Female Custodes and other Games Workshop Retcons... OR... The Great Custodes Kerfuffle!!
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- čas přidán 15. 04. 2024
- Today I am 90Percentgeek
10Percentretconned
Well... It's been an interesting 48 hours hasn't it? I couldn't wait till Friday to talk about this topic so here are the Top Ten occasions when Games Workshop suddenly changed the Lore of Warhammer 40K in such a way that it HAD ALWAYS BEEN SO!!
As ever you can catch my on the Morehammer Podcast every week as well, and if you subscribe and comment on the Man Vs Skaven video if you want to be in with a chance of winning a classic metal Imperial Space Marine.
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#custodes #warhammer40k #warhammer40000 #warhammer
There have always been Orks in the Water Caste, since the first of the Tau Empire was created.
I mean, to be honest, I'd quite like to see Orks in the Water caste - they're one of the only races to successfully out negotiate them as the War of Dakka proves!
Early retcons... no internet... no reverberating echo chamber.
And... Most earlier retcons were totally internal to the 40k lore and had no connection to socio-cultural movements in the real world. No political real world ramifications.
I don’t care personally, but I understand why the conflict exists.
I mean there was an internet it's just instead of Twitter or Facebook back then the arguments took place on Warseer, but the reaction feels like it was less marked in my memory.
My main contention is you don't see them doing this with the imperial female factions. There is no reason the sisters of silence can't have male troops. So unless GW changes that it shows clear bias
... I mean, I guess they'd have to call them something else? I just assumed all the male pariahs were scooped up by the Culexus temple.
Squatters Rights!
Another golden video. I was in stitches. I have no words! 🙏🏻
Cheers dude!
Brilliant stuff again. Thank you for this.
Glad you enjoyed it
This has confirmed that I have GW Stockholm Syndrome!
Your point about the global campaign is right on target. The War Machine stock at our FLGS sold like hot cakes :)
Ha! I ended up with a Mercenaries army following that campaign!
I did wonder if Illiyan Nastase was going to make it into this video when I saw the thumbnail 😊
Good video Ben
Why female Custodians? Can anyone give me an in lore reason for them? Just one?
Because they can, and it may attract women to the franchise.
Because they might be really good at it? Because He's the Emperor of Mankind not the Emperor of the XY chromosome?
Because unfortunately it’s political and not business.
The Eye of Terror campaign turned out to be only one of the many plausible threads of The Skein. And Eldrad was just like “nah, don’t fancy pursuing that one” and manipulated events differently.
The implication here is massive - that Eldrad, through his selfpreservation, is responsible for the Great Rift of Chaos across the galaxy(a result not present in the original EoT campaign).
That's a staggering implication!!!
@@90percentgeek To be fair, Abaddon was trying to achieve the "Crimson Path", which was meant to be a bit like the great rift, but instead of it being a scar of chaos across the Galaxy, it was meant to be a laser line of chaos pointed straight at Terra... Perhaps Eldrad viewed the Great Rift as the best case scenario (in which he didn't die?) or perhaps, it is just the perfidy and the hubris of the eldar that he mistakenly thought his self preservation would lead to a better outcome than his death?
Well said, sir.
The only issue is I can no longer call them the ‘Misters of Violence’ as a mirror to the Sisters of Silence. No biggie.
😂😂😂
But they get to be The Golden Girls instead!
Do you think this will lead to maybe having men in Sisters of Battle? Please please please, i think the aesthetic would be awesome
I mean, they used to. They were called the frateris militia and we're available during 2nd. Check out the models. I always thought the sisters would look good with some church cult troops like redemptionists!
They technically due now with Auxillury units. I forget what they are called but those heretics that get their hands replaced with nueral whips and sent to suicide rush the enemy are mixed sex units
I kinda hope not. Space marines are still an all-boys club and are vastly more significant than the Custodes. If you want a diverse range of female models the GW 40k range will still likely be lacking for a very long time and the sisters are a kind of conciliation prize in that regard.
The month necrons were introduced I closed the white dwarf and threw it across the room, never looked at a GW model for 8 years after that. I have to point out though that few of these are retcons but expanding or introducing things. The actual necron retcon did really annoy a lot of people
Wow, was that purely due to their introduction to the lore? And was that the 2nd edition ones or the 3rd edition ones?
It would be very cool if one of the missing space marine legions was all girls and came back into the game…they’ve been hidden under the imperial palace all this time! Oh yes and the emperor is coming back in some form or another at some point! It keeps the narrative going, which is what’s important. No problem with female Custodies, hell why can’t my Thousand Sons have some Daughters of Magnus as well? Great video, well done!
I was actually talking about this on the Morehammer Podcast earlier this week - one of my favorite fan theories is that the 2nd or 11th Legion aren't destroyed but were locked in a stasis vault somewhere waiting for when they are needed, or were dispatched to another galaxy. A host of them being female astartes would be an amazing way to include them in the hobby.
I honestly don't get why some folks think GW owes them anything. No one held, or is holding a gun to your head and yelling "buy this!"
I'm all for improved representation, and it'd be great to have had more females guard models over the years, but I think the biggest problem with arguments over female space marines and custodes is that it minimises or undermines the whole satire thing that's long been at the heart of 40k. The Imperium is awful, a xenophobic fascist theocracic bureaucracic nightmare, and it wouldn't be surprising if it had loads of arbitrary (snd sexist) rules like space marines can only be male because the emperor* just made them that way millennia ago. Sure, in-universe people think space marines are amazing, heroic etc and the fluff is written from thst POV, but GW increasing seems to be trying to present the Imperium as the 'good guys' now
*Along with Erda, Amar Astarte et al
Problem not even "change the lore" aka retcon, but that it's CLEARLY POLITICAL CHANGE to please woke overlords like Black Rock, and then they tried to gaslight people who been their customers for 20-30 years "IT ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THIS" "What do you talking, there always been female Custodes" lmao
And all of it just to put some trans-women into Cavil's tv-show, while they don't want Sisters of Silence nor Sisters of Battle to represent women in 40K, because one type can't lecture about politics and gender study's(fake shit) and other type promotes religion.... and we all know how LGBT community afraid of religion talks.
Ah yes "Not enough women in 40k" "Why you nerds hate women?" .... strawman is weak in here, because 40k has shitload of women in it, just so happen that cannonically this unit and Space Marines been male centered, but ofc why not invade and take it for yet another SJW target, but why i don't see people asking for Brothers of Silence, or female representation among Orks? ....ah feminists doesn't care about these? Anyway.
Interesting review of some of the lore changes in 40K. female Custodes is generating the reaction largely due to the context of the recurring arguing about female Space Marines. Both sides of the debate are dug in and frankly the conversation is boring to me at this point. Build and paint your minis how you like. Develop your own lore. It's a big galaxy with room for lots of variety. I don't see a need for female Marines or Custodes personally. I don't think this will drive model sales. If anything the hypersensitivity many have towards "woke pandering" will drive some to leave the hobby. I like cool models with good paint jobs. My converted Blood Angels Terminator Company Champion is not supported by the lore or the model range. I am mildly annoyed that many of my older models are now relegated to legends status.
My problem with 40K is the continuous rebalancing and rules complexity. I am a casual player at best and don't want to invest the effort into relearning the rules every time I play. This is what has pushed me out of playing. I love the models. Female Custodes? Okay, whatever. I have no plans to build or play a Custodes army so it doesn't affect me. I hope the debate doesn't infect my FLGS when I hang out and chat with other hobbyists.
What are FLGS ?
I'm in the same boat with my Terminator armoured Sanguinary Priest. I do wish when they changed the background or the rules they added more options to the game instead of taking them away. My guard army was based around veteran squads and sniper teams - one of which is Legends now and the other doesn't exist anymore making me basically shelve the army for this edition (or just play 3rd edition which frankly is one of my favourite 40K editions anyway!)
@@adwarfsittingonagiantsshoulder Friendly Local Game Store
What’s funny is people don’t have a problem with necrons retcon but do with female custodies
I had a slight problem with the necrons retcon, but I got over it. Plus the storylines it introduced are cool and interesting.
We seem to have the same nonsense in WFB/TOW with people moaning about the notion that a Bretonnian knight can be (not has to be) a woman. Started work on my top ten Fantasy Battle changes, but didn't get much past the ones that have happened from the first game I ever played (The Magnificent Sven, 2nd Ed):
The Slann: Went from frogmen to lizards riding dinosaurs as that's what the kids like/nobody bought them anyway/nobody could buy them anyway, was hard to tell.
The Norse: Disappeared all together having been Vikings then apparently returned as some sort of Chaos Marauders (only without their own army). What about the original Chaos Marauders? They seem to have turned into Chaos Warriors who themselves have turned into Chosen Chaos Warriors or whatever.
Dwarf Beserkers: Had a small number of great models but got pushed out by inferior over the top ones in a rebranding that led to crimes like people painting Juggo's hair orange rather than blue.
Amazons: Where they?
Pygmies: Weren't in the battle, but were referenced as having fed Karl Ustracutter his own leg, causing him to have become a bit disengaged from adventuring for a while. Long gone.
Sven himself: seems to have been rewritten substantially, 'trouser legs' ritual and all.
So that's pretty much everything that featured in the game. There was a halfling I suppose, but as you don't see many of them these days I would argue that Riolta Snow in her capacity as an elf is just about the last errr... woman standing...
Honestly I don't see the problem with changing lore. But alas I don't have problems with the female custodes lore either. GW had the chance to solve the female sm "problem" easily when they introduced the primaris, stating that Cawl solved the issues preventing female recruits.
It's entirely possible that GW will just do that yet and say they've been there since the Primaris were first doled out, they just haven't been mentioned till now.
@@90percentgeekYes, but whatever GW does, people will freak out because, "women in MY hobby? HERESY!!" Or some other idiocy...
I think you entirely miss the point of the people being offended while, in a way, proving the community is not generally opposed by retcons. It's the fact that female Custodes in itself don't add to the setting, diminish the Sisters of Silence and that GW did not add a single word to the Lore at all, they just went the laziest, scummiest way possible by changing the pronouns in a short story and gaslighting people on Twitter.
I honestly believe if GW would have added a bit of Lore ADDING to the Custodes, fleshing the faction out even more in a satisfying way and putting in the work, people wouldn't be as angry as they are now.
I disagree, I think adding female custodes does add to the setting - it puts stories like the War in the Webway into a wholly different context. I am hopeful we might get more fluff on the subject - maybe a Black Library story or something like that!
@@90percentgeek How do Custodes being female add to the war in the webway?
@@90percentgeek eh ? How ? The Sisters of Silence already fill that spot and would be way more interesting then a lazy gender flip. And lets be honest if we put our lore hats on. After being taken as a kid, all the impants and for the female recruits no doubt having boobs chopped off coz they serve no purpose, stuffed into power armour they are gonna look and act no diff then the males so whats the actual point ? It changes nothing other then clearly pandering. But people like you are clapping like seals over getting some lazy crumb thinking its a win. But its all good its a win and a L for the incels and chuds right ? Coz everyone that does not like this change must be some extreme right winger right ?
Everything written after 2004 is fan fiction anyway. It don't matter. None of this matters. czcams.com/video/qX-YfuVQmX8/video.html
My favourite “it’s always been this way” retcon is how the primarchs were just Imperial generals in Rogue Trader and in 2nd gen they’d “always” been super duper Space Marine daddies.
But I’m guessing that retcon was okay because they all had a penis?
No its coz alot of RT was abit silly and the lore was still being fleshed out and 40k finally found its groove by 3rd edition.
@@brokenhalo2001 Ah, so lore retcons between RT and 3rd is fine, but 3rd onwards isn’t?
Mfs really taking the retcon "retcon" when previously they had no lore for a run.
As compared to this lore retcon thats just gw trying to boost their esg score which is a social polticial ideology but yeah go off
What the heck does the lore change have to do with esg? Like, do you think they're going to get a tax rebate for changing the background?
@90percentgeek do you not know Blackrock and vanguard both companies who together own about 11% of gw stock who push esg in the businesses they invest in
I've heard that theory but knowing something about how the stock market works (my wife has worked in the market in the past) that is absolutely not a factor here.
@@90percentgeek it absolutely is, 11% is a large share and they will 100% have influence. As we all know from the start and for 30+ years that custodes were intended to be all male
So in your hypothetical scenario, a major US investment company, with shares in Microsoft, Apple and Google, took the time to direct a UK plastic toy company to change a single piece of narrative in one corner of their games to include women as part of some master scheme? I've said it before and I will say it again - get a grip!
Female space marine already exist is call sister of Battle. In same way a cow is Female and bull are males
You are being disingenuous trying to conflate the most recent change the GW has done to the lore with the earlier ones. There is a vast difference between the two. The earlier ones had nothing to do with (or at least not glaringly so) with real-life politics and were more motivated by the interest to increase the quality of the setting (and money, of course). The reason why half of the community is up in arms now is because they want to keep politics out of the hobby, something that was the status quo viewpoint over a decade ago. There are zero reasons from storytelling perspective to have done this change. It brings nothing new, simply artificially changes the gender of the custodes, and creates a ton of conflicts with the earlier writings. What's worse, I bet the fandom would have welcomed with open arms new lore and units to Sisters of Silence or Sisters of Battle, but since that would have required some actual work from GW and not nearly as many brownie points from the woke people currently celebrating on Twitter their culture war "victory", they chose to not go down that path. Had they done so, this whole controversy could have been avoided.
The only reason why you yourself don't care, is probably because you either belong to the same political group with these toxic woke activist or because you are ignorant of how they operate, and certainly, by defending this decision GW has made, you are facilitating further politization of the hobby. It should be obvious to anyone that if you overly politicize something, those who disagree with that ideology will be pushed out, creating much smaller fan base and a hobby that is harder to approach (the reason why the no-politics stance was so prevelant before as it made sense from the business perspective).
The whole "why are you making such a big deal out of it" is a common gaslighting tactic from the woke crowd that has been seen utilized with other IPs in the past. The fact is, the people who wanted their hobby to stay non-political weren't the ones who made a deal out of it in the first place. It was in fact the people who advocated for the change.
I don't accept your premise that including the other gender on this planet is a political move. Certainly I'm not aware of any women's groups who have campaigned for equal inclusion in our frankly quite silly toy soldiers hobby. I just like how it opens up the scope to a wider range of story telling as it adds different characters and themes to the background fluff that had been somewhat lacking until now. It doesn't seem to me to alter the background of the game anywhere near the scale that adding a whole new species did, or as someone else pointed out - changing the result of the 13th Black Crusade to make the result way worse for the galaxy as a whole!
That's why my response is "get a grip" - it doesn't negatively effect your life one iota, and may have positive effects for the game. And really, I had hoped we as fanboys had moved beyond the "ew, girls!" stage by this point! It's the 21st century FFS!
@@90percentgeek Mate, I am sorry, but your response itself proves that it is indeed political. I am all for inclusion in stories across the spectrum, but that of itself is a moral value that I hold and the most fundamental level of politics is the values each side has and their clash against one another. Therefore, to suggest that mine or yours modern day values should be pushed into a dystopian grimdark sci-fi fantasy universe which is practically antithetical to everything we in real life consider good, is explicitly pushing politics into it, since those sorts of values aren't something that would exist on their own within that setting.
Do you think that the Imperium cares a rat's ass about the level of gender equality within its ranks, especially when it comes to the protection of the Emperor of humankind. The reason why it makes much more sense to have that group of bodyguards be made of men is due to some basic biological realities that exist with us humans. The fact that men are naturally stronger is one, though that necessarily wouldn't be a reason to exclude women from the Custodes as you could argue that the process of making the Custodes would equalize that difference. What, however, does make a difference is that men, considering from evolutionary perspective, are much more expendable than women. After all, one man can father theoretically hundreds of children in one year, whereas a woman can only give birth to a single child within a year (excluding a chance of twins). Because the Custodes are made of members of nobility, and because the process of making one has such a high failure rate according to the existing lore, what do you think would happen if the Noble Houses would let their daughters get sacrificed on mass in the attempt of making a female Custodes. The entire nobility would in this case die off because they wouldn't have enough women to carry the next generation of children. Unless this problem can be solved somehow by the new writing, you will end up having a gapping whole in your setting's believability. Maybe there is something that I haven't thought of, in which case of course I would be more malleable to the idea of a female Custodes, but before someone can actually point it out to me, I am afraid I can't force myself into believing that this new change into the lore is in any way a good addition.
As to there not being any women advocacy groups for more female representation either amongst the Space Marines or Custodes, well, you are right. Most of the people pushing it seem to be men, which of course makes sense since vast majority of the fanbase is male and most women just simply aren't interested in tabletop wargames. That said, this fact doesn't suddenly prove that the push for more female representation amongst these fictional, exclusively male factions isn't political. Ironically enough, I have already seen several women on X or on CZcams voicing their dislike for this new change, considering this cheap form of pandering insulting. Women can just as well enjoy male-only factions as us men can enjoy female-only factions and to suggest something else is in my mind a slightly sexist point of view, or at least it has the possibility of being one depending on the reasons behind holding such a view.
Btw, I am curious as to why you think that the inclusion of women into Custodes would massively expand the range of storytelling in 40k. As far as I see it, anything that the change could bring on that front could just as well be fulfilled by the already existing factions that have women in them. Furthermore, wouldn't such an argument immediately demand that we open all the exclusionary factions that exist in Warhammer to both genders as it would increase the "range of characters" that we could have? I have been writing for two years now as a hobby that I enjoy, and most of my characters are women because I like putting myself outside my comfort zone and trying to explore the minds of people whose experience differs from my own. However, in the context of female Custodes, none of those differences would seem to play any part. Most crucially, Custodes aren't supposed to have any children or spend time raising them (not that that is something women are exclusively meant to do, of course). Their only duty is to serve the Imperium as bodyguards of the Emperor and for that purpose, the gender of the character doesn't seem to bring anything massive to the discussion.
Lastly, aside my somewhat confrontational language, I appreciate you taking your time to respond. I am sure you have something better to do than argue with strangers on the internet. I would, however, like to point out that calling anyone who disagrees with you a misogynist, isn't really something that helps to create a healthy environment for discussion.
TeH wOkE aGeNdA
@@Auvinius The Imperium has artificial womb technology, it's used on Kreig.
No, the Custodes are not merely bodyguards or warriors, they are the Emperor's Companions and are his vision of Humanity perfected. No Geneseed blueprint required, each is a singular work of genetic art in of themselves.
@Leonora295 I never claimed that geneseed was required. I was simply going off from the part of the lore that stated that almost entire generations of noble sons were lost in the making of a single Custodes. That would imply that the process is extremely dangerous, requiring absurdly many attempts before succeeding, and would explain why there are so few Custodes around. If you had to do a similar process in the case of women, there would be no noble women left to carry children. My knowledge of the lore isn't quite as expansive as some others in the hobby, but is using artificial womb technology really that common amongst the nobles, and even if it was, why bother to send women with all these unnecessary drawbacks attached. I am sure that if using the artificial womb technology is so common, there shouldn't be any lack of male children amongst the nobles. Am I missing something?
I'm going to share this to everyone complaining about retcons. If you don't like retcons, go back to rogue trader.
"If you don't like retcons, go back to rogue trader"
A time when new stuff was constantly being produced that changed factions with every new piece. I'll have to decide whether to only use my original undersized Orks, half of whom seem to be dressed to fight WWII on behalf of Hitler or whether I can accept my Bad Moons, Deathskulls, Snakebites etc. Terrible when all those new amazing books came out and stuff changed, didn't know what to do with myself...
There is a huge different between written into the lore and dropped into the lore. Your takes are true but your argument is weak. The real question you should be asking is “why now?” and “why female custodians?”. But sure look you won’t as we know why. Thank you for your video.
What's the difference between written into the lore and dropped in? The female custodes were written in in the latest codex weren't they? Whereas the Black Crusade retcon was just quietly rolled out by ignoring everything that had happened.
The female custodians are retconned into the lore for different reasons than the black crusade and the necrons and so fort. The question is why, business or political ? If your answer is business then you’re lying to yourself.
If you think "why now?" is an important question, does it mean you would have been okay with this change at a different time? Is dropping female custodes now a particularly bad time, making it so your question is warranted? Would there have been a better time to release them without prompting all this bitching from you?
Boring about warhammer woke process.
Which bit was the woke bit? The necrons, the Tau, the Black Crusade?
@@90percentgeek The Necrons are woke - from their millenia-long slumber, that is!
😂😂😂
@@90percentgeek
One thing is what people do with their miniatures, Im ok with that, even if they paint astra militarum like comunist army or nazy army or changing all the covered slaanesh demonetes for a totally nude ones, its fine, everyone is free to do wathever with the miniatures they have bought and ANYONE have tje right to censor, discriminate or tell them, hey you are wrong and I will report you to tournamen or workshop police to ban you because i dont like your minis...
And in other hand we have what wrokshop do with their lore, and is fucking it with no sense and no explanation or justification about the changes just, hey, WAKE UP this is not for inclusivity, is for profits, Woke is profit, woke is good in social media and it sells, and more with the upcoming Amazon tv shows, there is a % in every tv show of forced diversity.
Dude, the problem is not there are womans, the problem is because is forced, is no sense, no justification, no explanation.
So I dont tell others they are wrong, do you want sexy busty female orks with guns in your army? Go with that, but Im totally free to say I dont like the idea of put things put of context in a already setted lore.
Find that bit of furry sexy head for booty female space wolfs or a bubble gun for astra militarum near.
You obviously dont want any woke police go to your channel and demand it, and obviously want likes and views, Im ok with that.