Thematic Discussion of Female Custodes - Straight From the Page

[Wormwoods]

Worth noting that this is an additive change. 'Some of the custodes are women' doesn't mean your army or Strike Sodality or whatever has to hit some quota on the table, or even your personal army lore. You're welcome to just say that this particular group is all boys. If you're really not happy about it, you can basically opt-out as it applies to your collection, your lore.

 

They've made changes like this before, like the Necrons. The fact that now, as standard, Necrons have enslaved their Gods and retained more of their identities over the aeons doesn't mean you can't collect and fluff an army of old style mindless space zombies for the eldritch horror angle,l.

 

This isn't Squats being dead for decades. This isn't the Old World exploding, and taking all the old factions with it. 

[Scribe]

 

They do that all the time! 

 

And most of the time, if not all the time, I hate it. I dont care that GW treats its IP with cynicism all the time, I care that its done at all. I've said since Cawl and Primaris, this IP is circling the drain.

 

 

As opposed to at the whims of the marketing people?

 

Easily worse. Marketing people at least will have I would hope some kind of natural, institutional integrity with the setting. A fools hope, but a hope.

 

Social Media outrage bots? They just want everything marching along with their particular ideologies of the day and everyone that resists, or disagrees, is an *-ist.

 

 

And yeah, it might have something to do with progressive ideals. So what?

 

So if something is decided, as it was a decade ago, then it was decided.

 

 

Every creator's values will affect their work.

 

Absolutely, and they can go work on an IP which aligns with their values. Not that 'female genetically modified being' is a value...but hey lets just change IP's for no reason apparently.

 

 

[Crimson Longinus]

 

 

And most of the time, if not all the time, I hate it. I dont care that GW treats its IP with cynicism all the time, I care that its done at all. I've said since Cawl and Primaris, this IP is circling the drain.

 

 

I mean, I'd gladly go back to the Rogue Trader lore, where marines were gritty penal legionaries instead of noble revered heroes and primarchs were just dudes instead of silly giant demigods, but I think a lot of people liked those changes.

 

When you think the lore was "completed" when it should have been frozen and never altered again? Because it was always in flux, and a lot of things people now think as fundamental are results of that. 

 

I even agree with you that the current fluff is bad, but not because it was changed, but because some of the changes were bad. 

 

 

 

Easily worse. Marketing people at least will have I would hope some kind of natural, institutional integrity with the setting. A fools hope, but a hope.

 

Social Media outrage bots? They just want everything marching along with their particular ideologies of the day and everyone that resists, or disagrees, is an *-ist.

 

Marketing people have integrity? Ok, mate...

 

 

 

So if something is decided, as it was a decade ago, then it was decided.

 

So back to penal legion marines, and let's get rid of demigod primarchs? And the Custodes are not superhuman either, just regular shirtless guys with laser spears?

 

 

 

Absolutely, and they can go work on an IP which aligns with their values.

 

They are. It just might not align with your values.

 

 

 

Not that 'female genetically modified being' is a value...but hey lets just change IP's for no reason apparently.

 

It is not. But you assumed their inclusion was based on values. Which probably is true.

 

[Captain Idaho]

 

To nudge things back to in-setting discussion...

 

Can the people who enjoy the aspect of brotherhood expand on that point? What elements of a fraternity to the Custodes embody? I dig the angle that making the Custodes an all-male force tells us something about the Emperor, but I'm still fuzzy on the inherent male-ness of their behaviour.

 

Very good question and one that I feel is individual but mirrored by those who share similar experiences and interpret them the same way.

 

Personally I don't have a stake in the Emperor doing it for specific reason, rather how I receive and interpret a brotherhood as presented to me.

 

I'm a physical dude. Many folk here might not know, care or believe it, but I am. I'm 6'1, a boxer and gone through physical trials and tribulations as well as emotional. I was raised alongside my brother by father in rough council estate, with all the extra trimmings you might imagine.

 

My friends were physical also. Some on the council estate side of things, all rough and ready and sport is an obvious outlet and focus for us.

 

Rugby and boxing were my natural choices, both sports that have a heavy masculine slant to them, by their very nature. To clarify, even women who partake in those sports adopt a masculine hat whilst engaging in them, because of the intrinsic make up of such sports, though they can remove that hat and carry on easily enough afterwards.

 

This possibly unnecessary background to my life might give a handle on where my outlook stems from.

 

Masculine traits - such as strength and stoicism, endurance of adversity without complaint, resilience, honour and loyalty... these are a thing. They exist. They are fundamentally part of me and those I regard as (loosely) part of a brotherhood to which I belong.

 

So what am I going to be interested in? In Game of Thrones I liked the masculine characters, good and bad, showing us all how they coped with the pressures of the world around them. How they upheld their honour. How they maintain their vows and how they coped with those that were broken.

 

I wasn't interested in Jon Snow, who I felt was a boy. I enjoyed the MEN around him. Mormont (both of them) and how they dealt with dishonour. Need Stark who tried to hold his honour and head above water but could only keep one. The Hound, long suffering and who had grown calloused emotionally through that suffering, but was still valuable. Bronn who was a cut throat but directly challenging to authority but working within the system. Oberyn Martel who sought revenge at the cost of his own safety... all wrapped with airs of physical power and capability.

 

These are masculine stories. The stories of men.

 

I appreciate them because I see echos, metaphors and similarities in them that are around me, in my memory of experiences and that what I've witnessed. No, I'm not talking literally repeats of their stories.

 

That is what I value and the interests I hold for my collections such as Warhammer are no exception. I enjoyed Doom 2016 too.

 

So Adeptus Custodes were this reflection. Whilst Space Marines are a different variant of this masculinity, they were much less engaged with interactions in all their depictions bar a few, focusing purely on war. It has it's place of course! I like reading about a brotherhood of soldiers/warriors too!

 

What the Adeptus Custodes bring is art, philosophy, elegance, subtlety and intelligence to that brotherhood. They are studious, individual like a boxer might be, though working as a collective to a task as well as focusing on their own. I won't go on too much here, apologies if your eyes hurt!

 

Their goals and how they are portrayed are different to Space Marines. Very much so. And that echo to a brotherhood is something I was drawn to.

 

Now it has been eroded I have lost interest in it. They're not what they were, no longer a brotherhood and that makes me disappointed.

 

(Though not strictly speaking what you asked, I don't like how it's been removed that the feminity of the Sisters of Silence was alongside the masculinity of the Custodes, in a way that was greater than the sum of their parts. They worked together to lessen the weaknesses of the masculine and feminine and come out triumph.

 

That message has been dismissed now)

[darkhorse0607]

Well Roomsky you tried

 

I'm trying to find a better way of saying my piece on the brotherhood aspect as I was one of the ones who brought it up, once I do I'll come back and edit this unless Captain Idaho beats me to it.

 

Edit

 

He beat me to it and said it way better than I could have.

Edited September 5 by darkhorse0607

[LemartestheLost]

 

We've seen some valuable points regarding GW's practice made here, I think, but I've updated the OP so that moving forward we can hopefully cleave closer to the topic of what the change means in-setting. The meta discussion is not unwelcome but I feel the salient points have been raised, and raised well, already.

 

Always good to remember that Twitter is a cesspit, social media will make you think we're far more divided than we actually are, and that GW is a soulless corporation that will feed everything you love about 40k into a woodchipper for a quick buck. 

 

I shall digress lol. I will add that I also am not a fan of the change as someone like Captain Idaho mentioned who grew up in male dominated and fraternal organizations their entire life and will continue to participate in them until I die. Men's orgs truly do mold you into something else after long enough and like Idaho said that angle is now lost. I don't know if GW is getting away from fraternal orders because of bad news in the press recently (My old fraternity just got axed from campus for hazing this week ), but they're missing an opportunity to showcase the duality of the force that these organizations possess for both good & evil, and that is a real shame. There is a doubt, self-loathing, hatred, love, intensity, focus and humour exclusive to all men's organizations, that, no matter the skill or prowess of a female added to the group, will not be the same once the two are mixed. This is not to say that women joining organizations makes things worse, because oftentimes it's the opposite case and they fix a myriad of problems. But it IS different, and undeniably so. For those of us who resonate with the all-male warrior order vibe, we sense that we're losing the complexity and nuance in the faction without it actually being replaced with anything as of yet, which it always a "feelsbadman". By not making the revelation come to light in 40k and insisting they were always in the original 10,000, GW has hamstrung themselves by not allowing their authors to explore the premise of how the Female Custodes actually change the status quo (for better or worse, this is 40k if you'll remember) after 10,000 years of bros in the Imperial Frat House. There are so many fun, DARK stories that could be written from that angle. 

 

I'm just waiting for Chris Wraight to change my mind with Watchers 3 or a different standalone Custodes banger, really. My feet aren't planted in stone, but until I'm given reason not to be, I'm remaining an Eeyore. Please, BL, commission the man for what the people want!

 

 

Edited September 5 by LemartestheLost
spelling

[Captain Idaho]

 

Worth noting that this is an additive change. 'Some of the custodes are women' doesn't mean your army or Strike Sodality or whatever has to hit some quota on the table, or even your personal army lore. You're welcome to just say that this particular group is all boys. If you're really not happy about it, you can basically opt-out as it applies to your collection, your lore.

 

This doesn't really work though as the logic applies in reverse. If you're not really happy with there being male only Custodes, opt out as it applies to your collection and your lore.

 

 

 

They've made changes like this before, like the Necrons. The fact that now, as standard, Necrons have enslaved their Gods and retained more of their identities over the aeons doesn't mean you can't collect and fluff an army of old style mindless space zombies for the eldritch horror angle,l.

 

This isn't Squats being dead for decades. This isn't the Old World exploding, and taking all the old factions with it. 

 

Yeah I hated the loss of the lovecraftian vibe of Necrons too. They're now Egyptians in spaaaaace and I haven't engaged in them since either.

[Scribe]

 

When you think the lore was "completed" when it should have been frozen and never altered again?

 

3rd-5th is the pinnacle of 40K as a setting. I'm not interested in the debate, why was the change made, 'reasons'. Its not done to improve the setting, its not consistent with the setting. Its simply a retcon, and a retcon due to a decade long precedent.

 

Next up, Female Marines.

[Crimson Longinus]

 

 

3rd-5th is the pinnacle of 40K as a setting.

 

But certainly you must realise that this is just your opinion? That this particular time in the franchise's history was also just one point in the long chain of changes and retcons, and is not more special than anything that come before it or after, except to you personally? And this era would have not existed, if the edict of stasis you demand would have been applied in the lore of the earlier editions.

 

 

 

 

I'm not interested in the debate, why was the change made, 'reasons'. Its not done to improve the setting, its not consistent with the setting. Its simply a retcon, and a retcon due to a decade long precedent.

 

I'm sure the writers thought it was to improve the setting. You might disagree, like I disagree with them that turning primarchs into giant superheroes was a good idea. 

 

 

Next up, Female Marines.

 

I certainly hope so! This actually is my biggest issue with the female Custodes. I have nothing against them per se, but it is the marines who actually need not to be gender locked. Custodes are a marginal niche faction, and one with very limiting lore and aesthetics, so if they're male only then that's not a big deal. Marines on the other hand are the main faction of the setting and one of their big selling points is their versatility and customisability.  It is silly that you can have viking marines, or vampire marines or samurai marines, but suddenly we draw the line at amazon marines. So female Custodes feel sort of like a consolidation price. I'll take it, but it's not what I actually wanted. 

 

 

Edited September 6 by Crimson Longinus

[Scribe]

 

But certainly you must realise that this is just your opinion?

 

No, lol

[Crimson Longinus]

 

 

Very good question and one that I feel is individual but mirrored by those who share similar experiences and interpret them the same way.

 

Personally I don't have a stake in the Emperor doing it for specific reason, rather how I receive and interpret a brotherhood as presented to me.

 

I'm a physical dude. Many folk here might not know, care or believe it, but I am. I'm 6'1, a boxer and gone through physical trials and tribulations as well as emotional. I was raised alongside my brother by father in rough council estate, with all the extra trimmings you might imagine.

 

My friends were physical also. Some on the council estate side of things, all rough and ready and sport is an obvious outlet and focus for us.

 

Rugby and boxing were my natural choices, both sports that have a heavy masculine slant to them, by their very nature. To clarify, even women who partake in those sports adopt a masculine hat whilst engaging in them, because of the intrinsic make up of such sports, though they can remove that hat and carry on easily enough afterwards.

 

This possibly unnecessary background to my life might give a handle on where my outlook stems from.

 

Masculine traits - such as strength and stoicism, endurance of adversity without complaint, resilience, honour and loyalty... these are a thing. They exist. They are fundamentally part of me and those I regard as (loosely) part of a brotherhood to which I belong.

 

So what am I going to be interested in? In Game of Thrones I liked the masculine characters, good and bad, showing us all how they coped with the pressures of the world around them. How they upheld their honour. How they maintain their vows and how they coped with those that were broken.

 

I wasn't interested in Jon Snow, who I felt was a boy. I enjoyed the MEN around him. Mormont (both of them) and how they dealt with dishonour. Need Stark who tried to hold his honour and head above water but could only keep one. The Hound, long suffering and who had grown calloused emotionally through that suffering, but was still valuable. Bronn who was a cut throat but directly challenging to authority but working within the system. Oberyn Martel who sought revenge at the cost of his own safety... all wrapped with airs of physical power and capability.

 

These are masculine stories. The stories of men.

 

I appreciate them because I see echos, metaphors and similarities in them that are around me, in my memory of experiences and that what I've witnessed. No, I'm not talking literally repeats of their stories.

 

That is what I value and the interests I hold for my collections such as Warhammer are no exception. I enjoyed Doom 2016 too.

 

So Adeptus Custodes were this reflection. Whilst Space Marines are a different variant of this masculinity, they were much less engaged with interactions in all their depictions bar a few, focusing purely on war. It has it's place of course! I like reading about a brotherhood of soldiers/warriors too!

 

What the Adeptus Custodes bring is art, philosophy, elegance, subtlety and intelligence to that brotherhood. They are studious, individual like a boxer might be, though working as a collective to a task as well as focusing on their own. I won't go on too much here, apologies if your eyes hurt!

 

Their goals and how they are portrayed are different to Space Marines. Very much so. And that echo to a brotherhood is something I was drawn to.

 

Now it has been eroded I have lost interest in it. They're not what they were, no longer a brotherhood and that makes me disappointed.

 

(Though not strictly speaking what you asked, I don't like how it's been removed that the feminity of the Sisters of Silence was alongside the masculinity of the Custodes, in a way that was greater than the sum of their parts. They worked together to lessen the weaknesses of the masculine and feminine and come out triumph.

 

That message has been dismissed now)

 

That is a thorough post and I get what you're trying to say. But what bothers me in this, and some other posts that talk about "masculinity" and "femininity" in similar way, is that it seems uncomfortably gender essentialist to me. 

 

I just do not believe that there really are "masculine" traits or stories in such essentialist fashion that such stories could not be told if some of the characters are female. Women can have such traits as well, they can portray such roles, they can be part of such stories. 

 

 

 

 

No, lol

 

OK. I think we identified the problem!

 

 

Edited September 5 by Crimson Longinus

[Scribe]

 

OK. I think we identified the problem!

 

Considering you want female Marines? Yep.

[Shield-Captain]

 

 

Feel free to point to all the times they changed something and then loudly proclaimed that those WEREN'T changes.

 

Or just continue to miss the point and hit the "respectfully disagree" button without understanding the post.

 

I won’t rise to your bait but I literally pointed out all of these changes. And a lot of frater seem to be hung up on the idea of “changes.”

 

Is this a change to a lore from the meta aspect of the lore, we the players interacting with the setting? Yeah sure. Change. They said “hey we never actually clarified this but female Custodes exist” and so that was new info. We all learned something about the lore that we didn’t know before. Sure they had referred to the Custodes as a brotherhood, but plenty of real-world fraternal organizations permit female members. 
 

Is it a change to the ur-lore of the setting? No. Female Custodes have existed in 40K since the inception of the Imperium. That we never encountered one before is a product of the in-universe setting’s assumptions. Oh well not a big deal. 
 

The Leagues of Votann are a “new” faction to the lore. We knew them as Squats so long ago that it is barely worth mentioning and we were told, explicitly, that their home planet had been devoured by the Tyranids and they were gone. And then! We were wrong! The Squats were always the Leagues. The ancient Aeldari even had a name for them. And they were a part of the setting! They had engaged with humanity since the before the Horus Heresy! And yet they never appear in any Horus Heresy novels. We were told this. We were informed. Some of the information we thought we knew was incorrect and we were thusly told “Squats have always been Votann.” 
 

Funny, but not many people freaked out. It was a huge addition to the lore. It was a major departure from what we knew. What we thought we knew. 
 

EDIT: grammar and stuff. Since I wrote this on my phone.

Edited September 6 by Shield-Captain

[Marshal Rohr]

I did prefer the dichotomy of Sister of Silence and Custodes as the daughters and sons of the emperor idea, but if my wife has a girl and she wants to make a self insert Custodes and play a narrative campaign with her dumb old dad, then it’s worth it to me. At the end of the day it’s toys, and girls like toys too, and fantasy should be an escape. Should they have tried to make it work in the background? Yeh, but they slaughtered so much better background for no reason that choosing this hill to die on, with no in universe lore to build off of outside of a single line in a codex from the worst reboot since Resident Evil as scared is just grasping at straws. Unless GW goes full Dr Thunder with triple D boob armor on custodes plate (which they didn’t in the show) I think it’s an earnest attempt to get those girls into the game that were just as weird and nerdy as us as kids. Is it corporate greed? Obviously. Not all corporate greed can be bad. Aldi sells groceries at half the cost, but it feeds families and has some nice tasty treats. Are they doing it out of some altruistic vision? Nah, but it feeds families. 
 

edit: tldr they could’ve done the introduction better but if it makes a little girl wanna get into Warhammer how can it be bad? 

Edited September 5 by Marshal Rohr

[Indy Techwisp]

Speaking genuinely about this whole Lore Update in general, I think it was a little rushed.

It's a really low impact change in-setting, all things considered.

Absolutely no in-universe issues with it tho, they never did explicitly say there couldn't be Female Custodes and 40k has many extant examples of "brotherhoods" that are fully mixed Gender.

Like, the giant golden murder bananas can also be female? Great, now give us lore for the entirely new faction you added that supplants and alters literally every piece of lore we ever had about Space Dwarves.

 

That said, could they have introduced it better? Yes, they could have.

Maybe if the episode of The Tithes had been the first appearance of a Female Custodes and then the Codex lore had followed that, there'd be less issues?

Maybe if the initial reveal wasn't a leaked page from the Spanish Codex?

The first impression mattered a lot and sadly this rather "notable" lore change was heavily impacted by being leaked early.

Realistically, this should not have been a "big thing".

At worst it should've gotten a "That's a bit weird." and not much else.

And yet somehow it blew up into a giant mess with people jumping into arguments over things that are nothing to do with it.

Like FSM, for example. Space Marines have been explicitly stated to only work with males and if they were gonna change that they probably would've done it back when Cawl basically made Marines 2.0 and caused the last massive lore argument that's still ongoing. This also has JACK  to do with Female Custodes, so why is it continually brought up as a related argument.

(Also I think it's pretty clear that Sisters of Battle are rapidly filling the FSM role anyway as they're both absorbing all the Firstborn gear and being pushed as a main faction more and more in marketing, to the point they've overtaken Guard as the Second Place of Imperial Representation.)

 

TL;DR My thoughts on this entire ""controversy"" is as such:

[hd3]

 

I did prefer the dichotomy of Sister of Silence and Custodes as the daughters and sons of the emperor idea, but if my wife has a girl and she wants to make a self insert Custodes and play a narrative campaign with her dumb old dad, then it’s worth it to me. At the end of the day it’s toys, and girls like toys too, and fantasy should be an escape. Should they have tried to make it work in the background? Yeh, but they slaughtered so much better background for no reason that choosing this hill to die on, with no in universe lore to build off of outside of a single line in a codex from the worst reboot since Resident Evil as scared is just grasping at straws. Unless GW goes full Dr Thunder with triple D boob armor on custodes plate (which they didn’t in the show) I think it’s an earnest attempt to get those girls into the game that were just as weird and nerdy as us as kids. Is it corporate greed? Obviously. Not all corporate greed can be bad. Aldi sells groceries at half the cost, but it feeds families and has some nice tasty treats. Are they doing it out of some altruistic vision? Nah, but it feeds families. 
 

edit: tldr they could’ve done the introduction better but if it makes a little girl wanna get into Warhammer how can it be bad? 

 

 

I guess the answer is, why would she be more likely to go into now than before the change? Warhammer pre femstodes wasn't exactly lacking female characters or female exclusive factions even in either black library or on the tabletop. Aeldari, SoS, SoB, female guard regiments. Did none of these get quite enough represention to appeal? And if not, how much representation is needed?

 

Two, given the constant stream of failures in videogames, tv shows, movies etc. that have failed by diluting their IP to appeal to a broader audience which has never displayed prior interest in said IP, why do you think this will be better? 

 

At the risk of being flippant, nobody ever bunged Michael Angelo's David in the middle of Lambo field in the hopes of bringing more sculpture fans in to watch the football and then said it was a brilliant move to make the sport more inclusive. Football is extremely welcoming to anyone who likes or is interested in football and clearly indifferent to those who aren't. Perhaps we'd be better served focusing on our own community and including the women are actually interested already rather than constantly changing things in pursuit of a hypothetical wider audience.

Edited September 6 by hd3

[phandaal]

 

Funny, but not many people freaked out. It was a huge addition to a lore. It was a major departure from what we knew. What we thought we knew. 

 

Plenty of people did in fact freak out over it. I was personally subjected to it for the crime of being a fan of dwarves for the last 30+ years of my hobby life and enjoying the new lore.

 

The difference is that the addition of Votann was not driven by outside socio-political pressure, so people had their strong opinions, they argued about it, and they moved on. I didn't tell people that Votann coming back was a good thing because now we have representation for real-life dwarves. I didn't say that other people should like it because "why would they be against representation and inclusion for dwarves?"

 

To be clear again, people can like whatever they like, and other people can dislike what they dislike without accepting labels or the premise that some changes are good changes in and of themselves.

 

Going to leave it there, out of respect for Roomsky's request.

[Roomsky]

@Captain Idaho thank you for your response! A very interesting and informative read. I'm not in the same space you are but you've helped me comprehend some of what has been lost by the change in a way that others have perhaps struggled to articulate. 

 

A bit of why I had trouble getting there, and why others may not feel anything has been lost:

1. Having not grown up in (nor having become involved in since) similar masculine environments, what is unique about them is obviously foreign to me. My physical activity growing up was a very traditional Taekwon Do school (as in, no pity belts or paying your way up) with a near-even split between the sexes. Sparring, honour, rivalry, civilian-grade physical adversity etc. just don't have a gendered association for me. Same for adulthood - I think I'm friends with more women who like sports than I do men, ditto shockingly violent media and a soup of other manly stereotypes. Between that and the fact that Custodes tend not to be especially personable (not a lot of Bro Moments going on there,) and completely non-sexual, means I come out the other side of Femstodes going "uhhh this seems the same." I simply have not developed a taste for "the sauce" in this regard.
    
2. I'm sort of with Arkhan Land on transhumans not counting as people when it comes to personality. At least, not the kind of people that I would label "man" or "woman." Going to your Game of Thrones example: for me, part of what makes a compelling character defined by manhood is that they were once a boy. They have come from a place without responsibility, or power, and now must grapple with both. Custodes have a straightforward purpose and were built from the ground up to embody that purpose from day one. The struggle of being a man, and the expectations of being a man, seem absent. How does an irresponsible person grapple with being a father? How does one society demands honour, virtue, strength, and decisiveness from fare when he's lacking in one or more of those categories? How does Tyrion deal with lacking a man's man's physicality? How does having an over-abundance of some of those traits lead to never becoming a real man at all? (see: the Mountain.) I find Custodes so defined by the physical acumen they were designed to have, that any meaningful masculinity has been filtered out of them as a faction. Valerian is hands down the most interesting of them, to me, because Wraight is a skilled enough author to give him a meaningful challenge in his existence as a Custodian. His difficulty standing in the Emperor's presence is genius. The fact that he must deal with that and keep face, not let it hinder him in any way despite being so closely tied to his very purpose - yeah, I can see some masculinity there. But his brothers have no such luck and strike me as a bunch of ball-kicking robots challenged to a game of football. And they leave me feeling the same level of fraternity (none.)

But, as mentioned, biased against the faction, and I am a fraternity-sauceless individual - and that's not even going into a discussion about gender roles that is not remotely appropriate for this forum. To be clear, I'm not suggesting there isn't something there, rather, I'm trying to show how little it means to someone who can't see it. 

Edited September 6 by Roomsky

[Shield-Captain]

 

 

The difference is that the addition of Votann was not driven by outside socio-political pressure, so people had their strong opinions, they argued about it, and they moved on. I didn't tell people that Votann coming back was a good thing because now we have representation for real-life dwarves. I didn't say that other people should like it because "why would they be against representation and inclusion for dwarves?"

 

To be clear again, people can like whatever they like, and other people can dislike what they dislike without accepting labels or the premise that some changes are good changes in and of themselves.

 

Going to leave it there, out of respect for Roomsky's request.

As a genuine question, is there any proof to the assertion that this was driven by some sort of outside pressure? I haven’t seen any but I’m willing to be wrong. 
 

I believed (and still believe) that it was much like any other update GW makes. They never explained their reasoning except to say that this is how it has always been and something about how this further differentiates Custodes from Space Marines (a line I think specifically quashes the idea of the imminent introduction of female Space Marines).

[Noserenda]

Ha, i think Roomsky covered my potential point on brotherhood pretty well, when i played Rugby my fellow prop was a very feminine, if large woman, and was absolutely one of the team without diluting our bond. Ive been involved in real and simulated  (Plenty well enough to convince the brain chemistry) fighting for decades with and against women in increasing numbers and i absolutely have strong bonds of brotherhood with a few of them, to the extent that one fished me out of a very dark place and gave me somewhere to live just like im sure any of our male peers would have in the same place.

A lot of groups define brotherhood by the exclusion of exploitation of women, but i think that says a lot more about them honestly.

[Marshal Rohr]

 

 

 

I guess the answer is, why would she be more likely to go into now than before the change? Warhammer pre femstodes wasn't exactly lacking female characters or female exclusive factions even in either black library or on the tabletop. Aeldari, SoS, SoB, female guard regiments. Did none of these get quite enough represention to appeal? And if not, how much representation is needed?

 

Two, given the constant stream of failures in videogames, tv shows, movies etc. that have failed by diluting their IP to appeal to a broader audience which has never displayed prior interest in said IP, why do you think this will be better? 

 

At the risk of being flippant, nobody ever bunged Michael Angelo's David in the middle of Lambo field in the hopes of bringing more sculpture fans in to watch the football and then said it was a brilliant move to make the sport more inclusive. Football is extremely welcoming to anyone who likes or is interested in football and clearly indifferent to those who aren't. Perhaps we'd be better served focusing on our own community and including the women are actually interested already rather than constantly changing things in pursuit of a hypothetical wider audience.

Games workshop literally wrote that Black Templars love navigators after two editions of them not liking navigators because some author somewhere decided the idea of atheist crusaders was too complex for modern audiences (2012). I genuinely do not give a single [redacted] how you feel about anything after the one thing I dedicated my entire hobby life to got erased for sales. 
 

edit: and they wrote that bull:cuss: in the same year a beloved black library author wrote a short story describing in detail why the black Templars stayed true to the edict of Nikea. Absolutely unhinged to think custodes with boobs is some crime against the lore after that massacre. 

Edited September 6 by Marshal Rohr

[Indy Techwisp]

Oh yeah.

One more thing, to add here for now.

The recent animated appearance of a Female Custodes is really the only time since they were added that GW has actually, deliberately, put one in front of our faces and said "Look at the Lady Custodes."

They also used this as an opportunity to smack us over the head with the double whammy of "This is something that sets Custodes apart from just being bigger marines." and "We intentionally don't give out all the information so we can add stuff smoothly later on. Imagine how much it would suck if we added a thing and told you "That's it, no more lore for this ever"?"

 

Surely if we're assuming this Lore Update was done to boost sales they'd have been pushing Female Custodes a whole lot more, right?

Thinking cynically, if it was a choice guided solely by marketing and sales shouldn't they have mentioned them more than ONCE since the Codex released?

You don't really get something to a new target audience if you ever actually market it.

We probably won't ever actually know why, but if it was for Marketing then surely we can agree they very much failed to actually capitalise on it.

 

It'd be like making an announcement trailer for a TV show then never airing that trailer and just Shadowdropping the series onto a random streaming platform.

 

It really does feel like we as a community are putting a lot more weight behind this lore blurb than GW intended.

It could simply be that GW's Codex Lore Team asked on some random Crunch meeting "Bob wrote this Character as a lady, did we ever say that Custodes could be Ladies?" and got back "Frag it, that doesn't matter. Just send it though, the book ships to the printers in a week."

Edited September 6 by Indy Techwisp

[Scribe]

 

They also used this as an opportunity to smack us over the head with the double whammy of "This is something that sets Custodes apart from just being bigger marines." and "We intentionally don't give out all the information so we can add stuff smoothly later on. Imagine how much it would suck if we added a thing and told you "That's it, no more lore for this ever"?"

 

This is such a lie on their part. Such a lie.

[Captain Idaho]

 

@Captain Idaho thank you for your response! A very interesting and informative read. I'm not in the same space you are but you've helped me comprehend some of what has been lost by the change in a way that others have perhaps struggled to articulate. 

 

I thank you for the positive reception, because I tried to keep a tone that was informative and in spirit with your own good nature here and I'm glad it has worked. Text based prose... always subjective danger!

 

 

 

A bit of why I had trouble getting there, and why others may not feel anything has been lost:

1. Having not grown up in (nor having become involved in since) similar masculine environments, what is unique about them is obviously foreign to me. My physical activity growing up was a very traditional Taekwon Do school (as in, no pity belts or paying your way up) with a near-even split between the sexes. Sparring, honour, rivalry, civilian-grade physical adversity etc. just don't have a gendered association for me. Same for adulthood - I think I'm friends with more women who like sports than I do men, ditto shockingly violent media and a soup of other manly stereotypes. Between that and the fact that Custodes tend not to be especially personable (not a lot of Bro Moments going on there,) and completely non-sexual, means I come out the other side of Femstodes going "uhhh this seems the same." I simply have not developed a taste for "the sauce" in this regard.

 

Yeah totally fair. Our journeys are different and that's what makes everyone valuable in their own way.

 

What we derived from the Custodes in the first place not necessarily being the same is definitely going to impact how we receive any potential changes.

 

 

1. I'm sort of with Arkhan Land on transhumans not counting as people when it comes to personality. At least, not the kind of people that I would label "man" or "woman." Going to your Game of Thrones example: for me, part of what makes a compelling character defined by manhood is that they were once a boy. They have come from a place without responsibility, or power, and now must grapple with both.

 

I certainly value that type of story, considering I have children, boys, and these are journeys they must transverse themselves.

 

I would say that valuing the story of masculinity specifically often goes with the basis of the baseline of a man character. They were boys once. If written well, you can usually get glimpses of their lives before, as they grew.

 

I guess I'm saying they're not mutually exclusive.

 

 

 

1.  
2. Custodes have a straightforward purpose and were built from the ground up to embody that purpose from day one. The struggle of being a man, and the expectations of being a man, seem absent. How does an irresponsible person grapple with being a father? How does one society demands honour, virtue, strength, and decisiveness from fare when he's lacking in one or more of those categories? How does Tyrion deal with lacking a man's man's physicality? How does having an over-abundance of some of those traits lead to never becoming a real man at all? (see: the Mountain.) I find Custodes so defined by the physical acumen they were designed to have, that any meaningful masculinity has been filtered out of them as a faction. Valerian is hands down the most interesting of them, to me, because Wraight is a skilled enough author to give him a meaningful challenge in his existence as a Custodian. His difficulty standing in the Emperor's presence is genius. The fact that he must deal with that and keep face, not let it hinder him in any way despite being so closely tied to his very purpose - yeah, I can see some masculinity there. But his brothers have no such luck and strike me as a bunch of ball-kicking robots challenged to a game of football. And they leave me feeling the same level of fraternity (none.)

 

Well I feel that's just writing, poor or mishandled or lazy. Valerian was done well, but much of the rest of the narratives are specific characters of Custodes is surface level stuff.

 

Your points are great masculine stories! The Mountain example is excellent, as hes an example of what happens when masculinity is allowed to go to an extreme. Poetically, the masculine without the compassion of the feminine can be seen there, though another angle would be the lack of masculine restraint. Being able to use your power without restraint is adolescence rather than masculine and learning restraint in the eyes of such temptation is a journey many men (in his example) have taken.

 

 

But, as mentioned, biased against the faction, and I am a fraternity-sauceless individual - and that's not even going into a discussion about gender roles that is not remotely appropriate for this forum. To be clear, I'm not suggesting there isn't something there, rather, I'm trying to show how little it means to someone who can't see it. 

 

Essentially it's a cat and dog situation! We are different for sure! That's great and I love it.

 

We might not see each other's position because we speak a different language in that interpretation, for many reasons that ARE NOT malicious. That's cool. It really is.

 

For me, I just... lose interest. There's always someone who will enjoy something, the real crux is the numbers whether it is relevant to GW.

 

The real question for GW - is the loss of interest and disapproval from one group of legitimate people worth it to enamour the interest and approval of another legitimate group of people?

 

Regarding this, personally I feel that it didn't need to happen. The numbers of people interested in 40K and Custodes just because of a female is likely lower than how many are turned away from them, but this is conjecture from me and could be wrong as we struggle to prove either way.

 

But I don't think it needed to happen. New lore? Want a super human female version of Custodes - make your own. It would have worked just as well.

 

It doesn't sit well with me removing other people's representation (the masculine brotherhood types) and calling it progress. We deserve a space too.

 

Anyway, thank you for the discussion and taking it in good nature as intended.

[Evil Eye]

There's a few things I'll say on this (beyond what I've already said on female Custodes being less of an issue than omnipresent Custodes).

 

First I completely agree on the issue of male-only spaces being verboten but female-only spaces being allowed is a really lame double-standard. If we "need" female Custodes and Space Marines, we also "need" Frateris Templar being pushed more prominently. If we're going by the spirit of equality, then it is completely ridiculous to have one sex be allowed exclusive clubs but the other be disallowed. And if equality isn't the issue then that renders the "need" for female Custodes/Marines completely redundant anyway!

 

Secondly, I find the idea of wanting "representation" in 40K absolutely laughable. It's a complete crapsack of a universe where the only constants are death and suffering; you do not want to be represented in 40K because you'll either be a hapless victim or a psychotic murderer. Case in point, Space Marines; adolescents are stolen from their families, vivisected, stuffed full of augmentations and brainwashed into monstrous death machines for a literal lifetime of war in the absolute worst theatres of battle imaginable. That's flat out horrific, and not something you'd want happening to you or your children, EVER. I can understand someone wanting to relate to a character in, say, Lord of the Rings or Dungeons and Dragons (though I do think that relatability as a character does not have to involve identity politics at all; case in point, I found Akko Kagari in Little Witch Academia highly relatable due to her character of "endlessly determined to be good at something she is naturally bad at" despite her being a Japanese girl and me being a strangely eloquent goblin English man), but 40K!? Hell no!

 

Furthermore, attempting to make the series more compatible with modern "inclusivity"/progressive ideology has absolutely sapped what made 40K unique from it. We've gone from a setting where the golden age was forever lost and the acts of heroism from those who raged against the dying of the light were all the more inspiring considering that all the great heroes of yore were long dead or consumed by madness, to a sanitized mockery of its former self where the once-forgotten heroes of myth are now everywhere and always just around the corner to save the day, and the grittiness has been watered down to the point the tagline of "Forget about the promises of science and progress" has been omitted. Clearly, GW is making 40K less like 40K to make it appeal to people who never liked 40K to begin with. (Many such cases, sad!)

 

If 40K was too dark and scary for these people to engage with without it being changed for them, then frankly they should have found another hobby, in much the same way I wouldn't get into tattoo art as someone with a chronic phobia of needles.

 

As a TLDR to all that, the desire to add "inclusivity" to a universe nobody of sound mind would want to be "included" in has been a disaster for 40K. You can either have a setting with no scary or unsettling or "problematic" themes or you can have an authentic 40K setting. You can't have your cake and eat it. Female Custodes are just one relatively minor symptom of a far bigger problem that won't be solved unless or until the zeitgeist of big corporations pretending to care about (often highly suspect) social trends dies a death.