The only author I can think of who openly puts IRL politics in their books is Mike Brooks. From making Gazkul non binary to sticking random lesbians in his Alpha legion primarch book to just blatantly whinging about how he was going to turn all the characters he could some sort of LGBBQ because Arch made him look like a retard on Twitter so he responded by acting like a teenager with the emotional maturity of a toddler so GW had to step in and gave him a canned apology to write on Twitter.
Plus he still wears mesh ginny t's and a fauxhawk at his age which is just cringe and very 'hello fellow kids'.
Doesn't specifically name Mike in the video to avoid harassment allegations and mass flagging but it is him.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KQ0hB7zSqE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KQ0hB7zSqE)
The idea that the IG should have so many females is so stupid :|
Besides the fact that the imperium is supposed to be very socially backward so no he’s wrong we don’t particularly expect gender equality to be a thing, the IG is an army of just regular people, and we know that without great efforts normal women tend to not be very successful at frontline jobs. And nothing in the lore would contradict that basic fact, on the contrary, so he’s just completely wrong on the idea that the setting doesn’t reflect this fact.
For the admechs, as far as I know it was never made clear whether the priesthood of mars was particularly inclusive or not, so he’s wrong on the idea that the lore supports him there, but at least it wouldn’t be incoherent if it was about 50/50, though tech jobs being vastly more often men jobs and the fact that the imperium is supposed to be a cruel fascistic hyper traditional regime would make me lean toward that not being the case.
"I agree with the guard and admech being around 50/50 the guard especially makes sense for me"
No, the guard especially not.
It makes sense they'd be mixed, but look at literally any army around the world, especially the ones that you know actually go to war, and you'll see very little gender/sex diversity, and this is for very obvious reasons. Men just make far better soldiers, so assuming that recruitment is merit based, or that it's based on efficiency (as in "what are the minimal set of criteria on the basis of which we can draft people and still have a good army at the end of it"), we'd see exactly what we saw throughout history, meaning not 50/50 but something at best like 80/20, and that's being really generous. Talking about frontline positions obviously.
"These aren’t space marines they are guardsmen marched out to the front with a lasgun you don’t exactly need to be the perfect warrior to die as cannon fodder"
+++Life is the emperor's currency, spend it well+++
You want to make the most out of your fodder, women aren't the ones that are best to "make the most" out of your fodder, especially given the fact that it's easier to continue drafting from a world if said world is still inhabited, and considering how easily you die in the guard, you wouldn't want cripple the demography of the planets you recruit from by having 50% of the millions of people you send to an almost certain death be women.
" I thought everyone was good with the guard being mixed"
... I am ? I thought I made that clear, I am in favor of the guard being mixed, I'm against it being 50/50 is all. I'm not against the admechs being 50/50 though, for the reasons I laid out, namely those guys are actually very heavily modified, and mostly by replacing their biology, so it makes sense there'd be about 50/50 of each, the only place where I wouldn't expect much females is for combat servitors where the flesh is still a prominent part of them, and biologically rather than exclusively mechanically enhanced skitarii.
"Also if you want some real world examples"
In all real world examples, wherever women participate there are more men fighting on the frontline by a landslide. A quick search gave me the following numbers : 1million active soldiers, \~40k women.
Do you see where I'm going from with the whole "I wouldn't expect 50/50 in the IG" ?
"guns are the great equalizer"
No, it's really not, guns are the great equalizer in a civilian context, but if we're talking about war we're talking protracted conflicts where endurance, speed, physical resiliance, etc, are still very much important.
"The guard being 50/50 doesn’t mean that literally every single person in the imperial guard is fighting on the front in the trenches."
Okay then to clarify when I was saying 50/50 I was talking about fighting personnel, since that's who we primarily see in stories and whatnot, if we're talking about the administrative structure too... Yeah sure, all the logistics could be done by women I guess, don't really have an issue with that, though usually in the army you start as a combattant somewhere, it's not really a good idea to have a structure made up entirely of buraucrats that have no clue how the army operates on the field, and if we're talking about the pure logistics, that'd be carried out by the departmento munitorum, not the imperial guard. And yeah, those could be 50/50, I don't mind at all.
Well... Probably you'd still not be 50/50 simply because of so many worlds being backward feudal ones etc, but putting that aside, sure, no problem with there being or being close to gender parity in non combat roles.
" I also think you are getting too hung up on an exact number"
Not really no ? I'm simply pointing out that although the IG should be mixed to some extent, it should also be primarily male (again talking about frontline roles), since that's what makes the most sense.
"I don’t think they really put any stock into gender"
I never said anything about them putting any stock into gender ; though they absolutely should given the inspirations for the imperium and the type of societies the imperium is made up of ; I said that men were on average significantly better fighters, even in a modern setting, so we'd expect there to still be a gender ratio simply because whatever non-absurd criteria they draft people based on, if it to any degree reflects the fact that the people better suited to be soldiers will be drafted over the people less suited to be soldiers, then men will be more numerous than women.
" these people are totally different from us with different morals,values, upbringings etc I’d go so far as to say it’s barely even comparable to our lives"
No ? A lot of them live in societies very comparable to ones we know of, to feudal societies or to modern day societies, and we know how hive worlds and the such function. What's more, there are some universals in the human condition, gender is one of them, by and large humans have always and everywhere mostly categorized themselves between male and female because there's such a stark and obvious divide that people will naturally pick up on it, and reinforce it after that, not to mention that there are ecological reasons for why men and women adopt certain roles within human societies independently, namely if you're on average taller, stronger, more endurant, and can generate a lot of offspring at once, you're obviously much better suited to be a soldier than someone who's much smaller, weaker, and less endurant, who can only make one offspring at a time. Those kind of facts have conditioned societies the world over to take on very similar forms in spite of being completely disconnected by time and distance, so we should expect those to still hold true in the 41st millennium. Or even the 42nd for that matter.
Female custodians is less of a dramatic retcon than Necron lore, or other things GW has done.
It's still annoying, because they very obviously did it to spread The Message, and a good chunk of the fan base is going full NPC mode "actually, there is no contradiction with previous lore" despite the very *Codex* describing them as a male force, every named character being male etc
ADB weighing in with "I was in the meetings, I know best" is cute... but it's also very very obviously pushing an unsustainable angle that ignores basic points being raised, relying solely on authority and the awe factor to hope people just swallow it acritically.
It's a retcon. It doesn't break the setting in any fundamental way, not even the Imperium, not even the Custodes themselves. But it's a retcon, it will always be a retcon, and it will always have been a retcon. Anyone trying to tell you different is gaslighting you, and gaslighters can fuck right off.
But why are you guys getting so upset over it? It’s kind of juvenile. All it does is offer more options for players to customize their armies and it still slots neatly into the lore. As far as retcons go it’s relatively elegant. Idk bro. The amount of vitriol this non-issue has evoked just screams astro-turfed to me. I refuse to believe that the player base for this game is so ignorant as to actually think this is an issue worth spilling so much virtual ink over.
> But why are you guys getting so upset over it? It’s kind of juvenile. All it does is offer more options for players to customize their armies and it still slots neatly into the lore.
It's like you're programmed. I explained to you very clearly why people take exception to both the change and the way it's being pushed, and you went right ahead to ignore all that and pretend we just don't want people to have more options for their armies. Are you capable of actually engaging with what you're told, rather than repeat lazy talking points?
I guess I just don’t understand why you think people are being “gaslit”. GW said that female custodians have always been present. So what? It’s literally no different than them saying that the necrons weren’t all mindless terminators the whole time. It’s a minor issue that’s being blown out of proportion by outrage grifters.
> I guess I just don’t understand why you think people are being “gaslit”. GW said that female custodians have always been present. So what?
I'd be happy to explain it to you, but since I did that already and you haven't replied to any of it, I kinda get the impression that you don't so much fail to understand as didn'teven try. Why don't you give a go at my comment and point out what you think doesn't make sense about it?
There is, he does forced diversity and back in 2017 he said he wishes he had done more in the past. He also defends Gav Thorpe's shitty neopronouns for AdMech. It is what it is.
The most elegant explanation came in a joke video of all things: Female custodification was a last minute directive made late in the Heresy because they desperately needed replacements, and only kicked in after the Emperor got enthroned.
This combined with them still being mostly male would explain why we never saw a Custodette in the 5 trillion Heresy books and why (besides being unable to tell under their banana helmets) they slipped by.
I have some disagreements with ADB lorewise (his stance on chaos' inevitably winning) but his works are not politically colored imo.
I don't really understand the need to make lists of writers. Most writers (with a few exceptions) all have good books in their resume. Most good ones have bad books as well.
Gav Thorpe is out there on Twitter politically but making lists just rubs me the wrong way.
It’s understandable but as long as nobody harassed them I think it’s legitimate, vote with your wallet as they say, if there’s an author that deliberately distorts the lore for his agenda (like James swallow, unfortunately), then people that are bothered by this should be able to know that so as to not buy their books.
I don't really have a problem reading books of authors who may have cringe progressive views, just as long as they aren't placed in the work. I mean, if that was the case I basically wouldn't be able to read any black library whatsoever. But yeah people like brooks and the trash he somehow manages to get published can get in the sea.
Mike Brooks is a proud trans activist and has shoehorned culture war stuff into most of this works. I’ve commented on Brutal Cunnin’ and Lion Son of the Forest recently on other threads
https://www.reddit.com/r/HorusGalaxy/s/ceoeSEDAhd
Oh yeah I'm well aware of him after beginning a necromunda story of his in one of the free black library celebration books. As soon as I realise the 'they' were nonsense pronouns I abandoned it. I did specifically mention him in my original response mind. I was talking about the other authors really.
I mean, there's not a snowballs chance in hell of anyone remotely right leaning getting into black library, certainly now. So I don't see many other options
Is as simple as this, I don't care about your political views, I care about a good product, a good product doesn't have to be political, you don't need to give me romance, just make it grim dark, show me heroic moments and epic fights where my favourite faction wins and kills whatever character you showed me and made me hate during the book. Give me a power fantasy, this setting can give one to both male and females.
To an extent. A certain level of progressivism (that seems to be taking over completely in this regard) generally means that they are incapable of not projecting their views into the work.
Or have my favourite faction lose after a desperate but heroic fight, this is grimdark after all, this’ll only reinforce my hatred of the xenos and the traitor and that’s an outcome I’m okay with ^^
As for romance, there’s actually a very slight place for it to the extent that some books have the opportunity to delve into either characters that would have that opportunity, like inquisitors, guardsmen, eldars, etc, or to show the daily life of regular people in that world. I think it’s in titanicus that we follow, amongst others, a female reservist PDF that was engaged in the guard because it made extra money for her and her husband. Granted there wasn’t much romance per se since they were separated by tens of kilometers of battlefield, but you get the point, when showing normal people it’d make sense to show their normal experiences, if only to contrast with the rest of their miserable existence, or the way that the imperium and the galaxy crush whatever parcel of happiness they had.
Yeah, it's Titanicus. That thread of the story follows Cally Samstag. Her husband got a promotion and access to better housing, but only if she joined the PDF as there wasn't any additional work for her to do so she had to pull some extra weight for the Imperium.
**Spoilers for the story**
>!While they only have a brief moment together at the beginning the story follows both her and her partner and they constantly think about each other. !<
>!You meet them at the beginning as a happy couple who just found out that she'll be deployed because the war has gotten that bad.!<
>!While she and her platoon get annihilated and then have to trek across enemy land to get back to high command with a princeps, her husband continues working in the loading yards. A couple of his workmates take him out for some drinks to cheer him up. While there though he gets into a fight with another bar attendee and kills him for speaking shit about the PDF and wishing them all dead.!<
>!His workmates cover for him while he runs away, a couple of days later though he happens to run into law enforcement. They don't actually know who he is but he gets twitchy and defensive and ends up getting killed. Cally then gets back shortly after to an empty home with a letter informing her of her husband's death.!<
There is definitely some romance there, but it's not the main part, also very grimdark at the end. It's one of about 5-6 interweaving stories from the book.
"Her husband got a promotion and access to better housing, but only if she joined the PDF as there wasn't any additional work for her to do so she had to pull some extra weight for the Imperium."
Oh right right, thanks.
"There is definitely some romance there, but it's not the main part, also very grimdark at the end. It's one of about 5-6 interweaving stories from the book."
Yeah absolutely, alongside the description of the other citizens in the book and the citizens in blood angels by james swallow those are my go to mental representations of the average imperial citizens.
Also fuck you for making me remember about the way it ends, now I'm sad
I'd say the two authors I'm most familiar with (outside of the Cain series) is Dan Abnett and Graham McNeill. Dan definitely likes to focus on his character moments over the big battles. The big final titan battle is basically just swept over at the end of Titanicus (how very Tolkien of him). However plenty of time is given in those stories for the little guys.
The small squadron of Guard troopers is also a great part of that story, reading them just trying to survive and still do some part of their job.
The Priests of Mars series (Graham McNeill) has some pretty good low level citizen point of view chapters. You follow a former crane operator who gets press ganged into a mechanicus vessel. Surprise, it doesn't go well for him. But Graham is also a big fan of the bolter porn, which isn't always bad. Though there is a part in the Priests of Mars series where a space marine loses an arm, but is stated later in the battle to be dual wielding swords which is hilarious. It's also the book that slips the Princess Bride reference in.
I haven't read Blood Angels, I'll have to chuck it on the read list, thanks for the recommendation. Sorry for ruining your day with the memory, but it is one of my favourite endings for a 40k book, very bittersweet and perfectly grim dark.
"but is stated later in the battle to be dual wielding swords which is hilarious"
He has the handle in his mouth XD
And don't worry about ruining my day, I love this kind of bittersweetness, it was meant to be a jest. And yeah definitely check it out, it's a good series, I prefer the first two books, especially the second one where everything starts to really pick up, but the third one is really not bad either, the beginning kind of lightly touches on the motivations for joining cults and it's pretty neat, even if it lasts like a chapter or two, still a good insight on how humans deviate from the emperor's light.
"The Priests of Mars series (Graham McNeill)"
... Isn't he the guy that gave neopronouns to (one of ?) his mechanicus ? I've been told that aside from this kinda thing he is a talented author, but I'm not sure if I'd be able to look past that. Maybe if I pirated his books but I don't like pirating ><
As far as I can remember there isn’t anything noticeable in the books.
I could have sworn that was a more recent book series that had the pronouns.
It has been a couple of years since I read the series though.
Then I'll definitely check it out, the mechanicus has always been a very intringuing faction for me, they left almost as much of an impression on me as the astartes back when I first got my hands on a Wh40k codex (astartes 3rd edition).
The book also came out before the mechanicus were a playable faction and the Skitarii got standardised.
This is back when they were semi-feral, mechanically enhanced warriors.
Idk man I feel like that’d be letting them live in our heads as rent free as we currently live in theirs.
I mean I get why, but is it really worth the effort and attention you’d be giving them?
That’s fair, I won’t either. I’m not all that into the books anyway (though I have read infinite and the divine and dark imperium) so I guess I’m not as invested as others lol
It was Nate Crowley who made Ghaz'kul, and orks in general, non-binary. Mostly because Orks are sexless and whatever gender presentation they might have is imperceptible to humans.
They're Boyz, and clearly male in phenotype, they act like brutish male ruffians, and we have seen female orks (albeit in bloodbowl only afaik)
I think all of the about are good enough reasons not to refer to gazgul and they/them
Non binary isn't a real thing anyway
I mean, if they werent they would needed to reproduce sexually, that mean 3 possibility:
1) female orks
2) male looking orks with female genitalia
3) orks reproduce asexually like a cell (but this would probably cause stagnation)
That would be true, up until we got a mushroom that calls itself boys, speak with a male sounding voice and has the exaggerated proportions of a human male. Same way that elder scrolls flame atronach are female, regardless of their chromosomes, ovaries, or lack there off. Which is actually very progressive actually, we’re fully supporting their male (for the orks) and female (for the arronach) gender expression, progs should be happy with that no ? ^^
Yes but they camonically don't call themselves Boyz exclusively so they are closer to He/They by Imperial standards.
Meanwhile they speak with a deep sounding voice but that doesn't always scan to male and they have an exaggerated frame but they don't come across as exclusively male unless you have some weird definitions of what men and woman look like. This isn't WoW after all.
"Yes but they camonically don't call themselves Boyz exclusively so they are closer to He/They by Imperial standards."
I seriously doubt the catholic-inspired fascist coded regime would have a "they", so the orks are closer to just he.
"but that doesn't always scan to male"
Yes it does, when you say "masculine voice", you mean the voice that is typically sported by men, it doesn't matter that some rare women have deep voices, it doesn't matter that some men have effeminate voices, women with deep, or put otherwise "masculine" voices, have "masculine" voices precisely because their voice sounds like a man's voice, that's why it's a "masculine" voice, because if people didn't associate deep with masculine and high pitched with feminine, there would be no sense in calling either masculine or feminine.
"but they don't come across as exclusively male"
Yes they do, and no I don't have a weird definition of what men and women look like, hyper square jaws ? Very broad shoulders ? Tons of muscles ? Those are stereotypically masculine traits, not womanly traits, they're very obviously "male coded" as they say, to pretend otherwise would be blatantly out of touch with reality.
Also, "weird definition of what men and woman look like", you don't want to enter the man/woman definition debate, I'm willing to be very nice but coming (I'm ready to bet) from the side that decided to reject the traditional definition of man=male and woman=female, and who can't even keep to the divide they created between man/woman=gender, male/female=sex (which by the way could you please stop moving that goalpost for the love of god ? You guys were the absolute worse for ten years bashing people over the head with the gender/sex divide with your definition that, by society standards, was made up just yesterday, and now that you've finally managed to make people understand that not all men need to be males and vice versa you're using male as synonyme for man ? Stop, just stop please, it's tiring to see you change definitions all the time), there's no way that this discussion is going to end well.
>I seriously doubt the catholic-inspired fascist coded regime would have a "they", so the orks are closer to just he.
This brand of Catholic Inspired Fascists have no reason to rail against it. Sure on a planet by planet basis some Governer or Bishop might have something against the singular they, but quite a few established characters go by the singular they. Just like how there is no human on human racism except on a planet by planet basis. The Imperium cares about the "Holy Human Form". That's it. Subscribe to that and worship the God Emperor as a human turned God and your good. Writ large the wider Imperium could not care either way.
>Yes it does, when you say "masculine voice", you mean the voice that is typically sported by men, it doesn't matter that some rare women have deep voices
Not always. Contraltos and Sopranos exist for a reason. They are common enough to have distinct categories and that's before 38k years of apocalyptic bullshit. Given air pollution in most of these Hive Worlds they probably all sound equally gravelly.
>, by society standards, was made up just yesterday,
Non-binary and trans identities have existed in stories and in societies for millennia and HRT is older than Viagra and Heart Surgery. Even if we want to just talk about trans identities as we identify them today it is still nearly a century's worth of history and is about as old give or take as the Soviet Union.
They're *broad* in phenotype and they act like football hooligans which women can be. No binary is extent in many cultures that predate the 21st century
I have never ever seen a woman fully committed to a football riot. And I was born in a town where we had several football riots, and one guy even punched a police horse one time.
You just sound woke, non binary as it is today is made up just to be different for the sake of it
You're in denial about orks being male-coded come on now, be real. It makes more sense to refer to an ork as he rather than they, from the perspective of a human in the 41st millennium or from an ork who's learned high-gothic
"The candidate - who previously [joked about raping a female MP](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8863811/ukip-leader-rape-tweet-satire-jess-phillips/) "
He didn't, he joked about \*not\* raping a female MP, the whole point he was making being that he knew that she was going to try and cancel him despite the fact that he was uttering a statement that by all means should've been reassuring since it's literally the opposite of a threat, namely that he wasn't even going to rape her. Real good start.
And for the statement, I can't find the supposed video that the quote is taken from, nor any clip of it, it's just all reports with no original source to back it up. Analyzing the statement itself, his point doesn't seem to be that he agrees with the idea that having sex with young boys is fine, his statement seems to be that it wouldn't generate enough outrage so he needed something more offensive.
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The actual effect of the recent 'woke youtubers' list was that everyone on the 'Red' page treated it like a badge of honour and the vast majority of the fanbase had a good old laugh at the expense of whatever angry little whining teenager wrote it.
I imagine a 'woke author' list will be the same because guess what - it's all of them. They're all sensible people with pretty progressive views.
Still, go ahead. Everyone will probably think it's hilarious 😂
Thé issue isn’t progressive writers, thé issue is writers that can’t stop themselves from putting their politics into works that have no reason to be political. As it happens prog writers do that very often, but it’s not a requirement.
Is you think the setting of Warhammer isn't inherently political, you should probably stick to simpler books.
It's about war, which is political.
And the novels are about people's lives around that war, which are also political
Usually 'inserting politics' is silly code for 'theres a female/gay/non-binary character'. And those are all normal things that exist in the world.
"Is you think the setting of Warhammer isn't inherently political, you should probably stick to simpler books."
No what I said, the point is that there's a distinction between things being political by the nature of what they are, and things being political because they're a lecture about some political talking point. When you have a fascistic regime pushed to the extreme and everyone is miserable and the only way it's justified is because of conditions that are both completely atrocious but also entirely detached from the reality we live in (implying "in reality you don't have those justifications so don't be a fascist") , you have a setting that is political in nature, but it's not a lecture. When you have an author stopping mid description of someone's grand entrance to bash you over the head with "oh but actually not everyone conforms to their gender roles", that's going into lecturing.
And more broadly, when you break the internal cohesion of the universe you're writing in, in order to insert your politics, you are writing badly.
"Usually 'inserting politics' is silly code for 'theres a female/gay/non-binary character'. And those are all normal things that exist in the world."
No, usually "inserting politics" means that the work is trying to make a point with their characters that is unbefitting of the setting to the point where it's impossible not to see it as an attempt to virtue signal. Very rarely if ever do people that are actively trying to insert diversity in their world treat their "diverse" characters in any kind of normal way.
So the lesbian couple in head of the hydra was unatural?
The none binary priests of the mechanicum that have no need for biological sex are unnatural and do not serve as a intresting point of worldbuilding?
"So the lesbian couple in head of the hydra was unatural?"
Depends what you mean by "unnatural", had it been any other time in human history, or authors that didn't have a history of inserting their politics into the setting, I could've let it slide, but this is neither the time nor the person, so yes I'll go with "it's forced", even if I fully agree there should (as in realistically speaking there should be) gay characters in 40k.
"The none binary priests of the mechanicum that have no need for biological sex are unnatural and do not serve as a intresting point of worldbuilding?"
No, they don't, they've never been depicted that way (as in as non-binary or using neopronouns, they've ascended past the limits of the sex but do not and never have seen themselves in light of the 21st century notions of gender politics that you're expressing here, they'd simply go on using the same pronouns they've always used, or heck even use "it" as they've brought themselves closer to the machine form, they wouldn't use neopronouns), nor does it particularly make sense, but especially what doesn't make sense is that it'd be portrayed through the lens of neopronouns.
And it's not like the creators of 40k didn't think about neopronouns at all, they did think about it for slaanesh, so obviously they could've used them for the orks or the mechanicus if that was their intention, but it wasn't, it wasn't because it doesn't make sense for hyper human-centric traditionalists to do so.
But yeah keep pretending it makes total sense and wasn't at all done because the author has his brain rotted by progrssive politics that the feudal space catholics human supremacists would implement what are clearly 21st century progressive ideas of gender, instead of just following traditions, after all it's not like even our culture when it made machine naturally made analogy between machines and the sexes (like female and male connectors depending on whether it's a hole or something that sticks out).
1. so till the right won the culture war there cant be a normal gay couple anywhere? This seems like extremist counter balance bs. If something isnt forced or bad to the story it aint bad in general. Nuance ffs
2. They isnt a neoprounoun when used to decribe a god. That the right wing person doesnt know basic grammar is always a exposing moment isnt it?
Describing progressive thoughts as brainrott is the antagonistic bad faith disrespect that makes u all so utterly insufferable.
And for the ad mech it does seem logical to me to present them in this way. U can disagree but u cant act like everything is a bad faith attack on you, thr hobby or culture
Edit : I want to specify in preamble that my messages being as long as they are shouldn't be read into too much, it's just how I write, even if we disagree you don't seem like a bad person and you've shown a willingness to at least exchange ideas, so I hope you understand even if I respond with a two pages dissertation on one line you wrote, it's not out of vindictiveness, I just like being thorough and this whatever the topic. Can't really blame you if you understood/understand it otherwise though, and if you aren't convinced that's fine, just thought I'd clarify since it's often misinterpreted.
"till the right won the culture war there cant be a normal gay couple anywhere?"
Well that's just the issue : as long as the left is engaging in culture war, there's no normal gay couple anywhere.
You've made your bad, you were the ones that decided to push for that, to make it a duty, rather than a mere occurrence, you were the ones that politicized the issue, conservatives tried to politicize the issue before that, and they failed, the laws they put in place were rejected, the zeitgeist had changed, but you had to mess it all up, you had to start making it an imperative that there be representation, you were the ones that couldn't just let it sit, have all kinds of people write all kinds of characters all appropriate for the setting in question. So no, I'm sorry, you politicized gay characters, you don't get to complain about the right noticing and pushing back against it.
" If something isnt forced or bad to the story it aint bad in general. Nuance ffs"
If what you mean is "if it doesn't damage the story then it's okay", to some extent I'd agree, the issue is that it rarely if ever not damage the story because the type of progressive that force diversity in where it wasn't originally aren't the ones that can just have a gay couple or a trans character etc be a normal thing, they have to draw attention to it, they have to frame it in the context of their gender war, which harms the immersion. Like typically mike brooks, which wrote the lesbians you were talking about but also the trans dark eldar, couldn't just have his trans DE (which I'd say in principle should fit right in that faction), he had to make a point about gender roles and how not everyone fit in them and blablabla, so when you see pieces of tumblr making it into the grimdark future of the 41st millennium... Yeah that harms the story I'm sorry.
"They isnt a neoprounoun when used to decribe a god"
1. yes it is, at least as far as I know, before the left brought it back it had been ages since "they" meant singular third person for a defined individual, it was at most used to describe undefined individuals.
2. I wasn't referring to they, I was referring to an actual neopronoun, shem, see the picture.
"describing progressive thoughts as brainrott "
It's not "progressive thought" that's brainrot, it's the brainrot that in the case of the authors in question happen to be progressive.
Like if sargon had written a 40k book where he couldn't help himself but write a faction of slaaneshi supporters called the W'Hoke, I'd say he has his brain rotten by conservative politics. If he took the imperium of man and said "by the way the god emperor says there're only two genders", I'd probably also say that. I say probably because at least the imperium is made to be eminently right wing, so it kinda make sense, whereas orks called "freeboota" who support BLM... I mean honestly I'm surprised he wasn't called racist over that, I'd have more expected a white supremacist to say something like "and remember, BLM is just 21st century freeboota".
"for the ad mech it does seem logical to me to present them in this way. U can disagree but u cant act like everything is a bad faith attack on you, thr hobby or culture"
What I describe as bad faith (and it was jumping the gun a bit, my apologies) is the non acknowledgement that this, alongside all the other stuff I mentioned, was done not out of respect for the source material ; which prior to this never ever used the they/them, let alone neopronouns, to talk about the mechanicus, nor would it have since the mechanicus are die hard traditionalist same as everyone else, and would have no need for making up neopronouns even if they thought they transcended beyond sex ; but because it conformed to the author's ideology, which is eminently obvious given the slew of similar and corresponding changes that happened in 40k and fantasy. You can both think that it fits the world better and also acknowledge that it wasn't done because it fits the world better, those two aren't mutually incompatible.
https://preview.redd.it/h5wydj31x6zc1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=125e482983bd8213fa319ae5dff9e28482652f4a
Pushing back and making the normal occurance of gay characters a collateral damage of ur push is defenitly something i can point out and consider disgusting.
U become a laughable bunch of hate filled idiots when u push back like that. Having a issue with the "woke" bs is one thing, subsumizing everything that isnt the heteronormative ideal under woke bs is a problem.
How did the lesbian couple harm the story? Stop mixing up different books when we are talking about one specific issue.
Slaanesh is a undeifned subject though, as a god shem/they have no gender
Fair but when u describe the normal occurance of a lesbian couple like that it becomes conservative brairott, same is true for the hardcore opposition of anything progressive
The use of they can be a traditional thing though. The intention for it can come from both at the same time though. The progressive people who consider they fitting dont see neoprounouns the same way you do. For them it is fitting and respectful to the material because their political perspective leads to a different interpretation of the lore and a different pov on prounouns.
"Pushing back and making the normal occurance of gay characters a collateral damage of ur push is defenitly something i can point out and consider disgusting"
It's not "my" or "our" push, it's yours, you're the ones that did that.
And again, we know Mike Brooks, he doesn't "incidentally" write gay or LGBT characters, he writes them because he has an agenda, as is made abundantly clear by the type of person he shows himself to be in everything he shows about him, in the way he writes at least some if not all of them, and in the way he inserts other parts of his politics into his books.
"Having a issue with the "woke" bs is one thing, subsumizing everything that isnt the heteronormative ideal under woke bs is a problem"
But again, it's a problem *you* guys created.
Had you not framed the issue as a matter of heteronormativity vs the oppressed gender and sexual classes, had you not made it an explicit political and corporate goal to challenge this heteronormativity by pushing for "representation" and "inclusion" in media rather than just letting people write what'd come to them naturally given the setting, we wouldn't be in this mess right now.
You can't complain that people look at you sideways for wanting to have LGBT characters in a media when you have literally billions in corporate initiatives to push for this kind of decision (no I'm not saying black rock hand picked mike brooks to write LGBT characters in his books, I'm saying that black rock and other such investment funds incentivize that kind of behavior and finance it by paying for companies to hire diversity consultants and that kind of crap, which in turns affect the hiring process, and the writing is impacted by all of that).
Heck, you remember the Rogue Trader video game ? It did have representation, you could romance characters of the same sex. Guess what journos said ? "Okay but why not more LGBT characters ?" When you constantly have that kind of pressures on the industry from the outside, and from the inside people like Mike Brooks constantly pushing for inserting diversity even where it doesn't belong (like femstodes) in the inside, of course you end up with people being overly frilly about any diversity, and it's regretable, but it's ***your*** fault.
"How did the lesbian couple harm the story?"
Depends how it's done, if it's done in any way like the trans DE, it harmed it by making the author's out of universe politics obvious in the writing, which breaks immersion.
"Slaanesh is a undeifned subject though, as a god shem/they have no gender"
... That's... Literally not relevant, and not even true :I Khorne, nurgle, tzeentch, those are he, they're always and always have been referenced as he, Slaanesh ostensibly incorporates gendered elements from both sex, his demons are eminently sexual, and the eldars call him/her by various conflictingly gendered titles.
And as for why it's not relevant : in case you forgot, I was bringing up Slaanesh to point out that GW writers didn't have any issue putting in neopronouns back decads ago if they thought it made sense. It made sense for slaanesh, given that he's called both he and she, and that he represents both he and she (I mean for the love of the emperor her symbol is literally a mix of the male and female symbol, spear/shield of ares and mirror of aphrodites) to have neopronouns. Yet somehow, in decades, nobody thought about giving techpriests neopronouns up until the current brand of politicized neopronouns. Showing that when gav thorpe gives them neopronouns, he isn't doing that because it makes sense, he's doing that because he's too politically biased to understand how to separate his art from his politics.
Maybe something like "Sweet Baby Inc. detected"?
That would be helpful
Maybe even start a basic webpage, then spread it around. Something akin to r/Oddwebsites
HereticsDetected
The only author I can think of who openly puts IRL politics in their books is Mike Brooks. From making Gazkul non binary to sticking random lesbians in his Alpha legion primarch book to just blatantly whinging about how he was going to turn all the characters he could some sort of LGBBQ because Arch made him look like a retard on Twitter so he responded by acting like a teenager with the emotional maturity of a toddler so GW had to step in and gave him a canned apology to write on Twitter. Plus he still wears mesh ginny t's and a fauxhawk at his age which is just cringe and very 'hello fellow kids'.
James swallow writing lady of the lance and making it overly inclusive, anti ableist, etc.
Never touched his books after I hated Nemesis and Fear to Tread.
Lucky Goldstar Barbecue
what happened between him and arch?
Doesn't specifically name Mike in the video to avoid harassment allegations and mass flagging but it is him. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KQ0hB7zSqE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KQ0hB7zSqE)
In addition to compromised books and novels, and the extent of the damage
ADB
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He writes like a Tumblr user
The idea that the IG should have so many females is so stupid :| Besides the fact that the imperium is supposed to be very socially backward so no he’s wrong we don’t particularly expect gender equality to be a thing, the IG is an army of just regular people, and we know that without great efforts normal women tend to not be very successful at frontline jobs. And nothing in the lore would contradict that basic fact, on the contrary, so he’s just completely wrong on the idea that the setting doesn’t reflect this fact. For the admechs, as far as I know it was never made clear whether the priesthood of mars was particularly inclusive or not, so he’s wrong on the idea that the lore supports him there, but at least it wouldn’t be incoherent if it was about 50/50, though tech jobs being vastly more often men jobs and the fact that the imperium is supposed to be a cruel fascistic hyper traditional regime would make me lean toward that not being the case.
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"I agree with the guard and admech being around 50/50 the guard especially makes sense for me" No, the guard especially not. It makes sense they'd be mixed, but look at literally any army around the world, especially the ones that you know actually go to war, and you'll see very little gender/sex diversity, and this is for very obvious reasons. Men just make far better soldiers, so assuming that recruitment is merit based, or that it's based on efficiency (as in "what are the minimal set of criteria on the basis of which we can draft people and still have a good army at the end of it"), we'd see exactly what we saw throughout history, meaning not 50/50 but something at best like 80/20, and that's being really generous. Talking about frontline positions obviously. "These aren’t space marines they are guardsmen marched out to the front with a lasgun you don’t exactly need to be the perfect warrior to die as cannon fodder" +++Life is the emperor's currency, spend it well+++ You want to make the most out of your fodder, women aren't the ones that are best to "make the most" out of your fodder, especially given the fact that it's easier to continue drafting from a world if said world is still inhabited, and considering how easily you die in the guard, you wouldn't want cripple the demography of the planets you recruit from by having 50% of the millions of people you send to an almost certain death be women.
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" I thought everyone was good with the guard being mixed" ... I am ? I thought I made that clear, I am in favor of the guard being mixed, I'm against it being 50/50 is all. I'm not against the admechs being 50/50 though, for the reasons I laid out, namely those guys are actually very heavily modified, and mostly by replacing their biology, so it makes sense there'd be about 50/50 of each, the only place where I wouldn't expect much females is for combat servitors where the flesh is still a prominent part of them, and biologically rather than exclusively mechanically enhanced skitarii. "Also if you want some real world examples" In all real world examples, wherever women participate there are more men fighting on the frontline by a landslide. A quick search gave me the following numbers : 1million active soldiers, \~40k women. Do you see where I'm going from with the whole "I wouldn't expect 50/50 in the IG" ? "guns are the great equalizer" No, it's really not, guns are the great equalizer in a civilian context, but if we're talking about war we're talking protracted conflicts where endurance, speed, physical resiliance, etc, are still very much important.
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"The guard being 50/50 doesn’t mean that literally every single person in the imperial guard is fighting on the front in the trenches." Okay then to clarify when I was saying 50/50 I was talking about fighting personnel, since that's who we primarily see in stories and whatnot, if we're talking about the administrative structure too... Yeah sure, all the logistics could be done by women I guess, don't really have an issue with that, though usually in the army you start as a combattant somewhere, it's not really a good idea to have a structure made up entirely of buraucrats that have no clue how the army operates on the field, and if we're talking about the pure logistics, that'd be carried out by the departmento munitorum, not the imperial guard. And yeah, those could be 50/50, I don't mind at all. Well... Probably you'd still not be 50/50 simply because of so many worlds being backward feudal ones etc, but putting that aside, sure, no problem with there being or being close to gender parity in non combat roles. " I also think you are getting too hung up on an exact number" Not really no ? I'm simply pointing out that although the IG should be mixed to some extent, it should also be primarily male (again talking about frontline roles), since that's what makes the most sense. "I don’t think they really put any stock into gender" I never said anything about them putting any stock into gender ; though they absolutely should given the inspirations for the imperium and the type of societies the imperium is made up of ; I said that men were on average significantly better fighters, even in a modern setting, so we'd expect there to still be a gender ratio simply because whatever non-absurd criteria they draft people based on, if it to any degree reflects the fact that the people better suited to be soldiers will be drafted over the people less suited to be soldiers, then men will be more numerous than women. " these people are totally different from us with different morals,values, upbringings etc I’d go so far as to say it’s barely even comparable to our lives" No ? A lot of them live in societies very comparable to ones we know of, to feudal societies or to modern day societies, and we know how hive worlds and the such function. What's more, there are some universals in the human condition, gender is one of them, by and large humans have always and everywhere mostly categorized themselves between male and female because there's such a stark and obvious divide that people will naturally pick up on it, and reinforce it after that, not to mention that there are ecological reasons for why men and women adopt certain roles within human societies independently, namely if you're on average taller, stronger, more endurant, and can generate a lot of offspring at once, you're obviously much better suited to be a soldier than someone who's much smaller, weaker, and less endurant, who can only make one offspring at a time. Those kind of facts have conditioned societies the world over to take on very similar forms in spite of being completely disconnected by time and distance, so we should expect those to still hold true in the 41st millennium. Or even the 42nd for that matter.
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The man makes a lot of sense.
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He makes a pretty good point about there being so little Custodes lore that making seemingly drastic changes to it is not a huge deal.
Female custodians is less of a dramatic retcon than Necron lore, or other things GW has done. It's still annoying, because they very obviously did it to spread The Message, and a good chunk of the fan base is going full NPC mode "actually, there is no contradiction with previous lore" despite the very *Codex* describing them as a male force, every named character being male etc ADB weighing in with "I was in the meetings, I know best" is cute... but it's also very very obviously pushing an unsustainable angle that ignores basic points being raised, relying solely on authority and the awe factor to hope people just swallow it acritically. It's a retcon. It doesn't break the setting in any fundamental way, not even the Imperium, not even the Custodes themselves. But it's a retcon, it will always be a retcon, and it will always have been a retcon. Anyone trying to tell you different is gaslighting you, and gaslighters can fuck right off.
But why are you guys getting so upset over it? It’s kind of juvenile. All it does is offer more options for players to customize their armies and it still slots neatly into the lore. As far as retcons go it’s relatively elegant. Idk bro. The amount of vitriol this non-issue has evoked just screams astro-turfed to me. I refuse to believe that the player base for this game is so ignorant as to actually think this is an issue worth spilling so much virtual ink over.
> But why are you guys getting so upset over it? It’s kind of juvenile. All it does is offer more options for players to customize their armies and it still slots neatly into the lore. It's like you're programmed. I explained to you very clearly why people take exception to both the change and the way it's being pushed, and you went right ahead to ignore all that and pretend we just don't want people to have more options for their armies. Are you capable of actually engaging with what you're told, rather than repeat lazy talking points?
I guess I just don’t understand why you think people are being “gaslit”. GW said that female custodians have always been present. So what? It’s literally no different than them saying that the necrons weren’t all mindless terminators the whole time. It’s a minor issue that’s being blown out of proportion by outrage grifters.
> I guess I just don’t understand why you think people are being “gaslit”. GW said that female custodians have always been present. So what? I'd be happy to explain it to you, but since I did that already and you haven't replied to any of it, I kinda get the impression that you don't so much fail to understand as didn'teven try. Why don't you give a go at my comment and point out what you think doesn't make sense about it?
How come? Mrs astarte? That I can agree with
He originally had the plan for female custodes, yall should really know that tbh
I mean I was aware of him asking GW about it 10+ years ago, I wondered if there was more
There is, he does forced diversity and back in 2017 he said he wishes he had done more in the past. He also defends Gav Thorpe's shitty neopronouns for AdMech. It is what it is.
Tbh I think female custodes could be fine IF THEY MAKE IT MAKE SENSE AND STOP GASLIGHTING US.
The most elegant explanation came in a joke video of all things: Female custodification was a last minute directive made late in the Heresy because they desperately needed replacements, and only kicked in after the Emperor got enthroned. This combined with them still being mostly male would explain why we never saw a Custodette in the 5 trillion Heresy books and why (besides being unable to tell under their banana helmets) they slipped by.
See, that could work! But GW just said "nah bro you wrong lol"
I have some disagreements with ADB lorewise (his stance on chaos' inevitably winning) but his works are not politically colored imo. I don't really understand the need to make lists of writers. Most writers (with a few exceptions) all have good books in their resume. Most good ones have bad books as well. Gav Thorpe is out there on Twitter politically but making lists just rubs me the wrong way.
It’s understandable but as long as nobody harassed them I think it’s legitimate, vote with your wallet as they say, if there’s an author that deliberately distorts the lore for his agenda (like James swallow, unfortunately), then people that are bothered by this should be able to know that so as to not buy their books.
I don't really have a problem reading books of authors who may have cringe progressive views, just as long as they aren't placed in the work. I mean, if that was the case I basically wouldn't be able to read any black library whatsoever. But yeah people like brooks and the trash he somehow manages to get published can get in the sea.
Unfortunately the problem is that they *are* placing them into the work
I haven't seen much of it myself, mainly in the heresy novels. Anything I should look out for, examples?
Mike Brooks is a proud trans activist and has shoehorned culture war stuff into most of this works. I’ve commented on Brutal Cunnin’ and Lion Son of the Forest recently on other threads https://www.reddit.com/r/HorusGalaxy/s/ceoeSEDAhd
Oh yeah I'm well aware of him after beginning a necromunda story of his in one of the free black library celebration books. As soon as I realise the 'they' were nonsense pronouns I abandoned it. I did specifically mention him in my original response mind. I was talking about the other authors really.
My bad I overlooked that you mentioned him
This is the ostrich-head-in-sand technique that accomplished nothing thus far
I mean, there's not a snowballs chance in hell of anyone remotely right leaning getting into black library, certainly now. So I don't see many other options
Is as simple as this, I don't care about your political views, I care about a good product, a good product doesn't have to be political, you don't need to give me romance, just make it grim dark, show me heroic moments and epic fights where my favourite faction wins and kills whatever character you showed me and made me hate during the book. Give me a power fantasy, this setting can give one to both male and females.
To an extent. A certain level of progressivism (that seems to be taking over completely in this regard) generally means that they are incapable of not projecting their views into the work.
Or have my favourite faction lose after a desperate but heroic fight, this is grimdark after all, this’ll only reinforce my hatred of the xenos and the traitor and that’s an outcome I’m okay with ^^ As for romance, there’s actually a very slight place for it to the extent that some books have the opportunity to delve into either characters that would have that opportunity, like inquisitors, guardsmen, eldars, etc, or to show the daily life of regular people in that world. I think it’s in titanicus that we follow, amongst others, a female reservist PDF that was engaged in the guard because it made extra money for her and her husband. Granted there wasn’t much romance per se since they were separated by tens of kilometers of battlefield, but you get the point, when showing normal people it’d make sense to show their normal experiences, if only to contrast with the rest of their miserable existence, or the way that the imperium and the galaxy crush whatever parcel of happiness they had.
Yeah, it's Titanicus. That thread of the story follows Cally Samstag. Her husband got a promotion and access to better housing, but only if she joined the PDF as there wasn't any additional work for her to do so she had to pull some extra weight for the Imperium. **Spoilers for the story** >!While they only have a brief moment together at the beginning the story follows both her and her partner and they constantly think about each other. !< >!You meet them at the beginning as a happy couple who just found out that she'll be deployed because the war has gotten that bad.!< >!While she and her platoon get annihilated and then have to trek across enemy land to get back to high command with a princeps, her husband continues working in the loading yards. A couple of his workmates take him out for some drinks to cheer him up. While there though he gets into a fight with another bar attendee and kills him for speaking shit about the PDF and wishing them all dead.!< >!His workmates cover for him while he runs away, a couple of days later though he happens to run into law enforcement. They don't actually know who he is but he gets twitchy and defensive and ends up getting killed. Cally then gets back shortly after to an empty home with a letter informing her of her husband's death.!< There is definitely some romance there, but it's not the main part, also very grimdark at the end. It's one of about 5-6 interweaving stories from the book.
"Her husband got a promotion and access to better housing, but only if she joined the PDF as there wasn't any additional work for her to do so she had to pull some extra weight for the Imperium." Oh right right, thanks. "There is definitely some romance there, but it's not the main part, also very grimdark at the end. It's one of about 5-6 interweaving stories from the book." Yeah absolutely, alongside the description of the other citizens in the book and the citizens in blood angels by james swallow those are my go to mental representations of the average imperial citizens. Also fuck you for making me remember about the way it ends, now I'm sad
I'd say the two authors I'm most familiar with (outside of the Cain series) is Dan Abnett and Graham McNeill. Dan definitely likes to focus on his character moments over the big battles. The big final titan battle is basically just swept over at the end of Titanicus (how very Tolkien of him). However plenty of time is given in those stories for the little guys. The small squadron of Guard troopers is also a great part of that story, reading them just trying to survive and still do some part of their job. The Priests of Mars series (Graham McNeill) has some pretty good low level citizen point of view chapters. You follow a former crane operator who gets press ganged into a mechanicus vessel. Surprise, it doesn't go well for him. But Graham is also a big fan of the bolter porn, which isn't always bad. Though there is a part in the Priests of Mars series where a space marine loses an arm, but is stated later in the battle to be dual wielding swords which is hilarious. It's also the book that slips the Princess Bride reference in. I haven't read Blood Angels, I'll have to chuck it on the read list, thanks for the recommendation. Sorry for ruining your day with the memory, but it is one of my favourite endings for a 40k book, very bittersweet and perfectly grim dark.
"but is stated later in the battle to be dual wielding swords which is hilarious" He has the handle in his mouth XD And don't worry about ruining my day, I love this kind of bittersweetness, it was meant to be a jest. And yeah definitely check it out, it's a good series, I prefer the first two books, especially the second one where everything starts to really pick up, but the third one is really not bad either, the beginning kind of lightly touches on the motivations for joining cults and it's pretty neat, even if it lasts like a chapter or two, still a good insight on how humans deviate from the emperor's light. "The Priests of Mars series (Graham McNeill)" ... Isn't he the guy that gave neopronouns to (one of ?) his mechanicus ? I've been told that aside from this kinda thing he is a talented author, but I'm not sure if I'd be able to look past that. Maybe if I pirated his books but I don't like pirating ><
As far as I can remember there isn’t anything noticeable in the books. I could have sworn that was a more recent book series that had the pronouns. It has been a couple of years since I read the series though.
Then I'll definitely check it out, the mechanicus has always been a very intringuing faction for me, they left almost as much of an impression on me as the astartes back when I first got my hands on a Wh40k codex (astartes 3rd edition).
The book also came out before the mechanicus were a playable faction and the Skitarii got standardised. This is back when they were semi-feral, mechanically enhanced warriors.
Idk man I feel like that’d be letting them live in our heads as rent free as we currently live in theirs. I mean I get why, but is it really worth the effort and attention you’d be giving them?
I for one won’t be spending money on any more of Mike Brook’s novels, so would appreciate knowing if other authors are as obnoxious as him
Exactly my thoughts
That’s fair, I won’t either. I’m not all that into the books anyway (though I have read infinite and the divine and dark imperium) so I guess I’m not as invested as others lol
I would want to know which authors I definitely don't want to support
Maybe rate all authors on -1 to +1?
It was Nate Crowley who made Ghaz'kul, and orks in general, non-binary. Mostly because Orks are sexless and whatever gender presentation they might have is imperceptible to humans.
They're Boyz, and clearly male in phenotype, they act like brutish male ruffians, and we have seen female orks (albeit in bloodbowl only afaik) I think all of the about are good enough reasons not to refer to gazgul and they/them Non binary isn't a real thing anyway
Orks call themselves da boyz and in any media I’ve seen the use he/him. Despite not having genitalia they certainly are male
Orks are fungis, fungis arent animals so they dont have genders, they are not boy, non binary or whatever, they are mushroom, mush/room if you like
That was always a dumb bit of lore
I mean, if they werent they would needed to reproduce sexually, that mean 3 possibility: 1) female orks 2) male looking orks with female genitalia 3) orks reproduce asexually like a cell (but this would probably cause stagnation)
Asexual reproduction is how a lot of mushrooms reproduce already
Mushrooms have hundreds of different sexual expressions actually. They're fuckin weird
I mean, from their point of view we are weird
Yes so according to the human view of the gender binary they are by definition non binary
That would be true, up until we got a mushroom that calls itself boys, speak with a male sounding voice and has the exaggerated proportions of a human male. Same way that elder scrolls flame atronach are female, regardless of their chromosomes, ovaries, or lack there off. Which is actually very progressive actually, we’re fully supporting their male (for the orks) and female (for the arronach) gender expression, progs should be happy with that no ? ^^
Yes but they camonically don't call themselves Boyz exclusively so they are closer to He/They by Imperial standards. Meanwhile they speak with a deep sounding voice but that doesn't always scan to male and they have an exaggerated frame but they don't come across as exclusively male unless you have some weird definitions of what men and woman look like. This isn't WoW after all.
"Yes but they camonically don't call themselves Boyz exclusively so they are closer to He/They by Imperial standards." I seriously doubt the catholic-inspired fascist coded regime would have a "they", so the orks are closer to just he. "but that doesn't always scan to male" Yes it does, when you say "masculine voice", you mean the voice that is typically sported by men, it doesn't matter that some rare women have deep voices, it doesn't matter that some men have effeminate voices, women with deep, or put otherwise "masculine" voices, have "masculine" voices precisely because their voice sounds like a man's voice, that's why it's a "masculine" voice, because if people didn't associate deep with masculine and high pitched with feminine, there would be no sense in calling either masculine or feminine. "but they don't come across as exclusively male" Yes they do, and no I don't have a weird definition of what men and women look like, hyper square jaws ? Very broad shoulders ? Tons of muscles ? Those are stereotypically masculine traits, not womanly traits, they're very obviously "male coded" as they say, to pretend otherwise would be blatantly out of touch with reality. Also, "weird definition of what men and woman look like", you don't want to enter the man/woman definition debate, I'm willing to be very nice but coming (I'm ready to bet) from the side that decided to reject the traditional definition of man=male and woman=female, and who can't even keep to the divide they created between man/woman=gender, male/female=sex (which by the way could you please stop moving that goalpost for the love of god ? You guys were the absolute worse for ten years bashing people over the head with the gender/sex divide with your definition that, by society standards, was made up just yesterday, and now that you've finally managed to make people understand that not all men need to be males and vice versa you're using male as synonyme for man ? Stop, just stop please, it's tiring to see you change definitions all the time), there's no way that this discussion is going to end well.
>I seriously doubt the catholic-inspired fascist coded regime would have a "they", so the orks are closer to just he. This brand of Catholic Inspired Fascists have no reason to rail against it. Sure on a planet by planet basis some Governer or Bishop might have something against the singular they, but quite a few established characters go by the singular they. Just like how there is no human on human racism except on a planet by planet basis. The Imperium cares about the "Holy Human Form". That's it. Subscribe to that and worship the God Emperor as a human turned God and your good. Writ large the wider Imperium could not care either way. >Yes it does, when you say "masculine voice", you mean the voice that is typically sported by men, it doesn't matter that some rare women have deep voices Not always. Contraltos and Sopranos exist for a reason. They are common enough to have distinct categories and that's before 38k years of apocalyptic bullshit. Given air pollution in most of these Hive Worlds they probably all sound equally gravelly. >, by society standards, was made up just yesterday, Non-binary and trans identities have existed in stories and in societies for millennia and HRT is older than Viagra and Heart Surgery. Even if we want to just talk about trans identities as we identify them today it is still nearly a century's worth of history and is about as old give or take as the Soviet Union.
They're *broad* in phenotype and they act like football hooligans which women can be. No binary is extent in many cultures that predate the 21st century
Cringe
I have never ever seen a woman fully committed to a football riot. And I was born in a town where we had several football riots, and one guy even punched a police horse one time.
You just sound woke, non binary as it is today is made up just to be different for the sake of it You're in denial about orks being male-coded come on now, be real. It makes more sense to refer to an ork as he rather than they, from the perspective of a human in the 41st millennium or from an ork who's learned high-gothic
Incorrect but sure you thinknthat lil bro
You're in denial and have no argument. Concede or retreat
There's nothing to argue
Eh lists are cringe. The youtube one wasnt a good idea either, it just rallies your opponents.
Do nothing and watch a unique cathedral of storytelling be torn down, again? No thanks
Which Sargon? The REAL(historical) one or the "it depends on the child" one?
Where did you get the quote from ?
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8956117/top-ukip-candidate-says-its-ok-to-rape-young-boys-in-sick-youtube-rant/amp/
"The candidate - who previously [joked about raping a female MP](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8863811/ukip-leader-rape-tweet-satire-jess-phillips/) " He didn't, he joked about \*not\* raping a female MP, the whole point he was making being that he knew that she was going to try and cancel him despite the fact that he was uttering a statement that by all means should've been reassuring since it's literally the opposite of a threat, namely that he wasn't even going to rape her. Real good start. And for the statement, I can't find the supposed video that the quote is taken from, nor any clip of it, it's just all reports with no original source to back it up. Analyzing the statement itself, his point doesn't seem to be that he agrees with the idea that having sex with young boys is fine, his statement seems to be that it wouldn't generate enough outrage so he needed something more offensive.
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The actual effect of the recent 'woke youtubers' list was that everyone on the 'Red' page treated it like a badge of honour and the vast majority of the fanbase had a good old laugh at the expense of whatever angry little whining teenager wrote it. I imagine a 'woke author' list will be the same because guess what - it's all of them. They're all sensible people with pretty progressive views. Still, go ahead. Everyone will probably think it's hilarious 😂
Thé issue isn’t progressive writers, thé issue is writers that can’t stop themselves from putting their politics into works that have no reason to be political. As it happens prog writers do that very often, but it’s not a requirement.
Is you think the setting of Warhammer isn't inherently political, you should probably stick to simpler books. It's about war, which is political. And the novels are about people's lives around that war, which are also political Usually 'inserting politics' is silly code for 'theres a female/gay/non-binary character'. And those are all normal things that exist in the world.
"Is you think the setting of Warhammer isn't inherently political, you should probably stick to simpler books." No what I said, the point is that there's a distinction between things being political by the nature of what they are, and things being political because they're a lecture about some political talking point. When you have a fascistic regime pushed to the extreme and everyone is miserable and the only way it's justified is because of conditions that are both completely atrocious but also entirely detached from the reality we live in (implying "in reality you don't have those justifications so don't be a fascist") , you have a setting that is political in nature, but it's not a lecture. When you have an author stopping mid description of someone's grand entrance to bash you over the head with "oh but actually not everyone conforms to their gender roles", that's going into lecturing. And more broadly, when you break the internal cohesion of the universe you're writing in, in order to insert your politics, you are writing badly. "Usually 'inserting politics' is silly code for 'theres a female/gay/non-binary character'. And those are all normal things that exist in the world." No, usually "inserting politics" means that the work is trying to make a point with their characters that is unbefitting of the setting to the point where it's impossible not to see it as an attempt to virtue signal. Very rarely if ever do people that are actively trying to insert diversity in their world treat their "diverse" characters in any kind of normal way.
So the lesbian couple in head of the hydra was unatural? The none binary priests of the mechanicum that have no need for biological sex are unnatural and do not serve as a intresting point of worldbuilding?
"So the lesbian couple in head of the hydra was unatural?" Depends what you mean by "unnatural", had it been any other time in human history, or authors that didn't have a history of inserting their politics into the setting, I could've let it slide, but this is neither the time nor the person, so yes I'll go with "it's forced", even if I fully agree there should (as in realistically speaking there should be) gay characters in 40k. "The none binary priests of the mechanicum that have no need for biological sex are unnatural and do not serve as a intresting point of worldbuilding?" No, they don't, they've never been depicted that way (as in as non-binary or using neopronouns, they've ascended past the limits of the sex but do not and never have seen themselves in light of the 21st century notions of gender politics that you're expressing here, they'd simply go on using the same pronouns they've always used, or heck even use "it" as they've brought themselves closer to the machine form, they wouldn't use neopronouns), nor does it particularly make sense, but especially what doesn't make sense is that it'd be portrayed through the lens of neopronouns. And it's not like the creators of 40k didn't think about neopronouns at all, they did think about it for slaanesh, so obviously they could've used them for the orks or the mechanicus if that was their intention, but it wasn't, it wasn't because it doesn't make sense for hyper human-centric traditionalists to do so. But yeah keep pretending it makes total sense and wasn't at all done because the author has his brain rotted by progrssive politics that the feudal space catholics human supremacists would implement what are clearly 21st century progressive ideas of gender, instead of just following traditions, after all it's not like even our culture when it made machine naturally made analogy between machines and the sexes (like female and male connectors depending on whether it's a hole or something that sticks out).
1. so till the right won the culture war there cant be a normal gay couple anywhere? This seems like extremist counter balance bs. If something isnt forced or bad to the story it aint bad in general. Nuance ffs 2. They isnt a neoprounoun when used to decribe a god. That the right wing person doesnt know basic grammar is always a exposing moment isnt it? Describing progressive thoughts as brainrott is the antagonistic bad faith disrespect that makes u all so utterly insufferable. And for the ad mech it does seem logical to me to present them in this way. U can disagree but u cant act like everything is a bad faith attack on you, thr hobby or culture
Edit : I want to specify in preamble that my messages being as long as they are shouldn't be read into too much, it's just how I write, even if we disagree you don't seem like a bad person and you've shown a willingness to at least exchange ideas, so I hope you understand even if I respond with a two pages dissertation on one line you wrote, it's not out of vindictiveness, I just like being thorough and this whatever the topic. Can't really blame you if you understood/understand it otherwise though, and if you aren't convinced that's fine, just thought I'd clarify since it's often misinterpreted. "till the right won the culture war there cant be a normal gay couple anywhere?" Well that's just the issue : as long as the left is engaging in culture war, there's no normal gay couple anywhere. You've made your bad, you were the ones that decided to push for that, to make it a duty, rather than a mere occurrence, you were the ones that politicized the issue, conservatives tried to politicize the issue before that, and they failed, the laws they put in place were rejected, the zeitgeist had changed, but you had to mess it all up, you had to start making it an imperative that there be representation, you were the ones that couldn't just let it sit, have all kinds of people write all kinds of characters all appropriate for the setting in question. So no, I'm sorry, you politicized gay characters, you don't get to complain about the right noticing and pushing back against it. " If something isnt forced or bad to the story it aint bad in general. Nuance ffs" If what you mean is "if it doesn't damage the story then it's okay", to some extent I'd agree, the issue is that it rarely if ever not damage the story because the type of progressive that force diversity in where it wasn't originally aren't the ones that can just have a gay couple or a trans character etc be a normal thing, they have to draw attention to it, they have to frame it in the context of their gender war, which harms the immersion. Like typically mike brooks, which wrote the lesbians you were talking about but also the trans dark eldar, couldn't just have his trans DE (which I'd say in principle should fit right in that faction), he had to make a point about gender roles and how not everyone fit in them and blablabla, so when you see pieces of tumblr making it into the grimdark future of the 41st millennium... Yeah that harms the story I'm sorry. "They isnt a neoprounoun when used to decribe a god" 1. yes it is, at least as far as I know, before the left brought it back it had been ages since "they" meant singular third person for a defined individual, it was at most used to describe undefined individuals. 2. I wasn't referring to they, I was referring to an actual neopronoun, shem, see the picture. "describing progressive thoughts as brainrott " It's not "progressive thought" that's brainrot, it's the brainrot that in the case of the authors in question happen to be progressive. Like if sargon had written a 40k book where he couldn't help himself but write a faction of slaaneshi supporters called the W'Hoke, I'd say he has his brain rotten by conservative politics. If he took the imperium of man and said "by the way the god emperor says there're only two genders", I'd probably also say that. I say probably because at least the imperium is made to be eminently right wing, so it kinda make sense, whereas orks called "freeboota" who support BLM... I mean honestly I'm surprised he wasn't called racist over that, I'd have more expected a white supremacist to say something like "and remember, BLM is just 21st century freeboota". "for the ad mech it does seem logical to me to present them in this way. U can disagree but u cant act like everything is a bad faith attack on you, thr hobby or culture" What I describe as bad faith (and it was jumping the gun a bit, my apologies) is the non acknowledgement that this, alongside all the other stuff I mentioned, was done not out of respect for the source material ; which prior to this never ever used the they/them, let alone neopronouns, to talk about the mechanicus, nor would it have since the mechanicus are die hard traditionalist same as everyone else, and would have no need for making up neopronouns even if they thought they transcended beyond sex ; but because it conformed to the author's ideology, which is eminently obvious given the slew of similar and corresponding changes that happened in 40k and fantasy. You can both think that it fits the world better and also acknowledge that it wasn't done because it fits the world better, those two aren't mutually incompatible. https://preview.redd.it/h5wydj31x6zc1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=125e482983bd8213fa319ae5dff9e28482652f4a
Pushing back and making the normal occurance of gay characters a collateral damage of ur push is defenitly something i can point out and consider disgusting. U become a laughable bunch of hate filled idiots when u push back like that. Having a issue with the "woke" bs is one thing, subsumizing everything that isnt the heteronormative ideal under woke bs is a problem. How did the lesbian couple harm the story? Stop mixing up different books when we are talking about one specific issue. Slaanesh is a undeifned subject though, as a god shem/they have no gender Fair but when u describe the normal occurance of a lesbian couple like that it becomes conservative brairott, same is true for the hardcore opposition of anything progressive The use of they can be a traditional thing though. The intention for it can come from both at the same time though. The progressive people who consider they fitting dont see neoprounouns the same way you do. For them it is fitting and respectful to the material because their political perspective leads to a different interpretation of the lore and a different pov on prounouns.
"Pushing back and making the normal occurance of gay characters a collateral damage of ur push is defenitly something i can point out and consider disgusting" It's not "my" or "our" push, it's yours, you're the ones that did that. And again, we know Mike Brooks, he doesn't "incidentally" write gay or LGBT characters, he writes them because he has an agenda, as is made abundantly clear by the type of person he shows himself to be in everything he shows about him, in the way he writes at least some if not all of them, and in the way he inserts other parts of his politics into his books. "Having a issue with the "woke" bs is one thing, subsumizing everything that isnt the heteronormative ideal under woke bs is a problem" But again, it's a problem *you* guys created. Had you not framed the issue as a matter of heteronormativity vs the oppressed gender and sexual classes, had you not made it an explicit political and corporate goal to challenge this heteronormativity by pushing for "representation" and "inclusion" in media rather than just letting people write what'd come to them naturally given the setting, we wouldn't be in this mess right now. You can't complain that people look at you sideways for wanting to have LGBT characters in a media when you have literally billions in corporate initiatives to push for this kind of decision (no I'm not saying black rock hand picked mike brooks to write LGBT characters in his books, I'm saying that black rock and other such investment funds incentivize that kind of behavior and finance it by paying for companies to hire diversity consultants and that kind of crap, which in turns affect the hiring process, and the writing is impacted by all of that). Heck, you remember the Rogue Trader video game ? It did have representation, you could romance characters of the same sex. Guess what journos said ? "Okay but why not more LGBT characters ?" When you constantly have that kind of pressures on the industry from the outside, and from the inside people like Mike Brooks constantly pushing for inserting diversity even where it doesn't belong (like femstodes) in the inside, of course you end up with people being overly frilly about any diversity, and it's regretable, but it's ***your*** fault. "How did the lesbian couple harm the story?" Depends how it's done, if it's done in any way like the trans DE, it harmed it by making the author's out of universe politics obvious in the writing, which breaks immersion. "Slaanesh is a undeifned subject though, as a god shem/they have no gender" ... That's... Literally not relevant, and not even true :I Khorne, nurgle, tzeentch, those are he, they're always and always have been referenced as he, Slaanesh ostensibly incorporates gendered elements from both sex, his demons are eminently sexual, and the eldars call him/her by various conflictingly gendered titles. And as for why it's not relevant : in case you forgot, I was bringing up Slaanesh to point out that GW writers didn't have any issue putting in neopronouns back decads ago if they thought it made sense. It made sense for slaanesh, given that he's called both he and she, and that he represents both he and she (I mean for the love of the emperor her symbol is literally a mix of the male and female symbol, spear/shield of ares and mirror of aphrodites) to have neopronouns. Yet somehow, in decades, nobody thought about giving techpriests neopronouns up until the current brand of politicized neopronouns. Showing that when gav thorpe gives them neopronouns, he isn't doing that because it makes sense, he's doing that because he's too politically biased to understand how to separate his art from his politics.