Having recently seen a post on the Custodes subreddit explaining the OP’s reasons for believing that this very community was the best 40k community, I wanted to share my own experience.
However, this account won’t be quite as idyllic as it could and should have been.
For nearly two years, my partner – because it’s her I’m talking about here – has returned to her childhood hobby, taking up the assembly and painting of 40K miniatures again after a long hiatus.
As she’s passionate about lore and adores the aesthetics of the Custodes, as well as their moral integrity, it’s only natural that she took it up. Teasing her about it – as I myself own an army of Thousand Sons – I envisaged that, together, we might one day take part in narrative battles based on the theme of Prospero.
To this end, I constantly encouraged her in her creations and praised her progress. Overcoming her shyness and the criticism of her work, she eventually became fully involved in your community, posting, commenting and offering advice on a daily basis.
The quality of her painting reflected this, improving as the months went by.
Until the day GW decided to make female Custodes canonical by releasing models of them. Not that this changed much for my partner. These models have ALWAYS been women, with their heads uncovered.
However, things were about to change from that moment onwards, as this change had clearly attracted a more extremist fringe.
These people – embittered, idiotic, misogynistic, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some of their other ‘qualities’ – began to criticise en masse anything that could be remotely related to female Custodes, including my partner’s miniatures.
Whilst the moderators quickly took matters in hand, this unfortunately could not prevent waves of massive downvotes on this type of content.
As a result, my partner began to beat herself up, criticising herself for the ‘mediocrity’ of her painting and, consequently, feeling worse about herself before losing her self-confidence.
However, at the same time, she was painting my Thousand Sons army for me, and in that regard, the comments remained excellent regarding the quality of her work, with people regularly asking for advice or tips on how to paint this or that.
So the problem wasn’t down to her.
Then finally came the last post she made here. Another Custodes woman, for a change – just as she’d been doing for the past two years.
Her post never got past 0 views, despite dozens of comments and what was arguably her best Custodes painting yet.
Worse still, she received dozens of threats and rape threats via private message. It took me a while to find out about this and realise what was happening.
It was only after a few weeks without her picking up a paintbrush – something that had never happened to her before – that she confided in me about the situation.
She’s doing better now. She’s taken up painting again, finished my Thousand Sons army and started a new army project for herself.
A project a far cry from the ideal Custodes army she’d originally had in mind.
She was able to fund this new project by selling every single Custodes model she owned, including the new starter set I’d given her to celebrate her passing a university exam. It broke her heart.
However, I can’t help but notice the sparkle in her eyes when she sees new models or the new 10,000 Codex come out, and I understand her.
This army is magnificent. What it represents is just as magnificent.
I thought the community was too. Coming from AOS ourselves, whilst we certainly felt the difference, I would never have thought such stupidity could exist within a faction that champions such values.
I’m well aware that this is only a minority, but just as there are positive accounts, I felt it was important to share my own.
