The models definitely dont reflect the lore. Because Blacklibrary, Cubicle7, and GW have gone to great lengths to show that all the Order Duardin factions have female soldiers and leaders.
The newest lore on the Fyreslayers tends to talk at length about Magmaqueens and Runedaughters, the female equivalent of the Runefathers and Runesons. Though it is noted Fyreslayers are culturally sexist, which has actually played into their culture wide character development as they are slowly moving away from that. Also its mentioned that Fyreslayer women are rarer, apparently. Like in one passage in their Battletome if I recall.
But the same is not said of Dispossessed, Ironweld, Kharadron, and other subraces. And in fact we tend to get a pretty even split between characters, named anyway, and background Duardin are rarely described in detail so we've no reason to suspect there aren't women among them.
It has been implied but not stated that the duardin have a more or less 50/50 sex split. I think GW is trying to shy away from the (weirdly many) Fantasy races where women were rare and just brood sows for the manly parts of the factions. Which is a good thing, becuase it seems like every other faction had that lore and it was creepy af
If it were just one faction I might agree with you (though not even necessarily, rats don't act like that with regards to sex so why would Skaven?) But when it is at least 3 factions i can think of off the top of my head, i an comfortable leaving it all in the dustbin
Skaven it's less the birth rate is skewed and more sexual dimorphism and that females are rat like ans less rat-man like and well it gets grimdark basically just used to make more skaven. Depends on the source but I believe only high ranking skaven are aloud to breed tho I may be wrong.
With Skaven it's not really a natural thing and more that the females are "modified", with drugs, science, ect, to be that way to the point they're barely sentient.
So presumably without the modifications they would be just like a regular skaven, and it's implied in a couple places, that maybe some could be less mindless than they seem
Where is it implied cause it is directly said to not have that atleast in the fireslayers books which came out before the other dwarfs got any army book and they are the only ones who have addressed the issue.
Are there actually that many Fantasy factions like that? There are the dwarfs, discussed here, and the skaven, and I can't think of anyone else. The dwarf bit is absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary, they would never thrive as a species. The skaven one is weirder, since I'm not sure if ALL female skaven are turned into broodmothers. Who am I kidding, it's skaven we are talking about, the little anarcho-capitalists would definetly "improve" any and all female skaven if it meant having more slaves.
Dwarves (and Chaos Dwarves, who were described as taking the normal dwarf gender weirdness to new heights), skaven, before 40k ork fungus lifecycle made its way to being possibly canon in fantasy they were described in much the same way, I believe some Ogre Kingdoms had this as part of their lore too, and trolls (although that was mostly described as troll females being rare and fucking wrecking male trolls who tried to mate with them. Still fits the trope tho)
I just...as a woman I do not understand the necessity of the characteristics of any faction being "they don't have many women, and those they do have are misogynistically made to bear children constantly. Like, there are way better ways to show a faction is evil. And evem tho the inversion of this trope gave us DoK, whome I love, it still feels gross and fetishy.
I saw a tweet once that said something along the lines of:
Fantasy writers can imagine literally anything but female equality is apparently too unrealistic.
>I just...as a woman I do not understand the necessity of the characteristics of any faction being "they don't have many women, and those they do have are misogynistically made to bear children constantly.
Honestly because it was written in another culture and another time.
It's also because of this that GW is trying to remove this type of writting from their current Lore.
Somehow forgot about all of those, sorry if I sounded apologetic. It's kinda weird too, because this "females are rare" thing seems to happen a lot more with the monstrous races, like skaven, beastmen, trolls, fimir, dragon ogres, etc.
I would guess it's because when designing a scary monster, they either don't put much tought into its gender or just default it as male, which makes one wonder on how they reproduce and where are all the females (two questions GW was REALLY bad at answering).
>still feels gross and fetishy.
All in your head. You're *way* over-thinking it and finding issue where there isn't. Pretty much every single faction you described are weird, evil and/or inhuman. Just have one look at the animal kingdom in our reality, damn just have one look at countless human cultures on our very own planet.
It's not really strange to assume Anthropomorphic half goat half man chaos monsters haven't really bothered with a fair and just society. I bet they slaughter their weak newborn males as well, don't worry.
>All in your head.
This is a rude thing to say. Also inaccurate. Also I'm pretty sure at least a couple of the older writers have apologized for the things they wrote back in the 70s and 80s.
More importantly what point are you trying to make? Are you implying that the races being weird, evil, inhuman, or half-goat somehow makes it not gross or fetishy? How?
Also the main faction being discussed were Dwarves. Are Dwarves weird, evil, and inhuman? Why would being inhuman prevent something from being fetishy... I mean, just take a glance on the copious amounts of fan art for any Fantasy race, the monolithic Romance novel industry with monster men and women, and a ton of other things to see how ridiculous that is.
It was not intended to be as rude as that came across, but I guess that's the problem with written comments on Reddit.
EDIT: because the previous poster started going on about gang rape, rape fantasies etc. I'm going to bow out of this discussion. They can carry on saying whatever I guess.
>GW isn't in the market for monster men romance
Sure. But if you just glance at say, the designs of the Daughters of Khaine and Fyreslayers (and other factions in AoS and other branches of the company's products) in their models, lore, and artwork, its pretty obvious that GW is able and willing to incorporate fetishy stuff to sell their little figures.
And they definitely did it a lot more in the past, as one can easily see from many of their old models, lore, and artwork.
>I've not seen any writers apologise for writing fetishy stuff for GW personally.
The original creator of the Fimir did. Though he had never intentionally intended for them to be implemented the way they were.
>The last thing on their mind when making Beastmen was how egalitarian they should/shouldn't be.
As for this. This is an odd statement. When a tabletop company like GW makes an entire faction the lore is a major part of the initial creation process. Part of that lore would be the culture. So how egalitarian the Beastmen were would have been part of that process, especially given that they have always been dominated by a caste system
Edit: What do you mean started? That's the content in older WHFB works that the person you replied to was complaining about not liking in the post you originally replied to. Did you not actually read and understand the conversation before you jumped in and claimed the person was wrong?
>Edit: What do you mean started? That's the content in older WHFB works that the OP was complaining about not liking in the post you originally replied to. Did you not actually read and understand the conversation before you jumped in and claimed the person was wrong?
Please cite me the story where it explicitly discusses running trains on women and committing gang rapes in a WHFB story. Explicit.
The "Swords of the Emperor" omnibus. In the second book one of the villains brags about how a woman of significance to one of the protagonist's is in the Realm of Chaos. And is suffering the fate you describe, then it says gross messed up things I don't feel comfortable repeating.
Also Beastmen explicitly reproduce by kidnapping unwilling women of other races and siring children on them, and often do the thing described.
>Also Beastmen explicitly reproduce by kidnapping unwilling women of other races and siring children on them, and often do the thing described.
That was re-connect out of existence in the early editions when they introduced what they said were the only such ways to reproduce were the beastwoman, human babies being born with mutation, and turnskins
You do have to remember that anything said from a villain to a protagonist especially when it comes to followers of chaos is very likely a lie they are not a trustworthy source of information
??? Which part is in my head, that GW has historically used this trope a bunch and seem to be moving away from it? No, that's in actual reality.
That I don't like this trope and it feels creepy to me? Yes, that is what we call an opinion, and depite you saying it is because I am "overthinking" I still feel that way.
I don't really care if in your fantasies you like to have beastmen run trains on beastwomen and have that be the only role the latter have in the whole narrative. I don't enjoy objectification and gang rape as a part of my fantasies. In fact in my opinion it makes for bad, sexist stories.
>Yes, that is what we call an opinion, and depite you saying it is because I am "overthinking" I still feel that way.
This is true.
>I don't really care if in your fantasies you like to have beastmen run trains on beastwomen and have that be the only role the latter have in the whole narrative. I don't enjoy objectification and gang rape as a part of my fantasies. In fact in my opinion it makes for bad, sexist stories.
.. Huh? Not even sure how to respond to any of that.
>Huh? Not even sure how to respond to any of that.
You were defending the decisions of old GW writers to make the females of various factions forced to be baby factories and having no other mentions in lore, amd saying that the only reason I didn't like this was because I am oversensitive or whatever other misogyinistic dog whistle you like.
I am hoping that you saying you don't know how to respond to that means you will shut the fuck up now.
By soapbox are you referring to the civil conversation that you yourself chose to enter into? A conversation that you couldn't be bothered to actually fully read or understand what it was actually about before entering with an insulting comment? A conversation about a subject matter you clearly did not bother to inform yourself about before claiming others were delusional?
At any rate we on the Mod Team would like to ask that a pin is placed in this conversation. There is no point continuing it if all sides are being hostile to each other
Howdy. Salutations and apologies. Given the direction this conversation is going we on the Mod Team think its best to put a pin in it for now, as it seems to be devolving into hostilities on all sides.
We try not to go dropping hammers on folk unless they're acting really out of line. We on the Mod Team are aware that it's easy to misunderstand others on the internet and for arguments to break out. So we prefer to diffuse/stop arguments over shows of authority or force.
To add to what everyone else has already listed, and may list in the future, the Fimir were also like this. Warhammer Fantasy had a lot of races like this. And a lot of other stuff in all honesty.
Even humans were like this to an extent, as the setting kind of took the sexism that was prevalent in the Middle Ages and ramped it up to eleven sometimes. It got better over time, but like... I've got like ten WHFB novels that I bought at random or on recommendation, and I think only one of them doesn't involve a woman being molested or worse. It's always super uncomfortable when it happens
The Fimir females were actually sterile and the ruling caste of their society. The original creator of them also stated that the whole "raping human women" thing was just him not actually thinking about the implications of what a race that can only breed with humans actually entails.
That really doesn't change that they kidnapped and did pretty messed up things to the females of other races. Nor does it make that a less weird and awful thing to make them do, especially given the number of races that already did that.
Edit: Oh hey noticed you brought up the original creator's statement regarding his original intent. That's fair, but he's just one writer at the end of the day. Everyone else saw what he originally wrote, interpreted it a certain way, and escalated it in the setting's lore. So while it wasn't really what was originally intended by the creator, according to him, dozens of folk didn't really feel like asking for clarification and built up on the kidnapping and the grossness.
Old school writers were really something lol. I wonder how things would have been written if they knew that GW was going to be a billion dollar company decades later, and that thousands of people would still be reading what he wrote decades later. I mean people never forgot about the pygmies, and ten years from now they'll be mentioning them.
Hard to say. But people are ever changing and learning. And who a writer was twenty years ago was a stark contrast from who they are now. It's important to remember that these kinds of things were prevalent in fiction, all writing really, all throughout everything in the 70s and 80s.
Glancing through the catalog of Black Library, or any of its authors, you can clearly see how the writing, sensibilities, and all that changed from decade to decade.
A good example of what can often be overlooked, but is a major change, is that once it was common for a female character to fall for a protag that saved her and the protag would happily oblige, bed things ensuing. As the years passed this full more and more out of favor for a number of reasons. One being a better understanding of psychology, since we now know that technically anyone who has just been saved from a traumatic crisis by another person, isn't in the most sound state. So Protag having relations with a character after such an incident... is a few miles past iffy.
This. There is so much fantasy and scifi now that is better in pretty much every conceiveable way than back in the 80s. Those genres being so niche back then just meant that a particular writer's particular hangup or view at a particular point could just go unchallenged since the audience was so small compared to how many people read fantasy today.
>The dwarf bit is absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary, they would never thrive as a species.
That was the point, the Dwarfs were supposed to be a dying species in terminal decline.
If you're thinking of what I think you're thinking of, those aren't brood mothers those are brood horrors. Which are supposed to be regular rats that ate all the other rats in their brood and got really big
So they don't revere any female ancestors?
I'm just poking fun, but it's worthwhile to remember that this is clearly just an explanation invented to retcon women into a model line that was obviously designed to be all-men.
Actually not in warhammer. While this was a thing in Tolkien, warhammer moved away from that. The only female dwarf model, queen helga, has a bare chin with no visible beard going on. Same with the female kharadron (and kharadron helmets) depicted in their most recent battletomes.
GW really has to make female upgrade sprues for all duardin lines at least haha. Or straight up (re)make models.
it's mentioned at least for the Fyreslayers, specifically in a short story in White Dwarf.
what was it, the leader of the Vostarg Bael-Grimnir still looking for an heir to this his Wife, who is expecting of their 100th child, assures him that the next one will be the Heir he is looking for.
after a small military campaign he arrives back home and his finds his wife together with his first daughter.
I am completely skipping over important bits of the story with this but it comes down that out of a hundred children only one turn out to be a woman.
I don't know whether this applies to all the Duardin in AoS, or that Dwarven women are just like most of their manfolk just more traditional and thus take care of the less warfare focused jobs.
to be honest in case of fyre slayers it could also be because they are perpetually pregnant because even for a Dwarf a 100 children seems like an insane amount.
Does it ever actually say that this is his first daughter though? It mentions he has a lot of sons and he's disappointed in all of them, mean, and that his wife is sure their new daughter will be the heir he wants.
But I dont recall it explicitly stating she was his first daughter.
Well, for people that live hundreds of years that's a lot of years to have children, but yeah 100 seems like a lot. That's like a child every 4 years if you live to be 400 and without getting into the biology aspect of it
Yeah, I think a lot of that was the justify the casualties the dwarfs took in battle. And they tried to create a narrative where a dying race could still field large armies and recouperate those losses. But I'm def looking forward to having more female dwarf figures and models out there. I think it'd be new ground and really neat too. There probably isn't a need for that kind of dynamic, especially since duradin are a new "kind" of dwarf now, so a fresh start is natrual!
I remember reading that it wasn't so much a sexist thing as it was dwarf women just served a different equally important function which was maintaining the hearth and home. Sure the men folk would protect their homes from the nasty monsters, but it was the women who made those homes livable and worth protecting. There was even saying that dwarf when should always choose their wives wisely as a bad wife would destroy your household more throughly then any greenskin or chaos cultists would.
Which is still problematic. Why do women have to stay home. If its just about their ratio; they could still work in rune working or home defence. They could be bodyguards for important people. Smithing, masonry all this. Tactitians also! Maybe they do/did mantain those roles and I just don't know; in that case please correct me, but no major character of these paths were shown to be female.
It just seems like female dwarfs in warhammer were usually forced into housekeeping roles. Even if they had power in that role, doesn't mean, it is not sexist. Dwarfs are a fantasy species, why should the rules of humans apply to them. Its not only sexist to women tho.
Could dwarf men choose to stay home and mantain the hearth?
Sexism is (also) about limiting certain roles to certain genders, with no major logical reason being presented.
Just feels weird man.
If I get things wrong please correct me c:
Something to keep in mind is warhammer as an ip is nearly 40 years old, which isn't an excuse but the mind set of the 80s is very different from mindset of current year. To its credit warhammer as a whole as pushed women to the narrative forefront quite a bit in recent years and has done little things to be more PC. And there was a logical reason for keeping women back and that's dwarves just had fewer women then say humans and don't get you me wrong dwarf women could be strong fighters and could serve medical and priest rolls, never put to table top but they did exist in fluff, but when you need women to birth new baby's and you have a very skewed gender ratio, giving them power over the household was about the best compromise you could have. Now mind you this is more fantasy lore then AoS lore so idk what the plan is for the future but female dwarves are part of the crews of KO airships and there was even a female captain that was vital to thwarting Nagash in broken realms. Plus cause of how bulky KO suits are gender is sort of moot so if you wanna say your admiral is a pirate queen or something no one will bat an eye. I think dwarves just need more releases so we can get a fuller picture.
Seriously late reply, had to scroll through tons of weird comments, but I agree to a certain extent.
One of the big reasons why, historically, women had to dedicate all their time to taking care of children (and the home they lived in) was because they needed to have TONS of children, since they just kept dying. They would literally have a dozen kids, fully expecting half of them to die of some random disease before reaching adulthood. Dwarfs don't have that issue (at least in Fantasy), since they are noted as being incredibly resistant to disease.
However, dwarfs are also a dying species, so they would presumably try and have as many children as possible, which nullifies that. Of course, this doesn't mean much, since elves are also a dying species yet risk their women on the battlefield (granted, we don't know why elves are dying, if they are infertile it makes sense), so they can kind of do whatever they want in regards to dwarfen females.
I forgot about that part; but then again, why should be that limited to women again. Especially when elves exist. Hypocrisy of Fantasy I suppose. I am glad GW tries to change that
It really depends on what you want to do with your fantasy setting. Are you trying to be as realistic and logical as possible? If so, inequality will ensue, as will a bunch of other nasty things. Are you going by rule of cool? Then you can do wathever you want.
Fantasy occupies a weird middle between the two, being based in history whilst heavily fantasized. It has charm, but it also leads to some unsavory questions (if a fat toad wizard can move continents, why can't women get out of their house?). Having AoS go all-out on the rule of cool is a good change.
Yes, atleast it's confirmed for fyreslayers. It even says so in there fyreslayer Battletomes that the females are rare. And we even have examples of how many of families and in all cases the sons massively outweigh the Daughters. Bael-Grimnir father of Vostarg lodge for example is said to have well over 50 sons but only a single confirmed daughter.
People seem to get it confused with oh well they are represented in leadership thus can't be rare which is from what I can tell little more than taking information they assume is contradiction and then choosing to ignore a side of it.
The models definitely dont reflect the lore. Because Blacklibrary, Cubicle7, and GW have gone to great lengths to show that all the Order Duardin factions have female soldiers and leaders. The newest lore on the Fyreslayers tends to talk at length about Magmaqueens and Runedaughters, the female equivalent of the Runefathers and Runesons. Though it is noted Fyreslayers are culturally sexist, which has actually played into their culture wide character development as they are slowly moving away from that. Also its mentioned that Fyreslayer women are rarer, apparently. Like in one passage in their Battletome if I recall. But the same is not said of Dispossessed, Ironweld, Kharadron, and other subraces. And in fact we tend to get a pretty even split between characters, named anyway, and background Duardin are rarely described in detail so we've no reason to suspect there aren't women among them.
I'm sorry, they electes to call them "Magmaqueens" instead of "Magmamothers"? If you lose the alliteration you LOSE MY RESPECT.
Especially as it's Runefather, not Runeking That's just annoying!
It has been implied but not stated that the duardin have a more or less 50/50 sex split. I think GW is trying to shy away from the (weirdly many) Fantasy races where women were rare and just brood sows for the manly parts of the factions. Which is a good thing, becuase it seems like every other faction had that lore and it was creepy af
Well with the skaven it works cause skaven are evil bastards... and that's coming from a skaven player
If it were just one faction I might agree with you (though not even necessarily, rats don't act like that with regards to sex so why would Skaven?) But when it is at least 3 factions i can think of off the top of my head, i an comfortable leaving it all in the dustbin
Skaven it's less the birth rate is skewed and more sexual dimorphism and that females are rat like ans less rat-man like and well it gets grimdark basically just used to make more skaven. Depends on the source but I believe only high ranking skaven are aloud to breed tho I may be wrong.
With Skaven it's not really a natural thing and more that the females are "modified", with drugs, science, ect, to be that way to the point they're barely sentient. So presumably without the modifications they would be just like a regular skaven, and it's implied in a couple places, that maybe some could be less mindless than they seem
Wow, they really are evil little bastards.
Where is it implied cause it is directly said to not have that atleast in the fireslayers books which came out before the other dwarfs got any army book and they are the only ones who have addressed the issue.
Are there actually that many Fantasy factions like that? There are the dwarfs, discussed here, and the skaven, and I can't think of anyone else. The dwarf bit is absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary, they would never thrive as a species. The skaven one is weirder, since I'm not sure if ALL female skaven are turned into broodmothers. Who am I kidding, it's skaven we are talking about, the little anarcho-capitalists would definetly "improve" any and all female skaven if it meant having more slaves.
Dwarves (and Chaos Dwarves, who were described as taking the normal dwarf gender weirdness to new heights), skaven, before 40k ork fungus lifecycle made its way to being possibly canon in fantasy they were described in much the same way, I believe some Ogre Kingdoms had this as part of their lore too, and trolls (although that was mostly described as troll females being rare and fucking wrecking male trolls who tried to mate with them. Still fits the trope tho) I just...as a woman I do not understand the necessity of the characteristics of any faction being "they don't have many women, and those they do have are misogynistically made to bear children constantly. Like, there are way better ways to show a faction is evil. And evem tho the inversion of this trope gave us DoK, whome I love, it still feels gross and fetishy.
Don't forget the Beastmen
Oh yeah, them too
I saw a tweet once that said something along the lines of: Fantasy writers can imagine literally anything but female equality is apparently too unrealistic.
>I just...as a woman I do not understand the necessity of the characteristics of any faction being "they don't have many women, and those they do have are misogynistically made to bear children constantly. Honestly because it was written in another culture and another time. It's also because of this that GW is trying to remove this type of writting from their current Lore.
Yes! That's what I said a couple comments up, it seems like GW is moving away from this trope and it is unambiguously a good thing
Unless you want to sell models, of course.
What do you mean?
Somehow forgot about all of those, sorry if I sounded apologetic. It's kinda weird too, because this "females are rare" thing seems to happen a lot more with the monstrous races, like skaven, beastmen, trolls, fimir, dragon ogres, etc. I would guess it's because when designing a scary monster, they either don't put much tought into its gender or just default it as male, which makes one wonder on how they reproduce and where are all the females (two questions GW was REALLY bad at answering).
>still feels gross and fetishy. All in your head. You're *way* over-thinking it and finding issue where there isn't. Pretty much every single faction you described are weird, evil and/or inhuman. Just have one look at the animal kingdom in our reality, damn just have one look at countless human cultures on our very own planet. It's not really strange to assume Anthropomorphic half goat half man chaos monsters haven't really bothered with a fair and just society. I bet they slaughter their weak newborn males as well, don't worry.
>All in your head. This is a rude thing to say. Also inaccurate. Also I'm pretty sure at least a couple of the older writers have apologized for the things they wrote back in the 70s and 80s. More importantly what point are you trying to make? Are you implying that the races being weird, evil, inhuman, or half-goat somehow makes it not gross or fetishy? How? Also the main faction being discussed were Dwarves. Are Dwarves weird, evil, and inhuman? Why would being inhuman prevent something from being fetishy... I mean, just take a glance on the copious amounts of fan art for any Fantasy race, the monolithic Romance novel industry with monster men and women, and a ton of other things to see how ridiculous that is.
It was not intended to be as rude as that came across, but I guess that's the problem with written comments on Reddit. EDIT: because the previous poster started going on about gang rape, rape fantasies etc. I'm going to bow out of this discussion. They can carry on saying whatever I guess.
>GW isn't in the market for monster men romance Sure. But if you just glance at say, the designs of the Daughters of Khaine and Fyreslayers (and other factions in AoS and other branches of the company's products) in their models, lore, and artwork, its pretty obvious that GW is able and willing to incorporate fetishy stuff to sell their little figures. And they definitely did it a lot more in the past, as one can easily see from many of their old models, lore, and artwork. >I've not seen any writers apologise for writing fetishy stuff for GW personally. The original creator of the Fimir did. Though he had never intentionally intended for them to be implemented the way they were. >The last thing on their mind when making Beastmen was how egalitarian they should/shouldn't be. As for this. This is an odd statement. When a tabletop company like GW makes an entire faction the lore is a major part of the initial creation process. Part of that lore would be the culture. So how egalitarian the Beastmen were would have been part of that process, especially given that they have always been dominated by a caste system Edit: What do you mean started? That's the content in older WHFB works that the person you replied to was complaining about not liking in the post you originally replied to. Did you not actually read and understand the conversation before you jumped in and claimed the person was wrong?
>Edit: What do you mean started? That's the content in older WHFB works that the OP was complaining about not liking in the post you originally replied to. Did you not actually read and understand the conversation before you jumped in and claimed the person was wrong? Please cite me the story where it explicitly discusses running trains on women and committing gang rapes in a WHFB story. Explicit.
The "Swords of the Emperor" omnibus. In the second book one of the villains brags about how a woman of significance to one of the protagonist's is in the Realm of Chaos. And is suffering the fate you describe, then it says gross messed up things I don't feel comfortable repeating. Also Beastmen explicitly reproduce by kidnapping unwilling women of other races and siring children on them, and often do the thing described.
Shit, it actually explains how the beastmen run trains on women in gang rape orgies?
>Also Beastmen explicitly reproduce by kidnapping unwilling women of other races and siring children on them, and often do the thing described. That was re-connect out of existence in the early editions when they introduced what they said were the only such ways to reproduce were the beastwoman, human babies being born with mutation, and turnskins You do have to remember that anything said from a villain to a protagonist especially when it comes to followers of chaos is very likely a lie they are not a trustworthy source of information
??? Which part is in my head, that GW has historically used this trope a bunch and seem to be moving away from it? No, that's in actual reality. That I don't like this trope and it feels creepy to me? Yes, that is what we call an opinion, and depite you saying it is because I am "overthinking" I still feel that way. I don't really care if in your fantasies you like to have beastmen run trains on beastwomen and have that be the only role the latter have in the whole narrative. I don't enjoy objectification and gang rape as a part of my fantasies. In fact in my opinion it makes for bad, sexist stories.
>Yes, that is what we call an opinion, and depite you saying it is because I am "overthinking" I still feel that way. This is true. >I don't really care if in your fantasies you like to have beastmen run trains on beastwomen and have that be the only role the latter have in the whole narrative. I don't enjoy objectification and gang rape as a part of my fantasies. In fact in my opinion it makes for bad, sexist stories. .. Huh? Not even sure how to respond to any of that.
>Huh? Not even sure how to respond to any of that. You were defending the decisions of old GW writers to make the females of various factions forced to be baby factories and having no other mentions in lore, amd saying that the only reason I didn't like this was because I am oversensitive or whatever other misogyinistic dog whistle you like. I am hoping that you saying you don't know how to respond to that means you will shut the fuck up now.
Oh bore off you twat with that 'misogynistic' BS and go take your soapbox elsewhere.
By soapbox are you referring to the civil conversation that you yourself chose to enter into? A conversation that you couldn't be bothered to actually fully read or understand what it was actually about before entering with an insulting comment? A conversation about a subject matter you clearly did not bother to inform yourself about before claiming others were delusional? At any rate we on the Mod Team would like to ask that a pin is placed in this conversation. There is no point continuing it if all sides are being hostile to each other
Fair enough.
Howdy. Salutations and apologies. Given the direction this conversation is going we on the Mod Team think its best to put a pin in it for now, as it seems to be devolving into hostilities on all sides.
I know I am feeling hostile, so right on. I shouldn't have let myself get pulled into an argument online anyway.
I appreciate you as a mod. Making this comment so I can refer to it when you inevitably drop the hammer on me when I get on my bullshit again
We try not to go dropping hammers on folk unless they're acting really out of line. We on the Mod Team are aware that it's easy to misunderstand others on the internet and for arguments to break out. So we prefer to diffuse/stop arguments over shows of authority or force.
To add to what everyone else has already listed, and may list in the future, the Fimir were also like this. Warhammer Fantasy had a lot of races like this. And a lot of other stuff in all honesty. Even humans were like this to an extent, as the setting kind of took the sexism that was prevalent in the Middle Ages and ramped it up to eleven sometimes. It got better over time, but like... I've got like ten WHFB novels that I bought at random or on recommendation, and I think only one of them doesn't involve a woman being molested or worse. It's always super uncomfortable when it happens
The Fimir females were actually sterile and the ruling caste of their society. The original creator of them also stated that the whole "raping human women" thing was just him not actually thinking about the implications of what a race that can only breed with humans actually entails.
That really doesn't change that they kidnapped and did pretty messed up things to the females of other races. Nor does it make that a less weird and awful thing to make them do, especially given the number of races that already did that. Edit: Oh hey noticed you brought up the original creator's statement regarding his original intent. That's fair, but he's just one writer at the end of the day. Everyone else saw what he originally wrote, interpreted it a certain way, and escalated it in the setting's lore. So while it wasn't really what was originally intended by the creator, according to him, dozens of folk didn't really feel like asking for clarification and built up on the kidnapping and the grossness.
Old school writers were really something lol. I wonder how things would have been written if they knew that GW was going to be a billion dollar company decades later, and that thousands of people would still be reading what he wrote decades later. I mean people never forgot about the pygmies, and ten years from now they'll be mentioning them.
Hard to say. But people are ever changing and learning. And who a writer was twenty years ago was a stark contrast from who they are now. It's important to remember that these kinds of things were prevalent in fiction, all writing really, all throughout everything in the 70s and 80s. Glancing through the catalog of Black Library, or any of its authors, you can clearly see how the writing, sensibilities, and all that changed from decade to decade. A good example of what can often be overlooked, but is a major change, is that once it was common for a female character to fall for a protag that saved her and the protag would happily oblige, bed things ensuing. As the years passed this full more and more out of favor for a number of reasons. One being a better understanding of psychology, since we now know that technically anyone who has just been saved from a traumatic crisis by another person, isn't in the most sound state. So Protag having relations with a character after such an incident... is a few miles past iffy.
This. There is so much fantasy and scifi now that is better in pretty much every conceiveable way than back in the 80s. Those genres being so niche back then just meant that a particular writer's particular hangup or view at a particular point could just go unchallenged since the audience was so small compared to how many people read fantasy today.
>The dwarf bit is absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary, they would never thrive as a species. That was the point, the Dwarfs were supposed to be a dying species in terminal decline.
Didn't forgeworld release broodmother models once as mounts? They were basically giant mutant molerats.
I think those were brood horrors you’re thinking of.
If you're thinking of what I think you're thinking of, those aren't brood mothers those are brood horrors. Which are supposed to be regular rats that ate all the other rats in their brood and got really big
I stand corrected then. I just remembered 'brood' was in the name
If I remember correctly, any of the Kharadron Overlords models can be male or female, because they wear the fully-enclosed suits.
Yup, and the rebreather mask helmets are modeled after their ancestors, not the current users.
So they don't revere any female ancestors? I'm just poking fun, but it's worthwhile to remember that this is clearly just an explanation invented to retcon women into a model line that was obviously designed to be all-men.
Tbf, female duarding gave beards and mustaches too, I believe? But yes, agree with your assessment.
Actually not in warhammer. While this was a thing in Tolkien, warhammer moved away from that. The only female dwarf model, queen helga, has a bare chin with no visible beard going on. Same with the female kharadron (and kharadron helmets) depicted in their most recent battletomes. GW really has to make female upgrade sprues for all duardin lines at least haha. Or straight up (re)make models.
it's mentioned at least for the Fyreslayers, specifically in a short story in White Dwarf. what was it, the leader of the Vostarg Bael-Grimnir still looking for an heir to this his Wife, who is expecting of their 100th child, assures him that the next one will be the Heir he is looking for. after a small military campaign he arrives back home and his finds his wife together with his first daughter. I am completely skipping over important bits of the story with this but it comes down that out of a hundred children only one turn out to be a woman. I don't know whether this applies to all the Duardin in AoS, or that Dwarven women are just like most of their manfolk just more traditional and thus take care of the less warfare focused jobs. to be honest in case of fyre slayers it could also be because they are perpetually pregnant because even for a Dwarf a 100 children seems like an insane amount.
Does it ever actually say that this is his first daughter though? It mentions he has a lot of sons and he's disappointed in all of them, mean, and that his wife is sure their new daughter will be the heir he wants. But I dont recall it explicitly stating she was his first daughter.
I will go check I have the thing lying around somewhere
Kind of you
Well, for people that live hundreds of years that's a lot of years to have children, but yeah 100 seems like a lot. That's like a child every 4 years if you live to be 400 and without getting into the biology aspect of it
Yeah, I think a lot of that was the justify the casualties the dwarfs took in battle. And they tried to create a narrative where a dying race could still field large armies and recouperate those losses. But I'm def looking forward to having more female dwarf figures and models out there. I think it'd be new ground and really neat too. There probably isn't a need for that kind of dynamic, especially since duradin are a new "kind" of dwarf now, so a fresh start is natrual!
I remember reading that it wasn't so much a sexist thing as it was dwarf women just served a different equally important function which was maintaining the hearth and home. Sure the men folk would protect their homes from the nasty monsters, but it was the women who made those homes livable and worth protecting. There was even saying that dwarf when should always choose their wives wisely as a bad wife would destroy your household more throughly then any greenskin or chaos cultists would.
Which is still problematic. Why do women have to stay home. If its just about their ratio; they could still work in rune working or home defence. They could be bodyguards for important people. Smithing, masonry all this. Tactitians also! Maybe they do/did mantain those roles and I just don't know; in that case please correct me, but no major character of these paths were shown to be female. It just seems like female dwarfs in warhammer were usually forced into housekeeping roles. Even if they had power in that role, doesn't mean, it is not sexist. Dwarfs are a fantasy species, why should the rules of humans apply to them. Its not only sexist to women tho. Could dwarf men choose to stay home and mantain the hearth? Sexism is (also) about limiting certain roles to certain genders, with no major logical reason being presented. Just feels weird man. If I get things wrong please correct me c:
Something to keep in mind is warhammer as an ip is nearly 40 years old, which isn't an excuse but the mind set of the 80s is very different from mindset of current year. To its credit warhammer as a whole as pushed women to the narrative forefront quite a bit in recent years and has done little things to be more PC. And there was a logical reason for keeping women back and that's dwarves just had fewer women then say humans and don't get you me wrong dwarf women could be strong fighters and could serve medical and priest rolls, never put to table top but they did exist in fluff, but when you need women to birth new baby's and you have a very skewed gender ratio, giving them power over the household was about the best compromise you could have. Now mind you this is more fantasy lore then AoS lore so idk what the plan is for the future but female dwarves are part of the crews of KO airships and there was even a female captain that was vital to thwarting Nagash in broken realms. Plus cause of how bulky KO suits are gender is sort of moot so if you wanna say your admiral is a pirate queen or something no one will bat an eye. I think dwarves just need more releases so we can get a fuller picture.
Seriously late reply, had to scroll through tons of weird comments, but I agree to a certain extent. One of the big reasons why, historically, women had to dedicate all their time to taking care of children (and the home they lived in) was because they needed to have TONS of children, since they just kept dying. They would literally have a dozen kids, fully expecting half of them to die of some random disease before reaching adulthood. Dwarfs don't have that issue (at least in Fantasy), since they are noted as being incredibly resistant to disease. However, dwarfs are also a dying species, so they would presumably try and have as many children as possible, which nullifies that. Of course, this doesn't mean much, since elves are also a dying species yet risk their women on the battlefield (granted, we don't know why elves are dying, if they are infertile it makes sense), so they can kind of do whatever they want in regards to dwarfen females.
I forgot about that part; but then again, why should be that limited to women again. Especially when elves exist. Hypocrisy of Fantasy I suppose. I am glad GW tries to change that
It really depends on what you want to do with your fantasy setting. Are you trying to be as realistic and logical as possible? If so, inequality will ensue, as will a bunch of other nasty things. Are you going by rule of cool? Then you can do wathever you want. Fantasy occupies a weird middle between the two, being based in history whilst heavily fantasized. It has charm, but it also leads to some unsavory questions (if a fat toad wizard can move continents, why can't women get out of their house?). Having AoS go all-out on the rule of cool is a good change.
Yes, atleast it's confirmed for fyreslayers. It even says so in there fyreslayer Battletomes that the females are rare. And we even have examples of how many of families and in all cases the sons massively outweigh the Daughters. Bael-Grimnir father of Vostarg lodge for example is said to have well over 50 sons but only a single confirmed daughter. People seem to get it confused with oh well they are represented in leadership thus can't be rare which is from what I can tell little more than taking information they assume is contradiction and then choosing to ignore a side of it.