That’s wishful thinking. The bigots were always going to lose their shit. Female space marines existed in Rogue Trader, so it’s not “lore purity” driving the outrage and it never has been. Appealing to lore has only ever been a thing because the current lore happens to align with their preference.
Yeah, from the article it seems that the unofficial mandate of dudes only came from the higher ups at GW.
You got to start somewhere, might as well have the bigots freak out about a tweet, rather than when you release the actual lore in a game book or novel.
But the most recent 10th-edition codex includes a point-of-view piece of lore from Calladayce Taurovalia Kesh, who uses she/her pronouns.
That codex was already published last summer. So it has already been lore for a while now, even though the misogynerds only took notice when GW tweeted about it.
Not correct; 10th edition core rules came out last summer, but the custodes codex this comes from was officially released on the 20th April 2024, it literally all happened just a few days ago. (Regarding the date discrepancy, people had preview copies before the official release)
Ahh, didn’t even know 10e is already out! Haven’t played in years.
To me the custodians make sense, they barely talk about any custodes in the books besides valdor. Man, I would pay so much money for them to retconned valdor into a woman, preferably in the sloppiest way possible. Oooh maybe valdor comes back from his mystery adventure as a trans lady, and that’s why the emperor loved him more than his sons.
even though the misogynerds only took notice when GW tweeted about it.
Sounds about right. They didn’t really seem the type who actually get into any lore that doesn’t involve their pet faction.
Didn’t malcador originally want to make the emperor’s kiddos to be all ladies in the first place? I would say that wouldn’t make sense unless they had already experimented with female custodes in the first place.
Like, this take is entirely fair. Incels are gonna incel, no matter what GW does, but this wasn’t the way to change this.
GW has gradually been moving in this direction; IG regiments were originally all men, then they had gender-segregated regiments, then mixed regiments started becoming more and more common until they became the norm. And this is something I’m all for; a flashlight lasgun is gonna be equally effective in the hands of men or women.
But you shouldn’t retcon established lore (even if it is problematic) with a tweet.
Why is it only a problem when they retcon female protagonists in to things rather than out?
Please don’t put words in my mouth. The issue was with how suddenly they changed it and how they clarified it, not with the change itself.
Retcons suck. Going straight from “Women can’t be made into Custodes” to “Oh, there have always been female Custodes, you just didn’t see them in 30 years of lore, even though we explicitly said they couldn’t exist!” is just lazy and jarring, no matter the subject matter. Clarifying it with a tweet instead of just letting it speak for itself just poured gasoline on it.
This is a good thing GW tried to do, they just handled it poorly.
Not quite correct, there were female models in power armour released with “rogue trader”, but very little lore and nothing specifically referenced female space marines. When they began actually writing 40K and 40K lore then they introduced the concept of the geneseed and it only working on males and they also introduced the sisters of battle who are indeed females in power armour but are not considered to be “female space marines” as such.
None of it was actually retconned, it just wasn’t explicit in “rogue trader” and later became so when the first actual 40K edition was released.
I’ve been playing 40k since the late 80s. I know the lore. I was there for it. I have watched it change over the decades. And sure, the female warriors weren’t explicitly labelled Space Marines, but they clearly were intended to be “the same” as the male models that would become Space Marines. The genestealers in Rogue Trader weren’t labelled tyranids either, but no one claims they weren’t by citing lack of specific lore at the time they were first published
The only reason those models didn’t continue to be made is because misogyny meant the models didn’t sell. So female space marines got written out of the lore, and the sisters, in all ways lesser than space marines, were introduced, so as to not offend the fan base of the time with equality.
When you basically rewrite 30 years of lore in a tweet naturally people will say wtf?
If they worked it into the lore properly I doubt there would be as much backlash.
Also known as the WotC model of lore building
That’s wishful thinking. The bigots were always going to lose their shit. Female space marines existed in Rogue Trader, so it’s not “lore purity” driving the outrage and it never has been. Appealing to lore has only ever been a thing because the current lore happens to align with their preference.
Yeah, from the article it seems that the unofficial mandate of dudes only came from the higher ups at GW.
You got to start somewhere, might as well have the bigots freak out about a tweet, rather than when you release the actual lore in a game book or novel.
I don’t want to contradict you, but…
That codex was already published last summer. So it has already been lore for a while now, even though the misogynerds only took notice when GW tweeted about it.
Not correct; 10th edition core rules came out last summer, but the custodes codex this comes from was officially released on the 20th April 2024, it literally all happened just a few days ago. (Regarding the date discrepancy, people had preview copies before the official release)
Ahh, didn’t even know 10e is already out! Haven’t played in years.
To me the custodians make sense, they barely talk about any custodes in the books besides valdor. Man, I would pay so much money for them to retconned valdor into a woman, preferably in the sloppiest way possible. Oooh maybe valdor comes back from his mystery adventure as a trans lady, and that’s why the emperor loved him more than his sons.
Sounds about right. They didn’t really seem the type who actually get into any lore that doesn’t involve their pet faction.
Which makes no sense in the lore. If you’re going to genetically engineer your soldiers, it hardly matters anyways.
Didn’t malcador originally want to make the emperor’s kiddos to be all ladies in the first place? I would say that wouldn’t make sense unless they had already experimented with female custodes in the first place.
Didn’t say no backlash just not as much.
It is also fantasy so it’s all made up.
I can’t remember the exact phrase, but to the effect of “Everything is canon in warhammer. But doesn’t mean its true”
Basically all written material is “canon” but it isn’t the “truth” - in the sense history is written by the victors.
Love that. Very realpolitik, in a fun way
Like, this take is entirely fair. Incels are gonna incel, no matter what GW does, but this wasn’t the way to change this.
GW has gradually been moving in this direction; IG regiments were originally all men, then they had gender-segregated regiments, then mixed regiments started becoming more and more common until they became the norm. And this is something I’m all for; a
flashlightlasgun is gonna be equally effective in the hands of men or women.But you shouldn’t retcon established lore (even if it is problematic) with a tweet.
“Problematic?” The sexism is part of why the Empire are the bad guys. The setting contains nothing but bad guys.
There were female space marines in the very first edition of 40k ever printed. That was retconned.
Why is it only a problem when they retcon female protagonists in to things rather than out?
Please don’t put words in my mouth. The issue was with how suddenly they changed it and how they clarified it, not with the change itself.
Retcons suck. Going straight from “Women can’t be made into Custodes” to “Oh, there have always been female Custodes, you just didn’t see them in 30 years of lore, even though we explicitly said they couldn’t exist!” is just lazy and jarring, no matter the subject matter. Clarifying it with a tweet instead of just letting it speak for itself just poured gasoline on it.
This is a good thing GW tried to do, they just handled it poorly.
40k lore explicitly has an unreliable narrator and not unrelatedly, retcons that have “always been that way” is how the game has always been.
Necrons, female space marines, genestealers, the old ones, they all got the same treatment.
Not quite correct, there were female models in power armour released with “rogue trader”, but very little lore and nothing specifically referenced female space marines. When they began actually writing 40K and 40K lore then they introduced the concept of the geneseed and it only working on males and they also introduced the sisters of battle who are indeed females in power armour but are not considered to be “female space marines” as such. None of it was actually retconned, it just wasn’t explicit in “rogue trader” and later became so when the first actual 40K edition was released.
I’ve been playing 40k since the late 80s. I know the lore. I was there for it. I have watched it change over the decades. And sure, the female warriors weren’t explicitly labelled Space Marines, but they clearly were intended to be “the same” as the male models that would become Space Marines. The genestealers in Rogue Trader weren’t labelled tyranids either, but no one claims they weren’t by citing lack of specific lore at the time they were first published
The only reason those models didn’t continue to be made is because misogyny meant the models didn’t sell. So female space marines got written out of the lore, and the sisters, in all ways lesser than space marines, were introduced, so as to not offend the fan base of the time with equality.
That is not what happened: The change was already in the last edition of the codex from last year. Per the article…
The tweet only highlighted a change that had already been made.