Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: The nature of being a Space Marine is to be taken from your family, ideally pre-puberty, subjected to trials very likely to kill you, stuffed full of all sorts of fun new organs, the process of which can kill you, your free will stripped away by multiple forms of indoctrination including Space Magic, and then to eventually die, ideally gloriously, in battle.
They shall be my finest warriors, these men who give of themselves to me. Like clay I shall mould them, and in the furnace of war forge them. They will be of iron will and steely muscle. In great armour shall I clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed. They will be untouched by plague or disease, no sickness will blight them. They will have tactics, strategies and machines so that no foe can best them in battle. They are my bulwark against the Terror. They are the Defenders of Humanity. They are my Space Marines and they shall know no fear." The Emperor of Mankind.
The emperor himself refers to them as men.
So, the Imperium of Man is all-male then?
And what about this blurb, which has been repeated in nearly all 40k media:
"To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark 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."
So, men have it awfully, but not women?
Space Marines appeal to masculine traits and ideals
Such as?
Men can like a thing and have something made for them.
But why does men having something "made" for them mean that there shouldn't be women in it? Why is "male" enjoyment tied to the lack of women in it?
Is Halo not made for men because there are women Spartans?
Is Gears of War not for men, because there are women in it?
Is Call of Duty not for men, because there are women in it?
Other female characters and factions are NOT lesser.
No-one is disagreeing with you on that, or is anyone saying they are (except, they DO have lesser marketing presence and aesthetic options presented to them).
But no less than female space marines will appease your demands? Sounds like you view other options as lesser.
Answer the rest of the comment, please.
Why do you view other means of representation as lesser? Answer please.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: The nature of being a Space Marine is to be taken from your family, ideally pre-puberty, subjected to trials very likely to kill you, stuffed full of all sorts of fun new organs, the process of which can kill you, your free will stripped away by multiple forms of indoctrination including Space Magic, and then to eventually die, ideally gloriously, in battle.
They shall be my finest warriors, these men who give of themselves to me. Like clay I shall mould them, and in the furnace of war forge them. They will be of iron will and steely muscle. In great armour shall I clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed. They will be untouched by plague or disease, no sickness will blight them. They will have tactics, strategies and machines so that no foe can best them in battle. They are my bulwark against the Terror. They are the Defenders of Humanity. They are my Space Marines and they shall know no fear." The Emperor of Mankind.
The emperor himself refers to them as men.
So, the Imperium of Man is all-male then?
And what about this blurb, which has been repeated in nearly all 40k media:
"To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark 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."
So, men have it awfully, but not women?
Space Marines appeal to masculine traits and ideals
Such as?
Men can like a thing and have something made for them.
But why does men having something "made" for them mean that there shouldn't be women in it? Why is "male" enjoyment tied to the lack of women in it?
Is Halo not made for men because there are women Spartans?
Is Gears of War not for men, because there are women in it?
Is Call of Duty not for men, because there are women in it?
Other female characters and factions are NOT lesser.
No-one is disagreeing with you on that, or is anyone saying they are (except, they DO have lesser marketing presence and aesthetic options presented to them).
But no less than female space marines will appease your demands? Sounds like you view other options as lesser.
Answer the rest of the comment, please.
Why do you view other means of representation as lesser? Answer please.
Oh, now *you're* asking for people to answer the question?
Sure, okay. I'll answer this one (the only way "other factions" are lesser is that Sisters, Guardsmen, Eldar, Orks, Admech, Chaos Space Marines, Votann, Tyranids, Dark Eldar, Tau, Agents of the Imperium, and every other faction in the game do not have the same market presence, customisability and media presence that Ultramarines, let alone all Space Marines, do. It's that's simple. In no other way are they lesser, because they are all very cool factions, with interesting lore and aesthetics, and generally high quality models. You seem obsessed with people thinking that these factions are lesser, when no-one believes that.)
Now. Return the favour, and answer every question that you have been trying to avoid answering.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Crimson wrote: People, please, do not quote half of the page to add a one sentence comment.
My apologies - I only wished to demonstrate the absolute absurdity and lack of good faith that Sledgehammer is displaying.
Sure, okay. I'll answer this one (the only way "other factions" are lesser is that Sisters, Guardsmen, Eldar, Orks, Admech, Chaos Space Marines, Votann, Tyranids, Dark Eldar, Tau, Agents of the Imperium, and every other faction in the game do not have the same market presence, customisability and media presence that Ultramarines, let alone all Space Marines, do. It's that's simple. In no other way are they lesser, because they are all very cool factions, with interesting lore and aesthetics, and generally high quality models. You seem obsessed with people thinking that these factions are lesser, when no-one believes that.
Then we agree that we can change that without having female space marines. These issues can be easily fixed in other ways.
Crimson wrote: I know of the aspect warrior lore, but it just doesn't work me visually, when looking at the army. There are some models that are designed to read very explicitly female, which causes the models without those design cues to read as male. And there are way more of the latter in the army, which makes it visually read as predominantly male.
I will leave this one alone as the last thing the thread needs is to skew off into a debate over the transgender nature of eldar aspect warriors and the 'solutions' to there being more male presenting aspects than female presenting.
Sure, okay. I'll answer this one (the only way "other factions" are lesser is that Sisters, Guardsmen, Eldar, Orks, Admech, Chaos Space Marines, Votann, Tyranids, Dark Eldar, Tau, Agents of the Imperium, and every other faction in the game do not have the same market presence, customisability and media presence that Ultramarines, let alone all Space Marines, do. It's that's simple. In no other way are they lesser, because they are all very cool factions, with interesting lore and aesthetics, and generally high quality models. You seem obsessed with people thinking that these factions are lesser, when no-one believes that.
Then we agree that we can change that without having female space marines. These issues can be easily fixed in other ways.
Conversation over.
Uh, no? Did you read a thing I've been saying about how that's not an adequate solution?
And I believe you owe everyone in this thread responses to all the questions you've been repeatedly asked. Unless you're admitting to behaving in some truly terrible faith.
Sure, okay. I'll answer this one (the only way "other factions" are lesser is that Sisters, Guardsmen, Eldar, Orks, Admech, Chaos Space Marines, Votann, Tyranids, Dark Eldar, Tau, Agents of the Imperium, and every other faction in the game do not have the same market presence, customisability and media presence that Ultramarines, let alone all Space Marines, do. It's that's simple. In no other way are they lesser, because they are all very cool factions, with interesting lore and aesthetics, and generally high quality models. You seem obsessed with people thinking that these factions are lesser, when no-one believes that.
Then we agree that we can change that without having female space marines. These issues can be easily fixed in other ways.
Conversation over.
Uh, no? Did you read a thing I've been saying about how that's not an adequate solution?
And I believe you owe everyone in this thread responses to all the questions you've been repeatedly asked. Unless you're admitting to behaving in some truly terrible faith.
Oh so you think they're lesser?
It's not about representation it's about female space marines or bust.
Sledgehammer wrote:Then we agree that we can change that without having female space marines. These issues can be easily fixed in other ways.
Conversation over.
Uh, no? Did you read a thing I've been saying about how that's not an adequate solution?
And I believe you owe everyone in this thread responses to all the questions you've been repeatedly asked. Unless you're admitting to behaving in some truly terrible faith.
Oh so you think they're lesser?
It's not about representation it's about female space marines or bust.
Talk about bad faith.
Jesus christ, you're hopeless. And everyone can see it.
Good luck having anyone take you seriously.
Oh, and these are the questions you're too afraid to answer: - What defines brotherhood and sisterhood in a way that makes them mutually exclusive, without resorting to describing the genders of those who perform those relationships? - Where do queer people fit in with these definitions? - How do Space Marines and Sisters of Battle respectively perform these relationships in a meaningful way in the 41st millenium? - If Space Marines are to be empathised with, why should men be able to, but not women? - What acts of exclusively "male friendship" do Space Marines perform, which could only be performed by men? - Why is it necessary for everyone's Space Marines, not just yours, to be all-male?
Sledgehammer wrote:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: The nature of being a Space Marine is to be taken from your family, ideally pre-puberty, subjected to trials very likely to kill you, stuffed full of all sorts of fun new organs, the process of which can kill you, your free will stripped away by multiple forms of indoctrination including Space Magic, and then to eventually die, ideally gloriously, in battle.
They shall be my finest warriors, these men who give of themselves to me. Like clay I shall mould them, and in the furnace of war forge them. They will be of iron will and steely muscle. In great armour shall I clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed. They will be untouched by plague or disease, no sickness will blight them. They will have tactics, strategies and machines so that no foe can best them in battle. They are my bulwark against the Terror. They are the Defenders of Humanity. They are my Space Marines and they shall know no fear." The Emperor of Mankind.
The emperor himself refers to them as men.
So, the Imperium of Man is all-male then?
And what about this blurb, which has been repeated in nearly all 40k media:
"To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark 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."
So, men have it awfully, but not women?
Space Marines appeal to masculine traits and ideals
Such as?
Men can like a thing and have something made for them.
But why does men having something "made" for them mean that there shouldn't be women in it? Why is "male" enjoyment tied to the lack of women in it?
Is Halo not made for men because there are women Spartans? Is Gears of War not for men, because there are women in it? Is Call of Duty not for men, because there are women in it?
I invite anyone who still wants to engage with this bad faith actor to repost these questions.
Sledgehammer wrote:Then we agree that we can change that without having female space marines. These issues can be easily fixed in other ways.
Conversation over.
Uh, no? Did you read a thing I've been saying about how that's not an adequate solution?
And I believe you owe everyone in this thread responses to all the questions you've been repeatedly asked. Unless you're admitting to behaving in some truly terrible faith.
Oh so you think they're lesser?
It's not about representation it's about female space marines or bust.
Talk about bad faith.
Jesus christ, you're hopeless. And everyone can see it.
Good luck having anyone take you seriously.
Oh, and these are the questions you're too afraid to answer: - What defines brotherhood and sisterhood in a way that makes them mutually exclusive, without resorting to describing the genders of those who perform those relationships? - Where do queer people fit in with these definitions? - How do Space Marines and Sisters of Battle respectively perform these relationships in a meaningful way in the 41st millenium? - If Space Marines are to be empathised with, why should men be able to, but not women? - What acts of exclusively "male friendship" do Space Marines perform, which could only be performed by men? - Why is it necessary for everyone's Space Marines, not just yours, to be all-male?
Sledgehammer wrote:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: The nature of being a Space Marine is to be taken from your family, ideally pre-puberty, subjected to trials very likely to kill you, stuffed full of all sorts of fun new organs, the process of which can kill you, your free will stripped away by multiple forms of indoctrination including Space Magic, and then to eventually die, ideally gloriously, in battle.
They shall be my finest warriors, these men who give of themselves to me. Like clay I shall mould them, and in the furnace of war forge them. They will be of iron will and steely muscle. In great armour shall I clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed. They will be untouched by plague or disease, no sickness will blight them. They will have tactics, strategies and machines so that no foe can best them in battle. They are my bulwark against the Terror. They are the Defenders of Humanity. They are my Space Marines and they shall know no fear." The Emperor of Mankind.
The emperor himself refers to them as men.
So, the Imperium of Man is all-male then?
And what about this blurb, which has been repeated in nearly all 40k media:
"To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark 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."
So, men have it awfully, but not women?
Space Marines appeal to masculine traits and ideals
Such as?
Men can like a thing and have something made for them.
But why does men having something "made" for them mean that there shouldn't be women in it? Why is "male" enjoyment tied to the lack of women in it?
Is Halo not made for men because there are women Spartans? Is Gears of War not for men, because there are women in it? Is Call of Duty not for men, because there are women in it?
Why do you feel the need for female space marines? Why are other options lesser in your eyes? Why can't people like or feel attached to gender exclusive clubs or themes? Why should your opinion trump 30 years of lore? Why do you think that the inclusion of another gender into a previously exclusive social group wouldn't affect the dynamic or perception of it? Why is it ok to only have sisters be a gender specific organization, but not space marines? Please cite your sources that state the inclusion of opposite genders into a previously exclusive group is non disruptive and that men and women do not have different proclivities either socially or biologically derived.
Sledgehammer, you’ve been asked the same questions for around a half-dozen pages.
If you want to be taken as a good faith actor in this discussion, it’d be wise to at least attempt to answer them.
JNAProductions wrote: Sledgehammer, you’ve been asked the same questions for around a half-dozen pages.
If you want to be taken as a good faith actor in this discussion, it’d be wise to at least attempt to answer them.
A demand without compromise was never good faith to begin with. Smudge themselves said that there are other ways of achieving representation without female space marines. That's pretty much the end of the conversation.
The specific request for female space marines is directly counter to how I view space marines. As a brotherhood. If you cannot grasp the concept of a brotherhood that is not and should not be my problem.
JNAProductions wrote: Sledgehammer, you’ve been asked the same questions for around a half-dozen pages. If you want to be taken as a good faith actor in this discussion, it’d be wise to at least attempt to answer them.
A demand without compromise was never good faith to begin with.
Asking people to elaborate on their questions is hardly a demand, it's an expectation of good faith when someone's having a discussion.
Second, I did answer your comment, as asinine as it was. That was your compromise. You broke the terms of that compromise immediately after.
Smudge themselves said that there are other ways of achieving representation without female space marines.
Where did I say that, and where did I say that it would be satisfactory? Sounds like you're lying now, as well.
The specific request for female space marines is directly counter to how I view space marines.
Which you are then refusing to elaborate on.
As a brotherhood.
And what *is* that? What does that *mean*?
If your argument hinges on this concept, defend it, or cede your point.
If you cannot grasp the concept of a brotherhood that is not and should not be my problem.
If you can't expand on your own argument, then politely, you should not be participating in a discussion about it.
These are the questions which I compromised with you to answer: - What defines brotherhood and sisterhood in a way that makes them mutually exclusive, without resorting to describing the genders of those who perform those relationships? - Where do queer people fit in with these definitions? - How do Space Marines and Sisters of Battle respectively perform these relationships in a meaningful way in the 41st millenium? - If Space Marines are to be empathised with, why should men be able to, but not women? - What acts of exclusively "male friendship" do Space Marines perform, which could only be performed by men? - Why is it necessary for everyone's Space Marines, not just yours, to be all-male?
JNAProductions wrote: Sledgehammer, you’ve been asked the same questions for around a half-dozen pages.
If you want to be taken as a good faith actor in this discussion, it’d be wise to at least attempt to answer them.
OR...
...people can just acknowledge that he isn't going to, slap him on 'Ignore', and move on with our lives. The last few pages have mostly been Smudgie and Sledge (I assume, since I put him on 'Ignore') repeating themselves. This conversation doesn't benefit from any more of that.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Politely, if someone says that they don't want to be referred to in a certain way, and you want to be respectful of them, it's customary to apologise and not double down on it.
That is the respectful thing to do, and would be fitting with the rules of the forum here.
What am I supposed to apologise for? It is a common, harmless meme phrase and I even went out of my way to adapt it to the stated pronouns of the user I'm engaging with. If you want to continue this part of the discussion, feel free to PM me.
BorderCountess can continue this if she wishes. I'm just saying, if someone said that a meme I'd used to describe them was not okay, then I would apologise and rescind that statement, if I genuinely cared about respecting them.
That's all I have to add.
I'd honestly never heard "My [sibling] in Christ" used as a derogatory term before. New experience!
To me, it looked like he was assuming a faith - and I was pointing out that it's not a wise assumption to make. But while I appreciate the modification, telling me it was used in a derogatory fashion I think bothers me even more.
But I put him on 'Ignore', too, so water under the bridge.
Eldar aspect armour is like a pantomime outfit. Dire Avengers can be women, Banshees can be men, the Avatar is formed from the young 'king' explicitly regardless of sex because they play the character of Eldanesh.
It is trans in the non-meme sense of 'I identify as an attack helicopter'. They become the mask.
But I suppose in the spirit of this thread we could demand GW change the lore, it likely originated to justify the limited model range anyway.
It did. If I recall, Gav Thorpe talked about it when interviewed about the Eldar books he wrote. I don’t remember the exact words but he asked for clarification on if the armor was different and not depicted in the artwork (how the background used to be handled) or if it was a case of “if there’s no model it doesn’t exist”, which was the new GW paradigm. But GW has softened to some degree on that—see female Custodes—so I imagine that fluff is outdated but not yet superseded. As miniature games are a visual experience, I’d prefer to see mixed gender Aspect armors to avoid the issue the orks have where the initial impression and surface level information is at odds with the “well, actually” background details.
Eldar aspect armour is like a pantomime outfit. Dire Avengers can be women, Banshees can be men, the Avatar is formed from the young 'king' explicitly regardless of sex because they play the character of Eldanesh.
It is trans in the non-meme sense of 'I identify as an attack helicopter'. They become the mask.
But I suppose in the spirit of this thread we could demand GW change the lore, it likely originated to justify the limited model range anyway.
It did. If I recall, Gav Thorpe talked about it when interviewed about the Eldar books he wrote. I don’t remember the exact words but he asked for clarification on if the armor was different and not depicted in the artwork (how the background used to be handled) or if it was a case of “if there’s no model it doesn’t exist”, which was the new GW paradigm. But GW has softened to some degree on that—see female Custodes—so I imagine that fluff is outdated but not yet superseded. As miniature games are a visual experience, I’d prefer to see mixed gender Aspect armors to avoid the issue the orks have where the initial impression and surface level information is at odds with the “well, actually” background details.
It's a bit harder to do with orks because you've got a couple of lens you're looking through. One is the viewer's assumptions on gender and how it's presented, another is the alien perspective on gender and how it's presented and yet another is that the alien gender presentation is written by humans who are coming from a particular assumption of gender.
So you end up with an alien race that is written as genderless, has no interest or concept of it, but uses design and textual language that ascribes human masculine gender sensibilities to them. So whether you mean it or not, they are coded with a gender to the outside viewer, even if internally they don't have one - a case of technically correct doesn't correlate with practically effective. For better or ill, the viewer is going to be unconvinced by their genderlessness, in the same way men in an office are unlikely to convinced by the genderlessness of being adressed as 'one of the girls' by the women in the office - hey they meant it in a gender neutral way.
Orks are good example of the unconscious male as default perspective most cultures have, where even if not described as male they are assumed male. Something has to be specifically described as female in order for the average person to realise its NOT male.
Crimson wrote: I know of the aspect warrior lore, but it just doesn't work me visually, when looking at the army. There are some models that are designed to read very explicitly female, which causes the models without those design cues to read as male. And there are way more of the latter in the army, which makes it visually read as predominantly male.
Yeah, agree.
It's annoying too since realistically even thin armor can hide gender pretty well, but because of the larger context in models the impression is more explicitly gendered. It'd be cool to have the options but it sure seems like a big ask after it took 25 years to update Warp Spiders. 3d printing ftw, hopefully tastefully.
If Etsy is any indicator, "tastefully" might he a pipe dream... but we can hope... and maybe in this one instance hope won't be the first step on the road to disappointment.
Are we going to force artists to change what fantasy they wanted to create, if it is deemed too one sided in representation? Are we going to force people to buy things that don't appeal to them until the sales numbers with non-representative <fantasy> are equal?
Well, again- as I said before, different people are arguing for different levels of inclusion, but I would say that generally, even advocates for greater inclusion are fine allowing stories about groups of male marines to continue to be told. What they tend to be asking for is merely an official line, whether in fluff or as a statement from GW that allows a person to put an FSM model on the table and know that there is now chance their opponent will be a jackass who says "You can't play that model because FSM don't exist."
They are fine with people being able to field entire chapters that include not a single woman; they just want the possibility to include women in their own armies. I don't know how many times anti-FSM have to be told that this can be done in such a way that the only effect at all it has on them is that they might occasionally see FSM in their opponent's armies, and when they do, they can't rely on the "fluff argument" to piss and moan about it.
That's really all most advocates are asking for, although as noted in my previous post, different people on this side of the fence do want different levels of inclusion. So while I BELIEVE most advocates are only asking for the bare minimum, the only person I can actually speak for is myself.
My own headcanon / expectation how FSM fit into the faction would be complete parity in capabilities, no segregation in unit assignment. So any Marine, regardless of unit or position, would be just as likely to be female as being male. Model-wise I'd see every new unit having 1-2 heads without helmets extra that are more feminine than now, but a far shot from being... uh refined? for lack of a better word. So kinda brutish and bulky, similar to the existing male heads.
Which is cool. My approach is different- I'd probably go 25%; I'd likely convert using Stormcast Eternal torsos- they same to have gotten the hang of armoured bodies that are still somewhat feminine without being full on boob plate, which is what I'd prefer. I only play Chamber Militant Marines, so Deathwatch and Grey Knights, and I play Crusade as exclusively as I can get away with, so often, my line troops EARN character status, so whether or not FSM become characters depends on how they grow in the games I play with them.
But again, I think what's important is that players always have the ability to engage as little or as much with FSM as they choose. They only thing we should prevent players who prefer exclusively male marines from doing is whining when their opponents choose to use FSM based on the premise that it's okay because they don't exist in the lore.
So right away, I wouldn't create named FSM from specific Marine subfactions that are so good they're auto include, because for a competitive player, that might actually be approaching what the other side fears- forcing them to acknowledge that there IS an FSM in their favourite subfaction, and that... Heaven forbid, they may feel compelled to field her because they'd be at a competitive disadvantage if they didn't. Again, anti-FSM folks are arguing as if EVERY pro-FSM player wants that.
Some of us might. But here's the thing: anyone on this side of the argument will see any step toward their preferred standard of inclusion as an improvement over the status quo.
PenitentJake wrote: And I think that the examples are somewhat flawed- both Sailor Moon and Tomb Raider are vehicles that were designed specifically to provide female representation in male dominated media. Sailor Moon and Lara Croft ARE the FSM of hero Anime and adventure videogames.
But also: the existence of Lara Croft, and the lore behind her in no way implies that a man could not be a kickass archaeologist. I don't know sailor moon very well, but if this Tuxedo Mask character is a hero, whether minor or not, that's already more inclusive than Marines.
I would assume that Rick Priestley did not have 40yo housewifes in mind as his target audience either, when he created Warhammer in the 80s. So I don't agree on the point about Sailor Moon and Tomb Raider being designed specifically for another audience making it a flawed example.
I think maybe we're getting wires crossed here. What I'm saying is that since both Lara Croft and Tuxedo mask are just human heroes, and there are several examples of both male and female characters who fit these archetypes already. Even if you wanted to argue that not being able to play a male archeologist/ adventurer in the Lara Croft video game, you couldn't- because Lara Croft being the playable character in the Lara Croft videogame doesn't mean that male archeologist/ adventurers don't exist. That's why she can't be connected to the argument about FSM one way or the other.
No matter what Priestly had in mind, Space Marines excluded women, and GW hasn't changed that in any of the ways they could have (through fluff, through Public Announcement or through additions to the model range). They may not have made a Lara Croft game where the main character is a man, but the lore of the game does not suggest that a male archaeologist/ adventurer can't exist. Pitfall Harry and Indiana Jones both exist.
We didn't bother George Lucas to release a version of "Fate of Atlantis" where we could swap the character to play "Diana Jones".
Again, we didn't need to, because nowhere in any Indiana Jones movie did Lucas imply that a female archaeologist adventurer could not exist. And in a fight, Marion Ravenwood would hold her own against Indy. Are you seeing yet how these examples have nothing at all to do with the FSM question?
I don't know enough about either of the Anime examples you cite, but I'm sure that those examples don't have anything to do with the FSM argument either. They only way they could is if the existence of Goku implied that a female Goku-equivalent archetype couldn't exist, or if Sailor Moon lore stated that there couldn't possibly be a male Sailor Moon-equivalent archetype.
We can give women a better representation in 40k without compromising on either side, that's all I'm saying.
Uhhm, you actually can't give women better representation than including them in the only faction that's been in every starter box for the past four decades.
You can try and argue that females in other factions might better exemplify what you perceive as feminine traits... But you see the "Eye of the Beholder" problem with using this interpretation of "better representation," right?
Tuxedo Mask is this guy here. The meme should tell you everything you need to know about him :
Spoiler:
It doesn't actually. What I need to know in order to determine whether or not Sailor Moon has anything at all to do with the FSM question is whether the lore of the franchise says that men can't possibly be whatever Sailor Moon is, or that women can't possibly be whatever Tuxedo mask is. If neither of these conditions are true, Sailor moon has nothing at all to do with the FSM question.
Your picture doesn't tell me whether either of these conditions are true, and therefore does nothing to help me determine whether or not Sailor Moon is relevant to the FSM question.
Gender swapping indiana jones has nothing to do with whether a woman can undergo the space marine transformation process.
The equivalent to that would be asking GW to make Dante a woman when he used to be a man. As the ability for women to be marines or not has no impact on whether dante would wake up suddenly a woman, it's a complete non sequitur.
If Etsy is any indicator, "tastefully" might he a pipe dream... but we can hope... and maybe in this one instance hope won't be the first step on the road to disappointment.
Yeah I was really hoping to see a better array of alternative models for various things by now.
I'd offer my services but I don't have any of the plastics, mine are all old metals. Also I'm guessing part swaps for Avengers, Scorpions etc are harder with the way GW tends to cut it's sprues.
Hellebore wrote:
As much as boobplate is dumb, Gw have said that the exarch head for the banshees is male but he still wears boobplate. Which if correct means that part of wearing the war mask is taking on the aspect in its entirety; so arguably, that means any aspect warrior could be male or female and the aspect's tradition determines whether it has boobplate or not.
This isn't the first time I've seen that claim stated on these forums, but I've not seen the primary source. Do you know where and when that was stated? WD issue #?
It's more than just the boob plate itself. The Banshees have thinner waists and instead of the six packs that the male-coded models get, they get two plates, one of which has a belly button. The belly button thing on Banshees goes all the way back to RT (even in the Jes Goodwin sketches) and has since been brought forward to the updated Guardians. Whereas the female torsos in the old Guardian kit had six pack abs, the new ones get the two plate and belly button design from the Banshees. Partly it's a problem of scale, but if there really were male Banshees I'd think they'd have different proportions than the female ones so as to be more differentiated on the tabletop.
Regardless of the model though, its been part of eldar lore since the beginning that all members of the craftworld join any aspects or paths. The banshees stick out only because they're a feminine aspect for a male war god. Which seems to be ignored quite a lot. The eldar god of war is male, but he has at least one explicitly female aspect. It doesn't change who can join what aspect, but it stands out as a thematic way to show female aspect warriors with a female aspect.
It also shows the somewhat androgynous nature of the eldar in that even their wargod isn't roid fuelled masculinity but encompasses feminine aspects as well.
I don't think that's it at all really. The Banshees stand out because they are almost the only models in the range sculpted to look explicitly female in a faction that is supposed to be fully egalitarian and yet really lacks in female sculpts. The actual current count is 11 models that are explicitly female in the range (Jain Zar, 5 Banshees, 4 Guardians, 1 Autarch (optional).
The Banshee aspect itself may be mostly female, but that doesn't mean the other aspects are overwhelmingly male. GW has shown us what female eldar models are supposed to look like. I'd just like more of them so I can more easily build an army that more closely matches the background in general and the female dominated craftworld Iybraesil in particular.
Crimson wrote:I know of the aspect warrior lore, but it just doesn't work me visually, when looking at the army. There are some models that are designed to read very explicitly female, which causes the models without those design cues to read as male. And there are way more of the latter in the army, which makes it visually read as predominantly male.
Yeah. I'm thinking GW either needs to produce more explicitly female sculpts (or optional bits) across the range. I don't think there's a way redesign the range to make all the models look androgynous.
My point was that there is egalitarianism in the eldar background regardless.
that they decided that boob and ab plate were the ways they depicted female eldar in the model range, doesn't change that. And given that design decision it would have been great to see more of them.
My comments on the howling banshees weren't to excuse the lack of that design style, it was just an interesting observation on the models and background of the eldar. A male wargod with a female aspect of war and the members all appearing female, was it a 'women are drawn to the female aspects of war' trope, an aesthetic trope, laziness, a deliberate choice that when the eldar join the banshees they take on the feminine to do so and thus the armour (which itself could be laziness to avoid sculpting male banshee armour).
The comments on the banshee exarch should be in the news and rumours thread when they were released, I believe the exarch was gendered by GW on Warcom, instagram or somewhere and that was linked in that thread. the search function seems to be erroring out at the moment though so I'm not sure how to find it.
JNAProductions wrote: Sledgehammer, you’ve been asked the same questions for around a half-dozen pages.
If you want to be taken as a good faith actor in this discussion, it’d be wise to at least attempt to answer them.
A demand without compromise was never good faith to begin with. Smudge themselves said that there are other ways of achieving representation without female space marines. That's pretty much the end of the conversation.
The specific request for female space marines is directly counter to how I view space marines. As a brotherhood. If you cannot grasp the concept of a brotherhood that is not and should not be my problem.
Maybe it would be helpful if you had a concrete scene or novel in mind where you'd say it wouldn't work with Female Space Marines. My loyalist lore is limited, basically only the DOW series and the Beast Arises Series and I don’t recall any Space Marine interaction where I'd say "this dialogue wouldn't work if there was a woman around".
Edit: and frankly that's because SM don’t talk about sexuality, they don’t talk about women, they don’t tell father-son-stories about fishing in their youth or whatever roleclichés we might have in mind. They're just soldiers doing 40K soldiery stuff.
It’s also based on the erroneous opinion that Astartes remain men.
They don’t. They’re post-human. Not human beans.
They do not live a human life in a human civilisation. As suggested earlier, the sheer level of lifelong indoctrination across multiple method raises serious questions about their level of free will.
Something they have in common with the Kin of the Leagues of Votann, where the desire to mine and make is genetically encoded along with the other traits the Votann felt the next generation would need.
They also share the genuinely horrifying trait that the same programming/indoctrination prevents them caring that they have no free will.
Quite. When my son was displaying an interest in 40K, I don't think when I explained the idea of Space Marines I ever actually said 'they're all men'. I think I said something like they're genetically modified and surgically enhanced super soldiers, and all they do is fight for the Imperium.
Our bodies change throughout, as do our brains. And not just through cultural expectation, but out preferences and attitudes shift as well. And whilst at least some of our previous, well I’ll call them incarnations, remain with us? They’re kinda vestigal. And they do vary from person to person.
An Astartes?
Baby - Toddler - Child - Genetic Killing Machine. And from that final stage? Their minds are not their own. At all. Their desires and that are strictly controlled to ensure peak efficiency as merciless killing machines.
For Gods sake, GW just release the bloody female marines, we'll get the inevitable grifter backlash and then we can all move on without having to go through this over and over for all time.
A highly oppressive and repressive super fascist regime which, inwardly, doesn’t demonstrate sexism, homophobia, transphobia or racism as we understand it.
It has “better” targets for society’s pettiness. Whilst it by no means justifies the extent of The Imperium’s persecution of its favourite Others? Those Others actually are an existential threat.
After all, it’s not a satanic panic when they are summoning daemons and opening literal portals to hell, or when the savage race is Orks, who absolutely well just kick the snot out of you because to an Ork, that’s just good fun, and so on and so forth.
Would you like to try a new argument?
So you're saying sometimes hyper-militant oppression is justified? You mean fascism is ok if the circumstances call for it? Because that appears to be the inevitable ideological slippery slope Smudge is alluring to.
My argument here is about Smudges apparent suggestion that I'm not worth having a discourse with because I'm largely against banning books, media and other forms of expression. I invite you tp riview the context within which my previous post is in response to.
Depends on the context.
Against rapacious, unrelenting threats such as Orks and Tyranids? You really don’t have a choice. They literally cannot be successfully negotiated with.
Sure you can bribe an Ork, even an entire Warband/Fleet. But it’s still just a matter of time until they realise turning whatever guns and materiel you paid them off with on you would be (to them) really really funny.
Its intolerance of non-Ecclesiarchy religion is likewise not entirely unjustified. Because Gods do exist there, and they’re not to be trusted, trifled with or bargained with.
The extent the Imperium oppresses its own people? Not at all.
But, that’s the perversity of The Imperium. It’s not sexist. It’s not racist. It’s not homophobic. It’s not transphobic. It’s done away with some of modern society’s foibles and pettiness in the worst possible way - by treating everyone equally awfully.
And it’s all for naught. It fights the good fight, simply to….fight the good fight, and to live to fight another day. But between its own gross inefficiencies and just how numerous its foes are? It’s stuck in a constant cycle of war and despair.
I really don't agree with this take MDG. Being intolerant of something is not the same as being fascist, and intolerance can be entirely valid. Intolerance of Tyranids? Very justified. Intolerance of abhumans? Based in bigotry and part of the Imperium's fascism.
The Imperium doesn't need to be fascist to resist Orks and Tyranids, and in fact is almost certainly making things worse by being fascist. The Tau, for example, also resist Orks and Tyranids and are (merely...) expansionist imperialists.
It is why I think the worst change to GW lore is making the blind faith actually beneficial against Chaos, rather than something the Imperium only believes is helpful and is probably counterproductive.
RaptorusRex wrote: Y’know, how come Aspect Warriors can have the monastic elements with both women and men, hmm?
Because they're aliens & thus don't need to adhere to how humans do things.
Humans also have mixed gender monastic groups though.
Sure, here in the real world. In the fictional setting you're taking too seriously though? Maybe, maybe not. Hard to tell when the only real example is always SM related.
So we'll just have to wait for GW to write some more gak to find out (unless I've missed something - I admit that I don't read much BL stuff).
The Schola Progenium is an Ecclesiarchy-run school system for orphaned Imperial children that is explicitly mixed gender. I suppose they are technically abbeys rather than monasteries as the instructors are referred to as drill-abbots, but I don't pretend to understand the difference between different types of cloistered communities...
Hellebore wrote:I find the argument about the Imperium's supposed sexist nature to be very cherry picking.
Because I've seen plenty of people try to tell me that it's ok marines are all male because the rest of the imperium's factions aren't sexist and recruit women, so it's ok because you can have female guardsmen or mechanicum.
So I'd like to know what it actually is - is the imperium an equal opportunity recruiter or not?
Because apart from the legalease prevention of men under arms for the ecclesiarchy and the 'organs don't work because girl' argument for marines, there's no specific sexist recruitment lauded, decried or even mentioned in the imperium's various factions.
And the very fact that the organs are supposed to prevent girls being marines is seemingly the ONLY reason there are no female marines. At no point has any background had any one in the imperium or marine chapters (afaik) voice the opinion that they're glad girls can't be marines, or that they don't understand why the guard recruits women or whatever.
From what I can see, the fact that women can't be marines is completely conflated with 'the imperium is inherently sexist', despite whole order of female only soldiers, equal opportunity guard recruitment and so on.
That is not to say that sexism doesn't exist amongst people or cultures within 40k, but there is a distinct lack of voiced or structural sexism within the imperium, administratum or departmento munitorum.
It isn't even that Marines are keyed to male organs, but male hormones. Something that was available as a simple tablet in reality for decades prior to GW writing that lore.
To be fair, that’s what I was going for, and am happy to agree.
The Imperium external awfulness isn’t always unjustified for the reasons discussed.
But that doesn’t justify the hellscape it remains for the vast majority of its citizens.
To touch on modern equivalents? In the first and second world wars, the populace of the UK put up with privation and rationing, Because There’s A War On, You Know. But that was only for a limited period, until the danger had passed, and things settled down again. So finite by definition, and folk can tolerate such things with such motivation.
But The Imperium has been at that for millennia now. It’s all it knows. It’s all it does. That it’s organised enough to sustain a galaxy spanning empire is remarkable. That it has zero interest or capacity in getting better organised is the tragedy.
For every “we’ve found an Ork world, best we nip that in the bud now” war of some justification, there’s a Starship Troopers style “well we’ll have to find something to kill” war for the sake of maintaining the war machine.
There was some talk about how female marines could be introduced. With Custodes it was easy to retcon the females in, as there isn't that much Custodes lore to begin with and they're a peripheral faction. Whilst personally I would not mind similar retcon with marines either, I do accept that it would be a bigger deal in this instance. There just is so much more marine lore and explicit (if old and not in codex for many editions) reference to exclusion of females.
So the path of least resistance here probably would be to frame it as new development. Turns out that the primaris geneseed works on females and some chapters are now embracing the opportunity.
Personally I would prefer "there have always been female marines" retcon, so that they could exist in historical eras of the setting as well, but a new development would be fine as well.
Hotzenplotz wrote: There are no female Astartes because GW has at least so far had enough business sense not to make them. "Once you go woke, you go broke."
Theres quite a gap between the "woke" that made businesses go "broke" and female space marines tbh.
Hotzenplotz wrote: There are no female Astartes because GW has at least so far had enough business sense not to make them. "Once you go woke, you go broke."
Meanwhile, in the real world where GW has been diversifying its offering and representation in model forms, it’s now so successful its recently become one of the 100 most valuable companies in the UK.
I suspect it just says that GW financials are great, which is easy enough to believe. The thing is, it's not really evidence for anything. For example it could also be said that mysogonystic dude-bros are flocking to GWs Marines simply because "AAA gaming has gone woke!" or whatever, and thus GW profits. *(I do not believe this)
GW hasn't "gone woke" by including more representation in model lines that were already narratively inclusive, with maybe the exception of Custodes. Custodes, who are a recent addition as a faction, and don't have anywhere near the history(irl) or breadth of background as Marines. And I think it'd be very a very rare customer who was really turned off by including an additional sprue of heads to Guard infantry, or more female Eldar, since it's long been understood that the miniature lines weren't adequately reflecting their lore.
But also, Marines are GWs cash cow. Anecdotally, they've been the biggest driver in sales since forever. If GWs financials are doing so well, and if they're doing so well partly because of Marines, why mess with a good thing? They did change Marines into Primaris (*spits*), but that was a move driven (I suspect) by the prospect of full-army replacement and to relieve competition from their past selves (since it's easy AF to find old Marine armies secondhand). But I don't think they see that same cynical drive to incorporate female marines. By acting as they have been they get to have their cake and eat it too. They get to show more representation in their model line to try to appeal to their non-primary demographic using non-marine factions (which need new models anyways), but keep the primary cash cow raking in the dough without introducing any risk of outrage.
Like, we can all talk about our ideals about inclusion and treatment of lore etc. all we want, but to GW these days it's mostly just love of money and risk aversion. They are full corporate.
Insectum7 wrote: I suspect it just says that GW financials are great, which is easy enough to believe. The thing is, it's not really evidence for anything. For example it could also be said that mysogonystic dude-bros are flocking to GWs Marines simply because "AAA gaming has gone woke!" or whatever, and thus GW profits. *(I do not believe this)
GW hasn't "gone woke" by including more representation in model lines that were already narratively inclusive, with maybe the exception of Custodes. Custodes, who are a recent addition as a faction, and don't have anywhere near the history(irl) or breadth of background as Marines. And I think it'd be very a very rare customer who was really turned off by including an additional sprue of heads to Guard infantry, or more female Eldar, since it's long been understood that the miniature lines weren't adequately reflecting their lore.
But also, Marines are GWs cash cow. Anecdotally, they've been the biggest driver in sales since forever. If GWs financials are doing so well, and if they're doing so well partly because of Marines, why mess with a good thing? They did change Marines into Primaris (*spits*), but that was a move driven (I suspect) by the prospect of full-army replacement and to relieve competition from their past selves (since it's easy AF to find old Marine armies secondhand). But I don't think they see that same cynical drive to incorporate female marines. By acting as they have been they get to have their cake and eat it too. They get to show more representation in their model line to try to appeal to their non-primary demographic using non-marine factions (which need new models anyways), but keep the primary cash cow raking in the dough without introducing any risk of outrage.
Do you think there would be a massive backlash to including a female head or two on the inevitable next iteration of Intercessors? There are still a couple of Firstborn kits in active circulation to replace...
GW hasn't "gone woke" by including more representation in model lines that were already narratively inclusive, with maybe the exception of Custodes. Custodes, who are a recent addition as a faction, and don't have anywhere near the history(irl) or breadth of background as Marines. And I think it'd be very a very rare customer who was really turned off by including an additional sprue of heads to Guard infantry, or more female Eldar, since it's long been understood that the miniature lines weren't adequately reflecting their lore.
This is the thing about the good ol' "Go woke, go broke!" slogan - it tends to be arbitrarily applied depending on how well something is doing, in order to provide circular proof. Something perceived as 'woke' did badly? Yeah, it's because it was woke. Something perceived as 'woke' did well? Weeeellll... it's not that woke...
It's a meaningless nothingburger intended to validate a worldview by selectively moving the goalposts, and it's not borne out by the various multi-billion dollar franchises that seem to be doing just fine.
So if we could avoid dragging it any further into this discussion, that would be great.
Honestly if they take the 'no girls allowed' sign off of the Space Marine's club door, I kind of hope its done with a Heresy model and like no fanfare whatsoever. Just go like "this new Alpha Legion commander led her troops during the [Blank] of [Blank] and did [Blank]" and show a picture of the model. Simple as that and you now have female marines existing for most of the timeline of the setting.
Do you think there would be a massive backlash to including a female head or two on the inevitable next iteration of Intercessors? There are still a couple of Firstborn kits in active circulation to replace...
Considering the amount of outrage we saw over Custodes? Yeah.
@Insaniak: I wouldn't call it a nothingburger, but I'm happy to leave it alone.
Insectum7 wrote: Considering the amount of outrage we saw over Custodes? Yeah.
It was like a couple of weeks, then it dissipated because the rage bait channels found something else to complain about. Female SM I would say might last maybe a month, a month and a half, of nerd rage because in the end there are far more pressing concerns than "Wiminz in my Space Marines" such as "Oh my god I can't pay my massive electric bills and all the food prices went up again".
The irony of people claiming "tourists" are ruining Warhammer is that the channels that do all the rage baiting aren't Warhammer focussed or even feature Warhammer semi-regularly, they're the bog standard "content" channels that scour the internet for something to rile people up about who will never actually pick up a model/book/paintbrush in their entire existence and move on to hating whatever is popular next.
Maybe a Star Wars project with a woman main character will come out at the same time, that'd really get them going.
Well this is the thing, do you have any data either way? That's my point. It's kinda insaniaks point too. It's really easy to craft a given narrative when the data is as opaque as cooperate earnings can be, since they can reflect all sorts of things. Correlation not being causation and all.
Btw if you actually have data I'd be real interested to see it.
I don't have the ability to look this up... but how many people on this forum were honestly angry about the possibility of having not dude Space Marines...
3 to 4?
Out of all the people who post here... it's a slim minority.
Lathe Biosas wrote: I don't have the ability to look this up... but how many people on this forum were honestly angry about the possibility of having not dude Space Marines...
3 to 4?
Out of all the people who post here... it's a slim minority.
I'm sure it will be like that elsewhere too.
I wouldn't make the assumption that it's the same elsewhere, filter bubble effect and all. But it's more data that I'd love to know.
Insectum7 wrote: Well this is the thing, do you have any data either way? .
I would think their continued record profits would be a fairly obvious sign that the 'backlash' against female custodes has not significantly harmed them.
Well this is the thing, do you have any data either way? That's my point. It's kinda insaniaks point too. It's really easy to craft a given narrative when the data is as opaque as cooperate earnings can be, since they can reflect all sorts of things. Correlation not being causation and all.
Btw if you actually have data I'd be real interested to see it.
Insectum7 wrote: Considering the amount of outrage we saw over Custodes? Yeah.
It was like a couple of weeks, then it dissipated because the rage . . . .
Need more data.
After a fashion.
Female Custodes become a thing.
Weird Men On The Internet throw a tantrum
GW reports record profits. Again.
Ergo, the “outrage” over female Custodes had absolutely no discernible impact on GW, and could, not entirely in bad faith, be argued to have helped them with those profits.
Hence, short lived, impotent “outrage”. They went woke, and got even more filthy, stinking rich.
Insectum7 wrote: Well this is the thing, do you have any data either way? .
I would think their continued record profits would be a fairly obvious sign that the 'backlash' against female custodes has not significantly harmed them.
I would argue that Custodes are not a significant fraction of their business, and thus any potential effect of backlash would be hard to see at the macro level.
You mean all the people on YouTube who couldn't even pronounce Custodes correctly whilst claiming to really love and cherish the lore and who dropped it as soon as the next right-wing rage farm event came along.
Insectum7 wrote: I would argue that Custodes are not a significant fraction of their business, and thus any potential effect of backlash would be hard to see at the macro level.
So your argument against the claim that Custodes backlash was insignificant is to point out that the Custodes backlash was insignificant?
Insectum7 wrote: Well this is the thing, do you have any data either way? .
I would think their continued record profits would be a fairly obvious sign that the 'backlash' against female custodes has not significantly harmed them.
I would argue that Custodes are not a significant fraction of their business, and thus any potential effect of backlash would be hard to see at the macro level.
How about: I then went and started a Custodes army.
Insectum7 wrote: I would argue that Custodes are not a significant fraction of their business, and thus any potential effect of backlash would be hard to see at the macro level.
So your argument against the claim that Custodes backlash was insignificant is to point out that the Custodes backlash was insignificant?
Interesting strategy.
Well. . .
If GWs profits are being held up as evidence that female Custodes didn't have any effect, but any effect on Custodes sales are obfuscated because they are such a tiny fraction of GWs portfolio. . . Then in the overall context of a discussion of Space Marines (who reportedly make up a significant portion of their sales) the "evidence" of GWs profits as a reaction to female Custodes isn't really there.
Insectum7 wrote: Well this is the thing, do you have any data either way? .
I would think their continued record profits would be a fairly obvious sign that the 'backlash' against female custodes has not significantly harmed them.
I would argue that Custodes are not a significant fraction of their business, and thus any potential effect of backlash would be hard to see at the macro level.
How about: I then went and started a Custodes army.
I don't feel like I should need to post this, but an anecdote is not data. I'm on record here as advocating for female Custodes btw, before GW did it I thought it was the right move.
GW change Custards, so they’re made from men and the dreaded wimmins.
A few people at least pretend to lose their minds. A further minority of unhinged people claim this is going to bury GW. This includes bizarre conspiracy theories that the change was made “under the radar” by an intern or similar.
GW then release a very well received animation on Warhammer+ featuring, fear of fears, a female Custodes. Who wears regular Auramite armour.
The sad git brigade say little more, though some desperately continue to try to peddle their conspiracy theory that secret heads are secretly rolling.
GW post further record takings and profits.
Show me in this only slightly facetious summary of events where a bunch of sad gits throwing a hissy fit had any impact beyond making themselves look very silly, and giving others a bit of a chuckle entirely at their expense.
GW change Custards, so they’re made from men and the dreaded wimmins.
A few people at least pretend to lose their minds. A further minority of unhinged people claim this is going to bury GW. This includes bizarre conspiracy theories that the change was made “under the radar” by an intern or similar.
GW then release a very well received animation on Warhammer+ featuring, fear of fears, a female Custodes. Who wears regular Auramite armour.
The sad git brigade say little more, though some desperately continue to try to peddle their conspiracy theory that secret heads are secretly rolling.
GW post further record takings and profits.
Show me in this only slightly facetious summary of events where a bunch of sad gits throwing a hissy fit had any impact beyond making themselves look very silly, and giving others a bit of a chuckle entirely at their expense.
Sure. Real talk?
As you "chuckle at the expense of the sad git brigade" more drift rightward politically in reaction, possibly resulting in important institutions making life harder for those very groups you wish to represent. (And maybe everyone else, too) It wouldn't be my vote, but it's something I worry about.
GW change Custards, so they’re made from men and the dreaded wimmins.
A few people at least pretend to lose their minds. A further minority of unhinged people claim this is going to bury GW. This includes bizarre conspiracy theories that the change was made “under the radar” by an intern or similar.
GW then release a very well received animation on Warhammer+ featuring, fear of fears, a female Custodes. Who wears regular Auramite armour.
The sad git brigade say little more, though some desperately continue to try to peddle their conspiracy theory that secret heads are secretly rolling.
GW post further record takings and profits.
Show me in this only slightly facetious summary of events where a bunch of sad gits throwing a hissy fit had any impact beyond making themselves look very silly, and giving others a bit of a chuckle entirely at their expense.
Does me picking up 1500pts of used Custodes for only $120 USD (counting shipping!) + then buying a Codex at the local shop count as an impact?
Or is that part of "at thier expense"?
Right after the codex dropped & fools were howling about the mention of FM custodes, I began seeing alot of Custodes being dumped at stupid low prices.
Were the former owners mad about rules? About there now being FM custodes in the lore? Both?
Whatever the reason, it was a heck of a savings for me.
GW change Custards, so they’re made from men and the dreaded wimmins.
A few people at least pretend to lose their minds. A further minority of unhinged people claim this is going to bury GW. This includes bizarre conspiracy theories that the change was made “under the radar” by an intern or similar.
GW then release a very well received animation on Warhammer+ featuring, fear of fears, a female Custodes. Who wears regular Auramite armour.
The sad git brigade say little more, though some desperately continue to try to peddle their conspiracy theory that secret heads are secretly rolling.
GW post further record takings and profits.
Show me in this only slightly facetious summary of events where a bunch of sad gits throwing a hissy fit had any impact beyond making themselves look very silly, and giving others a bit of a chuckle entirely at their expense.
Sure. Real talk?
As you "chuckle at the expense of the sad git brigade" more drift rightward politically in reaction, possibly resulting in important institutions making life harder for those very groups you wish to represent. (And maybe everyone else, too) It wouldn't be my vote, but it's something I worry about.
Antisocial men need their spaces too.
It doesn't even have to be antisocial people. I think a lot of people generally feel somewhat attacked when the thing they like and have an attachment to is claimed to be bad because it isn't up to some other people's standards or check certain boxes. It just seems to alienate people away from the cause more than it does to help with increasing inclusion.
And….was anyone keeping tabs on second hand Custards armies before female Custodes were introduced?
Anyone?
No?
Bueller?
Dust?
Welcome to the odd world of perception filters, where things are only closely observed when there’s some kind of controversy, manufactured or otherwise, and presented as evidence of doom. When in fact, because absolutely nobody kept tabs on it
before or since, there’s no benchmark.
And still no negative impact has been demonstrated. At all. And so the bizarre outrage remains short lived, and entirely impotent.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: And still no negative impact has been demonstrated. At all. And so the bizarre outrage remains short lived, and entirely impotent.
Custodes are irrelevant - total cash attributed to female custodes on GWs books is zero.
As I said a number of pages back if they are going to take a punt on female marines it is going to be off the back of red hot sales of things like sisters of battle, which none of you lot that responded are buying.
GW are making a large amount of profit. Marines are a large part of that profit. Sisters don't appear to be. From a purely business perspective why put your money on the line for what is ultimately a sprue of head swaps and perhaps a named character or two - female space marines aren't even a new model line given their gene-edited nature and one size fits all power armour.
Without some kind of positive cashflow from comparable products 'we want female space marines' is going to look a whole lot like 'we want you to re-screen Morbius'.
There’s an awful lot of assumptions in there, and I don’t think we have any evidence to support or really deny.
Factual Information
GW have, again, reported record takings and profits in excess of expectation.
GW changed the background of Custodes so recruits can be male or female
Common knowledge, and likely fact
Space Marines represent a significant percentage of GW’s sales - but as GW don’t break down their takings by game system, let alone army, we’ve no way of knowing what that percentage is
Outright assumptions without evidence
Sisters don’t make up a significant percentage of GW’s sales
Custodes don’t make up a significant percentage of GW’s sales
GW will only introduce Female Space Marines if the Sisters of Battle are selling well.
So I’m afraid I can’t agree with your claims, as there’s little to no evidence to support them.
What we can say? The introduction of female Custodes has had no noticeable negative impact on GW’s sales, despite the wilder claims made at the time, and the claim in this thread of “go woke go broke”.
Did female Custodes actively increase sales? Absolutely no idea. I dare say some will have picked up a new army to embrace that. But even then? That doesn’t mean it was paid for from new hobby budget. As in, we can’t say those that did buy into Custodes to have females in it, did so in addition to their regular, planned hobby spend.
Likewise anyone selling a second hand army. We don’t know what they did with the resulting funds. Maybe it was spent on a new GW project, maybe it was for car repairs, shopping, beer, ciggies etc.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Outright assumptions without evidence Sisters don’t make up a significant percentage of GW’s sales
Custodes don’t make up a significant percentage of GW’s sales
GW will only introduce Female Space Marines if the Sisters of Battle are selling well.
Lets not pretend that sisters are some kind of hot ticket right now. Their battleforce isn't going out of stock any time soon, nor did the hereticus set, nor did the sisters set before it.
I am sure they are selling some models but if it was an amount to make GW reconsider their marine line we'd have seen more than another bid to shift repentia and rhinos and a muted pack-in with old blackstone fortress models.
As for custodes my only statement is that female custodes don't sell, which is factual - there aren't any models. I speculated a number of pages back that GW may try a few to test the water on female marines. At the end of the day it isn't impossible that GW will just take a massive punt on the line but I would think they'd want something they can show to their shareholders first.
That screech was a moving of the goalposts, folks.
And another application of a baseless assumption, that for female Space Marines to come about, Sisters of Battle must first sell really well.
And the animation showed no difference in male and female Custodes armour. No boobplate. No tactical bikini. No thinning of the proportions to suggest femininity. So the lack of female models is more down to a lack of female unhelmeted heads, and Custodes haven’t had a release in the intervening time, and even then, we shouldn’t expect feminine armour or proportions.
And the rest remains speculation, including that changing the background to allow for female Space Marines is a punt or a risk in the first place, let alone that such a change might noticeably and negatively impact anything.
And the animation showed no difference in male and female Custodes armour. No boobplate. No tactical bikini. No thinning of the proportions to suggest femininity. So the lack of female models is more down to a lack of female unhelmeted heads, and Custodes haven’t had a release in the intervening time, and even then, we shouldn’t expect feminine armour or proportions.
Did the introduction of female and poc heads in the Guard impact sales? Did Lieutenant Mira turn the Space Marine game into a flop?
Did Black Library books that crammed as many women as possible in every non-SM position somehow sell less than older books that didn't? Did black Space Wolves alienate more people than the new Wulfen models? Do transpeople in Admech lore keep people from buying into that army?
The answer to all of these questions is somewhere between "we don’t know" and "apparently not". Let's face it, outside of the Astartes 40K already is full on "woke" (arguably it has been when it started satirizing fascism but that might stretch how the word is often understood).
And the animation showed no difference in male and female Custodes armour. No boobplate. No tactical bikini. No thinning of the proportions to suggest femininity. So the lack of female models is more down to a lack of female unhelmeted heads, and Custodes haven’t had a release in the intervening time, and even then, we shouldn’t expect feminine armour or proportions.
They are exactly the same goalposts that GW used in the 80s
Are female models selling well - yes / no
- or rather do we think female models will be profitable based on cold hard sales figures - yes / no.
That's it, nothing more. The other 20 pages of pearl clutching don't amount to a hill of beans.
Except GW now demonstrably appeals to a much wider and more varied demographic, altering things.
Society has also moved on in terms of expected gender roles. Women in the armed forces for one, and the glass ceiling being challenged. In short? We’re somewhat less sexist than in the 80’s. So “oh no, not a female warrior” isn’t what it was.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: We’re somewhat less sexist than in the 80’s. So “oh no, not a female warrior” isn’t what it was.
And when sales reflect that I am sure GW will make the jump, just like in the 80s when they were targeting 20-25% female models and the public said no.
And right now? The assumption is entirely your own that sales aren’t reflecting that. And as I’ve stressed? It’s an assumption without evidence.
Let’s look at what you’d need to reasonably demonstrate here.
1. Sisters of Battle aren’t selling well enough for GW’s tastes
2. Sisters of Battle aren’t selling well enough, and the predominant reason is it’s an army largely comprised of female sculpts.
3. Space Marines are selling well because they’re all all male army.
Adding point 4. And 5.
4. And because Sisters of Battle aren’t selling well enough, predominantly because it’s an army largely comprised of female sculpts, therefore adding some female heads to Space Marines kits would significantly impact sales of Space Marines
5. Those reduced sales are lost entirely, and not spent on other GW offerings.
Space Marines just need to be selling demonstrated well. Not why, just if. And from there any change represents risk.
I believe it is a reasonable assumption that if Sisters of Battle sales were lighting the profit sheets on fire or at least punching above their weight then we would have at least seen something - more focus on sisters, testing the water with actual female custodes models, something, anything.
But at the end of the day assumptions or not there is one undeniable fact - GW aren't selling female marines. That means whatever we think for them the numbers don't add up.
I'd be amazed if they didn't give at least a big temporary bounce in sales on release. People with no interest in the game even would buy them as a backlash to the backlash but loads of the more "progressive" hobbyists would just get them to increase the sales too. This happens with loads of products.
Space Marines just need to be selling demonstrated well. Not why, just if. And from there any change represents risk.
I believe it is a reasonable assumption that if Sisters of Battle sales were lighting the profit sheets on fire or at least punching above their weight then we would have at least seen something - more focus on sisters, testing the water with actual female custodes models, something, anything.
But at the end of the day assumptions or not there is one undeniable fact - GW aren't selling female marines. That means whatever we think for them the numbers don't add up.
GW gets overwhelming customer request to redo the entire sisters range > overwhelming positive feedback on the new range > other ranges expanded with more of a female presence (guard primarily but also more notable in AoS) > introduces female custodes > doubles down via an animation
Sure, GW haven't done anything since. They're going to move slowly rather than just out of the blue bombard the base with "WE HEARD YOU LIKE WOMEN?!?!!?".
In the entire history of WHFB, I think mortal Chaos only had exactly one female: Valkia the Bloody. (fun note: the one person who suggested she wasn't fit to lead because she was a woman wound up decorating her shield.)
Now, we've had several named characters (some of which were for Warhammer Underworlds), a quasi-generic Hero model, and now rank-and-file Marauders and Chaos Warriors are getting female sculpts.
I truly think this is only a matter of time before women break the Astartes ceiling.
Space Marines just need to be selling demonstrated well. Not why, just if. And from there any change represents risk.
I believe it is a reasonable assumption that if Sisters of Battle sales were lighting the profit sheets on fire or at least punching above their weight then we would have at least seen something - more focus on sisters, testing the water with actual female custodes models, something, anything.
But at the end of the day assumptions or not there is one undeniable fact - GW aren't selling female marines. That means whatever we think for them the numbers don't add up.
Again, your conclusion is based solely in assumption. Specifically that the future possibility of female Astartes is a risk in the first place.
Mixed gender hasn’t hurt any other army so far as we can tell. Leagues of Votann, Imperial Guard, Craftworld Eldar, Dark Eldar, Harlequins, Slaves to Darkness, Stormcast Eternals, Lumineth Realmlords, Soulblight, Nighthaunt, Sylvaneth, Daughters of Khaine, Idoneth Deepkin. They all have some form of female representation within their ranks. Oh, and some ladies among the Chaos Cultists.
That’s a lot of armies. And given GW continue to experience significant sales growth, and have done since this diversification, I think the only reasonable conclusion is the presence of male and female sculpts in a given range hasn’t hurt sales.
Note that I am not pinning GW’s growth on their presence, because like those saying it would be a negative impact, I don’t have the information or evidence to make such a claim, and there are other factors in play (wider offering of games systems with varying buy in costs, pandemic uptick, greater efforts to promote themselves online to name a few). But, it clearly doesn’t seem to have hurt them any.
Therefore, I don’t agree with your assumption that adding female Space Marines is any sort of a risk.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Therefore, I don’t agree with your assumption that adding female Space Marines is any sort of a risk.
That is a position that we are going to have to remain in disagreement on then.
Change is always a risk. If it wasn't then GW would have already done it, or at least the free social part of it, - because why not if there was no risk.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: We’re somewhat less sexist than in the 80’s. So “oh no, not a female warrior” isn’t what it was.
And when sales reflect that I am sure GW will make the jump, just like in the 80s when they were targeting 20-25% female models and the public said no.
For the record A.T. I don't actually doubt your premise. I agree that change will only occur if GW suspects it will have a positive effect on the bottom line.
But every time I see someone post about those old fem marines, I have to point out that they might have sold if the hadn't been some of the worst sculpts in GW history.
I wonder how well Suppressors and Desolators sell compared to the rest of the marine range- they too are some of the worst sculpts GW has ever produced.
And for the final question: when adjusted for the size of the player base at the time of release, I wonder if the garbage FSM models outsold the garbage Suppressors and Desolators. As I said in the worst model ever thread, if someone gave me any of these models as a gift, I'm not sure I'd accept it, and in order for me to actually paint and play with them, someone would have to be paying me.
I don't doubt that GW did use the poor sales of garbage FSM to justify not making good ones, but it's a shame they did. If the models had been higher quality, we might not be having this discussion right now.
Becuase they’ve other stuff going on seems the most likely answer, and would need to consider how to introduce it, background wise.
And remember, I’m not actively advocating for Female Space Marines. My only horse in this race is that if/when GW pull that trigger, we get some cool new background to go with it. I certainly don’t fancy “and there always has been”. Not for Astartes, one of the most explored force in 40K.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Come to think of it, there’s another error in assumption.
As covered earlier in the thread, in the early days GW were told by outlets not to send more female models, because they’re not selling. As confirmed in a shared Tweet by I think Rick Priestly. And so they didn’t produce any more female models.
But there’s another glaring difference between then and now.
Specifically? Back then, they were individual models. But now, we get multi-part kits, with variant heads.
And given Female Space Marines, like Female Custodes, needn’t require feminine body shape in models? Those variant heads are really all that needs doing.
So again….wheres the risk? Because whilst I can imagine there are some weirdos out there who will refuse to buy something because it has an option they don’t like? You’re not talking about a great many people.
PenitentJake wrote: But every time I see someone post about those old fem marines, I have to point out that they might have sold if the hadn't been some of the worst sculpts in GW history.
They weren't the models that killed the idea off. The decision was made based on sales from a prior citadel line according to Rick Priestley which gave the company cold feet going into rogue trader.
A.T. wrote:As I said a number of pages back if they are going to take a punt on female marines it is going to be off the back of red hot sales of things like sisters of battle, which none of you lot that responded are buying.
Obviously, it's unprovable and just one person, but I would like to just say that I *did* start Sisters when they went into plastic, and I've bought into them as much as I did all my other non-Space Marine projects.
Did I buy the new box? No, but I didn't buy any of the others either (and, to be completely honest, had I not already bought an Exorcist and Zephyrim squad closer to when they first came out, I'd have been all over this new box because it's everything I love in the Sisters army).
As for the comments on "bottom line is that GW aren't making women Astartes", I'd like to add the word "yet" into that.
GW weren't making plastic Sisters. Until they were. GW weren't making women Guardsmen in their regular squads, and instead saving them as one-off sculpts. Until they did include women in regular Guardsmen kits. GW didn't have fem-presenting Stormcast. Until they did.
It's because of those reasons that I don't particularly put stock into "well, they haven't done it yet, so that means they won't in the future" style arguments.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
A.T. wrote: Change is always a risk. If it wasn't then GW would have already done it, or at least the free social part of it, - because why not if there was no risk.
Just so I'm understanding your point correctly, are you suggesting that, in 2018, GW wouldn't have released plastic Sisters of Battle, because they hadn't already? Or that they wouldn't have released Leagues of Votann in 2022, because they hadn't already released them in 2021?
We can definitely state the obvious that GW *hasn't* done it, but we always need to finish that with the qualifier of "yet", because we simply don't know what GW will do next, and they've demonstrated that they are quite capable of introducing/releasing things without indication beforehand (and, if anything, the introduction of women across the board in humanoid factions in both 40k, AoS, and WHFB, especially in Custodes, indicates a trend that woman Astartes might be coming at some point down the line).
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Becuase they’ve other stuff going on seems the most likely answer, and would need to consider how to introduce it, background wise.
And remember, I’m not actively advocating for Female Space Marines. My only horse in this race is that if/when GW pull that trigger, we get some cool new background to go with it. I certainly don’t fancy “and there always has been”. Not for Astartes, one of the most explored force in 40K.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Come to think of it, there’s another error in assumption.
As covered earlier in the thread, in the early days GW were told by outlets not to send more female models, because they’re not selling. As confirmed in a shared Tweet by I think Rick Priestly. And so they didn’t produce any more female models.
But there’s another glaring difference between then and now.
Specifically? Back then, they were individual models. But now, we get multi-part kits, with variant heads.
And given Female Space Marines, like Female Custodes, needn’t require feminine body shape in models? Those variant heads are really all that needs doing.
So again….wheres the risk? Because whilst I can imagine there are some weirdos out there who will refuse to buy something because it has an option they don’t like? You’re not talking about a great many people.
The risk isn't to GW but more so the larger culture war that is pushing younger males towards the right. Individually it's not going to move the needle much but the narrative of forced inclusion and "fixing" older IP to be more politically correct has a knock on effect of making a lot of males feel like certain parts of society think being male is not a good thing or even bad. While most of this sort of stuff isn't trying to attack males, it can feel like an attack which is alienating.
Take this hypothetical, your a guy who likes the 40k faction of powered armored transhuman macho men. You don't have a problem with women and think people are people and everyone should be treater fairly in everyday life. Your good with Sisters being all women, Guard having men and women, etc but you like your boys club of macho men armored refrigerators. The lore has been established for decades that these powered armored transhumans are produced from men because of biological in-universe science reasons so whatever. Your happy playing with your minis and enjoying the lore.
Then you have people saying how it's not good that women can't be Space Marines (not that women can't play 40k or use Space Marines but that in-universe women can't become Space Marines) and that the lore should/needs to be changed to allow women to become Space Marines. Yes it's an ultimately unimportant issue in the grand scheme of things but it sends the message to that male Space Marines enjoyer that he is kinda wrong for liking his boys club of macho men and that comes across as being male isn't valid to be a theme. Because while the idea is to increase diversity and inclusiveness, it's done at the cost of masculinity being considered a worthwhile thing.
Hardly anyone wants Sisters to be male because the core theme of the faction is that they are all female and the artistic expression of the faction is super cool. The same should be true for Space Marines which has certain themes and style in which being all male plays a part of. It isn't a case of "no girls allowed" for the hobby and in general it think the geeky hobbiest space has become increasingly more inclusive and accepting of people. But it's these sorts of micro aggressions that build a feeling of anti male sentiment because it's apparently not ok to have an all boys club faction in a fictional entertainment IP that is for the most part quite inclusive for a setting centered around constant war.
The evidence of that sort of male alienation can be seen with voting trends for young males shifting to the right when historically younger people tend to vote more on the left (at least in the US).
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Just so I'm understanding your point correctly, are you suggesting that, in 2018, GW wouldn't have released plastic Sisters of Battle, because they hadn't already?
Nope.
It was suggested that female space marines were not a risk. I disagreed and further stated that as marines were GWs big money maker they would likely be looking to sales from other lines to determine if they wanted to rock that particular boat rather than taking a punt and hoping for the best.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Do you think the Custodes was a testing of the waters, to see what the response would be?
I doubt they called a meeting to discuss whether or not to give a custodes boobs and then hired a dedicated team to monitor the response. But they're probably aware enough to have kept an ear out for the response when they did drop some femstodes content.
"Quick note for today's meeting, guys. You know how we confirmed girls can be custodes the other day? Turns out a bunch of neckbeards are going berserk about it online."
EDIT: Or to put it another way, I don't think they introduced femstodes purely to test the waters, but I think they were aware that introducing femstodes would be a chance for them to gauge the response.
Trying to extrapolate Sisters being a poor selling army off of the most recent christmas battleforce not selling out is facile.
For one thing; it's not a good box ruleswise currently. It also has few actual Sisters of Battle in it. It has no big centrepiece model and duplicates a Rhino.
Not to mention Christmas Battleforces are chosen based on the selling power of the faction. It's this mix of "this faction sells well overall, but we made too much stock of [x] units, so we'll allocate at least half of the models in the box to them and include other models that consistently sell well in it." Sisters have had Christmas boxes in 2021, 2023 and now 2024 too. That's a level of consistency you don't see outside of Space Marines. It's why the last Drukhari box you saw was in like, what, 2018? 2017? Guess which christmas battleforce boxes sold out real fast in previous years, faster than Marines in 3 cases; Sisters of Battle.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Just so I'm understanding your point correctly, are you suggesting that, in 2018, GW wouldn't have released plastic Sisters of Battle, because they hadn't already?
Nope.
It was suggested that female space marines were not a risk. I disagreed and further stated that as marines were GWs big money maker they would likely be looking to sales from other lines to determine if they wanted to rock that particular boat rather than taking a punt and hoping for the best.
Right, I think I'm still not quite understanding then.
If Space Marines are GW's big money maker, and they're so risk adverse to it, why create Primaris? Or, perhaps, why bother redesigning and remaking Sisters in plastic, when they could just make more Space Marines?
Either way, it's hardly like Sisters *aren't* very well received right now, and there's little I've seen to indicate that they're less popular then any of the other non-Space Marine Christmas battleforces going on. The fact they have a battleforce in the first place is a pretty good indication that GW think they're doing well.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Just so I'm understanding your point correctly, are you suggesting that, in 2018, GW wouldn't have released plastic Sisters of Battle, because they hadn't already?
Nope.
It was suggested that female space marines were not a risk. I disagreed and further stated that as marines were GWs big money maker they would likely be looking to sales from other lines to determine if they wanted to rock that particular boat rather than taking a punt and hoping for the best.
Right, I think I'm still not quite understanding then.
If Space Marines are GW's big money maker, and they're so risk adverse to it, why create Primaris? Or, perhaps, why bother redesigning and remaking Sisters in plastic, when they could just make more Space Marines?
Either way, it's hardly like Sisters *aren't* very well received right now, and there's little I've seen to indicate that they're less popular then any of the other non-Space Marine Christmas battleforces going on. The fact they have a battleforce in the first place is a pretty good indication that GW think they're doing well.
Primaris were a risk but may have been seen as
A.) Less at-risk of alienating the player base than femarines would be.
B.) A risk with a high potential reward. If primaris were accepted, then you'd have all these flashy new units you'd be able to convince people to buy, especially as you phase out their firstborn equivalents.
Sisters were a risk because they went so long with so little support, it was probably hard to measure how many people would be willing to buy them outside of the hardcore fanbase they already had.
I think the point being made is that femarines could be perceived as a greater risk than both primaris marines and sisters. And additionally, there isn't necessarily as big a payoff to incentivize taking that risk. As discussed ad nauseum, the difference between a boy marine and a girl marine in terms of models is just a head swap if that. So you're not going to have a bunch of players rushing to buy more plastic when femarines are announced, but you might convince some neckbeards not to buy that box of intercessors they were eyeing for fear of contracting cooties.
(To reiterate, I am in favor of femarines being a thing.)
I’m sad, old and indeed git enough to remember their debut, right at the very, very arse end of 2nd Ed. And from the off, their background was genuinely fascinating, and the models cool.
Sure, part of the cool was them being all women. But what was really cool is they were new, in sculpt and background, and both were really solid.
As 40K transitioned to 3rd Ed, and with it the move to ever more plastics? The demand for plastic Sisters was there.
Because frankly, the aesthetic is genuinely cool.
Yet for what, 20 or so years? They only got hybrid models. Which, if anything, only drove demand for plastics.
TLDR? Sisters have always struck a chord. Not because they’re women, but because they’re just, y’know, really cool.
Fully agree sisters are cool. But if you're a GW money guy presented with whether or not to invest a bunch of money into gambling on what is *almost* a new plastic faction? I can see where that might be perceived as a risk.
They were probably aware of the existence of a die hard player base for sisters, but that player base simply hadn't had much chance to vote with their dollars up to that point because of the lack of kits being put out in support. They probably didn't have a huge number of sisters sales as evidence that they'd sell well because the company hadn't put anything out for them in forever, and what was available was extra expensive because it was all metal. Like, when GW decided to do the lates wave of kroot support, they were presumably able to look at kroot and tau sales for the last few years and get a rough idea of how willing people are to put money into similar products with similar prices.
You're a music producer. You know that this obscure borderline indie band has a small die-hard fanbase. You *hope* that if you spend some money supporting them and paying to produce a new album that it will have broad appeal and translate to lots of sales, but you can't be sure. And instead of putting your money into the indie band, you could always just ask one of your big name pop artists to crank out another album that sounds like the last one that sold well.
I mean, with sisters we know they were surprised by that one survey where everyone and their mother asked for plastic SoB. That's what made them start that project.
I still believe going the Chaos route is the way to go. Releasing female CSM first opens up the floodgates, introducing new models, a cool idea. And shows how backwards the Imperium is.
Oh you sweet Chaos child with tentacles instead of hair!
For the Sad Git brigade, making female Astartes debut the result of mutation is…wait, there’s a bunch of words, terms, and insinuations I’m not meant to use on Dakka.
Ahem.
No.
Let’s not make female Astartes the result of something, in-universe, inherently negative, yeah?
GW has had a long history of Ivory Tower decision making as their entire operation has been incredibly counter intuitive to what makes a business successful and also very much behind the times on just about everything. Brick and mortar stores that only sell their products, years of draconian policies regarding how retail stores can advertise and transact their products online, extremely slow to have any official merchandising, draconian policy about fan sites posting game rule quotes, antagonistic stance towards fan content, etc.The statements in the past about not doing market research makes it believable that GW didn't understand how popular plastic sisters would be.
I'd prefer the CSM route as well but it would need, for once, GW to write good Chaos lore. It would be far easier to introduce female CSM, in fact the main problem right now is: what took you so long? If female marines are only a problem of emperor's decree Chaos should have invented them 9500 years ago.
But yeah, make Bile's first stable marines female marines. Make a rebellious female cultist leader successfully transform into a Marine. Whatever. But it would need Chaos Lore that's deeper than: these are our cartoon villains, everything they do is so evil or stupid that some people mistake the Imperium for the good guys.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Yet for what, 20 or so years? They only got hybrid models. Which, if anything, only drove demand for plastics.
First release July 1997, last release July 2004. Codex out of print 2011 and models from the shelf before that. Celestine 2017. Plastic sisters November 2019.
When GW went through their big culling phase taking out all of the specialist games there was genuine surprise that the sisters didn't go with them. From all three remaining sisters players, as the meme would go.
With sisters, it really did not help that their old models were also more expensive than most brand new releases. It was a case where the army got drastically cheaper to collect with the release of the plastics. I forget the exact specifics as they delisted the metals 5 years ago now, but I'm pretty sure it was 80 or 90$ for a single 10 person squad.
Compare that to say Cadians, who at that same time were I think 29$, or the tactical marines who were I think 50$ then and a relatively new kit. Hell, even after 5 years of price hikes in a row, it is likely STILL cheaper to collect SIsters than it was 10 years ago.
For the Sad Git brigade, making female Astartes debut the result of mutation is…wait, there’s a bunch of words, terms, and insinuations I’m not meant to use on Dakka.
Ahem.
No.
Let’s not make female Astartes the result of something, in-universe, inherently negative, yeah?
They don't need to be mutants or horrible monsters.
They can be a champion of chaos who has fought her way through the ranks and been blessed by the Gods.
She won't need to be a child of Fabius Bile, but the living will of the gods.
A.T. wrote:As I said a number of pages back if they are going to take a punt on female marines it is going to be off the back of red hot sales of things like sisters of battle, which none of you lot that responded are buying.
Obviously, it's unprovable and just one person, but I would like to just say that I *did* start Sisters when they went into plastic, and I've bought into them as much as I did all my other non-Space Marine projects.
Did I buy the new box? No, but I didn't buy any of the others either (and, to be completely honest, had I not already bought an Exorcist and Zephyrim squad closer to when they first came out, I'd have been all over this new box because it's everything I love in the Sisters army).
I've played since Rogue Trader, but I quit during 6th because of the poor treatment sisters were receiving. At the time, my Witch Hunter/ Sisters metal army was the largest army I owned- 1500 Hereticus + 1500 SoB. Toward the tag end of 7th, I was walking by a GW and saw a GSC Codex in the window, and impulse bought for a curiousity/ nostalgia read, without any intention of playing.
And then they announced plastic Sisters for 8th, and I went hard down that rabbit hole. Not only did I go pedal to the metal on sisters, I bought into factions to ally with them and play against them. My Sisters army in plastic is my biggest army now- absolutely dwarfing the classic metal army.
These days, I can't buy boxes unless I 100% need/want everything in them. The Sisters box with the Exorcist, Seraphim and Jump Canoness actually fit that bill- I only have the 5 Seraphim from the 8th ed launch box, and my Exorcist is classic metal. I am kicking myself in the ass for not getting it, and depending upon what happens over the holidays, I might have one last shot... And I won't miss again.
Wish I had shelled out for the Battle Sanctum when it was still available, but that's another story.
The Hereticus box was also tempting; I do need a second unit of both Arbites and Inquisitorial Hench, and you can never have too many BSS or Immolators...
But what stopped me? I already have both Taddeus and Greyfax. Knowing both Krieg, Eldar Aspects and Emperor's Children are on the way? It made way more sense to pass. Honestly? I already have so many Sisters it might be smart to skip the Exorcist/ Seraphim box... But if I did get it, my army would almost be complete.
Dissent about Primaris is different than FSM, because FSM doesn't necessitate any model replacements, whereas Real/TrueMarines lost support over the years. FSM is pure lore, the effect of Primaris is very material.
Insectum7 wrote: Dissent about Primaris is different than FSM, because FSM doesn't necessitate any model replacements, whereas Real/TrueMarines lost support over the years. FSM is pure lore, the effect of Primaris is very material.
I see your point too. I've never been a real big space marine player...
I keep forgetting the Primaris issue cost people money as their first gen armies are being cast either into legends or being forcibly pushed into HH30k if you want to use them.
Insectum7 wrote: Dissent about Primaris is different than FSM, because FSM doesn't necessitate any model replacements, whereas Real/TrueMarines lost support over the years. FSM is pure lore, the effect of Primaris is very material.
Right. GW made marine players to basically rebuy their armies and that did not drive away the customers. So I really don't think FSM would drive away the customers either.
Insectum7 wrote: Dissent about Primaris is different than FSM, because FSM doesn't necessitate any model replacements, whereas Real/TrueMarines lost support over the years. FSM is pure lore, the effect of Primaris is very material.
Right. GW made marine players to basically rebuy their armies and that did not drive away the customers. So I really don't think FSM would drive away the customers either.
Two things
1: Personally, FSM is less of an issue to me, lore wise, than Primaris. That may not (clearly isn't) true for other people. Others are invariably going to be the type that love Primaris but hate the idea of FSM. Also, lots of people I've met through the years have multiple Marine armies. For those types it may have been just yet another Marine offering.
2: The Primaris release had a whole bunch of new models that a lot of people really liked, especially compared to the classic line. Also, gamewise they were "roidier", for lack of a better term. Tougher, Stronger, better gun. Lots of people were likely to buy into Primaris just for models+roids ("they feel more like marines should feel, huur!"). FSM wouldn't do that. The ideal for representation is that they wouldn't look any different besides some faces.
Lol. Now if GW decided to introduce FSM with a brand new line of MkVII I'd be pretty happy I probably wouldn't buy any though, as my Marine arny is done, aside from finishing off the painting. I wouldn't hold my breath for that occurence anyways.
1: Personally, FSM is less of an issue to me, lore wise, than Primaris. That may not (clearly isn't) true for other people. Others are invariably going to be the type that love Primaris but hate the idea of FSM. Also, lots of people I've met through the years have multiple Marine armies. For those types it may have been just yet another Marine offering.
2: The Primaris release had a whole bunch of new models that a lot of people really liked, especially compared to the classic line. Also, gamewise they were "roidier", for lack of a better term. Tougher, Stronger, better gun. Lots of people were likely to buy into Primaris just for models+roids ("they feel more like marines should feel, huur!"). FSM wouldn't do that. The ideal for representation is that they wouldn't look any different besides some faces.
Lol. Now if GW decided to introduce FSM with a brand new line of MkVII I'd be pretty happy I probably wouldn't buy any though, as my Marine arny is done, aside from finishing off the painting. I wouldn't hold my breath for that occurence anyways.
I think female marines should come alongside with some new cool kits. Not specific female marine kits, but just new interesting marine kits that have option to use female heads. I think that would help it go down smoothly. People like nice new marine kits, and if lore gets mangled a bit in the process, new shiny toys are more important!
And this is not sarcasm or anything. I'm really not a huge fan of the primaris lore, but the models are great so I bought a ton of them.
The last thing the game needs is more Marine players or more Marine support.
There will always be new marine kits. So might as well use some of them to introduce some optional female heads.
Well if lore wasn't an issue for you buying Primais, lore shouldn't be holding you back from sticking female heads on your models either, right? And we've seen that you're already doing that.
The last thing the game needs is more Marine players or more Marine support.
There will always be new marine kits. So might as well use some of them to introduce some optional female heads.
Well if lore wasn't an issue for you buying Primais, lore shouldn't be holding you back from sticking female heads on your models either, right? And we've seen that you're already doing that.
We can get pretty circular at this point.
It won't stop someone from making female Marines.
But the current lore DOES enable people to be jerks about said Marines. And far too many people use that permission.
Don't play/interact with those people. I can't use my Marines if Legends aren't allowed or people are sticklers for base sizes. I don't enjoy games with people complaining about my stuff either. Your FSM Primaris are at least allowed in tournaments.
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've always been under the impression that they (the Primarchs) are his (The Emperor's) genetic "sons" He engineered them from his own source material with each son focused into one of his personality aspects and genderflipping them female would have been unnecessary complications. i.e. Primarchs are male because they're made from Big E, and Big E is male. (Also this fiction was set 30+ years ago long before women were serving in combat roles, outside of named heros like Joan of Arc which I'm assuming people can see in the Sisters of Battle) Yeah they probably played fast and loose with the science, and its fiction so anything can be done with a little hand waving. But there was no reason to do so.
If you go with the primarchs as aspects of the Emperor’s personality, it does open the door to the missing two were his feminine side. He didn’t like seeing that once it was out of his mind in the real world, and had them wiped out...
GW is dead here, in this part of Canada, and no one has any interest in renewing the meta that was here. Stock sits on shelves and the only game being played on tables is Heroclicks.
Saying that there has been no change in sales after the twisting of the lore for the minority, is interesting to me. 9th died and 10th is no where to be seen. There is no meta for 11th edition when it hits. No one here cares.
All this activism for female Marines and gender refocusing is going to keep it off tables as regular people aren't interested in the message above story or game play.
GW has aligned themselves with hollyweird and cultural Marxists and people have noticed.
Only those trapped in the echo chamber have not noticed, or continue to scream about how the change is good and needs to be pushed farther.
His claim, and it’s for him to present contrasting evidence to support his claim.
Cop out extraordinaire.
Not really.
Especially since that poster said in the post that Warhammer has been dead since 9th Edition. That's a pretty significant period before Custodes got ladies.
Besides, his claim is that *bunch of meaningless buzzwords*, therefore sales are down, using solely anecdote instead of evidence.
Whereas, in the real world, GW have once again posted record results, not solely down to Licensing increases, to the point they’re now part of the FTSE 100.
Hence I’m very interested to found out what the other evidence I’m clearly not aware of might be.
GW is dead here, in this part of Canada, and no one has any interest in renewing the meta that was here. Stock sits on shelves and the only game being played on tables is Heroclicks.
Saying that there has been no change in sales after the twisting of the lore for the minority, is interesting to me. 9th died and 10th is no where to be seen. There is no meta for 11th edition when it hits. No one here cares.
All this activism for female Marines and gender refocusing is going to keep it off tables as regular people aren't interested in the message above story or game play.
I've been in many places where GW has been and died off and where its come around again and where it hasn't. There are LOADS of factors that lean into this, but to lay all the blame on something that hasn't actually happened (female marines are not a thing and the closest its come to being a thing is 1 video on Warhammer + with a Custodes and that was very recently - so nothing at all that would influence 9-10-early11 editions).
Chances are its dead in your area for a whole host of other reasons. Perhaps the regulars just got older; got kids and married and moved on as life threw other things at them and there were no/few younger people to pick it up and keep the active groups going. Perhaps there was a local fallout between fans over social elements and they disbanded; perhaps all the games moved 1 city over and you're in a "deadzone" between a couple of active playergroups that are just outside of your region; perhaps people got tired of GW's style of balance and reached out into other games; perhaps the local stores stopped promoting it in favour of MTG or RPG games or Boardgames and thus recruitment fell off as people were coaxed into other things.
There are SO many potential what-ifs and chances are the real reasons for your specific situation could be more than one single element. Indeed its very rare for it to just be 1 thing. Often its a combination that add up.
Two people leave the club because they have kids and don't have time; another gets promoted and moves away; another marries and moves overseas; the guy organising gets bored with the GW rules system and goes off to promote and play Heroclicks; the 3 remaining people don't really know how to market and they are all in their 30s which makes it harder to get the teens involved; etc...
Hmmm.....interesting. I'm, personally, amazed how this discussion seems to be more about GW'S bottom line than actual social justice or the consistency of the lore. Capitalism at its finest. /s
Gadzilla666 wrote: Hmmm.....interesting. I'm, personally, amazed how this discussion seems to be more about GW'S bottom line than actual social justice or the consistency of the lore. Capitalism at its finest. /s
its 20pages long - most threads that get that long change their focus. Unless there's an event that pushes it back onto the original topic.
Eg rumour threads can and will wander all over the place until a new rumour comes out or a release/news and then it nudges back on topic.
As with pretty much any Limited Company, GW’s main interest is its bottom line, as it has responsibilities to its shareholders, such as maximising profits.
And part of the argument against hypothetical Female Astartes is that it would tank sales. And just above? We’ve an anecdotal tale of how it was Female Custards that killed 40K in the poster’s area.
Yet, when we look at verifiable information? GW is going really really well. Which suggests the summarised by me right now “go woke go broke” is simply wishful thinking nonsense in this specific area, as whilst I deliberately stop short of claiming Female Custards are responsible for GW’s gains, the verifiable evidence shows that, at absolute worst, it didn’t hurt them any.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: And part of the argument against hypothetical Female Astartes is that it would tank sales. And just above? We’ve an anecdotal tale of how it was Female Custards that killed 40K in the poster’s area.
If 40k died in the area during 9th, then female Custodes had nothing to do with it. At worst they're a factor in 40k not coming back, but I would also wager there are a whole host of other more impactful reasons why.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Hmmm.....interesting. I'm, personally, amazed how this discussion seems to be more about GW'S bottom line than actual social justice or the consistency of the lore. Capitalism at its finest. /s
its 20pages long - most threads that get that long change their focus. Unless there's an event that pushes it back onto the original topic.
Eg rumour threads can and will wander all over the place until a new rumour comes out or a release/news and then it nudges back on topic.
Point. I'm going to eventually read the entire thread. Personally interested in the absence of interested parties in the late discussion. Where's Sgt_Smudge? Where's Not Online? Bans, perhaps?
Tyran wrote:
Insectum7 wrote: Maybe 30k is where it's at, and 30k's an even bigger sausagefest.
I have yet to meet the hypothetical 30k gamer in real life.
Starting to believe it is only smoke and mirrors pushed by Dakkadakka.
Hi. 30k player here. We exist. Nothing to do with the topics being currently discussed in this thread, however. At least, not in my personal experience.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Hmmm.....interesting. I'm, personally, amazed how this discussion seems to be more about GW'S bottom line than actual social justice or the consistency of the lore. Capitalism at its finest. /s
its 20pages long - most threads that get that long change their focus. Unless there's an event that pushes it back onto the original topic.
Eg rumour threads can and will wander all over the place until a new rumour comes out or a release/news and then it nudges back on topic.
Point. I'm going to eventually read the entire thread. Personally interested in the absence of interested parties in the late discussion. Where's Sgt_Smudge? Where's Not Online? Bans, perhaps?
Eh I mostly avoided the thread because I've not much to contribute to the core topic.
I think for the most part its a discussion that goes nowhere because everyone brings their own impression of what it should be and there isn't really a point where the middle ground is found. Everyone argues their own corner until someone starts slinging insults and then its an ego fight until the mods step in. It's been done to death as well; rearing its head every so often recently. So in a sense this thread is nothing new and for some its clear it won't go anywhere positive or progressive. It will also have zero impact on GW/the community at large.
Also as it can get hostile/insulting very quickly it can just be one of those topics people avoid because it ends up being a negative experience
Gadzilla666 wrote: Hmmm.....interesting. I'm, personally, amazed how this discussion seems to be more about GW'S bottom line than actual social justice or the consistency of the lore. Capitalism at its finest. /s
its 20pages long - most threads that get that long change their focus. Unless there's an event that pushes it back onto the original topic.
Eg rumour threads can and will wander all over the place until a new rumour comes out or a release/news and then it nudges back on topic.
Point. I'm going to eventually read the entire thread. Personally interested in the absence of interested parties in the late discussion. Where's Sgt_Smudge? Where's Not Online? Bans, perhaps?
Eh I mostly avoided the thread because I've not much to contribute to the core topic.
I think for the most part its a discussion that goes nowhere because everyone brings their own impression of what it should be and there isn't really a point where the middle ground is found. Everyone argues their own corner until someone starts slinging insults and then its an ego fight until the mods step in. It's been done to death as well; rearing its head every so often recently. So in a sense this thread is nothing new and for some its clear it won't go anywhere positive or progressive. It will also have zero impact on GW/the community at large.
Also as it can get hostile/insulting very quickly it can just be one of those topics people avoid because it ends up being a negative experience
I agree . But it's here, and people are fighting about it, so it's hard to ignore. The damnation of the public.
His claim, and it’s for him to present contrasting evidence to support his claim.
Cop out extraordinaire.
Not really.
Especially since that poster said in the post that Warhammer has been dead since 9th Edition. That's a pretty significant period before Custodes got ladies.
Disagree, GW might be doing great financially even if players are leaving certain product lines. The macro view of GW profit doesn't say anything about the topic. There's so much potential wiggle room in the numbers that a dip in sales or participation in a given area or faction could easily be lost.
PenitentJake wrote: People who don't actually know what Marxism is shouldn't be allowed to use the word.
I agree, but, Ummmm,.....when was Marxism mentioned? I apparently missed it.
Steelhead, towards the top of this page, mentioned cultural Marxism. Their whole post was basically utterly divorced from reality, though, so you'd probably already switched off by the time you got to that part.
Correct me if I am wrong, but here's what I've learned from this thread...
1. Most people would be fine with female space marines as long as there was a in-continuity reason that didn't feel like a shore-horned reason (See. Adeptus Custodes) for their existence.
2. Some consider the inclusion of female space marines to be part of a liberal/woke agenda that they feel personally affects their future enjoyment of the game.
3. Very few like the idea of female Chaos Space Marines appearing first, before loyalist Marines.
4. This is a sensitive subject that can quickly spiral into wars, and we owe a "thank you" to the friendly neighborhood moderators, for keeping us civil.
Lathe Biosas wrote: 1. Most people would be fine with female space marines as long as there was a in-continuity reason that didn't feel like a shore-horned reason (See. Adeptus Custodes) for their existence.?
It's possibly also worth pointing out, though, that Imperial Knights received exactly the same treatment as Custodes did (originally described as recruiting from 'noble sons', but then it turns out that's just out-dated shorthand for 'rich people' and some Knight households have some (or exclusively) women pilots as well, and always have) without all the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
GW have been 'shoe-horning' things into the background for as long as the game has been around. In every other instance, people grumbled, and then got on with their lives. It was only an issue for Custodes because culture warriors online (many of whom don't even play the game) blew it all out of proportion in an effort to turn it into a bigger deal than it actually is.
Lathe Biosas wrote: 1. Most people would be fine with female space marines as long as there was a in-continuity reason that didn't feel like a shore-horned reason (See. Adeptus Custodes) for their existence.?
It's possibly also worth pointing out, though, that Imperial Knights received exactly the same treatment as Custodes did (originally described as recruiting from 'noble sons', but then it turns out that's just out-dated shorthand for 'rich people' and some Knight households have some (or exclusively) women pilots as well, and always have) without all the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
GW have been 'shoe-horning' things into the background for as long as the game has been around. In every other instance, people grumbled, and then got on with their lives. It was only an issue for Custodes because culture warriors online (many of whom don't even play the game) blew it all out of proportion in an effort to turn it into a bigger deal than it actually is.
Also the people that don't like this just don't like it. No 'reasonable in continuity' reason will be good enough. It's a no true scotsman fallacy - there will never be an in universe reason that satisfies them, it will always be for 'woke' reasons, no matter how they do it and therefore no reason will be acceptable.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Correct me if I am wrong, but here's what I've learned from this thread...
1. Most people would be fine with female space marines as long as there was a in-continuity reason that didn't feel like a shore-horned reason (See. Adeptus Custodes) for their existence.
2. Some consider the inclusion of female space marines to be part of a liberal/woke agenda that they feel personally affects their future enjoyment of the game.
3. Very few like the idea of female Chaos Space Marines appearing first, before loyalist Marines.
4. This is a sensitive subject that can quickly spiral into wars, and we owe a "thank you" to the friendly neighborhood moderators, for keeping us civil.
I think that's what I've picked up...
Did I miss anything?
No. This thread only tells us the opinions of those who feel the strongest about this particular topic on this specific internet forum. In no way shape or form is this thread, or anything anyone says in it, representative of the greater whole. The vast majority are not going to take the time out of their day to engage in this discourse, no matter which side they might feel more sympathetic toward.
Lathe Biosas wrote: 1. Most people would be fine with female space marines as long as there was a in-continuity reason that didn't feel like a shore-horned reason (See. Adeptus Custodes) for their existence.?
It's possibly also worth pointing out, though, that Imperial Knights received exactly the same treatment as Custodes did (originally described as recruiting from 'noble sons', but then it turns out that's just out-dated shorthand for 'rich people' and some Knight households have some (or exclusively) women pilots as well, and always have) without all the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
GW have been 'shoe-horning' things into the background for as long as the game has been around. In every other instance, people grumbled, and then got on with their lives. It was only an issue for Custodes because culture warriors online (many of whom don't even play the game) blew it all out of proportion in an effort to turn it into a bigger deal than it actually is.
Also the people that don't like this just don't like it. No 'reasonable in continuity' reason will be good enough. It's a no true scotsman fallacy - there will never be an in universe reason that satisfies them, it will always be for 'woke' reasons, no matter how they do it and therefore no reason will be acceptable.
Because thematically space marines fulfill a greater role in the lore as the counterpart to the monastic military orders of the real world crusades within the religious crusades of the imperium. Their structure and composition is foundational to their theming and the informing of the audience as to what kind of society they represent. Sure not every chapter is literally a monk in their aesthetics, but they still exist within a greater framework and an underlying structure that encapsulates that idea. It helps sell the regressive and religious nature of the setting. It's broadly the exact same reason the sisters exist. Their manifestation and explanation in the lore is really just in service to and justification for the theme itself. Which cleaver writers can use as a wedge whereby, even if individual space marines and chapters don't seem all that religious, zealous, or backwards, they still can ironically exist within and help to reinforce a structure that is ideologically opposed to them.
You kind of get a double double reversal of these themes with the first Horus Heresy books. Horus fights the Emperor because of a falsely interpreted vison from the chaos gods in which he believes the emperor will raise himself up as a god, thus betraying his beliefs. In response he ironically empowers himself, acknowledges and does the bidding of the very gods that he is supposedly trying to destroy all whilst using an atheistic justification. Meanwhile Loken and the loyalists increasingly fight to protect and hide a burgeoning religion that directly goes against the imperial truth and will ultimately undermine all of the things that they have been fighting for. The ensuing fall of the space marines as they transition from their secular ideals into the instrument of a religious and repressive society is very, very important. Their future place as essentially the crusading military orders is pivotal to driving that point home within the setting. Being all male just happens to be fundamental to that theme and their place within the broader imperum.
Sledgehammer wrote: Because thematically space marines fulfill a greater role in the lore as the counterpart to the monastic military orders of the real world crusades within the religious crusades of the imperium. Their structure and composition is foundational to their theming and the informing of the audience as to what kind of society they represent. Sure not every chapter is literally a monk in their aesthetics, but they still exist within a greater framework and an underlying structure that encapsulates that idea. It helps sell the regressive and religious nature of the setting. It's broadly the exact same reason the sisters exist. Their manifestation and explanation in the lore is really just in service to and justification for the theme itself. Which cleaver writers can use as a wedge whereby, even if individual space marines and chapters don't seem all that religious, zealous, or backwards, they still can ironically exist within and help to reinforce a structure that is ideologically opposed to them.
And, as we explored earlier in the thread, none of this requires them to all be male.
Sledgehammer wrote: Because thematically space marines fulfill a greater role in the lore as the counterpart to the monastic military orders of the real world crusades within the religious crusades of the imperium. Their structure and composition is foundational to their theming and the informing of the audience as to what kind of society they represent. Sure not every chapter is literally a monk in their aesthetics, but they still exist within a greater framework and an underlying structure that encapsulates that idea. It helps sell the regressive and religious nature of the setting. It's broadly the exact same reason the sisters exist. Their manifestation and explanation in the lore is really just in service to and justification for the theme itself. Which cleaver writers can use as a wedge whereby, even if individual space marines and chapters don't seem all that religious, zealous, or backwards, they still can ironically exist within and help to reinforce a structure that is ideologically opposed to them.
And, as we explored earlier in the thread, none of this requires them to all be male.
The allusion to the monastic military orders, and the implication as to what that reveals to an audience concerning the greater values of the society for which they fight for and represent cannot be overstated. It is foundational to the establishing of the very setting itself.
It is through the divine mandate of the emperor by which both they and the imperium derives its power. The double headed Aquilla both historically and in 40k represents a structure in which religion and the state are wholly under the power and authority of a single body. The religious phraseology and the allusions to it within our own world are not accidental by any means.
Your suggestion would leave the sisters as the only real representation of these values of the setting. Again the cultural designs and themes that spring forth from those constructs would have to inevitably change as a result.
This all goes without saying that the underlying values that lead to the desire for the creation of the female space marines themselves (that being secular egalitarianism) lie in direct contrast to the themes of the imperium itself.
Insectum7 wrote: Nobody gets to choose how themes or details resonate with other people.
Ah. So you agree it’s wrong for one guy to decide that female marines don’t fit in the Astartes.
I am indeed just one guy, and my opinion is that female space marines will undermine the setting and its identity as a whole. I do not speak for the community or a broad silent majority. I also don't think that the majority opinion grants any greater authority than others. The majority can become just as tyrannical as any ruling minority or elite. As a construct 40k has and continues to be established with certain rules. Rules which we have essentially formed a broader understanding and social networks around. 99.99% of 40k players have and are being introduced to the setting as it exists. Space marines being all male as designed by the antiquated and religious satire that the setting is, is what everyone knows. Why disrupt the broader understanding of the franchise and undermine its religious themes and ability to satirize? If you want representation it can be achieved elsewhere without the downsides.
Homogenization in an effort to appeal to values that the setting can express through satire instead is quite simply bad writing.
Sledgehammer wrote: The allusion to the monastic military orders, and the implication as to what that reveals to an audience concerning the greater values of the society for which they fight for and represent cannot be overstated. It is foundational to the establishing of the very setting itself.
But does not require Space Marines to be male.
Those 'monastic military orders' were gender specific because soldiers were men, and monks and nuns were segregated to avoid them shacking up. Neither of those things is applicable here. The Imperium does not only use men for soldiers, and Space Marines have no interest in sex. So having them all be men is an anachronism.
Your suggestion would leave the sisters as the only real representation of these values the setting.
Ideally not, since I dislike Sisters as a concept as it is, like the all-male marines, based on an anachronism that doesn't actually fit into the setting.
Sledgehammer wrote: The allusion to the monastic military orders, and the implication as to what that reveals to an audience concerning the greater values of the society for which they fight for and represent cannot be overstated. It is foundational to the establishing of the very setting itself.
But does not require Space Marines to be male.
Those 'monastic military orders' were gender specific because soldiers were men, and monks and nuns were segregated to avoid them shacking up. Neither of those things is applicable here. The Imperium does not only use men for soldiers, and Space Marines have no interest in sex. So having them all be men is an anachronism.
Your suggestion would leave the sisters as the only real representation of these values the setting.
Ideally not, since I dislike Sisters as a concept as it is, like the all-male marines, based on an anachronism that doesn't actually fit into the setting.
Tthe allusion to those real world orders is what is used to inform the viewer on the broader social, political, and religious aspects of the society in which they represent. The structure of the space marines and the implementation of sexual segregation is highly important to drawing out the theme and establishing the allusion for the audience.
"its not needed" in 40k is like arguing that Kryptmann shouldn't have killed all of those planets. Without the real world allusions the setting no longer as closely mirrors the things they are trying to satirize. You hurt the identity of the setting by diminishing its ability to outline absurdities. Of course it's absurd, that's the point!
Insectum7 wrote: Nobody gets to choose how themes or details resonate with other people.
A theme 'resonating' with someone doesn't make it logically consistent within the setting.
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Sledgehammer wrote: And the allusion to those real world orders are used to inform the viewer on the broader social, political, and religious aspects of the society in which they represent.
Except they're not, because the society they represent is not one that requires gender segregation.
Having a gender segregated group that doesn't actually require gender segregation, that is the face of a society that doesn't consider gender segregation necessary is pointless. It doesn't make some grand statement about today's society... it was never that deep. It's an anachronism resulting from the faction having been created at a time when 'male soldier' was the default in the real world, so nobody questioned it being the default in the made-up one.
Insectum7 wrote: Nobody gets to choose how themes or details resonate with other people.
A theme 'resonating' with someone doesn't make it logically consistent within the setting.
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Sledgehammer wrote: And the allusion to those real world orders are used to inform the viewer on the broader social, political, and religious aspects of the society in which they represent.
Except they're not, because the society they represent is not one that requires gender segregation.
Having a gender segregated group that doesn't actually require gender segregation, that is the face of a society that doesn't consider gender segregation necessary is pointless. It doesn't make some grand statement about today's society... it was never that deep. It's an anachronism resulting from the faction having been created at a time when 'male soldier' was the default in the real world, so nobody questioned it being the default in the made-up one.
The sisters of battle literally require gender separation and it resulted from the largest and most devastating event in the Imperium outside of the Horus Heresy and as far as we know in lore NO ONE has even suggested attempting to make female space marines.
People look at the space marines as a literal divine manifestation of their emperors will. In such a society if you think even suggesting to change the geneseed to such an extent, even given caul and the primaris, you're going to get accused of heresy. You're essentially saying "yeah but i can do better than god".
Insectum7 wrote: Nobody gets to choose how themes or details resonate with other people.
A theme 'resonating' with someone doesn't make it logically consistent within the setting.
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Sledgehammer wrote: And the allusion to those real world orders are used to inform the viewer on the broader social, political, and religious aspects of the society in which they represent.
Except they're not, because the society they represent is not one that requires gender segregation.
Having a gender segregated group that doesn't actually require gender segregation, that is the face of a society that doesn't consider gender segregation necessary is pointless. It doesn't make some grand statement about today's society... it was never that deep. It's an anachronism resulting from the faction having been created at a time when 'male soldier' was the default in the real world, so nobody questioned it being the default in the made-up one.
I mean let's be real, male soldiers are still the default realistically in most active conflicts in the world right now. Female soldiers are largely in support capacities and none of them have yet to even be able to join the Navy Seals despite it being open to women to join, which when you think about the grueling attrition rate that most space marines have in their aspirant trials, make it even less likely for women to make it to be a space marine even if they were somehow magically allowed to join. There's a reason why despite a desperation for manpower in Ukraine right now, there's still only 13,000 women that have combatant status which is ludicrously low compared to men currently fighting there.
Insectum7 wrote: Nobody gets to choose how themes or details resonate with other people.
A theme 'resonating' with someone doesn't make it logically consistent within the setting.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sledgehammer wrote: And the allusion to those real world orders are used to inform the viewer on the broader social, political, and religious aspects of the society in which they represent.
Except they're not, because the society they represent is not one that requires gender segregation.
Having a gender segregated group that doesn't actually require gender segregation, that is the face of a society that doesn't consider gender segregation necessary is pointless. It doesn't make some grand statement about today's society... it was never that deep. It's an anachronism resulting from the faction having been created at a time when 'male soldier' was the default in the real world, so nobody questioned it being the default in the made-up one.
The sisters of battle literally require gender separation and it resulted from the largest and most devastating event in the Imperium outside of the Horus Heresy.
People look at the space marines as a literal divine manifestation of their emperors will. In such a society if you think even suggesting to change the geneseed to such an extent, even given caul and the primaris, you're going to get accused of heresy. You're essentially saying "yeah but i can do better than god".
So, "I improved on the whole design, fixed a lot of the flaws (or so they thought at the time), added a bunch of organs, completely reworked the armor, added stubbers and grav tanks," is fine? But "I increased the recruitment pool," is a bridge too far?
Edit: And, at least for this post you made, that would indicate that if female Marines were simply retconned in, so it was always possible and done, that'd be fine. Just delete the one line about only working with men and jobs a good one.
Insectum7 wrote: Nobody gets to choose how themes or details resonate with other people.
A theme 'resonating' with someone doesn't make it logically consistent within the setting.
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Sledgehammer wrote: And the allusion to those real world orders are used to inform the viewer on the broader social, political, and religious aspects of the society in which they represent.
Except they're not, because the society they represent is not one that requires gender segregation.
Having a gender segregated group that doesn't actually require gender segregation, that is the face of a society that doesn't consider gender segregation necessary is pointless. It doesn't make some grand statement about today's society... it was never that deep. It's an anachronism resulting from the faction having been created at a time when 'male soldier' was the default in the real world, so nobody questioned it being the default in the made-up one.
The sisters of battle literally require gender separation and it resulted from the largest and most devastating event in the Imperium outside of the Horus Heresy.
People look at the space marines as a literal divine manifestation of their emperors will. In such a society if you think even suggesting to change the geneseed to such an extent, even given caul and the primaris, you're going to get accused of heresy. You're essentially saying "yeah but i can do better than god".
So, "I improved on the whole design, fixed a lot of the flaws (or so they thought at the time), added a bunch of organs, completely reworked the armor, added stubbers and grav tanks," is fine? But "I increased the recruitment pool," is a bridge too far?
Dogmatically speaking I believe that fixing what already existed is much different than changing the nature of something entirely. I believe Caul used what already existed (the sangprimus portum) and just created a more stable genetic template, that is directly derived from the emperor and his works. We have NO EVIDENCE for female space marines, and to bring them out of the blue is much more akin to making your own plant from scratch then cross breeding a new one.
oh and i still am not a fan of the primaris lore for the janky implementation.
As far as weapons and new tanks goes, yeah it's technically tech heresy, but how many different vehicles and guns been created post heresy? A LOT!
I mean let's be real, male soldiers are still the default realistically in most active conflicts in the world right now. Female soldiers are largely in support capacities and none of them have yet to even be able to join the Navy Seals despite it being open to women to join, which when you think about the grueling attrition rate that most space marines have in their aspirant trials, make it even less likely for women to make it to be a space marine even if they were somehow magically allowed to join. There's a reason why despite a desperation for manpower in Ukraine right now, there's still only 13,000 women that have combatant status which is ludicrously low compared to men currently fighting there.
And none of this is an issue with the amount of modification that Space Marines go under. Nor is it a concern in a game in which human men and women have the exact same stat line and abilities.
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Sledgehammer wrote: The sisters of battle literally require gender separation ...
The Sisters of Battle require gender segregation because their existence relies on an anachronistic joke (because they're not "men under arms", hurr, hurr...) that doesn't make sense in a setting that doesn't segregate their population by gender.
The phrase 'men under arms' would never have been something that would have been used accidentally in a society that arms both men and women already, and if it was used deliberately it would have resulted in a summary execution of the person responsible for trying to subvert the rules, and the relevent passage of text being rewritten.
It was a joke that worked in the '90s, that is increasingly silly now.
I mean let's be real, male soldiers are still the default realistically in most active conflicts in the world right now. Female soldiers are largely in support capacities and none of them have yet to even be able to join the Navy Seals despite it being open to women to join, which when you think about the grueling attrition rate that most space marines have in their aspirant trials, make it even less likely for women to make it to be a space marine even if they were somehow magically allowed to join. There's a reason why despite a desperation for manpower in Ukraine right now, there's still only 13,000 women that have combatant status which is ludicrously low compared to men currently fighting there.
And none of this is an issue with the amount of modification that Space Marines go under. Nor is it a concern in a game in which human men and women have the exact same stat line and abilities.
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Sledgehammer wrote: The sisters of battle literally require gender separation ...
The Sisters of Battle require gender segregation because their existence relies on an anachronistic joke (because they're not "men under arms", hurr, hurr...) that doesn't make sense in a setting that doesn't segregate their population by gender.
The phrase 'men under arms' would never have been something that would have been used accidentally in a society that arms both men and women already, and if it was used deliberately it would have resulted in a summary execution of the person responsible for trying to subvert the rules, and the relevent passage of text being rewritten.
It was a joke that worked in the '90s, that is increasingly silly now.
And the space marines and the Sororitas are emblematic of an anachronistic society.....
I mean let's be real, male soldiers are still the default realistically in most active conflicts in the world right now. Female soldiers are largely in support capacities and none of them have yet to even be able to join the Navy Seals despite it being open to women to join, which when you think about the grueling attrition rate that most space marines have in their aspirant trials, make it even less likely for women to make it to be a space marine even if they were somehow magically allowed to join. There's a reason why despite a desperation for manpower in Ukraine right now, there's still only 13,000 women that have combatant status which is ludicrously low compared to men currently fighting there.
And none of this is an issue with the amount of modification that Space Marines go under. Nor is it a concern in a game in which human men and women have the exact same stat line and abilities.
I mean it is kind of relevant because Space Marine chapters are incredibly selective about who they choose to even recruit into their brotherhood, usually through trials with absurdly high attrition rates, so even if women were for some reason allowed to be put through those trials, they would almost be incredibly unlikely to make it through them to get the modification to become a space marine. Which is why I brought up the whole Navy Seals thing, since it's about the closest real world equivalent to it. And more importantly, it's not an anachronism because men will almost always undoubtedly be the default baseline for war and it has been for basically the entirety of human existence.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Gonna say it again, but this obsession over women is funny because none of you can actually give me a definition of what that actually is.
Inb4 mod edit because that's somehow a controversial thing to say.
GW is dead here, in this part of Canada, and no one has any interest in renewing the meta that was here. Stock sits on shelves and the only game being played on tables is Heroclicks.
Saying that there has been no change in sales after the twisting of the lore for the minority, is interesting to me. 9th died and 10th is no where to be seen. There is no meta for 11th edition when it hits. No one here cares.
All this activism for female Marines and gender refocusing is going to keep it off tables as regular people aren't interested in the message above story or game play.
GW has aligned themselves with hollyweird and cultural Marxists and people have noticed.
Only those trapped in the echo chamber have not noticed, or continue to scream about how the change is good and needs to be pushed farther.
The most vocal, aren't the majority.
Lol. So all you play around there is Heroclix, wich is tied to the comics industry (primarily Marvel & DC), but you expect us to believe that you're bothered by GW....
I call BS.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Correct me if I am wrong, but here's what I've learned from this thread...
1. Most people would be fine with female space marines as long as there was a in-continuity reason that didn't feel like a shore-horned reason (See. Adeptus Custodes) for their existence.
2. Some consider the inclusion of female space marines to be part of a liberal/woke agenda that they feel personally affects their future enjoyment of the game.
3. Very few like the idea of female Chaos Space Marines appearing first, before loyalist Marines.
4. This is a sensitive subject that can quickly spiral into wars, and we owe a "thank you" to the friendly neighborhood moderators, for keeping us civil.
I think that's what I've picked up...
Did I miss anything?
Most people don't care much at all, and most of the few people who do care don't care very much.
Grimslul wrote: Gonna say it again, but this obsession over women is funny because none of you can actually give me a definition of what that actually is.
Not have you, as it happens. Given you’re the one trying to hang everything on that particular nail, why don’t you go first.
And remember. You can’t appeal to chromosomes, as it’s already been demonstrated in this thread that, whilst rare, XX Chromosomes can result in male sex organs, and XY Chromsomes can result in female sex organs. And that’s before we consider XXX, XXY, XYY, XXYY, XXXY, XXXX, XXXXY and XXXXX Chromsomes.
As for “but Navy SEALS”. Didn’t realise they’re
A) Recruited pre-puberty by preference and in some cases, apparently necesitiy
B) Subjected to “might as well be magic” genhancement, the result of which is a being no longer human
So. A few to chew on there. But first, let’s hear your definition of a woman. Which I’m sure will be in-depth and scientifically rigorous. And not just a short list of Things Wot You Heard On The Internet.
I mean let's be real, male soldiers are still the default realistically in most active conflicts in the world right now. Female soldiers are largely in support capacities and none of them have yet to even be able to join the Navy Seals despite it being open to women to join, which when you think about the grueling attrition rate that most space marines have in their aspirant trials, make it even less likely for women to make it to be a space marine even if they were somehow magically allowed to join. There's a reason why despite a desperation for manpower in Ukraine right now, there's still only 13,000 women that have combatant status which is ludicrously low compared to men currently fighting there.
And none of this is an issue with the amount of modification that Space Marines go under. Nor is it a concern in a game in which human men and women have the exact same stat line and abilities.
As an outsider I know it's easy to not see the forest for the trees in this type of conversation. I'd caution you against getting so entrenched in your argument that you lose perspective. Stat lines equals lore. Really? Amusingly, all it really comes down to is stats from a logical in world perspective. With a multi billion source of seedlings, why would you send women into the meat grinder of recruitment to find that one in a hundred trillion, when you could use each one to pump out five more odds at a one in a billion recruit? That's institutional -ism and it's very in line with the 40k setting. Everyone's just meat to the galaxy spanning machinations of the imperium. Sure, they probably could make female marines, but why bother? Be it the vastly inflated cost of finding appropriate female novitiates, or the actual unneeded cost of designing a more involved (and therefore by lore, likely even more dangerous) pseudo-sex-change to take the role of the something a male initiate would already have by default, the result likely doesn't merit the effort.
If leading female super soldiers are necessary for future growth, 40k should look to iterate on the Sigmar and Old World situation. Heresy is already annoying for getting all the coolest armour models and more older-edition-like customisation-heavy rules when it's probably not all that economically viable. I only saw this thread trying for a way to get advice for appropriately scaled Primaris Cataphractii. Just find a decent way to fold 30 and 40k back together, there's no reason not to, and then start something setting respecting; maybe by retconning/alt reality-ing the Bile lore about falling to Chaos and becoming boring. Boom, super (new-)women and men, and the sanctity of forty years of convoluted lore but consistent setting preserved. Heck, throw in some Krorks and all the other hinted goodies we don't actually get to see because 40k isn't allowed to significantly change. I think it's clear that there's a significant demand for both progressing and progressive 40k, and the classic nothing ever changes crapsack world, often from the same people. So, keep enough the same that there's significant model interchangeability and just a few significant models/lines without rules in one or the other version and drink the tears of a thousand wallets from all the dope ass new models you're selling and lore you're producing.
I think (hope) that most people don't have a problem with the concept discussed here, just with sweeping, hamfisted Amazon-driven changes that influence how people engage with the product they love, without actually considering it. Because there are ways it could be done if there was a willingness to make some slight non-setting-influencing retcons and seriously push the lore of 40k forward. As best as I can tell without reading the entire novels of conversation on this topic, that's not what's being discussed here. This seems to be suggesting changes to things that, as other posters like Sledgehammer correctly note, fundamentally influence they way the vast majority of the player base have interacted with the setting for sometimes decades. Space Marines are Space military orders and male for essentially the same reason all real frontline soldiers and especially elite soldiers are male, while regular humans are road bumps, don't matter, and any woman equally does not matter in that context, because any multiple of 0 is still 0. That is the bare bones reality of how people have engaged with the setting of 40k for at least as long as I've known about it, and shifting those foundations to cater to influences that aren't actually the people invested in the setting will never be well received by the people who are invested in it, and they're not broadly sexist for feeling that way, just dumb for not being able to figure out why they actually feel that way.
With all that said, GW won't do anything bold, intelligent and worth doing. Maybe those amongst the first couple of posters who said that the main faction being all male is an issue are correct. If we imagine 40k as one of those comic book group display panels where characters get less and less recognisable and smaller with each row, perhaps moving forward SM should be further towards the top of the page, above Eldar, and Guard should be down the bottom and large fighting 'Nids and Orks?
One thing that definitely won’t happen is marines taking a back seat, or any other seat other than front and centre and getting all the attention. That’s the business model. That’s what drives sales and gives the IP its unique qualities.
In real life that main faction that is the face of the multibillion pound franchise being exclusively male is a problem. Like it or not it is a barrier to entry for some people.
As much as people can try to hang on words like brotherhood and monastic there is nothing in that factions identity that has to be male ONLY. Marines are enhanced super soldiers, basically built in labs and clad in big distinctive power armour so they are stronger, faster and bigger the humans. They aren’t humans by definition. Some are monk like, some are Vikings some are vampires etc but not all are monks etc. they can literally be whatever you like…..except female. It’s stupid.
In universe there is nothing that cannot be made possible, new races, units and weapons are “invented” all the time. The setting is in constant flux. Changing it in no way breaks it as has been shown by the hundreds of major changes that have happened over the decades.
The only reason to keep Marines as all male is politics, real life politics. However well meaning or toxic it’s only your politics that makes you against female marines if you are. There is nothing to debate beyond that.
The in universe ways to explain female marines have been discussed to death and no in universe reason adequately defends maintaining the status quo. From a real world political view point you cannot convince anyone who feels strongly against female marines because any argument you make just fuels their beliefs that their political view point is in jeopardy and rules the narrative they create.
I love that over the years we have persisted with these threads and each time it gets less toxic and more progressive. It is time for GW to make the change and bring in female marines. And if it drives a few toxic people to quit the hobby then the community will be better off for it.
Or they could keep marines all male and shift the marketing focus.
Whilst Marines make GW a huge amount of money there's also a huge risk having all your eggs in one basket. It also means that investments in other armies and model lines don't yield the same return on investment.
Now we've left the latter days of the Kirby regime where that financial focus led to over-investment in Marines and under-investment in other lines.
However we've also seen it harm the Stormcast in AoS - again a poster army that "has" to be in every starter set suddenly causing issues with GW having to wipe out half the model range that wasn't even 3 years old to make space for more.
All eggs in one basket is risky marketing.
IF GW marketed even one or two other armies as much suddenly representation is less of an issue if GW are putting posters of Marines and SoB and Eldar up side by side everywhere. Even just Marines and SoB as the figurehead of the brand would be a huge step. SoB bring a powerful element of gothic design that's a cornerstone of a lot of 40K and something that the Marines mostly lack in outside of things like the Chaplin models.
PenitentJake wrote: People who don't actually know what Marxism is shouldn't be allowed to use the word.
I agree, but, Ummmm,.....when was Marxism mentioned? I apparently missed it.
Steelhead, towards the top of this page, mentioned cultural Marxism. Their whole post was basically utterly divorced from reality, though, so you'd probably already switched off by the time you got to that part.
And, just to remind everyone, cultural Marxism is just a rebranding of cultural bolshevism which is a conspiracy theory that there is a secret shadowy group of people trying to destroy western culture via secretly inserting Marxist political theory into all aspects of the culture, especially the arts. Who created this conspiracy theory? The Nazis. Who was the shadowy group behind the supposed plot? The Jews, of course.
Anybody pushing the "cultural Marxism" bs is spreading literal Nazi (as in full-on Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler et al.) anti-Semitic propaganda, whether they know it or not. This conspiracy theory was also cited by mass-murderers such as Breivik and attempted mass murderers such as the Poway Synagogue shooter as the justification for their crimes.
PenitentJake wrote: People who don't actually know what Marxism is shouldn't be allowed to use the word.
I agree, but, Ummmm,.....when was Marxism mentioned? I apparently missed it.
Steelhead, towards the top of this page, mentioned cultural Marxism. Their whole post was basically utterly divorced from reality, though, so you'd probably already switched off by the time you got to that part.
And, just to remind everyone, cultural Marxism is just a rebranding of cultural bolshevism which is a conspiracy theory that there is a secret shadowy group of people trying to destroy western culture via secretly inserting Marxist political theory into all aspects of the culture, especially the arts. Who created this conspiracy theory? The Nazis. Who was the shadowy group behind the supposed plot? The Jews, of course.
Anybody pushing the "cultural Marxism" bs is spreading literal Nazi (as in full-on Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler et al.) anti-Semitic propaganda, whether they know it or not. This conspiracy theory was also cited by mass-murderers such as Breivik and attempted mass murderers such as the Poway Synagogue shooter as the justification for their crimes.
Yup. The influence of the writings of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich, György Lukács, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer etc. in higher education are just nazi conspiracies to be laughed at
György Lukács has influence in literary studies because he...did literary studies. I myself briefly tied Lukács's theories to Tolkien for my final paper for a British literature class, and that was on Tolkien's relationship to the forms of the novel and the medieval romance. I really find this an obviously anti-intellectual line of argument.
Also, no gak, Freud has influence in higher education. It's not like he's the father of psychology or anything, man.
PenitentJake wrote: People who don't actually know what Marxism is shouldn't be allowed to use the word.
I agree, but, Ummmm,.....when was Marxism mentioned? I apparently missed it.
Steelhead, towards the top of this page, mentioned cultural Marxism. Their whole post was basically utterly divorced from reality, though, so you'd probably already switched off by the time you got to that part.
And, just to remind everyone, cultural Marxism is just a rebranding of cultural bolshevism which is a conspiracy theory that there is a secret shadowy group of people trying to destroy western culture via secretly inserting Marxist political theory into all aspects of the culture, especially the arts. Who created this conspiracy theory? The Nazis. Who was the shadowy group behind the supposed plot? The Jews, of course.
Anybody pushing the "cultural Marxism" bs is spreading literal Nazi (as in full-on Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler et al.) anti-Semitic propaganda, whether they know it or not. This conspiracy theory was also cited by mass-murderers such as Breivik and attempted mass murderers such as the Poway Synagogue shooter as the justification for their crimes.
Yup. The influence of the writings of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich, György Lukács, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer etc. in higher education are just nazi conspiracies to be laughed at
That's funny, because literally none of them ever turned up when I was studying for either of my degrees. Maybe because they don't have anything to do with the subject I was studying and professors don't have enough contact hours to spend time on stuff not related to the material. I also note that you didn't actually rebut anything in my post, nor provide any evidence for your claims. And of course it is entirely coincidental that all of the people you named were Jewish or had Jewish ancestry. Really not doing you any favours in dodging the anti-semitism part of the conspiracy theory.
Overread wrote: Or they could keep marines all male and shift the marketing focus.
Whilst Marines make GW a huge amount of money there's also a huge risk having all your eggs in one basket. It also means that investments in other armies and model lines don't yield the same return on investment.
Now we've left the latter days of the Kirby regime where that financial focus led to over-investment in Marines and under-investment in other lines.
However we've also seen it harm the Stormcast in AoS - again a poster army that "has" to be in every starter set suddenly causing issues with GW having to wipe out half the model range that wasn't even 3 years old to make space for more.
All eggs in one basket is risky marketing.
IF GW marketed even one or two other armies as much suddenly representation is less of an issue if GW are putting posters of Marines and SoB and Eldar up side by side everywhere. Even just Marines and SoB as the figurehead of the brand would be a huge step. SoB bring a powerful element of gothic design that's a cornerstone of a lot of 40K and something that the Marines mostly lack in outside of things like the Chaplin models.
Isn't that exactly what they did with the 9th edition trailer? Give the SoB an important role and I think they also featured on a lot of posters in that edition. It seems as if it didn't last till 10th edition, but it shows how the focus can be changed a little. The AoS approach is pretty puzzling to me as Stormcasts are the most boring faction of that setting and I don't really see people liking them, still they feature in every starter box, unlike with Marines I don't think anyone would be sad to see an AoS starter without them for once. Personally I think it's time for a 40K starter to feature the cool (read: Chaos) Marines vs. Xenos, but what do I know .
Insectum7 wrote: Nobody gets to choose how themes or details resonate with other people.
A theme 'resonating' with someone doesn't make it logically consistent within the setting.
Themes, imagery, references, and allegory are external observations based on visible tropes, not internal lore consistency, and 40K is pretty much the archetype of a setting built on mashed-together imagery with just enough filler to make it work. If you're delving into the deep lore implications of a stylistic choice you're missing the point.
Anyways, I always thought part of the reason for Marines being a boys-only club was that they're intrinsically a satire of toxic masculinity; roided-up angry dudebros conditioned to respond to emotions with violence (and also, their junk doesn't work). But GW hasn't pushed that angle much at all in the last decade or two, so aside from the monastic element there isn't a ton of reason for them not to include women, while there are strong out-of-universe reasons to do so.
If this thread has taught me anything it is that nothing, no argument, will ever convince the pro-female marine side of the merit of keeping the setting the way it is. I know that someone is going to read that first sentence and completely ignore everything after, just like my first post, but it is so tiresome to be ignored and belittled as some sort of sexist hateful person because I don't agree.
Seeing as how the pro side is arguing for change the onus should be on them to argue the merits of the change and convince people to agree. All the arguments that GW is keeping people out of the hobby based on gender identity of a single faction, the poster boy faction granted, doesn't hold a lot of water with me because I guarantee that if they thought they could squeeze a few more pennies out of the fans of this game they would. GW is an aggressively monetarily driven company that will go after fan projects, third party manufactures and religiously dictates what can and can't be included in all forms of media. The bottom line is all they care about and clearly they are willing to completely destroy established fans while chasing after money (e.g. The End Times, Primaris Marine model line.) If they thought there was an untapped market for female marines they would do it tomorrow, but I am guessing that their experience with Stormcast has taught them that they would be chasing a unprofitable market, that market being women put off to the setting because of the poster faction being exclusively male.
FYI, I wanted to put this at the end to kind of prove my point that people wont read this - The anti-female space marine side is no better. This entire thread is people screaming at each other and name calling with no one willing to even listen to what the other side is saying. Sledgehammer has made some really good points and I don't see people engaging in that conversation, I see people belittling and ignoring the point. The idea that evoking the themes of crusaders and monastic orders in a very authoritarian and draconian society doesn't necessitate gender is just ignoring the shared history of human society. You can argue that is a black mark on history and we shouldn't continue those mindsets, which I agree with in totality, but there is merit in evoking those themes in a fantasy setting where you are painting a picture. It is a lot harder to paint the Imperium as an authoritarian anachronistic society when you give them sensibilities reflecting the modern social structure. This is a setting in which people still use swords when laser cannons that can destroy capital ships exist - forward, rational thinking is not exactly integral to the setting.
Arbiter_Shade wrote: If this thread has taught me anything it is that nothing, no argument, will ever convince the pro-female marine side of the merit of keeping the setting the way it is. I know that someone is going to read that first sentence and completely ignore everything after, just like my first post, but it is so tiresome to be ignored and belittled as some sort of sexist hateful person because I don't agree.
Seeing as how the pro side is arguing for change the onus should be on them to argue the merits of the change and convince people to agree. All the arguments that GW is keeping people out of the hobby based on gender identity of a single faction, the poster boy faction granted, doesn't hold a lot of water with me because I guarantee that if they thought they could squeeze a few more pennies out of the fans of this game they would. GW is an aggressively monetarily driven company that will go after fan projects, third party manufactures and religiously dictates what can and can't be included in all forms of media. The bottom line is all they care about and clearly they are willing to completely destroy established fans while chasing after money (e.g. The End Times, Primaris Marine model line.) If they thought there was an untapped market for female marines they would do it tomorrow, but I am guessing that their experience with Stormcast has taught them that they would be chasing a non existent market, that market being women put off to the setting because of the post faction being exclusively male.
FYI, I wanted to put this at the end to kind of prove my point that people wont read this - The anti-female space marine side is no better. This entire thread is people screaming at each other and name calling with no one willing to even listen to what the other side is saying. Sledgehammer has made some really good points and I don't see people engaging in that conversation, I see people belittling and ignoring the point. The idea that evoking the themes of crusaders and monastic orders in a very authoritarian and draconian society doesn't necessitate gender is just ignoring the shared history of human society. You can argue that is a black mark on history and we shouldn't continue those mindsets, which I agree with in totality, but there is merit in evoking those themes in a fantasy setting where you are painting a picture. It is a lot harder to paint the Imperium as an authoritarian anachronistic society when you give them sensibilities reflecting the modern social structure. This is a setting in which people still use swords when laser cannons that can destroy capital ships exist - forward, rational thinking is not exactly integral to the setting.
While I agree about 40k's setting, I do think you're trying to prognosticate GW's intentions as wholly money-driven. It's a common trope in this community, but they could squeeze us much more, in much more nastier ways.
Honestly when you look at the likes of Hasbro putting £1000 packs of cards into Magic the Gathering - which aren't even legal to play in their major game formats. Or Apple's entire approach to their cult-like iphones and such
Arbiter_Shade wrote: If this thread has taught me anything it is that nothing, no argument, will ever convince the pro-female marine side of the merit of keeping the setting the way it is. I know that someone is going to read that first sentence and completely ignore everything after, just like my first post, but it is so tiresome to be ignored and belittled as some sort of sexist hateful person because I don't agree.
Seeing as how the pro side is arguing for change the onus should be on them to argue the merits of the change and convince people to agree. All the arguments that GW is keeping people out of the hobby based on gender identity of a single faction, the poster boy faction granted, doesn't hold a lot of water with me because I guarantee that if they thought they could squeeze a few more pennies out of the fans of this game they would. GW is an aggressively monetarily driven company that will go after fan projects, third party manufactures and religiously dictates what can and can't be included in all forms of media. The bottom line is all they care about and clearly they are willing to completely destroy established fans while chasing after money (e.g. The End Times, Primaris Marine model line.) If they thought there was an untapped market for female marines they would do it tomorrow, but I am guessing that their experience with Stormcast has taught them that they would be chasing a unprofitable market, that market being women put off to the setting because of the poster faction being exclusively male.
FYI, I wanted to put this at the end to kind of prove my point that people wont read this - The anti-female space marine side is no better. This entire thread is people screaming at each other and name calling with no one willing to even listen to what the other side is saying. Sledgehammer has made some really good points and I don't see people engaging in that conversation, I see people belittling and ignoring the point. The idea that evoking the themes of crusaders and monastic orders in a very authoritarian and draconian society doesn't necessitate gender is just ignoring the shared history of human society. You can argue that is a black mark on history and we shouldn't continue those mindsets, which I agree with in totality, but there is merit in evoking those themes in a fantasy setting where you are painting a picture. It is a lot harder to paint the Imperium as an authoritarian anachronistic society when you give them sensibilities reflecting the modern social structure. This is a setting in which people still use swords when laser cannons that can destroy capital ships exist - forward, rational thinking is not exactly integral to the setting.
My whole point and only comment I. This whole thread is saying this, but from the other side. Neither side will ever convince the other because the ones who care enough to comment on here hold an ideology that differs from the other side. It isn’t about the game or the setting or company. It’s about beliefs.
As for making marines less of the key faction, that is never going to happen. They aren’t all eggs in one basket, they are fully customisable eggs that are easy to build, easy to paint easy to play and the face of the whole setting. Without marines front and centre 40K loses its USP. Like it or not they aren’t going anywhere.
As for making marines less of the key faction, that is never going to happen. They aren’t all eggs in one basket, they are fully customisable eggs that are easy to build, easy to paint easy to play and the face of the whole setting. Without marines front and centre 40K loses its USP. Like it or not they aren’t going anywhere.
My view is its less about making marines "less" and more about making other elements "more". The example of Marines and Sob side by side in artwork and marketing is an ideal example of how you can keep the Marine whilst making another faction also get just an equal level of marketing attention. Indeed show that off and you've got your female representation in every single banner suddenly. Men Monks on the Marine side; Females on the SoB side. Then anyone who wants more can dive into the game more and go for the Imperia.....Astrawhatevers
Again no one can dispute that Marines make GW money and work fantastic as a marketing tool; at the same time expanding their marketing to more regularly include other factions also means GW spreading out sales to other lines and spreading out their pool of interest
Getting more places for women in the game in other places would go a long way. Chaos cults, Demon prince models that are women.
Eldar, Necron and Tau getting better Narative representation as well as some extra models.
But also the chance for Elite miniatures, and the chance at more power fantasy. Often we see one side getting that chance, but for women suddenly it needs a huge burden to get anything.
Marines are a huge power fantasy and it’s why the lore really falls so flat, since the lore gets a massive kicking from all the marine players who really don’t seem to care much about what marines really could represent if GW wanted to ad more depth.
Sadly, GW probably needed the better leadership during the earlier editions. To be able to foresee some of the shifts.
Marines are a huge power fantasy and it’s why the lore really falls so flat, since the lore gets a massive kicking from all the marine players who really don’t seem to care much about what marines really could represent if GW wanted to ad more depth.
I have trouble seeing what you're getting at with this statement, but I'm really curious what you mean. Like I get the power fantasy bit (obvious), and I think I get why you say "the lore falls flat" (Space Marines are 'the heroes' depicted in lore . . .but are actually terrible agents of a terrible regime-ish?). Then I'm just not confident I can parse the rest.
I 1000% do not mean this as a "gotcha" or whatever, this is genuine interest.
I think its an after-effect of GW having a mandate for a long time for Black Library that all novels had to be about Imperials. If you look at how old 40K is and how long BL has been going; most Xenos races have books that focus on them that you can count on one and a bit hands.
Meanwhile Marines have hundreds (esp if you include all the HH stuff).
Contrast this to Old World where you do have some favourites; but the spread is much more diluted. There isn't one faction commanding all of the lore and books and most factions have at least one or two major series of their own.
GW has improved on the Xenos front a bit; but still races like Eldar and Orks - really long term factions - have very little written about them compared ot the Imperials. Heck Tyranids have almost nothing and they are just as old.
I would really like to know how that relates to army collection. Back in the days of 2nd, there sure were a lot of Marines, but I want to say there were a lot more Eldar and Orks around too. Eldar in particular having a pretty strong showing, partly I assume because they were competitive, but maybe the general GW zeitgeist was more favorable towards them at the time.
As an aside, one of the very first websites I found in the mid 90's was someone doing a deep dive into Eldar language and symbiology.
I would really like to know how that relates to army collection. Back in the days of 2nd, there sure were a lot of Marines, but I want to say there were a lot more Eldar and Orks around too. Eldar in particular having a pretty strong showing, partly I assume because they were competitive, but maybe the general GW zeitgeist was more favorable towards them at the time.
As an aside, one of the very first websites I found in the mid 90's was someone doing a deep dive into Eldar language and symbiology.
It's hard to say as GW never publishes sales figures for stuff specifically publicly. That said its my observation that the BL lore has far less impact than you might think. Many people don't read more than their Big Rulebook and Codex and then most only read the codex for the army(ies) they collect. They might, these days, also read a summary website that mostly builds off those same sources.
In general fewer people who are into the hobby directly dip into the lore unless they came from that first (eg Horus Heresy Fans coming into the game).
That said what DOES have an impact is GW's attention to armies and its osmething that took them a very long time to address. When armies like SoB and Dark Eldar missed whole editions for codex updates; when SoB and Eldar missed updates to models for decades; when Old World didn't get half as many updates as 40K. Basically models RULE. Armies that get little to no attention get less sales; less hype and used less; both from those starting out and those keeping going. Heck at one Stage in early AoS Slaanesh had so few new and updated models that there were strong rumours that "GW is going to remove Slaanesh from the game".
This is why today GW does these "one and done leader" models. They can sprinkle them into armes like Fyreslayers that they aren't going to update for ages as a "we are still paying attention to you" kind of release. It tells fans GW are investing in the army so the army is likely to stay around and creates sales hype for GW to market and talk about for a bit
Overread wrote: Heck at one Stage in early AoS Slaanesh had so few new and updated models that there were strong rumours that "GW is going to remove Slaanesh from the game".
The lore also kinda helped this one, what with Slaanesh being missing/trapped.
There's a Drukhari font floating around the web- I downloaded it and use it in Open Office- gotta print up some stuff to decorate an arena.
But yeah, I've been talking about that disparity forever, and I do think it has an effect on the playerbase... Especially when you combine over representation in BL with over representation in videogames, animations, starter sets... The chicken and the egg argument really does have teeth.
When the trailer with the Marine, the Guardsmen and the Sister vs. Necrons dropped, (9th?) I was hoping the starter box contained a Marine unit, a Guard Unit and a Sister unit with a character for each vs. a large force of Necrons.
I know there would be a lot of players who didn't like that, and I know it's unlikely that GW would do it. I've always been a many-small-armies kinda guy.
But even if you cut the guardsmen from the group and just present Sisters + Marines more often. With a dual faction Imperial force as part of a starter set, you have room for a character, an inantry unit and an "other" unit type.
Give us an Age of Apostasy series of novels- not as huge as the Heresy (heck, the Heresy shouldn't have been as huge as the Heresy). Release a Battle Sister game that rivals Space Marine II - or even just DLC a Sister mission or whatever.
If you did all that, and you also expanded inclusion in places where it's already present- Eldar and Guard, we might not be having this conversation.
The hyper-religiousity of SoB might turn off some people too, so SoB as Imperial femme representation wouldn't be perfect for a fair number of players. Expanding the SoS component of what is now the Custodes army to the point where a return to the Talons of the Emperor would actually be appropriate. I'm not pushin for an even 50/50 split, but give SOS something. My dream, of course, would be bring the Kharon Pattern Acquisitor to plastic. Even if they did it for Heresy and we got a 40k card for it.
Or you could give the model an update- I don't know, the Hecate Pattern Acquisitor or whatever... but keep that cool designed-to-be-magnetized door and some indicator that the transport's purpose is rounding up witches.
I love the Acquisitor as it is, in all its creepy glory... But I get that it isn't everyone's cup of tea, and I also know that for some ridiculous reason, GW is trying to keep 40k and 30k from overlapping, so I am willing to put up with an updated version if I have to.
Anyway, none of this is to say I have a problem with FSM... I absolutely don't. But I think if the changes listed above actually happened, it would feel like far less of an issue than it does at the moment.
Overread wrote: I think its an after-effect of GW having a mandate for a long time for Black Library that all novels had to be about Imperials. If you look at how old 40K is and how long BL has been going; most Xenos races have books that focus on them that you can count on one and a bit hands.
Meanwhile Marines have hundreds (esp if you include all the HH stuff).
Contrast this to Old World where you do have some favourites; but the spread is much more diluted. There isn't one faction commanding all of the lore and books and most factions have at least one or two major series of their own.
GW has improved on the Xenos front a bit; but still races like Eldar and Orks - really long term factions - have very little written about them compared ot the Imperials. Heck Tyranids have almost nothing and they are just as old.
This is a good response.
But also that marines lore works when you are getting into the gritty of the imperium. And this actually I think is an issue with a lot of loretube for 40K, where it’s often discussed with how cool marines are from everything. But little on the themes of 40K and marines. No thoughts on history or other fiction that may inspire ideas or talk about how horrific it is as well.
There is of corse the other issue that often nerd media and 40K is no exception is they often only depicted women quite poorly. We are in this sort of discussion since for men often they get a power fantasy, but women have the grim reality as the only narrative. You can see this in how suddenly biology is a big issue, but only in how it affects women in this discussion so often.
We also see this for basically all minorities where even if something is entirely within a norm that should be seen within a setting like 40K, it gets huge and constant pushback.
But from an objective standpoint, the themes of Space Marines don't require them to be male - just hyper-violent war machines.
I'd say "preach on my Battle Brother", but that might open a can of worms. Subjectively speaking, that is. Most of the themes for Space Marines are recycled historicals. The recycling has varied depth and accuracy. It may also have some "historical" fantasy/monsters mixed in. Ultras are Roman, DA are Teutonic Knights, BA are likely Greco-Space-Vampire-Knights. The Norse Space Wolves. The Mongol White Scars. Objectively male isn't technically required, but its strongly strongly suggestive. You'll see similar in the Guard. Rough Riders, Steel Legion, Krieg, Catachans, Cadians, Mordians, Tallarn, Valhallans etc - Easy parallels to WWI and WWII Russians, Germans, Trench Fighters, Vietnam Americans, Cadians could easy be 80's Americans invading Grenada or Desert Storm/Shield. Part of me wonders if they used Stormin Norman as the model for Creed. There have some some all/focused female factions. Wood Elves have a strong fictional Amazonian vibe going, plus female "monsters" like dryads. Sisters. Dark Elves.
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Andykp wrote: One thing that definitely won’t happen is marines taking a back seat, or any other seat other than front and centre and getting all the attention. That’s the business model. That’s what drives sales and gives the IP its unique qualities.
In real life that main faction that is the face of the multibillion pound franchise being exclusively male is a problem. Like it or not it is a barrier to entry for some people.
If a faction they don't have to play isn't what they want to play is a barrier to entry for some people, there will always be a barrier to entry for those people.
As much as people can try to hang on words like brotherhood and monastic there is nothing in that factions identity that has to be male ONLY. Marines are enhanced super soldiers, basically built in labs and clad in big distinctive power armour so they are stronger, faster and bigger the humans. They aren’t humans by definition. Some are monk like, some are Vikings some are vampires etc but not all are monks etc. they can literally be whatever you like…..except female. It’s stupid.
They (Loyalists at least) are all warrior-monk. There is a generic Space Marine framework, and chapter specific history/culture ripoffs. The Space Faring Warrior Monk thing is generic framework. See: https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Fortress-Monastery
In universe there is nothing that cannot be made possible, new races, units and weapons are “invented” all the time. The setting is in constant flux. Changing it in no way breaks it as has been shown by the hundreds of major changes that have happened over the decades.
What major changes? Unless you want to change in-universe eras (i.e. 30K to 40K or vice versa) there are no major changes. Primarchs returned. And nothing changed. Even though there were two of them working for Chaos, such that one of them could have kept Guilliman busy, while the other conquered Terra - nothing changed. Terra still stands. GW doesn't do major changes. They rearrange deck chairs. Their rule for the setting is the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The only reason to keep Marines as all male is politics, real life politics. However well meaning or toxic it’s only your politics that makes you against female marines if you are. There is nothing to debate beyond that.
No, its your politics that is demanding the change. There are what 13? more Primarchs to bring back in some way shape or form. There are how many (sub)factions still waiting for their Centerpiece LOW Primarch level model? Man Portable Heavies vs "tanks" could use at least another two rules passes - plus a bunch of prep for next edition. Its not my politics, its my bang for the buck, and better/more rules/units/models provides far more return on investment than a cosmetic curve on a piece of plastic that can be replaced by quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies for people who can't or won't by the plastic pieces.
The in universe ways to explain female marines have been discussed to death and no in universe reason adequately defends maintaining the status quo. From a real world political view point you cannot convince anyone who feels strongly against female marines because any argument you make just fuels their beliefs that their political view point is in jeopardy and rules the narrative they create.
I love that over the years we have persisted with these threads and each time it gets less toxic and more progressive. It is time for GW to make the change and bring in female marines. And if it drives a few toxic people to quit the hobby then the community will be better off for it.
How much less toxic does it get when you tell people who disagree with you its only because of their toxic politics protecting the status quo and they might as well be human traffickers?
In universe there is nothing that cannot be made possible, new races, units and weapons are “invented” all the time. The setting is in constant flux. Changing it in no way breaks it as has been shown by the hundreds of major changes that have happened over the decades.
What major changes? Unless you want to change in-universe eras (i.e. 30K to 40K or vice versa) there are no major changes. Primarchs returned. And nothing changed. Even though there were two of them working for Chaos, such that one of them could have kept Guilliman busy, while the other conquered Terra - nothing changed. Terra still stands. GW doesn't do major changes. They rearrange deck chairs. Their rule for the setting is the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Good point, but that summation could easily look like this (non-chronologically):
Primarch returned - nothing changes
Primarch upends imperial bureaucracy - nothing changes
Primarch launches indomitus crusade - nothing changes
Primaris invented and added to chapters - nothing changes
Femarines introduced - nothing changes
Grav tech rolled out - nothing changes
Imperium split in half - nothing changes
Another primarch returned - nothing changes
...
Allowing females to become space marines would be just another deck chair shuffle, and probably a smaller shuffle than the others. The effect would be more space marine recruits, allowing them a bit more numbers if they don't limit their max number at 1000, or just allowing quicker recovery from attrition if they do. In a setting that treats numbers as an afterthought anyway, I don't see this having an impact greater than the other points.
But from an objective standpoint, the themes of Space Marines don't require them to be male - just hyper-violent war machines.
I'd say "preach on my Battle Brother", but that might open a can of worms.
And then you type it out, anyway?
Most of the themes for Space Marines are recycled historicals.
And while many of those sources for inspiration were themselves historically sexist, none of them specifically required having boy-parts. The ones that had sex-based restrictions were generally influenced by sexist religious organizations.
How much less toxic does it get when you tell people who disagree with you its only because of their toxic politics protecting the status quo and they might as well be human traffickers?
1) If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
2) Excessive hyperbole. Have I called people and/or their opinions sexist and toxic? You bet; see number 1. Equating that to human trafficking? That is a step WAY too far, and is solely a product of your imagination.
But from an objective standpoint, the themes of Space Marines don't require them to be male - just hyper-violent war machines.
I'd say "preach on my Battle Brother", but that might open a can of worms.
And then you type it out, anyway?
Most of the themes for Space Marines are recycled historicals.
And while many of those sources for inspiration were themselves historically sexist, none of them specifically required having boy-parts. The ones that had sex-based restrictions were generally influenced by sexist religious organizations.
How much less toxic does it get when you tell people who disagree with you its only because of their toxic politics protecting the status quo and they might as well be human traffickers?
1) If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
2) Excessive hyperbole. Have I called people and/or their opinions sexist and toxic? You bet; see number 1. Equating that to human trafficking? That is a step WAY too far, and is solely a product of your imagination.
Yeah I’m pretty sure I didn’t type anything about human trafficking.
I fully admit that my reason for wanting female marines is entirely political. It makes sense fluff wise and business too if you ask me but the main reason is political, and I’m pretty sure everyone in here asking for it will admit that it’s down to their politics. Most if not all already have by asking for inclusion and the like. It’s the ones saying they don’t want it due to fluff reasons that are arguing in bad faith. It is their politics that wants them to not have female marines.
I did not cast any judgement on them for that either. But if some people are so upset at bringing in a change to enable women to be more included in the game that they quit, I will cast judgement on them and not miss them if they leave the hobby.
As for human trafficking, that’s just an stupid and pointless comment.
I fully admit that my reason for wanting female marines is entirely political. It makes sense fluff wise and business too if you ask me but the main reason is political, and I’m pretty sure everyone in here asking for it will admit that it’s down to their politics. Most if not all already have by asking for inclusion and the like. It’s the ones saying they don’t want it due to fluff reasons that are arguing in bad faith. It is their politics that wants them to not have female marines.
I did not cast any judgement on them for that either. But if some people are so upset at bringing in a change to enable women to be more included in the game that they quit, I will cast judgement on them and not miss them if they leave the hobby.
I think its an argument in bad faith to say that the arguments against women in the marines is driven purely by politics and can't be driven by a desire for 40 year old lore to remain as it has been.
Warhammer is not the real world and does not have to match a real persons real political and social ideals. Furthermore not everyone seeks to play in roleplay/story environments that mirror their own political/social ideals. For many the fact that its not a mirror of reality can be the interesting point.
Trying to argue that its all 100% politics and people driving their real world ideals into the game is a false assumption on both sides of the argument. It is true for some people, but not all.
I think its an argument in bad faith to say that the arguments against women in the marines is driven purely by politics and can't be driven by a desire for 40 year old lore to remain as it has been.
Warhammer is not the real world and does not have to match a real persons real political and social ideals. Furthermore not everyone seeks to play in roleplay/story environments that mirror their own political/social ideals. For many the fact that its not a mirror of reality can be the interesting point.
Trying to argue that its all 100% politics and people driving their real world ideals into the game is a false assumption on both sides of the argument. It is true for some people, but not all.
I also disagree on that arguments for women in the marines is purely politic.
40k, specially for older players, has a heavy emphasis on "your dude(tte)s", letting you customize and create your own paintjobs, custom subfactions, custom characters, etc.
And that is even more true for Space Marines who can follow many different themes from roman legionaires to vikings to vampires to fething space sharks. Variety, diversity and customizability is the name of the game.
Gender should be just another characteristic that is up to the player to customize as they see fit.
I fully admit that my reason for wanting female marines is entirely political. It makes sense fluff wise and business too if you ask me but the main reason is political, and I’m pretty sure everyone in here asking for it will admit that it’s down to their politics. Most if not all already have by asking for inclusion and the like. It’s the ones saying they don’t want it due to fluff reasons that are arguing in bad faith. It is their politics that wants them to not have female marines.
I did not cast any judgement on them for that either. But if some people are so upset at bringing in a change to enable women to be more included in the game that they quit, I will cast judgement on them and not miss them if they leave the hobby.
I think its an argument in bad faith to say that the arguments against women in the marines is driven purely by politics and can't be driven by a desire for 40 year old lore to remain as it has been.
Warhammer is not the real world and does not have to match a real persons real political and social ideals. Furthermore not everyone seeks to play in roleplay/story environments that mirror their own political/social ideals. For many the fact that its not a mirror of reality can be the interesting point.
Trying to argue that its all 100% politics and people driving their real world ideals into the game is a false assumption on both sides of the argument. It is true for some people, but not all.
Sorry I disagree, we’ve been at this discussion on and off for years now and one thing that has become clear to me is that lore arguments to keep things the same don’t stand up to any scrutiny. The reasons are always political. They may range from wanting to try and keep politics out of the game you love (its self a political statement and futile) to out right misogyny and everything inbetween depending on the individual. But if you have a take on the issue and want to change it or keep it the same that is political.
The reason the lore argument doesn’t stand up is, as has been shown a thousand times, the setting changes all the time, and this wouldn’t be a big a change as some that have have gone before. So it is always THIS change that is unwanted.
I think its an argument in bad faith to say that the arguments against women in the marines is driven purely by politics and can't be driven by a desire for 40 year old lore to remain as it has been.
Warhammer is not the real world and does not have to match a real persons real political and social ideals. Furthermore not everyone seeks to play in roleplay/story environments that mirror their own political/social ideals. For many the fact that its not a mirror of reality can be the interesting point.
Trying to argue that its all 100% politics and people driving their real world ideals into the game is a false assumption on both sides of the argument. It is true for some people, but not all.
I also disagree on that arguments for women in the marines is purely politic.
40k, specially for those that older players, has a heavy emphasis on "your dude(tte)s", letting you customize and create your own paintjobs, custom subfactions, custom characters, etc.
And that is even more true for Space Marines who can follow many different themes from roman legionaires to vikings to vampires to fething space sharks. Variety, diversity and customizability is the name of the game.
Gender should be just another characteristic that is up to the player to customize as they see fit.
That’s a good point and for me the strongest argument in favour of having female marines in the lore.
I also disagree on that arguments for women in the marines is purely politic.
40k, specially for older players, has a heavy emphasis on "your dude(tte)s", letting you customize and create your own paintjobs, custom subfactions, custom characters, etc.
And that is even more true for Space Marines who can follow many different themes from roman legionaires to vikings to vampires to fething space sharks. Variety, diversity and customizability is the name of the game.
Gender should be just another characteristic that is up to the player to customize as they see fit.
To me this is always a tricky thing. In some ways allowing more official customising is a good thing as it encourages creativity; it encourages new people new ideas and it encourages a more "these are your models" approach.
At the same time a few thoughts come to my mind
1) I don't need a company to tell me that I can or cannot make Hello Kitty Space Marines. You can go out and make them right now and no one stops you.
2) Limits help shape creativity. Totally open systems can start to feel "hollow" in nature because in part what defines a lore and world and so forth are very much the limits imposed upon it. A great example of the extreme of this is Age of Sigmar where the limits were entirely removed. There are basically no limits and for that it wound up lacking an identity for itself. Now 100% there are a LOT of other things going on alongside that. But it strikes me that its story, popularity and structure have improved the more GW has steadily started embracing limits on the setting. Giving maps, creating structure and so forth. Imposing limits.
3) Warhammer 40K isn't a storybuilding engine its a world setting that allows storybuilding. I think the difference between the two is important. From an official point it needs to have limits and constraints on factions; politics; etc.... These feed into how it appears; how it presents and so forth.
Finally there's another aspect where I think people trip up on - self representation.
This is something that's very different for different people. Some people want to have a creative world where they are part of that world; where they are the general very directly and have that supported not just by their own head-cannon but by the official cannon as well.
Others are more apt to play a role within the setting.
In a very crude way its like the difference between an RPG where you create the hero and one where you play a pre-set hero. Those arguing for greater official lore freedoms for factions are basically arguing for a sense of more official restriction lifting so that they can create whatever they wish. Those arguing against are more apt for having a preconstructed story and structure that they are dropping into.
Sorry I disagree, we’ve been at this discussion on and off for years now and one thing that has become clear to me is that lore arguments to keep things the same don’t stand up to any scrutiny. The reasons are always political. They may range from wanting to try and keep politics out of the game you love (its self a political statement and futile) to out right misogyny and everything inbetween depending on the individual. But if you have a take on the issue and want to change it or keep it the same that is political.
The reason the lore argument doesn’t stand up is, as has been shown a thousand times, the setting changes all the time, and this wouldn’t be a big a change as some that have have gone before. So it is always THIS change that is unwanted.
People argue against the lore changing all the time on multiple fronts; in fact as many as those who argue for change. There are endless debates on if the Imperium should or shouldn't fall; people who call out that certain factions should fall/be removed to allow the lore to advance etc... In fact the idea of the Imperium actually losing and being shattered is one that's been proposed for years as a means of opening up the setting to more xenos factions appearing.
Yes women in marines gets more attention and boils up more so than some of the others (and has done so much more evidently over the last 5-10 years or so online than before); but its not isolated.
Of course there's a whole other layer to this debate which is the argument on if women in space marines would lead to more women in real life taking up and feeling welcomed into the hobby by the system and the players. I touched on that before that I think the setting itself doesn't have to change, but simply GW's approach to marketing the setting itself in promoting other armies alongside Marines much more so. The 9th edition SoB and Marines standing shoulder to shoulder being a fantastic example of that kind of marketing that could be prolonged; promoted more and raising the up to stand alongside the lion of the marines in marketing.
This goes hand in hand with having more women evident in the hobby in general - more painters; players; presenters and so forth. Personally I think this latter part has a VASTLY greater chance of having that impact way more than including women models one of the army lores - keeping in mind that with the shape of a space marine unless you go full "boob armour*" you'd basically have nothing to tell male from female unless their helmet is off. Indeed it surprises me that GW hasn't made inroads more evident here with presenters on Warhammer+ outside of the artistic zone and players in their battle reports.
I look at other hobbies and marketing and I see the same patterns - hobbies that are dominated by one gender are often marketed by and too one gender. You don't have to change all of knitting to be making sword sheaths and weapon holsters to get men into it; but you do need men making clothes to be highlighted in the positive and promoted and so forth.
*and that in itself raises all kinds of arguments on if its actual inclusion or just male-fantasy
All that change with marketing is happening already, women are front and centre of many GW productions, presenting content and represented in the fiction, models and art work. That change is happening and the results are evident. Overall the hobby is becoming much more mainstream (see the FTSE 100). Overall the entire GW range has become massively more inclusive with all ranges having male and female representation and much more ethnically diverse sculpts and paint ranges.
But one range, the main range, the best selling and most obvious range that represents and entire multibillion pound company that still can’t have women in it.
Sisters of battle don’t negate the need for female spacemarines, they are a niche and flawed representation of women in the setting. Overtly sexualised and fetishised. There is some fantastic art work and fiction that portrays the brutality of the faction but the underpinning tropes they are based on will always mean they are not great for female representation in the setting.
Ultimately there is a massive elephant in the room, the main faction in the setting is entirely customisable as long as you don’t make them women. It makes no sense in real life or in universe.
The 'there's already a girl faction' argument is basically the 'we have girl space marines at home' meme.
Like all factions they are interesting but they are categorically worse than a space marine, weaker, slower, more fragile.
In all the ways a space marine is a power fantasy, a sister of battle is not. They are guardsmen in power armour with slightly better training and faith magic - but chaplains bestow faith abilities on their brethren anyway.
The problem with SoB as an alternative is that they are such a fan-service-to-men faction.
Skin tight power armour, boob plates, cutesy bob haircuts, dominatrix and subs Repentia units.
Also having the option for female representation be an all-women only faction, is kind of missing the point. Its kind of like saying someone is represented by there being a special area they can be segregated in.
While I won't dispute that SoB are sexualized models, I do think credit should be given to GW for the improvements they've made in that category- alternate hair, including bald, scars, eye patches, cybernetics; far less sexualized repentia, and characters like Aestrid, the Dialogus and the Dogmata that have less feminine silhouettes or present as older, more experienced and battle hardened women.
Again, I'm not denying that the models are still sexualized, but modern Sisters are neither classic Repentia nor AoS Witch elves.
Lathe Biosas wrote: And there are no longer Vect's slave girls or Daemonettes with their (uhhh... breasts, can I say that here?) flying freely.
There has been some steps to improve things.
There definitely are bosoms amongst the Slaaneshi models, but the more prominent ones are generally on models that ALSO have male aspects. (No, not that male aspect! At least not visible. )
Like the Fiends of Slaanesh have, on their right side, a rack of feminine breasts, and the other side a more masculine chest. They're also horrific centaur-like monstrosities, so I'm not super worried about them being sexualized.
PenitentJake wrote: While I won't dispute that SoB are sexualized models, I do think credit should be given to GW for the improvements they've made in that category- alternate hair, including bald, scars, eye patches, cybernetics; far less sexualized repentia, and characters like Aestrid, the Dialogus and the Dogmata that have less feminine silhouettes or present as older, more experienced and battle hardened women.
Again, I'm not denying that the models are still sexualized, but modern Sisters are neither classic Repentia nor AoS Witch elves.
The shaven headed sisters of battle look great, but boob plate armour is not.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And…morathi’s boobs are covered nowadays.
The boob plate, corset waists, high heels, skin tight leg armour, it all has to go. It's just awful. I feel actual embarrassment about liking a universe where it exists.
I'm saying 40K has a creative and artistic style. At some point you either have to accept that style and go with it; use proxy models from 3rd parties (there are utterly masses of choices now and growing); or try a different game with a different style.
Cap'n Facebeard wrote: The boob plate, corset waists, high heels, skin tight leg armour, it all has to go. It's just awful. I feel actual embarrassment about liking a universe where it exists.
The who what now?
I think the sisters having heels nonsense predates rogue trader in some kind of weird temporal paradox it's so old and tired now. One sister has heels, as Blanche put heels on everything.
Overread wrote: I'm saying 40K has a creative and artistic style. At some point you either have to accept that style and go with it; use proxy models from 3rd parties (there are utterly masses of choices now and growing); or try a different game with a different style.
That's pretty much the same argument being used to deny female space marines though. It's just the 40k style to not have it and people should play something else if they don't like it...
Hellebore wrote: That's pretty much the same argument being used to deny female space marines though. It's just the 40k style to not have it and people should play something else if they don't like it...
For the past 28 pages it has been the exact opposite - "Adding female space marines doesn't take anything away"
As opposed to - "Sisters of battle need to be completely changed from the ground up to have an appearance that bears no resemblance to their current one".
Hellebore wrote: That's pretty much the same argument being used to deny female space marines though. It's just the 40k style to not have it and people should play something else if they don't like it...
For the past 28 pages it has been the exact opposite - "Adding female space marines doesn't take anything away"
As opposed to - "Sisters of battle need to be completely changed from the ground up to have an appearance that bears no resemblance to their current one".
Whilst I will gladly acknowledge that Sisters are in a better place than they were 10 years ago, I also think they can still get better. Each individual Sister doesn't need fully sculpted DD-sized power armor. See: Captain Phasma.
Hellebore wrote: That's pretty much the same argument being used to deny female space marines though. It's just the 40k style to not have it and people should play something else if they don't like it...
For the past 28 pages it has been the exact opposite - "Adding female space marines doesn't take anything away"
As opposed to - "Sisters of battle need to be completely changed from the ground up to have an appearance that bears no resemblance to their current one".
Not sure I see the relevance. There are plenty of people saying that marines are male and they shouldn't be female and that's just the style of the faction.
Arguing that female marines doesn't change anything or take anything.away in that context is pointless - them being girls IS the change.
I'm saying it's a bad argument whether it's for the absence of women or the presence of bondage imagery and you can't argue for the change of one faction and turn around and deny the change in another using the same argument.
You're welcome to use a different one, but in a thread specifically where changing a faction is the point it's not particularly useful to try and deny it to another.
It is absolutely true that SoB are crazy BDSM nuns.And I love them for it, and I don't want them to be changed.
However, them being that is an issue in a context of them being such a substantial section of female representation in the game. More female representation there, is and more diverse it is, less of an issue any individual presentation not being appealing to everyone is.
Let's have female marines with similar armour than the men. Then people who do not like SoB aesthetic have that as an option for their power-armoured female warriors.
(Personally I like both. They're just different flavours.)
Hellebore wrote: I'm saying it's a bad argument whether it's for the absence of women or the presence of bondage imagery and you can't argue for the change of one faction and turn around and deny the change in another using the same argument.
You are conflating two very different changes in hobby terms.
Female space marines are a lore change - nothing changes from a hobby perspective except perhaps a new head sprue comes out.
'Captain Phasma-ing' the sisters is killing the model line and replacing it with a very different line, irrespective of whether the lore changes or not.
BorderCountess wrote: Whilst I will gladly acknowledge that Sisters are in a better place than they were 10 years ago, I also think they can still get better. Each individual Sister doesn't need fully sculpted DD-sized power armor. See: Captain Phasma.
Phasma was played by a man half the time. I'd be willing to be at least some of the background extra were women.
Ties in to something that came up earlier in the thread about female eldar aspect warriors not having boob plate, and therefore being an all-male line by assumption. Someone mentioned wanting female krieg as well - which any of them could be under the lore, the masks and armour yet the demand for more visibly female models exists.
As for 10 years ago the only models that changed were the repentia - who ironically got their bondage nun look from having clothes added. In old imagery they were as horrifying and mostly naked as their male flagellant counterparts but modesty demanded that they cover themselves up before release.
On the flip side the current repentia have to little clothing IMO - they would have looked much better with tattered robes instead of tennis shorts. The middle ground is rarely visually interesting, much like Phasmas armour.
Cap'n Facebeard wrote: That's kind of a strange outlook. I shouldn't be disappointed something hasn't improved in 50 years?
No, you should, as I suggested earlier, look at classic metal repentia, then at plastic repentia...
And then apologize for lying to us all when you said there's been no improvement, because there very, very obviously has been. You can apologize for the high heels lie while you're at it- I just checked five of my girls and their feet look pretty flat.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with feminine armour. The execution, that’s where it can get silly.
The same can be said of specifically ethnic sculpts. Even well meaning ones can turn out overly stereotypical.
And there can be at least an attempt to justify some stuff. For instance, Wyches and Witch Elves, in-universe, eschew armour and covering up to show they’ve never been injured, that they’re Just That Good.
Now, whether you accept that as a good enough justification is not for me to say. And even if you do, that doesn’t necessarily justify stuff like Battle Thongs.
The Repentia are an interesting example. The originals? Kinda kink wear. The suggestion of basques and hold ups. The new/current ones? More gym clothes. Tight fitting, yes, but not intended to titilate.
That the new ones are a marked improvement in realism? Doesn’t mean they’re beyond all criticism. And as earlier? It’s not for me to tell anyone what their opinion should be.
A.T. wrote: ...yet the demand for more visibly female models exists...
...The middle ground is rarely visually interesting, much like Phasmas armour.
You can have visibly feminine models without ridiculous boob-plate; see Stormcast Eternals. And the point of armor is to protect the wearer, not get thirsty dudes excited. You can have visually interesting armor on a woman without going overboard with the boob-plate.
I feel compelled to disclose that, yes, I personally enjoy the general aesthetic of the female form; I've always been attracted to women, and that hasn't changed in light of my transition. But I'm also able to recognize how and why people find a particular aesthetic offensive and/or problematic, and overly-sexualized miniatures in a wargame can fit into that category.
Yeah please don't change the bdsm nuns with guns look. Add some sexualized monk sculpts if you have to, but the theme should stay. It's peak 40k, in the same way practically any art of an imperial cruiser is.
The repentia are a weird one though. I found the nude ones distasteful. The modern ones are far worse though: they're boring. Ugh.
BorderCountess wrote: But I'm also able to recognize how and why people find a particular aesthetic offensive and/or problematic, and overly-sexualized miniatures in a wargame can fit into that category.
The problem with heading down the offensive pathway is you can use that to shut down the entire of Warhammer. Some people find boobplates and high heels offensive; some find exposed wounds, growths and sores; some the very notion of guns as toys or the hyper muscled presentation of men. At some point a line has to be drawn in the sand and people have to make the choice on if they enter the hobby or not and accept that there will be parts they like and some parts they don't.
You can try to remove all the potential problems, sources of offence, risks and everything but what you'd get out at the end of that process would not be Warhammer 40K. It would be something else entirely.
Alongside this you have to consider that over the last 40years these designs and themes have remained broadly constant within the game and the setting. Furthermore the game has grown vastly in popularity.
Now I'm all for taking down barriers of entry and making something more welcoming; however I tend to view a LOT of those barriers as being things that are more person to person elements as having the greatest impact. Coupled to that is presentation of the hobby to others. Eg going back again to the fact that if you've got more people of X group in the media; in the community; being community leaders and so forth them you're VASTLY more likely to attract the interest of more people of group X. Conversely if there's hardly any to no people of group X present then its a lot harder even if the group itself is very welcoming and puts up no direct boundaries.
However I'm also all for a thing being basically what it is in a creative sense. 40K has lore, stories, visual and creative styles. These things that drew all of us here to the game (some greater, some lesser, a few we might not like too) and kept us here. I'm cautious about throwing that out the window because as I see it that's just trying to create something different entirely.
I think it gets caught up in good intentions; but also from old fans who need a breath of fresh air and something different, but don't want too/feel like/can't get players outside of the Gw franchise system.
Somethings are utterly intrinsic to the game, or a given range’s aesthetic.
For instance, it’s a wargame, so violence is going to be involved.
Diseased and rotting bodies are Nurgle’s thing. And to some extent, you can’t do away with that without fundamentally changing the aesthetic of that range.
But. And a but of a scale that risks attracting Sir Mix-a-lot’s attentions? There are degrees. Especially when it comes to race, sex, and religion.
For instance, an Imperial Guard Regiment themed around Colonial Era Africa, where all the top brass are white, and the rank and file portrayed as thicko, backward natives is too far. But. An Imperial Guard Regiment from a world where all the humans are dark skinned isn’t necessarily offensive.
Likewise, armour forming to the feminine body is different from Battle Lingerie.
So asking that some stuff be toned down is not the same as asking for it to be removed entirely.
Where that line might or should lie, I can only speak for myself, and frankly it’s not worth the bother.
But I’m not accepting a slippery slope argument here.
BorderCountess wrote: And the point of armor is to protect the wearer, not get thirsty dudes excited.
I mean the point of armour "on a miniature" (or in a game, film whatever) certainly isn't to protect the wearer.
Its an aesthetic choice.
How far you go down that line can be debated - but in this case its about getting someone somewhere at least sufficiently interested to buy the models.
The problem I think is, as others have said, that different people will have different limits on when something is offensive or problematic.
I mean I'd never really considered the old Repentia to be sexualised - although on consideration they clear are. I just thought they were kind of bad models. Maybe its hard to achieve that sort of paint job in real life, and they don't look the same on table as a result.
Are Wych Elves (which I actually own, and kind of like - or at least did ten years ago)? Kinda - but not really.
Then you have the infamous Juan Diaz Daemonettes that are explicit - and I think that's a major cause of their popularity. Although you could argue there's something to them even aside from the nakedness - they are smaller, somehow more precise models versus the current plastics.
And then apologize for lying to us all when you said there's been no improvement, because there very, very obviously has been. You can apologize for the high heels lie while you're at it- I just checked five of my girls and their feet look pretty flat.
I was responding to someone else's comment about the range being similar to 50 years ago. The fact that the fetish nuns are marginally less fetishy doesn't really overwhelm me.
I think you also need to look at it in relation to female miniatures in general. Ever looked for female miniatures on Etsy? Kingdom Death? Any of the inevitable 'pin up' models?
I'm disappointed Gw haven't taken greater steps to improve things. We could have cool warrior women, instead of a fan service caricature
Cap'n Facebeard wrote: I think you also need to look at it in relation to female miniatures in general. Ever looked for female miniatures on Etsy? Kingdom Death? Any of the inevitable 'pin up' models?
Let me be the first to say that I don't want Poots anywhere near Warhammer. That dude's clearly got some issues.
That said: I'm not saying there shouldn't be a market for certain things, and that people can't like whatever they want. I was in the minority defending Manufaktura when the whole NSFW debate went down. If you want pinup Nuns with Guns in your Sisters army: go for it. If you don't want girls with cooties in your Astartes army: fine by me.
But when you're talking about the flagship faction in the most famous (and most profitable) miniatures wargame on the planet, I think better representation can and should happen.
I was responding to someone else's comment about the range being similar to 50 years ago.
Interesting. Because if I had been responding, my comment would have been: "No, it's not similar, because a tank top on a repentia is far less revealing than a band around the breasts that covers only the nipples, and SoB don't really wear heels anymore."
I think you also need to look at it in relation to female miniatures in general. Ever looked for female miniatures on Etsy? Kingdom Death? Any of the inevitable 'pin up' models?
Yup- Wargames Exclusive, Raging Heroes, Manufaktura Minis... Even Hasslefree.
But that proves MY point about modern sisters being relatively conservative, not yours or the other dude's that the SoB is just as sexist and objectifying as it ever was.
And again, for those who won't go back and read my original post, my point wasn't that SoB aren't still sexualized (they are)- my point is that this is getting better in the modern era, and to claim otherwise is dishonest. Sure, GW could go further- bring the mainline SoB armour more in line with femmecast eternals. But there can't really be any denial that GW has made some representational improvements to the range.
I'm disappointed Gw haven't taken greater steps to improve things. We could have cool warrior women, instead of a fan service caricature
As I said above, they could have gone further. I'm content with where we're at, but I acknowledge that's subjective, and your opinion here is valid even if I don't personally agree with it.
Crimson wrote: It is absolutely true that SoB are crazy BDSM nuns.And I love them for it, and I don't want them to be changed.
However, them being that is an issue in a context of them being such a substantial section of female representation in the game. More female representation there, is and more diverse it is, less of an issue any individual presentation not being appealing to everyone is.
Let's have female marines with similar armour than the men. Then people who do not like SoB aesthetic have that as an option for their power-armoured female warriors.
(Personally I like both. They're just different flavours.)
This was where we were at. My wife wasn’t into the very religious SOB, so she had no other options.
It feels like…. If you go to a party and there are a couple people in bondage gear, that’s a fun party. If you go to a party and everyone is only wearing bondage gear, you back out (assuming you’re not into the sweet agony).
Lathe Biosas wrote: And there are no longer Vect's slave girls or Daemonettes with their (uhhh... breasts, can I say that here?) flying freely.
There has been some steps to improve things.
Or Morathi, with one boob hanging out.
I mean, Morathi uses her sexuality as a weapon as much as her magic and Heartrender. Her showing a ton of skin could also be seen as mocking Hellebron and flaunting her status as a favourite of Khaine's Hags by showing off her ageless body that Hellebron is denied.
If there was one Elf in warhammer that would go into battle basically nude, it would be Morathi.
She's more in the realm of Bayonetta, owning her sexuality and femininity and using it for her own benefit.
Lathe Biosas wrote: And there are no longer Vect's slave girls or Daemonettes with their (uhhh... breasts, can I say that here?) flying freely.
I take it you haven't seen the Age of Sigmar range recently?
I mean I think it's a fair argument that some of the sisters art has trended more towards tight leather power armour rather than the tank with novelty tits of some 3e stuff but the female heavy sigmar factions these days are... well they are a choice.
Lathe Biosas wrote: And there are no longer Vect's slave girls or Daemonettes with their (uhhh... breasts, can I say that here?) flying freely.
I take it you haven't seen the Age of Sigmar range recently?
I mean I think it's a fair argument that some of the sisters art has trended more towards tight leather power armour rather than the tank with novelty tits of some 3e stuff but the female heavy sigmar factions these days are... well they are a choice.
Nope. I haven't looked at AoS at all... what should I look for?
Lore wise, they’re not meant to be alluring all the time. Indeed, their beguiling looks are just that. A beguilement, and one dropped once its violence o’clock.
Leaving room for stuff like the Diaz ones (arguably shifting between aspects) and the more horrifying to look at ones (glamour has been dropped, because it’s far, far too late)
Hellebore wrote: I'm saying it's a bad argument whether it's for the absence of women or the presence of bondage imagery and you can't argue for the change of one faction and turn around and deny the change in another using the same argument.
You are conflating two very different changes in hobby terms.
Female space marines are a lore change - nothing changes from a hobby perspective except perhaps a new head sprue comes out.
'Captain Phasma-ing' the sisters is killing the model line and replacing it with a very different line, irrespective of whether the lore changes or not.
No, SOME people, in an effort to appease whiners whose fun is determined by the deliberate and loudly exclaimed lack of female space marines, offered that the only thing they had to change was girl heads, so everything still looked manly. This is the peasant hat in hand, empty bowl asking for any scraps version of female space marines. This is appeasement at its most basic level, trying to make the majority feel comfortable enough to allow a CRUMB, because they won't give you a slice.
It is by no means a trufact that adding female marines requires no design work at all.
This is the classic, ask for parity, get an inch, pat yourself on the back for offering an inch and wash your hands of the 'solved' problem. Female heads is the MINIMUM requirement, not the standard one. I raised this pages back, but it was drowned in the cyclical rhetoric of people trying to avoid admitting why the lack of female space marines satisfies them in a way that only using male models when female ones could exist, does not.
As much as I think the stormcast are a pennypusher cynical production, they did get the male/female design parity and aesthetic down pretty well. That is what I would expect actually adding female space marines would do.
Hellebore wrote: I'm saying it's a bad argument whether it's for the absence of women or the presence of bondage imagery and you can't argue for the change of one faction and turn around and deny the change in another using the same argument.
You are conflating two very different changes in hobby terms.
Female space marines are a lore change - nothing changes from a hobby perspective except perhaps a new head sprue comes out.
'Captain Phasma-ing' the sisters is killing the model line and replacing it with a very different line, irrespective of whether the lore changes or not.
No, SOME people, in an effort to appease whiners whose fun is determined by the deliberate and loudly exclaimed lack of female space marines, offered that the only thing they had to change was girl heads, so everything still looked manly. This is the peasant hat in hand, empty bowl asking for any scraps version of female space marines. This is appeasement at its most basic level, trying to make the majority feel comfortable enough to allow a CRUMB, because they won't give you a slice.
It is by no means a trufact that adding female marines requires no design work at all.
This is the classic, ask for parity, get an inch, pat yourself on the back for offering an inch and wash your hands of the 'solved' problem. Female heads is the MINIMUM requirement, not the standard one. I raised this pages back, but it was drowned in the cyclical rhetoric of people trying to avoid admitting why the lack of female space marines satisfies them in a way that only using male models when female ones could exist, does not.
As much as I think the stormcast are a pennypusher cynical production, they did get the male/female design parity and aesthetic down pretty well. That is what I would expect actually adding female space marines would do.
I'm popping in and out of the conversation, so maybe I'm missing context. What would you be looking to have modeled on femarines other than heads? I'm in support of adding femarines, but I'm struggling to imagine what I'd do differently with the models other than the heads. I like stormcast, but I certainly don't want stormcast style boob plate or extra wide hips or anything like that. Most signs of sexual dimorphism would be hidden by all the transhuman bulk and the armor itself.
Even faces canonically tend to shift to more closely resemble the features of the marine's primarch.
Hellebore wrote: I'm saying it's a bad argument whether it's for the absence of women or the presence of bondage imagery and you can't argue for the change of one faction and turn around and deny the change in another using the same argument.
You are conflating two very different changes in hobby terms.
Female space marines are a lore change - nothing changes from a hobby perspective except perhaps a new head sprue comes out.
'Captain Phasma-ing' the sisters is killing the model line and replacing it with a very different line, irrespective of whether the lore changes or not.
No, SOME people, in an effort to appease whiners whose fun is determined by the deliberate and loudly exclaimed lack of female space marines, offered that the only thing they had to change was girl heads, so everything still looked manly. This is the peasant hat in hand, empty bowl asking for any scraps version of female space marines. This is appeasement at its most basic level, trying to make the majority feel comfortable enough to allow a CRUMB, because they won't give you a slice.
It is by no means a trufact that adding female marines requires no design work at all.
This is the classic, ask for parity, get an inch, pat yourself on the back for offering an inch and wash your hands of the 'solved' problem. Female heads is the MINIMUM requirement, not the standard one. I raised this pages back, but it was drowned in the cyclical rhetoric of people trying to avoid admitting why the lack of female space marines satisfies them in a way that only using male models when female ones could exist, does not.
As much as I think the stormcast are a pennypusher cynical production, they did get the male/female design parity and aesthetic down pretty well. That is what I would expect actually adding female space marines would do.
I'm popping in and out of the conversation, so maybe I'm missing context. What would you be looking to have modeled on femarines other than heads? I'm in support of adding femarines, but I'm struggling to imagine what I'd do differently with the models other than the heads. I like stormcast, but I certainly don't want stormcast style boob plate or extra wide hips or anything like that. Most signs of sexual dimorphism would be hidden by all the transhuman bulk and the armor itself.
Even faces canonically tend to shift to more closely resemble the features of the marine's primarch.
Echoing this.
I'm in support, 100%, for adding women to Marines. But all you need is a lore change, a head sprue, and future models to have equal amounts of male and female unhelmeted heads ,
... i literally gave an example of the stormcast...
It's shape, even at giant scales, especially around the hip to shoulder ratio. I mentioned pages back the issues women in the military had with kevlar and uniforms being unisex, and it taking literal decades for ones designed to fit them properly to actually appear.
But this is what having men making decisions on this results in, minimum effort 'problem solved' mentality.
It's not being approached from a holistic perspective, but from a 'what's the minimum shut up the complainers viable product' perspective.
The primaris armor definitely works only needing head options. I'll probably just do it myself whenever I get around to blinging out my marines, but its really all that's really needed.
Hellebore wrote: This is the classic, ask for parity, get an inch
It's asking for the moon when you are demanding that entire space marine model line be doubled in size.
... completely untrue and I'm baffled how you could draw that conclusion.
Just as they did with the rollout of every new box of marines up to primaris, they update in waves. We've only really got a complete primaris army now, 7 years after they were first released.
The next box of marines has half of them designed as women, then the next, then a lieutenant, then another lieutenant, then another, then a librarian, then another squad and so on. Actually, the lieutenant is probably where they could do it first, to set the aesthetic style before doing squads. They release a female lieutenant with the 'primaris can be girls now says cawl, film at 11' background and they just go from there.
It's a guarantee that in 10 years we will have a whole slew of different marine boxes and virtually none of the current ones on sale. Fitting female body shapes (which does not equate to boob armour) into the sculpts is less effort that designing whole new marine units. One master design for all the marines to be built from like they currently have for their male ones.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
LunarSol wrote: The primaris armor definitely works only needing head options. I'll probably just do it myself whenever I get around to blinging out my marines, but its really all that's really needed.
Talk to a woman trying to wear armour designed for a man of the same build and you will find that this is, categorically incorrect. Unless we're going down the route of 'all space marines change to manbodies due to geneseed, but somehow keep feminine faces'...
An hypotethical female space marine is going to be built like a brick, just like how male space marines are built like bricks and just how the female custodes is built like a brick.
Eh. There’s a difference between how the fluff describes Space Marines and how the miniatures actually look. The sculptors apparently aimed for relatable human features over uncanny gigantism, so I don’t see why they couldn’t “interpret” the features of female marines in the same manner.
Crimson wrote: It is absolutely true that SoB are crazy BDSM nuns.And I love them for it, and I don't want them to be changed.
However, them being that is an issue in a context of them being such a substantial section of female representation in the game. More female representation there, is and more diverse it is, less of an issue any individual presentation not being appealing to everyone is.
Let's have female marines with similar armour than the men. Then people who do not like SoB aesthetic have that as an option for their power-armoured female warriors.
(Personally I like both. They're just different flavours.)
This is a very important point. There's a big difference in whether they're just a face-in-the-crowd of a huge selection of female options, versus being that "substantial section".
In one context, corset power armour simply implies that crazy BDSM nuns exist. (And that adds very cool flavour.)
In the other context, corset power armour gets closer to implying that women are crazy BDSM nuns.
If they weren't (nearly) the only option, it wouldn't be an issue.
Hellebore wrote: ... completely untrue and I'm baffled how you could draw that conclusion.
Parity of models - adding to or replacing the existing line, that's still doubling up.
You can't have forgotten how much air the endless primaris releases sucked out of the game, year upon year upon year pushing every other faction a little bit further back in the queue due to the sheer scale of the change.
Matt of Jasoom wrote: In one context, corset power armour simply implies that crazy BDSM nuns exist.
Always thought it was a shame that the sororitas armour never got more old-style artwork before the leather-clad sisters of 6th edition.
There are unexplored details of the old design like the sleeves being used to conceal external power cables (visible on Celestine), the uncorsetted witch hunters sister showing just how chunky the armour was, and the retributors with their exoskeletons. Instead everyone seems to visualise them as either Sister Blanche or Sister Sin.
Tyran wrote: An hypotethical female space marine is going to be built like a brick, just like how male space marines are built like bricks and just how the female custodes is built like a brick.
Totally with Hellebore on heads being the minimum, but also agree that I want a slow-down on marine releases going forward, so I wouldn't implement the FSM in the way he suggests.
Instead, I'd release a box of 10 FSM that had options like the BSS- enough heavies and specialist bits in the box that you could build what you wanted. The idead being that people could choose how many to insert into other units... And if they chose to do so, they could field a pure FSM unit.
Now granted, you'd need Gravis box, a Phobos box and a regular Primaris armour box, but you wouldn't have to release all of those at once.
Gadzilla666 wrote:Personally interested in the absence of interested parties in the late discussion. Where's Sgt_Smudge? Where's Not Online? Bans, perhaps?
Alas, I've said nothing worth being banned over. I was just enjoying the rest of my life, but I now have some time to make people's experience more uncomfortable.
Sledgehammer wrote: Because thematically space marines fulfill a greater role in the lore as the counterpart to the monastic military orders of the real world crusades within the religious crusades of the imperium.
... Sisters go on more crusades than Space Marines do. Evidently, being "male" is not a prerequisite for quasi-religious pogroms.
Their structure and composition is foundational to their theming and the informing of the audience as to what kind of society they represent.
Fun fact about that society: it's not institutionally sexist.
Sure not every chapter is literally a monk in their aesthetics, but they still exist within a greater framework and an underlying structure that encapsulates that idea.
So, hang on - you say here that they don't need to fully represent/reflect as monks in order to "read" as monks - I personally feel that if I put a woman's head on a Black Templar, she'd read more like a "monk" than a male Space Wolf would!
Clearly, there's a bit of an inconsistency there: Space Marines can deviate from the "monk" aesthetic in every way, except from having women? That's been the point which has been raised, multiple times, about the freedom of choice in how people make their Space Marines. You can have Knight Marines, Roman Marines, Werewolf Marines, Shark Marines, Vampire Marines, Polynesian Marines, Mesoamerican Marines... but not women? Seems like a very arbitrary exception.
It helps sell the regressive and religious nature of the setting.
Again, just to clarify here, because I don't believe that you actually know the setting here. The Imperium is regressive and religious. It is not sexist, racist, homophobic, or transphobic. The Imperium's regression and theocracy is reflected in *literally every other aspect of it*.
Sledgehammer wrote: The allusion to the monastic military orders, and the implication as to what that reveals to an audience concerning the greater values of the society for which they fight for and represent cannot be overstated. It is foundational to the establishing of the very setting itself.
But does not require Space Marines to be male.
Those 'monastic military orders' were gender specific because soldiers were men, and monks and nuns were segregated to avoid them shacking up. Neither of those things is applicable here. The Imperium does not only use men for soldiers, and Space Marines have no interest in sex. So having them all be men is an anachronism.
Your suggestion would leave the sisters as the only real representation of these values the setting.
Ideally not, since I dislike Sisters as a concept as it is, like the all-male marines, based on an anachronism that doesn't actually fit into the setting.
Tthe allusion to those real world orders is what is used to inform the viewer on the broader social, political, and religious aspects of the society in which they represent.
Yeah, but, like people have pointed out to you, the Imperium isn't sexist, and doesn't employ institutional sexism in MOST of its social, political, and religious elements.
The Imperium is gender-locked in two places - the Sororitas (which actually DO tell us something about the wider Imperium, about corruption, about people clinging to power, and the senseless adherence to bureaucracy, and Space Marines (which... don't. Because you claim that they "tell us about the sexism in the wider Imperium", when there isn't any!)
There is no further gender imbalance across the wider Imperium, and so there is nothing else to say about the "broader social political and religious aspects of the society they represent".
It's completely *incongruent* with the wider Imperium! Imagine if Tau had a group which was all about personal benefits overriding the Great Good, and you defended it by saying "yeah, that group exists because it's reflecting the wider Tau Empire and their society and beliefs", when it's completely counter to the wider beliefs of the Tau.
The structure of the space marines and the implementation of sexual segregation is highly important to drawing out the theme and establishing the allusion for the audience.
What theme? That the Imperium is sexist? But the Imperium isn't sexist.
The theme of brotherhood? What does that mean?
That the Imperium is backwards and religious? That's reflected in the Sisters as is, and they don't need to be all-male to demonstrate that.
There's nothing which requires Space Marines to be *all male* except for ifGW happened to lean more heavily into Space Marines as a criticism/satire of toxic masculinity and machismo, and that Space Marines were no longer the "default create your own" faction. But that's simply too unlikely to be considered at this point, and doesn't change the massive media marketing supporting Space Marines.
Of course it's absurd, that's the point!
Not really. There's the thing called internal logic. You see, it males no sense, given the internal logic of the Imperium, that Space Marines should reflect the sexism of the Imperium... because there isn't any (institutionally).
Sledgehammer wrote: the space marines and the Sororitas are emblematic of an anachronistic society.....
The Imperium *is* anachronistic, but not in the way you're describing it. Else we wouldn't be seeing women Guardsmen, women HLOT, women Inquisitor, women Techpriests and Titan magi, women Knight pilots, and so on.
The Imperium is anachronistic in *some things*, not all things.
Grimskul wrote:I mean it is kind of relevant because Space Marine chapters are incredibly selective about who they choose to even recruit into their brotherhood, usually through trials with absurdly high attrition rates, so even if women were for some reason allowed to be put through those trials, they would almost be incredibly unlikely to make it through them to get the modification to become a space marine.
Again, another example of people not reading the actual lore they claim to defend.
First, Space Marine trials are not standardised between Chapters. One Chapter's standards will be different to another's, and the things one Aspirant will be judged on are very different to what another would be.
Second, what a lot of Chapters seem to test for isn't raw strength or skill or even health, it's willpower and conviction. We see this in Alexis Polux, we see this with Dante, we see this with Hyperion, we see this with Tacitus/Marneus Calgar. They weren't chosen because they were the strongest. They weren't chosen because they were the peak of their game.
Hell, Blood Angel recruits are drawn from irradiated wastelanders! Hardly the pinnacle of strength there.
Yes, I'll agree that Space Marine recruitment is VERY selective, but not in the way you're making out.
Which is why I brought up the whole Navy Seals thing, since it's about the closest real world equivalent to it.
Really? We recruit Seals from prepubescence and then inject them with hormones and hypno-indoctrination?
Get real, they're not even similar.
Arbiter_Shade wrote:If this thread has taught me anything it is that nothing, no argument, will ever convince the pro-female marine side of the merit of keeping the setting the way it is.
Well, yeah, because that's not what I'm arguing/defending.
As I've mentioned, any argument I have regarding the lore stems from the question of "is the universe improved by having this restriction/element in it?" Because it's a fictional universe, the inclusion of something within it should be the thing being scrutinised, not "is this a good reason to get rid of it?".
Or, in other words, I'm not working from the baseline of "this is in, now take it out", my baseline is "why should this be in", and working from there.
Seeing as how the pro side is arguing for change the onus should be on them to argue the merits of the change and convince people to agree.
And that's where I disagree. I believe that BOTH sides should be making their cases for change/stasis - and while I can't say that every change argument I always agree with, I haven't seen a single stasis argument that doesn't rely on some VERY faulty foundations.
If they thought there was an untapped market for female marines they would do it tomorrow, but I am guessing that their experience with Stormcast has taught them that they would be chasing a unprofitable market, that market being women put off to the setting because of the poster faction being exclusively male.
My counterpoint to this argument, and why I think it's not a very sound one, is that it relies on the current state of things to support itself. It relies on nothing changing from whenever it gets made, and supposes a world in which no changes have happened beforehand.
Put it this way: when Stormcast were released, they were aesthetically all male. According to this style of your argument, GW wouldn't make women Stormcast, because they surely would have already if they felt they could: ergo, all male Stormcast was a sign that GW would never do women Stormcast. And yet, they have. And they've continually created and showcased more femme-presenting Stormcast.
When Custodes were (re)released, as a full plastic faction, GW used exclusively male pronouns to refer to them. People interpreted this as endorsement that Custodes had to be all-male - and according to your argument, if GW had wanted to, they'd have put women in back in 2017(?), and their exclusion then must have meant that GW would never bother with women Custodes. Fast forwards to 2024, and... we have women Custodes now.
All I'm saying is that GW can be very slow on things, and that we can't exactly use their non-action on past events to always guess at their future plans.
Sledgehammer has made some really good points and I don't see people engaging in that conversation
You'll find the person who isn't engaging in Sledgehammer's conversation to be Sledgehammer themselves.
After all, I've repeated asked them to expand upon their own lines of conversation, only for them to refuse and outright lie their way out of answering.
If you want to blame people for not engaging honestly in that conversation, blame Sledgehammer. I'd love to carry on their conversation about:
- What defines brotherhood and sisterhood in a way that makes them mutually exclusive, without resorting to describing the genders of those who perform those relationships?
- Where do queer people fit in with these definitions?
- How do Space Marines and Sisters of Battle respectively perform these relationships in a meaningful way in the 41st millenium?
- If Space Marines are to be empathised with, why should men be able to, but not women?
- What acts of exclusively "male friendship" do Space Marines perform, which could only be performed by men?
- Why is it necessary for everyone's Space Marines, not just yours, to be all-male?
Maybe let's not talk about "people not engaging", when it's very clear who the biggest offender for that has been.
It is a lot harder to paint the Imperium as an authoritarian anachronistic society when you give them sensibilities reflecting the modern social structure.
So why is every other branch of the Imperium gender neutral? Why is the Imperium institutionally not homophobic, or transphobic, or racist? Why am I not seeing the same people who argue "the Imperium is be sexist!!!" not argue for sexism in every other facet of the Imperium? Doesn't that seem just a tad convenient?
TL;DR: Making the Imperium gender neutral doesn't change that they're an authoritarian anachronistic society.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Lathe Biosas wrote: Knowing Games Workshop, we are likely to see the first female Space Marine be another Lieutenant model.
If they do, can it be a Gravis or Terminator Lieutenant? Just so we can round out the full command squad?
It just blows my mind that people want the standard Sisters of Battle to be turned into basically Ashley wearing the knight armor in Resident Evil 4. This is a setting about every concept being turned up to 11 with chainsaw swords, guns that shoot RPG bullets, walking battle mech churches, tech priests that perform Catholic/Orthodox rituals to power cycle the computer that has a human brain for a processors. In this crazy hodgepodge of insanity are the Sisters which are one of the most badass factions in the setting and their current visual design is absolutely outstanding.
I swear it's like anything that hints at being feminine or dare I say a bit sexy is somehow considered degrading to women and a grave injustice. Looking feminine or sexy can be quite appealing to women and you see it all the time with female character designs that are very popular with women being quite beautiful/sexy/cute/etc. Just because the artistic design highlights female features doesn't make it represent women as being lesser, bad, or objects. Stuff like the argument of "boob plate" being considered stupidly impractical is hilarious for a setting when people have guns that can atomize you and melt tanks while you run at them across an open battlefield with a chainsaw sword and a battle standard like its linear warfare (all the while in the background you have a 400 year old super soldier using an oversized energized metal fist to punch a demon possessed walking iron luung back into the hell dimension). 40k is absurd and it exists to be impractical and insane. Nuns with guns being the militant arm of the Space Catholic Church because of a loop hole regarding not being allowed to have "men at arms" is properly absurd and I think it hurts the concept of nuns with guns if they are looking like generic grunts from some generic sci fi setting.
We have plenty of examples of women in the setting doing equal roles with their male counterparts such as with the Guard or Tau in which you can't even tell the sex apart or it's so subtle that modeling it is basically a head swap for a mini and that is perfectly fine for those factions where men and women are equally disposable for the mill stone of war. Women in 40k aren't considered weak and its great that there are factions that highlight women as being different and unique to men without those women being lesser for it. It just feels like there is this push to sanitize everything so much that you end up with the most politically correct blandness that has no flavor or spirit due to needing to appease those who seek out things to be offended about.
Vankraken wrote: It just blows my mind that people want the standard Sisters of Battle to be turned into basically Ashley wearing the knight armor in Resident Evil 4. This is a setting about every concept being turned up to 11 with chainsaw swords, guns that shoot RPG bullets, walking battle mech churches, tech priests that perform Catholic/Orthodox rituals to power cycle the computer that has a human brain for a processors. In this crazy hodgepodge of insanity are the Sisters which are one of the most badass factions in the setting and their current visual design is absolutely outstanding.
I swear it's like anything that hints at being feminine or dare I say a bit sexy is somehow considered degrading to women and a grave injustice. Looking feminine or sexy can be quite appealing to women and you see it all the time with female character designs that are very popular with women being quite beautiful/sexy/cute/etc. Just because the artistic design highlights female features doesn't make it represent women as being lesser, bad, or objects. Stuff like the argument of "boob plate" being considered stupidly impractical is hilarious for a setting when people have guns that can atomize you and melt tanks while you run at them across an open battlefield with a chainsaw sword and a battle standard like its linear warfare (all the while in the background you have a 400 year old super soldier using an oversized energized metal fist to punch a demon possessed walking iron luung back into the hell dimension). 40k is absurd and it exists to be impractical and insane. Nuns with guns being the militant arm of the Space Catholic Church because of a loop hole regarding not being allowed to have "men at arms" is properly absurd and I think it hurts the concept of nuns with guns if they are looking like generic grunts from some generic sci fi setting.
We have plenty of examples of women in the setting doing equal roles with their male counterparts such as with the Guard or Tau in which you can't even tell the sex apart or it's so subtle that modeling it is basically a head swap for a mini and that is perfectly fine for those factions where men and women are equally disposable for the mill stone of war. Women in 40k aren't considered weak and its great that there are factions that highlight women as being different and unique to men without those women being lesser for it. It just feels like there is this push to sanitize everything so much that you end up with the most politically correct blandness that has no flavor or spirit due to needing to appease those who seek out things to be offended about.
It comes down to execution and individuals' tolerances for certain elements, I think. While "sexy" bits of character design can be appealing/empowering, they can also be objectifying depending on how they're handled.
You just don't want those elements to come across as male-gaze-y, basically.
Personally, I feel like the boob plate is fine. The corsets are a weird choice (what are they doing; just protecting the armor's cables?) but don't really bug me. The combat high heels you see in some art makes me roll my eyes. But I get how someone else might have different takes on any or all of those.
Boob plate for femarines would feel weird because based on everything I know about armor (which isn't a ton), boob plate is just kind of a famously bad idea. And the astartes as an organization, though prone to gaudy decorations and baroque armor, don't seem like they'd clamp a set of chesticles onto some power armor just to let you know what's in that warrior's pants. And unless turning a woman into an astartes happens to result in boob enlargement for some reason, it doesn't seem like they'd need a bunch of extra space in there for the girls. And coming up with a bunch of extra bits for wider hip-to-shoulder ratios or whatever seems like a lot of work for supersoldiers whose shoulder-to-hip ratios are probably determines primarily by the fact that they're giant post-human gorillas wearing a tank's worth of armor.
Wyldhunt wrote: Personally, I feel like the boob plate is fine. The corsets are a weird choice (what are they doing; just protecting the armor's cables?) but don't really bug me.
I always thought the corsets evoked a Victorian stuffiness. Like they imply a deportment-class prudishness that underscores the sisters' devout intolerance for anything outside their narrow view. (Their uniformity is in line with that as well.) That's what originally drew me to them.
Also, just a thought that occurred to me - it makes sense in lore that the Sororitas armour and uniforms at least demonstrate the female form. It's clear visual proof that they are following the rules. "See, no men at arms here!"
Is it technologically backward, with little to no understanding of why stuff they built actually works? Yes.
Does that stop them building physics defying creations? Clearly not. Even simple, everyday options like the humble Lasgun is nothing short of a technological miracle.
Is it a bureaucratic nightmare? Yes. Does that stop it functioning as a far flung galactic civilisation? Absolutely not.
Is the Ecclesiarchy an oppressive “worship as we say, or else” awful institution ultimately preaching nothing but wilful ignorance? Yes. But. Does that in turn offer genuine protection against Literal Daemons? Absolutely.
Is Imperial society an objectively awful civilisation? Yes. But it’s not sexist. It’s not racist in the modern sense. It’s not at all homophobic. In short? It has more important things to “Other”, like genuinely hostile Xenos species, rogue psykers which even if they’re not naughty, are still a walking potential portal into literal hell.
And it treats its non-mutated and non-Abhuman citizenry equally awfully.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As for Astartes Chapters? They are of course something of an All Boys Club.
But….not exactly through choice. No Chapter has intentionally, purposefully excluded women. Indeed across the wider Chapter assets, there’s no sign of say, Ship Crews and other Helots only ever being male. Provided you’re getting on with your job, allowing the Chapter to wage its wars, you’re likely to be largely beneath their notice, unless your a Ship’s Captain or other essential command role.
Sisters of battle are only really brought up in this discussion in two ways, one as a reason not to need female marines because we have them and then to say by the other side that they are not an alternative because they do a really bad job at representation because they are overtly sexualised and clearly designed for the “male gaze”.
I personally don’t much care for the boob plate, I think GW did a much better job of “feminine” looking armoured warriors with the stormcast, but don’t see a need to change it. Just don’t hold it up a shining example of GW wokeness and female representation in the hobby.
But there really would be no difference appearance wise for female marines. It’s a lore change and as has been said a million times over maybe a few heads.
To try and say that introducing female marines would mean marines for twice as many models because you’d have to make a female version of everything is just BS and everyone knows it.
I really don't want female marines haven bespoke "feminine" armour. Accommodations that female body would require would not be the sort of things that would be visible on super bulky power armour in this scale. Even Cadians don't have different sculpts for women apart the heads.
I want the situation to be such, that they're marines first, and any personal trait are a very distant second. I Want helmeted marine to just be a marine; anyone could be in that suit.
With separate "female marine" sculpt, we get the same situation than with the Eldar. Every model specifically no modelled as female reads as male.
Also, marine range is utterly massive. Making a separate female version of an every unit would be a ludicrous undertaking. Female head sculpts being the extent of the implementation is not only fine, it is preferable.
Wyldhunt wrote: Personally, I feel like the boob plate is fine. The corsets are a weird choice (what are they doing; just protecting the armor's cables?) but don't really bug me.
I always thought the corsets evoked a Victorian stuffiness. Like they imply a deportment-class prudishness that underscores the sisters' devout intolerance for anything outside their narrow view. (Their uniformity is in line with that as well.) That's what originally drew me to them.
Yeah the corset design to their armor seems very much inspired by Victorian fashion merging with Gothic armor design (and maybe add a splash of 80s/90s Madonna that comes across in some of the artwork).
For FSM, I think they need something more than just the bare minimum low-effort token solution of a few bare heads. I don’t think they need to go full Eldar, though.
For high ranking Marines, “gender tailored” artificer armor or feminine-cut robes would be ideal for me. For example, a Blood Angels character should have a female-presenting vanity cuirass with abs and bosom. A Dark Angels character could have more of a nun-ish habit cut to the robe, or a Librarian could have a more fantasy-wizardess style to armor, accessories and robes. Space Wolves could have a more Valkyrie aesthetic. Ideally female characters would be modeled to present as female space marines body and head.
For lower ranks, perhaps some specific helmets or accessories could be added to differentiate the helmeted fsm from the msm. Or, if legs are still separate pieces, have optional leg bits with more feminine proportions.
I feel like just giving the bare heads to fit on torsos designed to read as male is going to lead to a distinct second-class tier for female space marines.
BobtheInquisitor wrote:For lower ranks, perhaps some specific helmets or accessories could be added to differentiate the helmeted fsm from the msm. Or, if legs are still separate pieces, have optional leg bits with more feminine proportions.
I feel like just giving the bare heads to fit on torsos designed to read as male is going to lead to a distinct second-class tier for female space marines.
I feel that giving them 'more feminine proportions' to beat you over the head with the fact that they represent women would be obnoxiously tokenizing. Like those old cheesecake-y fanmade female Guard sculpts that gave them exaggerated hips and triple-D cups because 'how else are you supposed to know they're women?'.
You're not, save for a bare head here and there. That's the point. We're talking about roided-up beefcake supersoldiers cosplaying walking refrigerators; Sisters-esque coding would be weird.
It could just be like the female stormtroopers in the Rey Star Wars Trilogy. You couldnt tell the difference between men and women physically due to their armour. You only knew they were different from their voices.
BobtheInquisitor wrote:For lower ranks, perhaps some specific helmets or accessories could be added to differentiate the helmeted fsm from the msm. Or, if legs are still separate pieces, have optional leg bits with more feminine proportions.
I feel like just giving the bare heads to fit on torsos designed to read as male is going to lead to a distinct second-class tier for female space marines.
I feel that giving them 'more feminine proportions' to beat you over the head with the fact that they represent women would be obnoxiously tokenizing. Like those old cheesecake-y fanmade female Guard sculpts that gave them exaggerated hips and triple-D cups because 'how else are you supposed to know they're women?'.
You're not, save for a bare head here and there. That's the point. We're talking about roided-up beefcake supersoldiers cosplaying walking refrigerators; Sisters-esque coding would be weird.
I’m not talking about cheesecake. I mean something closer to AOS Stormcast proportions.
See, you mention roided up beefcake soldiers, but have you looked at the art or (to a lesser extent for scale reasons) minis? Space marines do not look like Robert Zdar. The look like rugged-yet-handsome baseline human men. Sometimes they even look like specific human actors. And that’s just their faces. The bodies that fit under the armor seen in the artwork are lithe and narrow with ridiculously broad shoulders, more like basketball players than bodybuilders.
Yes, these are artistic liberties that don’t reflect the fluff as written. But they’re done anyway so little Timmys can see themselves in the power fantasy space marines rather than some body-horror freak show. Female space marines should be given the same kind of artistic liberties to allow little Cindys to see themselves in space marines. That takes a little bit more than putting a woman’s head on a body that was designed to represent an aspirational masculine ideal.
BobtheInquisitor wrote:For lower ranks, perhaps some specific helmets or accessories could be added to differentiate the helmeted fsm from the msm. Or, if legs are still separate pieces, have optional leg bits with more feminine proportions.
I feel like just giving the bare heads to fit on torsos designed to read as male is going to lead to a distinct second-class tier for female space marines.
I feel that giving them 'more feminine proportions' to beat you over the head with the fact that they represent women would be obnoxiously tokenizing. Like those old cheesecake-y fanmade female Guard sculpts that gave them exaggerated hips and triple-D cups because 'how else are you supposed to know they're women?'.
You're not, save for a bare head here and there. That's the point. We're talking about roided-up beefcake supersoldiers cosplaying walking refrigerators; Sisters-esque coding would be weird.
no one said sisters coding and the fact that people keep trying to falsly dichotomise this argument down to 'either women look like male astartes or need tit armour and sexy legs' is just aggravating.
and it's why you need women to be part of the design and discussion rather than a bunch of men making those decisions.
'walking refrigerators that somehow still have feminine faces' is just as dumb as 'sisters coding'. you're saying that only their face should be feminine but the rest must be masculine? How convenient. Why not just say that because they're so masculinised that the current marine faces could be men or women, they just all look super mannish.
Or you know, you accurately portray a woman's body being roided out in the same way you portray a man's body being roided out, which results in similar but distinct bulks due to the distinct body shapes they have.
'walking refrigerators that somehow still have feminine faces' is just as dumb as 'sisters coding'. you're saying that only their face should be feminine but the rest must be masculine? How convenient. Why not just say that because they're so masculinised that the current marine faces could be men or women, they just all look super mannish.
Or you know, you accurately portray a woman's body being roided out in the same way you portray a man's body being roided out, which results in similar but distinct bulks due to the distinct body shapes they have.
We're both on team femarine, but I'm genuinely struggling to picture what you have in mind. Can you provide an example of what you're picturing?
To my mind, the point of the marinification process is to turn people into walking muscle fridges. So it seems to me that any sexually dimorphic differences between builds would be pretty subtle to the point of maybe not being detectable on a mini. But I'm open to hearing you out.
shortymcnostrill wrote: [
Allowing females to become space marines would be just another deck chair shuffle, and probably a smaller shuffle than the others. The effect would be more space marine recruits, allowing them a bit more numbers if they don't limit their max number at 1000, or just allowing quicker recovery from attrition if they do. In a setting that treats numbers as an afterthought anyway, I don't see this having an impact greater than the other points.
I've already said this but I still think:
Its not going to break the game if they add female marines. People can play this game using a roll of quarters and a magic marker. They don't need models. Making Space Marines with obvious boobs is pretty far down the bang-for-the-buck list. The upheaval of the new rules design has left far bigger holes to fill than a form fitting boob plate.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Because I am a glutton for punishment I went to my Chatgpt buddy, the Omnissiah, and asked him for a female marine, and I got this:
I'm seeing basically a normal marine, but with a weirdly slender waist/torso. Which I don't think would be particularly fluffy and I don't particularly want to see on the tabletop. But I'm also not sure what Hellebore is asking for if not this.
'walking refrigerators that somehow still have feminine faces' is just as dumb as 'sisters coding'. you're saying that only their face should be feminine but the rest must be masculine? How convenient. Why not just say that because they're so masculinised that the current marine faces could be men or women, they just all look super mannish.
Or you know, you accurately portray a woman's body being roided out in the same way you portray a man's body being roided out, which results in similar but distinct bulks due to the distinct body shapes they have.
We're both on team femarine, but I'm genuinely struggling to picture what you have in mind. Can you provide an example of what you're picturing?
To my mind, the point of the marinification process is to turn people into walking muscle fridges. So it seems to me that any sexually dimorphic differences between builds would be pretty subtle to the point of maybe not being detectable on a mini. But I'm open to hearing you out.
GW minis don’t do subtle. They do Heroic scale, which means features are exaggerated and proportions altered unrealistically for effect. Space marine minis are not precisely-proportioned, fluff-accurate scale models. Why would you insist on imposing those standards only on FSM, especially to produce an outcome that visually erases the existence of FSM?
Also, when did they stop portraying Space Marines as they did in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th editions and when did they start painting them as muscle fridges? Because that phrase describes none of the iconic space marine artwork.
But from an objective standpoint, the themes of Space Marines don't require them to be male - just hyper-violent war machines.
I'd say "preach on my Battle Brother", but that might open a can of worms.
And then you type it out, anyway?
One can hope you'd get the not so subtle point.
Most of the themes for Space Marines are recycled historicals.
And while many of those sources for inspiration were themselves historically sexist, none of them specifically required having boy-parts. The ones that had sex-based restrictions were generally influenced by sexist religious organizations.
Or not. Amazonian Societies don't have to be led by warrior women. Sure its the primary surface level attribute people with passing knowledge of history will recognize, but its not necessary. We can do an entirely male society of Amazons and people will still get the reference.
How much less toxic does it get when you tell people who disagree with you its only because of their toxic politics protecting the status quo and they might as well be human traffickers?
1) If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
2) Excessive hyperbole. Have I called people and/or their opinions sexist and toxic? You bet; see number 1. Equating that to human trafficking? That is a step WAY too far, and is solely a product of your imagination.
Yes, I was pointing out your excessive hyperbole as well as a heaping helping of bigotry. How many times do you think someone in the Klan justified their hate with the Duck Test?
Lathe Biosas wrote: Because I am a glutton for punishment I went to my Chatgpt buddy, the Omnissiah, and asked him for a female marine, and I got this:
I'm seeing basically a normal marine, but with a weirdly slender waist/torso. Which I don't think would be particularly fluffy and I don't particularly want to see on the tabletop. But I'm also not sure what Hellebore is asking for if not this.
(No disrespect intended, Hellebore.)
If I saw that in "the wild" (i.e. no context)? I'd start wondering which Inquisitor that was. Mostly based on AI errors - the color isn't really any chapter - too grey for UM, not grey enough for Wolves - there is no chapter shoulder pad just two Eagles. The belt icon isn't high quality but when you're already thinking Inquisitor it could be a stylized version of their symbol. Top that off with the antique elbows and some sort of chain undershirt instead of a black carapace.
GW minis don’t do subtle. They do Heroic scale, which means features are exaggerated and proportions altered unrealistically for effect. Space marine minis are not precisely-proportioned, fluff-accurate scale models. Why would you insist on imposing those standards only on FSM, especially to produce an outcome that visually erases the existence of FSM?
Also, when did they stop portraying Space Marines as they did in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th editions and when did they start painting them as muscle fridges? Because that phrase describes none of the iconic space marine artwork.
Well there's two different parts to the "question". Are we talking in fluff, on the tabletop, or both? Eventually everyone gets to both, but almost everyone also starts with primarily one or the other. And nothing is "accurate" compared to the other. Textually, even an old Marine was supposedly a 7 foot tall hulk of walking steel muscle and sinew over a fused rib cage wrapped in a cermatie shell that spends 800 years eating nutrient gruel. As people have pointed out the artwork right next to this description isn't guaranteed to match. Then you throw a third representation medium (minis) into the mix and its just going to get worse.
Space Marines should look less like a regular male and be a much more grotesque form. I think the idea of female Space Marines runs into the massive problem of the trans human process turning a person into a 600lb brick of bone, meat, and fury isn't going to have anything left that resembles the female form. If they made the lore to allow females to undergo the transformation process to become a Space Marine then its whatever (still disagree with the idea of changing something for the sake of change) but trying to make them look anything remotely feminine is absolutely counter to the entire concept of the transformation process. If the goal is to make a massive slab of beef to be a super soldier then the end result should be the same if you use a male or female starting base as the whole point of the transformation is to produce a super soldier by modifying the human form into some sort of ideal fighting form.
Yeah I’m pretty sure I didn’t type anything about human trafficking.
Isn't that what toxic masculinity does though? Isn't it always about subjugate women like chattel? Why else would those even men be so toxic?
I fully admit that my reason for wanting female marines is entirely political. It makes sense fluff wise and business too if you ask me but the main reason is political, and I’m pretty sure everyone in here asking for it will admit that it’s down to their politics. Most if not all already have by asking for inclusion and the like. It’s the ones saying they don’t want it due to fluff reasons that are arguing in bad faith. It is their politics that wants them to not have female marines.
Was anyone suggesting it wasn't political for you? Did I miss someone suggesting the "everyone who disagrees with me is evil incarnate" argument wasn't poltical in nature?
I did not cast any judgement on them for that either. But if some people are so upset at bringing in a change to enable women to be more included in the game that they quit, I will cast judgement on them and not miss them if they leave the hobby.
As for human trafficking, that’s just an stupid and pointless comment.
I didn't cast judgment on those toxic people who won't agree with me for a multitude of reasons I boiled down to toxic masculinity and misogyny? I am curious where your line is drawn. If we have to include female space marines to "include" women in a game, do we have to make bug eyed alien Space Marines to include the Tyranids? Do we need to put teats on Tervigons?
Andykp wrote: I love that over the years we have persisted with these threads and each time it gets less toxic and more progressive.
I know this post is a few days old, but I wanted to leave a quick comment.
I had one person reach out to me directly to express their support for some of my posts in this thread. They also explained that they and someone they know are not participating on purpose because they're afraid of reprisals against their account. I've seen at least two other users have their (not pro-FSM) text removed within a day of posting. Meanwhile, repeated summaries of the anti-FSM side as being misogynistic and sexist, or even the outright call for their exclusion (in the other thread), didn't even result in a "keep it down, folks" post from a moderator.
If this thread is anything to go by how previous discussions about the topic were handled, then your impression for it becoming "less toxic and more progressive" stems not from changing the hearts and minds of people, but from intimidation and forced exclusion (=bans). I hope the irony of the situation is not lost on you.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Because I am a glutton for punishment I went to my Chatgpt buddy, the Omnissiah, and asked him for a female marine, and I got this:
Now featuring Henry Cavil as Ultramarine Sergeant Mann, and Callista Flockheart as Lieutenant Annorax.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Because I am a glutton for punishment I went to my Chatgpt buddy, the Omnissiah, and asked him for a female marine, and I got this:
This is... not terrible for AI. Details aside, that's probably pretty darn close to what I'd like to see on a table.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Because I am a glutton for punishment I went to my Chatgpt buddy, the Omnissiah, and asked him for a female marine, and I got this:
Breton wrote: Yes, I was pointing out your excessive hyperbole as well as a heaping helping of bigotry. How many times do you think someone in the Klan justified their hate with the Duck Test?
If you'd like to cite examples, I welcome the chance to re-evaluate my statements and apologize if necessary. I'd be especially curious as to where you think I was being a bigot. Keep in mind: bigotry is hating/discriminating against someone because of inherent characteristics, such as race. As I've said elsewhere, I'm not required to tolerate intolerance; if you choose to be sexist, I will call you out on it.
And get that Klan gak out of here. There's NO justifying anything they've done and you damn well know it.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Because I am a glutton for punishment I went to my Chatgpt buddy, the Omnissiah, and asked him for a female marine, and I got this:
BobtheInquisitor wrote:I’m not talking about cheesecake. I mean something closer to AOS Stormcast proportions.
I get that, and I'm not accusing you of wanting cheesecake minis.
But these aren't Stormcast. Stormcast armor is form-fitting, it copies the ancient Greek trope of aesthetically depicting muscle. The men have separate pec-plates. The women have uniboob armor (subtle, but it's there). Everyone gets sculpted abs and shapely calves. It's really just the enormous GW-signature pauldrons that depart from the artistically-idealized-skintight design, and both male and female models get them.
If anything, Stormcast are closer to Eldar armor design, or ironically Sisters. It's pretty easy to tell who's under the armor because it contours to the body under the armor and has aesthetic elements that further exaggerate their form.
Space Marine armor isn't like that. Bell-bottom greaves, giant chestplates, smooth uncontoured armor plates. It's closer to, say, power armor from Starcraft, and when we see women wearing it in that franchise, they look like... women in the same power armor as men. It's as much a walking tank as it is a suit of armor; there's nothing about its design that says you must have certain secondary sex characteristics to wear it.
I'll also point out that Space Marine model anatomy is already weird, to the point where artistic depictions of a character actually wearing it tend to make significant stylistic alterations. The models themselves imply the occupants have narrow waists, wide hips, slender thighs, and either uncomfortable squatting posture or more thigh gap than any female mini GW has produced. Marine armor design leans masculine on the whole as a result of going for big and strong, but there are no codpieces, pecs, or bulging biceps. The most explicitly male-coded parts of the design are the broad shoulders and massive pauldrons- GW staples that, again, they use on both male and female Stormcast, if that's the point of reference.
We're talking about models that don't exaggerate the human form the way Stormcast do, while also having proportional weirdness that isn't strictly male-coded. So I'll echo Wyldhunt's question: What exactly would you expect a female Marine to look like? Because I genuinely struggle to think of how you could code Astartes power armor as female without it looking gratuitous. That AI art is a perfect example- coding male Marines as hulking beefcakes and female Marines as wasp-waisted waifus does not seem like a win for inclusivity.
More importantly where inclusivity is concerned:
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Female space marines should be given the same kind of artistic liberties to allow little Cindys to see themselves in space marines.
As soon as you design different body types for female Marines, you are asserting that female Marines are obviously recognizably different from their male counterparts. That's opening a can of worms. For one thing, it's actively perpetuating that all the existing kits are male-only, and if Little Cindy wants to see herself in her army she's going to have to buy the new kits with the female Marine bits in them. It also raises the question of whether new kits will have the parts to be all-male or all-female, or if a mix is mandatory. It's a different situation from AoS creating Stormcast from scratch; here we're talking about making an enormous and currently all-male line more inclusive, and I don't think a solution that requires slowly replacing the entire line is ideal.
Like I've said before, at this point I'm pro-FSM, but if GW were to implement FSM I think the Custodes approach is the way to go. Female Marines are there, maybe they've always been there or maybe not, but either way the existing range can be leveraged to depict female characters.
You make a good point about the Stormcasts. I thought the Primaris marines were a bit more true scaled than real space marines and with pec plates, though, which would open the door for wider hipped legs, or a slightly higher waist. If that’s not possible, then we’re back to more feminine-associated accessories and robe/armor cuts. Helmets (for characters or specialists) can have a more feminine shape or plume/crest arrangement, something associated with what women wore in the appropriate appropriated culture for the chapter, like Valkyrie armor and helmets for Space Wolf FSM characters or female torso cuirasses for Blood Angel characters.
I think the problem with your argument that differently shaped female marines would make male marines read as male…is that they already read as all male.
Breton wrote: Most of the themes for Space Marines are recycled historicals.
And while many of those sources for inspiration were themselves historically sexist, none of them specifically required having boy-parts. The ones that had sex-based restrictions were generally influenced by sexist religious organizations.
Or not. Amazonian Societies don't have to be led by warrior women. Sure its the primary surface level attribute people with passing knowledge of history will recognize, but its not necessary. We can do an entirely male society of Amazons and people will still get the reference.
I'd actually like to jump on this and say I agree with this!
Knights needing to be "male" is a surface level attribute, that is not necessary in the world GW are trying to tell. People will still get the reference of Space Marines having elements reminiscent of knights and crusaders and monks (in the appropriate Chapters), even if they have women in them. The semiotic meanings of "knight" don't suddenly change when you don't know who's under the helmet, and a Black Templar will always look like a Teutonic Knight In Space, regardless of if it's a roided up man or woman in the armour. People will still get the reference.
a_typical_hero wrote:I've seen at least two other users have their (not pro-FSM) text removed within a day of posting.
Considering that one of those users was attempting a transphobic dogwhistle, I think that's for good reason. Blatant transphobia (and yes, I'm not just talking "ooh, they disagree with me", I'm referring to Actually Transphobic Comments) have no place here or anywhere else.
Can't speak for the other, mostly because I don't remember it, but I'm going to assume it wasn't because they were opposed to women Astartes.
Could I just have confirmation that you agree that transphobic comments (Actually Transphobic Comments and rhetoric, not just "you disagree with me", just to clarify) are abhorrent?
BobtheInquisitor wrote:
GW minis don’t do subtle. They do Heroic scale, which means features are exaggerated and proportions altered unrealistically for effect. Space marine minis are not precisely-proportioned, fluff-accurate scale models.
This is more or less what I'm getting at. I'm struggling to imagine differences between the builds of male and female space marines that would be significant enough to show up on a mini. I'd think any such differences would be pretty darn subtle, so I'm not sure we need to go out of our way to designate male and female bodies.
catbarf wrote:
But these aren't Stormcast. Stormcast armor is form-fitting, it copies the ancient Greek trope of aesthetically depicting muscle. The men have separate pec-plates. The women have uniboob armor (subtle, but it's there). Everyone gets sculpted abs and shapely calves. It's really just the enormous GW-signature pauldrons that depart from the artistically-idealized-skintight design, and both male and female models get them.
If anything, Stormcast are closer to Eldar armor design, or ironically Sisters. It's pretty easy to tell who's under the armor because it contours to the body under the armor and has aesthetic elements that further exaggerate their form.
Space Marine armor isn't like that. Bell-bottom greaves, giant chestplates, smooth uncontoured armor plates. It's closer to, say, power armor from Starcraft, and when we see women wearing it in that franchise, they look like... women in the same power armor as men. It's as much a walking tank as it is a suit of armor; there's nothing about its design that says you must have certain secondary sex characteristics to wear it.
I'll also point out that Space Marine model anatomy is already weird, to the point where artistic depictions of a character actually wearing it tend to make significant stylistic alterations. The models themselves imply the occupants have narrow waists, wide hips, slender thighs, and either uncomfortable squatting posture or more thigh gap than any female mini GW has produced. Marine armor design leans masculine on the whole as a result of going for big and strong, but there are no codpieces, pecs, or bulging biceps. The most explicitly male-coded parts of the design are the broad shoulders and massive pauldrons- GW staples that, again, they use on both male and female Stormcast, if that's the point of reference.
Ok, before I go any further. I realize that a single female Chaos Space Marine does not solve the "No Girls Allowed" issue, but... I thought that if I could find one instance in the Black Library archives, it could possibly show that it wouldnt destroy the foundations of Warhammer 40,000.
The reason for this post is: I found one... and not in Rogue Trader either.
In Storm of Iron by Graham McNeill, there is a female character named Karla.
She starts as a slave who is forced to polish the armor of a Chaos Space Marine, and through the corrupting influence of Chaos, she eventually undergoes a transformation into a Chaos Space Marine herself.
I know this is just one instance, and it uses "The powers of corruption," to overcome issues, but it is a female Space Marine, and I don't think anyone screamed for the head of Graham McNeill, nor boycotted GW.
This might be one tiny step, and I hope it is taken well. I mean no disrespect to anyone.
Chaos also has suits of armour with nothing inside them; marines so corrupted by the warp that they are basically incomprehensible mounds of flesh utterly fused to their suits. Some are cracking open with pulsing growths and weapons tearing out of their bodies; some are entirely given over to a demonic possession. Nurgle's Marines are utterly brimming with inhuman life in the form of maggots and other things crawling and creeping and feasting on the body inside. To say nothing of the things that they grow themselves like belly mouths; tentacles and more.
Chaos doesn't follow the rules for what makes a marine at all - on any level. In fact its kind of their thing to not follow the rules of the Astartes and the Emperor.
Also I'm going to say it now - one thing GW have pushed time and again is that MODELS sell above all else for them. If Female Marines are basically almost 100% identical to regular Marines then there isn't anything for GW to "sell" with those designs.
If GW made it so that women could be regular bogstandard Marines then you can bet that it would come with a new design. GW is well aware that most customers who walk in their shops are not reading pages of Lore; pouring over every detail of books written 30years ago to this day.
They are walking into a shop; seeing a game being played; seeing display models and going "I want that one" - Perhaps with a bit of staffer encouragement.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Ok, before I go any further. I realize that a single female Chaos Space Marine does not solve the "No Girls Allowed" issue, but... I thought that if I could find one instance in the Black Library archives, it could possibly show that it wouldnt destroy the foundations of Warhammer 40,000.
The reason for this post is: I found one... and not in Rogue Trader either.
In Storm of Iron by Graham McNeill, there is a female character named Karla.
She starts as a slave who is forced to polish the armor of a Chaos Space Marine, and through the corrupting influence of Chaos, she eventually undergoes a transformation into a Chaos Space Marine herself.
I know this is just one instance, and it uses "The powers of corruption," to overcome issues, but it is a female Space Marine, and I don't think anyone screamed for the head of Graham McNeill, nor boycotted GW.
This might be one tiny step, and I hope it is taken well. I mean no disrespect to anyone.
I read that one. It's... a weird enough situation that I'm not sure she really counts for purposes of this conversation. She was undergoing vague chaos possession shenanigans at the time. It doesn't seem like she was an astartes unless the demon went out of its way to give her a betcher's gland, lharaman's ear, etc. before making her vanish into the warp the next day. Rather it seems like the demon just allowed her to somehow pilot the stolen armor for a few hours.
EDIT: A better counterpoint might be the not-startes from Harrowmaster. They're transhuman ladies in power armor that are about the size of a marine and implied to have comparable capabilities. The main character gets all huffy and insists they're not "really astartes," and the local heretech just goes,
"Yeah yeah. There's more than one way to build a transhuman. Calm your jimmies, Jimmy. Enjoy your semantics."
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I think the problem with your argument that differently shaped female marines would make male marines read as male…is that they already read as all male.
That's not quite what I was getting at, but I think you're assigning too much importance to how the models read. Gamers thought Samus Aran was male because of the character sprite, but they got over it. Custodes still have male-coded miniatures but are now canonically mixed-gender. Again, Starcraft has the giant shoulders and pauldrons but both men and women wearing them. You just tell players that anyone can wear the armor, and that's that.
Because fundamentally, the sorts of physical characteristics that feed into the martial power fantasy Marines embody are things that are going to traditionally read as male. I think you'll struggle to make female Marines actually read as female without either really exaggerating the female characteristics or compromising the could-fistfight-a-truck-and-win visual design that defines the faction. I'd genuinely be interested to see concepts, but it's telling that GW had to opt for explicitly gender-coded form-fitting armor for Stormcast in order to have characters with broad shoulders and giant pauldrons still read as female. I don't think just giving a helmeted Intercessor wider hips or a slightly higher waist would do that.
In any case, the point I was making was that if GW were to create new and obviously different female Marine models, then that would be making the inclusivity of the faction subject to a full range refresh and however long that takes. Stating that both male and female Marines use the same armor instead allows you to roll out conversion bits like the things you described to augment the existing kits. That allows the existing range to be more inclusive, allows the studio to quickly add female representation to their Marine marketing, and makes it easier for new kits to support both male and female build options. Maybe it sounds like a cop-out, but I think it's the most straightforward and productive way to implement female Marines without having to redo the faction that is still undergoing a redo.
So I don't agree on the point about Sailor Moon and Tomb Raider being designed specifically for another audience making it a flawed example. 
wars, and we owe a "thank you" to the friendly neighborhood moderators, for keeping us civil.
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I thought the Omnissiah would protect me from the Tech-Heresy....
