So... Oldhammer and Female Space Marines

[AranaszarSzuur]

So, as a preface, I generally can't stand the female marines crowd. They just rub me the wrong way.

And more concretely they are bad for two reasons:
-1. Warhammer 40k is an established setting that lots of players love and in every single of over 100 Space Marines novels in the setting and the fluff Space Marines are male, and must be male because gene seed requires it, while at the same time lots of non-marine characters are female. So a person bringing in a female Space Marine army or wanting GW to make female Space Marines is basically saying that every single Space Marine novel and all the fluff is invalid. Like it's an attitude to the hobby that is, like, objectively bad and aiming at ruining fun of fans of fluff and novels.
-2. Another thing is many of these people actually have issue with Space Marines being male because they are too bigoted to read about characters that don't have their genitals despite that, like, having different genitals is literally the least significant difference between Space Marines and basically anyone.
Like it's literally what these people believe and how they read fiction:

Furthermore it’s an objective fact people identify with their own sex more easily and readily. That’s just objective truth, it’s been surveyed and analyzed mnumerous times. If you are unable to comprehend simple objective facts then there is little help I can give you.

Like, it takes a special kind of an asshole to find gender to be a barrier in enjoying collecting fascist transhumans and reading novels about them.

Of course they have male enablers that are virtue signalling how progressive they are and how they are all about manipulating people instead of respecting the setting.

What's interesting that the same kind of bigots but with a different set of genitals are the reason why Space Marines are all male in the first place.
https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2020/10 ... rines.html
Then GW has buried chances for female Space Marines because it decided to make this logistic/cultural problem canon, which it didn’t do with any other faction which is why you can have tons of female characters from almost every faction imaginable but you can’t have female space marines because it would turn over 100 Space Marine novels and over 20 years worth of fluff into trash.
(like, technically speaking if GW wanted to add female Space Marines, which they clearly don't, they could have just retconned them in in 3rd edition because they were really brutal with retcons at that point since it was basically a reboot of 40k after Kitchammer - like how they completely remade Orks and Tyranids and there was no novels besides Ian Watson tetralogy and they were adding many female soldiers to Elves and Eldar.
Or they could have made mass production Space Marines instead of super space marines in 8th edition - like they could have made new technobabble about Cawl creating new geneseed variant that is much easier to reproduce and accepts more recruits including women - with perhaps some more grimdark side effects like half of implanted people dying horribly and some being unstable. But they didn't. So, these people are an impotent nuisance but then they turn it all around and call you a gatekeeper and exclusionist and sexist or whatever if you don't want to ruin canon to accommodate for their bigotry.).

That being said, when it comes to Rogue Trader, my view is like this:

As revisitors, reinterpretators and redactors of the past long gone and all the lost potential, we do have access to female Space Marines. In Rogue Trader everything was still in state of flux.

We can decide that Marines include females because it was designer’s intention and there’s no burden of canon that would be destroyed since it was being created and we decide what is true or false.

Do we include the Origin of Adeptus Astartes or perhaps are our Space Marines adult criminals that are chem bulked, brainwashed and put in black carapace without any additional organs being installed? It’s our own choice. To be honest, Origin of Adeptus Astartes is sort of like the start of everything wrong with 40k - like the chem-bulked criminals that are powerful but still dying a lot being turned into superheroes. It created this massive rift between fluff and stats.

Like, I generally prefer C100 marines in the first place and they got axed because of plastic sets, I hate what they did to Orcs and Squats, I dislike how Chaos was added, etc. You don't have singular canon or established literature, so there isn't this kind of objective harm that adding female Space Marines would do in normal 40k.

 

[dieselmonkey]

I'll be honest, I dislike marines in general, especially all the grimdark rubbish that came about after Rogue Trader. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that there are two female marine models in the RT601 Adventurers range is enough proof for me that they've always existed.

Mind you, it's mainly the hordes of squealing incels that makes me want female marines to exist in any capacity. Anything that upsets them is, by default, a good thing.

 

[symphonicpoet]

^Yes, this. I am entirely with Dieselmonkey here. Rogue Trader is, and always was to me, a framework. It's not some sacred text whose every typographical error must be treated with respect, but rather a mish-mash of ideas on how to create a story: specifically how to create your OWN story. "Here! Play with our toys!" The very first line in the text says as much: "If you ever left the cinema or turned from the TV screen, wishing you could invent your own death-stars, storm-troopers, whirling ornithopters, and wild-eyed heroes then this is for you!" They told you they wanted you to create your own story, straight up. And they wanted to give you the tools to do it.

I'm blissfully unconcerned with the official GW cannon. I will gladly say that every space marine novel and all the fluff is . . . someone else's bag. I've honestly never read any of the novels. Never really collected White Dwarf, even. I bought Rogue Trader and a few of the other early rule books and that was literally all I needed for what I wanted. I like the "You tell your story and I'll tell mine," ethos of the early days. You want space marines to all be trans-human fascist cloistered battle brothers who reproduce by putting their seed in young boys? Knock yourself out. They certainly make colorful bad guys. (I do worry a bit that some folks don't seem to recognize that they're the bad guys.) I want female rebel beakies to defeat them. I want to tell stories about the resistance fighting against the evil empire; about the underground space-road smuggling muties to freedom. And I want my bad guys to have enough depth that they could look around and see that they're the baddies and maybe switch sides in a classic brawl.

And yes, I do honestly think it would be a fine and dandy thing if GW binned most of their fluff and started over. The old fluff wouldn't simply cease to exist. You'd still be able to use it to tell stories, much as I am still able to tell stories with giant armies of space dwarves. But female space marines might make them a bit less . . . one dimensionally awful. It could make them more complex and interesting. To my taste GW started getting too married to their own fluff in the 90s. They really need to sit down and have a good think about what their game is and can do. (To be fair, I suspect they've actually been doing that. They just want to make sure they don't lose money in the process.) Times change. Tastes change. Even our understanding of ethics changes. 40K is a game. It can change and still be okay. Maybe it'll even be better. (Again.)

But either way, we can each play our own game our own way. There is no one right way. This is the way. I will have girl marines. You will not. And that's okay.

 

[AranaszarSzuur]

I'll be honest, I dislike marines in general, especially all the grimdark rubbish that came about after Rogue Trader. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that there are two female marine models in the RT601 Adventurers range is enough proof for me that they've always existed.

These are Sisters of Battle. Note that these are clearly hero models. Note the power swords and the ram skull. The ram skull is worn by the Sister of Battle on the picture in the end of the rulebook where they are also described as descending upon organisations in squads and investigating, which suggests they are more like Inquisitors than Space Marines.
By the way, I like how they forgot to mention how these two models looked from behind XD (mildly NSFW):
https://eldritchepistles.blogspot.com/2 ... ammer.html
I think in the start they wanted Space Marines to be a background faction and imagined that people will play Rogue Traders or Inquisitors or Sisters of Battle or pirates or whatever with Space Marines as mooks but then it turned more and more into glorification of Space Marines.

And yes, I do honestly think it would be a fine and dandy thing if GW binned most of their fluff and started over. The old fluff wouldn't simply cease to exist. You'd still be able to use it to tell stories, much as I am still able to tell stories with giant armies of space dwarves.

Here is where you conceptualize the whole thing wrong because you're assuming that current 40k fandom is a bunch of amateur writers playing in a sandbox like with Oldhammer and Inq28. It isn't.

Thing is that around the time of Adeptus Titanicus and Space Marine, GW shifted WH40k from Laserburn-like mix of roleplaying and skirmish wargaming to something closer to historical wargaming. With the story of Horus Heresy being the centre of the setting. Also, shift from Rogue Trader to 2nd ed meant the narrative way of playing the game dying and only being resurrected with advent of internet communities because most of players would shift to playing tournament style so it didn't even work that way for Rogue Trader.

40K is a game.

Saying the Wh40k is a game is just so incredibly privileged and out of touch. It's a game just for a bunch of rich people. Like, a 40k starter set costs as much as 10 novels.

Modern 40k is all built upon interconnected lore and interconnected stories of novels, short story collections and fluff. Horus Heresy novel series is a flagship title with many novels ending up on New York bestseller list.
These stories matter. To bulk of Wh40k fans, the hobby is about studying in-world history and collecting and reading novels not about writing stories or collecting expensive models.

To me for like almost all the time except when I got Battlefleet Gothic and was able to get someone to play with me (which was rare) it was all about reading index astartes articles and reading the novels.

I think the first Warhammer novel/short story collection I got was Tanith First and Only back in 2000, then the short story collection Ignorant Armies and Felix and Gotrek novels and also Warhammer Monthly and White Dwarf. I remember reading Honour Guard and Into the Maelstrom back in 2008 when I was working in a factory. Each cost me, like 77% of daily wage. At peak moment before I've quit 40k in 2018 I had, like, 40 Wh40k novels and several short story collections. I was going to collect the whole Horus Heresy series since it was published in Poland, but after I realised GW will always treat me as an inferior reader while they are virtue signalling about how "Warhammer is for everyone", I've just quit completely and shifted to buying novels from the Atomic Space Rockets recommendations list. I think only passion for the setting and the overarching story kept me reading them since the quality is pretty uneven - there are very good books but most are really mediocre.

Like the Forgeworld Horus Heresy and Imperial Armour fluff is just insanely expensive (when it comes to prices in relation to wages... imagine paying 110 euro for softcover HH book).
Just comparing the days when I used to read Index Astartes in White Dwarf in the Fat Bloke era to Legion histories being locked away in super-expensive books, ugh :/ . Yeah, totally for everyone.

From my tumblr post from that time:

Poorhammer Customer Rebellion

Games Workshop has recently released a tonedeaf message about how “The Hobby is For Everyone” where they also couldn’t stop themselves from calling religious fascists heroes and promising to to make them more representative and diverse and relatable.

As a disabled person living in a 2nd world country I find the claim that the hobby is for everyone ridiculous.

Collecting Horus Heresy novels and want to learn more about legions and their campaigns? Well, too bad, the fluff is locked beyond a 72-125$ paywall! For that sum you can get whole 166 pages of fluff!!! WOW!

As if it was impossible to publish fluff like normal sane history books:

448 pages of high quality military history for 25$. Can it be done? Can be done!

Like, I’m not even talking about miniatures here. I’m talking about fucking WORDS.

There’s plenty of fans who can’t afford to participate in the tabletop game part of the hobby and only read novels or play video games. Why can’t we read about Horus Heresy campaigns and legions, about Siege of Vraks, about Badab War. etc?

Maybe if Warhammer is for everyone, it should really be for everyone?

Discuss!

Almost all Wh40k novels in English I got either from internet used book stores or book depository. Without the 30+% discounts and free shipping there’s no way I would buy them after they switched to trade paperbacks.

Not Imperial Armour/Horus Heresy books, though, which are sort of the only lore really worth reading.

I think the way FW locks away fluff in expensive books is a spit in the face of the loyal Wh40k novels fans that have put BL books on global bestseller list many times.

They treat us as inferior fans that don’t deserve to read interesting fluff. It’s just words. All these books probably could easily be printed out in black and white and be perfectly readable.

Like they could easily remove the gaming parts and keep them exclusive to their special ForgeWorld book, removing the gaming parts could also allow to reprint really old books without having to update the rules.

There needs to be more fan pressure for this, because it’s ridiculous how they did it and somehow everyone went along with it. Perhaps more people could go on their Warhammer is for everyone tweet and send them some hate about it.

And yes, I do honestly think it would be a fine and dandy thing if GW binned most of their fluff and started over. The old fluff wouldn't simply cease to exist. You'd still be able to use it to tell stories, much as I am still able to tell stories with giant armies of space dwarves. But female space marines might make them a bit less . . . one dimensionally awful. It could make them more complex and interesting. To my taste GW started getting too married to their own fluff in the 90s. They really need to sit down and have a good think about what their game is and can do. (To be fair, I suspect they've actually been doing that. They just want to make sure they don't lose money in the process.))

They aren't capable of changing. Like you got one guy talk about how "it's not aspirational" and then again default to calling Space Marines heroes and wanting everyone to have representation in space fascists. Their writers usually aren't even mentally capable of writing the setting as in fluff so in the end they default to glorification.

Like the beginning and the end of the second paragraph. Yeah, so we talked about how it doesn't represents us so now we can get to the part where we believe representation matters and the fascists we depict are actually heroes and good guys.
They also aren't interested in adding female space marines, they could have added them when they rebooted the setting in 3rd edition and they could have made mass production gene-seed that would accept wider variety of recruits, including women for 8th editon instead of super space marines for 8th edition. They aren't going to do that.
From what I see, what they did is increasing amount of Sisters of Battle products including a few novels and making their designs less waifish and more like actual female soldiers. They also confirmed that there are actually many times more Sisters of Battle than Space Marines.

Mind you, it's mainly the hordes of squealing incels that makes me want female marines to exist in any capacity. Anything that upsets them is, by default, a good thing.

Fun fact, 74 percent of all murder-suicides involved an intimate partner (spouse, common-law spouse, ex-spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend). Of these, 96 percent were women killed by their intimate partners.

This whole fashion of using incel as an insult is so dumb and ableist. Like if you can't find a partner because of stuff like crippling social anxiety or depression or autism or whatever or simply there are no compatible available people around in the first place, you're somehow painted as evil, when tons of abusive or misogynistic people or whatever have no trouble finding a relationship. Like people in relationships cheat, beat their partners, rape their partners, beat their children, rape their children, murder their partners, it's something that is happening all the time but somehow people don't use relationship-haver as an insult. It's because of culture of hatred for disabled people.

Most of incels I saw on youtube had some kind of messed up family situation that traumatized them and made getting a relationship next-to-impossible. Though sadly most aren't self-aware and instead fall prey to the black pill ideology. My story is:

How I became an incel.
It started with two noncels having a relationship and sex and creating me in the middle of an economic crisis under Bolshevik regime that shot protesting students and workers and oppressed people.

Under these conditions any reasonable people would decide to get an abortion but they decided to force me to exist in such a disgusting world anyway.

Then the male noncel turned out to be sleeping around while engaged to my mother. He not only created me in a wrong world but also dared to betray me.

He was dodging child support ever since I was born and instead of ensuring that I will have a great childhood like every breeder should, he tried to starve me and has driven me into poverty. He also had 4 more children with his next wife instead of investing all money into me like should have in penance for the unforgivable sin of bringing me into this putrid world.

It scarred me for life when it comes to relationships because my first relationship was a horrible betrayal that turned my life into living hell.

I was always terrified of rejection and felt like the part of me that is responsible for getting me into relationship was brutally cut out of me by the inhuman financial abuse the male noncel has subjected me to.

To make things worse my mother has lost her job in architecture because the crisis has fucked up the industry when I was 7 and was unemployed until I was 11. We were very poor and I was often hungry. I was very stressed out because of it.

I also didn’t receive a Lego Pirate Ship, Lego Castle, Lego pneumatic stuff, Lego Paradisa set, a Barbie dollhouse and My Little Ponies, Space Hulk, Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Warhammer 40,000, etc. which was a great injustice.

Because of it I find relationship stuff extremely stressful. It was the main reason why I became an incel. The first relationship in my life was a horrible life-ruining betrayal that resulted in over a decade of vicious financial abuse.

The filth from family court was assisting my father in impoverishing me and also haven’t assigned me any compensation for his loathsome betrayal. It’s because judges are evil and hate justice.

I became an incel because of the violent and toxic noncel relationship culture and institutionalised noncel child abuse.

Anyway, I have realised long time ago, like in 2008, I think after I got fired from two jobs for having chronic health problems and later in 2009 when two women I considered acquaintances at school because we'd talk regularly wouldn't let me xero their notes because "I should have been on all lessons" I realised that most of ableds hate disabled people and want us dead. It's so bad that sometimes I feel like trying to distinguish between ableds and ableists is just a waste of time. Though I try to persist and not give in to the dark side.
Like hating ableists is okay because they are enemies in war of extermination that they started, but not all non-disabled people are like this, only the vast majority that has intentionally chosen to inhuman monsters.

It also reminds me of one thing about abuse at school and inceldom:
“Those who were victimised were more likely to have bodily pain and headache. Frequent victimisation in childhood was associated with poor general health at ages 23 and 50. Moreover, pure victims reported slow recovery from illness in young adulthood.“
“Being a victim of bullying in childhood was not associated with becoming a young parent. Frequent victimisation increased the risk of living without a spouse or partner and receiving less social support at age 50.“
So those who are using "incels" as insults are also bashing victims of abuse. Disgusting!
I wrote more on the topic of how abuse is linked to inceldom and about necessity of compensations for abuse in my post:
https://illuminations-of-eternal-warfar ... almost-all

 

[dieselmonkey]

These are Sisters of Battle. Note that these are clearly hero models. Note the power swords and the ram skull. The ram skull is worn by the Sister of Battle on the picture in the end of the rulebook where they are also described as descending upon organisations in squads and investigating, which suggests they are more like Inquisitors than Space Marines.

Nope, they're female Space Marines. Y'know why? Because I said so. And tbh, that's all that counts.

Edit, and also:

This whole fashion of using incel as an insult is so dumb and ableist.

As someone who's unable to work, or indeed function properly due to a spinal injury, I wouldn't class myself as 'able'.

"Incel", as a term, is a descriptor of a toxic state of mind, not just the simple lack of a partner, be it as an insult or self-described.

 

[lenihan]

When it comes to Space Marines, I'm gender agnostic: I just hate the lot of them. To be honest I find the 40k setting very uninspiring (ok, apart from Necromunda, and even the grimness of the hive cities gets hammed up to a point where I just don't care) - and then layer onto that grimdark melodrama some power-suited roidrage 'monks', not for me thanks.

I'm not saying this to start a fight, I really like your drawings. But I just don't have an investment in this, and I think the whole idea of 'canon' is antithetical to oldhammer anyway, in my honest opinion.

My general principles are a) let people have fun, if other people want to play with space marines, let them, and b) a core feature of Oldhammer is an open world, taking responsiblity for your own fun and doing your own storytelling. If you want to have female marines within that, go right ahead. Also c) rule of cool. If you think female space marines look cool, go for it*

*space marines are never cool.

 

[symphonicpoet]

When it comes to Space Marines, I'm gender agnostic: I just hate the lot of them. To be honest I find the 40k setting very uninspiring (ok, apart from Necromunda, and even the grimness of the hive cities gets hammed up to a point where I just don't care) - and then layer onto that grimdark melodrama some power-suited roidrage 'monks', not for me thanks.

I'm not saying this to start a fight, I really like your drawings. But I just don't have an investment in this, and I think the whole idea of 'canon' is antithetical to oldhammer anyway, in my honest opinion.

My general principles are a) let people have fun, if other people want to play with space marines, let them, and b) a core feature of Oldhammer is an open world, taking responsiblity for your own fun and doing your own storytelling. If you want to have female marines within that, go right ahead. Also c) rule of cool. If you think female space marines look cool, go for it*

*space marines are never cool.

How about a rebel legion fighting the golden man to bring peace, love, and tolerance to the galactic frontier? I suppose they're no longer strictly "Imperial" space marines. Anti-imperial. But they could still serve the same function and have the same toys. Just different paint.

And in any case, every story needs badguys to make the gender (and species) agnostic hero's journey a challenge.

 

[symphonicpoet]

And yes, I do honestly think it would be a fine and dandy thing if GW binned most of their fluff and started over. The old fluff wouldn't simply cease to exist. You'd still be able to use it to tell stories, much as I am still able to tell stories with giant armies of space dwarves.

Here is where you conceptualize the whole thing wrong because you're assuming that current 40k fandom is a bunch of amateur writers playing in a sandbox like with Oldhammer and Inq28. It isn't.

Thing is that around the time of Adeptus Titanicus and Space Marine, GW shifted WH40k from Laserburn-like mix of roleplaying and skirmish wargaming to something closer to historical wargaming. With the story of Horus Heresy being the centre of the setting. Also, shift from Rogue Trader to 2nd ed meant the narrative way of playing the game dying and only being resurrected with advent of internet communities because most of players would shift to playing tournament style so it didn't even work that way for Rogue Trader.

I'm not really assuming anything about the current game. I'm well aware the thing shifted to a tournament system and that it became more of a wargame. (Though I wouldn't remotely call it historical. Historical wargames are all about the system and are incredibly miniatures agnostic. Even generally story agnostic. Historical wargamers love nothing so much as a good "what if." Which might be why there's so much crossover between historical wargamers and oldhammerers. I think every oldhammerer I know personally also plays historical wargames. Myself included.)

Anyway, I digress. I'm not trying to make any particular assertions about what the Contemporaryhammer community is like. I assume GW is doing that. And they're big kids and can do their own market research and make informed decisions. If they think female space marines will goose their sales significantly they'll include them. If they don't, they won't. That's precisely why they shifted to the tournament system in the first place: it sold more toys. They'll do whatever they believe will sell more toys to more people going forward.

40K is a game.

Saying the Wh40k is a game is just so incredibly privileged and out of touch. It's a game just for a bunch of rich people. Like, a 40k starter set costs as much as 10 novels.

40K is a game. It may be a game for rich people, but it's still very much a game. It's not real. It's toys. We play with them. We enjoy the stories other people tell. Maybe we also tell stories. Calling it a game shouldn't take anything away from anyone's enjoyment. Games are there to have fun and create joy in people's lives.

Modern 40k is all built upon interconnected lore and interconnected stories of novels, short story collections and fluff. Horus Heresy novel series is a flagship title with many novels ending up on New York bestseller list.
These stories matter. To bulk of Wh40k fans, the hobby is about studying in-world history and collecting and reading novels not about writing stories or collecting expensive models.

To me for like almost all the time except when I got Battlefleet Gothic and was able to get someone to play with me (which was rare) it was all about reading index astartes articles and reading the novels.

All of that will still be there, just like everything that came before it is still there. GW pretty much wrote the Slann out of 40K altogether, but you can still read the old stuff. Rogue Trader didn't cease to exist. White Dwarf from the 80s didn't vanish. If they write new books in a new style for new readers the old ones will still be there. Sci-Fi stories have changed a lot from back in the day. Ancillary Justice didn't erase Ringworld. If I enjoy the first more than the second you would still be welcome to enjoy the second more than the first. I love your art. I want you to enjoy 40K. I want it to be something you can afford. Please understand, I don't want to take anything away from you. I want you to have 40K and all the stories in it that you love. I just want to tell new stories myself. I sincerely hope we can BOTH tell stories. You have a rich and interesting voice. And you are not alone. Tell your story. And with luck others will tell theirs. GW will tell their official story and that's fine. It's their toy. They did build the thing. But every story we tell makes the thing richer, official or otherwise. Some of us are better writers. Some of us are better artists. Maybe even a few of us are 40K musicians. And that's okay. This is fun. It's not history. It's fiction. So we can do different and glorious things with it just for the sheer childish glee of it.

 

[Loose Loser]

I think it's more than game. I know blokes that only read books and never had any miniature or even played, then again I know guys who paint miniatures from GW, never read or played and so on. It's more less on personal side what one feels about it. Similar to cars I think, for most people it's something that cover them from rain when go to job and do it faster then walk, nuts and bolts so to say but for some people it's more than just a car. I was joking earlier about females in power armour but all in all I don't mind them but timing to start ( again ) with something like that is little bit funny, and all that change in illustrations also, and how they paint miniatures hehe It's all too funny considering social woke mayhem on this planet. You can always say it's only this, it's only that so we can go with all that until only known thing left on one are underwear and they will change that too because they're lazy and all they can do is demand and yell and they got horrific stamina for things like that. I know GW is giant, not little company they've been in 80s so miniatures are well though, of course, there is plenty room for heart and they got acknowledged imagination by many.

 

[Zhu Bajie]

Do what you want.

The corporations don't own your imagination.

Online debates about fandom, canonicity, are just another form of marketing and p.r., they don't really matter.

Saying the Wh40k is a game is just so incredibly privileged and out of touch. It's a game just for a bunch of rich people. Like, a 40k starter set costs as much as 10 novels.

Every Warhammer box-set and scenario published from 2nd Edition through to Rogue Trader came with cardboard counters so you could play the game. there's literally nothing more Oldhammer than doing that.

Really, how cool could a set of your own Femarine tokens designed by you be?

These are Sisters of Battle. Note that these are clearly hero models. Note the power swords and the ram skull. The ram skull is worn by the Sister of Battle on the picture in the end of the rulebook where they are also described as descending upon organisations in squads and investigating, which suggests they are more like Inquisitors than Space Marines.

This is an accurate observation. If you want to play in Ricks universe, there's no reason not to find a warp-storm isolated branch of the Sororitas who have become more outward facing.