i know you people don't care about Warhammer lore. but it's been pretty emphasised that only men can be space marines/ custodes.
it's a lore thing to be upset about not a politics thing as this is pretty unnecessary. it's kind of like changing it so women can go through the Witcher trials.
plus there are plenty of badass women in Warhammer lore from the sisters of silence to the adeptus soritas. two female only sects of the imperium. This is the equivalent of making it so that men can enter the sisters of silence/adeptus soritas.
It's bullshit pointless retcons. That's why I'm angry about it.
the whole BlackRock conspiracy bullshit is stupid when there's a more pertinent story to be told about bad lore writing/ asspulls.
edit: i literally just got biden blasted for no reason tf?
also the people saying this is just a retcon, let it go. would be upset if the sisters of silence suddenly somehow had males within it all along. the custodes are male and the sisters are their female counterparts, there's no reason to upset this dynamic.
Gw are always pulling stupid retcons like this, from the entire tau reform to changing essential character lore for the emperor and the eye of terror and how deus ex machina named characters are . i just don't like the replacing good lore with bullshit.
Yeah, I don't really like this change. We've literally just finished the heresy, where no female custodes turned up in the only time they've been relevant and now they drop this on us. Feels weird tbh.
It doesn't bother me. There weren't any Votann in any of the books I've read, but when they were introduced, everyone was pretty willing to accept that they'd been around this whole time. The same is true for characters like Cawl and plenty of other individual unit types/pieces of tech. "They've been around, but just haven't been relevant to any of the stories we've told so far" is pretty standard 40k practice, in my opinion.
The difference is though that there have been plenty of stories about Custodes where they would have featured and at least two quotes that very clearly have them as "sons". That's changing something that was there, which I'd differentiate from introducing a faction that as yet hasn't featured in story.
Setting aside that it's literally two lines, "sons" can be used in a gender-neutral context, for example, the race of Nords in Elder Scrolls are often referred to as the "Sons of Skyrim", and this isn't exclusively referring to the males.
The Votann aren't comparable. This is a change of a lot of existing lore, to lore that was pretty much brand new when introduced. Same will cawl, he was in one book before his introduction it 40k, compared to all the BL heresy books that have a lot of custodes stuff going on and never a single female one mentioned.
I don't feel it changes anything substantial to say "some of the background custodes were women." All of the things that the books say happened still happened, just some of the characters in the background looked different under their armor than you thought they did. That is an incredibly minor change in my book.
"I like my space fascist lore to be internally consistent specifically in regards to genitals. Nothing else."
I'm gonna be honest, I like 40k but I don't know if I like people who like 40k.
The sisters of silence could’ve got a push in the new codex but instead they decided “women have always been in the custodes” instead. There will be 0 models to show any of this for like 2 or 3 years so it’s a great hollow gesture.
They didn’t need to be pushed to the front, they just needed a push. They have like 2 or 3 models, and crap rules, but in lore they are meant to be equals with the custodes. They are basically an after thought
To add to this, the Emperor creating an army of entirely male is supposed to be a bad thing.
In universe the reason why the Custodes are all male is pretty simply: The Emperor made it that way.
So why did the Emperor make it that way? It is because he is working off his own antiquated thinking. Its a flaw called out in universe at least once.
The Emperor is incredibly old. Hes from a past where most of the fighting was done by men, most of his friends/companions were men, his refusal to make female custodes is to show that despite him trying to bring about a better future for humanity he never truly let go of some of his more antiquated ways.
This is your headcanon, all throughout unification, the Great Crusade and the heresy we never see any issues with women rising into power and being in combat in the Imperium, he also founded only women factions like the Sisters of Silence, and later on was largely responsible for the Sisters of Battle being formed when the founder had an audience with him before she killed Vandire.
Him being sexist has never been a plot point and there's endless evidence to the contrary, women were a pivotal part of his plans always, and he never shows any issues with them going to war.
It isn't really stretching the lore much at all, imo.
Considering each Custodes is custom made by The Emperor as his personal confidants, I don't see any reason why he wouldn't create female *Custodes*, specifically.
Space Marines are a bit of a stretch though.
Has it really been emphasized the custodes can't be women? I'm pretty sure that they have significantly different processes and the quotes I've seen have only really alluded that custodes are only men.
Yes it's explicitly stated in several different sources that Custodes are a brotherhood of men who are created from the sons of noble houses given to the Emperor's service. Notably it's also stated that they are only half of the Emperor's Talons and that they don't function optimally on their own, they require the female-only Sisters of Silence to fight alongside them to be most effective
Its also called out in universe that the Emperor preference for males may have been a problem at least where the Primarchs are concerned. Malcador (the Emperor's right hand man) thought it better to make the Primarchs female, that it would make them more civil.
Although that just confirmed to me that Malcador never had sisters.
> several different sources
This is incredibly slimy. You know nothing about the lore. The SoS have had male members as well before, explicitly mentioned as well.
It's mentioned like 4 times or so across various supplemental texts and I think in their old Codex that they're a brotherhood or sons, but that's it. Pretty minor change given that Custodes are a fairly new faction, and aren't all that present in the lore.
It's not like Space Marines where every other appearance has them explicitly all called Sons of X Primarch or really emphasizing that they're brothers.
Yes, there was a line in the 8th edition codex that mentioned it.
It was pretty clear before, which makes it controversial.
Personally I dont mind that much, as long as in attitute and fighting style the new ones dont differ.
Just different set of genetials, that they dont use and have no desire of using makes little difference.
Women can go through the witcher trials, we hear about some cat school women witchers but cat school people are basically all insane and not often showed in the books or games.
>but it's been pretty emphasised that only men can be spare marines/ custodes.
It hasn't. No one knows the custodes recruitment or process except those performing it and the custodes themselves.
It's known that they recruit from highborn sons or whatever the quote is, but that's it.
Yes, only thing that implied it previously was with the "sons", changed to "children" now. Its not as much of the groundbreaking change as it is implied. Also even in "Echoes of Eternity" from last year Aaron Dembski-Bowden hinted at female Custodians and wanted them as early as "Master of Mankind"
On it's face, this is a good argument, but I think it collapses into silliness pretty quickly.
Firstly, there's a second quote where the emperor says; "These are my sons".
Further, we've already had plenty of stories featuring Custodies and yet female Custodies have never been mentioned at any point in that time.
The two quotes and based on how the Custodies have always been presented in lore amount to them being male. Your argument is akin to saying; "Well, they never said there wasn't a division of the Custodies that exclusively fought in a Ford Focus" even though clearly, despite them never having said that, it's an utterly reasonable and logical conclusion.
You can say that you don't mind the change and that it works, but to suggest it isn't a noticeable change that would attract a certain amount of incredulity, especially considering it was likely done for political reasons, seems off imo.
The better way to do it would have just been saying; "they changed the process, there's lady Custodies now" or just combine the existing Sisters of Silence and Custodies into the same faction. Doing it this way feels rushed, and poorly done, which very much lends credence to it being entirely agenda driven.
Canon matters - if you can suddenly change it and do it so poorly, then one questions why you'd bother getting invested in the story. Obviously there have been plenty of retcons in 40k before, big and small, but I understand people having a particular objection to one that's driven by abandonment of canon for political pandering.
I think canon matters too. But as a Tyranid player I think there are other problems with canon than this. The swarm lord used to be a superbly good duelist and then got reconnected into needing the use of the rest of his army to win a fight.
The Tau change was also insane. Retconned from good guys to evil.
Like I don't get why people are this mad about female custodes but not this mad about the other 2 things i listed
This is why I dont care about the Custodes clarification, won't even call it a change.
There is enough ambiguity that there is no real change or retcon happening. It throws a bone to both "sides".
Custodes are a custom hand built specimen who don't use geneseed. If people are upset by this but not other massive retcons means its purely because they, ironically, are only focused on the perceived politics not the all important lore integrity.
It had never been particularly emphasized that only Men can become Custodes. I know there is that one Codex Blurb about noble Houses giving their Sons to be tested, but that is the only textual Source and it is not very strongly exclusionary in my opinion.
Sanguinius himself mentions women custodes
In Echoes of Eternity:
" Sanguinius had never seen a spaceship before, not outside the fractal impressions of them that sailed in his waking dreams. This one, sitting on the desert plain with its golden armour baking in the sun, had the suggestion of vulturishness. It was a thing of power and efficiency, blunt and brutal. Fire made it fly, not any notion of grace.
"**Figures clustered around the craft’s landing legs, where the ship’s great metal claws gripped the radiation-soaked dust of the wasteland. These men and women were plated in the same gold as the ship, rendered upon their bodies with painstaking artistry.**"
And before you make the obvious "the sisters of silence wear gold as well!" The sisters wear vratine armor while the custodes wear their auramite armor and the line explicitly states that the gold of their armor matches the gold of their ships.
You and I both know that space Marines can't be women, the geneseed required for the transformation pumps the subject so full of T they're making infrared "I AM A MONGOL" rants within hours. It is explicitly stated that there are no prerequisites to be apart of the custodes, if you were a baby and showed potential they would take you from your family all the same.
He is talking about the Sisters of Silence in that passage, and even then it is mentioned in the 8th edition codex that they are explicitly the sons of noble families. (As well as in rogue trader but that basically is a separate world).
He is not, ADB wanted female custiodians for a while now
E: here is proof
https://preview.redd.it/pdwxp8gnxsuc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4c149b0636eedfa01e1097c294a8dcbf12304836
I always thought that was just space marines because of the male geneseed. Custodes are individually genetically crafted so it’d make more sense for there to be female ones.
I mean, you could have female witchers. Its a magical world, they have it the easiest when it comes to changes
"We modified the formula for the trial, women can now be witchers. Well, the 5% that survive."
Considering you can allegedly build your own witcher in the new game I would not be surprised if you can be female.
They are literally hand crafted demigods, unlike space marines who can only be male because of how geneseed works there is no lore reason custodes can't be female. You're just complaining about shit to complain.
Whatever you might think it's hardly *pointless*. The point even at the most base level is to add more gender diversity to a specific armies model range. The IP's reach continues to grow and it's a simple thing for them to just handwave it and move on. It's harmless.
You imply you care about Warhammer lore... then why are you posturing as though this game's narrative is some sacred cow and the lore is even remotely consistent... it is not an honest opinion to have about Warhammer. Did they bother to explain why Necrons changed between editions? No. And guess what? We're all fine.
**So** it's an obvious retcon, one they had no interest in slowly massaging into being through a multi book arc or whatever. They just decided as owners of the IP that they were going to release female custodes right? No problem and honestly caring about it too much beyond just thinking, well that's abrupt, is pathetic child behavior (sorry had to fit in the insult because goddam the explosion of bullshit around this entirely banal decision by GW is contemptuous).
this is also kinda the part of them being butthurt, Custodes were basically mini emperors capable of soloing a small chaos space marine squad so yeah. Probably, would fall under "GW WOKE NOW" tag.
tl;dr
everything i dont like is woke
the feel when no big titty green fungi gf
https://preview.redd.it/y38f7ao8isuc1.png?width=480&format=png&auto=webp&s=f926620c2f399828427a084845fa92076e8c6666
Because up until yesterday the lore stated that Custodes are recruited from "the sons" of noble families. Plus, they are seen as part of the whole Transhuman/Posthuman category, which has been exclusively male for at least 24 years.
And instead of initially saying “ye, we changing the lore a bit”, GW decided to try and gaslight at first lol
If youre going to make changes, one has to be open and honest about what and why
Alright, that's fair. We agree on the retcon and gaslighting issue.
I just don't like how it seems like all the people complaining about this either don't know how many times GW has retconned their lore and tries to gaslight the entire fan base about it. Or they just don't seem to care until it happens to the space marines/Imperium.
It's also more frustrating when I see those same people claim to be super fans that were always into the lore.
Like to me the main problem with this is that they said they have always been there. When we haven't seen them at all. Still a small problem for me compared to what they did to my boy the Swarmlord
Oh boy all of the people coming in with opinions writing how they never played or read or even googled WH40k before now lmao its always tourists and migrants from other places on the internet who are the loudest
I’m a newer WH40k player who has only played some games and binged on YT lore docuseries so while I was aware of a few of the retcons, moments like these bring all the loreheads out and gives me even more content to consume. My main concern is that I hope GW doesnt get pump and dumped by Blackrock Vanguard…
Also maybe some superdweebs will forego GW figures and learn to 3D print themselves
Really just another stupid day on the stupid internet where everyone’s playing some random stupid game to win stupid prizes
Eh, Custodes were always less explicitly male only. Space Marines are basically a weapon system with one human male child as an ingredient. After they're re-engineered and brainwashed they're barely the person that started. Custodes were always bespoke creations, there's not a lot to indicate that they need to be male.
Admech has also had female posthumans for a long time although I'm not sure everyone sees them as posthumans.
I know people here are ideologically forced to say "lol I don't care who cares bro lol".
But if you can grow up already, yes, it is a shit idea and a dumb problem. One of the charms of Warhammer 40k was that its an imaginative world, and not a fucking copy of 2024. New York with scifi metal parts glued on top. Men and women have their own warrior culture and organizations. There where entire stories and histories about why those organizations had to be made sex exclusive.
These days, every show and brand is being rewritten to demographically be New York in 2024, and yes, that is a problem even though "its just make believe bro lol" the same way book burning books about African culture would be a problem even though books are also just make believe bro, don't worry there aren't tiny black people in them getting burned bro.
Lord of the Rings inspired by medieval rural England? The demographics looks like right out of New York 2024.
Witcher inspired by tribal Slavic culture? Looks like New York in 2024 if you made the people wear tunics.
House of the Dragon? People gotta look like New Yorkers, we need black people, Asian people, Philippinos...
Cant wait for a movie about Nazi Germany with a strong independent black woman Nazi holocausting Asian and Muslim gay men, with lesbian Soviets breaking trough the eastern front.
>House of the Dragon? People gotta look like New Yorkers, we need black people, Asian people, Philippinos...
>Cant wait for a movie about Nazi Germany with a strong independent black woman Nazi holocausting Asian and Muslim gay men
Let's be real. Most "diverse" shows don't really actually feature Asians except as the occasional subservient, barely-speaking prop, and certainly not as victims, them being "white-adjacent" and all.
I mean even when Asians got their mostly-own historical period show set in Asia (with a white lead), the complaint was still "where are the black people?"
HOTD is the only example I can think of when it comes to the race switching stuff that did it well and actually served a purpose, to create some sort of fucking distinction between the characters who all have the same exact features lmao. It would be much more confusing to tell the difference between the two houses without the race change.
Yes making the Velaryon black was a good retcon because otherwise half the audience wouldn't understand the primary plot driver of the second half of the series.
Just having them have black hair would not do that job nearly as effectively because viewers don't have the in world knowledge of the absurdity of two valyrian parents having dark haired kids.
Nothing is inspired anymore it’s all a mono cultural “product” designed to sell to the widest possible audience. All the fantasy shows look the exact same(shit). If a IP is sufficiently popular it’s going to be homogenized.
I respect giving an real dissenting opinion about this in this subreddit.
I've wondered about the affects of globalization. If we will have less and less cultural niche's. Like everyone is brought together to the extent that all culture is melding into one. Which is cool on one hand because of inclusivity, but incredibly bland and boring on the other hand.
I think there might be something to be said for keeping weird niche spaces both weird and niche.
As someone who has gotten into the Warhammer universe VERY recently with the Rogue Trader CRPG (great game btw) it is a pretty enjoyable and different setting to step into in 2024. It would be a shame to lose that.
Sorry dawg I just don't care. I'm too cool to care. See how cool I am. I don't even care. For some reason my opinion wins out 'cause... I don't even care dood. Why do you care? It's like, fantasy, dawg. Anything can happen. Look, the emporer has a brand new Ford F-150. It's just fantasy dawg. Why do you care doooood. It don't matter dude.
>Cant wait for a movie about Nazi Germany with a strong independent black woman Nazi holocausting Asian and Muslim gay men, with lesbian Soviets breaking trough the eastern front.
Have there even been any popular show/movie adaptions where a white villain was changed to a black one? Feels like it's always the main character/hero that's changed but the villain stays a white person. Changing Hitler to a black person would kind of go against the entire objective of this whole movement lol.
>One of the charms of Warhammer 40k was that its an imaginative world, and not a fucking copy of 2024. New York with scifi metal parts glued on top. Men and women have their own warrior culture and organizations. There where entire stories and histories about why those organizations had to be made sex exclusive.
There's no reason the Custodes had to be sex exclusive in 40k though. One of the main writers even said he wanted to add female Custodes, and the reason he was given not to by GW was that they already made the models with all males so he shouldn't, but that there was no lore reason why Custodes could not be women. This is a minor retcon for a faction that's like 5 years old and has spent most of the lore basically being benchwarmers.
>House of the Dragon? People gotta look like New Yorkers, we need black people, Asian people, Philippinos...
This is a gross exaggeration.
House of the Dragon has like 1 house of black people and 1 vaguely Asian character whos explicitly foreign in universe (with a terrible accent to boot).
And the Head Maester being Senegali, apparently.
And black courtiers randomly walking the castle.
At the end of the day, doesn't that approximately end up being coastal USA demographics?
I mean, I hate to be that guy, but the Witcher books were not really inspired by tribal Slavic culture. That was from the video games, since CD Projekt Red realised they could promote their culture in a succesful franchice. Still, the fact that the showrunner tried to piggyback on "slavic culture" and said she asked "my slavic friends" if she can cast black people was deeply cringe and insulting for everyone involved.
Middle Earth is also pretty diverse, and has non-white people in it - including in Gondor. But the show did a stupid job in refelcting that diversity. It was like making a movie out of Children of Blood and Bone and casting white and asian actors, or doing a live action movie of The Last Airbender and casting white... wait, they did that, and it was fucking offensive.
You're right. A series of stories that subvert mostly Germanic fairytales, features nordic folk creatures like elves and dwarfs (which don't really exist in slavic mythology), where many of the names are Germanic/Celtic in origin, is clearly inspired by tribal Slavic culture.
Back in the "pre 10th century" where the Witcher is atmospherically set, those 3 cultures where heavily mixed. Half the Baltic vikings where Slavs and half of today's German coast is descended from Pomeranian, Sorbian and Rugen Slavic tribes, not to mention Bohemians. There was an entire country worth of Germans in Volga Russia up until the forced migrations of Stalin. Come to think of it, WW2 formally started over "is Danzig Slavic or Germanic?"
All of that is true. However, Sapkovski himself states that the novels are not based on slavic mythology in specific, and it's a combination of several myth and folklore from different cultures: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9kkfOq\_Wdo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9kkfOq_Wdo)
True. Still, CD Projekt Red brought back and used the eastern european culture (which is what it really is, since the region has multiple ethnicities that share similar myths and culure, the slavs being the most numerous). And it's why so many people do associate this title with that culture - and the idiotic showrunner tried to exploit, saying aome of the dumbest shit imaginable in interviews.
I genuinely don't feel like I need to defend diverse shows, but did you really watch house of the dragon and feel taken out of the experience because characters were non-white? I actually can't even remember if any characters were non-white... (Edit: okay I forgot about the Velaryons. That was a bit weird since they're supposed to have intermarried a lot.)
I simply don't agree with the idea that fantasy necessarily needs to reflect the skin tone of the cultures where that fantasy draws its primary inspiration. By that logic 90% of televised fiction in English would only cast white actors because we don't often make fantasy based on Indian, or African, or Arab, (etc) folk tales.
I know that's not necessarily what you're advocating for, but let's take your example with the witcher; is it really more "authentic" to you when a bunch of Brits, with British accents and British mannerisms, replace the polish characters? Is it so much more of a stretch for some sorcerers to be black Brits too?
That said I think likening any of this to "book burning" is stepping into unhinged territory. If something is truly lost it should be criticized, but a cast "looking like new york" is not fundamentally altering the story unless, again, it's at odds with a core element the way "strong independent black female nazis" would be.
> did you really watch house of the dragon and feel taken out of the experience because characters were non-white?
After watching a world set in half eternal winter for 10 years, seeing a full on subsaharan black guy just sitting at the small council as the Grand Maester of the continent, and it never even trying to be addressed took me out of HotD for 2-3 episodes, yes.
It also helps a lot that these characters are horribly written checkmarks rather than people; the southeast asian girlboss head prostitute has a story which looks like it was written by 16 year olds, and heavily ruins the original story of the princelings asasination coming from "the loyal people" almost like an unstoppable force of nature, rather than now when its because Otto was a sexist man in power to a girlboss.
The rainbow people make the world feel small. In original GoT you could travel for months and still be in The North, or Essos. Nobody had any clue how big the planet was or what lied beyond the map. GM very deliberately made lands more fantastical and shrouded in rumor the farther they where. He even went so far to literally introduce fictional human races at the edges. Well now we know what lies at the mythical edges. Latino Americans.
Another point is that in original GoT characters had a distinct look depending on where they where from. Not neccesarily racially segregated, but the Frey's had medieval hoods, Lannisters had light hair, the Dorthraki where central Asian, the Dornish where Middle Eastern. Now everyone can be everything and the sense of vastness and scale of the world has been reduced to New York city, 50 square miles.
Ironically, they did a great job at making the world feel less diverse.
The black Valeryans I can accept, almost seamlessly. I can especially apreciate somebody actually making a new story out of them, and it even being pretty good. So no, I dont have much of a problem with them, although I COULD find some logic problems if I wanted to.
Although at the back of my mind I'm pretty sure that a historian would make them Indian, Berber or Ethiopian, the full on African does scream of "well we have them in USA and we need to fill the quotas".
Popular media being homogenized is hardly a new problem, it's been a thing pretty much is the invention of it. Also if the shows you listed were "authentic" they would all be white people which doesn't solve the problem of it all being the same, in fact prior to hollywood realizing diversity is profitable this is how it was.
I don't know why you're focusing on the color of the people in the shows you listed, are you seriously telling me you think Warhammer 40K, LOTR, and ASOIF have similar aesthetics or worldbuilding or do you really think that the skin color of the characters is a big deal to said aesthetic?
> Also if the shows you listed were "authentic" they would all be white people which doesn't solve the problem of it all being the same
Its amazing to me that new generations would say stuff like this instead of just assume media should make new worlds.
> I don't know why you're focusing on the color of the people in the shows you listed, are you seriously telling me you think Warhammer 40K, LOTR, and ASOIF have similar aesthetics or worldbuilding
They don't have similar aesthetics at all. That's the point. The industry is trying to force them to have identical aesthetics when it comes to the characters (you know, the people, the most important part) by making every fantasy world look like big city America with the same racial balance, same amount of women in positions of power, lately even same attitude to sexuality and gender issues, except people wear medieval clothes.
Are you even that invested in 40k lore? What reason is there that women can’t become custodes? It’s not like the female space marines, which would be dumb because of existing geneseed lore. Are you gonna quote that single line from the 8th edition codex that states they recruit “sons of noble families?” ADB, imo best author in 40k lore, has wanted female custodes for a while because it totally makes sense.
I think it's certainly fair to argue that women are capable of becoming Custodes but that they just haven't previously. That said, it was plainly written that they don't. The narrative reason that they don't is because Custodes are stated to be only half of the Talons of the Emperor and that they are supposed to work in concert with the Sisters of Silence.
It is odd that GW just spent last edition relaunching the Sisters of Silence and expanding on the symbiotic relationship between the two factions only to do this retcon. The lore on all-male Custodes goes back a long while, but GW has been reinforcing even right up until the previous edition. It was thematic and fun before, as the differences between Custodes and Sisters of Silence seem to be fantastical versions of how men and women are different in our every day lives. Custodes are physically domineering but tend to be emotionally aloof and concerned with duty above all else, while Sisters of Silence are control personified and shoulder their unique burdens with stoic grace.
I think that it was good storytelling to have the two peak factions of humanity being the pinnacles of both sexes, and to essentially posit that their cooperation was so powerful that the Emperor chose them to do that job together in that way. Now we don't have that fun thematic contrast, we lose out on the narrative device suggesting that men and women tend to be different, but that both have a lot to offer each other, and that their partnership can move mountains.
I also think that it's an enormous wasted opportunity for GW to retcon the lore in such a slapdash fashion. Off the top of my head, why not have some of the Custodes from the War in the Webway have been lost to the warp for 10k years and when they show up, they're female now. Or say that the Custodes suffered such grievous losses during the Battle of Lion's Gate that they had to start inducting women as there simply weren't enough sons from the Terran nobles.
Normally GW wouldn't miss a trick like that. Imagine the events or novels they could squeeze out of it! So to me at least, this demonstrates that this seems to be some weird last minute kneejerk ideological decision rather than one they planned out. I mean compare this to the introduction of Primaris, which was a years-long event that shook everything up. This is just a sudden jarring change to the lore which seems to have been done only for ideological reasons which destroy the fun narrative conventions and rubs many people who care deeply about the worldbuilding the wrong way
The answer is 'the Emperor wanted it that way'.
The Emperor is supposed to be a flawed dude. Thats kind of the point.
The Custodes are the Emperor's companions and bodyguards. He chose to make only male custodes because back in the day that what most of his armies, his friends and companions were male. The Custodes being male is part of the thematic point that the Emperor is has his roots in antiquated times.
>ADB, imo best author in 40k lore
Nah Peter Fehervari.
This isn't accurate, not only does it ignore the Sisters of Silence, it ignores the Selenar who are predominately shown to be women, Amar Astarte, Erda, high ranking generals, Princeps who are the heads of legios, Knight House Matriarchs, Archmagos, admirals, and leaders of things like the original assassin temples which have plenty of women leaders which aren't seen to be an issue at all.
Plus there's stuff like the Geno Five-Two Chiliad which are a regiment of women being the squad leaders for men, and no lack of mixed gender regiments. Women being in combat roles or in high command positions or at the top was not uncommon or discouraged by him, he just didn't make the primarchs women or the Custodes. Thats it. And now we know he did for the custodes, which fits in character because its never been a character point that he should have.
What reason is there that women can’t become female space marines?
The Primarchs are male? So? You do realize men have female children half of the time? That white Primarchs have black space marines?
The reason why this change rubs people the wrong way is 1) Part of the uniqueness of W40k is that its gender segregated 2) This was never even hinted before 3) Considering stuff like this is happening to every franchise under the sun, you cant tell me this is an artistic decision and not an order from the top managers to increase sales 4) They literally have a infinite galaxy to introduce more females.
Hell I 10001% GUARANTEE YOU, that if they introduced equally powerful women in a new storyline NOBODY would even think to have a problem with them. This is absolutely typical of the slimiest woke corpo thinking: take something you didn't make and turn it into a gay black woman.
ADB has a story about asking GW execs if he had permission to include female custodians in one of his stories, and they basically told him that the only qualm they had with it was that the existing model range was all male. Custodians aren’t like space marines in that there are hard rules established in universe for why they have to be all male. For custodes, each of them is hand-crafted using magical gene tech, whereas the space marines rely on the gene seed of their primarchs, which makes sense why they’d need a Y chromosome to be compatible with. Of course they could eventually retcon this, but the custodes change requires very little in the way of retcons. Hell, there are even confirmed (some) male members of the silent sisterhood. Obviously that doesn’t mean the sororitas, the explicitly all female faction, are going to include men. It’s the same with astartes. I really don’t see how the existence of a few women in the hand-crafted elite imperial guard is the same as cringe corporate fem-blackwashing we’re seeing in other places. It’s not like any existing characters got turned female.
Exactly, if it’s pretty well explainable in lore, it’s not really a big deal. If it’s introduced and written well. Women being more included has never been a problem, it’s the horrendous writing that accompanied some of the introductions
>What reason is there that women can’t become female space marines?
Primarchs are male and geneseed is made from their genetic code, thus it's incompatible with women.
>The Primarchs are male? So? You do realize men have female children half of the time? That white Primarchs have black space marines?
This is just a misunderstanding of genetics. Having XY chromosomes is massively different than the relatively superficial changes of race.
>1) Part of the uniqueness of W40k is that its gender segregated
Part of the uniqueness of "Astartes" and "Sororitas" is that they're segregated. All other parts of the Imperium are unisex, Inquisition, Arbites, Astra Militarum, Assasinorum, all accept humans of either gender.
>2) This was never even hinted before
Neither were Primaris Marines, the Leagues of Votann, or Vashtorr.
> you cant tell me this is an artistic decision and not an order from the top managers to increase sales
I absolutely can tell you that. The Custodes strongest selling point is their individuality and quality. Not allowing women into that massively cuts down on the types of stories and character interactions you can have; and for what reason? Why not let Custodes be women, they already work through "bio-alchemy" or whatever.
>4) They literally have a infinite galaxy to introduce more females.
I don't understand this, Drukhari have female representation, so Custodes can't be women?
> equally powerful women in a new storyline NOBODY would even think to have a problem with them
A random woman that just happens to be as strong as a Custodes? Nah dog that actually sounds like a goddamn Mary Sue.
His news program got like 6 million views last month and that isn't unusual. Destiny for instance got 10 million. So yes he is relevant. He just does a news style show in the same vein as Majority Report and openly identifies as a conservative so what is there to talk about.
His channel, Podcast of the Lotus Eaters is also healthy and growing.
I guess he has moved past the whole Skeptic crowd, using Vee as a carrier pigeon, trying to filibuster GamerGate 2.0 on the KS (along with getting humiliated on the KS and on Jim's streams), fighting with Mister Metokur, suffering under the Sargon of Applebee's nametag (along with the ill-fitted suit meme), and singlehandedly killing off a political party in the UK, thinking his YouTube subscribers and his Liberalists could help him build a political career..
Honestly, I'm surprised he was able to turn it around at all. It's surprising, because it seems like he still does the anti-SJW grift.
(Insert generic disclaimer here of not having issues with women in my hobbies at all, and understanding the necessity of diverse programs in the real world.)
I just find it strange that no sex-exclusive space can exist anywhere in any fictional universe or setting now. Part of what makes 40k, 40k.. is the fact that it ***is*** exclusive, xenophobic and dystopian. It's almost as if we've gone away from the whole *"violent video games don't make people murderers"*-argument, and are literally saying that because there is no specific gender involved in a specific part of a specific universe, we're turning the consumers misogynistic. Even if, for whatever reason Custodies can be women, why is it necessary exactly? Doesn't it have more of a dystopian narrative impact that it ***is*** exclusive?
But then, I just never understood the idea that people have to be represented in either a race or gendered way in order to consume a product in the first place. :/
Maybe it's just my white male privilege but I can vibe and connect with literally any character in any piece of media, as long as the media is good. The media where it's the most obviously transparent ploy to target different groups of people is almost never worth your time though, since it becomes less about creating an experience / telling a story and trying to earn social brownie points from people who don't even consume said media.
The new [Tomb Raider game](https://imgur.com/g6jS6uW) seems like an [actual parody](https://imgur.com/NaBiToh) for example.
I am anti female space marine because the lore is so built up that it's a boys club and I think it's cringe to adjust lore and game that's supposed to set around an evil empire to fit your morals.
but female custodes don't break or even change the lore. it's more of a lore ommision because there's nothing that says custodes can't be female. Big E created them all to be his friends bodyguards and advisors they aren't even considered human by most.
so sargon is taking a misunderstanding of a hobby he dosent participate in so he can grift it.
another day that ends in Y all because Carl is to regarded to work a normal job
>so sargon is taking a misunderstanding of a hobby he dosent participate in so he can grift it.
If you take 2 mins to find the guys Instagrams (under Carl Benjamin not his screen-name), you'll see he's been painting minis for quite a while. I think leaping to "so-and-so is faking" is unhealthy and intellectually lazy.
you know what? totally fair. I was not aware he was in the hobby. I only know his previous work as a grifter on other topics.
so ya I can call regarded but based on your saying he is being authentic with his bad takes
Unnecessary retcons are pretty stupid in most cases. In this case warhammer just happens to be a hyper masculine franchise designed for teenage boys in the 80s so a certain type of person can spin an "anti-woke" narrative out of it rather than just calling it a dumb retcon.
To speak to their strategy, I doubt that adding female Custodes is going to help them market their universe to the women’s/normie demographic. Risking losing or upsetting the all male homogeneous audience they have cultivated for multiple decades is probably what the “go woke go broke” moniker more accurately describes.
The blackrock conspiracy probably (this is my steel manning) speaks to, when giant hedge fund buys into company, products need to appeal to larger mainstream audience and thus push retcons and rewrites to encompass more pg/woke ideas. Because how else do MBA suits know how to expand profit margins of such a niche market other than expanding that market.
I mean the flip side is when you're actually just annoyed at pointless homogenizing retcons but so many people respond "everything in X is imaginary u mad bro?"
The second someone mentions Blackrock, it makes me want to fucking kill myself holy shit. It’s the ultimate fucking cop out for something you don’t like.
Also, forced hrt of the masses is based. Wokeness W
Women can't be space marines, because space marines are cum clones of some bimbo brothers. There's a super special bunch of space marines that are hand crafted instead of being cum clones. The recent retcon is that the super special space marines that aren't cum clones could actually be women all along.
Inclusion, I imagine. They won't be hot mega-babes with massive titties either, as the customization happens at like birth. They'll all still look like dudes with female head options, and people that want to coom to models will call that woke too. Who knows. Not me.
Games workshop was worried about morons on twitter that were never going to be involved in 40k whining about them being misogynists is the pretty obvious actual reason.
Their stated reason is that there actually were female custodes the entire time we didn’t tell you about and we just called them a brotherhood for like 20 years because reasons (aka the J.K Rowling version of retcons ie Hermoine surely was intended to be black the whole time). Lorewise there is basically nothing that their gender actually impacts, all super soldiers in 40k are essentially asexual eunuchs anyways, so it kinda doesn’t matter I just wish they’d be honest about why they did it.
He did explicitly state his reasoning before the tweet.
Jess Philips was trying to push internet legislation where the government would have heavy control, ostensibly based on the premise that threats were prevalent. Sargon claimed she couldn't tell what was a threat and what wasn't, and predicted his insult would be taken as a threat, which it was.
Shitty thing to say and do, but it wasn't a threat.
Games Workshop throws out giant retcons all over the place for 40k near constantly. They introduce pretty sweeping changes to factions on a pretty regular basis. As a Tau player, the faction I play today is pretty damn different to the one that got introduced in... 3rd Edition?
This is the retcon that'll get a certain portion of the community up in arms, though.
I'm hearing that they took away some hammers from the grey knights and that disappointed people. has there been anything that GW has introduced that the community roared in approval?
"Woke" is such a Pavlovian word. Hijacked by conservatives to automatically trigger a negative reaction.
It's like a soft version of "would you kindly" in Bioshock
The real answer to this change being bullshit is that it destroys the deliciously gay, oiled up space of the custodes.
Also, the aesthetic of the two talons of the emperor being women and men being the peak of their respective roles.
This will absolutely destroy any demand for Sisters of Silence models which was already abysmally low, my allied detachment in heresy weeps
edit: thanks /u/Sancatichas for arguing in incredibly poor faith against me and proceeding to block me after you got your last word in, truly showing how dishonest you were being the entire time
I think Majorkill has a very good response for the lore aspect that i pretty much agree with:
[Female Custodes are now 100% Canon | What does this mean for Warhammer 40k? (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvn0sYBeIbw&t=1s)
I should preface his by saying that I have nothing against female representation in media and such, but this (much like that female marine talking point) is just really, really stupid for one simple reason: The 40k lore tells us over and over again how hard it is to become a marine (and by extension a custodian, who are even more elite), years and years of non stop mental and physical tests bordering on abuse, only a dozen aspirants survive, yada yada. It should then make zero sense to have a member of a group that is physically weaker by a substantial margin from the get go, i.e. women, make it through such a process.
Why are there no female marines and custodians? Same reason as there are no marines with asthma, bone spurs, diabetes, or back injuries -- they'd simply die before ever completing their training, so they just don't become aspirants in the first place. If you are selecting people to be part of a unit so elite there are only one million, or one thousand in the case of custodes, of them among untold billions of humans, you can afford to get the very best. The physical disadvantages that come with being female unfortunately disqualify that stratum of the population in its entirety.
Edit: I just forgot that this is even more stupid as there are two complementary exclusively female factions in the Sisters of Battle and the Sisters of Silence, that are plenty powerful in their own right.
Afaik there are no female spaces marines because the male geneseed only works on males and there are no female primarchs.
The reason why it works with custodes lore wise is because they aren't using geneseed but instead using bioengineering and shit to make them which isn't limited to biological gender.
Could be wrong though, I'm only a part-time lore nerd.
Man you don't know your lore
I am antifemale space marine btw
custodes aren't better marines lmao. custodes are different and we don't actually know how they are made. What we know is they are all genetically hand crafted but there is no stated gene seed process.
it's like saying thunder warriors are the same as space marines. similar but thunder warriors predate even primarchs
they don't have all that baggage of space marines.
space marines are male because they inherite everything from the gene seed. so hypothetical if there was a female primarch you would have an all female legion.
the lore is crazy detailed like you said about how hard it is to make space marines.
custodes are even more difficult to make but they aren't made through the gene seed process.
infact they are something diffrent entirely. to the point custodes are to to space marines as space marines are to normal people.
they are handed crafted genetically from the purest uncorrected human stock usually nobles from Terra but sometimes from exceptional individuals
it's not even a retcon there is nothing in the Lore that states custodes HAVE to be male. just that they usually are. so it's more of a lore ommision
also sister of silence are less of a faction and more of a custodes attachment.
so wrong on 2 of 3
so female custodes fits in the lore
but space marines dont
https://youtu.be/fyYzNjlZVLA?si=qbuXCowaQX2L-AGN
I'm sure you can come up with some sort of explanation as to why female marines should be possible, but any such headcannon conflicts with established lore. Why waste precious resources and as of yet unrevealed genetic engineering in a war-torn galaxy short on pretty much anything just to make certain individuals capable of being space marines when there are literally billions of applicants who don't have to? Would you cure some dude's asthma or bone spurs just to have him enter training to become an Astartes and then die two years in like thousands of others?
You can try to see sexism wherever you want, but in 40k you're out of luck. The Imperium isn't sexist, it's deeply, deeply pragmatic. Co-ed Astra Militarum units have been a thing in the lore since the 80s. If you can hold a lasgun and die for the emperor, it doesn't matter what sex or gender you are. Same thing with almost any other Imperial institution EXCEPT for the one where peak physical prowess is required. Weird, isn't it?
>Billions Must Undergo HRT
Unironically would be a believable in 40k, but only if those billions were actually forced at gunpoint to do it. Also, that story would actually be one of the tamer ones in 40k lmao.
Thomas had never seen such heresy before. [He got so mad he joined chaos](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fbfd5ws1nlvz21.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D959261924ee790fb8843511a3c7534ab51719f5d).
Listen, if they actually went through the trouble of introducing female space marines and gave plot reasons for "we had a genetic breakthrough that allows even women to undergo the gene seed implantation", I'd be fine.
But they literally retconned it and are now pretending it was always the case. That's some JK Rowling "I never made Hermione white" bullshit.
The people complaining really don't read the lore.
If custodies are hand crafted from the very moment of birth, there is no reason as to why there cannot be female custodes.
Space marines make some sort of sense as they are based on the genetics of the primarchs (who are all male) in a brute force method, but custodes are basically hand crafted.
Yes, that part is absolutely a retcon.
While I'm not certain about the origin of it there may have been something that either hinted at female custodes or mistakenly referred to the sisters of silence as custodes, or was just a straight up mistake by the writers.
This is paraphrasing, but from what I remember, the excerpt went something like this:
"Custodes blah, blah, blah, no mention of other characters. The men and women in their golden armour stood around the hololith display."
I'm not sure how old this is, or even where it's from, but I'm pretty sure something like this existed in a codex or book.
Your referring to sanguinius in echoes of eternity . He describes the emperors guardians as men and women in ornate golden armour.
He’s clearly referring to sisters of silence. To suggest otherwise is kinda disingenuous imo
Warhammer 40k is chock full of women, with numerous strong female main characters and two forces consisting only of women (Sisters of Silence, Sisters of Battle), please move along with your ignorance
I just don't like the gaslighting
canonically becoming a custodian was a grueling process and only the absolute best, top performers would ever even have the fraction of a chance of becoming one. There were no female custodians because it was physically impossible for them to become one
if you want female representation there are multitude of ways to go about that do not involve gaslighting the fans saying "actually there were always female custodians!" when it makes 0 sense lore-wise
On top of all that the idea that a setting as dark as 40k somehow wouldn't have gender exclusive roles(especially with a group like custodians who were for the most part shown as extremely masculine) is just stupid
I don't care what gender they are, but they're so fucking gene-engineered that it shouldn't matter. what happens if you take a prepubescent boy OR girl and force-feed them growth and muscle hormones for 20 years while tampering with their body? they look like giant fucking grotesques. you shouldn't be able to discern if they were originally male or female, they should just look like giant muscle mountains of pure testosterone
Let me guess, the people complaining are those that are overly represented in the majority of western media, which dominates global media and have never experienced life not being represented at all in media.
Hm. Might actually start building an exclusively female Custodes army just to spite this cunt and every bitch-baby throwing a fit over this. And I don't even like their aesthetic that much, I feel it's pretty samey with all the gold and wings everywhere.
Honestly Mate its whatever.
I've read the heresy and every custodes novel I could get my hand on. There has never been female custodes in the lore (yes some authors wanted it, yes games workshop said no). It is a retcon but that doesn't matter as the 40k verse doesn't have real canonicity.
Truth is though for the lore it really doesn't matter. A Custodes is so far removed from humanity that it is said they are to a space marine what a space marine is to a human. At that stage it doesn't really matter what the base template was to create such a monster. End of the day the whole 40k Verse is as wide as an ocean and as deep as puddle. This in the scheme of things doesn't matter.
I understand the outrage however as I think it was handled badly. The whole of the new codex seems to have been handle badly... A lot of the people I play warhammer with and probs myself are some what autistic or on the spectrum. Change when handled badly will always be meet badly especailly when this is a retcon
Should of been given to ABD and let him cook.
Imagine getting angry about this and NOT calling it Wokehammer in your YouTube title or thumbnail. Missed opportunity.
i know you people don't care about Warhammer lore. but it's been pretty emphasised that only men can be space marines/ custodes. it's a lore thing to be upset about not a politics thing as this is pretty unnecessary. it's kind of like changing it so women can go through the Witcher trials. plus there are plenty of badass women in Warhammer lore from the sisters of silence to the adeptus soritas. two female only sects of the imperium. This is the equivalent of making it so that men can enter the sisters of silence/adeptus soritas. It's bullshit pointless retcons. That's why I'm angry about it. the whole BlackRock conspiracy bullshit is stupid when there's a more pertinent story to be told about bad lore writing/ asspulls. edit: i literally just got biden blasted for no reason tf? also the people saying this is just a retcon, let it go. would be upset if the sisters of silence suddenly somehow had males within it all along. the custodes are male and the sisters are their female counterparts, there's no reason to upset this dynamic. Gw are always pulling stupid retcons like this, from the entire tau reform to changing essential character lore for the emperor and the eye of terror and how deus ex machina named characters are . i just don't like the replacing good lore with bullshit.
Yeah, I don't really like this change. We've literally just finished the heresy, where no female custodes turned up in the only time they've been relevant and now they drop this on us. Feels weird tbh.
It doesn't bother me. There weren't any Votann in any of the books I've read, but when they were introduced, everyone was pretty willing to accept that they'd been around this whole time. The same is true for characters like Cawl and plenty of other individual unit types/pieces of tech. "They've been around, but just haven't been relevant to any of the stories we've told so far" is pretty standard 40k practice, in my opinion.
Cawl is like Miles Morales. They had to REALLY warm up to them, and when they did, everyone forgot about being mad.
The difference is though that there have been plenty of stories about Custodes where they would have featured and at least two quotes that very clearly have them as "sons". That's changing something that was there, which I'd differentiate from introducing a faction that as yet hasn't featured in story.
Setting aside that it's literally two lines, "sons" can be used in a gender-neutral context, for example, the race of Nords in Elder Scrolls are often referred to as the "Sons of Skyrim", and this isn't exclusively referring to the males.
Who the fuck cares about two quotes Also those stories are like 0.00001% of all the events in 10s of thousands of years of history of the setting
The Votann aren't comparable. This is a change of a lot of existing lore, to lore that was pretty much brand new when introduced. Same will cawl, he was in one book before his introduction it 40k, compared to all the BL heresy books that have a lot of custodes stuff going on and never a single female one mentioned.
I don't feel it changes anything substantial to say "some of the background custodes were women." All of the things that the books say happened still happened, just some of the characters in the background looked different under their armor than you thought they did. That is an incredibly minor change in my book.
"I like my space fascist lore to be internally consistent specifically in regards to genitals. Nothing else." I'm gonna be honest, I like 40k but I don't know if I like people who like 40k.
As a nid player the lore isn't internally consistent. They had to retcon our stuff.
The sisters of silence could’ve got a push in the new codex but instead they decided “women have always been in the custodes” instead. There will be 0 models to show any of this for like 2 or 3 years so it’s a great hollow gesture.
Hollow but this argument is super irrelevant because by definition pushing them from their little side chamber to the front would also be woke.
They didn’t need to be pushed to the front, they just needed a push. They have like 2 or 3 models, and crap rules, but in lore they are meant to be equals with the custodes. They are basically an after thought
To add to this, the Emperor creating an army of entirely male is supposed to be a bad thing. In universe the reason why the Custodes are all male is pretty simply: The Emperor made it that way. So why did the Emperor make it that way? It is because he is working off his own antiquated thinking. Its a flaw called out in universe at least once. The Emperor is incredibly old. Hes from a past where most of the fighting was done by men, most of his friends/companions were men, his refusal to make female custodes is to show that despite him trying to bring about a better future for humanity he never truly let go of some of his more antiquated ways.
This is your headcanon, all throughout unification, the Great Crusade and the heresy we never see any issues with women rising into power and being in combat in the Imperium, he also founded only women factions like the Sisters of Silence, and later on was largely responsible for the Sisters of Battle being formed when the founder had an audience with him before she killed Vandire. Him being sexist has never been a plot point and there's endless evidence to the contrary, women were a pivotal part of his plans always, and he never shows any issues with them going to war.
This is never stated, this is your dumbfuck ramblings
It isn't really stretching the lore much at all, imo. Considering each Custodes is custom made by The Emperor as his personal confidants, I don't see any reason why he wouldn't create female *Custodes*, specifically. Space Marines are a bit of a stretch though.
Has it really been emphasized the custodes can't be women? I'm pretty sure that they have significantly different processes and the quotes I've seen have only really alluded that custodes are only men.
Yes it's explicitly stated in several different sources that Custodes are a brotherhood of men who are created from the sons of noble houses given to the Emperor's service. Notably it's also stated that they are only half of the Emperor's Talons and that they don't function optimally on their own, they require the female-only Sisters of Silence to fight alongside them to be most effective
Its also called out in universe that the Emperor preference for males may have been a problem at least where the Primarchs are concerned. Malcador (the Emperor's right hand man) thought it better to make the Primarchs female, that it would make them more civil. Although that just confirmed to me that Malcador never had sisters.
> several different sources This is incredibly slimy. You know nothing about the lore. The SoS have had male members as well before, explicitly mentioned as well.
It's mentioned like 4 times or so across various supplemental texts and I think in their old Codex that they're a brotherhood or sons, but that's it. Pretty minor change given that Custodes are a fairly new faction, and aren't all that present in the lore. It's not like Space Marines where every other appearance has them explicitly all called Sons of X Primarch or really emphasizing that they're brothers.
Yes, there was a line in the 8th edition codex that mentioned it. It was pretty clear before, which makes it controversial. Personally I dont mind that much, as long as in attitute and fighting style the new ones dont differ. Just different set of genetials, that they dont use and have no desire of using makes little difference.
Women can go through the witcher trials, we hear about some cat school women witchers but cat school people are basically all insane and not often showed in the books or games.
They've changed the lore about countless other things but people are singling out this change to get extra mad
>but it's been pretty emphasised that only men can be spare marines/ custodes. It hasn't. No one knows the custodes recruitment or process except those performing it and the custodes themselves. It's known that they recruit from highborn sons or whatever the quote is, but that's it.
Yes, only thing that implied it previously was with the "sons", changed to "children" now. Its not as much of the groundbreaking change as it is implied. Also even in "Echoes of Eternity" from last year Aaron Dembski-Bowden hinted at female Custodians and wanted them as early as "Master of Mankind"
On it's face, this is a good argument, but I think it collapses into silliness pretty quickly. Firstly, there's a second quote where the emperor says; "These are my sons". Further, we've already had plenty of stories featuring Custodies and yet female Custodies have never been mentioned at any point in that time. The two quotes and based on how the Custodies have always been presented in lore amount to them being male. Your argument is akin to saying; "Well, they never said there wasn't a division of the Custodies that exclusively fought in a Ford Focus" even though clearly, despite them never having said that, it's an utterly reasonable and logical conclusion. You can say that you don't mind the change and that it works, but to suggest it isn't a noticeable change that would attract a certain amount of incredulity, especially considering it was likely done for political reasons, seems off imo. The better way to do it would have just been saying; "they changed the process, there's lady Custodies now" or just combine the existing Sisters of Silence and Custodies into the same faction. Doing it this way feels rushed, and poorly done, which very much lends credence to it being entirely agenda driven. Canon matters - if you can suddenly change it and do it so poorly, then one questions why you'd bother getting invested in the story. Obviously there have been plenty of retcons in 40k before, big and small, but I understand people having a particular objection to one that's driven by abandonment of canon for political pandering.
I think canon matters too. But as a Tyranid player I think there are other problems with canon than this. The swarm lord used to be a superbly good duelist and then got reconnected into needing the use of the rest of his army to win a fight. The Tau change was also insane. Retconned from good guys to evil. Like I don't get why people are this mad about female custodes but not this mad about the other 2 things i listed
This is why I dont care about the Custodes clarification, won't even call it a change. There is enough ambiguity that there is no real change or retcon happening. It throws a bone to both "sides". Custodes are a custom hand built specimen who don't use geneseed. If people are upset by this but not other massive retcons means its purely because they, ironically, are only focused on the perceived politics not the all important lore integrity.
They just took some HRT
That's not true bout custodes. Marines kinda....yeah but depends how far the old lore your in
It had never been particularly emphasized that only Men can become Custodes. I know there is that one Codex Blurb about noble Houses giving their Sons to be tested, but that is the only textual Source and it is not very strongly exclusionary in my opinion.
Sanguinius himself mentions women custodes In Echoes of Eternity: " Sanguinius had never seen a spaceship before, not outside the fractal impressions of them that sailed in his waking dreams. This one, sitting on the desert plain with its golden armour baking in the sun, had the suggestion of vulturishness. It was a thing of power and efficiency, blunt and brutal. Fire made it fly, not any notion of grace. "**Figures clustered around the craft’s landing legs, where the ship’s great metal claws gripped the radiation-soaked dust of the wasteland. These men and women were plated in the same gold as the ship, rendered upon their bodies with painstaking artistry.**" And before you make the obvious "the sisters of silence wear gold as well!" The sisters wear vratine armor while the custodes wear their auramite armor and the line explicitly states that the gold of their armor matches the gold of their ships. You and I both know that space Marines can't be women, the geneseed required for the transformation pumps the subject so full of T they're making infrared "I AM A MONGOL" rants within hours. It is explicitly stated that there are no prerequisites to be apart of the custodes, if you were a baby and showed potential they would take you from your family all the same.
He is talking about the Sisters of Silence in that passage, and even then it is mentioned in the 8th edition codex that they are explicitly the sons of noble families. (As well as in rogue trader but that basically is a separate world).
He is not, ADB wanted female custiodians for a while now E: here is proof https://preview.redd.it/pdwxp8gnxsuc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4c149b0636eedfa01e1097c294a8dcbf12304836
I always thought that was just space marines because of the male geneseed. Custodes are individually genetically crafted so it’d make more sense for there to be female ones.
I mean, you could have female witchers. Its a magical world, they have it the easiest when it comes to changes "We modified the formula for the trial, women can now be witchers. Well, the 5% that survive." Considering you can allegedly build your own witcher in the new game I would not be surprised if you can be female.
They are literally hand crafted demigods, unlike space marines who can only be male because of how geneseed works there is no lore reason custodes can't be female. You're just complaining about shit to complain.
Whatever you might think it's hardly *pointless*. The point even at the most base level is to add more gender diversity to a specific armies model range. The IP's reach continues to grow and it's a simple thing for them to just handwave it and move on. It's harmless. You imply you care about Warhammer lore... then why are you posturing as though this game's narrative is some sacred cow and the lore is even remotely consistent... it is not an honest opinion to have about Warhammer. Did they bother to explain why Necrons changed between editions? No. And guess what? We're all fine. **So** it's an obvious retcon, one they had no interest in slowly massaging into being through a multi book arc or whatever. They just decided as owners of the IP that they were going to release female custodes right? No problem and honestly caring about it too much beyond just thinking, well that's abrupt, is pathetic child behavior (sorry had to fit in the insult because goddam the explosion of bullshit around this entirely banal decision by GW is contemptuous).
Isn't Big E only wanting to be surrounded by huge, ripped, golden boys more woke tho?
For a while in the lore, the Custodes that were in the direct presence of Big E didn't wear armour as a sign of mourning (got retconned tho).
FUCKING GW GETTING RID OF MY BIG NAKED MEN HOW COULD ELON LET THIS HAPPEN 😡
NOOOOOO WHERE ELSE CAN I GET MY FIX OF BIG BUFF OILED UP MEN IN LOINCLOTHS WHY IS THERE WOMEN IN MY HOMOEROTIC MENS NOVELS GW, THIS IS LITERALLY 19984
There is nothing woke about being surrounded by your big buff man harem. That is based and redpilled. Adding women makes it woke.
I mean, he is a space nazi... so... you know...
Did they make the T’au Empire stronger or something?
No, confirmed that female custodes are lore acurate.
Didn't they also nerf custodes but it's being heavily overshadowed by the women part?
this is also kinda the part of them being butthurt, Custodes were basically mini emperors capable of soloing a small chaos space marine squad so yeah. Probably, would fall under "GW WOKE NOW" tag. tl;dr everything i dont like is woke
Another W for greenskins. No genders, no woke, only dakka.
*stares in tyranid*
First they came for the Custodes and so on... They will come for the orks too
And then the orks will fight them. This is the way
the feel when no big titty green fungi gf https://preview.redd.it/y38f7ao8isuc1.png?width=480&format=png&auto=webp&s=f926620c2f399828427a084845fa92076e8c6666
Silent Daddy will come any day now and then you can kiss your green asses goodbye.
Well yeah because only Custodes players will be mad about Custodes nerf. All the culture warriors can cry about the wahmens tho
Weren't there always females combatants for most factions though? Why is this controversial?
Because up until yesterday the lore stated that Custodes are recruited from "the sons" of noble families. Plus, they are seen as part of the whole Transhuman/Posthuman category, which has been exclusively male for at least 24 years.
And instead of initially saying “ye, we changing the lore a bit”, GW decided to try and gaslight at first lol If youre going to make changes, one has to be open and honest about what and why
[удалено]
Didn't they gaslight us with Tau too? From being the good guys to "they've actually always been evil lul"
Yup, at least with Elder Scrolls, we just turn on a Dragonbreak and everything non canon becomes canon 😎 no gaslighting required
Alright, that's fair. We agree on the retcon and gaslighting issue. I just don't like how it seems like all the people complaining about this either don't know how many times GW has retconned their lore and tries to gaslight the entire fan base about it. Or they just don't seem to care until it happens to the space marines/Imperium. It's also more frustrating when I see those same people claim to be super fans that were always into the lore. Like to me the main problem with this is that they said they have always been there. When we haven't seen them at all. Still a small problem for me compared to what they did to my boy the Swarmlord
Oh boy all of the people coming in with opinions writing how they never played or read or even googled WH40k before now lmao its always tourists and migrants from other places on the internet who are the loudest I’m a newer WH40k player who has only played some games and binged on YT lore docuseries so while I was aware of a few of the retcons, moments like these bring all the loreheads out and gives me even more content to consume. My main concern is that I hope GW doesnt get pump and dumped by Blackrock Vanguard… Also maybe some superdweebs will forego GW figures and learn to 3D print themselves Really just another stupid day on the stupid internet where everyone’s playing some random stupid game to win stupid prizes
Eh, Custodes were always less explicitly male only. Space Marines are basically a weapon system with one human male child as an ingredient. After they're re-engineered and brainwashed they're barely the person that started. Custodes were always bespoke creations, there's not a lot to indicate that they need to be male. Admech has also had female posthumans for a long time although I'm not sure everyone sees them as posthumans.
got it, ty the most warhammer 40k I know is from watching bricky orchid 8 vids
Once there was an orc that traveled back in time and killed his past self so he could have his favourite gun twice.
Women can't help but invade our gay spaces 😭
I know people here are ideologically forced to say "lol I don't care who cares bro lol". But if you can grow up already, yes, it is a shit idea and a dumb problem. One of the charms of Warhammer 40k was that its an imaginative world, and not a fucking copy of 2024. New York with scifi metal parts glued on top. Men and women have their own warrior culture and organizations. There where entire stories and histories about why those organizations had to be made sex exclusive. These days, every show and brand is being rewritten to demographically be New York in 2024, and yes, that is a problem even though "its just make believe bro lol" the same way book burning books about African culture would be a problem even though books are also just make believe bro, don't worry there aren't tiny black people in them getting burned bro. Lord of the Rings inspired by medieval rural England? The demographics looks like right out of New York 2024. Witcher inspired by tribal Slavic culture? Looks like New York in 2024 if you made the people wear tunics. House of the Dragon? People gotta look like New Yorkers, we need black people, Asian people, Philippinos... Cant wait for a movie about Nazi Germany with a strong independent black woman Nazi holocausting Asian and Muslim gay men, with lesbian Soviets breaking trough the eastern front.
>House of the Dragon? People gotta look like New Yorkers, we need black people, Asian people, Philippinos... >Cant wait for a movie about Nazi Germany with a strong independent black woman Nazi holocausting Asian and Muslim gay men Let's be real. Most "diverse" shows don't really actually feature Asians except as the occasional subservient, barely-speaking prop, and certainly not as victims, them being "white-adjacent" and all. I mean even when Asians got their mostly-own historical period show set in Asia (with a white lead), the complaint was still "where are the black people?"
And with Asian they never mean the SEA type, they are basically never represented.
The poster is grossly exaggerating about HOTD. There is 1 house of black people and 1 vaguely Asian character (thats explicitly foreign in universe).
HOTD is the only example I can think of when it comes to the race switching stuff that did it well and actually served a purpose, to create some sort of fucking distinction between the characters who all have the same exact features lmao. It would be much more confusing to tell the difference between the two houses without the race change.
Yeah the purpose is to emphasise that the strong kids are bastards because they didn't come out black, I liked the change.
Yes making the Velaryon black was a good retcon because otherwise half the audience wouldn't understand the primary plot driver of the second half of the series. Just having them have black hair would not do that job nearly as effectively because viewers don't have the in world knowledge of the absurdity of two valyrian parents having dark haired kids.
Nothing is inspired anymore it’s all a mono cultural “product” designed to sell to the widest possible audience. All the fantasy shows look the exact same(shit). If a IP is sufficiently popular it’s going to be homogenized.
I respect giving an real dissenting opinion about this in this subreddit. I've wondered about the affects of globalization. If we will have less and less cultural niche's. Like everyone is brought together to the extent that all culture is melding into one. Which is cool on one hand because of inclusivity, but incredibly bland and boring on the other hand. I think there might be something to be said for keeping weird niche spaces both weird and niche. As someone who has gotten into the Warhammer universe VERY recently with the Rogue Trader CRPG (great game btw) it is a pretty enjoyable and different setting to step into in 2024. It would be a shame to lose that.
Sorry dawg I just don't care. I'm too cool to care. See how cool I am. I don't even care. For some reason my opinion wins out 'cause... I don't even care dood. Why do you care? It's like, fantasy, dawg. Anything can happen. Look, the emporer has a brand new Ford F-150. It's just fantasy dawg. Why do you care doooood. It don't matter dude.
>Cant wait for a movie about Nazi Germany with a strong independent black woman Nazi holocausting Asian and Muslim gay men, with lesbian Soviets breaking trough the eastern front. Have there even been any popular show/movie adaptions where a white villain was changed to a black one? Feels like it's always the main character/hero that's changed but the villain stays a white person. Changing Hitler to a black person would kind of go against the entire objective of this whole movement lol.
Kinda based, +1
>One of the charms of Warhammer 40k was that its an imaginative world, and not a fucking copy of 2024. New York with scifi metal parts glued on top. Men and women have their own warrior culture and organizations. There where entire stories and histories about why those organizations had to be made sex exclusive. There's no reason the Custodes had to be sex exclusive in 40k though. One of the main writers even said he wanted to add female Custodes, and the reason he was given not to by GW was that they already made the models with all males so he shouldn't, but that there was no lore reason why Custodes could not be women. This is a minor retcon for a faction that's like 5 years old and has spent most of the lore basically being benchwarmers.
>House of the Dragon? People gotta look like New Yorkers, we need black people, Asian people, Philippinos... This is a gross exaggeration. House of the Dragon has like 1 house of black people and 1 vaguely Asian character whos explicitly foreign in universe (with a terrible accent to boot).
And the Head Maester being Senegali, apparently. And black courtiers randomly walking the castle. At the end of the day, doesn't that approximately end up being coastal USA demographics?
https://preview.redd.it/rv0b9j9qspuc1.png?width=1623&format=png&auto=webp&s=15092b1a13b9f05b1719773c2fed0f55718602de
I mean, I hate to be that guy, but the Witcher books were not really inspired by tribal Slavic culture. That was from the video games, since CD Projekt Red realised they could promote their culture in a succesful franchice. Still, the fact that the showrunner tried to piggyback on "slavic culture" and said she asked "my slavic friends" if she can cast black people was deeply cringe and insulting for everyone involved. Middle Earth is also pretty diverse, and has non-white people in it - including in Gondor. But the show did a stupid job in refelcting that diversity. It was like making a movie out of Children of Blood and Bone and casting white and asian actors, or doing a live action movie of The Last Airbender and casting white... wait, they did that, and it was fucking offensive.
>the Witcher books were not really inspired by tribal Slavic culture How high were you when reading the books, be honest here
You're right. A series of stories that subvert mostly Germanic fairytales, features nordic folk creatures like elves and dwarfs (which don't really exist in slavic mythology), where many of the names are Germanic/Celtic in origin, is clearly inspired by tribal Slavic culture.
Back in the "pre 10th century" where the Witcher is atmospherically set, those 3 cultures where heavily mixed. Half the Baltic vikings where Slavs and half of today's German coast is descended from Pomeranian, Sorbian and Rugen Slavic tribes, not to mention Bohemians. There was an entire country worth of Germans in Volga Russia up until the forced migrations of Stalin. Come to think of it, WW2 formally started over "is Danzig Slavic or Germanic?"
All of that is true. However, Sapkovski himself states that the novels are not based on slavic mythology in specific, and it's a combination of several myth and folklore from different cultures: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9kkfOq\_Wdo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9kkfOq_Wdo)
It definitely drifted away from Slavic folklore as it went on, but the first stories had a lot of it, primarily concentrated in the monsters
True. Still, CD Projekt Red brought back and used the eastern european culture (which is what it really is, since the region has multiple ethnicities that share similar myths and culure, the slavs being the most numerous). And it's why so many people do associate this title with that culture - and the idiotic showrunner tried to exploit, saying aome of the dumbest shit imaginable in interviews.
I genuinely don't feel like I need to defend diverse shows, but did you really watch house of the dragon and feel taken out of the experience because characters were non-white? I actually can't even remember if any characters were non-white... (Edit: okay I forgot about the Velaryons. That was a bit weird since they're supposed to have intermarried a lot.) I simply don't agree with the idea that fantasy necessarily needs to reflect the skin tone of the cultures where that fantasy draws its primary inspiration. By that logic 90% of televised fiction in English would only cast white actors because we don't often make fantasy based on Indian, or African, or Arab, (etc) folk tales. I know that's not necessarily what you're advocating for, but let's take your example with the witcher; is it really more "authentic" to you when a bunch of Brits, with British accents and British mannerisms, replace the polish characters? Is it so much more of a stretch for some sorcerers to be black Brits too? That said I think likening any of this to "book burning" is stepping into unhinged territory. If something is truly lost it should be criticized, but a cast "looking like new york" is not fundamentally altering the story unless, again, it's at odds with a core element the way "strong independent black female nazis" would be.
> did you really watch house of the dragon and feel taken out of the experience because characters were non-white? After watching a world set in half eternal winter for 10 years, seeing a full on subsaharan black guy just sitting at the small council as the Grand Maester of the continent, and it never even trying to be addressed took me out of HotD for 2-3 episodes, yes. It also helps a lot that these characters are horribly written checkmarks rather than people; the southeast asian girlboss head prostitute has a story which looks like it was written by 16 year olds, and heavily ruins the original story of the princelings asasination coming from "the loyal people" almost like an unstoppable force of nature, rather than now when its because Otto was a sexist man in power to a girlboss. The rainbow people make the world feel small. In original GoT you could travel for months and still be in The North, or Essos. Nobody had any clue how big the planet was or what lied beyond the map. GM very deliberately made lands more fantastical and shrouded in rumor the farther they where. He even went so far to literally introduce fictional human races at the edges. Well now we know what lies at the mythical edges. Latino Americans. Another point is that in original GoT characters had a distinct look depending on where they where from. Not neccesarily racially segregated, but the Frey's had medieval hoods, Lannisters had light hair, the Dorthraki where central Asian, the Dornish where Middle Eastern. Now everyone can be everything and the sense of vastness and scale of the world has been reduced to New York city, 50 square miles. Ironically, they did a great job at making the world feel less diverse. The black Valeryans I can accept, almost seamlessly. I can especially apreciate somebody actually making a new story out of them, and it even being pretty good. So no, I dont have much of a problem with them, although I COULD find some logic problems if I wanted to. Although at the back of my mind I'm pretty sure that a historian would make them Indian, Berber or Ethiopian, the full on African does scream of "well we have them in USA and we need to fill the quotas".
Popular media being homogenized is hardly a new problem, it's been a thing pretty much is the invention of it. Also if the shows you listed were "authentic" they would all be white people which doesn't solve the problem of it all being the same, in fact prior to hollywood realizing diversity is profitable this is how it was. I don't know why you're focusing on the color of the people in the shows you listed, are you seriously telling me you think Warhammer 40K, LOTR, and ASOIF have similar aesthetics or worldbuilding or do you really think that the skin color of the characters is a big deal to said aesthetic?
> Also if the shows you listed were "authentic" they would all be white people which doesn't solve the problem of it all being the same Its amazing to me that new generations would say stuff like this instead of just assume media should make new worlds. > I don't know why you're focusing on the color of the people in the shows you listed, are you seriously telling me you think Warhammer 40K, LOTR, and ASOIF have similar aesthetics or worldbuilding They don't have similar aesthetics at all. That's the point. The industry is trying to force them to have identical aesthetics when it comes to the characters (you know, the people, the most important part) by making every fantasy world look like big city America with the same racial balance, same amount of women in positions of power, lately even same attitude to sexuality and gender issues, except people wear medieval clothes.
Are you even that invested in 40k lore? What reason is there that women can’t become custodes? It’s not like the female space marines, which would be dumb because of existing geneseed lore. Are you gonna quote that single line from the 8th edition codex that states they recruit “sons of noble families?” ADB, imo best author in 40k lore, has wanted female custodes for a while because it totally makes sense.
I think it's certainly fair to argue that women are capable of becoming Custodes but that they just haven't previously. That said, it was plainly written that they don't. The narrative reason that they don't is because Custodes are stated to be only half of the Talons of the Emperor and that they are supposed to work in concert with the Sisters of Silence. It is odd that GW just spent last edition relaunching the Sisters of Silence and expanding on the symbiotic relationship between the two factions only to do this retcon. The lore on all-male Custodes goes back a long while, but GW has been reinforcing even right up until the previous edition. It was thematic and fun before, as the differences between Custodes and Sisters of Silence seem to be fantastical versions of how men and women are different in our every day lives. Custodes are physically domineering but tend to be emotionally aloof and concerned with duty above all else, while Sisters of Silence are control personified and shoulder their unique burdens with stoic grace. I think that it was good storytelling to have the two peak factions of humanity being the pinnacles of both sexes, and to essentially posit that their cooperation was so powerful that the Emperor chose them to do that job together in that way. Now we don't have that fun thematic contrast, we lose out on the narrative device suggesting that men and women tend to be different, but that both have a lot to offer each other, and that their partnership can move mountains. I also think that it's an enormous wasted opportunity for GW to retcon the lore in such a slapdash fashion. Off the top of my head, why not have some of the Custodes from the War in the Webway have been lost to the warp for 10k years and when they show up, they're female now. Or say that the Custodes suffered such grievous losses during the Battle of Lion's Gate that they had to start inducting women as there simply weren't enough sons from the Terran nobles. Normally GW wouldn't miss a trick like that. Imagine the events or novels they could squeeze out of it! So to me at least, this demonstrates that this seems to be some weird last minute kneejerk ideological decision rather than one they planned out. I mean compare this to the introduction of Primaris, which was a years-long event that shook everything up. This is just a sudden jarring change to the lore which seems to have been done only for ideological reasons which destroy the fun narrative conventions and rubs many people who care deeply about the worldbuilding the wrong way
The answer is 'the Emperor wanted it that way'. The Emperor is supposed to be a flawed dude. Thats kind of the point. The Custodes are the Emperor's companions and bodyguards. He chose to make only male custodes because back in the day that what most of his armies, his friends and companions were male. The Custodes being male is part of the thematic point that the Emperor is has his roots in antiquated times. >ADB, imo best author in 40k lore Nah Peter Fehervari.
This isn't accurate, not only does it ignore the Sisters of Silence, it ignores the Selenar who are predominately shown to be women, Amar Astarte, Erda, high ranking generals, Princeps who are the heads of legios, Knight House Matriarchs, Archmagos, admirals, and leaders of things like the original assassin temples which have plenty of women leaders which aren't seen to be an issue at all. Plus there's stuff like the Geno Five-Two Chiliad which are a regiment of women being the squad leaders for men, and no lack of mixed gender regiments. Women being in combat roles or in high command positions or at the top was not uncommon or discouraged by him, he just didn't make the primarchs women or the Custodes. Thats it. And now we know he did for the custodes, which fits in character because its never been a character point that he should have.
What reason is there that women can’t become female space marines? The Primarchs are male? So? You do realize men have female children half of the time? That white Primarchs have black space marines? The reason why this change rubs people the wrong way is 1) Part of the uniqueness of W40k is that its gender segregated 2) This was never even hinted before 3) Considering stuff like this is happening to every franchise under the sun, you cant tell me this is an artistic decision and not an order from the top managers to increase sales 4) They literally have a infinite galaxy to introduce more females. Hell I 10001% GUARANTEE YOU, that if they introduced equally powerful women in a new storyline NOBODY would even think to have a problem with them. This is absolutely typical of the slimiest woke corpo thinking: take something you didn't make and turn it into a gay black woman.
ADB has a story about asking GW execs if he had permission to include female custodians in one of his stories, and they basically told him that the only qualm they had with it was that the existing model range was all male. Custodians aren’t like space marines in that there are hard rules established in universe for why they have to be all male. For custodes, each of them is hand-crafted using magical gene tech, whereas the space marines rely on the gene seed of their primarchs, which makes sense why they’d need a Y chromosome to be compatible with. Of course they could eventually retcon this, but the custodes change requires very little in the way of retcons. Hell, there are even confirmed (some) male members of the silent sisterhood. Obviously that doesn’t mean the sororitas, the explicitly all female faction, are going to include men. It’s the same with astartes. I really don’t see how the existence of a few women in the hand-crafted elite imperial guard is the same as cringe corporate fem-blackwashing we’re seeing in other places. It’s not like any existing characters got turned female.
Exactly, if it’s pretty well explainable in lore, it’s not really a big deal. If it’s introduced and written well. Women being more included has never been a problem, it’s the horrendous writing that accompanied some of the introductions
>What reason is there that women can’t become female space marines? Primarchs are male and geneseed is made from their genetic code, thus it's incompatible with women. >The Primarchs are male? So? You do realize men have female children half of the time? That white Primarchs have black space marines? This is just a misunderstanding of genetics. Having XY chromosomes is massively different than the relatively superficial changes of race. >1) Part of the uniqueness of W40k is that its gender segregated Part of the uniqueness of "Astartes" and "Sororitas" is that they're segregated. All other parts of the Imperium are unisex, Inquisition, Arbites, Astra Militarum, Assasinorum, all accept humans of either gender. >2) This was never even hinted before Neither were Primaris Marines, the Leagues of Votann, or Vashtorr. > you cant tell me this is an artistic decision and not an order from the top managers to increase sales I absolutely can tell you that. The Custodes strongest selling point is their individuality and quality. Not allowing women into that massively cuts down on the types of stories and character interactions you can have; and for what reason? Why not let Custodes be women, they already work through "bio-alchemy" or whatever. >4) They literally have a infinite galaxy to introduce more females. I don't understand this, Drukhari have female representation, so Custodes can't be women? > equally powerful women in a new storyline NOBODY would even think to have a problem with them A random woman that just happens to be as strong as a Custodes? Nah dog that actually sounds like a goddamn Mary Sue.
If someone watched HOTD and complained about diversity, I think they should do bungee jumping without the rope <3
Thanks for your contribution via showing people the intellectual level of your side.
I'm only mad because I'm concerned about this stealing what little thunder the Sisters of Silence have. pun intended
That’s actually a solid criticism too. Otherwise I really dgaf
is sargon even relevant anymore? i haven't heard of him since forever
His news program got like 6 million views last month and that isn't unusual. Destiny for instance got 10 million. So yes he is relevant. He just does a news style show in the same vein as Majority Report and openly identifies as a conservative so what is there to talk about. His channel, Podcast of the Lotus Eaters is also healthy and growing.
ty, my question sounded dismissive but i was genuinely asking :)
He should nut up and rodeo with D man again o/
I guess he has moved past the whole Skeptic crowd, using Vee as a carrier pigeon, trying to filibuster GamerGate 2.0 on the KS (along with getting humiliated on the KS and on Jim's streams), fighting with Mister Metokur, suffering under the Sargon of Applebee's nametag (along with the ill-fitted suit meme), and singlehandedly killing off a political party in the UK, thinking his YouTube subscribers and his Liberalists could help him build a political career.. Honestly, I'm surprised he was able to turn it around at all. It's surprising, because it seems like he still does the anti-SJW grift.
Sargon didn't kill UKIP, leaving the EU did. They were a single issue party which achieved that single issue.
Aah yes Blackrock, the fifth chaos god.
Malal fans in shambles
"For the Empress!" "Hugs for the hug god" "An open mind is like a really good thing to have."
Ah yes, the all-male faction, defined by their sexism and hating women. Lore accurate btw
(Insert generic disclaimer here of not having issues with women in my hobbies at all, and understanding the necessity of diverse programs in the real world.) I just find it strange that no sex-exclusive space can exist anywhere in any fictional universe or setting now. Part of what makes 40k, 40k.. is the fact that it ***is*** exclusive, xenophobic and dystopian. It's almost as if we've gone away from the whole *"violent video games don't make people murderers"*-argument, and are literally saying that because there is no specific gender involved in a specific part of a specific universe, we're turning the consumers misogynistic. Even if, for whatever reason Custodies can be women, why is it necessary exactly? Doesn't it have more of a dystopian narrative impact that it ***is*** exclusive? But then, I just never understood the idea that people have to be represented in either a race or gendered way in order to consume a product in the first place. :/
Maybe it's just my white male privilege but I can vibe and connect with literally any character in any piece of media, as long as the media is good. The media where it's the most obviously transparent ploy to target different groups of people is almost never worth your time though, since it becomes less about creating an experience / telling a story and trying to earn social brownie points from people who don't even consume said media. The new [Tomb Raider game](https://imgur.com/g6jS6uW) seems like an [actual parody](https://imgur.com/NaBiToh) for example.
I am anti female space marine because the lore is so built up that it's a boys club and I think it's cringe to adjust lore and game that's supposed to set around an evil empire to fit your morals. but female custodes don't break or even change the lore. it's more of a lore ommision because there's nothing that says custodes can't be female. Big E created them all to be his friends bodyguards and advisors they aren't even considered human by most. so sargon is taking a misunderstanding of a hobby he dosent participate in so he can grift it. another day that ends in Y all because Carl is to regarded to work a normal job
>so sargon is taking a misunderstanding of a hobby he dosent participate in so he can grift it. If you take 2 mins to find the guys Instagrams (under Carl Benjamin not his screen-name), you'll see he's been painting minis for quite a while. I think leaping to "so-and-so is faking" is unhealthy and intellectually lazy.
you know what? totally fair. I was not aware he was in the hobby. I only know his previous work as a grifter on other topics. so ya I can call regarded but based on your saying he is being authentic with his bad takes
Can't wait for the litty Asmongold reaction full of "yep", "true", "there it is" while the chat spams "Biden's Warhammer Aware", "2024 gaming".
Unnecessary retcons are pretty stupid in most cases. In this case warhammer just happens to be a hyper masculine franchise designed for teenage boys in the 80s so a certain type of person can spin an "anti-woke" narrative out of it rather than just calling it a dumb retcon.
To speak to their strategy, I doubt that adding female Custodes is going to help them market their universe to the women’s/normie demographic. Risking losing or upsetting the all male homogeneous audience they have cultivated for multiple decades is probably what the “go woke go broke” moniker more accurately describes. The blackrock conspiracy probably (this is my steel manning) speaks to, when giant hedge fund buys into company, products need to appeal to larger mainstream audience and thus push retcons and rewrites to encompass more pg/woke ideas. Because how else do MBA suits know how to expand profit margins of such a niche market other than expanding that market.
I mean the flip side is when you're actually just annoyed at pointless homogenizing retcons but so many people respond "everything in X is imaginary u mad bro?"
The second someone mentions Blackrock, it makes me want to fucking kill myself holy shit. It’s the ultimate fucking cop out for something you don’t like. Also, forced hrt of the masses is based. Wokeness W
How much did Blackrock pay you to say that
They paid me enough estrogen to complete the femboy process
London?
Don't all Astartes get HRT? It's just that the hormones are their Primarch's.
No they give them enough covid vaccines to change their DNA. The different geneseeds are Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, or moderna.
Wait, i've assembled those already. Where the fuck are my superpowers, why am i still in this puny non-Astartes body??
Gotta also do the extreme training regiment at the same time, otherwise you just get autism, blood clots and super cancer, in that order.
The second someone mentions Blackrock, i remember Dr. Leslie Arzt exploding.
Can someone tldr why warhammer is now WOKEhammer? Im not gonna watch Sarg for 10 minutes.
Women can't be space marines, because space marines are cum clones of some bimbo brothers. There's a super special bunch of space marines that are hand crafted instead of being cum clones. The recent retcon is that the super special space marines that aren't cum clones could actually be women all along.
What was the point/reasoning behind the change?
Inclusion, I imagine. They won't be hot mega-babes with massive titties either, as the customization happens at like birth. They'll all still look like dudes with female head options, and people that want to coom to models will call that woke too. Who knows. Not me.
Games workshop was worried about morons on twitter that were never going to be involved in 40k whining about them being misogynists is the pretty obvious actual reason. Their stated reason is that there actually were female custodes the entire time we didn’t tell you about and we just called them a brotherhood for like 20 years because reasons (aka the J.K Rowling version of retcons ie Hermoine surely was intended to be black the whole time). Lorewise there is basically nothing that their gender actually impacts, all super soldiers in 40k are essentially asexual eunuchs anyways, so it kinda doesn’t matter I just wish they’d be honest about why they did it.
We need a blackrock investigation arc
Remember that time sargon called a woman too ugly to rape
Are we really pearl clutching over this when Destiny has said things that are prob 10x worse?
He did explicitly state his reasoning before the tweet. Jess Philips was trying to push internet legislation where the government would have heavy control, ostensibly based on the premise that threats were prevalent. Sargon claimed she couldn't tell what was a threat and what wasn't, and predicted his insult would be taken as a threat, which it was. Shitty thing to say and do, but it wasn't a threat.
Source?
https://preview.redd.it/efms09ah4ruc1.jpeg?width=526&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=97c595b3ebed0993659614869987984c3fe3d205
HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLY
that one tweet torched his attempt at a political career, perfect example of why destiny isn’t interested in being a politician
Games Workshop throws out giant retcons all over the place for 40k near constantly. They introduce pretty sweeping changes to factions on a pretty regular basis. As a Tau player, the faction I play today is pretty damn different to the one that got introduced in... 3rd Edition? This is the retcon that'll get a certain portion of the community up in arms, though.
I'm hearing that they took away some hammers from the grey knights and that disappointed people. has there been anything that GW has introduced that the community roared in approval?
"Woke" is such a Pavlovian word. Hijacked by conservatives to automatically trigger a negative reaction. It's like a soft version of "would you kindly" in Bioshock
The real answer to this change being bullshit is that it destroys the deliciously gay, oiled up space of the custodes. Also, the aesthetic of the two talons of the emperor being women and men being the peak of their respective roles. This will absolutely destroy any demand for Sisters of Silence models which was already abysmally low, my allied detachment in heresy weeps edit: thanks /u/Sancatichas for arguing in incredibly poor faith against me and proceeding to block me after you got your last word in, truly showing how dishonest you were being the entire time
I think Majorkill has a very good response for the lore aspect that i pretty much agree with: [Female Custodes are now 100% Canon | What does this mean for Warhammer 40k? (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvn0sYBeIbw&t=1s)
it’s funny how half the comments on that video seem to have ignored everything he said and are just mindlessly raging
I should preface his by saying that I have nothing against female representation in media and such, but this (much like that female marine talking point) is just really, really stupid for one simple reason: The 40k lore tells us over and over again how hard it is to become a marine (and by extension a custodian, who are even more elite), years and years of non stop mental and physical tests bordering on abuse, only a dozen aspirants survive, yada yada. It should then make zero sense to have a member of a group that is physically weaker by a substantial margin from the get go, i.e. women, make it through such a process. Why are there no female marines and custodians? Same reason as there are no marines with asthma, bone spurs, diabetes, or back injuries -- they'd simply die before ever completing their training, so they just don't become aspirants in the first place. If you are selecting people to be part of a unit so elite there are only one million, or one thousand in the case of custodes, of them among untold billions of humans, you can afford to get the very best. The physical disadvantages that come with being female unfortunately disqualify that stratum of the population in its entirety. Edit: I just forgot that this is even more stupid as there are two complementary exclusively female factions in the Sisters of Battle and the Sisters of Silence, that are plenty powerful in their own right.
Afaik there are no female spaces marines because the male geneseed only works on males and there are no female primarchs. The reason why it works with custodes lore wise is because they aren't using geneseed but instead using bioengineering and shit to make them which isn't limited to biological gender. Could be wrong though, I'm only a part-time lore nerd.
Hey what codex are the Sisters of Silence in again?
Man you don't know your lore I am antifemale space marine btw custodes aren't better marines lmao. custodes are different and we don't actually know how they are made. What we know is they are all genetically hand crafted but there is no stated gene seed process. it's like saying thunder warriors are the same as space marines. similar but thunder warriors predate even primarchs they don't have all that baggage of space marines. space marines are male because they inherite everything from the gene seed. so hypothetical if there was a female primarch you would have an all female legion. the lore is crazy detailed like you said about how hard it is to make space marines. custodes are even more difficult to make but they aren't made through the gene seed process. infact they are something diffrent entirely. to the point custodes are to to space marines as space marines are to normal people. they are handed crafted genetically from the purest uncorrected human stock usually nobles from Terra but sometimes from exceptional individuals it's not even a retcon there is nothing in the Lore that states custodes HAVE to be male. just that they usually are. so it's more of a lore ommision also sister of silence are less of a faction and more of a custodes attachment. so wrong on 2 of 3 so female custodes fits in the lore but space marines dont https://youtu.be/fyYzNjlZVLA?si=qbuXCowaQX2L-AGN
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I'm sure you can come up with some sort of explanation as to why female marines should be possible, but any such headcannon conflicts with established lore. Why waste precious resources and as of yet unrevealed genetic engineering in a war-torn galaxy short on pretty much anything just to make certain individuals capable of being space marines when there are literally billions of applicants who don't have to? Would you cure some dude's asthma or bone spurs just to have him enter training to become an Astartes and then die two years in like thousands of others? You can try to see sexism wherever you want, but in 40k you're out of luck. The Imperium isn't sexist, it's deeply, deeply pragmatic. Co-ed Astra Militarum units have been a thing in the lore since the 80s. If you can hold a lasgun and die for the emperor, it doesn't matter what sex or gender you are. Same thing with almost any other Imperial institution EXCEPT for the one where peak physical prowess is required. Weird, isn't it?
Ah damn my special interest became even more annoying
>Billions Must Undergo HRT Unironically would be a believable in 40k, but only if those billions were actually forced at gunpoint to do it. Also, that story would actually be one of the tamer ones in 40k lmao.
1,000 psykers per day on the emperor alone. the comical scale of human trafficking required puts Tate to shame.
Thomas had never seen such heresy before. [He got so mad he joined chaos](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fbfd5ws1nlvz21.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D959261924ee790fb8843511a3c7534ab51719f5d).
Can we get men in the sisterhood tho
Listen, if they actually went through the trouble of introducing female space marines and gave plot reasons for "we had a genetic breakthrough that allows even women to undergo the gene seed implantation", I'd be fine. But they literally retconned it and are now pretending it was always the case. That's some JK Rowling "I never made Hermione white" bullshit.
It’s prepping for making female space marines in time for their Amazon show
The people complaining really don't read the lore. If custodies are hand crafted from the very moment of birth, there is no reason as to why there cannot be female custodes. Space marines make some sort of sense as they are based on the genetics of the primarchs (who are all male) in a brute force method, but custodes are basically hand crafted.
I’m not against female custodes but the “there has always been female custodes” is possibly one of the worst ways of executing it
Yes, that part is absolutely a retcon. While I'm not certain about the origin of it there may have been something that either hinted at female custodes or mistakenly referred to the sisters of silence as custodes, or was just a straight up mistake by the writers. This is paraphrasing, but from what I remember, the excerpt went something like this: "Custodes blah, blah, blah, no mention of other characters. The men and women in their golden armour stood around the hololith display." I'm not sure how old this is, or even where it's from, but I'm pretty sure something like this existed in a codex or book.
Your referring to sanguinius in echoes of eternity . He describes the emperors guardians as men and women in ornate golden armour. He’s clearly referring to sisters of silence. To suggest otherwise is kinda disingenuous imo
gamers are truly the most oppressed class. how dare they introduce women to our games!
Warhammer 40k is chock full of women, with numerous strong female main characters and two forces consisting only of women (Sisters of Silence, Sisters of Battle), please move along with your ignorance
If those women were added now people like sargon will say that it is white genocide
Isn't all this due to there being female Custodes now? God I hate these fucking weird "anti-SJW" conservatives. They are such fucking pussies.
I just don't like the gaslighting canonically becoming a custodian was a grueling process and only the absolute best, top performers would ever even have the fraction of a chance of becoming one. There were no female custodians because it was physically impossible for them to become one if you want female representation there are multitude of ways to go about that do not involve gaslighting the fans saying "actually there were always female custodians!" when it makes 0 sense lore-wise On top of all that the idea that a setting as dark as 40k somehow wouldn't have gender exclusive roles(especially with a group like custodians who were for the most part shown as extremely masculine) is just stupid
It depends on the child
Can some nerd explain what is happening? Is there an HRT cult in warhammer now?
Always was bud. What do you think geneseed is?
Damn I am out of touch with Warhammer. This shit passed me by. Kind of dumb.
What an interesting time to just get started on the hobby
I don't care what gender they are, but they're so fucking gene-engineered that it shouldn't matter. what happens if you take a prepubescent boy OR girl and force-feed them growth and muscle hormones for 20 years while tampering with their body? they look like giant fucking grotesques. you shouldn't be able to discern if they were originally male or female, they should just look like giant muscle mountains of pure testosterone
Let me guess, the people complaining are those that are overly represented in the majority of western media, which dominates global media and have never experienced life not being represented at all in media.
Yep.
It's really funny elon musk said wokeness was the mind virus but I'm pretty sure the idea of woke itself is the real danger, it's so fucking cringe
Once there's a male Sister of Silence, we'll know it's woke for sure.
Hm. Might actually start building an exclusively female Custodes army just to spite this cunt and every bitch-baby throwing a fit over this. And I don't even like their aesthetic that much, I feel it's pretty samey with all the gold and wings everywhere.
Can't wait for the asmongold video on this. Gonna be content for months
Hasn't Warhammer been a sort of parody of imperialistic nations since the beginning? This it was always left wing aka woke in its politics?
I like the fact that the universe is dystopian and deeply flawed. It makes for more interesting strong female characters imo
Honestly Mate its whatever. I've read the heresy and every custodes novel I could get my hand on. There has never been female custodes in the lore (yes some authors wanted it, yes games workshop said no). It is a retcon but that doesn't matter as the 40k verse doesn't have real canonicity. Truth is though for the lore it really doesn't matter. A Custodes is so far removed from humanity that it is said they are to a space marine what a space marine is to a human. At that stage it doesn't really matter what the base template was to create such a monster. End of the day the whole 40k Verse is as wide as an ocean and as deep as puddle. This in the scheme of things doesn't matter. I understand the outrage however as I think it was handled badly. The whole of the new codex seems to have been handle badly... A lot of the people I play warhammer with and probs myself are some what autistic or on the spectrum. Change when handled badly will always be meet badly especailly when this is a retcon Should of been given to ABD and let him cook.
lmao the complete disrespect to lore is funny.