went down the old dwarf path of 'half of them are already female, beards and all' would that be enough for people, if not why not?
I'd prefer an upgrade sprue of more feminine heads and for future Marine kits to have an equal mix of male and female unhelmeted heads, in addition to the lore change.
Admittedly, I do not know how hard it would be to sculpt and convey that at the Warhammer scale. I assume it's possible, but I'm not super well-versed in that area of the hobby.
I'd love to see your explanation for this comment.
A.T. wrote:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: it does make sense to ensure your recruits are as adept with it as possible, hence all female / And by culture or technological limitation, it’s only women that are brought in/manufactured.
That is the current space marine lore, yes.
With the talk of head swaps i'd be curious to see the results of a poll on female representation vs feminine representation. Like the unisex Skitarii there is no particular reason why a female space marine would look any different to a male one beneath the armour and gene-editing.
If GW went down the old dwarf path of 'half of them are already female, beards and all' would that be enough for people, if not why not?
I strongly agree with this, actually! Beneath the armour and helmet, a Space Marine is a Space Marine, regardless of if they were an infant boy or girl. It's when the helmet comes off that we can question the gendered presentation of Astartes.
Here's where I stand:
Either we lean into the "Space Marines are inhuman and barely recognisable, having been stripped of their humanity and now are only killing machines" approach (which results in Space Marine heads needing to be remastered to look brutishly inhuman and none of the "strong jawed, handsome male hero" faces that we currently have, which result in a gendered appearance)
or
We can keep the "strong jawed handsome male hero" heads that we already have, and supplement that with "strong jawed, handsome female hero" heads - very much the same sort of roided up brutish and aggressive faces, just with a more fem slant. We already see this with Stormcast models.
But it really is just a headswap - we don't need slimmer armour plates or different breastplates - and beneath any helmeted model could be either.
Either those, OR massively and retroactively depopularise Astartes, going back decades. But that's simply so unrealistic as to not be a productive answer for this topic.
shortymcnostrill wrote: Oh no dear reader, an evil chaos fleet just plopped out of a warp rift in segmentum solar and is currently nearing Terra. And while our brave defenders are boltering as hard as they can, they may not be able to bolter hard enough! Oh the humanity!
But wait, what's that? The ground on Venus erupts in a furious warcry, reopening a long-forgotten cave. Forth springs Femisarius Cawl, Belisarius' twin sister thought dead for 10000 years, with a band of heroic Femarines following in her wake...
That looks about right. But surely that plot should be covered by an NDA? GW won't want it socialised this early!
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A.T. wrote: With the talk of head swaps i'd be curious to see the results of a poll on female representation vs feminine representation. Like the unisex Skitarii there is no particular reason why a female space marine would look any different to a male one beneath the armour and gene-editing.
If GW went down the old dwarf path of 'half of them are already female, beards and all' would that be enough for people, if not why not?
Its a good one - SOBs can look female but after extreme conditioning, which as many have pointed out means they lose many of the stereotyped looks of women in fantasy. Not least the sort of damage and wear your body receives as a front line soldier is considered a masculine in how it looks, but the women I know who did multiple hard tours in Afghanistan with more time in contact than most male soldiers of the previous four decades, are grappling with the same issues and the same visible toll.
Throw in extensive gene editing, increasing height by 15-20%, body mass by considerably more, thickening bones, etc etc and humans tend to look very similar. If GW tomorrow said, you know they take both sexes for selection and alter them both ending up in this, that is going to be quite credible. And I think if Astartes are still around in 20 years that generation of customers with the advances in gender reassignment that will take place will consider it perfectly plausible for little girls and boys to go in one end and identical transhumans come out the other.
Indeed looking back its surprising the writers didn't propose that in the 80's as a further dose of punk gothic horror.
In fact I think that is going to be my headcannon going forward.
Either we lean into the "Space Marines are inhuman and barely recognisable, having been stripped of their humanity and now are only killing machines" approach (which results in Space Marine heads needing to be remastered to look brutishly inhuman and none of the "strong jawed, handsome male hero" faces that we currently have, which result in a gendered appearance)
Sgt_Smudge wrote: and none of the "strong jawed, handsome male hero" faces that we currently have
eh... handsome?
I suppose it's a matter of what is and isn't considered attractive in men and women but the primaris heads (pictured) are lantern jawed slabheads.
Pretty much all of the replacement 'female space marine' heads are basically escher heads with more undercuts. Feminine but human, no hint of the muscle or bone growth or testosterone poisoning of an astartes.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: it does make sense to ensure your recruits are as adept with it as possible, hence all female / And by culture or technological limitation, it’s only women that are brought in/manufactured.
That is the current space marine lore, yes.
With the talk of head swaps i'd be curious to see the results of a poll on female representation vs feminine representation. Like the unisex Skitarii there is no particular reason why a female space marine would look any different to a male one beneath the armour and gene-editing.
If GW went down the old dwarf path of 'half of them are already female, beards and all' would that be enough for people, if not why not?
That brings us back to MDG’s “Orks are gender neutral, actually” argument that pretends orks don’t add to the presentation of the game as a sausage fest despite being sculpted to look like sausage. If a gamer has to be two levels into the weeds of the lore in order to know the burly beefcake is actually inclusivity pie, then the game is sending mixed messages at best to prospective and casual gamers.
On the model bonces? They don’t quite match the background description, where they’re described as closer to Robert Z’Dar, to offer a real world analogy.
Recognisably human, but of oddly exaggerated, slightly unnatural (but not grotesque or necessarily unattractive) looking, features.
What I find hilarious is that this almost exactly describes the situation and my personal feelings with the prequel trilogy. Yes, the Disney trilogy is bad, but it didn't "ruin Star Wars," Lucas already did that himself. I have literally never been as disappointed with a film than I was with Phantom Menace. At least the dialogue and acting in the Disney trilogy is not actively painful to watch most of the time, even though the plot makes no sense whatsoever.
There's a generational component to this. Guys younger than I am moan about how Disney ruined SW in the 2010s. I counter that it was ruined in 1999 by Lucas himself. To which they reply, "no way!", because that's when they started with SW.
What I find hilarious is that this almost exactly describes the situation and my personal feelings with the prequel trilogy. Yes, the Disney trilogy is bad, but it didn't "ruin Star Wars," Lucas already did that himself. I have literally never been as disappointed with a film than I was with Phantom Menace. At least the dialogue and acting in the Disney trilogy is not actively painful to watch most of the time, even though the plot makes no sense whatsoever.
There's a generational component to this. Guys younger than I am moan about how Disney ruined SW in the 2010s. I counter that it was ruined in 1999 by Lucas himself. To which they reply, "no way!", because that's when they started with SW.
Also, those who say the sequels, and even prequels, are bad movies need to watch Actually Bad Movies.
Disappointing I will happily accept. But bad? Objectively not even close.
Hard Ticket To Hawaii? That is an objectively BAD movie.
The Room? That is an objectively BAD movie.
Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things? That is an objectively BAD movie.
Live a little, watch some abject crap. Gain better perspective. Learn the merely disappointing from the objectively bloody awful.
What I find hilarious is that this almost exactly describes the situation and my personal feelings with the prequel trilogy. Yes, the Disney trilogy is bad, but it didn't "ruin Star Wars," Lucas already did that himself. I have literally never been as disappointed with a film than I was with Phantom Menace. At least the dialogue and acting in the Disney trilogy is not actively painful to watch most of the time, even though the plot makes no sense whatsoever.
There's a generational component to this. Guys younger than I am moan about how Disney ruined SW in the 2010s. I counter that it was ruined in 1999 by Lucas himself. To which they reply, "no way!", because that's when they started with SW.
Also, those who say the sequels, and even prequels, are bad movies need to watch Actually Bad Movies.
Disappointing I will happily accept. But bad? Objectively not even close.
Hard Ticket To Hawaii? That is an objectively BAD movie.
The Room? That is an objectively BAD movie.
Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things? That is an objectively BAD movie.
Live a little, watch some abject crap. Gain better perspective. Learn the merely disappointing from the objectively bloody awful.
I still contend that gremlins 2 is superior to gremlins 1, and that ghostbusters 2 was a fine movie.
Before sliding off on a tangent, I'd like to attach one bit to that tangent.
Remember the outrage over female stormtroopers in the new movies?
Did everyone throw their Star Wars merchandise into a bonfire and quit loving their franchise?
Nope. It will be the same here. A little grumbling from a minority of the fanbase, I'll get some new models to paint up, swap a head onto my Castigator pilot, and then we can all the enjoy the game we love....
What I find hilarious is that this almost exactly describes the situation and my personal feelings with the prequel trilogy. Yes, the Disney trilogy is bad, but it didn't "ruin Star Wars," Lucas already did that himself. I have literally never been as disappointed with a film than I was with Phantom Menace. At least the dialogue and acting in the Disney trilogy is not actively painful to watch most of the time, even though the plot makes no sense whatsoever.
There's a generational component to this. Guys younger than I am moan about how Disney ruined SW in the 2010s. I counter that it was ruined in 1999 by Lucas himself. To which they reply, "no way!", because that's when they started with SW.
Also, those who say the sequels, and even prequels, are bad movies need to watch Actually Bad Movies.
Disappointing I will happily accept. But bad? Objectively not even close.
Hard Ticket To Hawaii? That is an objectively BAD movie.
The Room? That is an objectively BAD movie.
Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things? That is an objectively BAD movie.
Live a little, watch some abject crap. Gain better perspective. Learn the merely disappointing from the objectively bloody awful.
I still contend that gremlins 2 is superior to gremlins 1, and that ghostbusters 2 was a fine movie.
Hey hey hey! Whooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaa there Pedro!
Who said Gremlins 2 and Ghostbusters 2 are cack?
You point them out to me, and I’ll bash ‘em.
I even enjoyed Ghostbusters 2016. Granted it’s not a great Ghosbusters film, but as a comedy it’s like, totally fine.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Before sliding off on a tangent, I'd like to attach one bit to that tangent.
Remember the outrage over female stormtroopers in the new movies?
Did everyone throw their Star Wars merchandise into a bonfire and quit loving their franchise?
Nope. It will be the same here. A little grumbling from a minority of the fanbase, I'll get some new models to paint up, swap a head onto my Castigator pilot, and then we can all the enjoy the game we love....
And hopefully get some new players.
Were stormtroopers ever explicitly all male?
The only limitation I know of was that they typically weren't short, lol.
. . .
I'd love to engage more with this thread but I'm taking the day off, holiday and all.
What I find hilarious is that this almost exactly describes the situation and my personal feelings with the prequel trilogy. Yes, the Disney trilogy is bad, but it didn't "ruin Star Wars," Lucas already did that himself. I have literally never been as disappointed with a film than I was with Phantom Menace. At least the dialogue and acting in the Disney trilogy is not actively painful to watch most of the time, even though the plot makes no sense whatsoever.
There's a generational component to this. Guys younger than I am moan about how Disney ruined SW in the 2010s. I counter that it was ruined in 1999 by Lucas himself. To which they reply, "no way!", because that's when they started with SW.
Oh it gets much further back than that, to the very original SW fans Lucas ruined it in 1983.
What I find hilarious is that this almost exactly describes the situation and my personal feelings with the prequel trilogy. Yes, the Disney trilogy is bad, but it didn't "ruin Star Wars," Lucas already did that himself. I have literally never been as disappointed with a film than I was with Phantom Menace. At least the dialogue and acting in the Disney trilogy is not actively painful to watch most of the time, even though the plot makes no sense whatsoever.
There's a generational component to this. Guys younger than I am moan about how Disney ruined SW in the 2010s. I counter that it was ruined in 1999 by Lucas himself. To which they reply, "no way!", because that's when they started with SW.
Oh it gets much further back than that, to the very original SW fans Lucas ruined it in 1983.
What I find hilarious is that this almost exactly describes the situation and my personal feelings with the prequel trilogy. Yes, the Disney trilogy is bad, but it didn't "ruin Star Wars," Lucas already did that himself. I have literally never been as disappointed with a film than I was with Phantom Menace. At least the dialogue and acting in the Disney trilogy is not actively painful to watch most of the time, even though the plot makes no sense whatsoever.
There's a generational component to this. Guys younger than I am moan about how Disney ruined SW in the 2010s. I counter that it was ruined in 1999 by Lucas himself. To which they reply, "no way!", because that's when they started with SW.
Oh it gets much further back than that, to the very original SW fans Lucas ruined it in 1983.
Not 1978, with the Holiday Special?
You could even argue 1977. Hard to ruin what doesn't exist.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: it does make sense to ensure your recruits are as adept with it as possible, hence all female / And by culture or technological limitation, it’s only women that are brought in/manufactured.
That is the current space marine lore, yes.
With the talk of head swaps i'd be curious to see the results of a poll on female representation vs feminine representation. Like the unisex Skitarii there is no particular reason why a female space marine would look any different to a male one beneath the armour and gene-editing.
If GW went down the old dwarf path of 'half of them are already female, beards and all' would that be enough for people, if not why not?
I'd prefer an upgrade sprue of more feminine heads and for future Marine kits to have an equal mix of male and female unhelmeted heads, in addition to the lore change.
Admittedly, I do not know how hard it would be to sculpt and convey that at the Warhammer scale. I assume it's possible, but I'm not super well-versed in that area of the hobby.
Though the bigger thing is the lore change.
Two words: Stormcast Eternals.
We know for a fact that GW can do this. And if The Tithes proved anything about the lore, it's that a fully-armored female Space Marine would be indistinguishable from a male Space Marine. Even if the did make feminine bodies, they could still use the Stormcast as a template for their approach since I wouldn't call what female Stormcast wear 'boobplate' like what the Sisters wear.
We know for a fact that GW can do this. And if The Tithes proved anything about the lore, it's that a fully-armored female Space Marine would be indistinguishable from a male Space Marine. Even if the did make feminine bodies, they could still use the Stormcast as a template for their approach since I wouldn't call what female Stormcast wear 'boobplate' like what the Sisters wear.
I'm not too familiar with AoS, we're the Stormcast originally all male and they were changed to be multi gender, or were the Stormcast male and female when the game began?
Edit: Looking at the Stormcast, you could do female Marines in that style.... just don't let the guys selling Female Chaos Marines (or Female Tau) on Etsy anywhere close to the moulds.
They were all male at first. I don’t remember if there was a lore prohibition against women Stormcast Eternals at first, but there was some resistance when the first female SCE minis released.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: They were all male at first. I don’t remember if there was a lore prohibition against women Stormcast Eternals at first, but there was some resistance when the first female SCE minis released.
And people still play AoS? Did I miss the apocalypse? World still there?
Seems like the Von Drakken solved this.
EDIT: I'm not attempting to be sarcastic or funny. I honestly think that if it's been done for one game and everything is okay, you can do it for another game.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: They were all male at first. I don’t remember if there was a lore prohibition against women Stormcast Eternals at first, but there was some resistance when the first female SCE minis released.
They were also all empty suits of armor at first, so gender/sex didn't mean much.
I don't think there was a whole lot of investment in Stormcast at the time, and I imagine much of the playerbase was still more concerned with the detonation of the previous world/lore etc.
Insectum7 wrote: I don't think there was a whole lot of investment in Stormcast at the time, and I imagine much of the playerbase was still more concerned with the detonation of the previous world/lore etc.
Oh, then just bring back Leman Russ, signal the end times, and poof 11th Edition and all sorts of new stuff in the new continuity.
We can start at any time in the timeline (post heresy of course) and create tons of new stories.
You don't need to shoehorn in any sexes, because everything will be brand new.
EDIT: Now to find some Skaven to blow up the universe.
On Stormcast, I recall they were men and women from the very start but the models were clearly male. Us fans came up with the theories of empty suits, all remade to look like male humans etc. But GW did later release models that were female.
On Space Marine faces they do supposed to have gigantism to some degree. Which thickens facial features. Thick jaws and brows; bigger noses etc.
For what its worth I am fine with female Custodes, but I would prefer Space Marines stay the sole all male faction in the Imperium. I will be fine if the release female space marines well (I have my doubts GW can). I would prefer Space Marines be de-emphasised. At least the first founding chapters. If the home-world is not near the conflict pick another Chapter. I do not want to force others to my preferences, but I do want them heard.
Maybe our patron Saint, Henry Cavill, will change the pov from Marines to Custodes. They are the Imperium's best and brightest. It's time for the Custodes to shine.
Insectum7 wrote: I don't think there was a whole lot of investment in Stormcast at the time, and I imagine much of the playerbase was still more concerned with the detonation of the previous world/lore etc.
Oh, then just bring back Leman Russ, signal the end times, and poof 11th Edition and all sorts of new stuff in the new continuity.
We can start at any time in the timeline (post heresy of course) and create tons of new stories.
You don't need to shoehorn in any sexes, because everything will be brand new.
EDIT: Now to find some Skaven to blow up the universe.
Let's give credit where credit is due. Archaon is responsible for ending the Old World, with a massive last-minute assist from Mannfred von Carstein. The Skaven merely shot down a moon.
Tygre wrote: On Space Marine faces they do supposed to have gigantism to some degree. Which thickens facial features. Thick jaws and brows; bigger noses etc.
It is definitely something missing from all the third party sculpts. Regular 'human' heads - escher with more undercuts.
Manfred von Drakken wrote: Not that I'm trying to kick the hornets' nest, but we've all had a couple of days to cool down.
And after all this, I have to wonder: does anyone actually have a reason not to include female Marines beyond, "...but the lore!"?
Because, let's be honest - the lore is sufficiently malleable that GW could work it in if they wanted to.
The lore is a sufficient reason.
GW had that opportunity with Primaris Marines and decided not to do it.
There really is no reason for FSM's to exist.
That said, put any heads you want on your models that you paid. The stats would likely be the same if FSM's were a thing so you don't need GW to produce them to make your own.
If you want an in-lore reason why? It doubles the potential pool of recruits for space marines, something that the Imperium would literally genocide a planet or 3 to achieve
It doesn't feel like an important part of the lore to me, it's not as relevant as the banning that led to the formation of the Sisters Of Battle for instance. I don't think there was ever any decree in lore, or from GW, that space marines must all be manly men. The lore justification of it being a limitation of the process could be very easily changed - as I've mentioned previously, they have relatively recently changed this already with the introduction of the Primaris marines. There could just be a crisis in space marines recruitment that means they need to look further afield; or some crucial female character (not sure who? Not aware of many) could be grievously wounded and put through the Primaris process as a last-ditch attempt to save her, and what do you know? It works...
What I would say though is that it shouldn't be enforced. Space marine kits should come with enough heads to allow you to field all boys / all girls / all helmets, whichever way you roll.
::eyes the room full of pitchforks and lit torches::
Hear me out. I think I have a nifty way of solving this (the Lore) issue that shows off the stagnation that is the Imperium.
Introduce Female Chaos Space Marines first. And you can do what GW is best at... obfuscation.
DON'T explain it. It just is, put conflicting rumors and snippets of Inquisitorial missives, make it convoluted, add all the Fabius Bile, maybe its this, maybe its that... but don't explain it.
Much like the missing Legions, some mysteries are just fun, and this will keep people guessing for a long time.
GW have proved numerous times over the years that as much as possible grumble about the background being changed, they'll but new models of they're cool.
So all they actually need to do to introduce female marines is release cool models for them. However they choose to work it into the background is largely irrelevant... It's going to get complaints from those who dislike change regardless of how they do it. And then people will buy the cool models, they'll become a standard part of the game, and everyone will move on.
To move this conversation from the same circular arguing - the same arguments have been made and then apparently ignored to be used again (ie the lore is not set in stone and GW changes it whenever so it is NOT a valid argument against FSM).
What thematic marine units would you think could be cool specifically BECAUSE they are identified as female?
ie , beyond the bare minimum 'girls are allowed', what about 'girls elevate the concept'?
ie Space Wolf Valkyrie units, jump pack spear wielding orbital insertion crazies.
The Ultramarine Minervan guard, strategic deployment specialists.
and so on.
I could see the warrior lodges being brotherhoods, but then you have sisterhoods of cool unit ideas as well.
So, personally I'm tired of the same old arguments which boil down to 'i don't like it, and my opinion is what GW should act on, despite how GW treats their own lore (female custodes, retconns galore)' and I'd rather see joyous creativity from people on how women would be represented in marine chapters beyond the bare minimum head swap.
I’m not sure I’d plump for all female Chapters at least at first. Any new Chapter involves senior figures imported from parent Chapters, with “original aspirants” ascending the ranks over decades, as positions uh, “become available”. So to go straight to all-female Chapters wouldn’t work for me, and risks an incel’s fevered imaginations where the women are, at first, necessarily commanded by the men. Let’s just not go there, yeah?
Rather I’d prefer to see Cawl develop the conversion process beyond the Y Chromosome limitation.
That discovery could be based on The Emperor’s original research notes (see earlier about the Astartes project being a salvage bodge job, and never the intended final product)
From there? I don’t think I’d want the models or units to be gendered. I’d want them to be largely indistinguishable in physique, on account of all the extras that go into making any human into an Astartes.
So, I’d be happier with somewhat more feminine unhelmeted noggins being the only distinguishing feature, and the recruits being treated no differently.
I mean, in the world of Dirty Pillows, you need to have colossal norks to require Power Armour to reflect the Devil’s Dumplings (if such a physical feature even developed/survived the conversion process. Because staggering amounts of testosterone and who knows what else).
Let it serve as a reminder that in order to become one of Humanity’s mythical saviours, one must necessarily sacrifice one’s own very humanity.
the point wasn't the gender segregate, but to have martial traditions within the chapters specific to sister/brotherhoods.
So you have 100% integrated chapters, AND separate units with their own martial traditions. There are thematic concepts that are elevated by that, without denying women/men entirely from the army.
We already have fairly set progression from recruitment, through the Scout, Reserve and Battle Companies, with those who survive long enough eventually becoming Veterans.
And along that journey, a given Marine might serve in any number of squads and squad types.
We already have fairly set progression from recruitment, through the Scout, Reserve and Battle Companies, with those who survive long enough eventually becoming Veterans.
And along that journey, a given Marine might serve in any number of squads and squad types.
Keep them all equal grist for the uncaring mill.
I mean that, like so much of GW lore we've just spent the whole thread saying is malleable, is also not true.
GW invented the morkai hunters for space wolves, the tyranid war veterans for the ultramarines. The risen. The sanguinary guard. Every primaris unit that looks nothing like the dev, tac, ass, progression we used to have.
But if it's too difficult to accept, then just make them also integrated but specifically female coded background. in the same way men join the howling banshees despite the specifically female aspect. Valkyrie orbital insertion and minervan strategic guard are cool ideas regardless.
The aesthetic options I see are all based on marine’s most precious commodity: bling. FSM would allow for different robe cuts, traditionally feminine hats, crowns or “hairstyle” adornments, as well as alternative death masks and sculpted cuirasses for Blood Angels.
The units listed are Chapter specific Veteran units, and I see no reason why a a hypothetical female veteran wouldn’t just be accepted into those existing units, or necessarily give rise to new ones.
Basically? My preference is that once you’re a Marine? You’re a Marine. And your progression through the ranks and units is based on merit and experience, regardless of your human origin. That the Chapter and its traditions don’t really care what is or isn’t in your power armour undies, exactly which world or tribe or community you were initially recruited from.
You’re part of the Chapter now, with the same expectations and responsibilities all such members of the “lucky” few have.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Cross posted with Bobtheinqusitor, for clarity.
We already have fairly set progression from recruitment, through the Scout, Reserve and Battle Companies, with those who survive long enough eventually becoming Veterans.
And along that journey, a given Marine might serve in any number of squads and squad types.
Keep them all equal grist for the uncaring mill.
I mean that, like so much of GW lore we've just spent the whole thread saying is malleable, is also not true.
GW invented the morkai hunters for space wolves, the tyranid war veterans for the ultramarines. The risen. The sanguinary guard. Every primaris unit that looks nothing like the dev, tac, ass, progression we used to have.
But if it's too difficult to accept, then just make them also integrated but specifically female coded background. in the same way men join the howling banshees despite the specifically female aspect. Valkyrie orbital insertion and minervan strategic guard are cool ideas regardless.
I'm not firmly opposed to the idea of gender-specific Marine units, but the point is to strive for gender equality in the poster faction of the setting. There are very few - in any, truly - gender-specific units in other mixed-gender factions; I don't see the Adeptus Astartes giving enough of a crap to make an all-girls squad.
Hellebore wrote: To move this conversation from the same circular arguing - the same arguments have been made and then apparently ignored to be used again (ie the lore is not set in stone and GW changes it whenever so it is NOT a valid argument against FSM).
Lore arguments are absolutely valid. Now, absolutely, history has shown that GW doesn't always respect it's own lore, and can treat it poorly, sure. But that doesn't mean it can't be contested. It doesn't matter to some, but it matters to others.
We already have fairly set progression from recruitment, through the Scout, Reserve and Battle Companies, with those who survive long enough eventually becoming Veterans.
And along that journey, a given Marine might serve in any number of squads and squad types.
Keep them all equal grist for the uncaring mill.
I mean that, like so much of GW lore we've just spent the whole thread saying is malleable, is also not true.
GW invented the morkai hunters for space wolves, the tyranid war veterans for the ultramarines. The risen. The sanguinary guard. Every primaris unit that looks nothing like the dev, tac, ass, progression we used to have.
But if it's too difficult to accept, then just make them also integrated but specifically female coded background. in the same way men join the howling banshees despite the specifically female aspect. Valkyrie orbital insertion and minervan strategic guard are cool ideas regardless.
I'm not firmly opposed to the idea of gender-specific Marine units, but the point is to strive for gender equality in the poster faction of the setting. There are very few - in any, truly - gender-specific units in other mixed-gender factions; I don't see the Adeptus Astartes giving enough of a crap to make an all-girls squad.
Yeah I would think making gender specific units would be rather beside the point.
So, I’d be happier with somewhat more feminine unhelmeted noggins being the only distinguishing feature, and the recruits being treated no differently.
I mean, in the world of Dirty Pillows, you need to have colossal norks to require Power Armour to reflect the Devil’s Dumplings (if such a physical feature even developed/survived the conversion process. Because staggering amounts of testosterone and who knows what else).
Let it serve as a reminder that in order to become one of Humanity’s mythical saviours, one must necessarily sacrifice one’s own very humanity.
I agree, I’m not sure they’d even develop them tbh. Aspirants are pre-pubescent (so none prior) and then are exposed to a ton of drugs (in loads of testosterone) that make them grow in pretty templated ways
Secondary characteristics probably not going to develop.
I'm not firmly opposed to the idea of gender-specific Marine units, but the point is to strive for gender equality in the poster faction of the setting. There are very few - in any, truly - gender-specific units in other mixed-gender factions; I don't see the Adeptus Astartes giving enough of a crap to make an all-girls squad.
While marines are unlikely to care in the slightest what is in each others' pants, it's worth remembering that many chapters are very big on maintaining the traditions of their homeworlds. So it wouldn't be at all inconceivable for woman-only warrior groups to emerge in marine chapters where those chapters have a history of such things from before they became marines.
That said, I do agree that it would somewhat undermine the whole idea of introducing women to the marines to then immediately go segregating them into their own formations. I could see it working better to have those warrior traditions carry across, but in a gender-neutral fashion. So, say, Space Wolf Valkeries, based on the tradition of warrior women units, but the marine version would allow any suitable warrior.
Marines are already described as having a slightly unsettling visage. Their facial features oddly exaggerated, not quite in scale with their now massive physiques. This is in contrast to the Primarchs, who are described as all being in-scale.
However, not ugly or necessarily unattractive as such. Just…noticeably Not Human. The sort of unusual it takes you some time to really put your finger on.
I agree with everyone who said that they wouldn't want there to be specific "female marine units" or even female marine appearance apart different heads.
That being said, whilst I would strongly prefer the norm to be full integration, as well as the gender being basically a non-issue, I would not vehemently oppose some specific chapters having different approaches.
I’ll also come on the side of not segregating marines by gender. If there’s a Valkyrie unit, let it be composed of male and female space marines. They should base these units in their inspirations’ martial spirit and combat tradition only, with old gender norms and other trivia being left behind as meaningless.
Hellebore wrote: To move this conversation from the same circular arguing - the same arguments have been made and then apparently ignored to be used again (ie the lore is not set in stone and GW changes it whenever so it is NOT a valid argument against FSM).
Lore arguments are absolutely valid. Now, absolutely, history has shown that GW doesn't always respect it's own lore, and can treat it poorly, sure. But that doesn't mean it can't be contested. It doesn't matter to some, but it matters to others.
I did indeed. Not a fan of the new version at all and wished they hadn't done it, specifically because he'd already had more detail than other primarchs to work with. Many seemed to think that the current image of Russ was the only image though and it was worth making clear that he wasn't always so flanderised.
And while I've got no power to affect the outcome of GW's lore decisions, it's not a problem to express issues with them. However, The change to a character's personality, is not equivalent to an abstract gender segregation and there aren't any morally objectionable arguments to make in defence of Leman Russ' old personality, while far more of the arguments against FSM have been pretty gross (across the community, not specifically in this thread) which makes the whole position pretty questionable. If I was trying to get old LR reinstated and tried to argue that him being a proud rapist, or lauded as a hero for genociding a human planet that was a thinly veiled caricature of arabs/jews or any other minority, then yeah there'd definitely be some squinting askance at that position and how trying to keep that image of him was so important to me...
I have no problem separating two positions as not morally equivalent - personality change and sex segregation, while also recognising that my issues with the current LR are GW's decision and I can't affect the outcome.
My preference for old LR doesn't tell half the population that the most important part of 40k that is used to introduce new players to the world explicitly bans their representation, nor does it brow beat them with it continuously by trying to use fictional justifications to maintain that ban and that somehow the happiness of some male players is tied into their explicit banning from that faction. Should they be allowed to represent their gender in that faction, then they will be causing untold suffering amongst others around them.
People are welcome to hold 'no girls allowed' positions, but they should expect that others may not particularly respect that position. I don't care if no one respects my position that old LR is better than new LR, because it has no affect on me at all. And yet people are very sensitive about the no girls allowed position being respected in a way that they don't feel bad about holding it - please let me enjoy this intrinsically sexist fiction, but don't tell me its sexist or it will ruin it for me - i need the sexism to gain enjoyment from it, but also don't like sexism at all.
A Chapter could be highly conservative, due to centuries if not millennia of Largely Being Left Alone To Their Traditions, with genuinely very minor oversight or accountability.
Some initial resistance to New therefore does make sense. After all, who is this bionic gimboid who just turned up with a bunch of new guys that are apparently part of our Chapter now?
What’s that? A Primarch ordered it? That may as well be, but he’s not our Primarch, is he?
So like Primaris, any initial objection can be framed as them just not being used to taking orders, and being highly suspicious of an outsider fiddling with things, rather than any “but wimmins are weedy and smelly and will want us to decorate the Chapter Keep every six months” type stuff, to take it to an illogical extreme.
I think it's too close to call IMO. I don't really see how it couldn't be framed in a way that wouldn't come across as sexist.
New recruits are female, Chapter doesn't like and makes life difficult for new female recruits. Why are they mad? Oh because it was only men before and tradition is super important?
Nah that's way too similar to how women are treated in the armed forces today.
Manfred von Drakken wrote: And after all this, I have to wonder: does anyone actually have a reason not to include female Marines beyond, "...but the lore!"?
Apart from "...but the lore!" being a darn good reason, there were several people voicing different concerns throughout the thread. Your deliberate exclusion of those arguments doesn't make them invalid.
A Town Called Malus wrote: If you want an in-lore reason why? It doubles the potential pool of recruits for space marines, something that the Imperium would literally genocide a planet or 3 to achieve
Crispy78 wrote: It doesn't feel like an important part of the lore to me, it's not as relevant as the banning that led to the formation of the Sisters Of Battle for instance. I don't think there was ever any decree in lore, or from GW, that space marines must all be manly men. The lore justification of it being a limitation of the process could be very easily changed - as I've mentioned previously, they have relatively recently changed this already with the introduction of the Primaris marines. There could just be a crisis in space marines recruitment that means they need to look further afield; or some crucial female character (not sure who? Not aware of many) could be grievously wounded and put through the Primaris process as a last-ditch attempt to save her, and what do you know? It works...
The chancellor in the novell "The Emperor's Legion" mentions that the Imperium got the capability to create a lot of new chapters, the High Lords just refuse to do so at the moment. At a 99.9% failure rate, a single hive world offering 1000 million candidates would result in 1 million new Scouts. If online sources are to be believed, Necromunda could give 1% of its total population to achieve this number. What's the total population of the Imperium again? Pre-Cawl there were ~1 million loyal Space Marines in the whole galaxy, if I remember correctly.
insaniak wrote: So all they actually need to do to introduce female marines is release cool models for them. However they choose to work it into the background is largely irrelevant... It's going to get complaints from those who dislike change regardless of how they do it lazy changes like the Custodes. And then people will buy the cool models, they'll become a standard part of the game, and everyone will move on.
I corrected that for you.
Hellebore wrote: What thematic marine units would you think could be cool specifically BECAUSE they are identified as female?
I hope that nobody who argued against "male" being a core part of the SM identity thinks that an all "female" squad is a great idea.
Hellebore wrote: What thematic marine units would you think could be cool specifically BECAUSE they are identified as female?
I hope that nobody who argued against "male" being a core part of the SM identity thinks that an all "female" squad is a great idea.
You missed every other comment I made about there also being gendered male units. When there is parity, it's not an issue to have that. Selective quoting is not going to make you look clever.
The other thing that is ignored is that the thread is the bare minimum ask - women in marines. The entire marine aesthetic is heavily masculine (which as the default is ignored until you point it out and then people try to say it's gender neutral), so even if they said 'sure add girls' it would still be, girls can play so long as they look as much like boys as possible. It's not an equivalent showing, it's just 'wear the men's uniform, jobs a goodun' which women in militaries around the world will tell you is not useful. This is of course in no way an argument for boobplate....
But there is more to the discussion than, hey girls can be marines so long as none of the masculine imagery changes. It's just that the concept gets bogged down in whether there should be women at all, it never progresses passed that. Because whenever women do achieve any representation it's always begrudgingly and rarely on their own terms - like being 'let in' means they should be grateful to have any presence and so should be happy with what they get, rather than being equal members with equal say in how things run.
But as usual, the shitfight to get them even in there means that it takes another few decades before the military designs kevlar that fits their bodies, or equipment that fits comfortably.
insaniak wrote: So all they actually need to do to introduce female marines is release cool models for them. However they choose to work it into the background is largely irrelevant... It's going to get complaints from those who dislike change regardless of how they do it lazy changes like the Custodes. And then people will buy the cool models, they'll become a standard part of the game, and everyone will move on.
I corrected that for you.
No, you didn't. You changed it to something completely different to what I was actually saying.
There are a lot of people out there who just dislike change, regardless of how it is executed. They like things the way they are, and the immediate reaction to any change is to dislike it, because it's not what they're used to. And those people tend to be the loudest complainers, from my experience, because change is 'ruining' the thing they like... but that doesn't automatically make change a bad thing.
Manfred von Drakken wrote: And after all this, I have to wonder: does anyone actually have a reason not to include female Marines beyond, "...but the lore!"?
Apart from "...but the lore!" being a darn good reason, there were several people voicing different concerns throughout the thread. Your deliberate exclusion of those arguments don't make them invalid.
A Town Called Malus wrote: If you want an in-lore reason why? It doubles the potential pool of recruits for space marines, something that the Imperium would literally genocide a planet or 3 to achieve
Crispy78 wrote: It doesn't feel like an important part of the lore to me, it's not as relevant as the banning that led to the formation of the Sisters Of Battle for instance. I don't think there was ever any decree in lore, or from GW, that space marines must all be manly men. The lore justification of it being a limitation of the process could be very easily changed - as I've mentioned previously, they have relatively recently changed this already with the introduction of the Primaris marines. There could just be a crisis in space marines recruitment that means they need to look further afield; or some crucial female character (not sure who? Not aware of many) could be grievously wounded and put through the Primaris process as a last-ditch attempt to save her, and what do you know? It works...
The chancellor in the novell "The Emperor's Legion" mentions that the Imperium got the capability to create a lot of new chapters, the High Lords just refuse to do so at the moment. At a 99.9% failure rate, a single hive world offering 1000 million candidates would result in 1 million new Scouts. If online sources are to be believed, Necromunda could give 1% of its total population to achieve this number. What's the total population of the Imperium again? Pre-Cawl there were ~1 million loyal Space Marines in the whole galaxy, if I remember correctly.
insaniak wrote: So all they actually need to do to introduce female marines is release cool models for them. However they choose to work it into the background is largely irrelevant... It's going to get complaints from those who dislike change regardless of how they do it lazy changes like the Custodes. And then people will buy the cool models, they'll become a standard part of the game, and everyone will move on.
I corrected that for you.
Hellebore wrote: What thematic marine units would you think could be cool specifically BECAUSE they are identified as female?
I hope that nobody who argued against "male" being a core part of the SM identity thinks that an all "female" squad is a great idea.
Why is the lore a good reason? It's just hashed out fiction. Or is it a case of "old good new bad?"
Bobthehero wrote: Alright then. The Imperium is now the unequivocally goods guys. Goes against the lore? Why does it matter, it's just hashed out fiction.
Something that goes against the central conceit of the setting is different from something that changes a single faction in a way that is largely irrelevant to their (many) themes.
And you know what? GW could make that change too. It’d radically alter 40k in a way I personally think would be for the worse, but they can do it if they want to.
Bobthehero wrote: Alright then. The Imperium is now the unequivocally goods guys. Goes against the lore? Why does it matter, it's just hashed out fiction.
GW have done a terrible job of making them the bad guys so not sure what your point is. Their massive catalogue of books is nothing but hero power fantasy, good guy guilliman, noble marines etc.
It's bad in name only and there are plenty of pro fasch people out there who unironically consider it good. Which a problem entirely of GW's making because they want to sell the hero fantasy while also getting that edge the darkbad provides, without actually exposing the consequences of that darkbad.
Currently the imperium is a noble hero cosplaying as an edgelord. GW has a long way to go in their fiction if they want to ACTUALLY depict the imperium as bad in a way that any new customer sees understands and accepts. Because they don't currently.
Bobthehero wrote: Alright then. The Imperium is now the unequivocally goods guys. Goes against the lore? Why does it matter, it's just hashed out fiction.
I'm a little puzzled as to what point you thought you were making, here.
What would happen if GW decided to switch the Imperium to being 'unequivocally good' is that some people would hate the change for various reasons, some people would love the change (whether because it's something new, or because they currently dislike the ubiquitous grim-ness of the setting now), and some wouldn't care because they view the background material as nothing more than window dressing to add some colour to a game of toy soldiers and their real focus is on pushing models around the table.
So, pretty much what happens with every other change to the background material. It would make for a very different tone to the setting overall... but the world would keep turning, and within a few months, the majority of the player base would have accepted that this is the way things are now and moved on.
Bobthehero wrote: Alright then. The Imperium is now the unequivocally goods guys. Goes against the lore? Why does it matter, it's just hashed out fiction.
I don’t get what you mean. How does opening up the Astartes to making more children into soldiers make the Imperium good guys? Just because something is “good” for consumers doesn’t make it change the morality of characters in universe.
The Imperium has plenty of evil ideas without borrowing sexism from the real world. Personally, I’d prefer to keep real world bigotries in the real world and have my escapist fantasy Bloodiest Regime Imaginable stick to committing unreal, escapist atrocities.
My point is that if you claim the lore is just hashed out fiction, then you can justify *anything* no matter how much it goes against the lore, at which point, why bother have lore at all?
Bobthehero wrote: My point is that if you claim the lore is just hashed out fiction, then you can justify *anything* no matter how much it goes against the lore, at which point, why bother have lore at all?
I mean…They did do that already. Do you not remember 5th edition?
Do you not remember what happened to the Warhammer World?
I have to admit I find this reasoning amusing, coming from the other side of the issue where GW already irreparably broke the setting for me, rendered its once engrossing lore into He-Man level toy-pushing, and made it crystal clear multiple times that nothing in the setting means anything to those in charge.
The setting is an embarrassment already. Let yourself grieve and move on.
Manfred von Drakken wrote: And after all this, I have to wonder: does anyone actually have a reason not to include female Marines beyond, "...but the lore!"?
Apart from "...but the lore!" being a darn good reason, there were several people voicing different concerns throughout the thread. Your deliberate exclusion of those arguments don't make them invalid.
We've established that the lore is malleable, so it's not exactly a rock-solid argument. It's hard for players to hold the lore as sacrosanct when GW doesn't.
And every other 'argument' against female Marines has basically boiled down to, 'girls have cooties'. To me, they all look like a six-year-old boy sitting in his treehouse with a paper hat and stuffed tiger dropping water balloons on the girl from across the street.
Marines not being post-human genhanced monstrosities?
The game being set in raids into the Eye of Terror to collect revenue?
Either the background is all sacrosanct, or it’s all open to change.
Me? I’m not fussed about change myself. I prefer it be developments rather than retcon, but I’m not nailing my colours to the mast on that.
Ideally they'd have started without a bunch of things that would have to be retconned later, really, just add on new things while respecting what is already there.
Bobthehero wrote: My point is that if you claim the lore is just hashed out fiction, then you can justify *anything* no matter how much it goes against the lore, at which point, why bother have lore at all?
The background material serves the same purpose it always has - to provide a setting in which the game exists. It's less that you can justify anything, and more that you don't actually need to.
We're not talking about a religious text handed down from on high. It's a setting for a game of toy soldiers.
Ideally they'd have started without a bunch of things that would have to be retconned later, really, just add on new things while respecting what is already there.
I'm sure the original 40K writers would have loved to know where the game was going to be in 30 years time, but that's not really a realistic expectation. Rogue Trader included rules for creating your own vehicles, because they seriously didn't think they would ever have the budget to make more than a handful of official vehicle kits. Their vision of the game was very firmly grounded in 'what if?' rather than a concrete vision of how the universe could look if they had the resources to do it properly.
The game would be a bare shadow of itself if the studio in the years since had confined themselves to what was already written.
I mean…They did do that already. Do you not remember 5th edition?
Do you not remember what happened to the Warhammer World?
I have to admit I find this reasoning amusing, coming from the other side of the issue where GW already irreparably broke the setting for me, rendered its once engrossing lore into He-Man level toy-pushing, and made it crystal clear multiple times that nothing in the setting means anything to those in charge.
The setting is an embarrassment already. Let yourself grieve and move on.
I started getting more into 40k near the end of 5th, so I never got deeply immerse in the older lore, but someone of the newer stuff is pretty crap, too
The background material serves the same purpose it always has - to provide a setting in which the game exists. It's less that you can justify anything, and more that you don't actually need to.
We're not talking about a religious text handed down from on high. It's a setting for a game of toy soldiers.
The sort of dismissal of the lore leads to the quote above.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: And so adding female Marines wouldn’t be acceptable to you because? Why would that not be respecting what exists already?
Because what currently exists says it can't happen, sure if we handwave that, then it's anything goes. But I don't want the lore to be just handwaved and be malleable to the point where it doesn't matter.
No, the existing lore says the existing conversion process can only be done on male candidates.
I’ve given consistent, in-universe reasons why that status quo is by no means the result of a conscious choice in the creation of the technology. Such as the entire Astartes project being a salvage job without the presence of the Primarchs, which got the Astartes to a “good enough, and now the Warp Storms have cleared, I guess they’ll have to do” state.
They were, canonically, not the intended final product, just the best made of a bad situation.
Given The Emperor had developed predecessors (at least the Thunder Warriors), to pretend he had no intentions, in place of no time, to revisit and rejig is, so far as opinions can be in this situation, just wrong. And we can’t rule out that part of the intention to revisit, revise and perfect would’ve been to sort out the Y Chromosome only issue. Because as the Great Crusade showed? They’d take as many Astartes as each Legion could arm, equip and transport. So limiting it intentionally to around 50% of candidates (the sniffy standards of Chapters clearly not being as much of a concern originally) wouldn’t make sense. Especially as there’s no sign of any limits in rank or service for women elsewhere in the Imperial armed forces. At all.
Because what currently exists says it can't happen, sure if we handwave that, then it's anything goes. But I don't want the lore to be just handwaved and be malleable to the point where it doesn't matter.
You can not want it all you want, but it's going to happen. It's how GW have been developing their franchises for 30 years now. You're apparently coming in halfway through and telling a bunch of people who have been here since the '90s that the way things were when you personally arrived is how they should stay, and they're trying to tell you that this is just how it is, and how it's always been.
The background is malleable, and that's by design. It's how the game grows.
I wouldn't be opposed to it going back to before I arrived, tbh, I firmly think not all change is good, maybe at some point the lore's gonna change to the point where it's not fun anymore, we'll see.
Not all change is good. Thing is, not all the stuff that was there originally was good, either.
Which of it is good and which isn't is very much down to personal preference. I'm not a fan of Primaris marines, or having loyalist Primarchs in 40k. I also wasn't a fan of the bit from the 90s where the Iron Hands are led by a guy with Iron Hands whose name is Iron Man. Some people love both of those things.
Personal dislike is ultimately not the best litmus test for whether or not a change is a good idea. As much as I dislike the Primaris as a thing, for example, I can't deny that they're technically nice models and have added a lot of narrative value to the setting. I can also just choose to not use them if I don't want to, and leave them to those who do...
The brotherhood, self sacrifice and monastic inspiration inherent to the cultural makeup of space marines is exactly what makes them space marines. To remove them from that is to make them no different than other power armored super soldiers from other franchises. The Adeptus Sororiatas is your foil to them. It is all in service to the thematic image of a society built on the bones of outmoded and archaic ways of thinking. "Progress" is at odds with the core themes of the franchise.
"Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods." It kind of spells it out here....
40k is in many ways directly at odds with our sensibilities and moral compass, which has helped to insulate it from some of the broader cultural discourse ongoing in media. Please stop interjecting these issues into a setting that is in its essence diametrically opposed to that kind of discourse.
Bobthehero wrote: I wouldn't be opposed to it going back to before I arrived, tbh, I firmly think not all change is good, maybe at some point the lore's gonna change to the point where it's not fun anymore, we'll see.
That happens to everyone. At some point, some change, you decide the setting has moved away from you. The good news is you’ll still have old codices and BL books to revisit. The bad news is if you stay in TT wargaming at all you’ll have to keep hearing about WH40k and all its eye rolling developments forever.
Sledgehammer wrote: The brotherhood, self sacrifice and monastic inspiration inherent to the cultural makeup of space marines is exactly what makes them space marines. To remove them from that is to make them no different than other power armored super soldiers from other franchises. The Adeptus Sororiatas is your foil to them. It is all in service to the thematic image of a society built on the bones of outmoded and archaic ways of thinking. "Progress" is at odds with the core themes of the franchise.
"Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods." It kind of spells it out here....
40k is in many ways directly at odds with our sensibilities and moral compass, which has helped to insulate it from some of the broader cultural discourse ongoing in media. Please stop interjecting these issues into a setting that is in its essence diametrically opposed to that kind of discourse.
So if sexism is appropriate to the Imperium in 40k, why isn't racism?
Or homophobia?
Or transphobia?
And why is it literally only one organization that excludes women, and not also the High Lords, or the Inquisition, or Guard, or Arbites, or so on and so forth.
Sledgehammer wrote: The brotherhood, self sacrifice and monastic inspiration inherent to the cultural makeup of space marines is exactly what makes them space marines.
What exactly about a monastic lifestyle (let's ignore Space Wolves for the moment!) requires adherents to be men?
Are women not capable of self sacrifice?
Can women not share bonds with those they fight with?
None of what you described needs to be inherently masculine, particularly in a setting that doesn't treat men and women any differently to each other anywhere else, other than in one badly dated joke to justify nuns with guns.
40k is in many ways directly at odds with our sensibilities and moral compass, which has helped to insulate it from some of the broader cultural discourse ongoing in media. Please stop interjecting these issues into a setting that is in its essence diametrically opposed to that kind of discourse.
Conversely, it could be argued that maintaining a gender bias into Space Marines when that bias doesn't actually exist in the culture that they represent does more to 'interject these issues' into the setting than allowing women to be Space Marines would.
The Imperium does not have a gender bias. We're shown no other job in the entirety of the Imperium where women are told 'Nope, can't do it. The genitals are not right for this action!' Just Space Marines.
It was not questioned back when the game was first created, because that gender bias did exist in the minds of the people playing the game. But the longer it goes on, and the more women are represented in the rest of the game, the more absurd it gets.
Sledgehammer wrote: The brotherhood, self sacrifice and monastic inspiration inherent to the cultural makeup of space marines is exactly what makes them space marines. To remove them from that is to make them no different than other power armored super soldiers from other franchises. The Adeptus Sororiatas is your foil to them. It is all in service to the thematic image of a society built on the bones of outmoded and archaic ways of thinking. "Progress" is at odds with the core themes of the franchise.
"Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods." It kind of spells it out here....
40k is in many ways directly at odds with our sensibilities and moral compass, which has helped to insulate it from some of the broader cultural discourse ongoing in media. Please stop interjecting these issues into a setting that is in its essence diametrically opposed to that kind of discourse.
So if sexism is appropriate to the Imperium in 40k, why isn't racism? Or homophobia? Or transphobia?
And why is it literally only one organization that excludes women, and not also the High Lords, or the Inquisition, or Guard, or Arbites, or so on and so forth.
Because at their core the space marines are like I just said a brotherly, monastic, religious, military order that evokes the imagery and culture of their predecessors in the real world historical crusades as a means by which to convey those thematic underpinnings.
And racism, sexism, and fear of anything not of the norm is literally the mechanism by which 40k can achieve its satire. In Gaunts Ghosts for instance, Gaunt, is successful DESPITE the imperium. He is a loose cannon that does EVERYTHING outside of the norm, defying all convention. The irony of his success and the critique therein is that, that is the very reason why he is successful. He is not a typical commander, and does not hold the the typical values of his contemporaries, and is thus successful. Ultimately this results in him being a very successful commander and an thus ironic exemplar of the values of the imperium, thereby propagating the bad behavior that persists in the structure around him...
The imperium of man's raison d'être is the horrors of the warp, which they ironically are literally feeding through their refusal to act ethically.
Sledgehammer wrote: The brotherhood, self sacrifice and monastic inspiration inherent to the cultural makeup of space marines is exactly what makes them space marines.
What exactly about a monastic lifestyle (let's ignore Space Wolves for the moment!) requires adherents to be men?
Are women not capable of self sacrifice?
Can women not share bonds with those they fight with?
None of what you described needs to be inherently masculine, particularly in a setting that doesn't treat men and women any differently to each other anywhere else, other than in one badly dated joke to justify nuns with guns.
40k is in many ways directly at odds with our sensibilities and moral compass, which has helped to insulate it from some of the broader cultural discourse ongoing in media. Please stop interjecting these issues into a setting that is in its essence diametrically opposed to that kind of discourse.
Conversely, it could be argued that maintaining a gender bias into Space Marines when that bias doesn't actually exist in the culture that they represent does more to 'interject these issues' into the setting than allowing women to be Space Marines would.
The Imperium does not have a gender bias. We're shown no other job in the entirety of the Imperium where women are told 'Nope, can't do it. The genitals are not right for this action!' Just Space Marines.
It was not questioned back when the game was first created, because that gender bias did exist in the minds of the people playing the game. But the longer it goes on, and the more women are represented in the rest of the game, the more absurd it gets.
I'll quote Insaniak here, because I'd like to hear your answer.
This post puts it significantly better than I did.
Sledgehammer wrote: The brotherhood, self sacrifice and monastic inspiration inherent to the cultural makeup of space marines is exactly what makes them space marines. To remove them from that is to make them no different than other power armored super soldiers from other franchises. The Adeptus Sororiatas is your foil to them. It is all in service to the thematic image of a society built on the bones of outmoded and archaic ways of thinking. "Progress" is at odds with the core themes of the franchise.
"Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods." It kind of spells it out here....
40k is in many ways directly at odds with our sensibilities and moral compass, which has helped to insulate it from some of the broader cultural discourse ongoing in media. Please stop interjecting these issues into a setting that is in its essence diametrically opposed to that kind of discourse.
So if sexism is appropriate to the Imperium in 40k, why isn't racism?
Or homophobia?
Or transphobia?
And why is it literally only one organization that excludes women, and not also the High Lords, or the Inquisition, or Guard, or Arbites, or so on and so forth.
You've literally been told why within 40k lore.
Lore: The geneseed process simply doesn't work on females for some unknown reason.
