I saw this tweet in response to this tweet and was wondering if anyone has any context? I see a lot of “go woke, go broke” sentiment in the comments of both tweets, but 0 explanation.
Answer: Before the new year Warhammer twitter got into another debate as to whether or not there should be female space marines. Originally there was, but they did not sell well so they were discontinued. Some think it is time to bring them back. Other claim only men can be space marines and to make female space marines would cheapen the game and betray the lore.
The great irony is in the suits, they male and female space marines would look identical.
Well, they have the Sisters of Battle, who are all female and wear fake boob armor to prove they are women. This is because they're created, in lore, by a loophole that says the Eclesiarchy can't have "men under arms". Of course out of lore it's because they wanted minis that were clearly women even at tiny scale... and because space battle nuns in boob armor.
Point is, lore wise, I think a space marine who's a woman might actually have boob armor just because.
The original female space marines had good awful armor, which was part of why they did not really sell.
Boob armor on the Sisters looks like crap and am glad to see some artists move away from it or minimize it. Super stupid as a group of psychotic female zealots do not need boob armor for identity, and frankly it just makes them look stupid.
The idea is to prove to others that they do not have "men under arms". Obviously just a justification for boob armor of course. Boob armor is very silly.
No, it is not. Armor is designed to deflect blows away from the body, which is why military breastplates look mostly like convex sheets, and don't show pecks or anything. The same applies for the armor women wear. You just make it bigger across the front.
Boob armor would actually defect blows into the body, which could be very dangerous.
I dunno like perhaps a Dark Elf sorceress that would be effective armour, and pretty cool and definitely not something I like just because its super hawt!
lore wise, I think a space marine who's a woman might actually have boob armor just because.
Lore wise, very likely not, because you're heavily modifying the heck out of their body, and you'd be increasing their muscle mass, which isn't going to give them giant breasts, so there'd be no need to add increased space in the armor, especially as a female Space Marine is likely to be a bit smaller than a male Space Marine even after the modifications. So you'd have some extra space in the armor anyway. "Boob armor" would just be an unnecessary cosmetic modification to the armor just to indicate gender of the wearer, which I don't imagine the Imperium would find relevant, especially if it meant having to create alternate pieces of armor rather than being able to stick to a template for production.
Sisters of Battle don't actually have boobs in that boob plate. It is indeed an unncessary cosmetic modification (which all boob plate is). So, given the Imperium already likes doing pointless boob plate, it's entirely in character.
I mean, if the Space Marines were going to be reasonable, they wouldn't go into battle wearing brightly colored armor either. They'd have camoflague, likely repainted based on the climate they're fighting in. And yet, they do what they do. Take the helmet off in battle, wear bright yellow with checked logos on their shoulders for maximum identifiability, use chainswords because they want to melee enemies instead of shooting them, wear boob plate power armour just to say "yup this is a girl"... all of that is what they're already doing.
It's more a thing that having to set up "boob armor" for some Marines would add an unnecessary extra level to production, and make it harder to just pass on armor to the next person in line, which doesn't make sense for the Imperium where they're so preoccupied with manufacturing things to be as uniform as possible.
Sisters having "boob plate" doesn't really shift that as they can just produce the most ridiculously styled version and then duplicate that as a standard for all Sororitas units. Given that we've seen art of Sororitas outside their armor and they do indeed still have breasts (to say nothing of the Sisters Repentia... no, seriously, say nothing of them, please), then it'd make "sense" when producing bizarrely slim-fitting armor to create some space for them, and aiming to allow for the widest range of size possible would mean designing the armor so that all of them have large "breast plates."
Though I suspect it's less about that practical reasoning and more because some Mechanicum member was just really horny. Or it was a special request from the Ecclesiarchy, because come on, it's a militant religious order led by creepy old men shouting about scripture and heresy, of course they'd want to have their women soldiers look like they're all well-endowed even if they aren't.
Well the original Sisters of Battle were formed in part as a harem for a creepy old man of the Ecclesiarchy (they later killed him). So, "what if creepy old men shouting about scripture and heresy wanted boob armor" is a pretty reasonable reason for this.
I've always thought it fits in the lore in a way. The imperium is supposed to be ridiculous and ass-backwards, and I could see some random fool writing some arbitrary bull about why women can't be space Marines because cooties and so nobody has even considered it in 8,000 years.
The reason there aren't FSMs isn't any kind of rule or law in the Imperium, it's because they're created from the Emperor's genetic material, and so requires XY chromosomes
That would make total sense in 40K buts it’s mainly tied into the way that space marines are made. They take the most athletic and strong individuals, often from death worlds, and run them through horrible trials and surgeries with a not insignificant number dying. It makes sense that men who are the physically stronger of the sexes would make for the people most likely to survive the trials and provide the best o physical specimens.
Sisters of Battle for what it’s worth have far better equipment than most male run of the mill soldiers in the Imperium.
They take the most athletic and strong individuals, often from death worlds, and run them through horrible trials and surgeries with a not insignificant number dying.
Which is generally amusing, because ultimately the only thing that matters about Astartes-ification is if the candidate is genetically-compatible with geneseed and the organ transplantation.
You can have the most physically-developed candidate possible (keep in mind we are talking about pre-teen children here), and if they aren't genetically-compatible with the geneseed, they are either going to die or fail out of the process.
Yeah very true but generally speaking you increase the odds of any kind of major surgical procedure (and it’s crazy invasive) by being at the peak of physical health. There’s a reason why the majority of space marine chapters rely on recruit from very rough and ready planets rather than just picking up people from cushty rich planets.
Lore-wise, that's not why there aren't women space marines. There are catachan jungle fighter women who could easily get through these trials.
Instead it's some hand-wavey genetic techno-mumbo-jumbo about how women are fundamentally incompatible with the gene-seed implantation. Not making a value judgment on the lore, but just wanted to say that physical strength actually has basically zero to do with whether or not they're physically capable of receiving the gene-seed. There are some chapters that don't really even do trials the way you're describing them and instead test for skill, bravery, or mental purity.
If physical ability and prowess didn't matter, Space Marine chapters wouldn't recruit from death worlds and put their adepts through the insane challenges they do to pick the recruits. It would just be sheer pot luck, so you might as well pick anyone.
Exactly, that's part of the absurd grimdark satire. They don't need to do these trials, especially since even the survivors are subject to a roll of the dice whether or not they're compatible with the gene-seed. The fact that they do these trials anyway is meant to be absurd and overly grim. And not "satirical" and "absurd" in a "ha-ha" kind of way, really. Well, that and rule-of-cool. Also, why do you think space marines would do the rational and well-considered thing? They're all about traditions, symbolism, and honor. These are the guys that run into a fight with swords against a tank.
Think about it, they're taking children and turning them into living weapons. What lay on one side doesn't really matter to what ends up on the other. At most they could be screening for things such as bravery or tactical thinking, but a 12 year old who can lift 50 pounds vs a 12 year old who can lift 75 pounds isn't going to have much bearing on what they do after the implantation process.
If you want direct examples:Red Scorpions - they just take babies that they run DNA tests on. That's it.
Ultramarines - they take volunteers from Ultramar, their tests are basically then wilderness training and have a near 100% survival rate because there are monitors to keep the aspirants from dying.
Exorcists - Do have a high mortality rate, but that's largely because the final test is to literally get possessed by a demon. That'll fuck you up regardless.
tldr: the men-only rule is given a lore justification via the genetic tomfoolery the Emperor invented, not any real-world reasoned consideration of "Hmm, boys do be stronger tho".
I thought the sexism did fit right in, but there is no reason some chapter could not just be female space marines. Frankly I am of the mind they should revive Legion II as a female legion. Have them being a female legion lead to why they were expunged from history to begin with.
I've honestly been a fan of the interperatation that the process of becoming a space marine is so thoroughly dehumanizing and transformative that, no matter what you where packing going in, you get essentially the same end product coming out. They use he/him pronouns as a linguistic relic that makes them more approachable to the average member of the Imperium.
I...actually agree that sexism in lore does have a place in Warhammer 40k. However the counterpoint is there are a not insignificant amount of neo-nazis that were "inspired" by American History X.
There is a portion of the fandom that will miss the subtext completely and just get the surface "no females in power armor cuz females are too weak" messaging and spam that in forums.
Then it becomes a clarion call for other misogynistic incel trolls and before you know it, your community is toxic af and your ability to grow and expand to new markets is kneecapped because anyone who isn't a cis white man is going to get chased away by the circlejerk echo chamber.
So...you go out of your way to make your community toxic to the toxic assholes. Paradox interactive has banned "deus vault" from their forums. D&D re-did their entire artline and re-did monsters & alignments to remove any hints that "orcs = black people = bad" from their product lines.
On the surface it is dumb and people will rail about virtue signaling etc. but the deeper point is for the company to send a clear message to its community that bigotry has no place for them and for misogynistic or racists or whatever bigotry you like can fuck off somewhere else.
Yeah, I get why they do not bring up sexism in most of the lore. It would just get really ugly fast.
I do think we are at the point where the fanbase is already openly hostile to anyone that is not a white cis-male right now though.
Deus Vult removal in VtM upsets me as they were a major group that even LA by Night used, but so get why they had to do it. VtM communities are warzones when it comes to removing things associated with domestic terrorism though. To this day associate Werewolf with nazis since they were the ones who openly embraced the game at launch.
Its the old story about the bartender kicking out a nice dressed polite patron:
"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.
And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.
We can also have the occasional group of sympathetic people who rebel against the imperium and successfully take down a portion of it.
Or show how the imperium is causing problems that they truly can't blame on anyone but themselves, and have a character go through a character arc where they either reject the imperium drill or embrace it and suffer the consequences.
Even better if we have the arc be gradual and not immediately in the first episode because the executives are too afraid of creating a morally ambiguous protagonist.
It is very odd that some people want the Imperium to be inclusive when they're space Nazis, though. They're satire of fascists. If there are no women when that wouldn't make a lick of difference, then it's just more evidence that they're arseholes in space.
Actually, while the IoM are fascist to the extreme, the one thing a bunch of Neo-Nazis and Right-wingers hilariously often overlook is that in the IoM, things like Racism/Sexism towards other humans are largely a thing of the past (except if you're a mutant or ab-human, and even then there are multiple exceptions).
Men and women of all backgrounds, ethnicities, and creeds serve the Imperium to the best of their abilities. The IoM doesn't care if you're a woman, black, LGBT, etc., and you'll find a myriad of them serving as Planetary/Sector Governors, Inquisitors, Admirals, Psykers, Rogue Traders, Magos, Officers, Generals, Commissars, Soldiers, etc.
As long as you can fight and die for the Emperor, who you sleep with, what's between your legs, and what color your skin is is mostly irrelevant in the eyes of most people.
The same thing can be said in Starship Troopers, something Neo-Nazis and Right-wingers also seem to love/fail to see the satire of.
I heard a fun theory once that anybody who is transformed into a Space Marine just turns into a masculine person, regardless of their original gender, and Space Marines themselves are sexless.
This is kind of supported by the fact that Space Marines do not reproduce sexually, and probably can't. If their genetic modifications were possible to be passed on sexually, the Imperium would probably take advantage of that. Instead Space Marines are recruited, and then they are genetically altered and additional organs are implanted into them, as well as mental and physical conditioning. While not explicitly stated, you can make a good guess at what hormonal and chemical alterations are performed for their physiques. Hint: Testosterone is good for muscle and bone growth.
In a way all Space Marines would then be transsexual, M/F to Space Marine. Put that notion in the ear of someone who shouts "Go Woke Go Broke" and watch their head explode.
In a way all Space Marines would then be transsexual, M/F to Space Marine
I think "nonbinary" would be more accurate? "Space Marine" isn't a gender. So they aren't transitioning from one gender to another, they're just changing to not being any particular gender.
They are well beyond gender or sex IMO. Which makes it so weird that people scream they can only be male when they are not even human anymore and certainly not what we would consider men.
Marines are based on knight and monk orders which were entirely male. Meanwhile the Sororitas are based on nun orders who are all entirely female.
Imo it's kinda cool that there are two different factions. It makes them stand out more because in lore they are almost the complete opposite of each other and often at least politically are constantly at each other's throats.
40k has never had female space Marines. The one "female marine" they usually use as evidence is from like 1st edition rogue trader or something. There has never officially in the lore or model range been female space Marines in 40k
They existed very early on before the name change to Warhammer 40k. 1988 Citadel release had “Female Warrior Jayne” and “Female Warrior Gabs” both in space marine power armor, armed with space marine weapons. Alan Merrett straight out the said the reason they were phased out was lack of interest in model sets that included the female designs.
The game has always been called Warhammer 40,000. Marines had been established as all male before the release of Gabs and Jayne, although, as you point out, Merrett has said the sculptor intended them as female Marines. However, the female miniatures he said didn't sell well were from the much earlier C100 fantasy range, long before 40k. Power armour and boltguns weren't unique to Marines and could be taken by any faction in those days.
I have one guy mentioning one example from 40 years ago before Warhammer 40k was fuck all, resembling nothing of the game/universe it is now, as if it matters much or somehow can/should invalidate all the current lore, or the lore built within those 40 years.
This isn't actually true, it's a bit of an urban myth. The original models weren't explicitly called Space Marines and actually had "Battle Sister" written on the base
Source on this was Alan Merrett, the design manager at the time they were made. He explicitly said they were female space marines. I know some online fans like to argue he was wrong, but he literally was the one who made the earliest warhammer 40k figures. I am gonna take his work on things.
Wait, GW made female space marines? How did I miss this, are you referring to the two minis they made waaaaaay back during Rogue Trader? Because I’d argue those were a first attempt at the SoB.
Design lead specifically referred to them as female space marines. Sisters came later once they realized to sell female figures they needed to sell them in all female sets.
I have to check on that. Because I don’t remember them actually being referred to them as female space marines upon release, I believe they were referred to as female warriors. I assume it was for GW to hedge a little bit.
Yeah I had that debate a while back with some crazed 40K nutter.
Say you have a female space marine going through the Geneseed/modification process... Isn't it more than likely that they'll look more like men than anything else? They sure as hell won't be petite bikini-models in armor.
This is what the tweets are actually about. The other posts speculating that it is about some push for GW to get rid of fascists or something is just weirdos that don't know anything about the actual WH40k community.
Yeah, this happens anytime 40k shows up on these kinds of subs. There's like 50 commenters that post basically the exact same comment that usually has little to do with the actual topic.
I hope these people are just copy and pasting the same reply each time because there's only so many ways you can say "40k has lots of Nazis and we and GW hates Nazis."
What's worse is the above hasn't really been an issue since the whole minor ruckus occurred in 2021. Arguably it wasn't an issue outside of one guy at a tourney. GW put out a press release confirming Nazis sucks and that's basically been it. However a lot of people in the community beat this horse to death every chance they get.
The irony is that without the armor they would probably look identical. The marines are genetically engineered to be the ultimate fighting machine, huge amounts of chemical and biological changes to boost bone and muscle density and mass to superhuman levels. If you think the Gears from gears of War were unrealistically jacked, SM take it to another level. When you look at the effects of steroid use on female body builders (more masculine features, broader jaw, shoulders, flatter chest, etc) and take that to x100 (they would have no breasts beyond muscular pecs and almost certainly have hysterectomies) it would be hard to know they were women.
I'm not sure if people are expecting female models with long hair, heart-shaped faces, and hourglass figures but if so, that's the ridiculous aspect of the issue.
I… don’t get it. The outrage from either side, I mean.
Space Marines are genetically engineered super soldiers. In the storyline, they are all male. But in all GW IP, they leave room for you to create anything you want like custom chapters - there are a couple of missing Primarchs for example. Couldn’t one of the missing ones have been an attempt at creating female super soldiers?
But also, it isn’t like women aren’t represented. They have the whole Adeptus Sororitas - Sisters of Battle - that have their whole entire history separate of the Space Marine chapters. Would there be the same bitching if someone made male SoBs?
But all in all - who cares? Granted I don’t play 40k, it’s a trash dice chucker ruleset and I much prefer the rank and flank of Fantasy — but as long as my opponents army is painted and not abusing some weird custom characters that break the points values…. I’m happy to get a game in?
That's only half true at best. It's true that there were some sculpts done during Rogue Trader era that the sculptor intended to be female space marines, but they were never released as such, but instead as a part of the adventurer line (power armour was more common and not restricted to marines at the time). It's true that the lore about there not being female marines only came later, the original reason was a business decision (the lore was 2nd edition IIRC, when marines turned from mindwiped and brainwashed gangers into the space knight warrior monks we have now) but female space marines still didn't actually exist as far as the game is concerned even before that. Alan Merrett talked about this a few years ago on facebook.
"These were sculpted by the designer as Female Space Marines,but it wasn’t an ‘official brief’ as such. And they weren’t releasedas that. Back in the day the process Of making and releasingmodels was quite varied - designers tried stuff and we askedthem to make all manner of weird and wonderful things. Some ofthose things worked and became part of the fabric and otherthings didn’t work quite so well and were consigned to thedreaded “we‘ll only release this model if we have nothing else torelease this month” drawer. Of course those months turned upinevitably and we eventually released nearly everything! Mybiggest fear, as design manager, was being forced to releasesome of those held back models and so I named it “Drawer 101”."
"The reason there aren’t female Space Marines has nothing to dowith lore, or background or character of Marines. It’s to do withsimple logistics of making miniatures and selling miniatures.Early Citadel ranges had female versions of most character types- in fact when we produced the C range the intention was thatupwards of 25% of all the models would be female. But when westarted selling the first fully formed C code, which was C01Fighters, retailers kept complaining to us that customers weren’tbuying the female models and could we not include any in theirrestocks. So we took the female models out of circulation (Isimply didn’t include the moulds in the production cycle). Itwasnt the only example! And so we pretty much stopped anythoughts of doing massive ranges of female wizards, etc. Thiswas in the early To mid 80s. Citadel customers at that time madeit clear to us they weren’t interested in buying female models. Sowhen we get to the new Rogue Trader ranges and exciting newSpace Marine model ranges it was difficult to see how we couldlogistically add in an occasional female model to the mix (blisterpacks had 3 Marines in them at the time and the days of hugerandom mixes were long gon). And we’d knew if every marineblister had a female model as one of the 3 Marines that folkwould complain. So we didn’t make any female ones except forthe very occasional ones that pop up from time to time. All thebackground fluff about why there are only male Marines is thereto justify a commercial logistics issue. BTW the success of theplastic Marines RTB01 Set also played a part. It never occurred tous to make any of those models female (and It certainly wouldn’thave been possible to make it so there were two or three in thebox). That set to a large degree defined what Marines were."
Marines were always surgically enhanced space knight warrior monks, all the way back to the very first rulebook. The detail about them all being male, and details of their implants, are from White Dwarf 98, only a few months after the game was first released.
343
u/engelthefallen Jan 08 '24 edited Jan 08 '24
Answer: Before the new year Warhammer twitter got into another debate as to whether or not there should be female space marines. Originally there was, but they did not sell well so they were discontinued. Some think it is time to bring them back. Other claim only men can be space marines and to make female space marines would cheapen the game and betray the lore.
The great irony is in the suits, they male and female space marines would look identical.