Thematic Discussion of Female Custodes - Straight From the Page

[Roomsky]

It's been a while since this change dropped but everyone still seems quite eager to discuss it. Here's a containment thread!

 

This discussion still has limitations, obviously. The focus is on Custodes as presented by general fluff: novels, WH+ content and Codex blurbs. How were they presented before? What has changed? Is this change for the better from a narrative, thematic, and logical perspective? What does it improve? What does it weaken? Be cordial and back your viewpoints with substance. This is not a thread about whether or not GW has always intended women to be Custodes in a meta sense.

 

I would suggest avoiding the use of certain buzzwords surrounding diversity in fiction, you know and I know the discussion that follows will get the thread locked. Ideally, avoid discussions about GW's real-world motivations for the change as well. This is a discussion about the setting.

Edited September 5 by Roomsky

[StrangerOrders]

I will provide a more detailed opinion later (edit, it is now later and while not my best work, I tried to present my issue) but I think four words kind of summarize it for me.

 

Good idea, terrible execution.

 

If we need a chronology, the idea was first introduced by ADB when discussing his desires for MoM which codified (heh) Custodes as they are and built from his previous work defining them as more than 'golden normalish guys'. This was shut down at the time per his words due to the nominal model range being male and wanting to avoid confusion. The door was quite deliberately left open I think.

 

And I do think GW does use certain approaches when they perceive negative feedback which, while I understand from a corporate sense I do not enjoy being on the receiving end.

 

To expand, GW ultimately sells minis and do not really credit their audience. I think they excluded female Custodes originally because at the time they did not think of 'proportion them to justify using male-coded models' and have now only updated to 'you can use them, but they are still male coded so use our models'.

 

And I do not think this conversation can be had by just limiting it to female custodes, because for me at least alot of the portrayal issues with female custodes counts for both the males and what I see as a misguided rejection of femininity and what it says from a design language (bare with me as I argue for custodes having what some might call feminine characteristics).

 

It feels disappointing I suppose, because I like the concept of Custodes as idealized humans, but the Emp's kind of 'perfect onto horror' ideal. 

 

My mind goes to descriptions of their being the human ideal, faces like courtiers and being custom made. The description of skin like marble or of perfectly balanced features. That speaks to some carefully maintained softness and sharpness to them which the west traditionally assigns to being feminine.

 

And I think thats thing around 'perfection onto horror' the idea of something which should be recognizable, soft and or beautiful but is entirely too large and unyielding and somehow inhuman for all that it very much seems like what you might crave humans to be. 

 

Because thats the Emp's problem in a nutshell, it is surface level gold and marble over something empty, unfeeling and mechanical. 

 

And then they give us art and animation that looks like space marine pictures stretched vertically.

 

If male Custodes are Adonis, females should invoke Aphrodite. Vitruvian men and women but scaled nightmarishly.

 

But what does the art give us? What do the animations give us? 

 

Brutes, ugly ones at that. Consider the Captain general in the recent High Lords art as my favorite example.

 

It is at odds with the design language of their armor and the masterwork of the art that they are referred to. It makes them creatures of the Imperium when the books describe them as something out of place and even at odds with it. The nightmare desired versus the one that was not. It is an opportunity to strike interesting contrasts cast aside in favor of reveling in an iota of additional grime in a sea of it when there was the potential to see a strange plate of radiant gold striking an image with it.

 

To use an analogy, Michelangelo's David is masterwork but if you see it you realize how horrific that human proportion becomes when scaled up.

 

Now imagine if it got off its plinth, dressed in gold and started walking towards you with spear in hand. Without a single more drop of humanity in his face.

 

To me, that would invoke true horror.

 

I think going with yet another dull case of hypermasculinity is shallow as it shows creative limitations on both the artist and the audience, that there cannot be horror in beauty (and I openly admit I find Slaaneshi art laughable in what we have versus what it is described) and that there is no dread in femininity expressed through golden artifice and divinely wrought flesh. It depresses me in some ways for what could have been and I guess that encapsulates my feelings about Custodes, not just the female variety.

 

Disappointment.

 

Just my two cents and I respect those who disagree, it would be great to debate the topic further.

Edited September 4 by StrangerOrders

[Gamiel]

 

If male Custodes are Adonis

When have they been Adonis?

[StrangerOrders]

 

When have they been Adonis?

First scene with a Custodes in MoM, read how she describes Valdor. She does not use the term but she dwells on his face.

 

Look up how Valerion is described by others.

 

Look up how they describe marines as lumpen and malformed.

 

Look up how they are described as the hope for what the species may become. The hope of the man that made most of the Primarchs beautiful and even the ugly ones striking under a specific lens (even Angron is described as beautiful in the moment his face isnt clouded by hate and rage).

 

I could go on, and I am sure you could look hard enough to find one described as a lumpen brute, but it is maybe not honest to describe that as the rule nor as the norm.

 

And, to a degree, I suppose I should ask this in the air of debate. Why should they not be Adonis? Why should they be yet another lumpen brute in a setting of them? Why should they be as all others and lack any notion of softness when even Aeldari are now shown in art as brutish, hard-featured and even desiccated? 

 

If any faction should differ, the ones engineered as symbols should be. 

 

I am open to being convinced I am wrong, but that is my present position.

Edited September 4 by StrangerOrders

[Roomsky]

My own thoughts:

 

I think Custodes as women is somewhere between a neutral change and a positive one. GW gets no brownie points from me for scraps they think will sell more plastic, but the community who has embraced the change are clearly having a great time with it. It also handily fills the FSM niche without actually going there. The real substance of the change is going to be when proper creators get their hands on the premise, like with The Tithe. Hopefully Wraight can take a crack at it in Watchers 3.

 

From a fluff purist standpoint (if there even is such a standpoint with anything like consistency,) Custodes as an element of the setting have been dead to me since 8th ed. Custodes including women is an inconsequential change compared to their becoming active off of Terra. They were another example of how decayed the Imperium is: a hyper-elite and no doubt otherwise useful military force refuses to stop guarding the least-invadable planet in the galaxy due to a combination of paranoia and self-loathing. Custodes were a tragic, wasted force. 8th Edition killed the core faction identity stone-dead. It is akin to the Mechanicus suddenly proclaiming "the flesh is strong." Compared to that, women being Custodes is a cough in a hurricane.

 

But, I see many people like the gaudy homunculi who replaced real Custodes. And that's okay! I won't claim the Talons of the Emperor aren't cool. But new-Custodes are now defined by how amazing they are (and that is why I dislike them.) They're a superior force they are to nigh everyone else, would that they had matching numbers. They're practically Wardian Ultramarines. So if we're already at peerless-uncorruptable-warrior-poets, all far beyond a lowly space marine, who not have them transcend another limit of the Astartes through induction of girls? Literally, I mean. Why not?

 

Is it because the Imperium is a fascist hellscape? GW has no interest in actually portraying the horrors of fascism in-setting (or space feudalism or space authoritarianism or whatever you want to label the Catholic Space Nazis.) - their heroic warriors are actually noble, women are allowed to do things beyond having children, and psychotic zeal actually has metaphysical benefits. I don't see the advantage in trying to apply it here, specifically.

 

Is it because they're the masculine counterpoint to the Sisters of Silence? I won't say there's no angle there, but there's a reason so many women appreciate being a part of the most powerful warriors active in the setting instead of only being their all-women companions who dress in boob-plate, are physically (and by way of processing power - mentally) inferior to the male talons in every way, and don't speak (I'm not saying this was intentional, or that the SoS aren't cool as hell. But I wouldn't blame anyone if that didn't exactly grab them.) Again, not being rhetorical: what is masculine about Diocletian? Is it that he's a massive :cuss:? Aleya gives him a run for his money. Is Valerian masculine for being well-read and introspective? An actual fascist regime would condemn him for his "soft," "womanly" personality.

 

Happy to read counterarguments.

 

(This is not a response to the excellent thoughts of StrangerOrders above this post)

Edited September 4 by Roomsky

[Marshal Reinhard]

I must admit I've never really truly cared for the Custodes. An effect of that is that I'm not that well versed in their lore.

 

I'm not even sure what they are. They're the extra super duper """marines""", that guard the imperial palace, decked all out in gold. Though unlike the former, they're not mortals ascended, but crafted from conception to be superior from the outset. Which would make them truly alien to humanity. The least human super soldiers, ones that never were human to begin with. Yet a lot of lore I hear second hand seems to want them to be best of human potential. Clashes a lot with my own conception that they're almost stunted unfeeling unthinking golems, as they have no need for distracting thoughts when they guard the same rooms and corridors for thousands of years on end.

 

The change to allow female Custodes makes sense if they're truly meant to represent the best potential that humanity can be in all aspects. There's no reason to restrict that to one gender. I just have trouble wrapping my head around that lore, I guess. Retcons in 40k have come about before without huge fanfare, things were simply always like this. Space marine chapters always had Centurions.

 

Yet I can understand the feeling of gaslighting, especially in todays climate. It also comes prepackaged with the ugly notion that if you're against the change for whatever reason (say you value the historical precedent that they were all male, more than I do), you're an -ist and a bad person guilty of wrong think. And while I probably hold "safe" and "correct" opinions on this matter, I may not on the next.

Edited September 5 by Marshal Reinhard

[StrangerOrders]

 

I must admit I've never really truly cared for the Custodes. An effect of that is that I'm not that well versed in their lore.

 

I'm not even sure what they are. They're the extra super duper """marines""", that guard the imperial palace, decked all out in gold. Though unlike the former, they're not mortals ascended, but crafted from conception to be superior from the outset. Which would make them truly alien to humanity. The least human super soldiers, ones that never were human to begin with. Yet a lot of lore I hear second hand seems to want them to be best of human potential. Clashes a lot with my own conception that they're almost stunted unfeeling unthinking golems, as they have no need for distracting thoughts when they guard the same rooms and corridors for thousands of years on end.

 

The change to allow female Custodes makes sense if they're truly meant to represent the best potential that humanity can be in all aspects. There's no reason to restrict that to one gender. I just have trouble wrapping my head around that lore, I guess. Retcons in 40k have come about before without huge fanfare, things were simply always like this. Space marine chapters always had Centurions.

 

Yet I can understand the feeling of gaslighting, especially in todays climate. It also comes prepackaged with the ugly notion that if you're against the change for whatever reason (say you value the historical precedent that they were all male, more than I do), you're an -ist and a bad person guilty of wrong think. And while I probably hold "safe" and "correct" opinions on this matter, I may not on the next.

*Chuckles darkly*

 

We will see how long some chapters always had Centurians... *Eyes Chaplain Checking Absolver Pistol*

[Evil Eye]

I'm somewhat neutral on the subject of female Custodes, mainly because IMO the Custodes being a playable 40K era army (as opposed to an incredibly small group who never leave Terra, both to protect the Emperor and as penance for failing to do so in the Heresy) was a massive mistake anyway. I still feel like it would have made infinitely more sense to give more development to the Sisters of Silence, given they've been BEGGING for more attention, but there we go.

 

GW's handling of the "reveal" and the motivations behind it were dreadful though, plain and simple.

[phandaal]

 

Yet I can understand the feeling of gaslighting, especially in todays climate. It also comes prepackaged with the ugly notion that if you're against the change for whatever reason (say you value the historical precedent that they were all male, more than I do), you're an -ist and a bad person guilty of wrong think. And while I probably hold "safe" and "correct" opinions on this matter, I may not on the next.

 

I definitely do not hold the "safe" opinion on this change. 

 

Here it is: Female Custodes are not a necessary good in and of themselves. Custodes being an all-male organization was never something that needed to change. It has no effect on the real world, outside of the feelings it engenders in the 40k community, and the change will not have a positive impact on 40k or the world at large.

 

And yes, for the most part we are all just a bunch of nerds and not whatever "ism" someone learned to call other people during their Mind Reading 101 class in college.

[Indy Techwisp]

Kinda spinning off the main topic, but someone I know IRL raised an interesting point about this introduction.

That being that Female Custodes being introduced in the Codex lore and now properly debuted in the Animation may be heralding a full range refresh for the "Talons of the Emperor" range.

Custodes are notably out of scale by now and really lack several kinds of units such a faction should ideally have (Eyes of the Emperor, extra Anathema Psykana options and more Resin-to-plastic updates, for example).

So in that sense, making this change in lore could be used to justify a full range refresh and update for a somewhat less popular faction to the finance team by arguing that people would want models that match the lore and if they're gonna update the basic Custodes kit they might as update the rest of the range too, etc, etc.

 

That said, in regard to the actual depiction in the show, I feel they could've made them a little... larger?

Like, Custodes are meant to be over 9~10ft tall, right?

While Tyrith standing about head above Primaris marines makes sense, I feel her height kinda... shrinks a little when the Marines aren't in the scene, tho that might just be a production thing.

 

Also is it just me, or are Tyrith and Atlacoya's hands the same size despite the scale difference?

[StrangerOrders]

 

Kinda spinning off the main topic, but someone I know IRL raised an interesting point about this introduction.

That being that Female Custodes being introduced in the Codex lore and now properly debuted in the Animation may be heralding a full range refresh for the "Talons of the Emperor" range.

Custodes are notably out of scale by now and really lack several kinds of units such a faction should ideally have (Eyes of the Emperor, extra Anathema Psykana options and more Resin-to-plastic updates, for example).

So in that sense, making this change in lore could be used to justify a full range refresh and update for a somewhat less popular faction to the finance team by arguing that people would want models that match the lore and if they're gonna update the basic Custodes kit they might as update the rest of the range too, etc, etc.

 

That said, in regard to the actual depiction in the show, I feel they could've made them a little... larger?

Like, Custodes are meant to be over 9~10ft tall, right?

While Tyrith standing about head above Primaris marines makes sense, I feel her height kinda... shrinks a little when the Marines aren't in the scene, tho that might just be a production thing.

 

Also is it just me, or are Tyrith and Atlacoya's hands the same size despite the scale difference?

I think its been mentioned that SoS do have some level of enhancement (I could swear I read chemical somewhere) and I they do have fairly tall boots right? 

 

Wouldn't be surprised if SoS do average like 190cm or something and skew the scale. 

 

Do we have a comparison of the SoS with the marines?

 

Although this is a rare and funny reminder that talking to most Imperial posthumans is an exercise in looking up.

Edited September 4 by StrangerOrders

[Indy Techwisp]

Another thought related to this:

I'm personally surprised GW didn't fully throw out the Genderlocking for all the Talons in the codex.

Hyperstrong Male Blanks exist, and the actual term for the SoS' Organisation is Anathema Psykana, which iirc isn't a gendered term?

The fact they didn't just go "Yeah, Female Custodes and Brothers of Silence are canon" implies there's an actual reason they removed the Genderlock on only Custodes and not also on the Anathema Psykana.

 

Question is... what would that reason be?

(Y'know, assuming this isn't just my theorist brain going insane.)

[phandaal]

 

Question is... what would that reason be?

(Y'know, assuming this isn't just my theorist brain going insane.)

 

Hyper strong male Blanks get sent to the Culexus temple. Like all good Blanks, people would rather not think about them. 

[DarkChaplain]

My big problem with it is pretty simple, in essence:

 

There is no bloody precedent for female Custodes from back when they were still being made by The Bloke Himself.

 

They've been designated a Brotherhood over and over, their characters have ever been male, and there's not been a reference to female children being indoctrinated - if anything, there's been a clear divide established between the Custodes-Adam and Sisterhood-Eve, coming together to create a greater whole, a balance.

 

Coming out in the Dark Millennium timeline to say "akshually, there are female Custodes" is an a-pull precisely because it's so late into the setting's history. And with the Heresy over and wrapped up, there's not even a chance to shoehorn it into the days of the Emperor alive.

 

Now you can make the argument that Cawl, too, was a late-stage addition when 8th happened - and he suuuuuuuuucked as a result. Fix-It-All Cawl was terrible - but they got to fix him by letting Haley work his magic in both modern times and the Heresy. The way he was retroactively added to the setting was cumbersome, but perfectly realized after a few books building it up and making him an actual character rather than a fluff cliffnote with a model.

 

The difference is: Cawl is a singular character (well, actually a conglomerate of characters spliced together, and he might have made AI of himself, but that's besides the point - functuonally he is singular). Female Custodes are not singular. They'd have been around enough to be known or remarked upon, or featured in novels (like those Dan Abnett books of the Siege, for instance, where he couldn't keep himself from adding bajillions to his overcrowded Dramatis Personae). Establishing a full-on other gender of a faction we've seen and read so much about, acting like they've always been there, doesn't work the same way as adding a character on the fringe. It's just not workable with how much fluff they've already had, again, during their heyday where we know there was a limited number of them, handcrafted by the Emperor, of which almost all perished during the Siege of Terra.

 

Heck, I still have an issue with modern 40k allowing for Custodes to be made willy nilly, it seems like, rather than what we got being the leftovers from the Emperor's time, or very limited creations based on a degrading template that can't keep up with the trueborn originals. But they have to be easily replacable now, due to the introduction to the wider galaxy. Great...

 

Had they actually done the legwork at those times we got close and personal with Custodes (e.g. the Siege at the latest, Valdor's novel, or MoM earlier), then MAYBE they could've made it work smoothly, and justified it in-universe (particularly why the Emperor crafted and kept crafting female custodes but abandoned female Space Marines in the concept stage of the Thunder Warriors). Even now, I would not be bothered by a singular female Custodes showing up, having been some special character tasked with something special by the Emperor in the latter days, kept secret from all but Malcador or such. Justifying why we've never heard of her or had her referenced, but giving her enough weight and intrigue in her introduction to give a hook.

 

But they didn't do that. They did it in the lowest-effort way imaginable, for reasons that appear like it's a throwaway thing they had to do for external reasons rather than internal (setting-related) deliberations. And that is just damn silly.

 

Also, I still hate the fact that Centurion suits were used in Rob Sanders' The Beast Arises 11. Those books are not long before the 2nd Black Crusade, those ugly pos suits don't exist yet for another 5 millennia or so!

[Indy Techwisp]

Oh yeah.
I don't get why this is considered a big deal Lorewise.

We know that to make a Custodes, you take a newborn infant, use some mystical archeotech from the DAoT to render the infant into pure soulstuff and then mould that soulstuff into the apex form of that human soul.

I can't really see any reason this process is disrupted by the presence or lack of any bodyparts still in the pre-alpha stages of development.

 

For Marines we have had a number of "reasons" given over the years, but as far as I can find the only reason we assumed no Female Custodes before was that they... never explicitly said you could use a female infant as the Custodes Easy-Bake ingredients?

 

Also Re: The Brotherhood angle.

The Imperial Guard have many, many Guardswomen within their ranks, but you still have terms like "Blood Brothers", "Brood Brothers" and "Brothers-in-Arms" just referring to a group of Guard as a whole, irrespective of sex or gender (Heck, the Sarge of the new Brood Brothers kit is a Female 3rd/4th gen Neophyte Hybrid).

Why would it be any different elsewhere in the Imperium?

You have 3 main "Brotherhoods" (Custodes, Marines and Guard) and 2 of those groups are now Mixed Gender.

 

Also, yes.

We have a "Sisterhood" that is only female.

Sadly, due to how the English Language works, "Masculine" group terms are typically Inclusive where as "Feminine" group terms are typically exclusive.

The Masculine term is the "default" term used unless there are no Males at all in which case the Feminine term is used.

 

As another example, "Hey Guys!" is used as a generic group phrase where as "Hey Girls!" is used only when not referring to any males.

[Roomsky]

I guess what I'm most curious about is why the change is viewed as a bad thing. Putting aside the cynical roll-out and the cynical reasoning for adding Femstodes - what about the change, beyond it on principle being an unearned change, is bad? What do we lose out on? Because it doesn't take away from the grimdark, it doesn't affect anything material about how Custodes act as far as I can see, they basically still just look the same too.

 

What am I missing?

[Marshal Rohr]

I am personally furious by the changes. Custodes should not be 12 feet tall. 

[wecanhaveallthree]

What we lose out on is an explicit design decision on themes pretty much as old as time: MAN SUN, WOMAN MOON.

 

The balance of Sun and Moon has been a thing since, like, forever, and the male/female representation of each. The 'imbalance' of the Talons of the Emperor mirrors the 'balance' of Luna and Sol in Roman myth: Rome stands so long as the two are in harmony, and in 40K, both organisations are shadows of their former power and prestige. Indeed, the all-but-revival of the Psykana and the Somnus Citadel in Wraight's work (as well as 8th having the Custodes go out in force) aligns with Guilliman's restoration of the Republic Imperium. Heh heh heh.

 

The Psykana being a secretive, insular group with a private language who hunt the creatures of the night is badass. Their pairing with the bright, beautiful and attention-drawing gold of the Custodes is also badass. I've always felt the Anathema being women-only was a solid nod to that same historic theming of magic and the arcane being female-dominated. The Custodes are great warriors, sure, but when it comes to the mystic arts - the supernatural, or as Erda shows us, the primal - ya need a woman's touch.

 

TL;DR Symmetry and themes, yo.

 

On a more in-setting note, it was exactly that mythology and occult nature that likely informed their creation by the Emperor. Tapping into those forces for your anti-Chaos specialists makes good.

 

Perhaps, most personally, I think the addition of female Custodes gentles the Emperor in a way that's at odds with his history, his experiences, his life - and the nightmare world he created. Dan Abnett wrote very simply of the Emperor's defeat of Horus in a way that resonated very strongly for me: at the end of everything, it was just a man killing his son with a stone. The Emperor is, still, even all that time later, with all that wisdom and experience, still a scared boy wishing he had the power to save his father. The emotional impact of that moment was so powerful it created one of the strongest daemons of the setting in Drach'nyen (BELAY THAT, I'M DUMB). The Emperor's story is a masculine one. He was raised by men, betrayed by men, deprived of his father. His particular blindness, his lack of self-reflection is what causes him to take up the mantle of Dark King until Oll - a man! - begs him to reconsider. Until Loken - a grandson - speaks to him. And they can only do this because Malcador - another dude - put a failsafe on those all-male Companions. 

 

Of course the Emperor made the Ten Thousand male. He has, through all history, been supported and surrounded by men. I doubt he was even conscious of doing it, for the afore-mentioned self-blindness. The Emperor seeks safety. He seeks power: to preserve, to protect, to destroy what is different, or strange, or challenging.

 

Look at how he drove away all the Perpetuals who spoke against him. Look where he posted Sureka - on a rock as far away as it's possible to be. Look at how he failed to confront Erda. He just let her be. He could not understand her. He could not anticipate her. He can not engage with her, so he avoids her. He is, still, that scared little boy who wants to surround himself with ideal men who will listen to him, accept him, comfort him. 

 

Of course the Ten Thousand are male.

 

How could a boy's toy soldiers be anything else?

Edited September 5 by wecanhaveallthree

[Marshal Rohr]

Drachnyen’s birth and the Emperor killing his uncle are two seperate events. 

[Karhedron]

 

Like, Custodes are meant to be over 9~10ft tall, right?

 

The best comparison I have seen for scale is the cover of Solar War as it has normal humans, Marines, Custodians and a Primarch all standing on the same level. We can see that custodians are taller than Marines but only by a head or so. They are still well short of Rogal Dorn, who was not particularly tall for a Primarch. If Marines are 7' out of armour, that would put custodes at around 8' meaning that they would not be much taller than Primaris marines.

 

[Wormwoods]

 

Also is it just me, or are Tyrith and Atlacoya's hands the same size despite the scale difference?

Well, you know, we're never getting fully away from Heroic Scale, are we?

 

I'm not much of a fan of Custodes in general, for reasons others have mentioned in here. The design space of 'big transhuman living weapons in power armour' is pretty full in 40K, and all the other examples get to have some level of free will beyond 'protect emperor'. Maybe I just don't like painting gold much, who can say. 

 

I'm not that interested in the lore consistency. Custodes used to be shirtless. Leman Russ used to be an imperial general. Perpetuals used to not exist, and I was happier for it. 'What's currently true' is more important than what the lore used to be, because it's always been in flux. Do women getting to be big golden philosophical zombies too ruin the lore as it currently exists? I wouldn't say so, why would it change anything? I just want it to show up on the tabletop. That's kind of my assumption about why it happened, too: they've had success making big, golden women in power armour over in AoS, why not do the same over in 40K? I just wish they had lined it up with a model release. 

 

Overall positive, would likely have more of an opinion if it was for a faction I liked, but would like it to be in plastic before/around the same time as on the page, just as a general rule for these things. Imagine if we had multiple years of Primaris books before the first Intercessor box was revealed? 

[TrawlingCleaner]

The balance of Sun and Moon has been a thing since, like, forever, and the male/female representation of each.

 

I think this might be the first thing I've read that I'd consider a loss to the faction by including women in the Custodes, I'd love to know if it was intentional when they created Custodes/Sisters of Silence or if it was a cool unintentional happenstance

 

The Emperor is kind of notoriously gentle and soft with a whole plethora of characters, often acts out of emotion and has "favourites". Malcador, Valdor, Ra, of course Horus etc. I'm not sure why using men and women as his bodyguard would make him gentler? They're barely human, large, automatons at the end of their transformation either way. I'd argue he sends the Perpetuals away because he valued their friendship rather than not knowing how to deal with them, although I suppose that could largely be arguable.

 

He's also surrounded by women and would've interacted with women for 30k+years? Other than Space marines all other facets of the Imperium have women, the Perpetuals included women etc. The betrayals and relationships he has aren't exclusive to the male experience. On a meta level, most of the writing and the characters created were created with the audience they had at the time and the strengths the writers had at the time. To be honest (potential hottake), BL writers couldn't write women for a long time, most are only just now passingly able to and GW's target market was most definitely not women (that's not to say women didn't get in the hobby). In the same way the Ian Watson's Space Marine book is no longer seen as cannon for GW, older lore will also be changed and evolve. GW's audience has grown and evolved too.

 

On the actual retcon, it's not out of the ordinary for GW? "They were here the whole time" or "It's always been this way" is how they've done retcons in the past. Black Crusades, Eldrad's death, Dark Imperium, the deaths of primarchs, large swathes of the Horus Heresy, Pertarabo's Ascension, Rogal Dorns, Centurions, even the Leagues of Votann/the end of Squats has been "they were always here"ed. All with a such a comparitively small amount of dirt kicked up. If they said "The Emperor sent out a vision to include women" or "The gene-smiths in the Palace figured out a way to make custodes from women", that tends to sound like "The Emperor knew how to and didn't want to" or "The Emperor knows less about Gene-smithing than a no-name in the palace". There's probably less questions on the writers and less hard or weird answers they'd have to give

 

For me, there's near zero loss to the setting as a whole and even less to the faction and it's themes (other than the above cool symbology) and a big net positive to the hobby. The more people in the hobby, the better and better representation of people from all walks of life, the better

[Gamiel]

 

First scene with a Custodes in MoM, read how she describes Valdor. She does not use the term but she dwells on his face.

 

Look up how Valerion is described by others.

 

Look up how they describe marines as lumpen and malformed.

 

Look up how they are described as the hope for what the species may become. The hope of the man that made most of the Primarchs beautiful and even the ugly ones striking under a specific lens (even Angron is described as beautiful in the moment his face isnt clouded by hate and rage).

Don't have that book. Do you have any quotes?

 

 

What we lose out on is an explicit design decision on themes pretty much as old as time: MAN SUN, WOMAN MOON.

Just want to point out that we have many mythologis with a sun goddess and a moon god, and if we go back to the Mesopotamians (which is as far back as we can go I think) were their deities for the sun and moon both male (with the sun god being the son of the moon god and his wife).

[hd3]

 

I'm somewhat neutral on the subject of female Custodes, mainly because IMO the Custodes being a playable 40K era army (as opposed to an incredibly small group who never leave Terra, both to protect the Emperor and as penance for failing to do so in the Heresy) was a massive mistake anyway. I still feel like it would have made infinitely more sense to give more development to the Sisters of Silence, given they've been BEGGING for more attention, but there we go.

 

GW's handling of the "reveal" and the motivations behind it were dreadful though, plain and simple.

Can't agree with the latter two points on this enough

Edited September 5 by hd3

[LemartestheLost]

First of all, thank you @Roomsky for opening the thread and making it clear that this is a good faith argument zone. So far, I'd say we're moving along swimmingly! Everybody here has said something I can find common ground on even if we disagree on the wider issue. I think it really does speak to the maturity of this subforum and those that frequent it.  I will post my full thoughts when I'm not at risk of passing out from exhaustion, but DarkChaplain & Wecan have gotten most of them nailed to a T. My biggest gripe is that the nature of the real world and the nature of 40k are diametrically opposed. Not that it is a bad thing, I do not want to live in the 41st millennium. That fact isn't anybody's fault, but it does mean that over time 40k will naturally lose its harsh satire angle to the detriment of the setting.

 

 

Is it because the Imperium is a fascist hellscape? GW has no interest in actually portraying the horrors of fascism in-setting (or space feudalism or space authoritarianism or whatever you want to label the Catholic Space Nazis.) - their heroic warriors are actually noble, women are allowed to do things beyond having children, and psychotic zeal actually has metaphysical benefits. I don't see the advantage in trying to apply it here, specifically.

 

 

Precisely this. Of course, lots of whitewashing has to happen in order to sell the parents of a 13 year old on the Space Nazi faction in an expensive hobby, and maybe I'm just becoming an old curmudgeon before 30, but I want more from GW in terms of actually portraying the horrors of fascism in the fiction and at the meta level (harder to do with the models). They won't do that because the world/media cycle/internet has no mercy or nuance in today's age where farming clicks is how the money is made, so any principled stand as for why the Imperium should actually be portrayed more truthfully will get the folks at GW called Neo Nazis themselves.

Edited September 5 by LemartestheLost
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