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Hecaton wrote:

I mean I reject your premises pretty wholeheartedly. The idea that Astartes is the faction with the most potential for customization and self-expression is kinda sad.

Mk. Not sure what the point is here?
I can provide evidence that supports my point if you want. Damien Pedley's Deathwatch and Thunderwulfen's Soul Haunters are some of my favourite examples of hobbyists taking SM and turning them into something brilliant.
Or you could just look at how GW has made boatloads of Chapters with their own identities, aesthetics, and cultures all of which stem from the humble Space Marine.



If you don't even like SM why are you engaging in the discussion? You don't like the faction but care so much about it that you don't want it to change at all? That boggles my mind on so many levels.

 Gert wrote:

If you don't even like SM why are you engaging in the discussion? You don't like the faction but care so much about it that you don't want it to change at all? That boggles my mind on so many levels.

Because instead of making them even more overwhelmingly ubiquitous, I'd rather that be walked back.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Andykp wrote:


AIS can’t make space,Raines, that’s the bollocks science bit mate. It’s made up!

Well maybe people with it couldn't become Astartes. I don't know. You don't either.

I actually do agree that the Space Marines are way overdone and I got as fething sick of them as anyone through 2020 - but how to do that is a separate topic, and as several posters have pointed out in exquisite detail, this is not a realistic scenario, nor is it one mutually exclusive to just adding a few lines of text to a book, a few pieces of art depicting female space marines and a headswap sprue somewhere and being done with it.

That's part of what's frustrating about the absence - They've downplayed it so hard that it would be so easy to fix and they've never displayed the gender-neutral gonads needed to do so.

 CEO Kasen wrote:
I actually do agree that the Space Marines are way overdone and I got as fething sick of them as anyone through 2020 - but how to do that is a separate topic, and as several posters have pointed out in exquisite detail, this is not a realistic scenario, nor is it one mutually exclusive to just adding a few lines of text to a book, a few pieces of art depicting female space marines and a headswap sprue somewhere and being done with it.

That's part of what's frustrating about the absence - They've downplayed it so hard that it would be so easy to fix and they've never displayed the gender-neutral gonads needed to do so.

GW does seem to have a very low opinion of their 40k players, especially when compared with how they're handling AoS.

I think that's mostly down to the more unsavoury elements of the WHFB fandom jumping ship when AoS launched. In fact I would be willing to say that most AoS hobbyists are completely new and had never played WHFB, of the people I used to regularly game with I think only one guy actually played WHFB and the rest of us started with AoS.
I'm not saying that there aren't going to be some unsavoury people who are into AoS but the setting and background don't have the "set in stone" nature WHFB and 40k have. GW can advance the story and add whatever they want and nobody can say "but thats not how AoS is".

Hecaton wrote:

Catulle wrote:
You were literally told to knock it off pages ago now. Want to press that point now just to get across how much your conception of the Imperium depends of your... inserting fanon child abuse when the Astartes are literally *right there*?

It's not fanon, it's in the lore.

What you implied? No, it wasn't.
Irrespective of that, we're discussing how the lore is made up, and not set in stone - perhaps the conversation is less about "what does the lore say" and more "why does the lore say that".

Sorry, your precious Astartes support an irredeemably evil regime. So do the Sororitas.

Again, weird flex, we're all on the same page on that.

I'm not really sure why you're trying to act like we don't know that the Imperium's awful?

Catulle wrote:
Dear GOD you people are Boring.

Boring, maybe, right, definitely.

Citation needed.

Catulle wrote:
If you need to be told - Women are women, you imbecile. Men are men. Just listen, we're fundamentally the same.

Hey mods, am I allowed to respond in kind, or do the insults only go one way?

I mean, you've insulted plenty of us over the course of this thread. I think that this *is* the response in kind to your implications that people only want women Astartes for some sexually gratifying reason.

Something something glass houses.

Just because something's socially constructed doesn't mean it's arbitrary

Actually, it kinda does. Most things really are fairly arbitrary, including most human distinctions on gender and sexuality especially.

or doesn't have its roots in human biology.

And it also means that just because something is socially constructed, that doesn't mean it *does* have roots in biology.

Gert wrote: Space Marines are the flagship faction of 40k.
They get the lion's share of marketing/releases.
This means that the majority of factions in the game are some flavour of SM.
Because of this variety in flavour, a core tenant of SM is that the hobbyist can paint/convert/give them whatever background they want and it would still be accepted within the "canon".

I mean I reject your premises pretty wholeheartedly. The idea that Astartes is the faction with the most potential for customization and self-expression is kinda sad.

Sad, but true.
Reject it all you like, but your rejection doesn't change truth. The most varied factions that GW produce, the ones that they have the most design space and expression towards, are flavours of Space Marine. This is a fact.

And just look how popular custom Chapters and custom Space Marine heroes are - it's hard to argue they aren't incredibly appealing to a wide market.

Let Astartes be Astartes.

Sure. Define Astartes in a way that everyone agrees, first. Because I don't think we can all agree on that, if it includes them needing to be male.

It also ties into the idea that characters must have special and unique power in order to be heroic; to be frank, that'a a big part of why I find Astartes to be mostly uninteresting.

I'm not sure I follow. There's nothing "special" or "unique" about women getting to be Space Marines. They just get to join the club of very popular looking Space Marines, and get to do all the stuff that make Space Marines appealing.

Adding women Space Marines wouldn't make women Guardsmen any less heroic than male Space Marines make male guardsmen less heroic.

The other thing is it would recapitulate the idea that men can only have power or heroism becuase they jealously hoard it away from women, which is not really a theme I enjoy, or that I think had much depth to it.

I'm not really sure what this point is at all - how does adding women Space Marines imply this theme?

Fundamentally I think it makes sense for people who are supposed to be lesser reflections of the Emperor to be male.

So, the Custodes, right?
The Emperor didn't/doesn't care all that much about the Space Marines. They delegated it to lesser human scientists, and they were full of corruptible flaws. He wanted soldiers, a mass wall of ceramite and steel to take to the stars - I'm not sure why gender would be on his checklist.

For the record, I see the Emperor as one of the most villainous characters in the setting, not a beneficent precursor whose message was corrupted.

You're right, he absolutely *is* a villainous character.
Having him use women in his armies doesn't change that.

Hecaton wrote:

Gert wrote:If you don't even like SM why are you engaging in the discussion? You don't like the faction but care so much about it that you don't want it to change at all? That boggles my mind on so many levels.

Because instead of making them even more overwhelmingly ubiquitous, I'd rather that be walked back.

And I'd rather that women were able to be Space Marines in the first place.
However, one of our preferences is much simpler than the other, and preferable to GW as a whole.

Well maybe people with it couldn't become Astartes. I don't know. You don't either.

Exactly - you or I don't know, because there's nothing *to* know - it's all made up. There's no biological or scientific argument to be made, because Space Marines are made of sheer unadulterated make believe science. There's absolutely no scientific reason that women should or should not be able to be Space Marines, in the same way that there's no scientific reason that men should or should not be able to be Space Marines. All we have are creative and marketing decisions, and when we see the creative and marketing trends that GW are choosing to pursue, and making no sign of stopping, women Space Marines fits closely on that trend.

CEO Kasen wrote:I actually do agree that the Space Marines are way overdone and I got as fething sick of them as anyone through 2020 - but how to do that is a separate topic, and as several posters have pointed out in exquisite detail, this is not a realistic scenario, nor is it one mutually exclusive to just adding a few lines of text to a book, a few pieces of art depicting female space marines and a headswap sprue somewhere and being done with it.

That's part of what's frustrating about the absence - They've downplayed it so hard that it would be so easy to fix and they've never displayed the gender-neutral gonads needed to do so.

Precisely my thoughts on the matter, both on Space Marine dominance (because my god, do they get far FAR too much) and on how it's much easier to fix their already-near-enough-gender neutrality than it is to propose that GW shoot their cash cow.

 Gert wrote:
I think that's mostly down to the more unsavoury elements of the WHFB fandom jumping ship when AoS launched.

Pretty much everyone else jumped ship too lol

Hecaton wrote:

 Gert wrote:
I think that's mostly down to the more unsavoury elements of the WHFB fandom jumping ship when AoS launched.

Pretty much everyone else jumped ship too lol

Speak for yourself. Former WFB player here who moved over to AoS. Glad I did too. The game, setting and community is a damn site better than fantasy ever was.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

 Gert wrote:
I think that's mostly down to the more unsavoury elements of the WHFB fandom jumping ship when AoS launched.

Pretty much everyone else jumped ship too lol

Speak for yourself. Former WFB player here who moved over to AoS. Glad I did too. The game, setting and community is a damn site better than fantasy ever was.

But that doesn’t fit hecatons narrative so he will ignore that. It’s how he rolls.

it really can't. The setting *cannot* grow, because it is fictional. It has no pre-determined end point, it has no guaranteed outcome, because we do not (and this is a good thing) know all the variables.

We don't know if Guilliman will ever successfully close the Rift, but the story could be written that way. We don't know if Abaddon will reach Terra and lay siege to the Palace again, but the story could be written that way. We don't know if Cawl would even work out how to make women Astartes, but the story could be written that way. Or not, for all of the above.
The point is that the story is guided by the whims of *real* people, in the *real* world - and for a company, those decisions are quite often guided by profit and money. Unfortunately, profit and money are "political", to use the phrase.

My reasons for changing Space Marines are because I want representation in 40k where it ought to be. We have, over the course of this thread, outlined why Space Marines don't need to be male, and why them being all male is not just arbitrary, but *damaging* to the identity of what Space Marines are, according to GW.
With that out of the way, and having ascertained that Space Marines don't need to be male in the first place, we can evaluate why Space Marines ought to be representative - and them being a flagship faction is a major part of that, because, as I've said, representation is nothing without visibility.

Space Marines are the most visible faction. The rest stems from there.

Okay, I accept your point that the lore is entirely fictional, made on the whims of the creators of the game.

Let's take your example of guilliman trying to close the Rift and make a hypothetical out of it to try and illustrate my point. I know you don't like hypotheticals, but they are a valuable way of illustrating points and I'm afraid I will continue to use them. I hope that you can respond with more than "but that's not how reality is". On one hand, they write that he doesn't close the rift because they have a story they want to play out of some evil power emerging from it and uniting the chaos powers to combat the growth of primaris marines, possibly by corrupting primaris marines, which may have its roots in trying to sell chaos primaris models but ultimately is written because they thought it would be cool to do. On the other hand, they write in that he does close the rift because some people wrote in to complain about the rift being open and how this offended them for whatever reason.

The first is entirely internal decisions - influenced by model ideas and sales and such because they are a business, but not influenced by anyone complaining about the presence of the rift. The second scenario is externally influenced. Option 1 seems like GW doing what GW do, and the universe progressing. Option 2 sounds like societics interfering with the game.


As for space marines being "the most customisable faction" and so forth, this does not mean that there's no limits. If you made an army of marines with cat heads and tails, and whose vehicles are driven by mice in big wheels, and then tried to say that they were canon, you would probably receive the same level of resistance to the idea as people do now with female marines.



In any case. Your argument is that space marines should be representative because they are the flagship faction and they have no reason not to be. I argue that they should be representative because they have no reason not to be, and popularity shouldn't factor into it.

Put it another way. If space marines weren't the flagship faction ("but they are!" - shush, use that wonderful internal theatre system called "Imagination" and see if you can picture it!), I would argue that they would still need representation. Because they have no reason not to have it, and because female marines would be a cool thing to add. You have said "custodes can stay all male because they aren't the flagship", and honestly, this seems like extremely poor reasoning. This is like saying "we don't need to make the back streets less sexist because we never see them at the popular parties". You're effectively suggesting that representation can be ignored on any factions which aren't featured in the adverts. What you're accomplishing there is making 40k look representative, whilst leaving it not so. You're painting the roses red, and pretending they always have been. I'm suggesting we plant red roses. Both result in red roses, but one is superficial.

And I stand for both. Space Marines both have no "natural" reason to be male in the first place, because the lore is inherently "unnatural", and therefore have no reason not to include women. They also just happen to be the flagship, which furthers the reason why they, and not the other all-male faction, should be visibly gender-neutral.

Space marines have no "natural" reason to be gender neutral either. In fact, there's more in-lore benefits to them being as similar to one another as possible rather than having as much variety as possible. Space marines are an unnatural creation, based off a human but transcended into science fiction. A natural spread of genetic variation is expected from a diverse breeding population. Space marines are neither. Theoretically, the most efficient way to produce ranks of super-soldiers is to modify them all to be the same size & shape, so the armour always fits, and to have the pigments/chemicals in their skin made universal so that they can combat harsh radiation etc. You don't want some of the marines to struggle because they're getting sunburn, whilst others complain that the armour doesn't fit properly, and so on. To properly fit their roles as humanities engineered solution to the horrors of the galaxy, marines should probably look more or less the same as one another.

As such, any arguments about whether it makes sense for them to represent the natural aspects of humanity are a little ungrounded.

The reason isn't "because they aren't", the reason is "because they won't ever be".

"And they dodge the question again! The crowd goes wild!"

I am asking you to defend your position that "The flagship product must be representative". We agree on pretty much al lthe rest of it - that marines should have females, that it would be good to improve representation in the game as a whole - but it is this, and only this, that I am still concerned about.

So, you say "the flagship product must be representative". What if it were orks? they are masculine, very much the embodiment of boisterous lads with a testosterone overdose, and have no female representation at all. Does your reasoning stand up to this? Or is the fact that they are the flagship merely a bonus, meaning it will make the representation more obvious?

The flagship faction is defined by its ability to easily create "Your Dudes" while still fitting into the background at any point.
I could create a Chapter that doesn't have any Chapter command that aren't Librarians and that would be fine. Or a Chapter that only pays lip service to the Imperium but patrols a vital area of space so they're given loads of slack by the High Lords. But the second I dare to make a SM female I'm liable to be harassed and threatened.

If SM weren't the flagship and maybe Aeldari or AM were, then yes I'd still say "hey what's up with the flagship not allowing women?". Of course neither of these factions disallow female soldiers within their ranks so the point is moot. SM are framed as the premier human faction yet 50% of humanity aren't allowed to represent themselves because according to one guy women didn't sell in the 80's which means they can never be allowed in the faction ever, despite the fact that faction gets at least half the releases in a game edition and gets the most novels/audiobooks/games/comics.

Orks aren't mammals, they're fungal lifeforms which don't have sex or gender as we'd apply it to a mammal. Technically Orks are all sexless but just use masculine pronouns.
I can make myself into an Ork Warboss but it's not the same as making myself into a Militarum Officer or SM hero because Orks aren't human. I can't put as much depth into the character because Orks by design (both by GW and potentially the Old Ones) aren't a deep-character faction. And that's fine, it's funny to think of the philosophical debates between humans as to why they are fighting then Orks just do it because its fun. But human factions are better for representing oneself because we are human and can apply our lives onto our characters more easily.

 Gert wrote:
The flagship faction is defined by its ability to easily create "Your Dudes" while still fitting into the background at any point.
I could create a Chapter that doesn't have any Chapter command that aren't Librarians and that would be fine. Or a Chapter that only pays lip service to the Imperium but patrols a vital area of space so they're given loads of slack by the High Lords. But the second I dare to make a SM female I'm liable to be harassed and threatened.

If SM weren't the flagship and maybe Aeldari or AM were, then yes I'd still say "hey what's up with the flagship not allowing women?". Of course neither of these factions disallow female soldiers within their ranks so the point is moot. SM are framed as the premier human faction yet 50% of humanity aren't allowed to represent themselves because according to one guy women didn't sell in the 80's which means they can never be allowed in the faction ever, despite the fact that faction gets at least half the releases in a game edition and gets the most novels/audiobooks/games/comics.

Orks aren't mammals, they're fungal lifeforms which don't have sex or gender as we'd apply it to a mammal. Technically Orks are all sexless but just use masculine pronouns.
I can make myself into an Ork Warboss but it's not the same as making myself into a Militarum Officer or SM hero because Orks aren't human. I can't put as much depth into the character because Orks by design (both by GW and potentially the Old Ones) aren't a deep-character faction. And that's fine, it's funny to think of the philosophical debates between humans as to why they are fighting then Orks just do it because its fun. But human factions are better for representing oneself because we are human and can apply our lives onto our characters more easily.

Everything you said here is correct. But I also fail to see how the "they are the flagship" argument applies anything to this.

If space marines weren't the flagship, their fluff would still be the same, and people would still be against female marines. The horrible business of death threats etc. is not related to their being the flagship.

A more relevant question, rather than "if X was the flagship, should X be changed?" is "If X was the flagship, should marines still be changed?". If the answer is "Yes" (and mine is, with no higher or lower reasoning than as they are now - they would need changing just as much as they do now), then their being the flagship is irrelevant to the reasoning, though it is a bonus.

So that's my new question (which I should have been asking from the start, my apologies that it's only just occurred to me!):

If Orks were the flagship, would marines still need changing to include females?

I don't know honestly. If SM weren't the flagship faction then would there be more models for other factions that are mixed forces like Aeldari or AM? If Marines were balanced to the other factions like Stormcast are then there might not be an issue. In AoS there's loads of armies with mixed forces, Cities of Sigmar, Stormcast, Sylvaneth (sort of maybe, they are plants but they use pronouns), most of the Chaos factions, Nighthaunt, and Soulblight. There's also a large number of important female characters in AoS like Morathi, Lady Olynder, Allariel, and the new Stormcast character.
The biggest problem with removing SM as the flagship in a hypothetical is that it completely changes the direction of all of 40k's releases for the past 20 years. If a mixed forces faction was the spotlight maybe GW would have put more effort into learning to sculpt better female miniatures before AoS dropped.

Is it your intention to continually compare Female marines to a form of kink? No one here is advocating for cat people and there are zero Catfolk in existence to even argue that. We are talking about representing half the damned population of the planet in our toy soldiers game. Women want to be part of our hobby, I want women to be part of our hobby. People are making that goal MORE difficult with horrifically silly non-sequitur arguments like, "Why are there no CAT MARINES"?

It's like the Newtons law of BS. For every force desperately trying to push humanity into a better place, we have an equal and opposite number of people trying to push this boulder really hard back to the oldtown.

 Gert wrote:
But the second I dare to make a SM female I'm liable to be harassed and threatened.

Threatened by some, and indeed, supported by others. There are some good projects out there that get positive feedback - ever come across thr tigers of veda?

To be fair, this touches on something of a somewhat unrelated issue. death threats, harassment etc seems par for the course for a lot of things in this community and hobby. I don't think it's female marines (or lack of them), per se. I would argue its cause is an undercurrent of entitled, narcissistic , poorly socialised, maladjusted [bleeps] and trolls in our community. In dome cases people being fair too close to their hobby and violently resistant to change. Any change. Combined with the anonymity of the internet.That's the problem there and I think it needs looked at as well.

Matt Ward got death threats apparently. I doubt he's the only writer in that board.

The writers at pp got them with the mk2 field test ten years ago.

Im pretty sure anyone with a platform who pushes any agenda other than 'play as competitive and as hard as you can, step all over your peers' will get death threats. Smudge and myself, amongst others, are often on the 'defending narrative or 'don't go balls to the wall competitive!' and get massive amounts of pushback and negativity.

Yeah, I'll be transparent - a good bit of the reason I'm in favor of GW officially recognizing female marines is purely because I think anyone who would leave the hobby over it would be performing the same service that Clowns serve in human society - to make the space better, happier and more enjoyable for everyone by their leaving.

The reason they havent so far is, I would assume, whatever numbers or analysis they've done has indicated that it'd cost them more money than they'd gain from new customers, at least in the short term, and 40k is their big moneymaker property which is why theyre playing soooo much safer with it than they're playing with AOS.

But it is absolutely costing them in terms of quality of the product lines. AOS' recent stuff has been absolute fire, and we're looking at a huge ork release for 40k and I'm just...I don't know, neutral on it? They're fine. They're all very serious and dour and low-tech orks, I feel the same way about them as I do the big huge plate-armor wearing orks from AOS. None of that charm that comes from goofy scrap metal vehicles and zany tech.

Support doesn't matter when people within the 40k community feel bold enough to send death threats and say it's ok because the lore supports them.
People threatened Matt Ward because of the content he produced that went against the "established" background but it didn't even do that. All Ward was guilty of was not being great at writing and he had to literally disappear for years from the Wargaming scene and GW changed its policy of putting specific author names on rules publications.
There is also a distinct difference between an employee of a company who can get help with their defence from said company, and a random person who can't rely on a corporation to back them up or keep them safe and the UK especially has a problem with women getting help from law enforcement when receiving harassment or threats. It's also the content of the threats that matter, a man isn't going to be threatened with sexual violence but a woman absolutely is, LGBTQ+ people are going to get slurs hurled at them while the individual threatens to kill them, the list goes on.
I know you absolutely aren't being crass or insensitive with what you're saying but it's a very different game that's being played with this specific topic than a GW writer being less than stellar at their job.

some bloke wrote:Okay, I accept your point that the lore is entirely fictional, made on the whims of the creators of the game.

Let's take your example of guilliman trying to close the Rift and make a hypothetical out of it to try and illustrate my point. I know you don't like hypotheticals, but they are a valuable way of illustrating points and I'm afraid I will continue to use them. I hope that you can respond with more than "but that's not how reality is". On one hand, they write that he doesn't close the rift because they have a story they want to play out of some evil power emerging from it and uniting the chaos powers to combat the growth of primaris marines, possibly by corrupting primaris marines, which may have its roots in trying to sell chaos primaris models but ultimately is written because they thought it would be cool to do. On the other hand, they write in that he does close the rift because some people wrote in to complain about the rift being open and how this offended them for whatever reason.

The first is entirely internal decisions - influenced by model ideas and sales and such because they are a business, but not influenced by anyone complaining about the presence of the rift. The second scenario is externally influenced. Option 1 seems like GW doing what GW do, and the universe progressing. Option 2 sounds like societics interfering with the game.

I disagree with the conclusion you came to on this one. The first is still a "politically motivated" decision, as it is influenced so by the need to maintain the setting to support their business and model sales. By keeping the state of the setting in a stalemate, they can indefinitely drag out expansions, updates, sequels, side-stories, etc etc. It is done to continue their business model in the setting - and that is a politically motivated stance, by means of economics.

I don't agree really that any decision can ever be "entirely internal", because internal decisions are still guided by real people in the real world.

As for space marines being "the most customisable faction" and so forth, this does not mean that there's no limits. If you made an army of marines with cat heads and tails, and whose vehicles are driven by mice in big wheels, and then tried to say that they were canon, you would probably receive the same level of resistance to the idea as people do now with female marines.

Anthropomorphic cats don't exist in the real world. Women do.

But you hit on a great thing there - that apparently entirely fictional cat-people would have the same amount of resistance to them as including real life women. Why on earth is there so much pushback against including actual women then?

Your argument is that space marines should be representative because they are the flagship faction and they have no reason not to be. I argue that they should be representative because they have no reason not to be, and popularity shouldn't factor into it.

So, I agree with your main reason for doing so.
Just because you disagree with one of my other reasons is no reason to shoot the idea down, no?

Put it another way. If space marines weren't the flagship faction ("but they are!" - shush, use that wonderful internal theatre system called "Imagination" and see if you can picture it!), I would argue that they would still need representation.

And I would agree. But I'm not going to pretend that them being the flagship isn't also a major reason why they should be made gender neutral.

And sure, I can play pretend and ignore the context of the situation, but that feels like a very intellectually dishonest argument when I'm trying to be as watertight as I can with my reasons and logic, because there's plenty of users here who would be eager to misquote me and misrepresent my argument. If I'm going to make a strong case, I need to rely on the strength of my point without playing with hypotheticals.
I hope that makes my aversion to these hypotheticals clear.

You have said "custodes can stay all male because they aren't the flagship", and honestly, this seems like extremely poor reasoning. This is like saying "we don't need to make the back streets less sexist because we never see them at the popular parties". You're effectively suggesting that representation can be ignored on any factions which aren't featured in the adverts.

That's not at all what my entire point on the Custodes was.

My point on the Custodes was that they could remain all male because of several factors:
1. They are not the flagship faction, and therefore, they contribute much less towards the pervasive sense of an all-male hobby than the figurehead Space marines do - and trying to deal with that pervasive sense of an all-male hobby is part of what I'm trying to do.
2. Custodes embody the stylistic qualities of an all-male warrior fraternity much more than the Astartes do - Custodes have a much tighter core design and aesthetic that hearkens back to similar all-male warrior cohorts reminiscent of classical Greece.
3. Custodes have never had women members represented, point blank. Space Marines had the older unsold sculpts, at one point.

What you're accomplishing there is making 40k look representative, whilst leaving it not so.

Women don't need to be present in *every* faction though, in the same way men don't *need* to be, in order to be "representative".

Representation needs to be present with visibility, but when Custodes aren't exactly a "visible" faction in the same way Space Marines are, they are much less crucial in needing to be representative. Sure, if there's a clamouring for representation in the Custodes too, I'll support that, but there simply isn't, not as far as I've seen.

You're painting the roses red, and pretending they always have been.

I'm not doing that at all. I'm saying we plant red roses where none existed before, but they don't need planting behind the bike shed where no-one will see them.

And I stand for both. Space Marines both have no "natural" reason to be male in the first place, because the lore is inherently "unnatural", and therefore have no reason not to include women. They also just happen to be the flagship, which furthers the reason why they, and not the other all-male faction, should be visibly gender-neutral.

Space marines have no "natural" reason to be gender neutral either.

Other than gender-neutral is a pretty fair thing to default to, no?

There must be a starting point of some kind, why is that not neutrality of gender?

In fact, there's more in-lore benefits to them being as similar to one another as possible rather than having as much variety as possible. Space marines are an unnatural creation, based off a human but transcended into science fiction. A natural spread of genetic variation is expected from a diverse breeding population. Space marines are neither. Theoretically, the most efficient way to produce ranks of super-soldiers is to modify them all to be the same size & shape, so the armour always fits, and to have the pigments/chemicals in their skin made universal so that they can combat harsh radiation etc. You don't want some of the marines to struggle because they're getting sunburn, whilst others complain that the armour doesn't fit properly, and so on. To properly fit their roles as humanities engineered solution to the horrors of the galaxy, marines should probably look more or less the same as one another.

As such, any arguments about whether it makes sense for them to represent the natural aspects of humanity are a little ungrounded.

This would only make sense if we had any indication that Space Marines were supposed to be of a homogenous size, shape, and design. The issue is that they're not.
Astartes don't get sunburn already, thanks to their enhancements, and we explicitly see different skin tones even within the same Chapter. Space Marines already have different enough physiques that we get explicit descriptions of Astartes who are described as much taller or broader or imposing than other Astartes (examples being Moloc, Abaddon, or Pausanias).

Unless we change how GW represent Space Marines (and making them more homogenous is rather counterproductive to the whole "player customisation" thing), Space Marines have plenty of different appearances - except female presenting ones.

The reason isn't "because they aren't", the reason is "because they won't ever be".

"And they dodge the question again! The crowd goes wild!"

That's not dodging the question. That's a reality check.
I'm not going to argue about a make-believe scenario about a make-believe world, because we're not in a make-believe world with a make-believe scenario, and that's not the topic I'm here to discuss. I'm not here to discuss if we should have Ork women, I'm here to discuss women Space Marines, and I need to consider all the relevant *real world context* for that - including how GW won't step away from Space Marines being their flagship.

I am asking you to defend your position that "The flagship product must be representative".

Because the flagship is the face of the hobby. And if the face of the hobby is showing only one type of *real world human face* and not another, then this presents to people that maybe only one type of *real world human face* is welcome.

So, you say "the flagship product must be representative". What if it were orks? they are masculine, very much the embodiment of boisterous lads with a testosterone overdose, and have no female representation at all. Does your reasoning stand up to this? Or is the fact that they are the flagship merely a bonus, meaning it will make the representation more obvious?

Orks aren't real. Women are.
That should be enough of a reason why this is a ridiculous line of logic.

Deadnight wrote:Threatened by some, and indeed, supported by others. There are some good projects out there that get positive feedback - ever come across thr tigers of veda?

To be fair, this touches on something of a somewhat unrelated issue. death threats, harassment etc seems par for the course for a lot of things in this community and hobby. I don't think it's female marines (or lack of them), per se. I would argue its cause is an undercurrent of entitled, narcissistic , poorly socialised, maladjusted [bleeps] and trolls in our community. In dome cases people being fair too close to their hobby and violently resistant to change. Any change. Combined with the anonymity of the internet.That's the problem there and I think it needs looked at as well.

Very true - and if I can remove as much ammunition and shreds of legitimacy from the people who want to make those kinds of threats, I want to try.

the_scotsman wrote:Yeah, I'll be transparent - a good bit of the reason I'm in favor of GW officially recognizing female marines is purely because I think anyone who would leave the hobby over it would be performing the same service that Clowns serve in human society - to make the space better, happier and more enjoyable for everyone by their leaving.

The reason they havent so far is, I would assume, whatever numbers or analysis they've done has indicated that it'd cost them more money than they'd gain from new customers, at least in the short term, and 40k is their big moneymaker property which is why theyre playing soooo much safer with it than they're playing with AOS.

Very much agreed on both counts - on both partially my motivations to make the place generally nicer, and on why I don't believe GW have - and why I also think that they're using AoS as a testbed for a lot of 40k ideas in the future.

I can only hope so, at least.

Fair points Gert.

I hadn't actually considered it from the pov of an 'isolated hobbyist' getting piled on and trolled in this manner. Take it from someone who had their brake cables cut in school, bank accounts and rape letters to girls i got on with forged in my name - i know all about this stuff, and how it can destroy people.

Yeah - fair. I'm on board with you.

On a personal note, most of my friends are lgbtq, I know the crap that gets sent their way. My way too by assiciation, since I'm far more comfortable with them than in 'alpha male', or even 'straight' circles (I know to those who are actually gay in real life, this is probably a bit patronising on my part. I always found Lgbtq circles safer and more welcoming in general). For what it's worth,those attacks disgust and infuriate me. And it's not just because of my own associated experiences.

I wasn't trying to disagree with what you were saying. I do think it touches on a vile vein in our community. Those that target 'the lesser', those that target 'the minority', even those that stray outside 'the orthodoxy' - my own personal hate.
I think this all needs to be addressed.

I'm glad we agree and I am very sorry for the experiences you've had (coming from a former edgy teen who probably said some things he shouldn't have at one time or another).

[Speak for yourself. Former WFB player here who moved over to AoS. Glad I did too. The game, setting and community is a damn site better than fantasy ever was.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Is it your intention to continually compare Female marines to a form of kink? No one here is advocating for cat people and there are zero Catfolk in existence to even argue that. We are talking about representing half the damned population of the planet in our toy soldiers game. Women want to be part of our hobby, I want women to be part of our hobby. People are making that goal MORE difficult with horrifically silly non-sequitur arguments like, "Why are there no CAT MARINES"?

It's like the Newtons law of BS. For every force desperately trying to push humanity into a better place, we have an equal and opposite number of people trying to push this boulder really hard back to the oldtown.

Firstly, if you think that "cat people" is exclusively a kinky thing then that's on you. To be honest, I find the idea that "marines are supposed to be the most customisable faction" laughable. You can paint them different colours. That's about it. I was trying to refute the idea that "marines are supposed to be customisable" is a sound reason for the change.

Sgt_Smudge wrote:I disagree with the conclusion you came to on this one. The first is still a "politically motivated" decision, as it is influenced so by the need to maintain the setting to support their business and model sales. By keeping the state of the setting in a stalemate, they can indefinitely drag out expansions, updates, sequels, side-stories, etc etc. It is done to continue their business model in the setting - and that is a politically motivated stance, by means of economics.

I don't agree really that any decision can ever be "entirely internal", because internal decisions are still guided by real people in the real world.

It is true that people are influenced by the outside world, because that is where people live. The original decision to make marines all male was directly influenced by the outside world - sales etc. We agree that this was a bad decision - and one which you repeatedly call arbitrary. I would argue that, within-lore it was arbitrary, and in real life it was not. They made the decision based on peoples opinions and not on the integrity of the game - they wanted female marines, then they made a societal decision to remove them, based on peoples opinions. Now you are stating, rightly, that there is no need for this, it's only 13 words, and so on. Thus we have an excellent example of a decision made for external reasons.

If they decide to do X because sales or cool ideas for stories or whatever, that is all about the internal workings of GW. As soon as they do something to reflect the societal views of the world around them, that is a societal decision. I hope that you can see the difference there. They decided to write "The lost waaagh!" fluff because it was a cool idea, there was no external influence deciding whether or not it was a good idea to write it.

Anthropomorphic cats don't exist in the real world. Women do.

Orks aren't real. Women are.

And neither are space marines. I'm afraid this argument is a non-starter.

But you hit on a great thing there - that apparently entirely fictional cat-people would have the same amount of resistance to them as including real life women. Why on earth is there so much pushback against including actual women then?

Probably because the fluff of this fictional universe is as clear on the inclusion of cat-people as it is about women in the space marine legions. Nowhere does it explicitly refute them, and nowhere does it explicitly state they are possible. I agree that we need to change that about female marines, but I was trying to point out that doing something outside of canon and then trying to claim it is canon will get the same response from people who take it too seriously, regardless of the societal influences.

Just because you disagree with one of my other reasons is no reason to shoot the idea down, no?

Oh, I'm not shooting the idea down. I'm merely suggesting that you've got your motivations in the wrong order, and that these things matter for the integrity of the entire excercise.

And I would agree. But I'm not going to pretend that them being the flagship isn't also a major reason why they should be made gender neutral.

And sure, I can play pretend and ignore the context of the situation, but that feels like a very intellectually dishonest argument when I'm trying to be as watertight as I can with my reasons and logic, because there's plenty of users here who would be eager to misquote me and misrepresent my argument. If I'm going to make a strong case, I need to rely on the strength of my point without playing with hypotheticals.
I hope that makes my aversion to these hypotheticals clear.

I have bolded the bit which I find wrong.

Them being the flagship and being in a position to be made representative is a hugely beneficial thing, but it is, at heart, coincidence. Marines ended up the flagship for reasons other than because they can be made representative. They would exist in the lore, exactly as they are, even if they were not the flagship. The fact that your argument that "they are the flagship and thus must be changed because they are the flagship" doesn't hold water with any other races with existing (albeit outdated) fluff explaining why they aren't representative means that your hypothesis "Flagship faction must be representative" is disproven. The hypothesis "Astartes must be representative" holds water, but being the flagship is entirely coincidental, and a very good thing for making this more visual.

Women don't need to be present in *every* faction though, in the same way men don't *need* to be, in order to be "representative".

Representation needs to be present with visibility, but when Custodes aren't exactly a "visible" faction in the same way Space Marines are, they are much less crucial in needing to be representative. Sure, if there's a clamouring for representation in the Custodes too, I'll support that, but there simply isn't, not as far as I've seen.

I don't suggest that they are in every faction, but I do suggest that they be present in every faction in which it makes sense to have them. The popularity or visibility shouldn't affect this decision - if it does, then it is the very definition of a token gesture. "Look, we have female models, look at these marines" is no help if the women coming through the door don't want to play marines.

That's not dodging the question. That's a reality check.
I'm not going to argue about a make-believe scenario about a make-believe world, because we're not in a make-believe world with a make-believe scenario, and that's not the topic I'm here to discuss. I'm not here to discuss if we should have Ork women, I'm here to discuss women Space Marines, and I need to consider all the relevant *real world context* for that - including how GW won't step away from Space Marines being their flagship.

You're not going to argue about a make believe scenario in a make believe world, instead we shall argue about why there is a make believe scenario in this make believe world in which only men can be space marines?

And yes, regardless of what you do instead of answering the question, not answering the question is dodging the question. I know that orks aren't the flagship - I'm not under a rock. I am simply curious as to what you would be saying if they were. If you think the orks need to be changed, or if you think that other factions should be changed and the advertising divided between them. It's becoming increasingly unlikely I'll get an answer on this, it seems. Though the whole point of asking wasn't to get an answer, but to make you think about the question.



Ultimately this boils down to the fact that, if we take the "Flagship faction" part out of it, we agree pretty much entirely. I am simply suggesting that them being a flagship faction should be considered a multiplier for the effect, and not a reason for doing so. It is convenient and coincidental that marines happen to be both changeable and the flagship. If the flagship weren't marines and was instead a faction which is deeply rooted in a single-sex representation (EG orks) then we wouldn't be discussing changing them - and thus we can rule "because they are the flagship" out as a reason for doing it. "Because they are the flagship" is a reason for thinking that it would have a large effect. But it is not a good reason to do it outright. Fortunately space marines present us with plenty of other reasons to do it, so we can still agree to do so!

Except you can do way more than just paint them different colours. A Space Wolf miniature is visibly different from a Dark Angel. Take a look at Thunderwulfen's Soul Haunters and compare them to basic GW Primaris for a brilliant example of how creative a hobbyist can be with SM.


In your opinion, the motivations are in the wrong order. And just to go back to something I said earlier, why does it matter what order the motivations are in? We agree that the end result is a net positive, so why are you arguing about it?



It's not a coincidence that SM are the flagship faction though is it. Heroic super-soldiers sell well especially when they come in many different flavours as Astartes do. The argument for changing the flagship isn't just "they need to change because they are the flagship" either. It's "the flagship needs to change because it is only in its current state because of a business decision made 20-30 years ago when the culture around the game was very different to today and now people are using the flagship as an excuse to be exclusionary and hateful".


Except there's evidence that says women hobbyists do want to play SM and when they make female SM to better represent themselves they get harassed and threatened. It's not tokenism when there are people actually asking for it.



But it's not just about the setting of 40k is it? It's about the setting having an influence on real people. There's no point in answering a question that completely ignores the premise of the discussion because it doesn't matter. You wouldn't go into a discussion on the causes of WW1 and say "but what if Franz Ferdinand didn't get shot?" because then you're not talking about the causes of WW1 anymore, you're talking about alternative history that could be literally anything at all.



Again, it's not just because SM are the flagship faction. It's multiple reasons that stem from them being the flagship faction.

some bloke wrote:To be honest, I find the idea that "marines are supposed to be the most customisable faction" laughable. You can paint them different colours. That's about it.

Tell me, is a colour swap the only difference between a Space Wolf and an Ultramarine? Could I use the Space Wolves sprue in it's entirety, paint them Ultramarines, and still look exactly the same? Of course not.

You also miss out on the legacies and cultures that these Chapters have, and are encouraged to have by GW. Unlike many other Imperial factions, Space Marines are explicitly shown and showcased as being incredibly different and varied within their Chapter cultures, in stark contrast to many of the other factions GW show.

It is true that people are influenced by the outside world, because that is where people live. The original decision to make marines all male was directly influenced by the outside world - sales etc. We agree that this was a bad decision - and one which you repeatedly call arbitrary. I would argue that, within-lore it was arbitrary, and in real life it was not.

I'd argue that it was - perhaps not arbitrary, per se, but GW definitely made a choice between continuing to create women, or leaving them by the wayside. They chose the latter - it wasn't a forgone conclusion.

If they decide to do X because sales or cool ideas for stories or whatever, that is all about the internal workings of GW. As soon as they do something to reflect the societal views of the world around them, that is a societal decision. I hope that you can see the difference there.

I don't see the difference, because sales and what are considered "cool ideas" are determined by the societal views of the people in the world around us all.

Anthropomorphic cats don't exist in the real world. Women do.

Orks aren't real. Women are.

And neither are space marines. I'm afraid this argument is a non-starter.

Space Marines are a human faction. Transhuman, perhaps, but drawn from humans, based off of humans in reality.

If Space Marines were less human, I'd agree - but they're not. They're a visibly human faction, and so still retain that representation of humanity.

But you hit on a great thing there - that apparently entirely fictional cat-people would have the same amount of resistance to them as including real life women. Why on earth is there so much pushback against including actual women then?

Probably because the fluff of this fictional universe is as clear on the inclusion of cat-people as it is about women in the space marine legions.

Sure - and why are women just as excluded as fictional cat-people?

That's my point - real world humans were excluded arbitrarily, so comparing them to an entirely fictional creation is fruitless.

I was trying to point out that doing something outside of canon and then trying to claim it is canon will get the same response from people who take it too seriously, regardless of the societal influences.

And trying to compare something entirely fictitious to *real human beings* isn't a very strong argument, especially when we're asking why real human beings weren't represented.

Perhaps the problem here is with the people who have such a negative reaction to women being included, and consider it such a faux pas alongside adding in an entirely made-up creation.

Just because you disagree with one of my other reasons is no reason to shoot the idea down, no?

Oh, I'm not shooting the idea down. I'm merely suggesting that you've got your motivations in the wrong order, and that these things matter for the integrity of the entire excercise.

Integrity?

My motivations are centred on real human beings here. I honestly couldn't care less about the lore, because the lore matters less than real human beings. I think the idea that wanting representation in the most visible place *because it's the most visible place* is the best motivation to have, as opposed to being detached from representing real human beings.

Yeah, integrity and good motivation - I think I have plenty of that, thank you very much.

And I would agree. But I'm not going to pretend that them being the flagship isn't also a major reason why they should be made gender neutral.

And sure, I can play pretend and ignore the context of the situation, but that feels like a very intellectually dishonest argument when I'm trying to be as watertight as I can with my reasons and logic, because there's plenty of users here who would be eager to misquote me and misrepresent my argument. If I'm going to make a strong case, I need to rely on the strength of my point without playing with hypotheticals.
I hope that makes my aversion to these hypotheticals clear.

I have bolded the bit which I find wrong.

Them being the flagship and being in a position to be made representative is a hugely beneficial thing, but it is, at heart, coincidence. Marines ended up the flagship for reasons other than because they can be made representative. They would exist in the lore, exactly as they are, even if they were not the flagship.

Co-incidence or not, they *are* the flagship, and them being a human-presenting faction in that position of marketing and public presentation, they should absolutely be representative.

If Custodes were the flagship, I'd be saying the same thing, but I'm not saying it about Orks, because Orks aren't human-presenting.

The fact that your argument that "they are the flagship and thus must be changed because they are the flagship" doesn't hold water with any other races with existing (albeit outdated) fluff explaining why they aren't representative means that your hypothesis "Flagship faction must be representative" is disproven. The hypothesis "Astartes must be representative" holds water, but being the flagship is entirely coincidental, and a very good thing for making this more visual.

No, it entirely holds water with other races - the problem is that the races you're naming aren't representative in the first place. Orks aren't human. Tau aren't human. Eldar aren't human.

But a human faction in the flagship position? Yeah - they definitely *should* be representative.

Women don't need to be present in *every* faction though, in the same way men don't *need* to be, in order to be "representative".

Representation needs to be present with visibility, but when Custodes aren't exactly a "visible" faction in the same way Space Marines are, they are much less crucial in needing to be representative. Sure, if there's a clamouring for representation in the Custodes too, I'll support that, but there simply isn't, not as far as I've seen.

I don't suggest that they are in every faction, but I do suggest that they be present in every faction in which it makes sense to have them.

The problem is that "makes sense to have them" is entirely arbitrary. If Space Marines were redesigned, an actually strong case could be made for them not to have women, in the same way it makes sense for the Custodes not to.

But we're not talking about redesigning factions, and I'm emphasising that Space Marines be focused on *because of their prominence*.

"Making sense to have them" is still putting the lore ahead of real human beings. I'm not going to do that.

The popularity or visibility shouldn't affect this decision - if it does, then it is the very definition of a token gesture. "Look, we have female models, look at these marines" is no help if the women coming through the door don't want to play marines.

But when Marines are the face of the hobby, and the first impression many people will have coming in, it's important that that impression is as inclusive as possible. Sure, they might come in and not want to play Space Marines, but they're feeling safer to come in in the first place.

It's not tokenistic, it's representative.

You're not going to argue about a make believe scenario in a make believe world, instead we shall argue about why there is a make believe scenario in this make believe world in which only men can be space marines?

That's what I've been doing, yes - and I've been asking why this whole time, because it's entirely ridiculous that there needs to be a make-believe scenario in this made-up world that requires only men to be Astartes.

And yes, regardless of what you do instead of answering the question, not answering the question is dodging the question.

I'm answering the question by pointing out that it's based on a bad premise.

I know that orks aren't the flagship - I'm not under a rock. I am simply curious as to what you would be saying if they were.

Because Orks aren't representative of people, or the flagship, this doesn't really compare to Space Marines.

If you think the orks need to be changed, or if you think that other factions should be changed and the advertising divided between them. It's becoming increasingly unlikely I'll get an answer on this, it seems. Though the whole point of asking wasn't to get an answer, but to make you think about the question.

Now, if you *really* want what I think you're getting at, let's make Custodes the flagship faction, and Space Marines the side-faction.

I would want Custodes and Space Marines changing to be inclusive - because Custodes would be the flagship, and therefore need to be representative (or not representing anything), and because Space Marines would still be defined on their customisation.

Ultimately this boils down to the fact that, if we take the "Flagship faction" part out of it, we agree pretty much entirely. I am simply suggesting that them being a flagship faction should be considered a multiplier for the effect, and not a reason for doing so.

And I disagree, because being in the privileged position of being the flagship means that *if* any representation exists in the faction, it must be fair and equal representation.

It is convenient and coincidental that marines happen to be both changeable and the flagship. If the flagship weren't marines and was instead a faction which is deeply rooted in a single-sex representation (EG orks) then we wouldn't be discussing changing them - and thus we can rule "because they are the flagship" out as a reason for doing it. "Because they are the flagship" is a reason for thinking that it would have a large effect. But it is not a good reason to do it outright. Fortunately space marines present us with plenty of other reasons to do it, so we can still agree to do so!

As I've said, Orks don't work because they're not human or human-presenting.

To switch to Custodes, and my stance on the flagship being representative would remain the same.

 Gert wrote:

Except you can do way more than just paint them different colours. A Space Wolf miniature is visibly different from a Dark Angel. Take a look at Thunderwulfen's Soul Haunters and compare them to basic GW Primaris for a brilliant example of how creative a hobbyist can be with SM.

That's fine, but I've seen way more variety and creativity in the Ork conversions I've seen over the years. It's mostly armor color that differentiates between Astartes chapters.

Hecaton wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Except you can do way more than just paint them different colours. A Space Wolf miniature is visibly different from a Dark Angel. Take a look at Thunderwulfen's Soul Haunters and compare them to basic GW Primaris for a brilliant example of how creative a hobbyist can be with SM.

That's fine, but I've seen way more variety and creativity in the Ork conversions I've seen over the years.

No-one's saying that Orks can't be creative and varied. Hell, you're pretty free to be as creative and varied as you like (well, except if you want to include women!) for any faction.

However, there's very clearly one faction that GW promote customisation and player creativity in the most - can you tell what it is yet?

It's mostly armor color that differentiates between Astartes chapters.

And trinkets, and trappings, and heritage, and culture, and radically different methods of waging war, and religious orthodoxy, and so on, so forth.

Oh, that's a lot more than colours.

Just a point for the inclusion of female marines being “political”.

GW have gone out of their way the last few years to make the range more ethnically diverse. Adding heads with more diverse features and a range of paints designed to paint more skin tones than just Caucasian. Increasing the number of models painted with dark skin in the publications. That’s all political, but no one has complained about it.

It seems people are happier being sexist than racist?. Maybe it’s the cynic in me but seems the most logical conclusion as to why some politics is ok in the hobby but not gender politics.

I think the difference might lay in the fact that women already exist in 40k, and have probably existing in larger numbers vis-a-vis sisters and representation in other factions for a long time, and ethnic diversity was clearly a blind spot born from the limitations of the world the game grew up in.

That level of representation being acheived for females (alibet not without sexist depictions also from it's heritage), not everyone views the existence of a fraternal faction (even a popular or flag ship faction) in the universe where sororitas and mixed gender forces like guard exist as problematic. Nor does it neccessarily seem obvious to everyone that marines as a fraternal concept MUST be dismantled in order for women to enjoy the game or find representation.

I get that there's vocal persons here who hold that as a very deep conviction, but there also seem to be a lot of people who haven't reached that same world view, including a population of current women who enjoy the game even without GW producing female marines or fiction.

Gert wrote:A Space Wolf miniature is visibly different from a Dark Angel.

Sgt_Smudge wrote:Tell me, is a colour swap the only difference between a Space Wolf and an Ultramarine?

Lore aside, these are different armies. You need a different book to run them. Plus, I don't consider "you can buy a different model!" to be the same as "They are so customisable!"

Considering that the main reason why people turn unpleasant about female marines is because, within the setting, female marines don't exist (regardless of whether or not females exist in real life), I would consider the baseline for a faction to be advertised as customisable to be how much you can customise them whilst keeping within the lore. A space marine rhino can have smoke launchers put in different positions, or some decals or battle damage added to the outside. You can cover it in purity seals if you like, but ultimately it will always look like a rhino. However, if you gave me every vehicle kit in the game, I could make you 3-4 dozen different ork vehicles, none of which would look the same, and all of which would fall within the scope of the lore (except perhaps necron vehicles as they have their whole phasing out thing). If you made a rhino powered by space marines running in giant wheels, it would look cool, but it would not be canon. Do the same for orks, and it's perfectly reasonable (though with orks instead of marines, of course).


So yes, you can buy different models for your marine army from different armies which also happen to be marines, but that doesn't make them customisable. Heck, they even have the lore saying "if it wasn't written forever ago, you cannot make it!" for all their technology. That is basically GW saying "If we don't make the kit, and if you don't assemble it exactly how we say, then it's not canon". Their fliers look cool as anything when they have legs, but they aren't canon. GW's lore makes space marines one of the least customisable factions.


As for saying "space wolves are different from normal marines", death guard are different from chaos marines. But they are two different armies which are based on the same thing, so I wouldn't say "chaos space marines are so customisable, because you can buy a different army instead and they look different!"

Sgt_Smudge wrote:Integrity?

My motivations are centred on real human beings here. I honestly couldn't care less about the lore, because the lore matters less than real human beings. I think the idea that wanting representation in the most visible place *because it's the most visible place* is the best motivation to have, as opposed to being detached from representing real human beings.

Yeah, integrity and good motivation - I think I have plenty of that, thank you very much.

So this is the very definition of Societics interfering with something. Your whole reason for doing this isn't because it would improve the game, but because it would improve other things. I was referring to integrity of the excersise, not your reasoning. You say that your goal is to improve the viewpoints of people who are so deeply entrenched in the lore that they will not allow female marines and act sexist because of it, driving women away. I agree that this needs to be addressed.

So we have the person who is so obsessed by the lore that it means gurlz go home. You have two approaches here:

Your approach - you take that lore and you replace it with alternative lore which includes women. When questioned "why has this changed", you reply (in whatever way you like), "Because society doesn't accept the way in which marines were not representative, so we waded in and changed it for you. The change has nothing to do with the game, and is only about the real world."

How do you suppose that person, who was so attached to the lore, wil ltake this? Will they see women coming through the door and think anything other than "those women made them change the lore that I loved, and I resent them for that"?

Before you say "and that person can sod off", I agree with you - but they won't. They will stay there, and their toxic vibes will make the women who come through the door wonder what they did wrong.

Now, alternatively you say to this person, having changed their lore and they ask "why?" - "Cawl did a bunch of cool stuff and when he did so he managed to make space marining work on women, which has doubled their recruitment, and then he led an awesome battle to reclaim >insert some planet here< with an army which was a mixture of male & female marines, and won because they had enough marines now, and now Cawl is doing more cool stuff in the background".

The net result on marines is the same - they become representative, and they will attract a wider audience. But when those women walk through the door, they will be met by people who have read a load of cool lore justifying the change in-universe, and have accepted and raved about how cool this latest development in the 40k storyline is. They might even have been influenced by the idea that adding women to marines made them better, so think adding women to GW stores will make them better too.


It's about the mindset of people. I think that if you wade in and say "these have to change because societal reasons" then you will get backlash. If you wade in and say "These have changed because al lthis stuff happened in the lore" then you won't get that backlash.


We want the same thing - I just think your reasoning for it will cause more harm than good.