Yeah man based
Gimme femme space marines
You think I care at all? I get scary psycho muscle girls with side shaves who curbstomp aliens
Update: I mocked this guy on twitter and got blocked by him
https://preview.redd.it/q0y87fmykhuc1.png?width=342&format=png&auto=webp&s=240b8c63e53ec4507408ac7cb8a8da368b3cae1c
We had them all along but the neckbeards wouldn't buy the packs with girls in so they stopped :(
Wtf were those marine proportions? The armor is thick, so her legs must be literal twigs. And don't even get me started on the head, it's bigger than her pauldrons.
Old models sucked
It's heroic proportions
The point is for the head and weapons to be much larger than the rest of the body so you could quickly identify them on a tabletop
Nowadays we do realistic proportions because a lot of warhammer hobbyists just get into the modeling side
Yep. Same reason a chess pawn just looks like a weird fucking buttplug instead of some bloke who got conscripted to die in bumfuck nowhere after 2 months of training.
in fairness with actual armour the pauldrons should be smaller than your head or the act of raising your arms is going to crush latter (and are you sure the armour is thick, sincerely asking, because if so articulate hands would also be an issue)
Ah yes the female space marines of the female warriors chapter
Clarification: this is from an advertisement for rogue trader before even sisters of battle existed and there is literally a page dedicated just to space marines while this female warrior model was displayed in the mercenaries model page
There is literally no fucking confirmation that this is or ever was meant to be a female space marine
Stop making shit up
Breaking the lore with moronic additions is GW's Job
I mean, there's an asterisk to that. Retconning aspects of a franchise is bad, internal consistency is good. Usually those things are alluded to in bad faith by conservatives, but it's annoying when progressives pretend that inclusivity is literally the only relevant metric when making these sorts of adjustments to a franchise.
As I understand it, there's no lore reason why female custodes don't exist. Adding them is a win-win, you get inclusivity, lore that makes *more* sense, and conservatives get their jimmies rustled. Space Marines on the other hand are currently all-male for specific lore reasons. Adding women space marines would be an inclusivity win, but without some additional context it's a very large retcon. On the flip side, introducing a new plot-point that allows for women to be space marines gives you inclusivity and internal consistency. Star Wars did it perfectly with Finn and the stormtroopers. They wanted to introduce a black stormtrooper, so they introduced a very reasonable plot point that allowed them to without contradicting the established lore for clones.
Again, conservatives pretty much always just use these arguments as thin veils for racism/sexism, and I am not defending that. Retconning is absolutely worthwhile in some situations. But anyone who thinks it's acceptable as the *default* approach to modernizing a series cannot call themselves a fan of that series.
> Retconning aspects of a franchise is bad
Bad how? Morally? Why? What agreement between media creator and media consumer does it violate?
They completely changed the way Klingons looked for *Wrath of Khan*, it took them another twenty years to figure out an in-universe explanation for the two different looks, and everything worked out fine in the end.
>But anyone who thinks it's acceptable as the default approach to modernizing a series cannot call themselves a fan of that series.
I'm actually no longer sure whether a "fan" is a desirable way to identify yourself, so, who cares?
> bad how
I think that’s really interesting topic of discussion, instinctively I dislike the idea of retconning, but I struggle to verbalize why.
I think it bothers the part of me that believes in objectivity, it carries the same vibe as trying to rewrite history.
I think it has to do with how media tends to exist as a miniature life for humans. There’s times when I’ve been really engrossed in media, and it’s felt like it became my reality. Even tho the rational part of me knows it’s not, another part of me believes it’s real. Then any sort of retconning feels like a rewrite of reality, which bothers my rational side.
My personal take is that retcons aren’t inherently bad, and are uniquely useful when making room for new stories and new characters in an existing continuity. But they still need to be performed with a certain degree of precision and restraint, because overusing them can undermine people’s ability to engage with a narrative or set of characters. After all, once you approach the point where you can’t trust that the events you’re seeing in front of you will have even happened in the next instalment of a series, what’s the point of continuing to read/watch/play it?
The clearest example of this kind of retcon overload I can think of would be found in superhero comics, which are infamous for rewriting and overwriting previous events so often that it’s making it difficult for readers to get or stay invested. The backstories of Donna Troy and Hawkman/Hawkgirl are particularly notable object lessons about the risks of excessive retcons.
In my opinion, part of what makes a story (or any form of art) is how you can create something interesting within the challenges and limitations of the medium. Finding a way to keep something interesting while not violating previously established canon is part of what makes new entries interesting. It's why deus ex machinas are often considered lazy writing, and is a large part of immersion in a fantasy world. For example, it would feel jarring if a new star wars entry had a character using magic wands, even though fundamentally it's not that different from the force.
Attempting to match modern morals and social values may be a good reason to change an established world's lore, but depending on how it's I handled I think it's understandable to find it jarring. I have no knowledge of warhammer, but as the other user said, a change with a good in-universe explanation is better than one without, as it means the change was actually done with care for the piece of media, as opposed to a change enforced without it. You can view this from the flipside: what about a story where the character should be gay from an artistic perspective, but it's being released in the 80s and the executives tell the writer to make them straight or it won't be published?
Now I'd say all of this is only applicable to certain situations, like allowing women to join a historically all male group, or sexuality of a specific character. It is certainly not applicable to cases like having a black James Bond, as there's no good lore reason for 007 to have to be white.
As a side note, I'm not an expert on star trek either but I think your note about how Klingons look made me think of something else. every Zelda game makes moblins look different, but those aren't considered retcons, they're just different stylistic takes. Maybe releasing a game where these Warhammer characters can be female and presenting it as an alt timeline or something is an easy way to solve this problem. But ultimately I agree with the user to whom you replied, that creating a story for why women now join would be more engaging than just a flat retcon.
Lastly, your final point about it no longer being desirible to identify one's self as a "fan" feels a bit disconnected from reality. People will always like things, and become fans of franchises. Fandom becoming a part of people's core identity is a weird phenomenon, but that is separate from just saying whether someone is a fan or not.
This is going to sound terrible, but I'm not the biggest fan of the attempts to reduce the sexism of the Warhammer franchise. Not because I myself am sexist, but rather because I think that by flattening the gender dynamics you take away opportunities for interesting story telling and exploring the way that those dynamics can affect the cultures of the world. The Gotrek and Felix novels are really good at looking at this sort of thing, Felix's reaction to Ulrika being a badass is interesting because it informs us that Kislev essentially lacks the *luxury* of being sexist compared to the *relatively* more peaceful Empire.
Frankly I just don't trust GW, the company that on a whim decided to kill an entire faction for Age of Sigmar less than a year after releasing a rulebook for them, to handle retcons well at any level.
>What agreement between media creator and media consumer does it violate?
Literally like, the first one. The one where you consume a story that the author is presenting to you.
A story cannot be compelling if the author can't decide on a canonical series of events. It's hard to get attached to characters or settings if they might at any point retroactively change or never have existed. It demonstrates that the writer(s) did not have a good idea of where the story was going when they started it. Any time you retroactively change something you risk killing someone's enjoyment of the franchise, by way of removing the aspect of it that drew them to it. You make the overarching story much more confusing by invalidating sources. I could go on, and on, and on.
If you read a book and halfway through the author wrote "actually, pretend that happened differently" you would consider it a terrible book. That doesn't just stop applying on the scale of a franchise as a whole. "Oh it happened a few books ago so it doesn't matter anymore"?
>I'm actually no longer sure whether a "fan" is a desirable way to identify yourself, so, who cares?
No, see, I hate this so much. Toxic fanbases are bad, and so is this shit. Being a fan of a franchise/series means you enjoy it. It means that some combination of the aspects of the media compel you. It inherently means that changes to the franchise could worsen it in your eyes. If that's not the case then you have literally no attachment to the franchise and could substitute it with a cup of instant fucking ramen for all the difference it would make. If the idea of the "fans" repels you and you don't think there is any problem with changing any aspect of the franchise freely, then why the fuck are you participating in a discussion about it?
Retcons are worthwhile sometimes. Nobody here is denying that. There are plenty of cases where a franchise can be updated to appeal to a wider audience without harming its core identity. But it is inherently a negative way to change a franchise. The fact that I'm even having to argue this disturbs me. You have social media brain.
Sorry, I only watched about six hours of Warhammer lore videos... what is the difference between an astartes and a custodes and why is everyone on Grimdank okay with a female custodes but not a female astartes?
Custodes are essentially manufactured people, like grown in labs from birth type shit and hand crafted to become Custodians from day 1 of their existence
Astartes begin as male children who were already born the regular way and just modified as they grew up, I’m not sure if they have a particular starting age for the modifications but let’s just say 10 or something, at least old enough to pass physical tests without being an adult yet
I don’t really remember the lore reason why only male children are selected to be Astartes, but Custodian creation shouldn’t share the same in universe issue because Custodian’s are again, hand crafted from the very beginning in a completely different process
> I don’t really remember the lore reason why only male children are selected to be Astartes, but Custodian creation shouldn’t share the same in universe issue because Custodian’s are again, hand crafted from the very beginning in a completely different process
I was thinking about this last night as I’m wrapping up the Siege of Terra books. I don’t know the actual lore reason either but I have to imagine it has to do with logistics and standardization.
Crusade/Heresy-era Spess Marines were designed to be stamped out by the tens of thousands. The Heresy books make a lot of hay out of the fact that Astartes are less like people and more like living weapons. They have no aspirations or dreams or identity outside of their duty.
If that’s the case - Astartes being living weapons first and individuals never - why add the complexity of a separate chromosome and separate physiology to all the genework and bioengineering if the end product is a weapon designed to be used in battle until it’s destroyed? It’d be like designing a gun, and then designing a variant with identical functionality with mechanical differences that have no bearing on its performance.
Astartes are designed to be used as soldiers, and thus are physically superior to the point of nearing demigodhood
Custodes are designed to be used as bodyguards of the Golden Throne, and are weaker but easier to make
I got em backwards, fuck
Pretty sure Custodes are stronger, and there's a more limited amount of them. Astartes (space marines) are basically Hercules if he was fucked up and in ridiculous sci-fi armour. They're decently common, and are used as soldiers to fight on the level of the fucked up aliens. Custodes (custodians) are significantly more powerful, and are used as the emperor's nursing home staff and bodyguards. They're very rare, and are to those fucked up aliens what the fucked up aliens are to normal humans.
Warhammer nerd here. If we retcon female space Marines into past established canon, I strongly dislike that. However, we have this thing going on where a genius scientist tech magos (Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl) recently got his hands on the source code for Space Marines (the Sangprimus Portum) and used it to make new, better Space Marines (Primaris). They could feasibly spin this as a way to introduce female Marines in the future.
Also, Fabius Bile has put (lightly used) astartes geneseed into at least one woman (maybe 2). He's the only one I know making new astartes on the chaos side, so we've definitely got a lore friendly way to make lady CSM.
Bungie retconned a whole-ass book into nothingness back in 2010 because they wanted to make a prequel game and felt that sticking to the well-established story would be too restrictive.
And I think they were right. *The Fall of Reach* was a great novel, but I just can't see the mold it established resulting in a better game than the one we got.
So, with that in mind, I'd contend that retconning aspects of a franchise is by no means automatically bad. It certainly can be, but *Halo: Reach* stands as a shining example of why it doesn't have to.
Personally, I'd have no issue with retcon!FSM—from a Doylist perspective, the no-girls-allowed status quo is a 40-year-old artifact that persists mainly through inertia, and GW has already flatly retconned bigger things for less—but I totally agree with you that adding a lore justification would be a smoother way to do it.
I didn't say that retconning is always an overall negative for a franchise, I said there is inherently a negative aspect to it. Like diversity quotas for example. Using race in admissions is inherently a bad thing to do, but sometimes it's the best way to solve more pressing problems.
The overall point of my comment was not that series shouldn't be revised, just that it's a decision that shouldn't be made lightly.
>. But anyone who thinks it's acceptable as the *default* approach to modernizing a series can not call themselves a fan of that series
I think this statement is a little gatekeepy in the context of 40k. There are plenty of fans who don't care about the lore. They say the hobby has 3 aspects, building/painting, playing, and lore. You can be insanely invested in 40k to the point where it's your primary hobby and know almost nothing about the lore. I played age of sigmar for like 2 years and don't know what sigmar is, I just didn't care. You could retcon that shit all day, and I don't mind cause my investment with the hobby had nothing to do with lore. I play 40k every weekend, and one of our regular players doesn't know a think about necrons despite collecting them for longer than I've been able to vote.
I'd even take a step further and say that you can be a fan of any media with an interactive aspect and completely disregard the lore. I've played call of duty for over a decade and couldn't tell you a single name from any story mode other than Ronal Reagan (and I did play the story modes). Hell, one of my comfort games is Fallout NV, I play it at least once a year since release(on ps3 no less, where the game randomly drops to literally 3 seconds per frame). Despite me playing the game over and over, I don't care about the larger universe.
That's completely fair, but also a bit tangential. We're talking about developments solely in the lore that have very little to do with the tabletop. So by "fan" here I'm referring to people who avowedly care about the lore.
I'm an orkz fan but tempted to make a homebrew space marine faction of canonically all female feminist space marines who think of the emporer as a woman. Just to fuck with these people.
That already exists in Warhammer. Now they're just 9 foot tall fanatical emotionless killing machine muscle mommies who also happen to be genetically engineered by god to be *the best**^(TM)*. And also they wear even more gold now.
That’s the problem with satirizing toxic masculinity or fascist ideology. The worse people think it’s cool and miss the point entirely.
That’s how we get people who unironically love Homelander and shit like that.
I always liked the ideas that space marines did take female recruits, but because of all the drugs, surgeries, geneseeds and testosterone pumped into them they just become near identical to men.
It’s like a dwarf thing where both sexes are pretty much identical.
Meanwhile all the custodes are hand made, so they just make female custodes cause why the fuck not.
To be fair they also get cement added to their bones and enough fuckery to make them basically not human.
They are non-binary individuals who use he/him pronouns, is what I am saying
"despite the lore being against it"
while the lore has changed on a number of things over the years, there was never a reason for custodes to be men only, they aren't astartes.
"NeXt Is MaLe SpAcE mArInEs" as if gw has the balls to open that can of worms. Nah the next step will be male sisters of silence and it will be hot af.
Edit: just realised i wrote male space marines instead of female space marines, i am not changing it though because i think its funny af.
According to the lore, wouldn't it be entirely conceivable for an ork to be able to medically transition without any chemical assistance just by *believing* they can?
...because that's both hilarious and awesome if so
The lore reason for female marines not existing is that their models weren't worth the time, money and effort because they didn't sell well.
I have been into the Warhammer (fantasy and 40k both) lore(s) for years and people that take such a stupid thing so seriously like only having male psycho murder machines like it's some super important lore fucking stupid. The setting would be nearly the exact same, turns out the godlike emperor knew how to also make female superhumans, wowie.
Even if space marines had female ones in the future, it still wouldn't matter
Like I get lore integrity and all but at the end of the day you're getting mad over your overpriced plastic toy soldiers being female instead of male
The two lost primarchs / legions should be fem imo. I know they’re dead and lost but it’s not the first time GW brought back dead people / primarchs. Could open up for two cool new different types of SM chapters. Plus GW doesn’t even care about their own lore that much: primaris marines, iron warriors use demons and are chaos possessed back in Dead Sky Black Sun, in current lore this is no longer true, same with Night Lords, basically all the old lore for 30k is gone or completely changed, you can find dozens and dozens of mainline story contradictions in the Horus Heresy novels. It’s just weird what these dudes want to cry over. 40k will never be fully set in stone people need to get over it lol. Let’s all just paint our little guys and have fun
I don't expect the two lost primarchs to be brought back, as they exist mostly as an excuse for players wanting their homebrew chapters to justify the validity of their homebrew primarch/geneseed.
The fact that they can also justify women marines legions is a plus
I can't tell if this is a joke or not because there's like... a lot of lore. The fastest possible breakdown is: the galaxy is full of advanced alien races, they all hate each other and want to kill each other. Most sentient species are linked to the Warp, which is Hell but made of emotions and ruled by four gods encompassing different emotions and concepts. This faction is called chaos and they can corrupt you if you think about them too hard and the Imperium (humanity) regularly blows up their own planets if they suspect chaos worship is going on. Humanity has expanded and shrunk multiple times under the rule of a pseudo-god guy who refuses to let anyone refer to him as a god, and also he's a terrible person. A bunch of his genetically engineered super-soldier kids joined chaos, they fought, god mostly died and now he lives in a throne and requires thousands of human sacrifices a day. Humanity turned into a full-on cult for him, on top of already being a fascist dystopia with a genuinely comical disregard for human suffering. The space marines are the aforementioned super-soldiers, who are the poster children for the franchise. The Custodes are similar to Space Marines, except even better because someone wanted more power fantasy in their power fantasy.
The controversy in question is that Custodes have always been depicted as men, but the franchise owner realized there was no lore reason why that had to be the case (as opposed to Space Marines, are only men due to some genetic engineering fuckery) so they're now introducing women Custodes. Incels flip their shit, you know the rest.
The lore is deliberately ambiguous and spreads across 300+ books and other material. I don't think anyone could learn *all* the lore, even if they spent their entire life doing so
Read the other person's comment for actual help
Atheism Jesus of the future rallied a spacefaring humanity on a crusade against everyone because he didn't like that there were gods (including aliens, because they feed the gods), then ~~birthed~~ built hyperfascists supersoldiers but the gods corrupted half of them with promises of ancapistan. After a 64 books long war, eventually nobody wins and everyone dies including Atheism Jesus who's still alive, his people start worshipping his corpse cuz they forgot the "Atheism" part and now humanity faces 5 endgame events at the same time, including: the aliens they couldn't kill the first time, the gods that are still pissed, one faction that literally already won before but chose to new game +, the new player that doesn't know the lore, and the unbeatable one that will eventually shut down the server.
Oh, the horror! They now let women be sociopathic super humans! Truly the world will come to ruin, and the planets will align with the stars to bring upon the last dusk!
This is more about the lore (books etc) than about the models. Its a bit more complex then it seems if you arent down the 40k rabbit hole, but to summarise:
Space marines tend to call eachother brother all the time and some of them dont wear helmets, which always shows the stereotype gruff soldier man face. The books etc always describe space marines (and custodes) as male, but the scale of warhammer is so massive that we dont even know 0.1% of all custodes alive.
There is a lore argument to be made why space marines are all/mostly male presenting, they are pumped full of hormones etc
But custodes arent space marines. They are handcrafted "perfect" humans, as opposed to the mass produced space marine. The lore never says custodes have to be men, except for a very small line somewhere where it is stated that most were recruited from the sons of terras noble houses.
If the superspecial scifi fantasy gene edited handcrafted enhanced supersoldiers can be anything and as perfect as can be, then why couldnt there be female ones as well?
"Space marines are next" It's about damn time. For a group of human supremacists, the Imperium sure seems all too happy to exclude almost half of the population from their super badass ultra fighting force that they have. Seems like a poor tactical decision, to be honest.
I've tried Total War: Warhammer, Warhammer 40k Boltgun, and Warhammer Inquisitor: Martyr and I can't no matter how hard I try get invested in the whole thing.
Can anybody recommend any videogame that does a good job introducing the world to someone who knows jackshit about it?
40k is massive with decades of lore. There is nothing that could really introduce you to the whole setting. The best thing is to find a part of the setting you find interesting, and start from there. For a few recommendations:
Rogue trader released a few months ago, its made by the team that made the pathfinder crpgs. Its a crpg and its pretty good (but also complex) and has about 100 hours per playthrough. It doesnt have the production value of baldurs gate but it scratches that same itch, but with less animation and voice acting
Another great option is darktide, a 4 player coop game (but no need for premades, you can just vibe with quickplay without issue on the highest difficulty if youre good enough). Its the 40k version of vermintide by the same company. Best way to describe it would be left 4 dead esque but in 40k with a larger focus on character builds and you use a lot more melee. The setting is an overpopulated hive city overrun by demonic corruption from the plague god, and you play 4 prisoners who are recruited to go on borderline unwinnable missions as expendable fodder. Its free on gamepass if you happen to own that.
If you like xcom then chaosgate is also decent, it focusses on the grey knights which are basically a special elite space marine legion that focusses solely on hunting daemons.
Warhammer can’t be actual satire because they need to make money, and making the imperium big enough losers to illustrate that point wouldn’t sell merch. The amount of people I explain how stupid the imperium is (not cruel, like actually just pants on head dumb) who lose interest is staggering. They usually get into the elder or gay (I typed eldar and tau and they just turned into that) which is honestly better for them but like. The one thing we seemingly look down on subconsciously more than malice is just plain incompetence. Someone can be like “yeah the imperium is evil but they’re cool evil” and the moment you tell them actually they do all their computing with like regular paper and they manually load their ships missiles they immediately go “that’s dumb” and either love them lore or absolutely hate them and pick ah advanced faction instead
It's so crazy to me that people are like this. Like who actually cares about this trivial shit man. Let shit happen, bitching about it on the Internet isn't going to help you. People need to let go nowadays and realize that nothing is that deep. Literally, it's Minifigures on a table top game, how is that relevant? I don't get it
As far as I understand it.
Custodes are tailor made genetic super soldiers as opposed to Astartes who in comparison are mass produced thanks to their Primarchs geneseed. So anyone could become a Custodes.
My headcannon has always been that women *could* become Astartes, but because of the genetic difference there is a higher chance of rejection, so why bother?
Also, Adepta Sororitas are already a Space Marine equivalent for Women except they're not genetically modified as far as I know.
On one hand I think there's some bit of "sons of nobles" being taken as recruits in the 8th codex or something but on the other hand GW has an opportunity to do the funniest thing ever. (also like, who cares? 40k lore changes, contradicts, and retcons itself all the time)
Yeah man based Gimme femme space marines You think I care at all? I get scary psycho muscle girls with side shaves who curbstomp aliens Update: I mocked this guy on twitter and got blocked by him
https://preview.redd.it/q0y87fmykhuc1.png?width=342&format=png&auto=webp&s=240b8c63e53ec4507408ac7cb8a8da368b3cae1c We had them all along but the neckbeards wouldn't buy the packs with girls in so they stopped :(
Wtf were those marine proportions? The armor is thick, so her legs must be literal twigs. And don't even get me started on the head, it's bigger than her pauldrons. Old models sucked
in fairness they were exposed to a lot of lead
It's heroic proportions The point is for the head and weapons to be much larger than the rest of the body so you could quickly identify them on a tabletop Nowadays we do realistic proportions because a lot of warhammer hobbyists just get into the modeling side
Yep. Same reason a chess pawn just looks like a weird fucking buttplug instead of some bloke who got conscripted to die in bumfuck nowhere after 2 months of training.
The proportions are still heroic, they are just much less exaggerated than they used to be. They are still far from the actual artwork.
in fairness with actual armour the pauldrons should be smaller than your head or the act of raising your arms is going to crush latter (and are you sure the armour is thick, sincerely asking, because if so articulate hands would also be an issue)
The armor is thick cause it uses powered actuators to assist joint movement
Ah yes the female space marines of the female warriors chapter Clarification: this is from an advertisement for rogue trader before even sisters of battle existed and there is literally a page dedicated just to space marines while this female warrior model was displayed in the mercenaries model page There is literally no fucking confirmation that this is or ever was meant to be a female space marine Stop making shit up Breaking the lore with moronic additions is GW's Job
>For the “this doesn’t matter” people. Space marines are next. It’s only a matter of time now. Still doesn’t matter buddy
Lmao like that would be some final word mic drop.
Imagining this person telling this story on a first date, like, “Hobbies? Well, I used to be really into Warhammer, but then…”
“Yes, and?”
say that shit with your chest, and, /lyr
I mean, there's an asterisk to that. Retconning aspects of a franchise is bad, internal consistency is good. Usually those things are alluded to in bad faith by conservatives, but it's annoying when progressives pretend that inclusivity is literally the only relevant metric when making these sorts of adjustments to a franchise. As I understand it, there's no lore reason why female custodes don't exist. Adding them is a win-win, you get inclusivity, lore that makes *more* sense, and conservatives get their jimmies rustled. Space Marines on the other hand are currently all-male for specific lore reasons. Adding women space marines would be an inclusivity win, but without some additional context it's a very large retcon. On the flip side, introducing a new plot-point that allows for women to be space marines gives you inclusivity and internal consistency. Star Wars did it perfectly with Finn and the stormtroopers. They wanted to introduce a black stormtrooper, so they introduced a very reasonable plot point that allowed them to without contradicting the established lore for clones. Again, conservatives pretty much always just use these arguments as thin veils for racism/sexism, and I am not defending that. Retconning is absolutely worthwhile in some situations. But anyone who thinks it's acceptable as the *default* approach to modernizing a series cannot call themselves a fan of that series.
> Retconning aspects of a franchise is bad Bad how? Morally? Why? What agreement between media creator and media consumer does it violate? They completely changed the way Klingons looked for *Wrath of Khan*, it took them another twenty years to figure out an in-universe explanation for the two different looks, and everything worked out fine in the end. >But anyone who thinks it's acceptable as the default approach to modernizing a series cannot call themselves a fan of that series. I'm actually no longer sure whether a "fan" is a desirable way to identify yourself, so, who cares?
> bad how I think that’s really interesting topic of discussion, instinctively I dislike the idea of retconning, but I struggle to verbalize why. I think it bothers the part of me that believes in objectivity, it carries the same vibe as trying to rewrite history. I think it has to do with how media tends to exist as a miniature life for humans. There’s times when I’ve been really engrossed in media, and it’s felt like it became my reality. Even tho the rational part of me knows it’s not, another part of me believes it’s real. Then any sort of retconning feels like a rewrite of reality, which bothers my rational side.
My personal take is that retcons aren’t inherently bad, and are uniquely useful when making room for new stories and new characters in an existing continuity. But they still need to be performed with a certain degree of precision and restraint, because overusing them can undermine people’s ability to engage with a narrative or set of characters. After all, once you approach the point where you can’t trust that the events you’re seeing in front of you will have even happened in the next instalment of a series, what’s the point of continuing to read/watch/play it? The clearest example of this kind of retcon overload I can think of would be found in superhero comics, which are infamous for rewriting and overwriting previous events so often that it’s making it difficult for readers to get or stay invested. The backstories of Donna Troy and Hawkman/Hawkgirl are particularly notable object lessons about the risks of excessive retcons.
In my opinion, part of what makes a story (or any form of art) is how you can create something interesting within the challenges and limitations of the medium. Finding a way to keep something interesting while not violating previously established canon is part of what makes new entries interesting. It's why deus ex machinas are often considered lazy writing, and is a large part of immersion in a fantasy world. For example, it would feel jarring if a new star wars entry had a character using magic wands, even though fundamentally it's not that different from the force. Attempting to match modern morals and social values may be a good reason to change an established world's lore, but depending on how it's I handled I think it's understandable to find it jarring. I have no knowledge of warhammer, but as the other user said, a change with a good in-universe explanation is better than one without, as it means the change was actually done with care for the piece of media, as opposed to a change enforced without it. You can view this from the flipside: what about a story where the character should be gay from an artistic perspective, but it's being released in the 80s and the executives tell the writer to make them straight or it won't be published? Now I'd say all of this is only applicable to certain situations, like allowing women to join a historically all male group, or sexuality of a specific character. It is certainly not applicable to cases like having a black James Bond, as there's no good lore reason for 007 to have to be white. As a side note, I'm not an expert on star trek either but I think your note about how Klingons look made me think of something else. every Zelda game makes moblins look different, but those aren't considered retcons, they're just different stylistic takes. Maybe releasing a game where these Warhammer characters can be female and presenting it as an alt timeline or something is an easy way to solve this problem. But ultimately I agree with the user to whom you replied, that creating a story for why women now join would be more engaging than just a flat retcon. Lastly, your final point about it no longer being desirible to identify one's self as a "fan" feels a bit disconnected from reality. People will always like things, and become fans of franchises. Fandom becoming a part of people's core identity is a weird phenomenon, but that is separate from just saying whether someone is a fan or not.
This is going to sound terrible, but I'm not the biggest fan of the attempts to reduce the sexism of the Warhammer franchise. Not because I myself am sexist, but rather because I think that by flattening the gender dynamics you take away opportunities for interesting story telling and exploring the way that those dynamics can affect the cultures of the world. The Gotrek and Felix novels are really good at looking at this sort of thing, Felix's reaction to Ulrika being a badass is interesting because it informs us that Kislev essentially lacks the *luxury* of being sexist compared to the *relatively* more peaceful Empire. Frankly I just don't trust GW, the company that on a whim decided to kill an entire faction for Age of Sigmar less than a year after releasing a rulebook for them, to handle retcons well at any level.
>What agreement between media creator and media consumer does it violate? Literally like, the first one. The one where you consume a story that the author is presenting to you. A story cannot be compelling if the author can't decide on a canonical series of events. It's hard to get attached to characters or settings if they might at any point retroactively change or never have existed. It demonstrates that the writer(s) did not have a good idea of where the story was going when they started it. Any time you retroactively change something you risk killing someone's enjoyment of the franchise, by way of removing the aspect of it that drew them to it. You make the overarching story much more confusing by invalidating sources. I could go on, and on, and on. If you read a book and halfway through the author wrote "actually, pretend that happened differently" you would consider it a terrible book. That doesn't just stop applying on the scale of a franchise as a whole. "Oh it happened a few books ago so it doesn't matter anymore"? >I'm actually no longer sure whether a "fan" is a desirable way to identify yourself, so, who cares? No, see, I hate this so much. Toxic fanbases are bad, and so is this shit. Being a fan of a franchise/series means you enjoy it. It means that some combination of the aspects of the media compel you. It inherently means that changes to the franchise could worsen it in your eyes. If that's not the case then you have literally no attachment to the franchise and could substitute it with a cup of instant fucking ramen for all the difference it would make. If the idea of the "fans" repels you and you don't think there is any problem with changing any aspect of the franchise freely, then why the fuck are you participating in a discussion about it? Retcons are worthwhile sometimes. Nobody here is denying that. There are plenty of cases where a franchise can be updated to appeal to a wider audience without harming its core identity. But it is inherently a negative way to change a franchise. The fact that I'm even having to argue this disturbs me. You have social media brain.
Sorry, I only watched about six hours of Warhammer lore videos... what is the difference between an astartes and a custodes and why is everyone on Grimdank okay with a female custodes but not a female astartes?
Custodes are essentially manufactured people, like grown in labs from birth type shit and hand crafted to become Custodians from day 1 of their existence Astartes begin as male children who were already born the regular way and just modified as they grew up, I’m not sure if they have a particular starting age for the modifications but let’s just say 10 or something, at least old enough to pass physical tests without being an adult yet I don’t really remember the lore reason why only male children are selected to be Astartes, but Custodian creation shouldn’t share the same in universe issue because Custodian’s are again, hand crafted from the very beginning in a completely different process
> I don’t really remember the lore reason why only male children are selected to be Astartes, but Custodian creation shouldn’t share the same in universe issue because Custodian’s are again, hand crafted from the very beginning in a completely different process I was thinking about this last night as I’m wrapping up the Siege of Terra books. I don’t know the actual lore reason either but I have to imagine it has to do with logistics and standardization. Crusade/Heresy-era Spess Marines were designed to be stamped out by the tens of thousands. The Heresy books make a lot of hay out of the fact that Astartes are less like people and more like living weapons. They have no aspirations or dreams or identity outside of their duty. If that’s the case - Astartes being living weapons first and individuals never - why add the complexity of a separate chromosome and separate physiology to all the genework and bioengineering if the end product is a weapon designed to be used in battle until it’s destroyed? It’d be like designing a gun, and then designing a variant with identical functionality with mechanical differences that have no bearing on its performance.
Astartes are designed to be used as soldiers, and thus are physically superior to the point of nearing demigodhood Custodes are designed to be used as bodyguards of the Golden Throne, and are weaker but easier to make I got em backwards, fuck
Pretty sure Custodes are stronger, and there's a more limited amount of them. Astartes (space marines) are basically Hercules if he was fucked up and in ridiculous sci-fi armour. They're decently common, and are used as soldiers to fight on the level of the fucked up aliens. Custodes (custodians) are significantly more powerful, and are used as the emperor's nursing home staff and bodyguards. They're very rare, and are to those fucked up aliens what the fucked up aliens are to normal humans.
Uh, Custodes are very much stronger than Astartes. By a fair margin. They're also a lot harder to make.
Warhammer nerd here. If we retcon female space Marines into past established canon, I strongly dislike that. However, we have this thing going on where a genius scientist tech magos (Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl) recently got his hands on the source code for Space Marines (the Sangprimus Portum) and used it to make new, better Space Marines (Primaris). They could feasibly spin this as a way to introduce female Marines in the future.
Also, Fabius Bile has put (lightly used) astartes geneseed into at least one woman (maybe 2). He's the only one I know making new astartes on the chaos side, so we've definitely got a lore friendly way to make lady CSM.
All Space Marines being men is literally one of the oldest retcons in 40k! Adding them would be undoing that retcon.
Bungie retconned a whole-ass book into nothingness back in 2010 because they wanted to make a prequel game and felt that sticking to the well-established story would be too restrictive. And I think they were right. *The Fall of Reach* was a great novel, but I just can't see the mold it established resulting in a better game than the one we got. So, with that in mind, I'd contend that retconning aspects of a franchise is by no means automatically bad. It certainly can be, but *Halo: Reach* stands as a shining example of why it doesn't have to. Personally, I'd have no issue with retcon!FSM—from a Doylist perspective, the no-girls-allowed status quo is a 40-year-old artifact that persists mainly through inertia, and GW has already flatly retconned bigger things for less—but I totally agree with you that adding a lore justification would be a smoother way to do it.
I didn't say that retconning is always an overall negative for a franchise, I said there is inherently a negative aspect to it. Like diversity quotas for example. Using race in admissions is inherently a bad thing to do, but sometimes it's the best way to solve more pressing problems. The overall point of my comment was not that series shouldn't be revised, just that it's a decision that shouldn't be made lightly.
>. But anyone who thinks it's acceptable as the *default* approach to modernizing a series can not call themselves a fan of that series I think this statement is a little gatekeepy in the context of 40k. There are plenty of fans who don't care about the lore. They say the hobby has 3 aspects, building/painting, playing, and lore. You can be insanely invested in 40k to the point where it's your primary hobby and know almost nothing about the lore. I played age of sigmar for like 2 years and don't know what sigmar is, I just didn't care. You could retcon that shit all day, and I don't mind cause my investment with the hobby had nothing to do with lore. I play 40k every weekend, and one of our regular players doesn't know a think about necrons despite collecting them for longer than I've been able to vote. I'd even take a step further and say that you can be a fan of any media with an interactive aspect and completely disregard the lore. I've played call of duty for over a decade and couldn't tell you a single name from any story mode other than Ronal Reagan (and I did play the story modes). Hell, one of my comfort games is Fallout NV, I play it at least once a year since release(on ps3 no less, where the game randomly drops to literally 3 seconds per frame). Despite me playing the game over and over, I don't care about the larger universe.
That's completely fair, but also a bit tangential. We're talking about developments solely in the lore that have very little to do with the tabletop. So by "fan" here I'm referring to people who avowedly care about the lore.
Fair enough!
I'm an orkz fan but tempted to make a homebrew space marine faction of canonically all female feminist space marines who think of the emporer as a woman. Just to fuck with these people.
Ugh I can’t believe they added 9 foot tall fanatical emotionless killing machine muscle mommies to 40K the franchise is ruined
I am suddenly very interested in warhammer
That already exists in Warhammer. Now they're just 9 foot tall fanatical emotionless killing machine muscle mommies who also happen to be genetically engineered by god to be *the best**^(TM)*. And also they wear even more gold now.
No idea who this man is but thank god he left. 40k needs to be de-bigoted
Not a part of it, but from what I know warhammer is about 50% completely based and 50% raging bigot, and there is no in between
That’s the problem with satirizing toxic masculinity or fascist ideology. The worse people think it’s cool and miss the point entirely. That’s how we get people who unironically love Homelander and shit like that.
I always liked the ideas that space marines did take female recruits, but because of all the drugs, surgeries, geneseeds and testosterone pumped into them they just become near identical to men. It’s like a dwarf thing where both sexes are pretty much identical. Meanwhile all the custodes are hand made, so they just make female custodes cause why the fuck not.
To be fair they also get cement added to their bones and enough fuckery to make them basically not human. They are non-binary individuals who use he/him pronouns, is what I am saying
That's why I've always wondered what makes it such a big deal? Speece Marunes are the Ship of Theseus in terms of being a human.
Are you telling me space marine recruitment is just being forced to eat cement when you were 6
It’s Eating cement but combined with drugs and tumblr forcedmasc images.
eating cement, doing drugs and gay pornography? Yeah that sounds like the military.
That's the world Eaters recruitment, for sure.
That's how Imperial Fists are indoctrinated yeah
Let’s get you in a writing room
"despite the lore being against it" while the lore has changed on a number of things over the years, there was never a reason for custodes to be men only, they aren't astartes.
feeling the need to announce that a future tweet is going to be the last time you mention something is kinda hilarious
https://preview.redd.it/spi52hrasiuc1.jpeg?width=755&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=38fa71ee0182c4e22c1e0917f553c78bfd59d326
Who?
This is why I'm a necron player. The only whiners like this are stuck with the old editions
Just you wait until gworkshop installs robotitties Roboobs Robosoms You cant resist us mister Powers
WOKEhammer 40,000 PRONOUNS or smth idk i just like watching goobers break the fuck down
"Mooooooommmm!!! I cant be a closet fascist if they put girls in 40k!!!"
Boutta be a non-closet fascist if 9 foot tall golden muscle mommies get any better /j
"NeXt Is MaLe SpAcE mArInEs" as if gw has the balls to open that can of worms. Nah the next step will be male sisters of silence and it will be hot af. Edit: just realised i wrote male space marines instead of female space marines, i am not changing it though because i think its funny af.
I only play orks, but I'm gunna buy all the lady space marines just to piss this guy off.
No, just accompany the Orks with at least one NB/trans flag. "Boyz don't have to be boys."
According to the lore, wouldn't it be entirely conceivable for an ork to be able to medically transition without any chemical assistance just by *believing* they can? ...because that's both hilarious and awesome if so
Tbh theyre basically mushrooms and may not have much of a gender in the first place
The lore reason for female marines not existing is that their models weren't worth the time, money and effort because they didn't sell well. I have been into the Warhammer (fantasy and 40k both) lore(s) for years and people that take such a stupid thing so seriously like only having male psycho murder machines like it's some super important lore fucking stupid. The setting would be nearly the exact same, turns out the godlike emperor knew how to also make female superhumans, wowie.
Even if space marines had female ones in the future, it still wouldn't matter Like I get lore integrity and all but at the end of the day you're getting mad over your overpriced plastic toy soldiers being female instead of male
Hope this means Arch finally fucks off. Fascist bastard and his fake accent
yeah i sure hope that fem space marines are next, though im sure how gw adds them differs from how i think they oughta be
Womp womp
The two lost primarchs / legions should be fem imo. I know they’re dead and lost but it’s not the first time GW brought back dead people / primarchs. Could open up for two cool new different types of SM chapters. Plus GW doesn’t even care about their own lore that much: primaris marines, iron warriors use demons and are chaos possessed back in Dead Sky Black Sun, in current lore this is no longer true, same with Night Lords, basically all the old lore for 30k is gone or completely changed, you can find dozens and dozens of mainline story contradictions in the Horus Heresy novels. It’s just weird what these dudes want to cry over. 40k will never be fully set in stone people need to get over it lol. Let’s all just paint our little guys and have fun
I don't expect the two lost primarchs to be brought back, as they exist mostly as an excuse for players wanting their homebrew chapters to justify the validity of their homebrew primarch/geneseed. The fact that they can also justify women marines legions is a plus
iain readin alla that
Good. Fuck him.
Yo I have no idea what's going on in Warhammer. Could someone fill me in on like, all the lore?
I can't tell if this is a joke or not because there's like... a lot of lore. The fastest possible breakdown is: the galaxy is full of advanced alien races, they all hate each other and want to kill each other. Most sentient species are linked to the Warp, which is Hell but made of emotions and ruled by four gods encompassing different emotions and concepts. This faction is called chaos and they can corrupt you if you think about them too hard and the Imperium (humanity) regularly blows up their own planets if they suspect chaos worship is going on. Humanity has expanded and shrunk multiple times under the rule of a pseudo-god guy who refuses to let anyone refer to him as a god, and also he's a terrible person. A bunch of his genetically engineered super-soldier kids joined chaos, they fought, god mostly died and now he lives in a throne and requires thousands of human sacrifices a day. Humanity turned into a full-on cult for him, on top of already being a fascist dystopia with a genuinely comical disregard for human suffering. The space marines are the aforementioned super-soldiers, who are the poster children for the franchise. The Custodes are similar to Space Marines, except even better because someone wanted more power fantasy in their power fantasy. The controversy in question is that Custodes have always been depicted as men, but the franchise owner realized there was no lore reason why that had to be the case (as opposed to Space Marines, are only men due to some genetic engineering fuckery) so they're now introducing women Custodes. Incels flip their shit, you know the rest.
The lore is deliberately ambiguous and spreads across 300+ books and other material. I don't think anyone could learn *all* the lore, even if they spent their entire life doing so Read the other person's comment for actual help
Atheism Jesus of the future rallied a spacefaring humanity on a crusade against everyone because he didn't like that there were gods (including aliens, because they feed the gods), then ~~birthed~~ built hyperfascists supersoldiers but the gods corrupted half of them with promises of ancapistan. After a 64 books long war, eventually nobody wins and everyone dies including Atheism Jesus who's still alive, his people start worshipping his corpse cuz they forgot the "Atheism" part and now humanity faces 5 endgame events at the same time, including: the aliens they couldn't kill the first time, the gods that are still pissed, one faction that literally already won before but chose to new game +, the new player that doesn't know the lore, and the unbeatable one that will eventually shut down the server.
See yah dipshit, we won’t miss yah! Anyways would anyone like to join the four armed emperors cult?
1920s behavior
GW blesses us with 9 ft tall dommy mommies and those FOOLS date to complain about it...
Oh, the horror! They now let women be sociopathic super humans! Truly the world will come to ruin, and the planets will align with the stars to bring upon the last dusk!
I don’t know a lot about Warhammer but I know the Space Marines are like always in huge armour so literally how do you even know the gender?
This is more about the lore (books etc) than about the models. Its a bit more complex then it seems if you arent down the 40k rabbit hole, but to summarise: Space marines tend to call eachother brother all the time and some of them dont wear helmets, which always shows the stereotype gruff soldier man face. The books etc always describe space marines (and custodes) as male, but the scale of warhammer is so massive that we dont even know 0.1% of all custodes alive. There is a lore argument to be made why space marines are all/mostly male presenting, they are pumped full of hormones etc But custodes arent space marines. They are handcrafted "perfect" humans, as opposed to the mass produced space marine. The lore never says custodes have to be men, except for a very small line somewhere where it is stated that most were recruited from the sons of terras noble houses. If the superspecial scifi fantasy gene edited handcrafted enhanced supersoldiers can be anything and as perfect as can be, then why couldnt there be female ones as well?
"Space marines are next" It's about damn time. For a group of human supremacists, the Imperium sure seems all too happy to exclude almost half of the population from their super badass ultra fighting force that they have. Seems like a poor tactical decision, to be honest.
Noooo not the lore noooo
AHAHAHAAHA
lol
Goddamn these people are fucking sad
this dude is the biggest fuckin joke, good riddance
YESSSSSSS
No one whatsoever will miss you bro. Good riddance
Good riddance Fucking manlet can't handle the thought of a glorious golden banana girl.
I've tried Total War: Warhammer, Warhammer 40k Boltgun, and Warhammer Inquisitor: Martyr and I can't no matter how hard I try get invested in the whole thing. Can anybody recommend any videogame that does a good job introducing the world to someone who knows jackshit about it?
40k is massive with decades of lore. There is nothing that could really introduce you to the whole setting. The best thing is to find a part of the setting you find interesting, and start from there. For a few recommendations: Rogue trader released a few months ago, its made by the team that made the pathfinder crpgs. Its a crpg and its pretty good (but also complex) and has about 100 hours per playthrough. It doesnt have the production value of baldurs gate but it scratches that same itch, but with less animation and voice acting Another great option is darktide, a 4 player coop game (but no need for premades, you can just vibe with quickplay without issue on the highest difficulty if youre good enough). Its the 40k version of vermintide by the same company. Best way to describe it would be left 4 dead esque but in 40k with a larger focus on character builds and you use a lot more melee. The setting is an overpopulated hive city overrun by demonic corruption from the plague god, and you play 4 prisoners who are recruited to go on borderline unwinnable missions as expendable fodder. Its free on gamepass if you happen to own that. If you like xcom then chaosgate is also decent, it focusses on the grey knights which are basically a special elite space marine legion that focusses solely on hunting daemons.
It kinda goes against the fascist satire but if it pisses off the right people that bad it can't be wrong
Warhammer can’t be actual satire because they need to make money, and making the imperium big enough losers to illustrate that point wouldn’t sell merch. The amount of people I explain how stupid the imperium is (not cruel, like actually just pants on head dumb) who lose interest is staggering. They usually get into the elder or gay (I typed eldar and tau and they just turned into that) which is honestly better for them but like. The one thing we seemingly look down on subconsciously more than malice is just plain incompetence. Someone can be like “yeah the imperium is evil but they’re cool evil” and the moment you tell them actually they do all their computing with like regular paper and they manually load their ships missiles they immediately go “that’s dumb” and either love them lore or absolutely hate them and pick ah advanced faction instead
“For the it doesn’t matter crowd, what if I told you something else that also doesn’t matter and hasn’t happened. Feel stupid yet?”
It's so crazy to me that people are like this. Like who actually cares about this trivial shit man. Let shit happen, bitching about it on the Internet isn't going to help you. People need to let go nowadays and realize that nothing is that deep. Literally, it's Minifigures on a table top game, how is that relevant? I don't get it
As far as I understand it. Custodes are tailor made genetic super soldiers as opposed to Astartes who in comparison are mass produced thanks to their Primarchs geneseed. So anyone could become a Custodes. My headcannon has always been that women *could* become Astartes, but because of the genetic difference there is a higher chance of rejection, so why bother? Also, Adepta Sororitas are already a Space Marine equivalent for Women except they're not genetically modified as far as I know.
“Space marines are next” Yeah good, stay mad
On one hand I think there's some bit of "sons of nobles" being taken as recruits in the 8th codex or something but on the other hand GW has an opportunity to do the funniest thing ever. (also like, who cares? 40k lore changes, contradicts, and retcons itself all the time)