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Made in gb
Walking Dead Wraithlord






 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Argive wrote:Nothing says inclusion and representation like charging for inclusion and representation...

I think his solution would likely backfire. Also it means more SM stuff..
Proof would have to be in the proverbial pudding though.
Proof would have to be in the pudding, yes. So perhaps the whole "but I'd have to pay extra!!" is an entirely fabricated concern, and not guaranteed to be a problem.

As I've said - GW have been happy to make upgrade sprues without forcibly including them into kits. I see no reason this would have to be different.


But you are good to go with any marine off the shelf as a specific chapter. Just need right colours.
Can you paint a woman onto a SM? An upgrade sprue for gender is absolutely a tax on inclusion... IMO
We can agree to disagree but I think tis terrible optics and if Ive spotted it youd be nuts to think other wont spot it either. Just because you dont care because you get your way does not mean other people coming after will not be bothered by this.

They were more than happy to create women Stormcast, who fill a largely similar role to Space Marines in AoS. I'll be honest, I could see them quite literally using Stormcast as a testing ground for Space Marines: take the risks on your newly created faction in your second largest game, and if they pay off, try it on the mainline faction.


Yeeaaaah..... after they destroyed the game called WHFB in order to make room for AOS/storm casts.
And? How is this related to the inclusion of women?

I'm also fairly sure they didn't just nuke WHFB just for Stormcast - most likely, it was to break away from a setting that was perhaps a little too stagnant and creatively stifling - because they've certainly been flexing their creative muscles with AoS.


Well you keep brining up storm cast as an example of inclusion in Warhammer. I'm merely pointing out storm cast and AOS came with a huge cost.

You can yell about how this is not political till you blue in the face but will significant amount of customers see it that way?
That doesn't mean the significant amount of customers are still right.
And what if they are right? Who gets to decide.
I think it's pretty simple, really - can anyone tell me why women existing is political? How someone's very life is somehow a political topic? If so, isn't everyone's life political?


Completely irrelevant and absolutely nobody is making this argument. You are wilfully and purposively straw manning and misrepresenting what's being said.. Please show me quote where someone said women existing is political? This is clearly disengenuine deflection.

Garnering reaction out of a corporation through pressure can be construed as political if the values align with other political discussions going on elsewhere If you want to pretend this discussion exist in a vacuum I would just like to point out to the comparisons made with gaming and other media... Its relevant because you are attempting pressuring GW/ WH community to change their product. Wether or not you have political motive or not is irrelevant and not provable. I am merely pointing out that some/many customers will receive it that way. No idea what the numbers.

Again, all I'm saying is that they're more than happy to change the Space Marine identity - and if it becomes economically expedient to add women (as so many companies are realising that the women's market is fairly lucrative for pop culture), you bet they'll do it.


Market citations needed.
The RPG scene, Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition especially.


I also point towards the clothing industry, which was more tailored (ha!) towards men for the longest time. Similarly, the video game market is diversifying it's reach to more than it's previous demographics, and the industry is only growing.


How is a game you can play for free and talk to people comparable to Warhammer where you have to invest £100s if not £1000 and play a battle/war simulation??

Clothing? Longest time? When? Where? How is it relevant to Space Marines in a Warhammer 40k wargaming game?

What about all the things in recent times in popular media that failed when they seemed to have aligned with representation / inclusivity idea without adding anything of creative value...
It seems wargaming is just the next thing on the long list of culture that people want to change.

When companies get confused about what their purpose and mission statement and go off doing something else they tend to loose money.
This is an observation. Not an endorsement of anything.
A company's purpose, primarily, is nearly always profit. Not "we don't pander to women here".

Companies lose profit when they make certain business decisions that hurt their ability to deliver on the service/product they sell.


Like stopping marketing their products to their core audience.
40k/wargaming in general is 95+ % male is it currently?

There are awesome franchises and things where you have women as main protagonists. Like SOB in 40k. Why cant we elevate those and bring about organic change without burning everything to the ground?
Sisters aren't protagonists in 40k though, not in the broader sense. Sisters can be protagonists in their own books, sure, but they're not the "protagonist" faction plastered at the face of the company. Guess who are?

Oh yeah - the Space Marines.

Plus, why is including women Space Marines "burning everything to the ground"? Why the extreme language?


Why not, why cant sisters take the lead role in story telling? The new media seems to think so.. New comics, books and animations. I dont think the sisters hype train is stopping considering how popular its getting.
Can sisters be equal to SM or do they have to be superior in order to satisfy you?

I meant the setting. The cost weather you like it or not of creating Storm cast was the burnig to the ground of WHFB. Other factors aside that is a fact.
Did they do it to accommodate storm casts introduction ? Was it just rebranding or other reasons? Who knows the result is the same.

Whose to say some bright spark at GW wont think its time for new Warhmammer age of Galaxy because people seem to be saying 40k is outdated and needs to move with the times

Isn't the whole concept of women SM predicated on the fact that this idea didn't sell in the 80s but we have moved on since then?


Bringing up AOS storm cast as an example is really not a good play.. it was built on the ashes of WHFB and a lot of people lost their game. I'd rather this not happen to 40k.
Again, why would including women Space Marines be even close to equivalent to the setting shift that was WHFB/AoS? Rather an extreme reaction, don't you think?


Because GW is GW and I trust them as much with steering any change in the right direction as I do a back alley surgeon.

By all the SM fanboys account SM range is outselling all of creation which is why they get to have all the fun toys.. It appears they are doing something right.
And is that anything to do with them being all men, and being exclusively so? I don't think so.

Unless you're implying that apparently people seem to love Space Marines primarily because they exclude women?


Not what I said. Don't put words in my mouth.

I just observed SM+40k are selling really really well and GW is doing really well as a company.
You're absolutely right. I fail to see what that has to do with including women Space Marines though. Would you care to elaborate on that? Because I fail to understand why you'd mention how Space Marines are popular because they're "doing something right" when my point is about how they're excluding women.


Is excluding women the "something right" in this equation? Why else was it mentioned?



Ask GW why their marines are selling so well.. I don't know. Do you ?
It appears that not including women is irrelevant to sales of marines/40k. Because the market would be showing us otherwise vs AOS... This is an observation of objective fact.
Do not try to put up a straw man to argue against.

If you have deduced that's primarily because there are no female marines, that's entirely on you.. If you think that's somehow a bad thingy on you too.

The status quo seems to be working for GW as things stand.


Plus, you hit on a great point - "Space Marines get to have all the fun toys" - maybe women want to feel involved in those fun toys too, hence why they don't want to pick up a different faction?


Well sheeet maybe men who don't want to play SM want to have those toys too? What's being a woman has to do with anything?
Because the man is deciding he doesn't want to play *Space Marines*, but at least has the option for that representation. A woman doesn't even have the option of a woman getting those fun toys.
I don't want to play Warhammer space marine. Do you ?
I mean, I play every Imperial faction. So, I don't exactly fit your example.

Still does not change the fact i don't want o play Warhammer SM.
I dont care what your reasons are for more marine stuff. i dont want any more marine stuff.

Its of paramount importance more factions get more stuff and toys for longevity of the game. The fact you dislike SOB does not mean women wont like SOB... SOB should get all the same toys. Dragon SOB, Spiky SOB, Wolfy SOB etc the works! The sprinkle some for TAU and Eldar.
First, I don't dislike Sisters of Battle. I collect an army of them, for god's sake.
But your comment is exactly what I mean - you imply that Sisters of Battle are the "woman" faction. By my saying that I want women Space Marines, you take that as an attack on the Designated Woman Faction - when in reality, I'm simply saying that Sisters of Battle aren't equal to what Space Marines offer, from both a creative space, and a model range one too.

You say "we should have dragon SOB, spikey SOB, wolfy SOB" - but that's precisely the issue! The actual faction design of what Sisters of Battle are doesn't fit that kind of design. Sisters of Battle have a very strong faction design and culture - the Catholic nun trope, taken to the extreme, is integral to their design and aesthetic. By having "dragon SOB, spikey SOB wolfy SOB", you're actively compromising an *explicit* feature of their design. If you make wolfy SOB, you're needing to compromise on that very detailed Catholic nun design, and by doing so, you're harming their factional identity.

The same can't be said of Space Marines, whose faction design is centred on customisation and player freedoms. Their armour is neutral and blank for the most part, they're supplied with easy to convert upgrade sprues and sculpts. There is a wealth of different cultures and traditions reflected in the myriad Chapters, and GW are happy to encourage people to expand in weird and wacky ways. Space Marines are defined by their easy flavouring and ability to be defined as "spikey Marines, wolfy Marines, dragon Marines, Roman Marines, edgy Marines, etc etc" - Sisters aren't.

So either you're calling to massively overhaul the design of Sisters of Battle (not very lore friendly of you?), or we simply ignore 13 words of non-core lore, and add women Space Marines. I think one of these is much easier than the other.



It really seemed to me you are dissatisfied with SOB because they are not as good as SM according to you. Somehow even though on the table they can easily thrash any SM army.
I think they are just different side of the same coin. Like men and women..
The reason why I'm saying SOB because they are all women... And you seem to think 40k needs more representation of women. If the paramount thing of value that's being injected is gender and representation why would we not care about SOB who are all women? It fits the bill perfect.

Making SOB different to a SM does not make an SOB worse.

Unless you want to push an idea where men and women are the same... Because that's just not true in the real world so I don't see why this narrative should be reflected in 40k.

This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2021/06/24 03:18:59


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AngryAngel80 wrote:
I don't know, when I see awesome rules, I'm like " Baby, your rules looking so fine. Maybe I gotta add you to my first strike battalion eh ? "


 Eonfuzz wrote:


I would much rather everyone have a half ass than no ass.


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Hecaton wrote:
 CEO Kasen wrote:
Arguing sanctity of lore is a stronger argument in a work of literature or a historical period piece, or otherwise the creative vision of a single author. 40K is not these things. 40K is a still-marketed living universe now with an advancing storyline with a thousand hands on the wheel, and without changing a single piece of 'historical lore' there is no reason that this story cannot advance in the direction of allowing women as marines.


There's also no reason it should. When the people arguing for it are saying things like, paraphrased "a bunch of men together with no women is a bad look" I question their motives.

The point is that they *shouldn't* be changing the canon that whimsically.


Your issue isn't that there's no reason they should - it's that you don't value the reasons they should. Which is not the same thing.

This whole argument boils down to:

"allowing women to be marines has no impact on the setting, but has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience"

vs

"that's not a good enough reason to do it"


your definition of whimsical also happens to align with your values as well - are we to got back to Rogue Trader era 40k so that none of the changes made to marines 'whimsically' since then have an affect?

This is the fandom equivalent of old men shouting at kids on their lawn because they no longer feel relevant to the world they inhabit - welcome to the background radiation of women (and minorities') lives...



   
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Hecaton wrote:
There was some non-GW fan content along those lines that got published in a fanzine, but that was before the modern conception of what a Space Marine is.


Interestingly, GDW #36 was published in January '88 and the Chapter Approved article came out in February. GDW also came with a disclaimer so, the Sunstroke article really never did have anything to do with Games Workshop.

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Iracundus wrote:
You have to have female Guard for the simple reason that if they survive long enough they get their own world. If they were male only, they would die out within a generation.


Hey, look at it this way.

You can just keep giving out the same planet every couple decades.

Efficiency

   
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 Hellebore wrote:


Your issue isn't that there's no reason they should - it's that you don't value the reasons they should. Which is not the same thing.

This whole argument boils down to:

"allowing women to be marines has no impact on the setting, but has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience"

vs

"that's not a good enough reason to do it"


your definition of whimsical also happens to align with your values as well - are we to got back to Rogue Trader era 40k so that none of the changes made to marines 'whimsically' since then have an affect?

This is the fandom equivalent of old men shouting at kids on their lawn because they no longer feel relevant to the world they inhabit - welcome to the background radiation of women (and minorities') lives...


No, I disagree with the idea that it has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience. Women are generally interested in stories where female characters are powerful and "heroic" less than men are; fundamentally this seems more about satisfying a certain kind of male gamer's want for an army of powerful women rather than satisfying women. Again, games like Infinity have parity or near-parity with depictions of men and women in the game, but women are not flocking to that game compared to other minis games. You still get the guys who are clamoring for more female sculpts, have a female alter-ego on the forums, etc.
   
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In My Lab

Weren't you, not more than a page or two ago, saying how Smudge and the rest of us who want to be inclusive were just talking for women, instead of letting women talk for themselves?

So what do you call...

Hecaton wrote:
No, I disagree with the idea that it has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience. Women are generally interested in stories where female characters are powerful and "heroic" less than men are; fundamentally this seems more about satisfying a certain kind of male gamer's want for an army of powerful women rather than satisfying women. Again, games like Infinity have parity or near-parity with depictions of men and women in the game, but women are not flocking to that game compared to other minis games. You still get the guys who are clamoring for more female sculpts, have a female alter-ego on the forums, etc.
That?

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 JNAProductions wrote:
Weren't you, not more than a page or two ago, saying how Smudge and the rest of us who want to be inclusive were just talking for women, instead of letting women talk for themselves?

So what do you call...

Hecaton wrote:
No, I disagree with the idea that it has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience. Women are generally interested in stories where female characters are powerful and "heroic" less than men are; fundamentally this seems more about satisfying a certain kind of male gamer's want for an army of powerful women rather than satisfying women. Again, games like Infinity have parity or near-parity with depictions of men and women in the game, but women are not flocking to that game compared to other minis games. You still get the guys who are clamoring for more female sculpts, have a female alter-ego on the forums, etc.
That?


It's an actual study. I'll try to dredge it up.

Here we go.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/24 03:51:32


 
   
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That is a study that makes sense, from my personal experience as well. But there's no need to exclude people who would like female Space Marines from having them. You can have your marines be all male if you want, and I can put female Space Marines into my army if I so choose. You don't get to tell me how I should play my hobby. And it would be considerate if GW would consider what I and some others want in our Space Marine boxes, is all I'm saying.

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Hecaton wrote:
 CEO Kasen wrote:
Arguing sanctity of lore is a stronger argument in a work of literature or a historical period piece, or otherwise the creative vision of a single author. 40K is not these things. 40K is a still-marketed living universe now with an advancing storyline with a thousand hands on the wheel, and without changing a single piece of 'historical lore' there is no reason that this story cannot advance in the direction of allowing women as marines.


There's also no reason it should. When the people arguing for it are saying things like, paraphrased "a bunch of men together with no women is a bad look" I question their motives.

A) It should change because it is not merely one story; this is a setting you are encouraged to invest yourself inside. You are encouraged to create your characters within it and play out their battles. It's really part of 40K's brilliance that despite how much I might dislike the current mechanics of the game, I'm still talking about it because of my investment in it. And it's increasingly problematic to arbitrarily disallow 50% of the population from being represented in the most iconic faction in the setting.

It'd be like if I said that Fighters in, say, Forgotten Realms could only be male because Reasons. It's leaving out a gender select box for no good reason.

B) Why I declare this arbitrary boils down to: "Does being male matter here?" Is it important that everyone in this faction be male? And if it doesn't, then why not allow the choice? Which is related to:

Hecaton wrote:
Inclusiveness is not inherently trashy, but trying to make your product as mass-market appealing as possible almost certainly is. Having Astartes be male-only *does* elevate the setting, as it allows you to ask questions about why that is, how people in the setting feel about it, and explore whether or not people are content with that reality.


If GW saw it fit to have its characters ask those questions with any frequency, you'd have at least some point. Like I said, using misogyny to make the Imperium seem more dystopian is essentially the one valid argument for retaining this restriction - and they do not use it. GW hasn't even explicitly mentioned it in a codex in decades. I think there might have been one suggestion from Malcador about making the Primarchs women in the Heresy books somewhere and the Emperor laughed and thought he was joking, and as far as I know that's been the whole acknowledgement that this issue even exists.

There are works of fiction that explore gender and gender relations or for which gender is important, for which you couldn't casually gender-swap the protagonists and have them still function. 40K is not one of these.

Hecaton wrote:
The point is that they *shouldn't* be changing the canon that whimsically.

Why not? It is a setting that's designed to be whimsically alterable. The whole "Everything is canon - not everything is true" line is an extremely clever dodge to account for the fact that thousands of writers are going to occasionally contradict one another and that things are going to change.

Hecaton wrote:
I'd say that this is just evidence that Astartes's ubiquity in the setting has poisoned it. ​

I agree that it's tiresome that Space Marines are friggin' everywhere, but their ubiquity or lack of it wouldn't change the fact that there's really not a good reason to keep the restriction in place anymore. Stormcast Eternals are multigender and they sure as hell haven't wrecked AoS.

Hecaton wrote:

Still a conceit, there's no female Astartes yet.

Guess we'll all have to make it a thing, then. Royston, fetch my 3d printer!

Hecaton wrote:
No, I disagree with the idea that it has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience. Women are generally interested in stories where female characters are powerful and "heroic" less than men are; fundamentally this seems more about satisfying a certain kind of male gamer's want for an army of powerful women rather than satisfying women. Again, games like Infinity have parity or near-parity with depictions of men and women in the game, but women are not flocking to that game compared to other minis games. You still get the guys who are clamoring for more female sculpts, have a female alter-ego on the forums, etc.

A) Infinity's a bit niche, which is unfortunate but understandable.

B) And if there are guys who want to run women space marines, so what? That isn't a reason to deny the women who want to run them, and those exist too.

C) None of this questioning of motivation really makes the argument for inclusiveness less valid. No one is reasonably expecting the player gender ratio to become 50/50 overnight once they allow women as Space Marines; there's thousands of years of cultural conditioning that isn't going to be undone immediately once you headswap little plastic space soldiers. But you do what good where you can. It might make a few more female-identifying people start looking to the setting, maybe even like that kind of hero, and not to be shackled to preconceived notions about the kinds of heroes they are personally interested in. Progress happens step by step, and this is a logical step at this point.

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 LumenPraebeo wrote:
That is a study that makes sense, from my personal experience as well. But there's no need to exclude people who would like female Space Marines from having them. You can have your marines be all male if you want, and I can put female Space Marines into my army if I so choose. You don't get to tell me how I should play my hobby. And it would be considerate if GW would consider what I and some others want in our Space Marine boxes, is all I'm saying.


I mean if you kitbash an army of female Astartes it's not gonna bother me. I don't think GW should add them to the setting, though, and I think that the female space marine proponents find kitbashing to be unsatisfactory because it's about changing the canon, not self-expression.
   
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Spoiler:
 LumenPraebeo wrote:
That is a study that makes sense, from my personal experience as well. But there's no need to exclude people who would like female Space Marines from having them. You can have your marines be all male if you want, and I can put female Space Marines into my army if I so choose. You don't get to tell me how I should play my hobby. And it would be considerate if GW would consider what I and some others want in our Space Marine boxes, is all I'm saying.


GW Excluding people who like female marines is not the same as saying GW is excluding women though is it? ​Not all women would like the idea of Warhammer and even less women would care about female space marines...

GW gets to tell you how to hobby by having created the hobby and having conventions within the hobby... I.E. Eldar are eldar and not SM. Chaos is bad. Orks are green. Models have speciific base sizes. etc. SM are guys.

Ultimately nobody is going to stop you from changing your models how you want. You do you.
But if you don't care about GWs conventions why even be part of GW hobby ?

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AngryAngel80 wrote:
I don't know, when I see awesome rules, I'm like " Baby, your rules looking so fine. Maybe I gotta add you to my first strike battalion eh ? "


 Eonfuzz wrote:


I would much rather everyone have a half ass than no ass.


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Or, they SHOULD add them to the setting, and you simply need not use them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Argive wrote:
[spoiler]But if you don't care about GWs conventions why even be part of GW hobby ?


Quite simply, because i want to? Just because YOU don't think I care about GW conventions, doesn't mean I can't have it as a hobby.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/06/24 22:33:35


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If GW created space for female space marines, there would still be plenty of space for people who didn't want them.

But anti-female marine people would look a lot worse to themselves and others if they deliberately excluded them in their own armies for personal 'my dudes' fluff reasons, than because they were 'justified' by previously published lore.


The argument 'my unique marine chapter is special because it only recruits men' looks pretty facile in that instance.

   
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 CEO Kasen wrote:

A) It should change because it is not merely one story; this is a setting you are encouraged to invest yourself inside. You are encouraged to create your characters within it and play out their battles. It's really part of 40K's brilliance that despite how much I might dislike the current mechanics of the game, I'm still talking about it because of my investment in it. And it's increasingly problematic to arbitrarily disallow 50% of the population from being represented in the most iconic faction in the setting.


"Problematic" is meaningless. Again, representation doesn't really matter in this context, it's not doing any good.

 CEO Kasen wrote:
It'd be like if I said that Fighters in, say, Forgotten Realms could only be male because Reasons. It's leaving out a gender select box for no good reason.


No, it wouldn't, because Fighter is a skillset, not an organization. Astartes are an organization (and a phenotype). So your analogy fails. There are women in the setting who are adept at using power armor and boltguns.

 CEO Kasen wrote:
B) Why I declare this arbitrary boils down to: "Does being male matter here?" Is it important that everyone in this faction be male? And if it doesn't, then why not allow the choice? Which is related to:


I mean, ask the guys who wrote the Astartes fluff that codified them as all-male. I'm sure they have their reasons.

 CEO Kasen wrote:
If GW saw it fit to have its characters ask those questions with any frequency, you'd have at least some point. Like I said, using misogyny to make the Imperium seem more dystopian is essentially the one valid argument for retaining this restriction - and they do not use it. GW hasn't even explicitly mentioned it in a codex in decades. I think there might have been one suggestion from Malcador about making the Primarchs women in the Heresy books somewhere and the Emperor laughed and thought he was joking, and as far as I know that's been the whole acknowledgement that this issue even exists.


GW doesn't ask those questions, you're right, but they should. I always interpreted the Emperor as gynophobic to a certain degree.

 CEO Kasen wrote:
There are works of fiction that explore gender and gender relations or for which gender is important, for which you couldn't casually gender-swap the protagonists and have them still function. 40K is not one of these.


Depends on the characters. Eisenhorn? Bequin? Calgaer, I'd say, too.

 CEO Kasen wrote:

Why not? It is a setting that's designed to be whimsically alterable. The whole "Everything is canon - not everything is true" line is an extremely clever dodge to account for the fact that thousands of writers are going to occasionally contradict one another and that things are going to change.


Whether or not their are female Astartes is going to be a bigger deal than just "fuzzy canon."

 CEO Kasen wrote:

I agree that it's tiresome that Space Marines are friggin' everywhere, but their ubiquity or lack of it wouldn't change the fact that there's really not a good reason to keep the restriction in place anymore. Stormcast Eternals are multigender and they sure as hell haven't wrecked AoS.


AoS wrecked WHF though. Or at least was the nail in the coffin.

 CEO Kasen wrote:

Guess we'll all have to make it a thing, then. Royston, fetch my 3d printer!


Like I said, go ahead and kitbash.

 CEO Kasen wrote:

A) Infinity's a bit niche, which is unfortunate but understandable.


Which wouldn't affect the *proportion* of men and women who are involved, so no, my argument stands.

 CEO Kasen wrote:
B) And if there are guys who want to run women space marines, so what? That isn't a reason to deny the women who want to run them, and those exist too.


So it's disingenuous for them to claim to be for pro-women representation when they want to make their Saber expy waifu in 40k.

 CEO Kasen wrote:
C) None of this questioning of motivation really makes the argument for inclusiveness less valid. No one is reasonably expecting the player gender ratio to become 50/50 overnight once they allow women as Space Marines; there's thousands of years of cultural conditioning that isn't going to be undone immediately once you headswap little plastic space soldiers. But you do what good where you can. It might make a few more female-identifying people start looking to the setting, maybe even like that kind of hero, and not to be shackled to preconceived notions about the kinds of heroes they are personally interested in. Progress happens step by step, and this is a logical step at this point.


My point is it's not inherently good for the hobby to be more gender-equal in its playerbase. It's value-neutral. Participating in 40k is not like the right to vote or own property, and it's not like women are being *prevented* from participating in minis gaming, it just doesn't appeal to the vast majority of them, it seems. And that's fine, as opposed to the people who get incredibly self-conscious about participating in a male-dominated hobby.

I think minis gaming itself, rather than the 40k setting and its depiction of women (or lack thereof), is what turns most women off, and the fact that other miniatures games which have more balanced depictions of men and women have similar male-female ratios of playerbase supports me and not you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 LumenPraebeo wrote:
Or, they SHOULD add them to the setting, and you simply need not use them.


No. Feel free to kitbash, you'd be doing better than the vast majority of hobbyists to put that kind of work in.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Hellebore wrote:
If GW created space for female space marines, there would still be plenty of space for people who didn't want them.

But anti-female marine people would look a lot worse to themselves and others if they deliberately excluded them in their own armies for personal 'my dudes' fluff reasons, than because they were 'justified' by previously published lore.

The argument 'my unique marine chapter is special because it only recruits men' looks pretty facile in that instance.


I don't think they would. Unless, of course, you have this idea that male-only groups of humans are inherently immoral, which has popped up a few times in this thread.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 LumenPraebeo wrote:
Quite simply, because i want to? Just because YOU don't think I care about GW conventions, doesn't mean I can't have it as a hobby..


Doesn't seem like you want to, since you find all-male space marines repulsive. Why don't you come play Infinity? The minis are ace.

This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2021/06/24 22:34:04


 
   
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Hecaton wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
No, I disagree with the idea that it has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience. Women are generally interested in stories where female characters are powerful and "heroic" less than men are; fundamentally this seems more about satisfying a certain kind of male gamer's want for an army of powerful women rather than satisfying women. Again, games like Infinity have parity or near-parity with depictions of men and women in the game, but women are not flocking to that game compared to other minis games. You still get the guys who are clamoring for more female sculpts, have a female alter-ego on the forums, etc.

It's an actual study. I'll try to dredge it up.

Here we go.

Going by the abstract, that study doesn't say what you claimed. It says that the study found that books by male authors tended to have more powerful characters, and books by female authors didn't. Doesn't seem to be addressing who is actually interested in those stories at all.

And that's ignoring the fact that it's based on a statistically insignificant pool of authors (30 different series) and even within that they admit that the differences in many cases were not statistically significant. Also no mention of the criteria used to choose those authors, and whether the way the characters were portrayed is a result of gender predilections in the authors, the readers, or just the publishers.





 
   
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Hecaton wrote:


 CEO Kasen wrote:
B) Why I declare this arbitrary boils down to: "Does being male matter here?" Is it important that everyone in this faction be male? And if it doesn't, then why not allow the choice? Which is related to:


I mean, ask the guys who wrote the Astartes fluff that codified them as all-male. I'm sure they have their reasons.


They already answered that question. Female miniatures didn’t sell in the 80’s. They sell now. Their reasoning for why they codified that is not valid anymore.

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"Female miniatures were hideous in the 80's" I think it's a better description.

That said, unfortunately, it seems that GW evaluate the sanctity of their money more that any consideration about the product and the customers.

I'm referring here to the news that I just read that the US official GW tournament are entirely banning third party components (note: components, not models - which as far as I'm aware were allowed if minor on an otherwise GW model).

Which, I suppose, is another proof of how in order to be fully accepted as options Marines need a female sprue

I can't condone a place where abusers and abused are threated the same: it's destined to doom, so there is no reason to participate in it. 
   
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 Cybtroll wrote:
...another proof...


If people are going to the trouble of purchasing third party heads from other manufacturers would it not be the same difference to use any of the female heads that Games Workshop produce?

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"So now we've established the proposal in principle and are haggling over price!"

Just caught up on the last 2 pages of this one, and it seems like such a small thing to argue over - do we retrospectively change the lore, or build on it?

I honestly don't see the problem with advancing the lore rather than replacing it. I do see problems with taking an aspect of the lore and just rewriting it for the sake of it.


No doubt this will be met with the same deluge of "but it's only 13 words" and "But it was an arbitrary decision" and "but it hasn't even been mentioned for years", but we can all agree that, as we stand right now, without changing the lore, the whole setting, lore, and imagery of space marines says that we can't have female ones. That is, after all, the whole topic of this thread. Can we just agree that, as a baseline? I'm not saying that was a right thing to do, or a good one, but it is a thing that has happened and it's why space marines look like they do today. Right? Because if we can't agree on that then this is 47 pages wasted!


Now, as this thread was met with a huge amount of people (originally including myself) who said that the lore prevents it and should be left well enough alone, and absolutely nobody saying "oh, does it only work on men?" then we can safely say that this is a piece of lore that people know, and that people use to identify the space marine brand. People who have been playing the game know that space marines are all men, regardless of the reason behind that, and I would say in response to people asking for a definition of Core lore, this:

Core lore: Any lore which most people in the hobby are aware of.

For example - Necrons are walking death robots who have weapons that can strip the atoms from a target - most people know it, so it's core lore. Space marines are all men, and there's a reason for it somewhere - most people know it, it's core lore. Orks red vehicles go faster - it's core lore. Knowing that Wazdakka Gutsmek was intent on building a highway to ride motorbikes through the warp - some people might know it, but most wouldn't, so not core lore.

So, whilst there might not be many words, if any, to change to overwrite the lore, the fact remains that 90%* of people in the hobby are aware that marines are all men and most of those probably have some idea that the process only works on men.


So whilst you can say "the decision was arbitrary", "it's only 13 words and they aren't there any more" and "there was no reason for it to be only men in the first place" until you're blue in the face, it boils down to the fact that it was only men in the first place, and that most people in the hobby are aware of that fact, and to me, that's what makes something "core lore". Changing something which most people know means most people will feel like their 40k world has had to change to accommodate the change - like when newcrons were introduced and they rewrote their whole history. Adding a new part to the lore, and making it grow organically, should always be considered first. Conversely, changing a small aspect of the lore - like saying that (I don't know...) some piece of equipment which they once said was carried by space marines is actually built into their suits and always has been isn't going to affect most people's understanding of the lore.

I think that it is better if people who have followed a game for most of it's life don't get the response "actually you're wrong, they changed that" to saying "marine-juice only works on men", when they could instead get "that used to be true, but they have now found a way to make female marines which doubles their recruitment". The first will elicit a "that's annoying" response, and possibly even resentment that "women came in here and changed my game", which is hardly constructive to our goals of inclusivity, whereas the expansion of lore, nodding to what they already know but ultimately arriving at the same place - female marines are a thing now - then they are much more likely to say "oh, that's cool!" and be accepting of the change, and that is the response that we want, isn't it?


*number pulled from my behind, don't ask for a statistical analysis of it. By all means go into any GW store and ask anyone i nthere why all marines are male, and see if they have a reason or a shrug - and bring back your findings!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/24 08:02:32


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Spoiler:
 Cybtroll wrote:
"Female miniatures were hideous in the 80's" I think it's a better description.

That said, unfortunately, it seems that GW evaluate the sanctity of their money more that any consideration about the product and the customers.

I'm referring here to the news that I just read that the US official GW tournament are entirely banning third party components (note: components, not models - which as far as I'm aware were allowed if minor on an otherwise GW model).

Which, I suppose, is another proof of how in order to be fully accepted as options Marines need a female sprue

The whole no 3rd Party thing has always been policy for UK events at Warhammer World where GW hosts its events. They've just extended this policy to the tournaments they've officially sponsored in the States. GW couldn't allow another company's product to be featured at what is essentially a big marketing exercise.
   
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U.k

Hecaton wrote:
 LumenPraebeo wrote:
That is a study that makes sense, from my personal experience as well. But there's no need to exclude people who would like female Space Marines from having them. You can have your marines be all male if you want, and I can put female Space Marines into my army if I so choose. You don't get to tell me how I should play my hobby. And it would be considerate if GW would consider what I and some others want in our Space Marine boxes, is all I'm saying.


I mean if you kitbash an army of female Astartes it's not gonna bother me. I don't think GW should add them to the setting, though, and I think that the female space marine proponents find kitbashing to be unsatisfactory because it's about changing the canon, not self-expression.


I have kitbashed female marines so please don’t talk rubbish about my motivations. Your argument seems to be that it wouldn’t improve the setting because you wouldn’t like it. There’s no reason for that, you just wouldn’t. Please explain further if I’m wrong on that but that appears to be the case from what you have said.

We cannot give you evidence of females having been made because that’s the point. They are banned by an outdated piece of fluff that doesn’t appear in any codexs. That’s what we are arguing for. Yes folk can kitbash them and head canon them but the6 may get death threats if they do. So let’s change the rules. Write out the bit of old fluff that these horrible people use to justify their threats and make the community a nicer place for all.

As for this being a core part of marines identity, it was first brought up by your side and then thoroughly debunked by ours. It’s not core at all. Every codex for marines ever, from 2nd edition when they started up to now has a section on the creation of a marine. None of them, not one ever, has stated they have to be male only. That “fact” is not in print now and has not been since it was in WD in 2017, it has only ever been in WD and and in anthologies of WD articles. It is so peripheral to marines that it does not make it into their books and isn’t in print anywhere now. Now, you are claiming it is core to them.

There’s our argument against, prove us wrong. Same with the setting. We have laid out lots of times why the setting would benefit from the change. Again, prove us wrong. Why shouldn’t it change?
   
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U.k

 some bloke wrote:
"So now we've established the proposal in principle and are haggling over price!"

Just caught up on the last 2 pages of this one, and it seems like such a small thing to argue over - do we retrospectively change the lore, or build on it?

I honestly don't see the problem with advancing the lore rather than replacing it. I do see problems with taking an aspect of the lore and just rewriting it for the sake of it.


No doubt this will be met with the same deluge of "but it's only 13 words" and "But it was an arbitrary decision" and "but it hasn't even been mentioned for years", but we can all agree that, as we stand right now, without changing the lore, the whole setting, lore, and imagery of space marines says that we can't have female ones. That is, after all, the whole topic of this thread. Can we just agree that, as a baseline? I'm not saying that was a right thing to do, or a good one, but it is a thing that has happened and it's why space marines look like they do today. Right? Because if we can't agree on that then this is 47 pages wasted!


Now, as this thread was met with a huge amount of people (originally including myself) who said that the lore prevents it and should be left well enough alone, and absolutely nobody saying "oh, does it only work on men?" then we can safely say that this is a piece of lore that people know, and that people use to identify the space marine brand. People who have been playing the game know that space marines are all men, regardless of the reason behind that, and I would say in response to people asking for a definition of Core lore, this:

Core lore: Any lore which most people in the hobby are aware of.

For example - Necrons are walking death robots who have weapons that can strip the atoms from a target - most people know it, so it's core lore. Space marines are all men, and there's a reason for it somewhere - most people know it, it's core lore. Orks red vehicles go faster - it's core lore. Knowing that Wazdakka Gutsmek was intent on building a highway to ride motorbikes through the warp - some people might know it, but most wouldn't, so not core lore.

So, whilst there might not be many words, if any, to change to overwrite the lore, the fact remains that 90%* of people in the hobby are aware that marines are all men and most of those probably have some idea that the process only works on men.


So whilst you can say "the decision was arbitrary", "it's only 13 words and they aren't there any more" and "there was no reason for it to be only men in the first place" until you're blue in the face, it boils down to the fact that it was only men in the first place, and that most people in the hobby are aware of that fact, and to me, that's what makes something "core lore". Changing something which most people know means most people will feel like their 40k world has had to change to accommodate the change - like when newcrons were introduced and they rewrote their whole history. Adding a new part to the lore, and making it grow organically, should always be considered first. Conversely, changing a small aspect of the lore - like saying that (I don't know...) some piece of equipment which they once said was carried by space marines is actually built into their suits and always has been isn't going to affect most people's understanding of the lore.

I think that it is better if people who have followed a game for most of it's life don't get the response "actually you're wrong, they changed that" to saying "marine-juice only works on men", when they could instead get "that used to be true, but they have now found a way to make female marines which doubles their recruitment". The first will elicit a "that's annoying" response, and possibly even resentment that "women came in here and changed my game", which is hardly constructive to our goals of inclusivity, whereas the expansion of lore, nodding to what they already know but ultimately arriving at the same place - female marines are a thing now - then they are much more likely to say "oh, that's cool!" and be accepting of the change, and that is the response that we want, isn't it?


*number pulled from my behind, don't ask for a statistical analysis of it. By all means go into any GW store and ask anyone i nthere why all marines are male, and see if they have a reason or a shrug - and bring back your findings!



About your core lore. It’s core lore that technology has stagnated and new inventions are heresy. Yet every few months new and unheard of equipment has been released for marines and no one bats an eyelid. New tanks, new guns, new troops. All fine. There are countless examples of truly core lore that is printed in all the books being changed or ignored and no one minds. The horus heresy has changed entirely over the years, folk Lap it up. Chapter identities changed entirely (space Vikings into space werewolves on wolves firing ice guns) love it. But this old bit of fluff about men only is so sacred that it cannot be changed ever.

In the same paragraph where this line of text first appeared it also talked about the emperor being the only person allowed to issue the order for a new chapter. That’s has changed, he barely ever talks to anyone if he can at all. SAME paragraph but that can change but not men only. Why is that? Why is that but so sacred and important? Sadly for many I see the answer as being misogyny. (Not saying it is for you, no personal attack here, but I think it’s why it is in general). Could you explain why it’s so important to you? Or to the community? Why is it so much more sacred than all other fluff?
   
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Hobbyist: *kitbashes female SM*
The community: YOU CAN'T DO THAT IT VIOLATES THE SANCTITY OF THE LORE!! YOU DESERVE TO DIE FOR THIS!!!
Other hobbyist: *uses 3rd party products and makes Afrika Korps Orks*
The community: HAHA YES THIS IS SO GOOD!! SCREW GW!!!

Obviously I emphasised some parts for the joke but the reality is that if you make your Orks look like WW2 Wehrmacht or have your custom Chapter be obsessed with "genetic purity", that's perfectly OK. But if you dare to make SM women then you've crossed a line. Where's the logic in that?
GW is the bad guy if you're using another companies products to play the game but if you want to make changes to the background then suddenly GW must be protected at all costs.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/06/24 10:51:35


 
   
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Hecaton wrote:
 Gert wrote:

And they would still need baseline humans to reproduce because the Astartes process makes them incapable of reproduction. Astartes aren't human anymore, they don't get all the human features.


It doesn't have to make them incapable of reproduction.
Doesn't have to, you're right. But show me a Space Marine who is capable of reproduction.

 Gert wrote:
As for women feeling comfortable with a fantasy setting (you mention GoT) from my personal experience that is a lie, and the overwhelming majority of fantasy, and indeed GoT fans, are men.


Whatever. My point is that there are a higher percentage of female GoT/ASOIAF fans than female Warhammer 40k fans.
Have you considered that this is because it's an entirely different medium of media, and because there's also a higher percentage of women represented on the show?
Still a ridiculously poor example.
 Gert wrote:
For specific examples, my immediate women family members think it's far too flippant with certain topics and the female characters aren't good.
The "strong female characters" of GoT are almost without fail, all victims of *not nice things* which from my perspective, tells women that to be in a fantasy setting they have to suffer from these *not nice things* in order to be a "strong female character".
If we go into things like Star Wars or Star Trek, characters like Rey or Burnham are decried as Mary Sue's because they do the exact same things that male characters can/have done in the series. Rey, Luke, and even Anakin are all exactly the same in terms of character development.


Sorry, heroism requires going through rough gak. If you find that unacceptable, you don't want your characters to be heroes.
Not always. There's different kinds of "not nice things" that affect heroes, and with women characters, it's always very sexually charged. The same is rarely, if ever, the case for men.

Speaking of sexually charged, let's talk about your wee obsession with Space Marines suddenly becoming breeding machines the moment women are introduced, hmm?
 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
While not explicitly mentioned, I believe I have seen it expressed that Space Marines are infertile anyway. And is it not reasonable to assume that Space Marines at current are chemically castrated, or otherwise infertile? Especially seeing as most recruits are pre-pubescent.


Maybe they're hyper-fertile, with all those hormones pumped into them.
Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. But suffice to say, we've never seen it, it would be totally arbitrary if they *were*, and there's non-core lore supporting that they're most definitely not.

Or are you suggesting that Marneus Calgar is this raging ball of fertile energy in his current depiction?

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Adding women Astartes wouldn't make them suddenly baby makers, and honestly, I really don't appreciate the implication that women=pregnancies.


There was no such implication.
Really? And that's why all of a sudden you're conflating Space Marines with sex and reproduction?

Don't BS me.
Are you really so dense that you don't understand that it takes males *and* females for sexual reproduction to occur in mammals?
Yeah - and? These are hypno-indoctrinated soldiers that have never shown an interest in sex at all. Why is sex suddenly coming into things now that women are being mentioned?

I don't see you mentioning the Imperial Guard being a reason that women shouldn't be present in that faction. I don't see you doing it with men attached to the Sororitas. So why Space Marines? Why does the mere inclusion of women suddenly spawn images of sexual relationships between Astartes? Hell, not only is it kinda reductive of the role of women, but it's also incredibly heteronormative - intentionally or not, you're implying that Space Marines *do* care about sex, but absolutely none of them are homosexual or otherwise non-straight?

I'd just like to say, Hecaton, you're the one who brought sex into this. I'm *very* curious why you did, because I don't think it was relevant at all.
That's what I was talking about
But why bring it up? Why did we all need reminding of the mammalian reproductive system when we talked about simply including women?

The fact that you're so emphatically trying to claim how Space Marines are just super fertile and interested in sex is just a little weird, to be honest.
and the fact that you deceptively tried to spin it as sexism on my part just makes you look like a charlatan trying to score white knight points.
You know, if I brought up something completely unrelated out of nowhere, and someone expressed how that was honestly kinda weird and gave off massively sexist vibes, the first thing *I'd* do is apologise and retract my comments, and perhaps reword them.

The fact that you jump so strongly to various buzzwords instead of self-reflecting on just how weird it is that you started bringing sex into the situation doesn't reflect well on your case.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Emphasising the Imperium's pragmatism and focus on war over any sort of gender segregating, for one.


The Imperium is not pragmatic; it is needlessly cruel and self-degrading.
In some things, yes. In others, no, it is very evidently pragmatic.

See: women serving alongside men in the Astra Militarum.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Have you considered that Brienne of Tarth literally exists to fill that gap? Brienne *is* the representative aspect of that.

Probably the worst example you could have thought of to defend the whole "women like settings where there are no women fighters", considering the amount of formidable female combatants in that series.


Brienne is pretty much the only Westerosi woman in that series who's good at fighting
Hey, remind me, who killed the Night King?
Brienne's situation is presented as unique within the setting - her being a warrior woman is almost unheard of in her society.
You're right - but Brienne, no matter how unique she is in her setting, becomes the icon for warrior women, and becomes a source of representation for many women. The very fact that Brienne *exists* is representation, no matter how unique she is in the setting.
Somehow women seem to like this book series and television adaptation more than Warhammer 40k.
First, women's representation is *stronger* in GoT than it is in 40k. I'm not sure at all where you're getting this "GoT is unrepresentative of women but women love it!!" tangent from.
And I'm sure there's totally not a thousand reasons why women prefer GoT, not least perhaps because you can enjoy GoT from the comfort of your own sofa without needing to go into a hobby store and be leered at by men who aren't quite sure if you "belong" in there or not.

Just a thought.
Hecaton wrote:
Sgt_Smudge wrote:Can you show me a real life human undergoing the process? You can't. It's fictional.


Of course. But that statement doesn't detract from the fact that the process of creating an Astartes has never been shown working on a female human, and it has been outright stated to not do so.
Yeah - for entirely made up arbitrary reasons.

Why should I care about arbitrary reasons? Why are women arbitrarily restricted? Why should I respect made up words?

Sgt_Smudge wrote: Aw jeez. Shame.

Guess that canon's really sacred though still, right?


I don't want to see the setting turned into homogenized media trash *even more*.
I'm asking for the inclusion of women. Why is the inclusion of women "homogenised media trash"?
They're just women.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the Imperium was always gender-equal. Guardsmen are mixed gender, the High Lords are mixed gender, the Inquisition is mixed gender, the Admech barely *have* gender, the Assassinorum are mixed gender, the Navigators are mixed gender, the Navy are mixed gender, the PDF are mixed gender, etc etc

But why aren't Space Marines? After all - the Imperium clearly isn't institutionally sexist, unless you want to change that sacred sacred lore?


Neither are Custodes. It's just a conceit of the setting, you're gonna have to learn to live with it.
Oh, sorry, Custodes too. Wow. Two factions, one of them not being more than 10,000 members in number - versus the entire rest of the Imperium?

Might want to get a sense of scale there.


 JNAProductions wrote:
Edit: Exceptions for the earliest days of 40k, before much modern fluff was established. There were some women marines then, so I’ve been told, but no women marines exist in modern 40k.


There was some non-GW fan content along those lines that got published in a fanzine, but that was before the modern conception of what a Space Marine is.
Aaaactually it was endorsed by Chapter Approved, at the time.
Sure, you can say "before the modern conception of what a Space Marine is", but that just further lends into the idea that "modern conception of what a Space Marine is" is rather... flexible, no?

After all, the modern conception of what Space Marines are is Primaris.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Space Marines just not having women just feels spiteful, more than anything else, either as an arbitrary "our biology says no", or a "haha, no women allowed here, sucks to be you" (even though such blatant gender segregation doesn't really exist anywhere in the Imperium as a whole). There's no worldbuilding it contributes to, no aesthetic benefit or wider thematic point, and just seems more like a slap in the face than an organic, natural piece of worldbuilding.


I mean, the Emperor being a gynophobe makes sense, to be honest.
The Emperor didn't make the Space Marines though. Amar Astarte did.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Not that a fictional world should come before real world people feeling excluded in the first place, I may add.
Art's mission isn't to make people feel included
Actually, that's entirely dependant on the art in question. Nice try.
and however trite, the 40k setting is art.
And art isn't immune to criticism.

Also, we're not talking about just art. We're talking about a toy soldiers game where people get to express their own creative freedom with little plastic toy soldiers on a battlefield, with some made up arbitrary flavour text behind it to get the imagination roaring. It is a product. It is merchandise. And you'd be lying to yourself if you didn't recognise that the point of merchandise is to sell it, and to sell it as well as you can.

And representation sells well.


FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Dude, Hecaton, you are getting really close to crossing the line, as so many from your side have already done. The personal attacks are unwarranted, and the relentless assertion that women don't have autonomy over their bodies is disgusting, and wrong. 40k's Imperium might be many things, but they don't really go out of their way to show that women are powerless over their bodies or autonomy. You are thinking of Chaos.


When did I say any of that?
Literally the moment that you started making biologically reductive comments the moment that women Space Marines were suggested?

I really can't fathom why you felt the need to bring up mammalian reproduction here.

Argive wrote:
As I've said - GW have been happy to make upgrade sprues without forcibly including them into kits. I see no reason this would have to be different.

But you are good to go with any marine off the shelf as a specific chapter. Just need right colours. Can you paint a woman onto a SM?
Sure - same as a helmeted Space Marines could be a woman. Just put a helmet on, and you *could* be good to go. Just as long as there's the option for actual visible representation too.

And, as I've said, when, inevitably new Space Marine kits are released, they'd include some women heads, just like they include male heads currently. There you go, problem solved.
An upgrade sprue for gender is absolutely a tax on inclusion... IMO
People have been happy to get third party bits to customise their Marines how they like for decades. I don't think people will cry too much about this, in the wake of it being made canon. And, as I've said, *when* new kits are released (because you'd be kidding yourself if you didn't think new Space Marines will eventually be released), if they included a woman's head or two on the sprue alongside the bare male ones, there's no more "sprue inclusion tax".
Just because you dont care because you get your way does not mean other people coming after will not be bothered by this.
Who'd be bothered, exactly? Again, people are happy to spend extra to get the bits they want. Not to mention that a single sprue of heads can go a long way, if you're not putting them on every Marine.

Well you keep brining up storm cast as an example of inclusion in Warhammer. I'm merely pointing out storm cast and AOS came with a huge cost.
And why does that have anything to do with Stormcast including women?

I think it's pretty simple, really - can anyone tell me why women existing is political? How someone's very life is somehow a political topic? If so, isn't everyone's life political?


Completely irrelevant and absolutely nobody is making this argument.
Really? I'm not the one saying that this is "political".
Come on, tell me - how is this topic political? All we're discussing is women's representation - so if that's all that's being discussed, and this is "political", what's political about women's representation?
Garnering reaction out of a corporation through pressure can be construed as political if the values align with other political discussions going on elsewhere
So, basically, it might totally not be political, but if someone thinks it looks a little bit similar to other things, it's suddenly political?
Not exactly a benchmark for objective judgement there.
If you want to pretend this discussion exist in a vacuum I would just like to point out to the comparisons made with gaming and other media...
Thing is, no discussion exists in a vaccuum. And I'd like to point out that it's the people calling it "political" who are making the comparisons with other media and gaming first.
Its relevant because you are attempting pressuring GW/ WH community to change their product.
But why is that **political**?

The RPG scene, Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition especially.

I also point towards the clothing industry, which was more tailored (ha!) towards men for the longest time. Similarly, the video game market is diversifying it's reach to more than it's previous demographics, and the industry is only growing.


How is a game you can play for free and talk to people comparable to Warhammer where you have to invest £100s if not £1000 and play a battle/war simulation??
You tell me how they're not - why does investing hundreds of pounds mean that women wouldn't be interested?

Clothing? Longest time? When? Where? How is it relevant to Space Marines in a Warhammer 40k wargaming game?
Uh, you are familiar with dandyism, right?
Again, that was on you - you asked for examples of markets shifting to expand into the women demographic. I gave them.

What about all the things in recent times in popular media that failed when they seemed to have aligned with representation / inclusivity idea without adding anything of creative value...
What about them? Did they fail because they "aligned with representation", or did they fail because of other causes? Because I'm not seeing anything that inherently suggests "aligning with representation" is economically bad.
It seems wargaming is just the next thing on the long list of culture that people want to change.
Fun fact! Culture always changes.

Remember that fact.
A company's purpose, primarily, is nearly always profit. Not "we don't pander to women here".

Companies lose profit when they make certain business decisions that hurt their ability to deliver on the service/product they sell.


Like stopping marketing their products to their core audience.
Why would including women Space Marines be "stopping marketing to their core audience"?

Is the male audience of 40k so fragile that they'd see women Space Marines and suddenly think "OH NO, THEY'RE NOT MARKETING TO ME ANY MORE!!" You think so little of men that this would be the case?
40k/wargaming in general is 95+ % male is it currently?
Possibly. And GW reaching out to more women and appealing to them would simply just add more potential buyers. But are you really saying that men would drop out if women Space Marines were a thing? I had no idea men were so fragile about such things.

Sisters aren't protagonists in 40k though, not in the broader sense. Sisters can be protagonists in their own books, sure, but they're not the "protagonist" faction plastered at the face of the company. Guess who are?

Oh yeah - the Space Marines.

Plus, why is including women Space Marines "burning everything to the ground"? Why the extreme language?


Why not, why cant sisters take the lead role in story telling?
Because they're not the poster boys. Space Marines are.

And if you want to know why Space Marines are the poster boys - maybe it's got something to do with that 95% male audience you just mentioned?
The new media seems to think so.. New comics, books and animations. I dont think the sisters hype train is stopping considering how popular its getting.
And it's still laughably smaller than the cult of personality surrounding Space Marines.
Can sisters be equal to SM or do they have to be superior in order to satisfy you?
Sisters *won't* be equal to Space Marines, because they're two completely different factions, offering two completely different things, and because GW won't let Sisters be equal to Space Marines, because Space Marines are their poster child.

It's called being realistic - Space Marines will continue to be dominant. Therefore, if we want visibility, we change the dominant force to something that it has no reason not to be in the first place.

I meant the setting. The cost weather you like it or not of creating Storm cast was the burnig to the ground of WHFB.
Eh, not really? Stormcast could have been thrown into the World that Was just like the Storm of Magic was. GW simply decided to go full out with their new setting.
Other factors aside that is a fact.
Did they do it to accommodate storm casts introduction ? Was it just rebranding or other reasons? Who knows the result is the same.
Exactly my point - you can't even say if Stormcast were a direct *reason* - so how can you talk about "costs" when you don't even know the reasons and costs in the first place!

Whose to say some bright spark at GW wont think its time for new Warhmammer age of Galaxy because people seem to be saying 40k is outdated and needs to move with the times
Sure - but at this point, you're now just inventing scenarios and looking for made-up incidents.

I think we call them strawmen.

Isn't the whole concept of women SM predicated on the fact that this idea didn't sell in the 80s but we have moved on since then?
Yes. I fail to see why that requires a full setting reboot to change 13 words.


Again, why would including women Space Marines be even close to equivalent to the setting shift that was WHFB/AoS? Rather an extreme reaction, don't you think?


Because GW is GW and I trust them as much with steering any change in the right direction as I do a back alley surgeon.
Did Primaris burn the setting to the ground? They were a much more extreme change than simply including women.

You're absolutely right. I fail to see what that has to do with including women Space Marines though. Would you care to elaborate on that? Because I fail to understand why you'd mention how Space Marines are popular because they're "doing something right" when my point is about how they're excluding women.

Is excluding women the "something right" in this equation? Why else was it mentioned?



Ask GW why their marines are selling so well.. I don't know. Do you ?
No, I don't - but you're the one who brought it up. So please, elaborate. Why was this necessary to be mentioned in a thread about women Astartes?
It appears that not including women is irrelevant to sales of marines/40k.
You literally don't have any kind of data to make that comment How can you say that "not including women is irrelevant to the sales" when we have no idea of what the sales would be like if we *did* include women Astartes? For all you know, including women Astartes might increase the sales drastically - the point is, we have no evidence at all to make the claim that the sales difference is "irrelevant" because we don't have any.
Because the market would be showing us otherwise vs AOS... This is an observation of objective fact.
Did you miss all the other context around the two settings? Space Marines have been around for orders of magnitude more time than the Stormcast have. Don't you think that would play into things just a smidge?
Do not try to put up a straw man to argue against.
That's not even what a strawman argument is!

The status quo seems to be working for GW as things stand.
And? Does changing the representation of women affect that at all? You literally don't know at all, yet are fighting so hard to keep things as they are, despite the objections of real world people saying that this isn't okay - why?


I mean, I play every Imperial faction. So, I don't exactly fit your example.


Still does not change the fact i don't want o play Warhammer SM.
I dont care what your reasons are for more marine stuff. i dont want any more marine stuff.
Then don't buy it. Simple.

First, I don't dislike Sisters of Battle. I collect an army of them, for god's sake.
But your comment is exactly what I mean - you imply that Sisters of Battle are the "woman" faction. By my saying that I want women Space Marines, you take that as an attack on the Designated Woman Faction - when in reality, I'm simply saying that Sisters of Battle aren't equal to what Space Marines offer, from both a creative space, and a model range one too.

You say "we should have dragon SOB, spikey SOB, wolfy SOB" - but that's precisely the issue! The actual faction design of what Sisters of Battle are doesn't fit that kind of design. Sisters of Battle have a very strong faction design and culture - the Catholic nun trope, taken to the extreme, is integral to their design and aesthetic. By having "dragon SOB, spikey SOB wolfy SOB", you're actively compromising an *explicit* feature of their design. If you make wolfy SOB, you're needing to compromise on that very detailed Catholic nun design, and by doing so, you're harming their factional identity.

The same can't be said of Space Marines, whose faction design is centred on customisation and player freedoms. Their armour is neutral and blank for the most part, they're supplied with easy to convert upgrade sprues and sculpts. There is a wealth of different cultures and traditions reflected in the myriad Chapters, and GW are happy to encourage people to expand in weird and wacky ways. Space Marines are defined by their easy flavouring and ability to be defined as "spikey Marines, wolfy Marines, dragon Marines, Roman Marines, edgy Marines, etc etc" - Sisters aren't.

So either you're calling to massively overhaul the design of Sisters of Battle (not very lore friendly of you?), or we simply ignore 13 words of non-core lore, and add women Space Marines. I think one of these is much easier than the other.


It really seemed to me you are dissatisfied with SOB because they are not as good as SM according to you.
I'm not "dissatisfied" with them. I'm just not deluding myself to think that they stand a cat in hell's chance of being the poster faction. Sisters are fine with what they are, because their design is tight, it is aesthetically impressive and evocative, and the range is pretty damn solid. I like Sisters of Battle very much - but they're not Space Marines, in the same way that Orks aren't Space Marines, or Tau aren't Space Marines, or any of the other factions aren't Space Marines, except Space Marines.
Somehow even though on the table they can easily thrash any SM army.
I don't care about how strong they are on tabletop.
I think they are just different side of the same coin. Like men and women..
But that's the thing - they're not two different sides of the same coin any more so than Tau and Space Marines are two sides of the same coin.

Sisters of Battle are defined by a very strong cultural aesthetic design. Their lore is generally very centred on a unified concept and principle. Their existence is tied to a very specific single identity.

Space Marines are defined by their freedom to embrace a massive range of aesthetic designs and styles. Their lore is, for the most part, some of the most open-ended in all 40k. Their existence is justified by whatever the player wants it to be, because they have such a vast history to choose from.

They're vastly different factions, so I don't understand for a second why Sisters need to be brought into this, because they're not a suitable stand-in for actual Space Marines.
The reason why I'm saying SOB because they are all women... And you seem to think 40k needs more representation of women. If the paramount thing of value that's being injected is gender and representation why would we not care about SOB who are all women? It fits the bill perfect.
Thank you for proving my point - you've reduced the entire identity of Sisters of Battle down to "they're the woman faction" and ignored all the other design aspects they have, and how fundamentally they *don't* do the same things Space Marines do.

Space Marines are the poster boys because they are so flexible, so perfect a creative canvas for the player, so utterly open ended and free to interpretation. Sisters of Battle just aren't that. Sisters of Battle have a very tight, very strong design, but if you don't like that design - well, you're kind of left stranded.

Space Marines don't have that problem, and represent the apex of player creativity... unless you're a woman.

I also mention again that representation is nothing without visibility, and as I've said, you'd be deluding yourself to think that Sisters will ever come close to the cultural impact that Space Marines have - largely because Space Marines are such an excellent blank canvas for creativity.
Therefore, Space Marines are the best candidate, and Sisters of Battle are not.

Making SOB different to a SM does not make an SOB worse.
It doesn't make them worse - but it does make them unsuitable for representative purposes in the same way Space Marines are perfect for representation.

Unless you want to push an idea where men and women are the same... Because that's just not true in the real world so I don't see why this narrative should be reflected in 40k.
Go on - what's not the same? Don't forget, we're talking about made-up magic super soldiers in a far future setting - so I don't wanna hear any biology arguments come into play.

Hellebore wrote:Your issue isn't that there's no reason they should - it's that you don't value the reasons they should. Which is not the same thing.

This whole argument boils down to:

"allowing women to be marines has no impact on the setting, but has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience"

vs

"that's not a good enough reason to do it"
Absolutely right. And this has been the argument for most of the thread - people not valuing the real feelings of inclusivity felt by the audience.


Hecaton wrote:No, I disagree with the idea that it has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience.
You can disagree, but you'd be wrong, considering the amount of people who have very vocally said that visibility and inclusivity matter to them, myself included.

But sure, I guess you're just going to speak for (or rather, over) them.

some bloke wrote:Just caught up on the last 2 pages of this one, and it seems like such a small thing to argue over - do we retrospectively change the lore, or build on it?

I honestly don't see the problem with advancing the lore rather than replacing it. I do see problems with taking an aspect of the lore and just rewriting it for the sake of it.


No doubt this will be met with the same deluge of "but it's only 13 words" and "But it was an arbitrary decision" and "but it hasn't even been mentioned for years", but we can all agree that, as we stand right now, without changing the lore, the whole setting, lore, and imagery of space marines says that we can't have female ones. That is, after all, the whole topic of this thread. Can we just agree that, as a baseline? I'm not saying that was a right thing to do, or a good one, but it is a thing that has happened and it's why space marines look like they do today. Right? Because if we can't agree on that then this is 47 pages wasted!
No, I think we're all in agreement here that women Space Marines are not a thing right now. Sure, it's for totally arbitrary reasons, or reasons that don't tie in to the current depictions of what Space Marines stand for as a faction, but we cannot claim that women Space Marines exist at present.

The point of contention comes from how much of that is because it's actively enforced from GW's core lore, and how much of that is enforced by cultural inertia and simply just momentum from not changing decades-old lore.


People who have been playing the game know that space marines are all men
But how do they know that? Is it because they've gone and read Index Astartes, or the antiquated "Creation of a Space Marine" article which isn't repeated in the Codexes, or because they've gone digging on Lexicanum, or because it was repeated on some webforum, or simply because all the Space Marines they've seen are men?

My issue is why they know they can only be men, because GW certainly aren't saying it.
Core lore: Any lore which most people in the hobby are aware of.
You'd be surprised at the amount of "core lore" then which is incredibly outdated or misquoted then.

Abaddon being an armless failure is considered "core lore", yet has never once been an accurate depiction of him. Orks being able to make a working gun from a box and some nails is a gross exaggeration of their gestalt field theory, and yet is widely considered as "canon". And what about stuff that people outside of the hobby are aware of? I'd say that arguably, it should be what people outside of the hobby, or incredibly new to it, are aware of that is really the core stuff. After all, if we're trying to pinpoint what the majority of people see and engage with first, we should be asking the people whose views are solely based on their first impressions and the most surface level readings. That's arguably more "core" than anything else to me.

The problem with the whole "lore which most people are aware of" leads to things like fanon being considered "core lore", such as "the Emperor created the Space Marines" - he didn't.

For example - Necrons are walking death robots who have weapons that can strip the atoms from a target - most people know it, so it's core lore.
Because you can very clearly visually see from their skeletal design and that their guns are called "flayers", yes. GW also say on the webpage for the Necron Warriors kit that their guns "shred" the enemy - further reinforcing that ranged technology angle.
Space marines are all men, and there's a reason for it somewhere - most people know it, it's core lore.
They know it, but they don't know why it exists. I can't call that core lore, because it's based on simple rote and inertia.
Orks red vehicles go faster - it's core lore.
There were literally mechanical benefits in game to painting your vehicles red - of course that was core lore.
So, whilst there might not be many words, if any, to change to overwrite the lore, the fact remains that 90%* of people in the hobby are aware that marines are all men and most of those probably have some idea that the process only works on men.
90% of people in the hobby, sure, but some people have been in the hobby for a VERY long time, and have had a chance to read up on the non-core lore.

Who we really should be asking are people who are fresher to the hobby, or unfamiliar, and see what a cursory glance at a faction tells them. That way, they're only being exposed to what GW has prioritised, the stuff that, according to GW, is the most important selling point of that faction.

Again, if people are only aware that Space Marines are male, but don't know why, that's not really that strong of a reason why they still need to be male, is it?
So whilst you can say "the decision was arbitrary", "it's only 13 words and they aren't there any more" and "there was no reason for it to be only men in the first place" until you're blue in the face, it boils down to the fact that it was only men in the first place, and that most people in the hobby are aware of that fact, and to me, that's what makes something "core lore".
Again, that would imply that Abaddon being a failure is "core lore", or the Emperor making the Space Marines is "core lore" - and neither of these are accurate.

Changing something which most people know means most people will feel like their 40k world has had to change to accommodate the change - like when newcrons were introduced and they rewrote their whole history.
Well, yeah. 40k has *always* been changing. "Their 40k world" had changed before they started, has likely changed since they started, and likely will change in the future. It's a little late to be calling for sanctity in 40k lore when it wasn't really there in the first place.
Adding a new part to the lore, and making it grow organically, should always be considered first.
Disagree. Why is the lore more important than real human beings?
Conversely, changing a small aspect of the lore - like saying that (I don't know...) some piece of equipment which they once said was carried by space marines is actually built into their suits and always has been isn't going to affect most people's understanding of the lore.
People's understanding of the lore changes with the lore itself. Ultramarines once weren't a first founding Chapter, but people got over it. Primaris once didn't exist, and Guilliman was bound in stasis - but some people got over it. Heck, Leman Russ used to be a regular human - and people got over it.

Making women Space Marines doesn't retcon anyone's existing models. It's simply just "women are here".

I think that it is better if people who have followed a game for most of it's life don't get the response "actually you're wrong, they changed that" to saying "marine-juice only works on men", when they could instead get "that used to be true, but they have now found a way to make female marines which doubles their recruitment". The first will elicit a "that's annoying" response, and possibly even resentment that "women came in here and changed my game", which is hardly constructive to our goals of inclusivity, whereas the expansion of lore, nodding to what they already know but ultimately arriving at the same place - female marines are a thing now - then they are much more likely to say "oh, that's cool!" and be accepting of the change, and that is the response that we want, isn't it?
But the whole "actually you're wrong, they changed it" is already a thing! See:
- Necrons
- Tau
- Primaris
- Primarchs
- Who created the Space Marines
- Cadia
- Ynnari
- The whole Horus Heresy

Sure, we all know out of universe that women weren't always Space Marines, no-one's trying to pretend that GW were always including women. What I'm just simply baffled by is why we need to pretend why we need to preserve and date this development in the lore. The people reading the lore are grown-ups - I'm sure they can rationalise how inclusivity works and lore changes.
What I have to ask is why "women are part of the faction and they weren't before" would be considered grounds for resentment if it was retconned in, but would suddenly be all fine if GW said "women can be part of the faction *from this point in the made up timeline*"? I fear that you may be being a little too generous to the reaction of the latter portion.

Frankly, as to the reaction I want, if there's people who are getting their backs up because women are simply being added, I'm not sure I really care if I get their backs up or not. If they start to go increasingly hostile towards women, I'd hope that everyone else would see that for what it is - blatant exclusionism.

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 insaniak wrote:
Hecaton wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
No, I disagree with the idea that it has a big impact on the inclusivity felt by the audience. Women are generally interested in stories where female characters are powerful and "heroic" less than men are; fundamentally this seems more about satisfying a certain kind of male gamer's want for an army of powerful women rather than satisfying women. Again, games like Infinity have parity or near-parity with depictions of men and women in the game, but women are not flocking to that game compared to other minis games. You still get the guys who are clamoring for more female sculpts, have a female alter-ego on the forums, etc.

It's an actual study. I'll try to dredge it up.

Here we go.

Going by the abstract, that study doesn't say what you claimed. It says that the study found that books by male authors tended to have more powerful characters, and books by female authors didn't. Doesn't seem to be addressing who is actually interested in those stories at all.

And that's ignoring the fact that it's based on a statistically insignificant pool of authors (30 different series) and even within that they admit that the differences in many cases were not statistically significant. Also no mention of the criteria used to choose those authors, and whether the way the characters were portrayed is a result of gender predilections in the authors, the readers, or just the publishers.






Yeah, methodologically this is a joke. Evopsych bs is always like this 'We did a "Study" on six rhesus monkeys where the boy monkeys liked trucks and the girl monkeys liked a teddy bear! And in my conclusion I shall talk about the incredibly brave and not at all entirely societally entrenched belief that I happened to maybe be going into this study just a little bit seeking to find the exact opinion that I went into doing it with about how this is exactly how humans work!'

Seriously... We examined THIRTY novels, TOTAL, selected..somehow... and determined using....some criteria??? that the FIFTEEN novels written by male authors featured more powerful heroes who solved their problems with violence more often.

And then of course, because it's Evopsych broscience bs, you've gotta make sure to get a claim like "This may be because females benefit when their mate can dominate other males" riiiiiiiiiiiight into that abstract.

it can't be that there's a tendency for female authors to create less physically powerful, physically confrontational protagonists because males grow up in our society bombarded by stories of men solving their problems through physical confrontation and women are not, it must be that women are hard coded by their monkey dna to want to submit to a dominant alpha male who can overpower other masculoids with his big stronk monkey muscles! Nobody is ever influenced by stories they read and watch to create similar stories and narratives, that's crazy talk!

"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!!"

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For example - Necrons are walking death robots who have weapons that can strip the atoms from a target - most people know it, so it's core lore.
Because you can very clearly visually see from their skeletal design and that their guns are called "flayers", yes. GW also say on the webpage for the Necron Warriors kit that their guns "shred" the enemy - further reinforcing that ranged technology angle.
Space marines are all men, and there's a reason for it somewhere - most people know it, it's core lore.
They know it, but they don't know why it exists. I can't call that core lore, because it's based on simple rote and inertia.
Orks red vehicles go faster - it's core lore.
There were literally mechanical benefits in game to painting your vehicles red - of course that was core lore.
So, whilst there might not be many words, if any, to change to overwrite the lore, the fact remains that 90%* of people in the hobby are aware that marines are all men and most of those probably have some idea that the process only works on men.
90% of people in the hobby, sure, but some people have been in the hobby for a VERY long time, and have had a chance to read up on the non-core lore.

Who we really should be asking are people who are fresher to the hobby, or unfamiliar, and see what a cursory glance at a faction tells them. That way, they're only being exposed to what GW has prioritised, the stuff that, according to GW, is the most important selling point of that faction.

Again, if people are only aware that Space Marines are male, but don't know why, that's not really that strong of a reason why they still need to be male, is it?


I cut out the irrelevant bits to our discussion. Have you considered writing novels - you'd be able to bash one out every week at this rate!

Point 1: I find it odd that you can say, in the same breath (paraphrased), that "necrons are visually walking machines and their guns are called flayers so it's obviously part of what they are", and "Space marines are visually all men and call each other brother, but this cannot possibly define them". That seems somewhat hypocritical, and I mean that in a very mild sense.

Point 2: You say that you want to do this from the point of making new people to the hobby feel like women are represented, and aren't concerned with people who have been in the hobby for a very long time and have read up on the lore. So, if they introduce female space marines and acknowledge in the lore that "there were none before, but now there are, because they made the process work!" then surely the only people who would know that there were no female marines before would be those who have read up on the lore? Those new people looking in through the windows of GW would see female marines, not a sign saying "there never used to be female marines though!".

Final point, You're continuing to respond to me as if I am against female marines being added to the game - which I'm not. I'm against rewriting the lore so that female marines were always there.

One additional point to this is that every story written about marines - black library, the Horus heresy, all the fluff - will have "brother" and "he/him" used for every single character. I think that having female representation is better to acknowledge that it is moderately new in the setting, rather than have women take up the game thinking it's always been like it, and then find that every space marine novel or fluff ever written is all about men - making the female presence feel even more like a token gesture. The 13-word lore reason can easily be swept away, never to resurface, but you'll have to deal with the fact that everything ever officially made for Astartes is male, right up until the change is made.

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some bloke wrote:I cut out the irrelevant bits to our discussion. Have you considered writing novels - you'd be able to bash one out every week at this rate!
I'll take that as a compliment!

Point 1: I find it odd that you can say, in the same breath (paraphrased), that "necrons are visually walking machines and their guns are called flayers so it's obviously part of what they are", and "Space marines are visually all men and call each other brother, but this cannot possibly define them". That seems somewhat hypocritical, and I mean that in a very mild sense.
The thing is, guardsmen are also visually all men, and yet aren't supposed to be. We can't tell if this is a feature of Space Marines *needing* to be all men, or just defaulting to a male representation.

Necrons are literally entirely made up, they have no basis or default, so whatever they look like must be intentional. With a human presenting figure, like a Space Marine or Guardsman, we can't represent all people by how they look, but as a whole range, we can. The thing is, we can't tell at a glance if Space Marines are *meant* to be all male, or if that's just poor representation, just as we can't tell if Guardsmen are meant to be all male, or just have poor representation. And, I will say as well, the fact they're called Guardsmen would indicate a masculine preference, even in the mixed gender Astra Militarum.

Basically, it's because Necrons are entirely fictional, but Space Marines still are somewhat reflective of humans.

EDIT: And, I will say that not all Space Marines are visually men. A helmeted Space Marine can feasibly be any gender - it's just that all the *unhelmeted* Space Marines are visually male, but that is just a small nitpick, I grant.

Point 2: You say that you want to do this from the point of making new people to the hobby feel like women are represented, and aren't concerned with people who have been in the hobby for a very long time and have read up on the lore. So, if they introduce female space marines and acknowledge in the lore that "there were none before, but now there are, because they made the process work!" then surely the only people who would know that there were no female marines before would be those who have read up on the lore? Those new people looking in through the windows of GW would see female marines, not a sign saying "there never used to be female marines though!".
Sure, but *why* do we even need to make that distinction in the lore? I get your point, I do, but I don't understand why we even need to act like it wasn't possible in the first place in lore, aside from arbitrary reasoning?

Final point, You're continuing to respond to me as if I am against female marines being added to the game - which I'm not. I'm against rewriting the lore so that female marines were always there.
I am aware of that, and my apologies if it comes across like I don't recognise that. I do still fail to understand why we shouldn't rewrite the lore though.

It's not redacting history - the real world history of 40k shouldn't be forgotten, but the internal lore of the setting doesn't need to cling to that.

One additional point to this is that every story written about marines - black library, the Horus heresy, all the fluff - will have "brother" and "he/him" used for every single character. I think that having female representation is better to acknowledge that it is moderately new in the setting, rather than have women take up the game thinking it's always been like it, and then find that every space marine novel or fluff ever written is all about men - making the female presence feel even more like a token gesture.
The thing with that is that, even for gender neutral factions, most of the characters are men anyway. Most guardsmen novels didn't exactly have many women in them, leading to them also being full of masculine pronouns. It's honestly much easier to turn around and say "look, we weren't exactly the most representative when it came to our visibility of women in our setting - our older stuff is a product of it's time, and we're working on that". End of the day, short of rewriting all the old books (bad idea for many reasons!), those books will still be male-dominated. I think, by having women Space Marines always be possible, it at least opens the door for that open-ended creativity that 40k fiction has largely allowed, and what a lot of people enjoy about the Horus Heresy in particular - the chance to have your own dudes running around in the madness of the Imperium's greatest civil war.

If we allow women Space Marines retroactively, then 30k also becomes a place where women Space Marines can crop up in your own forces. Sure, unless new 30k stuff is written, there won't be any named examples, but there's nothing then stopping you making your own.
The 13-word lore reason can easily be swept away, never to resurface, but you'll have to deal with the fact that everything ever officially made for Astartes is male, right up until the change is made.
This is true, but as I said, the same can be said for how the majority of stuff made for Guardsmen was male too - it's easier just to say "yeah, we messed up in the past, we're gonna work on that", and more honest too.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2021/06/24 13:00:13



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Sure, but *why* do we even need to make that distinction in the lore? I get your point, I do, but I don't understand why we even need to act like it wasn't possible in the first place in lore, aside from arbitrary reasoning?

It's worth remembering that everything in the lore is arbitrary, except perhaps the basics like "there are humans". They made a decision to make necrons into robots, not skeletons or shellfish-people or just people full of nanobots to heal them or any number of things which would have fitted their lore and playstyle. Murder robots was decided, arbitrarily, so murder robots is what they are.

I suppose, really, this boils down to personal opinion. I think that retro-fitting the lore to suit a new change is unnecessary, particularly when they have such a clear opportunity to say "primaris works on female candidates too, doubling the recruitment opportunities for space marines". As it will also be driven by sales, there is a delicious irony in the phrase "doubling recruitment opportunities", as it can represent the potential target audience being expanded to include women. But that's just a bonus.

I just feel like, as it stands, the lore of the game is a bit contradictory but generally fits with the novels and all the fluff. If they retcon the fluff, then anything written before that retcon becomes wrong. If they build on it, then anything written before it simply becomes old - you can read it, learn it, and it may not still be valid, but it won't be wrong.

I think that's the crux of it for me. If you're presented with two options - one of which makes every space marine book published thus far wrong, and one which simply makes them set before female marines, then I feel like the respectful way to approach it is the second way.


I understand your frustration at "why should it have been this way", but nothing short of a time machine will change the fact that being all male is something which space marines have been presented as for the lifetime of the game, and as such everything about them is written about that fact. Regardless of the reasons for making the decision, the decision was made, and that is why there's no mention of a female Astartes anywhere in the lore right now. We can respectfully say "that was not a good thing, so we've improved the setting", or we can say "actually that never happened", and then have a generation of people asking why there are no female space marines in any of the books.

Obviously for the lack of female models in guard & such, where there's nothing backing up the decision except needing to make more models, they can just say "we've finally made models that represent the female guard". That's not such a big issue.

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 some bloke wrote:

I suppose, really, this boils down to personal opinion. I think that retro-fitting the lore to suit a new change is unnecessary, particularly when they have such a clear opportunity to say "primaris works on female candidates too, doubling the recruitment opportunities for space marines". As it will also be driven by sales, there is a delicious irony in the phrase "doubling recruitment opportunities", as it can represent the potential target audience being expanded to include women. But that's just a bonus.


I don't really see why the lore aspect of "more recruitment candiates" is something that makes a difference when the reason for their numbers in the first place place wasn't really to do with struggling to find recruits but the difficulty around acquiring the necessary organs and such.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/24 13:35:22


 
   
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 Mentlegen324 wrote:
 some bloke wrote:

I suppose, really, this boils down to personal opinion. I think that retro-fitting the lore to suit a new change is unnecessary, particularly when they have such a clear opportunity to say "primaris works on female candidates too, doubling the recruitment opportunities for space marines". As it will also be driven by sales, there is a delicious irony in the phrase "doubling recruitment opportunities", as it can represent the potential target audience being expanded to include women. But that's just a bonus.


I don't really see why the lore aspect of "more recruitment candiates" is something that makes a difference when the reason for their numbers in the first place place wasn't really to do with struggling to find recruits but the difficulty around acquiring the necessary organs and such.


Twice as many candidates, twice as many failures - twice as many organs to harvest

Thanks to pointing that out though, I didn't know that was the reason. I thought becoming Astartes just had a fairly high failure rate!

12,300 points of Orks
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I am Thoruk, the Barbarian, Slayer of Ducks, and This is my blog!

I'm Selling Infinity, 40k, dystopian wars, UK based!

I also make designs for t-shirts and mugs and such on Redbubble! 
   
 
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