Culture Warhammer 40,000 has slightly more women in it now and the neckbeards aren't happy - We're still not at "female space marines" but give it time.

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(Image credit: Games Workshop)

Since Warhammer 40,000's 10th edition was released last year, each of the wargame's factions has been getting the traditional rules refresh in the form of a new Codex book. The latest deals with the Adeptus Custodes, genetically engineered bodyguards of the Emperor so gigantic they make space marines look weedy. (They also happen to be Henry Cavill's army of choice). There are 10,000 of them and in the past they've only ever been depicted as men. In this latest iteration, shock horror, at least two of the Custodes are women.

Most players seem to have responded to this by shrugging and getting back to arguing about the new rules, but there's always a vocal minority who go on a tear. The Mail Online ran a typically subtle and understated headline that declared "It's Wokehammer!" and the meme community Grimdank has declared posts about "Femstodes" will only be allowed for one week before they join "Female Space Marine posts" as a banned topic. Games Workshop's official response is a tweet that says, "In regards to female Custodians, there have always been female Custodians, since the first of the Ten Thousand were created."

Is this a retcon? Yep, and it won't be the last. Warhammer 40,000 has had fluid "lore" right from the start. The original Custodian Guards were depicted as shirtless hunks who never leave Earth—a long way from the heavily armored galaxy-spanning golden gods they became—to say nothing of tweaks to the 40K canon like ditching half-eldar space marines and rewriting the Horus Heresy from a short story a handful of pages long into a series of 60+ novels.

The Adeptus Custodes aren't 40K's only genetically engineered supersoldiers, of course. The setting's flagship faction are the space marines, who are created differently—where Custodes are enhanced via a unique process begun when they're infants, space marines begin being grafted with a "gene-seed" when they're on the verge of puberty. And while the explanation that space marine gene-seeds are "keyed to male hormones and tissue types" goes back a way, it's not the real reason Games Workshop made a whole army of dudes who are men.

As GW's former head of IP Alan Merrett once explained on Facebook, "The reason there aren't female Space Marines has nothing to do with lore, or background or character of Marines. It's to do with [the] simple logistics of making miniatures and selling miniatures." In the 1980s GW sold miniatures in sets called blister packs, and as Merrett explained "the intention was that upwards of 25% of all models would be female." That didn't last because "retailers kept complaining to us that customers weren't buying the female models and could we not include any in their restocks." By the time Warhammer 40,000 was designed, GW made sure its poster boys were, well, boys to ensure they'd sell. As Merrett put it, "All the background fluff about why there are only male Marines is there to justify a commercial logistics issue."

And the same was true of the Adeptus Custodes, until it wasn't. Though the customers at the average Warhammer shop are mostly men, these days there are usually one or two women as well. And the men are a lot less likely to throw a hissy-fit about having women in their armies than gamers in the 1980s, despite what Reddit and Twitter might suggest. All of 40K's lore and storytelling exists to provide context for selling toy soldiers to people, and as the customer base changes so too will that lore.

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They put them in all their fucking marketing despite doing absolutely fucking nothing with them with their products.
Remember when the psychic awakening happened and they teased that Sister's faith could manifest in angels and then teased it even more in the.. 8th(?) edition trailer and then the 'angel' was just another Smurf? Fun times.

There's some rad bolter bitches stuff out there, like the pipe organ Exorcist or that one novel that featured a Soritas monastery ship crashing through the atmosphere of a Chaos world while firing battleship cannons into a gathering of a billion unarmored cultists and also dropping battle cathedrals the size of Notre Dame that were also firing everything they had at anything that moved while blasting hymns and the planet itself recoiled at the fury that was coming for it. I think that same book had them cross into the imperium nihilus and lose their fucking shit because they were blind to the astronomicon. Which is a really interesting idea about how 'faith' works when your god is so constant he's an actual reference point for navigation.

Whatever. Probably for the best they get ignored.
 
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All of 40K's lore and storytelling exists to provide context for selling toy soldiers to people, and as the customer base changes so too will that lore.
From what I've seen the customer base (however defined) might change a little, but the size of the audience decreases by a lot and does so more rapidly than anyone expects whenever and wherever these sort of changes are implemented.

We've seen this in Star Wars, MCU movies, floppy comic books, D&D, arguably certain genres of Metal, video game remakes/sequels changed for a "modern audience" and on and on. I'd imagine the drop off in something like Warcraft would be worse than most, given how it is such a niche hobby to begin with and -- as the article even states -- is all about "selling toy soldiers to people."

Contra the above, my limited understanding of Warcraft leads me to think it is more dependent upon "whales" (consooomers willing to part with big bucks) than most hobbies, so maybe the drop off won't be as drastic in dollar terms as it was in some of the others. Time will tell. If they start chasing away the whales, though? 🤔

And to put on my conspiratard hat, don't forget Henry Cavill is signed up to make a Warhammer TV show. Wonder if he'll be forced to update it for "modern audiences" now that certain things can be pointed to as canon that weren't when the show was announced in December 2023? Yes, this implies a sort of hivemind I'm not certain I accept but it is weird that for decades Warhammer autists have been left in peace but once there's a television show on the horizon all this starts coming out of the woodwork.
 
The market is coomers.

"Giantess" was the most-searched fetish in America a month or two before this decision.
The "Giantess" fetish is so stupid for how inconsistent it is. On one end you got feminine men who want a dominatrix. On the other end you got muscular chads who confront the 7' boss-lady à la Dark Souls equipped with only the "great sword" between their legs.

All this will do is bring more troons.
Unironically this. I'd imagine actual women are fine with Sisters of Battle and of Silence. Maybe even the Inquisition. Woman space marines are only there for ex-men troons who want their "literally me" to transition with them.
 
And to put on my conspiratard hat, don't forget Henry Cavill is signed up to make a Warhammer TV show.
Didn't he jump ship from the Witcher because they were ruining it with modern bullshit? Maybe we will do the same with 40k.

So you're forcing something on your customers that you already know they don't want and won't buy.

A strange business plan.
They were talking about back in the 80s. I have out of the hobby for since the end of 8th but didn't they refresh the entire sisters of battle line a few years ago? I figured those would sell well.

i dread the day when they will turn the adepta sororitas into sassy black girlboss kweens who dont need no emperor
IIRC the lore for the One Page Rules version of the sisters is basically this.

There's some rad bolter bitches stuff out there, like the pipe organ Exorcist or that one novel that featured a Soritas monastery ship crashing through the atmosphere of a Chaos world while firing battleship cannons into a gathering of a billion unarmored cultists and also dropping battle cathedrals the size of Notre Dame that were also firing everything they had at anything that moved while blasting hymns and the planet itself recoiled at the fury that was coming for it. I think that same book had them cross into the imperium nihilus and lose their fucking shit because they were blind to the astronomicon. Which is a really interesting idea about how 'faith' works when your god is so constant he's an actual reference point for navigation.
And to top it all off they are doing all of this without any superhuman upgrades like a gene seed implant. They are just true and honest women armed with nothing but faith and fury bringing demons to their knees while looking awsome doing it. Which, I can see why modern feminists hate them.
 
Honestly, it's not even the fact that they're trying to push female Custodes.
It's the fact they're trying to gaslight their audience by denying that male-only Custodes were ever a thing.
WH40K was always a changing setting with the return of the Silent King being a hype moment.
But to claim that "We've always been at war with Eurasia" is where I draw a fucking line.
 
The "Giantess" fetish is so stupid for how inconsistent it is.
Are you judging fetishes by their logical consistency? Nigga what is u doin

Mork to become either a woman or trans or agender
Gork is Stunningly Brave, while Mork is Bravely Stunning.

And to top it all off they are doing all of this without any superhuman upgrades like a gene seed implant. They are just true and honest women armed with nothing but faith and fury bringing demons to their knees while looking awsome doing it. Which, I can see why modern feminists hate them.
That's something that I really wish GW would do with them. Okay, they're power armored murder machines who normal people are afraid to approach. When they show up they may bring the Emperor's grace with them and save the day.. or they might burn your shit hole hive to the ground with you in it for the crime of being Space Chicago, But at the end of the day, they are just normal women. Hopes, fears, doubts, regrets, they're not immune the weight of the violence they commit. How does a normal ass human live life knowing they may be fallible, but the average citizen regards them as an infallible symbol of the Emperor? That they can fall to fear, but they absolutely must not for the good of humanity, even unto death, as they hurl themselves against the horrors of the Warp?
 
All this Femstodes stuff bothers me more then standard and I haven't played since 5th ed

The Bolter Bitches are a really interesting idea and if GW could be bothered to make them fun to play and more then just a gimmick they probably would sell much better.

I mean come on now hot babes with power armor who have a fetish for flamethrowers and high heels? Using religious overtones and catholic gothic designs feature gold and black?

It's a license to print money but the nuns with guns have always been the beaten redheaded retarded step child of GW so never really bloomed.

I blame Ward
 
i dread the day when they will turn the adepta sororitas into sassy black girlboss kweens who dont need no emperor
What they'll do is introduce a black 14 year old girl with a 6000 IQ who has to study in secret because waycism. Then one day she'll invent a potion that fixes the emperor or she'll create a device that makes the emperor channeling the Astronomican unnecessary or some other lore-shattering deus ex machina.

The story will end with her smugly noting that the "white dudes" only respect her now that she came to their rescue and using some form of the phrase "work twice as hard to get half as far".
 
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