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Why Warhammer 40K fans are freaking out over a female Custodes in the new codex

https://www.polygon.com/24133023/adeptus-custodes-explainer-warhammer-40k-female-custodians
slazer2au - 1.7yr

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.

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Ada - 1.7yr

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.

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TranscendentalEmpire @lemm.ee - 1.7yr

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.

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squirrel - 1.7yr

I don't want to contradict you, but...

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.

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TranscendentalEmpire @lemm.ee - 1.7yr

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.

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Neato - 1.7yr

Which makes no sense in the lore. If you're going to genetically engineer your soldiers, it hardly matters anyways.

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TranscendentalEmpire @lemm.ee - 1.7yr

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.

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slazer2au - 1.7yr

Didn't say no backlash just not as much.
It is also fantasy so it's all made up.

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breadsmasher @lemmy.world - 1.7yr

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.

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grrgyle - 1.7yr

Love that. Very realpolitik, in a fun way

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slumlordthanatos @lemmy.world - 1.7yr

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.

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Ada - 1.7yr

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?

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slumlordthanatos @lemmy.world - 1.7yr

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.

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Ada - 1.7yr

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.

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squirrel - 1.7yr

But you shouldn’t retcon established lore (even if it is problematic) with a tweet.

That is not what happened: The change was already in the last edition of the codex from last year. Per the article...

But the most recent 10th-edition codex includes a point-of-view piece of lore from Calladayce Taurovalia Kesh, who uses she/her pronouns.

The tweet only highlighted a change that had already been made.

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mindbleach @sh.itjust.works - 1.7yr

"Problematic?" The sexism is part of why the Empire are the bad guys. The setting contains nothing but bad guys.

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originalfrozenbanana @lemm.ee - 1.7yr

Also known as the WotC model of lore building

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kemsat @lemmy.world - 1.7yr

Considering the lore of WH40k, how is this surprising? I figured the fans were a bunch of racist incels, with all the stroking they do about the god emperor & his genetically engineered fuckboys.

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Daxtron2 @startrek.website - 1.7yr

Not all of us, but Nazis do seem to attach themselves to it

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kemsat @lemmy.world - 1.7yr

Didn’t think it was all y’all, but the mind is not surprised

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Xtallll - 1.7yr

Have they retconed the 10,000 years the Custodes spent hanging around the Imperial Palace naked and covered in oil?

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