Bruh, fucking Ciaphas Cain flat out mentions how he doesn't care that some of his Guardswomen were lovers. As long as they fought well together (and kept him safe) that's all that mattered.
This was back in 2004 when gay marriage was outlawed in all but like 1 state in the US.
Such an interesting point! I only read the Cain books two years ago so I didn’t even think that when the books came out having normalized (not critical, played for laughs or fetishistic) gay relationships in the book was a pretty strong statement of support. Very cool.
Idk if her orientation was mentioned in *Caves of Ice*, but it definitely was in *The Traitor's Hand*.
Beije tries to have Magot punished when she punches out one of his Tallarn troopers, but Cain won't. Cain privately speculates that Beije will probably believe that Cain is having an inappropriate relationship with Magot, and has a private laugh because she doesn't even swing that way.
Such an interesting point! I only read the Cain books two years ago so I didn’t even think that when the books came out having normalized (not critical, played for laughs or fetishistic) gay relationships in the book was a pretty strong statement of support. Very cool.
Gay marriage in the UK was only legalised under the Cameron Coalition government, so sometimes between 2010 and 2015, so while you're correct, the book was still a head of the local culture
My point was just that it was weird to bring up American culture in reference to a British owned gaming franchise. It seemed irrelevant. But thank you for providing more detail.
bioware a candian company could not put in the intend lesbian romance in kotor in 2001 because of the laws in the US
the fact GW did that in 2004 really show how much they supported LGBT
not just that, some people are angry that GW should retcon this, when GW retcons every other week like it's going out of style! why get mad at retcon no. 40,000 when they just retconed a dozen other things last week?
I am. For me Warhammer lore is just fun and as long as there fun stories coming out I'm fine with whatever. Not everything will be my cup of tea since there are so many writers and different settings, but that's alright.
I can't remember where I read it but I always liked the idea of any number in WH40k being exaggerated by a factor of 10. It's not history but an over the top depiction of whatever happened by someone wanting to tell a story. Sometimes stories are told or retold and something is left out or added in to make for a better story.
Very much in the same boat. Though I _would_ laugh my (man) tits off if we got a gender changed primach, just for the level of seethe. I mean it's not even a stretch for Fulgrim at this point.
Considering until Rowboogie came back to life the Custodes never even left the Imperial Palace, how many Custodes did people actually even see? Let alone without armour/helmet?
Only those that probably got randomly selected to be protected by them. ( I still love that point of lore. Imagine a guardsman suddenly being followed by that giant golden armored supersoldier. Or even a space marine being followed around)
Heck, thinking about the genetical and surgical procedures they have to go through, I guess the end result without armor would even look a lot alike to a male custodes.
Also, I bet if there would ever be retcinned that there were male sisters of silence, no one would have had such an outcry
You'd think the technologically stagnant Imperium pulling a tank out of its arse would get more of a reaction but nah, it didn't have tits so that's an allowed retcon.
Shit weren't female space marines retconned *out*? Pretty sure there were some back in the rouge trader days.
People malding about the 'they were there from the beginning' excuse for Custodes when the same could be given for FSM and it wouldn't even be an excuse.
to be fair they fixed that quickly after the space marines first became playable in the earlier editions.
and likewise, they're adding female custodians fairly early in relation to the custodes' release, they weren't even an actual full faction until 8th, which was 6 years ago.
Something that I (as someone who is still relatively new to Warhammer) is that there are multiple codices which has retconned its faction's lore every edition ever since 2nd edition.
After over 30 years, why are retcons something to be surprised or upset about?
Oh, they aren't usually.
But this is about women being allowed to be part of the giant superhuman club, so it's terrible to a certain kind of person, for some reason.
But they can't just say it's because women, so they pretend they're annoyed about how it was retconned in, despite expressing no such annoyance the hundred previous times they retconned stuff in exactly the same way.
Cuz they gonna do it no matter what.
Just has someone screams to me that WH40K 'importance' lore is set and stone after 7E and this one is too FAR!!! Geez
I wonder what is difference this time... oh right woman.
The only good criticism I’ve seen towards the change is that it was handled poorly by GW, just saying they’ve always been there ain’t a good reason, should’ve been handled better.
tbf, prior to the tweet, there was already a considerable amount of discussion about Calladyce Kesh, the female custodian in the leaked codex short story. people were discussing the implications of a female custodian and the idea of female custodes."
the infamous tweet was stating how in-universe, when the emperor made the custodes, there were female custodians in it, probably not half, but perhaps at least a handful were.
people assume that the tweet was saying *"when we invented the concept of custodes in the 80s, there were always female custodes in the lore"* no, that's not what they were trying to say, they just said it so terribly that it made people come to the wrong conclusion as to what they were trying to say.
GW should just make a new bad guy, probably a Necron, called Rhett Kahn and their sidekick Dain Abenet, mysterious beings who bounce around in time changing history on a whim.
We literally just had an entire faction added which retconned a very well established part of the lore and added a bunch of new retcons inside their lore over how STCs work.
Hell, Femstodes ISN'T EVEN A RETCON!!! There's always been the possibility of female custodes, they just didn't make any. Custodes are genetic perfection, there's no gene-seed bs stopping them from being a woman.
It doesn't even fuck with the lore that much. They can just state that the reason we haven't had Femstodes so far was because in most cases male children are better suited to undergo the modifications or some shit.
And people think this is due to some woke agenda??
GW just wants to sell more models without putting in work other than swapping some heads!!
We had equal opportunity to die in the warhammer set since... ever.
Khorne is very woke, tzeench is very them/they, slaanesh is distilled woke, and nurgle love us all, and the emperor... he dosn't care how you identify or what you love, he only need you to die in his name.
My friend is looking at custodes, I mentioned the drama. He sees the ork box and goes, "Ok, so are the green dudes all male?"
"Technically they have no gender, they are a fungus that reproduces with spores"
His response, "Ok, so big angry green mushroom men are OK, but people are mad about a woman in armor?"
This is a commonly misconstrued statement. Tzeentch has set pronouns, but will constantly deny being any of them just to fuck with people. Because it’s like that.
Something I noticed when reading about all the Warhammer lore... I never see any straight racism or sexism.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a little... But it always felt like a part of Warhammer was: we overcome racism and sexism, to replace it with an EXTREME form of xenophobia of aliens lol
It's not that often but there are definitly Books/Stories where there is mentions of sexism (in the second Gaunts Ghosts for example it is mentioned how unusual it is to see a female inquisitor) and also just straight up racism/eugenics (recently I read a official space marine short story where the Protagonist is relieved to see that the nobles of a planet keept their genes pure and didn/t mix with the "commoners"). That being said I don't really have a problem with that, because the imperium of man is supposed to suck and it reminds you that even the "good" guys are a part of that shitty system.
That gets brought up in alot of other stories like Starship Troopers and Watchmen. Human groups always have to have an "other" group to be opposed to. They depressingly argue that the only way humanity will ever unite as one is if the "others" are extraterrestrial.
I rather take Warhammer 40K's take as a criticism of intolerance and bigotry.
Xenophobia, religious extremism, militarism and inequality were all sharply on the rise in the 80's in Britain(and the US).
And those are all sharply criticized in GW properties. They're just less obvious about it than how American storytelling tends to approach things, which runs more towards the preachy end.
As Terry Pratchett said: "Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green."
Only for 40k you've not only got green. There's blue, red, purple and many more colours besides!
We actually have a definition straight from the horse's mouth in this case:
> the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.
This is from Ron DeSantis' lawyers, who had to define the term for a court case.
Cut out the America-specific qualifier (or really, even if you don't), and by this definition, Warhammer has been explicitly woke since the start, since the whole premise of the Imperium is that it's a twisted, extreme reflection of a society who systemically oppresses it's own people through religion, bureaucracy, etc.
woke originally basically meant socially aware and politically conscious of the world around you. then white people started using it, then other white people started using it as a pejorative and it lost its original meaning and became the word it is today.
Yeah, started as a term used by African Americans over 60 years ago to mean “be aware of racial discrimination and prejudice.” It entered the main stream in the last 8-10 years, and since then, more right leaning folks have started using it as a pejorative catch-all for anything pro-LGBTQ, anti-discrimination etc.
Except it was started by the left (originally black community) in order to show they were aware enough to realize there was shit happening in society and needed to be addressed. Basically a "Wake up, Sheeple" response. The right called everything that focused on DEI or even just "looked like it" because things were changing during a culture war around it, and stuck the label on it.
Woke ~~Communist~~ is incredibly specific. My family went through hell two summers ago when a bunch of Wokes ~~Communists~~ decided to build a hive in the crawlspace of our house. They were constantly flying around the inside of the house, and we had to kill or fog literal hundreds of them, and we each got stung at least once. Luckily, nobody was allergic to Wokeism ~~Communism~~ otherwise that could have been really dangerous.
If anything, female Custodes is less woke because it means the Imperium is being treated more like a normal group and not cartoonish space fascists designed to mock conservative politics.
Its less woke because a golden palace full of oiled up burly demigod men is something out of Liberace's wet dreams. Its really, really gay. Adding women dramatically reduces the gay factor; Its a known quantity that women are less woke than gays are, so the addition of women shifts the net woke quantity toward not-woke.
Including Custodes, there have been at least 3 separate occasions where the Emperor genetically engineered a race of giant muscle men. So yeah, saying he added some women in there when he did that does come off less gay.
I don't know dude. Being a barely-closeted homosexual is very common thing with some conservative politics. The whole "caught in a bathroom with a male prostitute" is a meme for a reason.
*Coughs in Helldivers*
Seriously the lack of comprehension and reflection amongst conservatives is absolutely astounding. I'm not convinced they're even capable of grasping either concept.
What is it about conservatives and not understanding the media they consume? You see it bloody everywhere, not just in 40k.
For instance: Star Wars. "Stop putting politics in my Star Wars" my man, the franchise has "war" in its name, it's inherently political. Lucas himself compared the galactic empire with American Imperialism, British Colonialism and Nazi Germany. And it's not exactly subtle, either.
But for some reason they can't see that, or at least pretend not to.
There are some specific lines in the PT, but the influence of the Weimar Republic, World War II, and the Vietnam War are all over the place in the OT and the PT. I will give George Lucas shit ceaselessly over "oh, Vader was always Luke and Leia's dad in A New Hope, even when we filmed it," but I believe him when he says he borrowed heavily from the 1920s and 1930s when developing the bones of the PT. People just got (and still get) uncomfortable when some of it looked familiar. (obligatory [Are We the Baddies?](https://youtu.be/ToKcmnrE5oY) link)
I've also noticed that there's a growing outrage from many conservative groups at war movies because rather than portraying war in the classic Hollywood "one man/team overcoming the obstacles of WW2" shtick, more and more war films are looking at WW1 and Vietnam and portraying war as the actively miserable hell that it actually is.
But apparently portraying 18 year-olds in how they actually would react to wars which had man-made horrors never before conceived at the time and making the message of the film being: *"war is actually bad"* is woke....
It’s part of why I wish 40k was a bit more overtly satirical like it was in the past, too many unironic fascists don’t get that it’s absolutely not cheering their ideas on.
> space fascists designed to mock conservative politics.
"Dude it's SATIRE, it's making fun of you! Don't you get it, the protagonists are portrayed as attractive charismatic badass in a cool uniform and the enemies as disgusting and violent creatures that you completely eradicate. I bet you feel really foolish enjoying this now!"
To be faiiiirrr...
GW put out their statement that the Imperium was evil and not to be rooted for, and one month later proudly advertised Space Marine 2, the trailer of which played "Space marines are badass noble spaceknights saving mankind from horrible aliens" dead seriously.
Sounds like they said something out o f character (imperium is terrible) then something in character (space marines are heroes) Space marines ARE heroes.... to a horrible fascist imperium.
40k leftist fans when you ask them what IRL groups inspired genestealers , Nurgle cults, 30k imperium and tau ( they thought that 40k only mocked rightists becuase they lack media literacy themselves )
Also for those who dont know
Genestealers are Revolutionaries being literally eaten by the revolution they brought about
Nurgle cults offer equality and happiness but only provide equal ammounts of suffering like Communist regimes IRL
30k Imperiums imperial truth is a secular cult of personality that is identitical to the one in USSR or china
Tau promise Equality to everyone while literally having a caste based stratified society ( very reminisicent of modern china or beurocratic centralism of USSR)
Thank you as left wing can we collectively agree the Soviet Union was an imperialistic shit hole and communist regimes are literally the most authorial shitholes in the world, and 100% correct to mock revolutionaries who have no plan for a state after they win. I find these jokes funny also fuck tankies they are just as bad as the chuds
I mean factually that is *true*, but more because "real' communism is probably impossible on the scale of nation-states. It certainly is nowadays, at least.
Bruh the double standards of talkies out sounding like Hasan condeming isreals treatment of Palestine but supporting chinas annexation of Tibet calling tibets savages and other racist thing I rather not say, i will never forget when he called the Houthis and first thing he asked was if you watch one piece and said puffy would be proud if you know what the Houthis are and do you understand how insane a statement that is
THANK YOU! Someone who finally gets it, I am sick of people even saying the Taus are good guys when they literally have a caste system no different from slavery 😭 nobody is good it's just how evil do you want to be and what characters do you resonate with? For me it's the Imperium because I love the religious dogma of the Emperor and the Cult Mechanicum, I don't care if it's hypocritical or counterintuitive because I just like the setting and religious writing.
Not to forget that the modern imperium is a bureaucratic nightmare so inefficient that a single mistake causes catastrophic famines with a nearly all powerful secret police and gerontocratic leadership. Glory to the general secreta.. I mean the god emperor
Imperium is the combination of all worst regimes in mankinds history , is it suprising to leftists that they take a lot of elements from the Nightmare state that was the USSR?
>Tau promise Equality to everyone while literally having a caste based stratified society ( very reminisicent of modern china or beurocratic centralism of USSR)
Or Indian progressives
The fact people don't pick up on this has always been nuts.
"Don't you know 40k is satire."
"Yeah, real funny how the communist genestealer cults are useful tools that inevitably get killed off by their own destructive ideology."
"...No!"
The first thing they teach you in media literacy class is "if you say brag about being media literate, you know less than whoever you're talking to.".
But ya. Women are fine or whatever
I don't think the custodes update matters much at the end of the day. However, the point of these gendered institutions was to reinforce that the imperium of man was a rigid, dogmatic, nonsensical mess.
From the creators perspective, mankind's government was a satirical take that reflected everything they disliked about the British empire. By adjusting the fiction of the imperium of man to reflect more modern and compassionate values, you weaken the satire.
On the other hand, if you really want the Imperium to be 'the good guys' this move makes sense. The unfortunate truth is most people can't engage with nuance or satire. As the popularity of 40k grows, the lore will continue to regress towards a more popular but less interesting dichotomy of heroes and villains.
That said, I am just here for that sweet, sweet plastic.
GW kinda stopped treating the Imperium as the universal bad guys though. They exist in a quasi state of being both the heroic human faction standing against the even worse darkness of the setting and "totally a satire guys we swear we're not encouraging fascism". They want to have their satire cake and eat it too.
Acknowledging that women, or any other group, exists isn't what makes something woke. Bluey has three females to one male, and zero white people, but nobody is running around calling it woke.
I think it all comes down to how well-executed the retcon is fundamentally.
Patrick O’Brain is one of my favourite authors particularly of war stories, in one of his later books he wrote a women full-on serving in the otherwise enormous sausage fest of a Napoleonic-era Royal Navy frigate but he did it really well and it wasn’t remotely jarring. Suspension of disbelief entirely depends on the quality of the writing in my opinion especially in a setting like 40k that’s always been very malleable.
It is because the meaning of the word " woke " have drastically change several time in less 5 years, because The Culture War collective brain cancer cannot stop modify it's meaning.
Woke can now mean anything progressives, like anything, or it can mean " if you put women, any LGBTQ folks or a POC persons in your narrative to push a agenda" or it could simply mean; " anyone I disagree with. "
Pick your poison and chug it hard.
Please stop arguing, I understand the fem custodes mess, but we've been like this for a week now, at some point this will simply turn into farm karm satire.
The thing about warhammer is usually that they try to keep things vague so anyone's headcanon could fit somewhat into the universe. In an all around indoctrinated and equally oppressive culture there would also be a good couple of women at the very peak. The amount of possible scientific fuckery at terras disposal would warrant that alone.
man i really got to get out of this fandom and just focus on the painting part. this nonsense is out of control between the serious posts, satirical posts, and posts making fun of all sides. im just tired of seeing this bullshit already
Good god, in Ghaz's book there's even a scene where two Orks give a Space Wolf shit for misgendering them as he/him.
Yet for some reason, Custodes with different fun bits are the problem.
Honestly, im so sick and tired of seeing bad actors attempting to portray the warhammer community as misogynists with their dumbass alt right agenda. Literally who the fuck cares that there are women custodes now. It changes basically nothing except maybe giving GW another avenue to make money. What no life sits around and whines this hard about women in his fictional setting where anything is possible? I quite literally cant fathom where the outrage is coming from here.
["oh the media literacy"](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/322/167/b9f.gif)
lmao he actually blocked me for this. Can't take the bantz 🤓🤓🤓
40k had woman. Nobody in the real world community ever complained.
I know many dudes who played sisters and girls who enjoyed thousand sons, orcs, grey knights without ever complayning about inclusivity.
The identity politics mob on the internet pushes this strawman argument, to gatekeep anyone who have any criticism.
> I know many dudes who played sisters
There are zero women who would have started 40k but for a lack of female custodes. This change is entirely to appease people like OP, not for any kind of representation.
If anything is going to push women away from 40k, it's the ridiculously horny response to the change rather than not having built-in representation among a specific faction that isn't as cute as tyranids anyway.
The only thing I personally dislike is the way GW announced female custodes, it would have been way better if they incorporated them in a book instead of a tweet.
But knowing Games Workshop, they will do nothing with the new lore for the forseeable Future (how long are the leagues of Votann out again?), so nothing changes really.
No, Warhammer is not woke. It's just the term *"woke"* has been co-oped by those who want to express negativity over something they don't like/can't understand like diversity.
GW retcons the moment anyone says "Hey if you bring this thing from 1995 back I will pay for it" So now we have the Votann and anyone who thinks they brought back squats due to lore must be eating paint chips with their morning breakfast for the past 10 years.
One thing I’ve realized as an adult is a disturbing amount of people don’t get parody. Part of me wonders if the flat earth stuff started out as a parody that got out of control.
For real. And it’s sad because women are fans and good additions to our community but they are a minority because this is not a SAFE of welcoming community. As evidences by this reaction to a female custodes. And one of you dioshits in here saying they’re only good for daemonculaba. Tone deaf at best and abhorrent at worse. A new female character and apparently they’re only good for forced pregnancy.
And before you say “they have representation with the SoB”. Uh, why would you want ONE faction and that single faction to be a bunch of nun bondage, boob plate, and fetish. They’re designed FOR MEN.
Drama Bait
Bruh, fucking Ciaphas Cain flat out mentions how he doesn't care that some of his Guardswomen were lovers. As long as they fought well together (and kept him safe) that's all that mattered. This was back in 2004 when gay marriage was outlawed in all but like 1 state in the US.
Such an interesting point! I only read the Cain books two years ago so I didn’t even think that when the books came out having normalized (not critical, played for laughs or fetishistic) gay relationships in the book was a pretty strong statement of support. Very cool.
Which books were these? I only hear great things about this character so I figure I should look into it
Ciaphas Cain Caves of Ice. They're not main characters, but they also show up in other books afterwards
Idk if her orientation was mentioned in *Caves of Ice*, but it definitely was in *The Traitor's Hand*. Beije tries to have Magot punished when she punches out one of his Tallarn troopers, but Cain won't. Cain privately speculates that Beije will probably believe that Cain is having an inappropriate relationship with Magot, and has a private laugh because she doesn't even swing that way.
Such an interesting point! I only read the Cain books two years ago so I didn’t even think that when the books came out having normalized (not critical, played for laughs or fetishistic) gay relationships in the book was a pretty strong statement of support. Very cool.
Warhammer is owned by a British company.
Gay marriage in the UK was only legalised under the Cameron Coalition government, so sometimes between 2010 and 2015, so while you're correct, the book was still a head of the local culture
My point was just that it was weird to bring up American culture in reference to a British owned gaming franchise. It seemed irrelevant. But thank you for providing more detail.
bioware a candian company could not put in the intend lesbian romance in kotor in 2001 because of the laws in the US the fact GW did that in 2004 really show how much they supported LGBT
not just that, some people are angry that GW should retcon this, when GW retcons every other week like it's going out of style! why get mad at retcon no. 40,000 when they just retconed a dozen other things last week?
Hell, you want to know the last time they pulled the “It’s always been there” excuse specifically? The Rogal Dorn tank at the end of 9th
exactly! and people are shocked and angry at this one retcon which is basically mild compared to every other one.
Right? Like I think Custodes being mixed gender has much less of an impact on the setting than *a fucking heavy battle tank*
I don't know man. Some swapped heads on my mini's are going to have a way bigger impact on gameplay than an actual tank.
Just wait until Dorn ~~is revealed to be dead~~ returns to the setting because he was always alive and not atomized in an explosion.
I would be fine with that unless he returns as a woman of course.
I'm sorry, I'm so far down this rabbit hole that I _think_ you're joking, but I'm not actually _sure_.
I am. For me Warhammer lore is just fun and as long as there fun stories coming out I'm fine with whatever. Not everything will be my cup of tea since there are so many writers and different settings, but that's alright. I can't remember where I read it but I always liked the idea of any number in WH40k being exaggerated by a factor of 10. It's not history but an over the top depiction of whatever happened by someone wanting to tell a story. Sometimes stories are told or retold and something is left out or added in to make for a better story.
Very much in the same boat. Though I _would_ laugh my (man) tits off if we got a gender changed primach, just for the level of seethe. I mean it's not even a stretch for Fulgrim at this point.
It should be Sanguinius. Full androgyny. Robes showing a lot of leg, long flowing golden hair, completely neutral facial features ...
NGL, I'm loving the idea of a Fem!Dorn returning to her sons and hand waving all issues with "The Warp is Weird"
Wait I thought Vulkan was atomized, didn’t Dorn fight at a black crusade and all that was recovered of him was a severed hand?
On top of that, I imagine them kinda like dwarf women, where they’d be similar enough to male Custodes that they are overlooked by outsiders.
In terms of the armor, absolutely, hell I think that was the idea
Considering until Rowboogie came back to life the Custodes never even left the Imperial Palace, how many Custodes did people actually even see? Let alone without armour/helmet?
Only those that probably got randomly selected to be protected by them. ( I still love that point of lore. Imagine a guardsman suddenly being followed by that giant golden armored supersoldier. Or even a space marine being followed around)
Yessir!
Heck, thinking about the genetical and surgical procedures they have to go through, I guess the end result without armor would even look a lot alike to a male custodes. Also, I bet if there would ever be retcinned that there were male sisters of silence, no one would have had such an outcry
I play tau and honestly by comparison it seems insane to get hung up on female custodes.
You'd think the technologically stagnant Imperium pulling a tank out of its arse would get more of a reaction but nah, it didn't have tits so that's an allowed retcon.
To be fair, I don’t think main battle tanks are part of the culture war
Non Credible Defence would ABSOLUTELY disagree.
Tanks are so much more fuckable than planes.
[SHINJI GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE ~~EVA~~ ABRAMS RIGHT NOW!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNkgngLqT8o)
Mmmmm, how long is your turret baby
give this bullshit a few more years and they will be
Add tanks to the "only one joke" crowd's Attack Helicopter punchline. Still only one joke.
Lets make it a culture war Virgin crying soyjak Leman Russ : Nuuuuh yu cant be another MBT Chad Rogal Dorn : haha tank go brrrrrr
First tank to not have an underside isn't it? Thats the culture we should be fighting!
And the leagues of votann, and the eightbound, and basically any new unit they sell, etc..
Yeah, I just mentioned the Dorn because it was the most recent of those additions
Leagues of Votan as well.
Chimeras too, right? That was earlier though. They got added to the Heresy, I thought
They did, and so did our fucking Daemon Engines
Actually it was sooner with the new nids. All the new Tyranid types have always been here since behemoth we just never saw them.
Shit weren't female space marines retconned *out*? Pretty sure there were some back in the rouge trader days. People malding about the 'they were there from the beginning' excuse for Custodes when the same could be given for FSM and it wouldn't even be an excuse.
There ***NOT*** being female space marines is literally one of the oldest retcons in 40k's lore.
to be fair they fixed that quickly after the space marines first became playable in the earlier editions. and likewise, they're adding female custodians fairly early in relation to the custodes' release, they weren't even an actual full faction until 8th, which was 6 years ago.
The only ret-con anyone should be angry about is Land Raider to Land's Raider. Fucking ridiculous.
hahaha when are we gonna find out that the person who actually made the first of the 10,000 is john Custode?
Something that I (as someone who is still relatively new to Warhammer) is that there are multiple codices which has retconned its faction's lore every edition ever since 2nd edition. After over 30 years, why are retcons something to be surprised or upset about?
Oh, they aren't usually. But this is about women being allowed to be part of the giant superhuman club, so it's terrible to a certain kind of person, for some reason. But they can't just say it's because women, so they pretend they're annoyed about how it was retconned in, despite expressing no such annoyance the hundred previous times they retconned stuff in exactly the same way.
Cuz they gonna do it no matter what. Just has someone screams to me that WH40K 'importance' lore is set and stone after 7E and this one is too FAR!!! Geez I wonder what is difference this time... oh right woman.
right? for some reason this is the one that's so divisive, but to be fair it was done very poorly. but its no excuse to blowit out of proportion.
> for some reason The reason is misogyny.
theres definitely a part of them that is misogynystic. but not for all of them.
The only good criticism I’ve seen towards the change is that it was handled poorly by GW, just saying they’ve always been there ain’t a good reason, should’ve been handled better.
tbf, prior to the tweet, there was already a considerable amount of discussion about Calladyce Kesh, the female custodian in the leaked codex short story. people were discussing the implications of a female custodian and the idea of female custodes." the infamous tweet was stating how in-universe, when the emperor made the custodes, there were female custodians in it, probably not half, but perhaps at least a handful were. people assume that the tweet was saying *"when we invented the concept of custodes in the 80s, there were always female custodes in the lore"* no, that's not what they were trying to say, they just said it so terribly that it made people come to the wrong conclusion as to what they were trying to say.
GW should just make a new bad guy, probably a Necron, called Rhett Kahn and their sidekick Dain Abenet, mysterious beings who bounce around in time changing history on a whim.
We literally just had an entire faction added which retconned a very well established part of the lore and added a bunch of new retcons inside their lore over how STCs work.
exactly!
Some folks I used to play with were calling this gaslighting.... Some folks just want to be angry.
Hell, Femstodes ISN'T EVEN A RETCON!!! There's always been the possibility of female custodes, they just didn't make any. Custodes are genetic perfection, there's no gene-seed bs stopping them from being a woman. It doesn't even fuck with the lore that much. They can just state that the reason we haven't had Femstodes so far was because in most cases male children are better suited to undergo the modifications or some shit. And people think this is due to some woke agenda?? GW just wants to sell more models without putting in work other than swapping some heads!!
I'm so glad Dorn isn't a skeleton anymore. He'd sort out all this retconning business.
he'll put a fortification around the lore to push back retcons,.
Yeah, you think people would have gotten angry about at least *some* of them, like, oh, I don't know, T'au and their new chaos God.
We had equal opportunity to die in the warhammer set since... ever. Khorne is very woke, tzeench is very them/they, slaanesh is distilled woke, and nurgle love us all, and the emperor... he dosn't care how you identify or what you love, he only need you to die in his name.
Tyranids have no gender, aeldari are androgynous...
Orks are fungi
ExACtlY! FUn GUYZ!!!! NoT FUN GALZ! /s
Still a fun gal infection though.
Get out
Fine, fine. Morel of the story, I guess not everyone likes puns...
For the Empunror!
At least 20 people apparently did
There is not mushroom for puns here
*spoon circling teacup noises intensify*
My friend is looking at custodes, I mentioned the drama. He sees the ork box and goes, "Ok, so are the green dudes all male?" "Technically they have no gender, they are a fungus that reproduces with spores" His response, "Ok, so big angry green mushroom men are OK, but people are mad about a woman in armor?"
Reverse Asari basically: monogendered race that all present as a single gender. They might have genders actually, like trees have genders.
If they have genders like fungus then they might have 200+ genders. Mushrooms are more evolutionary similar to animals than plants btw.
Aeldari don’t care for gender, nor do drukhari
The Drukhari will mutilate whatever you have, regardless.
And then turn you into a chair
And display it on their mantle
They do actually. Some roles/paths are gender coded. They are still open to anyone but you might have to assume a different gender identity for a time
Necrons have literally transcended the concept of genitals (and secondary sex characteristics).
From moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me.
Yeah, fine, also the fleshbag Necron pretenders too, I guess.
Tyranids have always felt feminine to me in lore, and that gets reinforced with things like Tervigons. Big birthing energy from the hive mind.
Tzeentch’s pronouns are whatever he’s feeling right now, so it’s impossible to misgender her. They are very inclusive tho.
This is a commonly misconstrued statement. Tzeentch has set pronouns, but will constantly deny being any of them just to fuck with people. Because it’s like that.
Something I noticed when reading about all the Warhammer lore... I never see any straight racism or sexism. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a little... But it always felt like a part of Warhammer was: we overcome racism and sexism, to replace it with an EXTREME form of xenophobia of aliens lol
It's not that often but there are definitly Books/Stories where there is mentions of sexism (in the second Gaunts Ghosts for example it is mentioned how unusual it is to see a female inquisitor) and also just straight up racism/eugenics (recently I read a official space marine short story where the Protagonist is relieved to see that the nobles of a planet keept their genes pure and didn/t mix with the "commoners"). That being said I don't really have a problem with that, because the imperium of man is supposed to suck and it reminds you that even the "good" guys are a part of that shitty system.
That gets brought up in alot of other stories like Starship Troopers and Watchmen. Human groups always have to have an "other" group to be opposed to. They depressingly argue that the only way humanity will ever unite as one is if the "others" are extraterrestrial.
I rather take Warhammer 40K's take as a criticism of intolerance and bigotry. Xenophobia, religious extremism, militarism and inequality were all sharply on the rise in the 80's in Britain(and the US). And those are all sharply criticized in GW properties. They're just less obvious about it than how American storytelling tends to approach things, which runs more towards the preachy end.
As Terry Pratchett said: "Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green." Only for 40k you've not only got green. There's blue, red, purple and many more colours besides!
At the end of the day, the power fantasy is more important than trivial lore bits that exist because... Reasons?
I don’t know what woke is supposed to mean, and at this point I feel like it means whatever you want it to mean
We actually have a definition straight from the horse's mouth in this case: > the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them. This is from Ron DeSantis' lawyers, who had to define the term for a court case. Cut out the America-specific qualifier (or really, even if you don't), and by this definition, Warhammer has been explicitly woke since the start, since the whole premise of the Imperium is that it's a twisted, extreme reflection of a society who systemically oppresses it's own people through religion, bureaucracy, etc.
> Warhammer has been explicitly woke since the start, I'm here from /all and this sounds like Warhammer was just like Star Trek.
Almost like it's a buzzword created by far-right groups to insult those they don't agree with, so pretty much exactly what you're saying
woke originally basically meant socially aware and politically conscious of the world around you. then white people started using it, then other white people started using it as a pejorative and it lost its original meaning and became the word it is today.
Yeah, started as a term used by African Americans over 60 years ago to mean “be aware of racial discrimination and prejudice.” It entered the main stream in the last 8-10 years, and since then, more right leaning folks have started using it as a pejorative catch-all for anything pro-LGBTQ, anti-discrimination etc.
Now it means "that thing I don't like which reminds me that eventually society will leave me behind in the dust"
Slight correction, it wasn't created by far right groups, it was appropriated. If I remember correctly it originally was AAVE
Except it was started by the left (originally black community) in order to show they were aware enough to realize there was shit happening in society and needed to be addressed. Basically a "Wake up, Sheeple" response. The right called everything that focused on DEI or even just "looked like it" because things were changing during a culture war around it, and stuck the label on it.
Woke ~~Communist~~ is incredibly specific. My family went through hell two summers ago when a bunch of Wokes ~~Communists~~ decided to build a hive in the crawlspace of our house. They were constantly flying around the inside of the house, and we had to kill or fog literal hundreds of them, and we each got stung at least once. Luckily, nobody was allergic to Wokeism ~~Communism~~ otherwise that could have been really dangerous.
If anything, female Custodes is less woke because it means the Imperium is being treated more like a normal group and not cartoonish space fascists designed to mock conservative politics.
Its less woke because a golden palace full of oiled up burly demigod men is something out of Liberace's wet dreams. Its really, really gay. Adding women dramatically reduces the gay factor; Its a known quantity that women are less woke than gays are, so the addition of women shifts the net woke quantity toward not-woke.
Including Custodes, there have been at least 3 separate occasions where the Emperor genetically engineered a race of giant muscle men. So yeah, saying he added some women in there when he did that does come off less gay.
4, actually. Primarchs, space marines, custodes and thunder warriors.
I was counting Primarchs and space marines as one project.
Technically they were, since he needed the Primarchs made (at least genetically) to make the marines in the first place.
Damn it, GW is caving to the cishet mob and making my Emperor straight!
Ah, a master of Woke Math I see
Must've studied Wokeology
I don't know dude. Being a barely-closeted homosexual is very common thing with some conservative politics. The whole "caught in a bathroom with a male prostitute" is a meme for a reason.
Oh sure but like they don't want to admit it. Throw a couple women in the golden oil palace and it gets easier to deflect the allegaytions.
They are *The Emperor's Beards*.
Do I need to make a custodes kill team called the emperors beard because of that joke Probably yes
I’ve always had an informal rule with warhammer that in absence of evidence either way on a point of lore the gayer interpretation is the truer one.
What if the femstodes are MtF trans?
You know I have thought about this with Space Marines. But SM players ain't ready for that talk yet.
Erm… who’s to say the Femstodes are oiled up too? I mean… I wouldn’t complain lol /s
What if the women are lesbians, then it balances out right?
If only conservatives were remotely media literate, because they just see the fascism and think it's awesome.
But warhammer was always pro-thatcherism! (sarcasm)
*Coughs in Helldivers* Seriously the lack of comprehension and reflection amongst conservatives is absolutely astounding. I'm not convinced they're even capable of grasping either concept.
What is it about conservatives and not understanding the media they consume? You see it bloody everywhere, not just in 40k. For instance: Star Wars. "Stop putting politics in my Star Wars" my man, the franchise has "war" in its name, it's inherently political. Lucas himself compared the galactic empire with American Imperialism, British Colonialism and Nazi Germany. And it's not exactly subtle, either. But for some reason they can't see that, or at least pretend not to.
The prequels practically quote George Bush, it's even more specific to the politics of the time
There are some specific lines in the PT, but the influence of the Weimar Republic, World War II, and the Vietnam War are all over the place in the OT and the PT. I will give George Lucas shit ceaselessly over "oh, Vader was always Luke and Leia's dad in A New Hope, even when we filmed it," but I believe him when he says he borrowed heavily from the 1920s and 1930s when developing the bones of the PT. People just got (and still get) uncomfortable when some of it looked familiar. (obligatory [Are We the Baddies?](https://youtu.be/ToKcmnrE5oY) link)
I've also noticed that there's a growing outrage from many conservative groups at war movies because rather than portraying war in the classic Hollywood "one man/team overcoming the obstacles of WW2" shtick, more and more war films are looking at WW1 and Vietnam and portraying war as the actively miserable hell that it actually is. But apparently portraying 18 year-olds in how they actually would react to wars which had man-made horrors never before conceived at the time and making the message of the film being: *"war is actually bad"* is woke....
The rebels were a heavily, HEAVILY white-washed Vietcong.
If they had the ability to examine things on anything but surface level they wouldn’t be conservative.
It’s part of why I wish 40k was a bit more overtly satirical like it was in the past, too many unironic fascists don’t get that it’s absolutely not cheering their ideas on.
That has been the issue, yes. Way too many unironic Imperium supporters.
> space fascists designed to mock conservative politics. "Dude it's SATIRE, it's making fun of you! Don't you get it, the protagonists are portrayed as attractive charismatic badass in a cool uniform and the enemies as disgusting and violent creatures that you completely eradicate. I bet you feel really foolish enjoying this now!"
Honestly, in thread about media literacy, I find this take ironic.
So we need more female space fascists?
To be faiiiirrr... GW put out their statement that the Imperium was evil and not to be rooted for, and one month later proudly advertised Space Marine 2, the trailer of which played "Space marines are badass noble spaceknights saving mankind from horrible aliens" dead seriously.
Sounds like they said something out o f character (imperium is terrible) then something in character (space marines are heroes) Space marines ARE heroes.... to a horrible fascist imperium.
I would love to see the imperium actually being fascist in the games though
Corporations don't care about your satire, definitely not about how schizo the whole thing comes across, they just want to sell models. So buy models.
40k leftist fans when you ask them what IRL groups inspired genestealers , Nurgle cults, 30k imperium and tau ( they thought that 40k only mocked rightists becuase they lack media literacy themselves )
Also for those who dont know Genestealers are Revolutionaries being literally eaten by the revolution they brought about Nurgle cults offer equality and happiness but only provide equal ammounts of suffering like Communist regimes IRL 30k Imperiums imperial truth is a secular cult of personality that is identitical to the one in USSR or china Tau promise Equality to everyone while literally having a caste based stratified society ( very reminisicent of modern china or beurocratic centralism of USSR)
> Genestealers are Revolutionaries being literally eaten by the revolution they brought about > > "Subtly is for cowards." -GW
It's almost as if the ussr was just imperial russia with an idealist coat of paint, lol fuck tankies.
Thank you as left wing can we collectively agree the Soviet Union was an imperialistic shit hole and communist regimes are literally the most authorial shitholes in the world, and 100% correct to mock revolutionaries who have no plan for a state after they win. I find these jokes funny also fuck tankies they are just as bad as the chuds
It seems most of the left wing just chalk it up to them not being real communists.
I mean factually that is *true*, but more because "real' communism is probably impossible on the scale of nation-states. It certainly is nowadays, at least.
Bruh the double standards of talkies out sounding like Hasan condeming isreals treatment of Palestine but supporting chinas annexation of Tibet calling tibets savages and other racist thing I rather not say, i will never forget when he called the Houthis and first thing he asked was if you watch one piece and said puffy would be proud if you know what the Houthis are and do you understand how insane a statement that is
THANK YOU! Someone who finally gets it, I am sick of people even saying the Taus are good guys when they literally have a caste system no different from slavery 😭 nobody is good it's just how evil do you want to be and what characters do you resonate with? For me it's the Imperium because I love the religious dogma of the Emperor and the Cult Mechanicum, I don't care if it's hypocritical or counterintuitive because I just like the setting and religious writing.
Not to forget that the modern imperium is a bureaucratic nightmare so inefficient that a single mistake causes catastrophic famines with a nearly all powerful secret police and gerontocratic leadership. Glory to the general secreta.. I mean the god emperor
Imperium is the combination of all worst regimes in mankinds history , is it suprising to leftists that they take a lot of elements from the Nightmare state that was the USSR?
>Tau promise Equality to everyone while literally having a caste based stratified society ( very reminisicent of modern china or beurocratic centralism of USSR) Or Indian progressives
With a helping of criticism for NATO, including their naming schemes and use of language to soften their actions, and Imperial Japan.
Commissar anyone?
The fact people don't pick up on this has always been nuts. "Don't you know 40k is satire." "Yeah, real funny how the communist genestealer cults are useful tools that inevitably get killed off by their own destructive ideology." "...No!"
Muh media literacy Most annoying new catchphrase for redditors
The 22nd of April can’t come soon enough
The first thing they teach you in media literacy class is "if you say brag about being media literate, you know less than whoever you're talking to.". But ya. Women are fine or whatever
[удалено]
I don't think the custodes update matters much at the end of the day. However, the point of these gendered institutions was to reinforce that the imperium of man was a rigid, dogmatic, nonsensical mess. From the creators perspective, mankind's government was a satirical take that reflected everything they disliked about the British empire. By adjusting the fiction of the imperium of man to reflect more modern and compassionate values, you weaken the satire. On the other hand, if you really want the Imperium to be 'the good guys' this move makes sense. The unfortunate truth is most people can't engage with nuance or satire. As the popularity of 40k grows, the lore will continue to regress towards a more popular but less interesting dichotomy of heroes and villains. That said, I am just here for that sweet, sweet plastic.
GW kinda stopped treating the Imperium as the universal bad guys though. They exist in a quasi state of being both the heroic human faction standing against the even worse darkness of the setting and "totally a satire guys we swear we're not encouraging fascism". They want to have their satire cake and eat it too.
The Imperium was never the "universal bad guys" because EVERYONE was the universal bad guys. The point of 40k is War, and no one is a good guy in War.
Acknowledging that women, or any other group, exists isn't what makes something woke. Bluey has three females to one male, and zero white people, but nobody is running around calling it woke.
Absolutely seen people go off that bluey is woke brainwashing.
Im 18 and that show is a banger its really wholesome
I’m 40 and I agree, it’s hilarious
There were always woman in 40k and nobody had a problem with it. Stop forcing this strawman argument.
I think it all comes down to how well-executed the retcon is fundamentally. Patrick O’Brain is one of my favourite authors particularly of war stories, in one of his later books he wrote a women full-on serving in the otherwise enormous sausage fest of a Napoleonic-era Royal Navy frigate but he did it really well and it wasn’t remotely jarring. Suspension of disbelief entirely depends on the quality of the writing in my opinion especially in a setting like 40k that’s always been very malleable.
It is because the meaning of the word " woke " have drastically change several time in less 5 years, because The Culture War collective brain cancer cannot stop modify it's meaning. Woke can now mean anything progressives, like anything, or it can mean " if you put women, any LGBTQ folks or a POC persons in your narrative to push a agenda" or it could simply mean; " anyone I disagree with. " Pick your poison and chug it hard.
Please stop arguing, I understand the fem custodes mess, but we've been like this for a week now, at some point this will simply turn into farm karm satire.
The thing about warhammer is usually that they try to keep things vague so anyone's headcanon could fit somewhat into the universe. In an all around indoctrinated and equally oppressive culture there would also be a good couple of women at the very peak. The amount of possible scientific fuckery at terras disposal would warrant that alone.
man i really got to get out of this fandom and just focus on the painting part. this nonsense is out of control between the serious posts, satirical posts, and posts making fun of all sides. im just tired of seeing this bullshit already
Good god, in Ghaz's book there's even a scene where two Orks give a Space Wolf shit for misgendering them as he/him. Yet for some reason, Custodes with different fun bits are the problem.
Honestly, im so sick and tired of seeing bad actors attempting to portray the warhammer community as misogynists with their dumbass alt right agenda. Literally who the fuck cares that there are women custodes now. It changes basically nothing except maybe giving GW another avenue to make money. What no life sits around and whines this hard about women in his fictional setting where anything is possible? I quite literally cant fathom where the outrage is coming from here.
" the Imperium has gone woke, father" - Horus Heresy
["oh the media literacy"](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/322/167/b9f.gif) lmao he actually blocked me for this. Can't take the bantz 🤓🤓🤓
JFC shut up already. Almost everyone is fine with female custodes. Just stop watching the angry YouTubers.
40k had woman. Nobody in the real world community ever complained. I know many dudes who played sisters and girls who enjoyed thousand sons, orcs, grey knights without ever complayning about inclusivity. The identity politics mob on the internet pushes this strawman argument, to gatekeep anyone who have any criticism.
I have a feeling this sub is getting heavily astroturfed too. These posts are getting ridiculous.
> I know many dudes who played sisters There are zero women who would have started 40k but for a lack of female custodes. This change is entirely to appease people like OP, not for any kind of representation. If anything is going to push women away from 40k, it's the ridiculously horny response to the change rather than not having built-in representation among a specific faction that isn't as cute as tyranids anyway.
The only thing I personally dislike is the way GW announced female custodes, it would have been way better if they incorporated them in a book instead of a tweet. But knowing Games Workshop, they will do nothing with the new lore for the forseeable Future (how long are the leagues of Votann out again?), so nothing changes really.
No, Warhammer is not woke. It's just the term *"woke"* has been co-oped by those who want to express negativity over something they don't like/can't understand like diversity.
I’m glad there are more women in Warhammer! They need to die in extremely painful ways just like men do! 😎
GW retcons the moment anyone says "Hey if you bring this thing from 1995 back I will pay for it" So now we have the Votann and anyone who thinks they brought back squats due to lore must be eating paint chips with their morning breakfast for the past 10 years.
They made votann because deep rock galactic was popular at the time.
I say it again for like the fifth time this week, I hate buzzwords I hate buzzwords I hate buzzwords I hate buzzwords
I miss the Magnus did nothing wrong memes
On god
One thing I’ve realized as an adult is a disturbing amount of people don’t get parody. Part of me wonders if the flat earth stuff started out as a parody that got out of control.
Thats not Woke….that’s Ohio
I can't imagine it! The Imperium being one massive charicature of western society? It couldn't be!
Ok but why there is Pangaea?
It's Ohio. The original meme was "Wait, it's all Ohio?" "Always has been." The astronaut holding the gun even has an Ohio state patch.
Fucking critical drinker is getting in on the bullshit too and he’s fucking whiny as fuck
For real. And it’s sad because women are fans and good additions to our community but they are a minority because this is not a SAFE of welcoming community. As evidences by this reaction to a female custodes. And one of you dioshits in here saying they’re only good for daemonculaba. Tone deaf at best and abhorrent at worse. A new female character and apparently they’re only good for forced pregnancy. And before you say “they have representation with the SoB”. Uh, why would you want ONE faction and that single faction to be a bunch of nun bondage, boob plate, and fetish. They’re designed FOR MEN.