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 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Nope. I haven't looked at AoS at all... what should I look for?

Hedonites for the current edition of daemonettes and other slaanesh models, daughters of khaine if you want the witch elves and their party shrines.

Who knows what the next Vect model will bring. Or chaos marines for that matter, 40k has become quite sterile compared to fantasy.

On Daemonettes?

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)

A.T. wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Nope. I haven't looked at AoS at all... what should I look for?

Hedonites for the current edition of daemonettes and other slaanesh models, daughters of khaine if you want the witch elves and their party shrines.

Who knows what the next Vect model will bring. Or chaos marines for that matter, 40k has become quite sterile compared to fantasy.

I doubt GW will bring back the slave girls - at least, not as before.

That said, I'd be lying if I said I'd never considered making my own Dais of Destruction using a Tantalus and a selection of minis from Manufaktura.

A.T. wrote:

 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:

A.T. wrote:

 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.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

A.T. wrote:

 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.

Which is girls heads.

 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.

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.

A.T. wrote:

 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.

I imagine Marisa from Street Fighter 6.

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.

Knowing Games Workshop, we are likely to see the first female Space Marine be another Lieutenant model.

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*.

Hope this helps.

Sledgehammer wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 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 if GW 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!"

^Agree with both of the above.

On the Imperium being anachronistic?

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.


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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.

 Matt of Jasoom wrote:

 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).

 Wyldhunt wrote:
The corsets are a weird choice (what are they doing; just protecting the armor's cables?)

On the original John Blanche art you can actually see cables exposed beneath the corset.

Didn't make it onto the metal models but other cabling on the legs and back did.

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.

I was attempting to do some research on trans characters in 40k when I hit a small speedbump.

I asked the Llama Meta Chatbot if there were any trans characters in the Adeptus Mechanicus, I received an answer that... I'll let you be the judge.