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I generally can't stand the female marines crowd. They just rub me the wrong way.
And more concretely they are bad for two reasons:
-1. Warhammer 40k is an established setting that lots of players love and in every single of over 100 Space Marines novels in the setting and the fluff Space Marines are male, and must be male because gene seed requires it, while at the same time lots of non-marine characters are female. So a person bringing in a female Space Marine army or wanting GW to make female Space Marines is basically saying that every single Space Marine novel and all the fluff is invalid. Like it's an attitude to the hobby that is, like, objectively bad and aiming at ruining fun of fans of fluff and novels.
-2. Another thing is many of these people actually have issue with Space Marines being male because they are too bigoted to read about characters that don't have their genitals despite that, like, having different genitals is literally the least significant difference between Space Marines and basically anyone.
Like it's literally what these people believe and how they read fiction:
Furthermore it’s an objective fact people identify with their own sex more easily and readily. That’s just objective truth, it’s been surveyed and analyzed mnumerous times. If you are unable to comprehend simple objective facts then there is little help I can give you.
Like, it takes a special kind of an donkey-cave to find gender to be a barrier in enjoying collecting fascist transhumans and reading novels about them. Like they don't realise it's them that is the problem. I have zero problems reading novels and watching movies and playing games with female protagonists, maybe they should stop excusing their bigotry with saying "it's natural" and "it's scientific fact" because it clearly isn't.
Of course they have male enablers that are virtue signalling how progressive they are and how they are all about manipulating people instead of respecting the setting.
What's interesting that the same kind of bigots but with a different set of genitals are the reason why Space Marines are all male in the first place.
https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2020/10/warhammer-40k-the-real-story-of-female-space-marines.html Then GW has buried chances for female Space Marines because it decided to make this logistic/cultural problem canon, which it didn’t do with any other faction which is why you can have tons of female characters from almost every faction imaginable but you can’t have female space marines because it would turn over 100 Space Marine novels and over 20 years worth of fluff into trash.
Like, technically speaking if GW wanted to add female Space Marines, which they clearly don't, they could have just retconned them in in 3rd edition because they were really brutal with retcons at that point since it was basically a reboot of 40k after Kitchammer - like how they completely remade Orks and Tyranids and there was no novels besides Ian Watson tetralogy which they made non-canon and they were adding many female soldiers to Elves and Eldar.
Or they could have made mass production Space Marines instead of super space marines in 8th edition - like they could have made new technobabble about Cawl creating new geneseed variant that is much easier to reproduce and accepts more recruits including women - with perhaps some side effects like half of implanted people dying horribly and some being unstable to keep things properly grimdark. Like Primaris were just so unnecessary because Space Marines are already over the top and mass production marines would be a nod to the fact that Space Marines are the most popular faction.
But they didn't. GW clearly doesn't want female Space Marines. They "miss" every chance they got to implement them without messing things up.
So, these people are an impotent nuisance but then they turn it all around and call you a gatekeeper and exclusionist and sexist or whatever if you don't want to ruin canon to accommodate for their bigotry and manipulation.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/05/18 06:26:09
Castozor wrote: We already have female representation though, not sure why it needs to be the poster boys too?
The poster 'boys' are precisely the faction that needs female representation, on account of being the most visible faction.
That, and the fact that when the only real argument against it is 'But it's not been that way before' then there is really no reason to not do it, if by doing so you make your product appealing to wider audience.
Dunno.
This is what a GW designer had to say on the subject.
GW is a $4B company that really, really understands how to sell models. They want to continue to grow, Kevin Roundtree would love nothing more than to tap into an otherwise inaccessible market.
Castozor wrote: We already have female representation though, not sure why it needs to be the poster boys too?
The poster 'boys' are precisely the faction that needs female representation, on account of being the most visible faction.
That, and the fact that when the only real argument against it is 'But it's not been that way before' then there is really no reason to not do it, if by doing so you make your product appealing to wider audience.
Dunno.
This is what a GW designer had to say on the subject.
GW is a $4B company that really, really understands how to sell models. They want to continue to grow, Kevin Roundtree would love nothing more than to tap into an otherwise inaccessible market.
Presuming it exists.
*Insert the bike meme*
Bigots in 1985: Waah! I want to play only army of my sex! I will complain if they are other sex!
Bigots in 2020: Waah! I want to play only army of my sex! Why there are no female space marines?!
Well, played bigots, they really did it to themselves.
In the 80s they were opposing creator's freedom to create new setting as they please in 2020s they are opposing creators freedom to maintain and respect canon and demand turning every single Space Marine novel and 30 years of fluff into trash.
Luckily nowadays GW is much more powerful than in the 80s.
By the way, I like how he's "forgetting" the fact that nobody actually forced them to make Space Marines all male and that writing the fluff in a way that made female space marines impossible was their deliberate choice. They left a door open for female members of all other Imperial factions and made some female Army trooper miniatures. Like Space Marines being all male was 100% their deliberate decision. They also could have made female Space Marines in 3rd ed when they have rebooted the setting. Like adding female Marines would be incomparable with what they did to Orks and Tyranids.
The female miniatures in Power Armour are Adepta Sororita - it's shown by the creature skull on their shoulderpads. And by the way Adepta Sororita were much more powerful back then and from the description they were more like inquisitors than what they became later.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2021/05/18 06:55:26
This has been mentioned a few times. Where is it actually stated in the fluff?
So a person bringing in a female Space Marine army or wanting GW to make female Space Marines is basically saying that every single Space Marine novel and all the fluff is invalid.
That would obviously depend on whether they added them as a retcon, or introduced them as a new development.
Even if it was the former, though, a retcon doesn't actually mean that GW operatives come to your house and burn your copies of those books. You'll still have them, and you can still read them, and they can be just as valid for you as they were before. You don't actually need GW to tell you what is and isn't canon. In fact, in the words of a relevant wise man:
"With Warhammer 40,000, the notion of canon is a fallacy. [...] Warhammer 40,000 exist as tens of thousands of overlapping realities in the imaginations of games developers, writers, readers and gamers. None of those interpretations is wrong
Gav Thorpe, Lead Designer GW"
Let's assume for a moment that canon is a thing, though. Introducing women doesn't actually invalidate anything that came before, any more than any of the previous additions to the game did. Storm Talons were never mentioned in the fluff... until the model was created. Did that immediately invalidate every book published prior to that date? Hell, most of the weapon and vehicle options available to Horus Heresy armies were never mentioned in the books prior to their models being created. Do we assume that the first half of the Horus Heresy novel series is now invalid?
The 40K background is a constantly evolving thing. It always has been. So arguing that this one specific change would somehow break everything, when none of the previous changes have done so, seems somewhat absurd.
-2. Another thing is many of these people actually have issue with Space Marines being male because they are too bigoted to read about characters that don't have their genitals despite that, like, having different genitals is literally the least significant difference between Space Marines and basically anyone.
Like it's literally what these people believe and how they read fiction:
This is quite possible the most warped interpretation of what representation means that I've ever read. Congratulations.
This is what a GW designer had to say on the subject.
To be clear, that's what a GW designer had to say about a business decision from the late '80s or early '90s. Times have changed. And it's fairly clear that GW are well aware of that, given that they have made steps towards introducing more diversity into the range, if at a somewhat slower pace than some fans would like.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/05/18 06:52:54
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: That's a fantastic attitude. Luckily there are black Space Marines but there's no pictures of black Sisters of Battle last I checked. Start there.
Oh boy this comment's aging like fine wine.
Just say you don't want to talk about the topic and bow out without trying to move the goalposts and deflect, yeah?
I'm not moving thr goal posts and am in fact impressed they even bothered to draw a black Sister of Battle. However nobody has bothered with female Orks or male Sisters.
There are female models all over.
As I pointed out earlier in the thread, the factions that are intended to be '50-50' are generally more like '1-99' in the model ranges.
CWE: 5 torsos in one troop kit, one elite squad (which hilariously when they updated to plastic GW made sure to include male heads in just so the boys don't feel left out
Drukhari: 2/8 I think characters, torsos and heads in 5 boxes. the Gold Star!
tau: 4 heads in 1 box.
GSC: 2 models in the biker box, the crewmember on the achilles, 2/12ish characters
Guard: 4 heads in 1 box - hooray, we're on the board!
Comparing to Age of Sigmar, there's almost no good way to make female models in 40k. If you want to, your options are like 4 heads in the sisters of battle troop box that aren't wearing the distinctive "That's A Sister of Battle" haircut, and now the 4 heads in the guard box. Otherwise, you're stuck pilfering bits from other game systems or buying third party minis.
1. Eldar really shouldn't be absurdly close to human proportions anyway. That there aren't exaggerated tits on every single model doesn't mean some of them won't be female. Absolutely absurd argument, especially as most of the bodies will be wearing helmets.
2. Drukhari really aren't that bad as you're making them to be, especially as, like I already stated, Eldar shouldn't be that proportioned like humans even on the 28mm scale. Nothing is stopping your Kalabites from being female outside that you don't like they're not baring midriff like on the Wyches.
3. Literally the only way to tell for Tau is fhe frickin nose. Lousy complaint.
4. I would figure that for Cults the women would be too busy giving birth to more mutants but sure, whatever.
5. Once again, with mostly helmets, how are you able to tell with Imperial Guard?
It's literally like all y'all want is exaggerated female features on the models as otherwise they're not female. That female Commisar done a couple years ago proves my point exactly: there were tons of complaints it didn't look like a woman, and to be honest many of you reek of this attitude, not even with the topic on hand.
Lastly, you could have requested female Custodes and literally nobody would bat an eye because of how little their fluff is established outside there's 10,000 of them sitting around doing nothing. I've literally suggested this before and we got the whole "but they're not on the posters".
Who. fething. Cares.
CaptainStabby wrote: If Tyberos falls and needs to catch himself it's because the ground needed killing.
jy2 wrote: BTW, I can't wait to run Double-D-thirsters! Man, just thinking about it gets me Khorney.
vipoid wrote: Indeed - what sort of bastard would want to use their codex?
MarsNZ wrote: ITT: SoB players upset that they're receiving the same condescending treatment that they've doled out in every CSM thread ever.
Blame GW for how it wrote the canon, not me. As I said they had opportunity to add female marines in 3rd ed (no novels/massive retcons - like for example the difference between 2nd ed Orks and 3rd ed Orks is staggering - they are unrecognizable) and 8th ed (Cawl and nu-marines). They preferred to keep things as they are in 3rd ed and make Primaris super super space marines with additional organs on top of the already male-only organs in 8th ed instead of just making a way for massive Space Marine reinforcements through a new production method. Like Primaris were just so bad - listening to Dark Imperium about how they were just slaughtering Chaos Space Marines was so cringe. I'd take something like mass production marines over it any day :| .
So a person bringing in a female Space Marine army or wanting GW to make female Space Marines is basically saying that every single Space Marine novel and all the fluff is invalid.
That would obviously depend on whether they added them as a retcon, or introduced them as a new development.
Even if it was the former, though, a retcon doesn't actually mean that GW operatives come to your house and burn your copies of those books. You'll still have them, and you can still read them, and they can be just as valid for you as they were before. You don't actually need GW to tell you what is and isn't canon. In fact, in the words of a relevant wise man:
"With Warhammer 40,000, the notion of canon is a fallacy. [...] Warhammer 40,000 exist as tens of thousands of overlapping realities in the imaginations of games developers, writers, readers and gamers. None of those interpretations is wrong
Gav Thorpe, Lead Designer GW"
Let's assume for a moment that canon is a thing, though. Introducing women doesn't actually invalidate anything that came before, any more than any of the previous additions to the game did. Storm Talons were never mentioned in the fluff... until the model was created. Did that immediately invalidate every book published prior to that date? Hell, most of the weapon and vehicle options available to Horus Heresy armies were never mentioned in the books prior to their models being created. Do we assume that the first half of the Horus Heresy novel series is now invalid?
The 40K background is a constantly evolving thing. It always has been. So arguing that this one specific change would somehow break everything, when none of the previous changes have done so, seems somewhat absurd.
If you weren't grasping at straws to push the agenda, it would be immediately clear - they didn't have to invent women nor they had believed women can't be powerful fighters - so you have various female fighters since early novels and in Horus Heresy series. GW has specifically excluded women from Astartes. Saying that there were always female astartes would absolutely invalidate everything that came before since the novels are primarily novels about people not about hardware.
-2. Another thing is many of these people actually have issue with Space Marines being male because they are too bigoted to read about characters that don't have their genitals despite that, like, having different genitals is literally the least significant difference between Space Marines and basically anyone.
Like it's literally what these people believe and how they read fiction:
This is quite possible the most warped interpretation of what representation means that I've ever read. Congratulations.
It's not my interpretation. It's something that few women that were rabidly demanding female space marines explained and claimed that it's an objective scientific fact. They are literally the same kind of people who were responsible for this mess in the first place but with swapped genitals. Like if you don't understand they can't read novels and collect armies with male space marine characters you have no empathy and stuff. I guess I need to improve my empathy until I'll be able to understand people who would complain about female Space Marine characters being included in marine units for a completely new setting back in the 80s. Though knowing GW they'd probably make female Space Marines with boobplate and in thongs (these are Adepta Sororita by the way, as shown by the creature skull on their shoulder pads).
The vile agenda ... of wanting female Space Marines.
The amount of poisoning the well on the part of anti-female Space Marine people here is utterly insane. Very typical rightoid crank "infiltrating agenda" stuff.
The biggest indicator someone is a loser is them complaining about 3d printers or piracy.
If they produced female heads for Marines I'd be all for it. Also, please don't just produce female Marines for Emperor's Children because reasons...
What I'd also like though, since the Imperium is painted in a more positive light recently, if Cawl came up with the ability to produce female Marines and Guilliman or most Chapter masters were like, no, we don't do women here. It's a fascist state after all, women are allowed to produce and be cannon fodder, but women in the Elite cadre outside of the church? Nah...
Either way, the current status with that strange reasoning seems a little... Lackluster.
"Wanting representation in media makes you a bigot" is quite probably the spiciest and dumbest take I think I've ever seen. Coupled with the "GW would make female Marines overly sexualised" despite literally no evidence to suggest they would do that makes for an argument with more holes than a chunk of Swiss cheese.
Did he really just "He who smelt it dealt it" Bigotted Misogyny?
This is where the curtain falls away and we see the true colors of the people who feel the status quo of oppression can ever be the one way. All other ways are somehow hurting their tiny genitals.
Seriously, I don't see why you fellas hate women, no, wait, I think I just answered my own question.
Yeah, I really really do love the amount of Mr Fantastic stretching required to make "people who do not want any women in their little spaceman toys and will throw their toys out the pram if even someone else can make them and GW says that's OK for them to do" and "people who think it would be nice if it were possible to make any number of space marines female out of the kits instead of having to get heads from other kits to do so" on the exact same moral footing.
Step one is, apparently, imagine that the REAL people who want female space marines are a secret kabal of....I guess female...supremacists, who want ONLY female space marines and want every male space marine STRIKEN FROM THE CANON, bwahahahahahaah, sitting in their castle of evil like skeletor and commanding their foolish duped virtue-signaling minions.
Bravo. Fantastic, truly inspiring performance. You've shattered the world record standing logic long-jump and stuck the landing.
The ship has almost certainly sailed at this point, at least for this round of selling the marine whales a new army. Maybe when Robute finds the secret vault of Primprimmarismaris marines in the lost archives of terra in 11th edition, but right now, it's clear that GW is aware that the fanbase of 40k is massively more change-averse and conservative than the fanbase of their other game system, and they're respecting that cancel culture juggernaut and treating marine fans with the ultimate delicate silk gloves.
They wrote a short story on Warhammer Community at one point where a woman (who had a giant power-greatsword and incidentally was fighting alongside a fething Custode) managed to kill a renegade primaris marine captain, and they learned their lesson from the amount of furious screeching from the eternally-online among the 40k fanbase to be much, much more careful about ever portraying their precious babies losing a fight and especially losing a fight to a woman.
Case in point, the brand new dark eldar codex - the story from the last codex where a group of wyches and hellions in the arena kill the first captured squad of primaris space marines has been stripped out, the fluff blurb about the drukhari capturing a custode has been retconned to they are TRYING to capture a custode. The only time in the 'dex they dare portray a dark eldar as superior to an astartes is Urien Rakarth capturing and experimenting on Primaris Marines for unknown purposes, but they don't dare actually show that in first person, they just mention it quickly in one sentence to resolve the whole 'Urien is sending out all his minions on a giant mission for some unknown purpose'....I hesitate to say "plotline"? from the previous codex.
So snuggle up in your beds and cuddle your blankies boys, you are well and truly safe. Your persistent social media tantrums have made it abundantly clear that the wild, crazy releases GW has been putting out for Age of Sigmar will never ever threaten you in your safe space, and as long as you keep buying, GW will keep making Primaris Rockoblasters and Primaris Smashinators and Primaris Infenestrators for years and years and years to come with nary a ponytailed head in sight to give you a spook.
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
Gert wrote: Coupled with the "GW would make female Marines overly sexualised" despite literally no evidence to suggest they would do that makes for an argument with more holes than a chunk of Swiss cheese.
Compare GW's depiction of the armour of the Sisters of Battle:
with the classic depictions of Joan of Arc.
The only female minature I've seen from GW that isn't overly sexualized is the Commissar Severina Raine model.
the_scotsman wrote: Yeah, I really really do love the amount of Mr Fantastic stretching required to make "people who do not want any women in their little spaceman toys and will throw their toys out the pram if even someone else can make them and GW says that's OK for them to do" and "people who think it would be nice if it were possible to make any number of space marines female out of the kits instead of having to get heads from other kits to do so" on the exact same moral footing.
Step one is, apparently, imagine that the REAL people who want female space marines are a secret kabal of....I guess female...supremacists, who want ONLY female space marines and want every male space marine STRIKEN FROM THE CANON, bwahahahahahaah, sitting in their castle of evil like skeletor and commanding their foolish duped virtue-signaling minions.
Bravo. Fantastic, truly inspiring performance. You've shattered the world record standing logic long-jump and stuck the landing.
The ship has almost certainly sailed at this point, at least for this round of selling the marine whales a new army. Maybe when Robute finds the secret vault of Primprimmarismaris marines in the lost archives of terra in 11th edition, but right now, it's clear that GW is aware that the fanbase of 40k is massively more change-averse and conservative than the fanbase of their other game system, and they're respecting that cancel culture juggernaut and treating marine fans with the ultimate delicate silk gloves.
They wrote a short story on Warhammer Community at one point where a woman (who had a giant power-greatsword and incidentally was fighting alongside a fething Custode) managed to kill a renegade primaris marine captain, and they learned their lesson from the amount of furious screeching from the eternally-online among the 40k fanbase to be much, much more careful about ever portraying their precious babies losing a fight and especially losing a fight to a woman.
Case in point, the brand new dark eldar codex - the story from the last codex where a group of wyches and hellions in the arena kill the first captured squad of primaris space marines has been stripped out, the fluff blurb about the drukhari capturing a custode has been retconned to they are TRYING to capture a custode. The only time in the 'dex they dare portray a dark eldar as superior to an astartes is Urien Rakarth capturing and experimenting on Primaris Marines for unknown purposes, but they don't dare actually show that in first person, they just mention it quickly in one sentence to resolve the whole 'Urien is sending out all his minions on a giant mission for some unknown purpose'....I hesitate to say "plotline"? from the previous codex.
So snuggle up in your beds and cuddle your blankies boys, you are well and truly safe. Your persistent social media tantrums have made it abundantly clear that the wild, crazy releases GW has been putting out for Age of Sigmar will never ever threaten you in your safe space, and as long as you keep buying, GW will keep making Primaris Rockoblasters and Primaris Smashinators and Primaris Infenestrators for years and years and years to come with nary a ponytailed head in sight to give you a spook.
::Slow Clap:: ::Rise into standing ovation:: I was wondering when we would be treated to another patented Scotsman 5 paragraph burn.
In the words of Master Roshi - Gonna need a Senzu for that one.
This is what a GW designer had to say on the subject.
GW is a $4B company that really, really understands how to sell models. They want to continue to grow, Kevin Roundtree would love nothing more than to tap into an otherwise inaccessible market.
Presuming it exists.
*Insert the bike meme*
Bigots in 1985: Waah! I want to play only army of my sex! I will complain if they are other sex!
Bigots in 2020: Waah! I want to play only army of my sex! Why there are no female space marines?!
Well, played bigots, they really did it to themselves.
In the 80s they were opposing creator's freedom to create new setting as they please in 2020s they are opposing creators freedom to maintain and respect canon and demand turning every single Space Marine novel and 30 years of fluff into trash.
Luckily nowadays GW is much more powerful than in the 80s.
By the way, I like how he's "forgetting" the fact that nobody actually forced them to make Space Marines all male and that writing the fluff in a way that made female space marines impossible was their deliberate choice. They left a door open for female members of all other Imperial factions and made some female Army trooper miniatures. Like Space Marines being all male was 100% their deliberate decision. They also could have made female Space Marines in 3rd ed when they have rebooted the setting. Like adding female Marines would be incomparable with what they did to Orks and Tyranids.
The female miniatures in Power Armour are Adepta Sororita - it's shown by the creature skull on their shoulderpads. And by the way Adepta Sororita were much more powerful back then and from the description they were more like inquisitors than what they became later.
Not sure what you're talking about. GW used to sell Female Space Marines, here's pics.
You can call people all the names you want, but nobody wanted to pay money for them. Not sure how to build a business selling things no one wants.
Maybe things are different today. Pretty sure GW knows what would happen if they started, say, putting 3 female torso in with each box of Interceptors.
Horrible, sexist, can't even believe anyone lets them get away with something so shameless.
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
Gert wrote: Coupled with the "GW would make female Marines overly sexualised" despite literally no evidence to suggest they would do that makes for an argument with more holes than a chunk of Swiss cheese.
Compare GW's depiction of the armour of the Sisters of Battle:
with the classic depictions of Joan of Arc.
The only female minature I've seen from GW that isn't overly sexualized is the Commissar Severina Raine model.
You have a poor understanding of oversexualisation if you think SoB fall into that category. Do you also think SM are oversexualised because they have crotch plates? If the SoB breastplates were over emphasised and eclipsed the rest of the model then yes I would agree they fall into the category. But they don't. As for non overlysexualised models, AoS Stormcast, the recent Cadian head swaps, a bunch of Necromunda and most of the female-esque GSC stuff don't fit that description.
Aszubaruzah Surn wrote: I generally can't stand the female marines crowd. They just rub me the wrong way.
Yeah, they challenge your bigotry. And instead of what normal people would do, examine and potentially change your views, you decided to project a concentrated torrent of sexism, insults and bigotry, then did oldest and dumbest trick in the book - accuse anyone who doesn't agree with you of what you just did. It's called projection, look it up.
insaniak wrote: This has been mentioned a few times. Where is it actually stated in the fluff?
Nowhere. In fact, in one of new Space Wolf books a female Fenrissian warrior stuns a Wolf Priest with a question of why she would be a bad SM candidate - and after he thinks a bit, he finally admits it's just tradition and he can't give her a good reason, then smirks and says maybe it's time to discard it, SW need more marines than ever these days so they really could use more candidates.
Just don't mention that story to bigots, they will REEE at you all day afterwards
Aszubaruzah Surn wrote: I generally can't stand the female marines crowd. They just rub me the wrong way.
Yeah, they challenge your bigotry. And instead of what normal people would do, examine and potentially change your views, you decided to project a concentrated torrent of sexism, insults and bigotry, then did oldest and dumbest trick in the book - accuse anyone who doesn't agree with you of what you just did. It's called projection, look it up.
insaniak wrote: This has been mentioned a few times. Where is it actually stated in the fluff?
Nowhere. In fact, in one of new Space Wolf books a female Fenrissian warrior stuns a Wolf Priest with a question of why she would be a bad SM candidate - and after he thinks a bit, he finally admits it's just tradition and he can't give her a good reason, then smirks and says maybe it's time to discard it, SW need more marines than ever these days so they really could use more candidates.
Just don't mention that story to bigots, they will REEE at you all day afterwards
Won't someone please think of the canon?..............
I don't think I have ever met anyone in the hhhobby virulently anti female Space Marine or virulently Pro shoehorning female bodies into Power Armour and deal with it bigots!
I certainly dont trust the current crop of writers to effectively write a change in game lore, leading to new product (again, same as the old product).
Castozor wrote:Secondly why break/change lore to satisfy, I dunno, like 20 people on the world?
Because it's more than 20 people, even if you're ignoring people because "hurrr twitter".
Far better is to ask "why *shouldn't* we make the lore more attractive for those people".
If we are going down that route we might as well trow out all established cannon to satisfy every weird fanfic someone ever came up with.
Because having Space Marines have women clearly means everything needs throwing out.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote:I'm not moving thr goal posts
So why bring up black Sisters in a conversation that didn't bring it up at all?
However nobody has bothered with female Orks or male Sisters.
When I see people clamouring for women Orks, you'll have my attention. But right now, I'm seeing people clamouring for women Astartes, and as the centrepiece faction, I think that makes all the difference.
No, it doesn't matter Space Marines are the most popular army.
Sticking your hands over your ears doesn't change the truth - Space Marines being the most popular faction and poster boys is exactly the reason here.
There are female models all over.
And that doesn't mean squat if they're not on the most marketable faction.
Y'all also have yet to tackle why Custodes wouldn't be the better place to insert your female fan fiction characters.
Because Custodes aren't the poster boys. Simple as that.
Castozor wrote:We already have female representation though, not sure why it needs to be the poster boys too?
That's exactly why. If the poster boys are reflecting a boys only image, that's the issue.
I'd equally balk at people wanting male SoB.
Sisters aren't anywhere near as iconic as Astartes.
If you are so insecure you absolutely need each and every faction to be filled to the brim with females as well the problem might very well be you.
I'm asking for them in *one* faction. Is that too much for your delicate sensibilities.
Let's not pretend superhuman monastic death machines are in anyway representative of your average male wargamer.
But they look like men, yes?
Either they need to look noticeably inhuman, or be gender neutral.
Castozor wrote:Firstly because if I had my way SM wouldn't be as omnipresent in marketing as they are
But they are, so there's your first problem.
secondly, and more importantly, "it hasn't been that way before" is a perfectly fine argument to me.
So you hate that there aren't any women Space Marines? Because, you know, women Space Marines *have* existed before.
I despise (lore) changes for the sake of changes.
So, as I said, you dislike that women Space Marines were canned in the first place?
Again if the product needs to change for some groups to be interested in it, then maybe the product isn't meant for them in the first place.
... that's literally not how that works at all, and is super gatekeeping.
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"Gatekeeping is OK if it keeps out women and minorities who might make me feel bad for treating women and minorities badly". Sums up quite a few of these arguments I think.
Well, I wouldn't assume that just inserting marginalized groups into things will automatically make them more comfortable with the setting and the hobby.
I know plenty of women into nerdy hobbies and some who do tabletop gaming and not one of them really cares about the Sisters of Battle refresh and push because, in the words of my missus, they're indoctrinated religious fanatics with little personality who mindlessly enforce and uphold a patriarchal fascist hierarchy. And this is only exacerbated by them being part of the PoV faction and treated like the good guys within the narrative.
Obviously most people are able to divorce themselves from reality and engage in fantasy, but it's easier to do that when the underlying meta-text of your story isn't so problematic and inherently uncomfortable. My missus loves the Drukhari lore because you have true equality within their society but the narrative doesn't hide that they're just comically evil and awful and that's where the endearing and fun nature of the faction comes in. People love villains after all and if they're equal opportunity villains then that's even better.
But when you have a (practically) mono-gendered faction that outwardly looks to be about bad-ass women being heroic when the actual reality of their existence is really the total opposite, while the women themselves hold incomprehensible and abhorrent views and they're treated as being protagonists? It ends up not being as appealing as people think. Just in 40k my ANECDOTAL experience of women in the hobby is that they almost always gravitate towards the Xenos factions because they can more easily portray equal gender distribution in their collections (Eldar have the actual models to do it and a Tau battlesuit can be whatever gender you want it to be) or because you can play horrible irredeemable pieces of gak (Orks or Drukhari) but not be treated as the good guys or shown in a positive light.
This is more about a wider issue with 40k as an IP and how GW continues to develop and market it as time goes on, where the actual satirical and self-aware nature of it is long gone and is dead and buried and we're now in a world where the Imperium and its fascist nature is just never challenged within the text and is excused and reinforced to a ridiculous degree. When you have the blue-eyed blonde superman outsider coming in to drain the swamp and Make the Imperium Great Again and at no point is this portrayed as potentially a negative and worrying thing then it tends to raise a few eyebrows. You can ACKSHULLY all you want and say how the Imperium may very well have eliminated gender discrimination, or point to hints about gay characters, or how there's a black Ultramarine on a novel cover or how Xenocide is fine because they're not killing other humans.... it doesn't matter because the subtext (not very sub mind you) and imagery of the MAIN PROTAGONIST FACTION of the setting calls back to political movements and governments that have historically discriminated against and/or tried to exterminate the previously mentioned groups (and if you can't understand the role of aliens in sci-fi often just being obvious parallels to real world ethnicities and races then, uh, okay dude). And in current 40k writing, there's basically no attempt made to refute or challenge the awfulness of the Imperium and its many subfactions.
This is not to say a gay black woman will never like 40k. I'm a bisexual man and I like 40k. People are individuals after all. But it's very telling in my local area, that despite living in a very diverse and open-minded part of the country, with a 40k community that is incredibly cool and accepting, and a local wargaming scene that isn't just white men.... that the 40k community is just 99% white men. I see more diversity in AOS and some fething historicals than 40k.
EDIT: And also, some of the replies in this thread are why people are so dissuaded by 40k and why GW will always be very conservative about making big changes towards it. I bet someone had to fething fight hard to actually put a black Ultramarine on that novel cover because if you saw the reaction to it from some of the 40k grognards you can just imagine the marketing and management guys fething sweating. There's a short story in the new Lumineth battletome and BR Teclis of two female crew of one of the Ballista's and how they're in a romantic relationship with each other. It's basically impossible to imagine something like that being put in any 40k Codex right now.
I mean fething hell, GW couldn't even make any female Incubi. Doesn't exactly fill you with much hope for good gender representation in any potential Craftworld refresh. Meanwhile AOS is just throwing female sculpts into boxes left and right whereas they're locked away and confined to their own faction in 40k or just made a gakky upgrade kit.
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Bosskelot wrote:Well, I wouldn't assume that just inserting marginalized groups into things will automatically make them more comfortable with the setting and the hobby.
Oh, you're absolutely right! Without wider systemic change in the way that the hobby treats previously marginalised groups, it won't ever be perfect. But getting rid of that "hey, you can't have Women be a part the Most Iconic Faction, because, uh, 'lore', that's why!!" threshold would do wonders for actual practical representation. Because unfortunately, it doesn't matter how many women pop up in the Guard, or the Cults, or the Eldar, or whatever else - because the Guard, Cults and Eldar (ESPECIALLY Eldar) don't see any time in the limelight compared to the Mighty Space Marines.
But it's very telling in my local area, that despite living in a very diverse and open-minded part of the country, with a 40k community that is incredibly cool and accepting, and a local wargaming scene that isn't just white men.... that the 40k community is just 99% white men. I see more diversity in AOS and some fething historicals than 40k.
Yeah, considering that AoS and 40k are literally made by the same company, it is rather telling that the more unsavoury elements are found predominantly in the 40k pile.
OK, just a reminder to keep it civil, folks. This thread has managed to stay on track for a record-breaking length of time for the subject matter, which is great to see, but it would be a shame to derail it now. Let's all dial back the antagonism, hmm?
I don't see why we can't have both? You have the old boys who for (Insert lore here) they had to be male. Then Cawl came along and installed JAVA 3.2.4.1 and hey presto! We've got Female Space Marines. Primaris did more than break the rules, it broke the lore, but I'm starting to see positive steps now. We have literally black representation, which to be honest I had not seen in 40k. Salamanders don't really suffer rascism, and they have what I would call Astartes privaledge. Hell, you would think there would at least be 1 or 2 black Chaos marines, given the sheer number of Desert planets that must get raided by chaos.
But still, Female Primaris marines can be a thing, and the "others" can have their Gen 1s. Fair?
Edit: removed offensive language
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Given the way they have advanced the story with the return of Guilliman and the addition of Primaris Marines, I'd like to see them go further with that and have the full blown schism within the Imperium that was rumoured when we first found out that Guilliman was coming back. Have the current Imperium, led by the High Lords on one side, and Ultramar and those who side with Guilliman on the other trying to put in place a less totalitarian regime. That lets them have their 'good guy' space marines while simultaneously emphasising just how corrupt and evil the Imperium has become.
Hell, female marines could even be the breaking point there... The purists were horrified enough about Cawl messing with the Emperor's design, so adding women to the ranks could well be that one step too far for the High Lords to accept.
I think the biggest problem with 40k is the inability to end the setting like with WHFB. AoS was given a blank slate with certain characters (Sigmar, Nagash, Allariel, etc.) able to return as advanced versions of their End Times power boost forms. You can keep the old guard at least a smidge happy (as dumb as that sounds considering the reaction AoS got and still gets) and draw in new ideas. Since AoS 0.0, the setting has advanced like 200 years IIRC and the big events have all actually been big events. The Age of Chaos, Age of Sigmar and the Realmgate Wars, the Necroquake and the Soul Wars, now with Broken Realms and AoS 3 both new and old major players pop up all over the place with either reimagined updates (Cities of Sigmar, Slaves to Darkness), brand new factions based on a small selection of WHFB units (Daughters of Khaine, Sylvaneth), and even new concepts (Stormcast, Kharadron Overlords).
40k just doesn't have that. Advance the setting more than 20 years and any character who isn't anti-aging (Astartes, Orks, Aeldari, Nids, Crons), dies and you have an army with no characters. Make any change and you have loads of people ranting and raving for years on end. Primaris, Centurion suits, and the new Beast Snagga Orks are just a few examples.
Gert wrote: Advance the setting more than 20 years and any character who isn't anti-aging (Astartes, Orks, Aeldari, Nids, Crons), dies and you have an army with no characters.
That's never actually been a problem in 40K. Quite a lot of the characters introduced to the game over the years have been already dead in the 'current' timeline. Solar Macharius, Eldrad, Chaplain Xavier, Nork Deddog (although I think they changed that to him being in retirement) , just off the top of my head.
40K games have never been intended to be taking place solely in the 'current' time. Battles can be fought at any point from the end of the Heresy onwards.
There's also the fact that when characters can wind up spending a century in the warp, their physical age becomes less relevant to the timeline.
Not being able to 'end' the setting is nowhere near being a problem... and the fact that they chose to end the Old World to create AoS rather than launching it as a parallel product for a completely different game style is still a huge disappointment.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/05/19 00:06:29
Imperial Guard - 1500 
GSC - 250 
