• Moghul@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Yeah it’s the same when you have a complaint that aligns with the bigots. Like the female custodes debacle. I don’t care what gender the marines are, but I do think GW handled it poorly.

    If they had just had… Idk the mechanicus find some relic that allowed women recruits to survive the upgrade to space marine, primaris, and custodes, and had them deliver a sick ‘more bodies for the war’ line, it would’ve been better.

    Saying that does feel icky because there are people who are just against women being marines and custodes. I’m not. If GW did it better, I’d have nothing to say and the bigots would still be bigots.

    • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 months ago

      In Gee Dubs defence, there had been speculation for years over female Custodes precisely because, unlike Space Marines, Custodes were not explicitly noted as being male-only.

      • Moghul@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I’ll take the L on that, I didn’t know it wasn’t explicitly said. I don’t remember any speculation like that either.

        Still I take it from what you’re saying that there were also no female custodian characters over the years, right? It doesn’t help the misconception but it isn’t the same as saying there aren’t any.

        • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOP
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          2 months ago

          Oh yeah, there were never female Custodes mentioned, which is why it was such a debate. My best guess is that Gee Dubs overlooked it when they changed Space Marines to male-only genetically modified supersoldiers after the Rogue Trader days, and when they realized their mistake, decided to keep it ambiguous in the Custodes’ case they wanted to change it later.

          • Cypher@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            For the record, the 7th edition Adeptus Custodes codex does have a lore section that states Custodes are all the

            infant sons of the noble houses of Terra

            And that the custodes are a brotherhood.

            I like the change and most people railing against it have no clue. Female custodes were originally intended by the author of the first real Custodes perspective novel.

            Aaron Dembski-Bowden has publicly stated (in 2016) that authors wanted them but were told no by corporate because the box of models didn’t have female heads.

    • latenightnoir@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Very, very good highlight! They did both the fans and the concept itself a disservice by introducing it through a hand-wavey half a paragraph’s worth of retcon…

      But that just tracks with James Borkshop’s slew of highly questionable decisions as of late. Imagine how much new blood (and fresh cash) they would’ve drawn in with a proper expansion to the story which would open up augmentation to basically anyone. How hard is it to attribute it as a modification of the process made by Cawl, who’s already at near Mary-Sue levels of big-brainedness? And it’d add more flavour to Guilliman’s rather rational take on doing things as well! Plus it’d reinforce the long-term tragedy of the entire universe itself, that everything is doomed even when Humanity’s not being as big of a bunch of regressive zealots because we already made things bad beyond the point of resolution. Poignant message, imho…