Honestly genuine respect for being able to say “I belittled them and I shouldn’t have done that.” I think it’s so easy to not even realize you’ve done it when you get caught up in the moment. Yet another reason Josh is a good role model
It really really is. I hold myself to an impossible standard, and even i still fuck this simple thing up time and time again. Huge respect for Josh. We should all do better.
@@matrixcom69 I saw most of it and I left a comment on one of his older vids just telling him to pump the brakes and I knew what approach he was AIMING for but not only was he missing it but that he was wading into something he needed to get better informed about first. Props to him for him taking a step back to have a better take and apologizing for his (likely unintended) tone and commentary towards the people he was trying to meet on respectful ground. (and unfortunately unintentionally failing miserably lol.) I have massive respect for him to take a step back and take responsibility for his original approach. Even if I disagreed with his original opening view, disagreements are fine. It was the execution of the disagreement in this case that had real issues.
My friend studies to become PR, he is also big Warhammer fun (unlike me, I have zero input on that, so sorry, if miss say something). So I asked him about that topic, because he has both professional and personal connection to it. So, the dry summary: - The idea itself is not bad, the modifications(?) done to those soldiers, that gender should not be that influential as in IRL. Also its sci-fi to a ridiculous degree. BUT - they did this after ignoring female-based fractions for many years, so it comes of very unnatural - retrospectively changing lore is always a shaky part, that needs to be handled with care. Like giving something cool for fans from that change. But they just shoved in that change and did nothing. Like adding a cool character that manged to get into the troops, despite it being hard (like Josh said). - "It always been that way" is insulting both to those, who want to preserve lore as much as possible and to those, who wanted the change like that for a long time - The brutal nature of Warhammer lays good reasons for in-lore sexism (and other -isms as I understand it). By itself its not reason enough to straight up deny female custodians(?), but it should've been addressed in a way it makes sense within general lore. - the way PR handled it is so unprofessional , that even junior PR-in-taring should be able to do it better -- Insulting fans for caring about franchise -- Forcing a divide between fans, forcing yourself in position, where you need to take side and inevitably loosing customers -- no damage control. The opposite fueling the fire -- they never addressed the main point of most emotional fans about fear that it all can lead to loss of Warhammer's brutality by smoothing all edgy corners and making it "socially acceptable", when one of the main appeal of franchise is that is the opposite
The part of the in-lore sexism is kind of debatable as far as I'm aware. The fact the sisters of battle exist and that the actual military of almost all factions with genders do use women make that point very moot. Astra Militarum, Eldari, Tau all have female warriors, the Chaos, Tyranid, Necron and Ork don't have genders so it is irrelevant for them.
Speaking from someone who absolutely has no idea about PR, but sometimes I think GW actively encourages dividing the fanbase. Sort of a divide and conquer type of mentality. Then again, I seriously doubt many people at GW are actually good at PR
@ponytoast1231 the males are nearly always physically stronger. I csn point to numerous books, where the sister of battle say this about space marines. Yes they both have power armor, but only 1 can lift a tank with their own muscles, while the other can't. The females in the lore are always psyker strong OR anti psyker. They are never physically stronger. Sexism exist but out if necessity of survival. The only female commander for the Tau was taught BY A MAN, and even then she needs the most advance armor and uses "stealth" to overcome her own physical weakness. Almost all Daemons on 40k take on male Masculinity. I'm not against any of this, because it makes sense. Wokeness is a cancer on the reality of the world. Weakness using emotional manipulation to gain strength and force people to conform to ideology.
@@ponytoast1231 Sisters of battle exist because the ecclesiarchy was banned from having a male fighting force. It's essentially a faction that exists entirely because of a loop hole in the law. Sisters of Silence is a better example of an all-female faction that exists entirely on its own merits.
@@TyphusVonElder Sisters of battle are not genetically modified, no shit they are weaker than Space marines.The point is that the faction exists so they are not trying to keep women out of combat. There is 2 named female Tau commanders, that doesn't change anything to the fact they are common in the actual fighting force so they are not excluded. For Chaos, chaos space marines are obviously males, but the daemons themselves are not gendered, except maybe Slaanesh in which case they are hermaphrodites. Daemons don't reproduce and are created from the warp, not gendered reproduction or organs. Even the Daemon princes that were turned from a human are not gendered since female human that were turned are also considered princes. Physical strength is pretty irrelevant when you have guns that melt people or atomize them with tanks, planes, artillery and orbital bombardment and your enemies are monsters with way more strength than any normal human male or female.
An internet personality taking accountability and admitting they made mistakes? This is why Josh is my favorite creator to watch. Feels good to support a legit good person.
His entire argument still boils down to _"Stop _*_*wanting*_*_ a male dominated space, this HAS to change because it's current year"._ That's not a lore argument, and it doesn't work with the Mechanical-Aesthetic of what draws people into collecting the figures either. This is something a "sexual equality" advocate would NEVER say to shows like "the View", Real Housewives, or Taylor Swift fans.
i didnt catch the full video it got taken down as i watched but some of the stuff i can muster to remember is "i hire the best person for the job if that happens to be a woman so be it" and it was a back and forth with "dave" who was on team no female custodes
Essentially, Josh has no problems with there being female custodes in the Warhammer universe. I thought he was pretty respectful and he swayed my opinion, but there were a lot of people that he offended with the clip, which I can also understand. This all lead to a ton of backlash and hatred thrown his way and no productive conversation was happening, so he removed it.
He pointed out that GW has made many canon-breaking choices in the past with 40k, like making the Primarchs into the children of the Emperor, so this Custodes decision is really par for the course as far as GW goes.
You're absolutely correct. The problem is, people tend to be tribalistic by nature, and that's something we have to be more conscious of. As humans, we, out of all of the animal kingdom, are sapient enough to be able to kill some of our harmful urges, or at least stifle them to the point where we can function without resorting to base instinct. Though the way social media is set up, people tend to exist in echo chambers that only serve to enhance the worst parts of us. That's why we need to be more self aware of what we say and do.
You sort of can? You can't attack them into *agreeing* with you, but you can coerce them into submitting and cowering in fear. That's basically what all the modern ideology amounts to. Coercion and fear; and that's also why they never seem to be happy or content, because they know they always have to purge any visible disagreement and seek out total obedience, because there is no genuine consensus, only people pretending to agree to avoid negative consequences.
Does Warhammer really not have female representation? Or is it just the case, that you need to have VISIBILITY? Custodes and Marines are poster children of Warhammer for a few reasons, but the most important is economy. Custodes have the best cost to power ratio, so they are a good army to start playing with. Add to that the fact, that Cavill said he played Custodes and you have a recepe for a popular army. It's all about the clout. Let's look at the armies. Marines - all male Custodes - all male Orcs - agender Necrons - agender Tyranids - agender Chaos - both male and female daemons Guard - male and female humans Eldar - male and female xenos Dark Eldar - male and female xenos T'au - honestly, not sure, but I assume there are both Sisters of battle - all female Sisters of silence - all female So we have a lot of representation in different armies. What matters is the spotlight, the visibility, the virtue signalling associated with having females specifically and ONLY on a poster. Then we have the gaslighting of "there were always female Custodes". Yeah? Where? Did any of them do anything of note? I mean... Besides trying to teleport a nuke to Emperor's Palace?
Well you see if they wanted to highlight Sisters of battle and Sisters of silence then they need to spend money and work for it. For my part I really like to hear form Sisters of silence POV.
At least in recent lore, necrons aren't entirely genderless. Male and female necrons do exist, especially amongst the higher echelons of necron society.
Okay so I'll start this by saying I think we're on the same train of thought here but getting off at different stations with our conclusions. When talking visibility there's often the issue of tokenism, for a long while sisters of battle could be considered a token female army because they were the only human army with female minis and got next to no support for a long time. This has been rectified in the fast few years with a glut of new kits, characters and novels thankfully. Sisters of silence on the other hand have 3.5 kits across 2 game systems... And all lore appearances have them attached at the hip to custodes or space Marines. GW hasn't given them the chance to shine on their own and on that I think everyone can universally agree. Unfortunately for the mixed gender armies listed, outside of the xenos ironically (because yes necrons are also mixed gender and have gender identities, they just use uniform bodies) the imperial and chaos armies had no female minis and very little female characters in lore. This is also being recently rectified to reflect the stated mixed gender status with female sculpts in kits (new guardsmen kit, cultists for chaos, etc.) and some women taking leading roles in stories tho. This recent trend is essentially GW putting their money where their mouth is when they said these factions are mixed gender for years. The one that bucks that trend is custodes, funny enough that you brought up their status as an entry level army because they share the same qualities that they marked out for stormcast when they designed the entry level AOS army (small model count, minimal skin showing, lots of metallics, helmet options for everything). I think they may be realizing what everyone else has about custodes being beginner friendly but they've made their bed with space Marines. On principle I'm not against Fenske custodes, I think they open up new avenues for character writing given the wider range of activities custodes get up to compared to marines. The twitter response however was taking a torch to icarus' own wings. With the drama dying down now however, we need to wait and see what they manage to do with it in the next year or two to really judge the value of the retcon. If ADB can write something good with this opportunity then it'll be worthwhile in my books at least.
99.9% of the people complaining about representation don't even play the game. They see some art of hyper-masculine Space Marines or see someone else playing an all-male army and think "Hmm, how can I weaponize my own insecurities into this hobby that I don't even like." This is why gatekeeping isn't always a bad thing, because there are actually bad actors out there who like to enter other people's spaces with the intent of changing and essentially ruining them. I wish that wasn't the case, but its just the world we live in now.
Frankly, even a silly explanation like "Yeah the Emperor woke up from death for 30 seconds, shout 'Muscle Mommies!', made femstodes a thing with psyker bullshit and died again" would be better than a random retcon like they did. The Warhammer universe can be whacky enough that you can slot that lore in. Just put the effort in. Also: >Adds female custodes >Nerfs custodes What did GW mean by this?
Yeah, this was basically my take on it. It wasn't so much that they changed the long standing lore. GW has every right to change the lore in the universe they created. It was how they went about it and the PR disaster afterwards that annoyed most people. They could have put out any number of little lore tidbits from "long lost records were discovered" or "the research into Primaris marines also resulted in the discovery of ancient techniques" or any number of things. Just saying "it's always been this way" and then literally insulting everyone who even asked why is not the best way to go about things. :P
The best (or worst) part is how stupid easy it is to introduce into the canon as well "By the will of the gods, they hath spoken - from this day forth, our empire shall invoke the might of every being - regardless of gender. Let this be THE REIGN OF ...THE WARHAMMER"
They where never nefed. They're bad in the meta. Melee is bad in the meta, Chaos is only able to get away with it because it's got the units. Custodes are all big single unit hero dudes who get swarmed.
they meant they wanted to distract people from their garbage codex and the fact that they where going to raise the prices of models again. So they decided to distract everyone with female custodes.
I didnt watch the other clip, but this one is great. Its extremely difficult to take a step back and adjust your opinion. Its even harder to admit being wrong or when you make mistakes. Great video.
@@suchaone6395but there literally is a wide spread “issue” of bots copy pasting existing comments on a video to appear real, and everyone of them has some half naked woman in the profile pic and suspicious links in the account info.
@@derigel7662 I want sister of battle mutli-pose kits, the mono-poses make me sad. I'd like an all female guard regiment too, in the lore they do exist.
The issue I have with the discussion is that there IS female representation in 40k, already present, in large number... In the lore. With 0 changes needed, there is tons! But we don't see any of that on the tabletop. There are tons of female inquisitors, tons of female assassins, tons of female rogue traders, tons of female guard of every rank, a dedicated faction, tons of female eldar, tons of female tau (the top caste tau is female even), etc etc etc. How much of that is represented on the tabletop? Well... Basically Shadowsun (leader of the tau empire forces), a few female eldar, Callidus assassins, and sisters of battle. I am not asking for female space marines or female custodes, because I do not think it will add anything valuable to the lore or tabletop and conflicts with established canon. I am asking for female guard, which canonically exist, in massive number. I am asking for rogue traders with fieldable armies who are female (and can have power armor!). I am asking for female inquisitor models, since some of the most well known inquisitors (Amberly Vale) is female and often fights in power armor. Every time there is a decent groundswell going for female guard or anything, it gets drowned out by people who don't seem to actually care about the setting all that much yelling about "BUT WHAT ABOUT FEMALE ASTARTES!" At this point, the dedicated fans of the hobby have had to deal with female astartes so many times that any token female insertion will piss them off. For anyone who wants to see more female representation in tabletop, female astartes (and now custodes) is a poison pill guaranteed to make it harder to get ANY female units. You know what would be interesting and fun? How about, instead of female custodes or female astartes, we ask for female arbites? Arbites are a super fun faction, there are women in it, and they get basically no love in tabletop. I'd love to see a set of arbites vs cultists, or arbites vs genestealers, or something like that. Have that be a fun thing.
Tbf, a lot of this stuff could also be levelled against the persistent issue of the massive over-representation of Astartes - especially Ultramarines - more generally. An outsider looking in could very easily think that 40k is only about the blue boys when it’s really not. Especially if they get in through RPGs like Rogue Trader or Dark Heresy whereby the desire to play as an Astartes will be met with “No. Would you like to be a Sister of Battle instead?”
@@Nikelaos_Khristianos which is why i want more non-astartes factions to be given center stage. Cause yes, they are pushed way too hard. And myself and no girl i know who is into the hobby likes them (tho some like CSM's). Hell, you go into a store and you'd think there are no women ever on the battlefield, going off their mini's.
@@Nikelaos_Khristianos True for GWs tabletop marketing push, but for the TTRPGs... I mean, without splatbooks nobody play a marine in RT nor DH at all, closest in power would be Imperial Psyker. Even with extra sources, with the classic options that arent outright merging the (doubled stats) Deathwatch game into are the Sisters, either of the Ork options and the Herektek/Heretek variant for Techpriest as far as raw power lore wise (and tabletop side for the first and last) without highly variable items.
@@ANDELE3025 The latter half of your comment is basically how a DM would mechanically approach the desire to be an Astartes. They’d try and figure out, “What role does the player want to fill?” And then work from there - though it does require the DM to explain why they’re suggesting that the player picks a Tech-Priest to start off with, for example, to later become something like a Heretek. They’re assuming they’re wanting to play as a tank, but DH in my experience tends to be a more fun game if you’re working from the basis of a character, not a role nor a class necessarily. I think “who do you want to be?” Rather than “what do you want to be?” Is a more interesting question from a role-play perspective - even though some would argue that’s “just semantics.”
The issue is 40k is, at the end of the day, about Space Marines. It's not about guardsmen or humans in general. It's focus is on the big dick Space marines and how big their dick is. That said you could just ignore marines and go with your own headcannon. That's kind of the beauty of 40k. The galaxy is a big place, and where Games Workshop fails, the fandom will pick up
Man, i know i was one of the people who put forward polite reasoning because Josh responded to me with "very well put" and I'm just glad of a few things. Firstly, this respectful follow-up is a move of pure integrity and reason. Secondly, i'm just glad that among all the shouting, the reasonable comments were noticed. not to preach but to all those who shouted, i urge you to try the polite approach next time.
This encapsulates why i love josh so much. Sadly is not common to have the opinion of "attacking those who opose my view does nothing to facilitate understanding, only furthers the divide and its ultimately self-serving". I vividly remember when he had a discussion with a guy blaming him for the death of tera. Not only he listened to him but also commended him for knowing a second language even if it wasnt very good at it. Thats how you treat people.
As a hardcore fan of the lore It’s not *THAT* GW did it It’s *HOW* they did it Thanks to the meme comic and the “there always has been”, I’m only going to see Femstodes as Tzeench Daemons
The fucked up so bad with the "they were always there" comment. If they simply went out and said something like blablabla though times need more heroes can not only restrict ourselves to half the population or the custodes made a breakthrough and can now also make women into them. People would have taken it much better than whatever they actually did.
No, it's that they did it at all. Warhammer is a fantasy setting that calls on numerous tropes and real-world historical events to paint a picture. Among them is the ideal of the warrior monk from the crusades. Men of wealth and privilege who gave all of that up to go serve a higher purpose for God. It's a prominent theme in the Custodes and Astartes, so to just decide one day "nah, that theme is gone now," is insulting to the lore and the fans. Being Battle Brothers is a major part of the theme, and changing it to Combat Comrades is cringe. It's just as bad of a change as if they retconned the Sisters of Battle (warrior nuns that serve the church because they're not allowed to have "men under arms") to include Misters of Battle. It's a change that ruins the lore, destroys the faction theme, and disrespects the fans no matter how it's done.
@@TheOneAndOnlyLUUUU 10.000 custodes, ~60 of them are named and who are male. That still leaves ~9.940 Custodes where 40% or 50% of them might be female.
It’s both to me, that and how Instead of creating something cool and unique they forcefully shoehorned change into already established lore, and then acted like there wasn’t even a change made This is not how to do it We know you want that sweet sweet investment money that needs you to be more… “woke” so to say, but try to actually use your heads to make it fit more into the lore and the setting Maybe like a illegal underground programs where fanatical women are trying to change themselves in some way to fight the xenos from the shadows, since they can’t do it publicly Their approach feels lazy and tone deaf
I just don't get where all the "it's how they did it" people where when the Vothan were announced. Who knows maybe you where there but there seems to be a awful lot of new people who are also upset for exactly the same thing and who insist that it has nothing to do with what they did.
My friend and I have had a similar discussion over the Primaris release. We have both come to an understanding that while the sculpts look amazing, the way GW introduced them was the dumbest way they could have done it. I looked into the lore behind it and have found myself less at odds against it, but my friend is working on building a Blood Angels force of pure firstborn. I still think it's dumb that Cawl somehow had them all in some unknown closet on MARS for Omnissiah's sake... If there was ever a planet where EVERYTHING was catalogued, it would be the HQ of the Adeptus Mechanicus. So a closet full of almost-primarchs for every chapter and all the weapons and equipment to arm them seems like a massive oversight.
It would have been 100x better if they just said "we want to increase the scale for Spercs, all new ones will be bigger" and then have a far better in lore (maybe Cawl) reason for the new armour.
You don’t understand the lore than. At all. Pls read more books. Local domain of arch-magos - his own sacred land, when only he- has the right to rule and do what he wants. If you have this domain on mars - showing how big your ba… cogitators.
@@BloodyArchangelus My frustration at it was largely because I had initially thought GW rolled out the Primaris with no in-universe conflict, I did the work to learn more about what changed between the Astartes and the Primaris. I actually found myself quite pleased when I found out there were members of the Imperium that didn't trust the Primaris at all. It largely mimicked the relationship and understanding that my friend and I shared. Even if I don't like the lore behind them, I still appreciate that there were things for me to learn about them.
Reminds me of the time I accused someone of using ad hominem attacks instead of attacking my argument... seconds before my brain giving up and resorting to ad hominem attacks myself...
If they have no argument except attacking you… it’s not really ad hominem to do it back since that is their argument (attacking you) so the counter argument of that is to attack them back.
@@draketurtle4169actually the proper way would be to point out the ad hominen and not engage with them anymore in a genuine manner If someone's argument is to insult you, there's no argument to be had
@@draketurtle4169 But that’s why ad hominems suck. They just engender completely cyclical ad hominem attacks that go absolutely NOWHERE. To the extent that I just don’t talk to someone if they turn every group discussion into an ad hominem. It just comes across as pathetic and childish. Like, “I don’t like how this person speaks - so I’m going to attack the way that they speak” rather than what is actually being said.
Of course the cheapest popular army gets it. I’d love for neglected factions to get new models. I love the sisters of silence design and lore. I’d love a proper model for a named character for them. Obviously I see now they’ll never get it because they’re not popular. I literally stopped building my custodes army. It’s the only way I can play sisters and clearly they’re going to get neglected. It’s the same feeling I got back when I played competitive league and overwatch. Clearly, I shouldn’t play the game if the feeling I got playing those games that made me quit, is popping up in Warhammer. I should have looked into how they go about adding models, the ancient eldar models should have been a clear warning to me.
>I see now they’ll never get it because they’re not popular. The question here is, not popular by the player or by GW who can't seem to think they are a faction to expand upon.
4:30 I see the people who had an issue with the way they were added, as, to put it as politely as I can, 'clueless normies.' Female custodes are now part of the setting because activists have always been trying to shove their way into a controlling position in 40K so they can make it less targeted toward teenage boys, and more targeted toward a different audience. I have a huge, huge problem with this. Put simply, I wish very, very horrible things on the activists that are prosecuting this campaign, things I can't describe in detail if I want this comment to stay visible. 4:47 I can. I can absolutely deny that. There is, in fact, I would say, an _overrepresentation_ of women in 40K. Women are present in 40K stories to a highly unreasonable degree given the circumstances of the setting. However, you still have women in the Astra Militarum, you have the Sisters of Battle, the Sister of Silence, female members of the Inquisition, female Adeptus Mechanicus, and I could go on and on talking about _just_ the Imperium of Man, never mind the Xenos and Chaos factions. That said, it would not be a problem if women _were not_ represented in 40K. Women don't need to be in everything. 4:58 That's a different statement than 'Warhammer 40K's female representation is lacking.' Yes, 40K is absolutely a male-dominated hobby, because women don't generally like wargames, or stories of the kind that feature in the setting that is the grim darkness of the 41st millennium. This is _also_ , not a problem. 5:36 To the women? What about the men? There has not been _a single custodian_ in the history of 40K, that has been female. We have tons of named custodes, none of them were ever female, _until_ the release of the 10th edition custodes codex. It's not 'patronizing,' _it's a lie_ . They're lying, to their fanbase, about the history of their own setting, for the sake of shutting people up. It's almost like they hate their own audience, like they don't _like_ the fact that 40K is male-dominated. 10:02 A reasonable response. Nobody has resources necessary to fight for every cause, and too many people are too eager to jump in without properly understanding a situation first.
my big problem with it, is that they try and shoehorn in female custodes in a way that's just straight up insulting to everyone, while they ignore the women only factions and don't have many if any women models for factions that are mixed. people love sos and sob and also a bunch of women from other factions. give us more and better women models along with cool women like shadowsun, lotara, tarasha, ect
You really are a great person Josh. This was a salve for the soul. Between you and jason thor hall i can finally feel like im listening to measured kind people who just want to make actual positive impacts for everyone. Thanks.
"I did something wrong. I belittled people who disagreed with me." Instant sub. So many people refuse to acknowledge how doing that poisons the conversation, and even more refuse to admit wrongdoing when the fall into this tempting behavior.
The issue with anyone saying "Do better" isnt for example what Josh said it actually means - its for them to signal and make them look better, like "hey, you fucked up, I dont care why but do better, because it sounds cool" (exaggerated) Its tough to take anyone saying "do better" seriously because they obviously arent saying that out of goodwill expecting some improvement
Additionally, the whole "I dont feel represented" by females is also kinda stupid because Males have always played female game series (i.e. Metroid - Samus, Tomb Raider - Lara Croft), and we have been doing it for years These are female MCs in the games, representing females, the males didnt have any trouble adapting so why is this made such a fucking big deal?
I mean, if all they are saying is "do better" sure.. But if people are explaining why something is wrong, and closing out with "do better" they are just expressing disappointment, likely in someone they felt respect for. Like, I'm pretty sure I have used those words before when for example someone took a sponsorship with a genuine scam company that with 2 seconds of research they would have known was a well known scam. Honestly, I think dismissing people wholesale over triggering phrases, or things that you see said by people and bullies who have no good meaning is a very dangerous game, and can lead to you becoming quite the dick sometimes.. and I say that with past experience of being a fairly spiteful person a long time ago.
@@uuu12343 representation is just the excuse a communist uses to gain power over something. Reality means nothing to these cultural locusts, they care about winning, and representation is one of those lies they abuse to break down mild-mannered old white males scared of being called out. They've been abusing the word they invented, r*cist, for many decades now under the same pretenses. Far more people who aren't r*cist have been called r*cist, than actual bigots, i'd bet my house on it. This is merely a new front in the culture war against marxism, if you can't recognise that it is a war, you've already lost, and your enemy won.
@@it-s-a-mystery Certain groups on the internet have misused many words and phrases for malicious reasons for years now. So terms like "do better" have lost their weight in discourse or no longer have their intended meaning.
the issue i see the fact that they didnt try to be like we need to open the hiring pool because of how rare they are but like always has been. same energy as there were only ever 9 primarks.
And having female custodies doesn't take away from SoS, the SoS isn't just about being female but being blanks that cover the custodians against psychic threats there main point t isn't that they are female. Having female custodies takes literally nothing away from the SoS it isn't taking away troop options or lore relevance unless we start getting female psyker custodies the SoS still have complete relevance.
I am the demographic they're trying to win over and i hate this. I'm a woman that really enjoys warhammer 40k, and i don't want the boys' toys, i have my own. My sisters of battle, inquisitors, Rogue traders, etc are WAY cooler than the custodes and marines. The problem isn't representation, it's being ignored. As a woman, this move made me honestly hate the direction this franchise is going. It's the wrong move. Insulting, demeaning, and stupid.
They also did the "it's always been there" with the Rogal Dorn Tank for the Imperial Guard so you kinda have to suspend your disbelief that this tank which was released a couple of years ago has been fighting for millenia on the side of the Imperium.
But how is that a problem? I mean, they did the same with every additional faction. Like, when they introduced the Necrons, it was the largest "They've always been there" of all time.
No, you're confusing it with in lore. They told a customer who asked the official channel WHY they were added. It wasn't in a novel or anything, they tried to retcon real life.
@@Jesujej I mean we never did that in 40k. It's a setting that has retcons all over the place. Like a superb painting different artists reworked once every months for decade.
@@mandowarrior123 No they did not. The tweet, and this all is just one social media message, stated that there has been women in the custodes since the first ten thousand were created. This is clearly stating in-universe now after the retcon there has always been women in the Custodes. I really hate that this has become like a major point of contension because some people (not all) want to take this into culture war territory. I mean at the most it could be that there was a single tweet made by the social media team that was not maybe the wisest choice of words. But in my I will say like 15 to 20 years in the hobby have I seen this much of a controversy from a retcon. Only thing I can think of is the Primaris Marines and that was kind of not a retcon. That is the only controversy that is this large. My opinion why this got such a large thing is because agitators who want to stoke the flames of the culture war did so on twitter. Because in twitter it is very easy for outsiders to go and stroke flames into this kind of thing. You know where this was not a big thing? Reddit. For all of its faults 40k and Custodes specific subreddits didn't have anywhere near this level of controversy. Most of the topics put up about this were met with "Who the fuck cares?" attitude. And just to add my counter point to the other usual note about this over shadowing Sisters of Silence: Sisters of Silence are not super-humans and in addition they are probably the worst representation. They are literally making people feel worse by their existence. Also one of the old lore writers came out of the wood work to talk about why they were originally instructed not to make female Custodes when the Custodes came to 40k as a playable army. None of the models would be female so the higher ups didn't want there to be lore about female Custodes. So now that we have them maybe we can receive some badass women Custodes models at some point. (Also some nifty Black Library books featuring some) TLDR: Controversy in my opinion very much overblown. There are few good reasons to be sad about this change and most of the controversy is driven by non-hobbyist for culture war reasons.
Not a 40k fan at all. No reason, just never tried it. But what I can say is I massively respect Josh for this. We all make mistakes and get emotive about things when we shouldn't. I just want to ask one thing though, just because it came up on the video. Why is it inherently a problem if it's a male dominated space? I think the reason that we see such frustration at topics like this, is that there is a prevailing notion that everything has to be for everyone. I don't believe that. Sure, that's not to say people should be kept out. But if a hobby has naturally skewed massively into having one main demographic, why is that seen as an issue (I'm not talking about from a business pov, obviously more people = more money in theory, I just mean culturally and socially)
For reasonable people that is not an issue at all. The people argueing inclusion in everything is needed habe lost the plot and in 99% of all cases have zero understanding of whatever they are trying to force themself into.
I think it's because "male dominated" could make someone think it's the "no girls allowed" sign. Which isn't true because anyone anywhere can get into 40k, they can kit bash, they can 3D print something, etc but... people don't think.
@@infinitecurlie yep that's definitely it. To some people, anything that's mostly male is seen as a problem and must be made right, potentially even with forced inclusion.
Having some space be "male dominated" isn't a problem - it's more of an observation, a phrase to describe a statistic. However, it can SOMETIMES be a symptom of some problem that effectively gatekeeps a demographic from that space/hobby/industry. Take economics for instance - it is male dominated industry, which isn't inherently wrong, but when you start looking into why that is, you start seeing countless stories about bias against women (for instance, nor being taken seriously just because you're a woman or being heckled due to your presentation because of it) or just plain sexual assault. Unsurprisingly, those things can cause women to drop out of the industry.
Glad to have this video back online, i was watching a previous version when it was set to private. I found the whole thing on twitch though. I really like Josh's approach to this, i was annoyed that the idea of female Custodes because it felt like one of those "modern audiences" changes i had no idea about the constant changes to the lore, this makes sense then or at least it doesn't sound forced like i thought it was.
In this case, it seems to be one of those "modern audiences" kinda change. Apparently, Amazon is to blame. If you want to delve deeper try ArchCast's videos, for example, where he goes into more detail about it.
I still disagree with "representation" comment lol. How can you feel not "represented" when most factions are nonhuman? What if all of them were nonhumanoid? Are all tyranid players bugs? Are all necron players cyborg mummies? This rethoric heavily implies women at large are really superficial and can only connect to things that are exactly like them Which, I mean, doesn't sound right, does it?
Do you want to know how representation works? Because there is a reason actually, why it can be important to some people to be represented in the Custodes.
@@Contevent I don't want to come off as ignorant, and my previous comment is not as in depth as I wanted, but I honestly do think if race or gender difference stops you from feeling represented - that's either on you or the author Because I DO feel represented by barely humanoid girly piece of phospophilite Because I DO feel represented in struggles of someone like deedlit, who is worried about missing out on creating more meaningful relationships with those she cares about before their passing And I know there are women who feel represented by Luke Skywalker or necrons (to tie it back closer to the conversation starter, yes, I know a girl with a necron army) Why then , exactly, should retroactively changing lore, that quite a lot of people are invested in, be needed? Because GW thinks women at large are superficial and NEED this pandering? Don't you think that it's quite insulting?
@@Russian_engineer_bmstu I do not actually. You are right that you can feel represented by... by well anything, because representation stands on 3 pillars: -Our identities are determined by how people look at us. -We have multiple identities -The importance of our identities can be forced on us by society. First, we often says to teens to not take into consideration what people think of them, to not let that affect their self worth. Well, we say that because that's what naturally happens. We exist through the perception of others, if you say to a child that he is fat, he will be fat in his mind regardless of the reality. The stronger our personality becomes, the harder it is to impose new identities on us, but it still very much happens to adults. Second, we have multiple identities. Someone can consider himself white, a man, but also a parent, a Metallica fan, a neat freak, unambitious, etc... We have plenties of identities, they just don't have the same importance to us. For example if their identity as a neat freak is greater than their love for W40k, they may prefer never going to a convention because of all the sweaty, smelly people there. It's a matter of priority. Third, society around us can force us to have identities. If a black woman wants to be an engineer, but every treats her either as a woman or as a black person first and foremost, and not as an engineer, well being a black woman will become a huge part of her identity. To take your example, you can identify yourself in character of other genders and other races because, well, your own gender and race isn't that important to you. It's not the case of everyone, and especially not the case of people suffering discrimination. And it's not even their choice, it is because of discrimination that it became a part of their identity. So why putting women in fiction is not pandering to the audience, insulting them by saying "Ha! You're so superficial you can't identify to someone who doesn't look exactly like you!"? Well, because to some women, being a woman is a huge part of their personality, whether they want it or not. And being represented in as vast an array of job, motivation, occupation, and physical form is a net positive as it make them feel more comfortable with who they are and encourages them to become whatever they want.
The biggest issue I have is that they say this is about inclusivity but that ignores the fact that the fiction was already incredibly diverse. No one complains when the sisters of silence or sisters of battle are female only, even all those “toxic players” we are lead to believe are flooding the fanbase.
It's really not that diverse. And some people keep insisting that there are no women in the Imperial Guard, so yeah I don't think it'd be hard to find people who complain about the existence of the sisters. And the fact that their army took 22 years to have another physical codex doesn't reveal them as popular.
@@Sammo212yeeee, that was a load of huey that came out of that guy. Anyone that's been around the setting for a while knows that there's a load of diversity.
@@draochvar9646 yeah, female guardsman were an important part of the Caiaphas Cain books as far back as 2003! There were even some all female regiments.
@@Contevent If it's women you want in 40k and not the sisters of battle or silence and you want it in first party models? multiple regiments of IG are either both male and female, or all women in the lore. it comes down to where the planet hails and what makes up the population. even then in raw models theres only a small fraction of the IG regements they ever showed. on the named character side you have Ursula Creed, who is exceedingly highly ranked and currently being sold, but i also recall a time period of a printed women commissar model. Staying in the imperium Im also aware of the inquisition and the Assassins where women have not only appeared in the roles (Inquisitor greyfax comes to mind), but there's certain assassin roles at least preferred if they aren't only allowed to be crewed by women. there's also the Imperial Knights, where the same case I believe applies in the lore, but the models you play with there are being piloted and the lore per knight is rather individual, so you can kind of just do as you like. as to the mechanicus... there's definitely women in the faction in the lore, but feel free to judge the models for yourself to see if any passes for you, because.. honestly, thats a lot of metal alteration to spot a form in after a certain breakpoint. the Eldar factions have many women and entire units dedicated solely to women, and their society has had them reach the highest roles possible before. Yvraine deserves a special notice for functionally being part of an act to herald the creation of a new eldar god, and was a big part of one of the earlier editions, but Ill never forget Farseer Taldeer, whether or not she is canon. The Tau in lore are a force that is both male and female in deployment, with one of their most well known commanders being Shadowsun, a woman. The Genestealers have women in their ranks, as they are what happens when human forces meet the Tyranid's sway. the Demons of the setting take on both male and female form... and a lot of other stuff besides. The Necron royalty have enough of their minds saved to be like people, albeit exceedingly old ones. your in a metal skeleton body either way, but nothing is stopping your upper crust from being women. Anyway, thats some options on the women front. personally I flitted between IG, Sisters of Battle, and the Orks myself. nothing like the routes a comedy outlook can take an ork mindset.
6:30 this is why the quote "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." by Lord Acton is such a timeless quote. It's too easy to fall to the allure of power, even the small fleeting moments of power. It's human to get things wrong, to make mistakes and do the wrong thing, but we all do the best we can and that's all anyone can really ask for.
Most factions except Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines have plenty of female representation. The face of the Eldar has been a female Farseer since like the early 2000s. In novels you got some pretty cool female Imperial Guard. Chaos Daemons have Slaneesh. Chaos has female cultists. The face of the Inquisition has been a female Inquisitor for a long time. It's been there if you look or have been involved in the hobby.
It's also important to be cautious of seemingly sensible criticisms being put forward in bad faith. While it's important to have your work reflect your attempts at inclusiveness, every attempt to do better can't be treated with contempt and scrutinized from top to bottom, else people will be less inclined to improve.
It takes a lot to admit that you were wrong, not many people have that strength. But if you are right and defend this point then do not bend one just because the pressure is great.
Modern GW doesn't. Way back in the day, you could substitute a can of coke for a dreadnought and no one would bat an eye. These days, no such laxity. I remember taking my Salamander army to a GW shop and it being perfectly chill. Within the last decade or so, they want you in their shops to buy as much as possible and as soon as they've extracted every cent or penny they could get from you, they're practically kicking you out the door till you have more money to spend.
Really well done explaining the context of the situation and where you went wrong. You’re a role model for self reflection and taking on new information, more people should do what you do in this video
Long time 40k player who runs exclusive Slaanesh just so I could have my bright pink ladies charge across the field and take apart all those grim dark big boys. The game really needs more female representation and I am overall glad to see it, but you make some solid points on how we discuss the matter and taking the time to address not just the issue but how we communicate is both classy and a net gain for positive discourse on the internet. Thanks for that!
He didn't say people don't or don't enjoy doing it, just that it's not the best way to go about it. But you're welcome to make your stand and I support your ability to make that choice. Go forward brave keyboard soilder *salute
There is a modern coloqualism in my language and it best translates to "Man of Honor" or technically to gentleman but that does not quite grasp the concept, that is you.
In my experience, having an argument has always been 'kill or be killed' because nobody starts one thinking to themselves, "right, I'mma make my point as a way to educate people and if I'm wrong, I will allow them to educate me". People's egos are too big for that. So now, even if I wanna be civilised, I can't. And if the only way you argue is by verbally brutalising people, at some point that becomes the only way you can argue.
Thats the issue with anonymity on the internet, most people who argue agressively like that on yt etc would never have the courage (or stupidity) to do so to a strangers face. If one has to fear no real consequences to their actions people tend to go overboard sadly.
@@Gnarfendorf Not even anonymity , there is a lot of people who have their names and work known and still behave like baboos but like you said the lack of in person interaction w
unfortunately it is the majority of arguments made in the modern age and likely throughout history, the whole "us vs them", "right vs left" etc. It's because to be wrong is an uncomfortable thing, they hold their opinion too personally and if you differ from their opinion it is seen as a personal attack on them. From what I've seen/heard it's because most people can't see how taking on criticisms to themselves or their opinions can potentially shape them into a better person. Plus even those that can process arguments or debates positively are still human and can make mistakes
Idk if its the same for everyone else but for me the learning part comes after the argument has happened, when you've settled down and thought about it for a bit. While in the argument you are making your best case. Not all arguments are useful, infact I think most probably aren't useful these days. But as Josh said, when its an isolated conversation/argument it becomes way more civilized. Idk if its performative as Josh says but I think in a public setting you're way more on guard and you're not willing to drop your guard when in a mass group of people. In a private conversation you are more readily going to drop your guard and listen/know you'll get your piece in too and have time to evaluate the conversation.
Look at this tourist, saying women need more rep in a game they won't play. Lets list all of the factions that have women in them: Sisters of Battle, Sisters of Silence, Adeptus Mechanicus, Astra Militarum, Imperial Knights, Chaos Daemons, Chaos Knights, Aeldari, Drukhari, Tyranids, T'au Empire, Genestealer Cults List of armies with only men: Leagues of Votann, Space Marines, Orks, Chaos Space Marines. Wow with 12 factions with women in and only 4 without, then women should be lining the block to play tabletop wargaming right? No they are not, GW ended up doing the Signified joke of changing a restaurant into a Pakistani restaurant and thinking it was a good idea. Restaurant went out of business, the owner cursing Signified. GW:"You said if I made 40K woke, I'd get female costumers where are they? My stock is tanking, I'm losing them all."
yea this is how you know alot of the vocal people for this are either disingenuous liers too in their political echo chambers and or new bloods who dont know much about the lore and the tourists coz its trendy to be into "nerd" things these days. And the fact with female space marines and custodes they would look and act no diff then the males so whats the actual point other then tick boxing and pandering to these train seals clapping coz they think their side stuck it to the chuds lol. Its like the popular kids that used to give us shit for liking 40k/nerd stuff back in the day are now in our spaces taking it over and telling us we are doing it wrong basically lol.
This should just be the normal way of thinking. Not many people really want to sit and reflect to own up, just generally, but you did it without really anyone telling you that you should. You lead a path most dont take, but should.
I personally hate "do better" because it seems to only be used now to imply that you doing better would be adopting my stance because it's better than yours.
Think about the implications if female Custodes really had existed for 30 years of storytelling covering 10,000 in game years, and not one of them had ever done anything consequential enough to notice. That is a staggering amount of accidental chauvinism. You would have to be one of the most exceptional women that ever lived to make the cut, and then spent the next 10 Millenia just being completely overshadowed by men. What an insult.
I was able to catch the original clip and in it was a, imo, very good way of articulating a position I like about the usage of the word "woke". It was along the lines of by saying woke you are not bringing a point about a specific someone forcing changes along the lines of their ideology and forcing these changes, using the word woke is a shorthand to something, this is where my memory fails and i'd like to find that again because it resonated with me.
I appreciate your even take on this. "It's always been like this" is just how GW does a lot of retcons and this is a minor one all things considered. No specific lore existed saying it wasn't possible, and GW authors had been trying to include female Custodes for a long time now. They were told no because the brand new model line was already made as all male. I understand people's dissatisfaction but I think people would have been unhappy regardless of how GW handled it. People hated Primaris and they had massive new lore to justify their existence. GW catches flak either way. I think it's a positive change.
oh frig this again... okay. Someone here who doesn't like the idea of women custodes. I don't because much like the dynamic of sisters of battle and Space Marines, the Custodes had a different but somewhat akin dynamic with the sisters of silence. the Custodes represent in the battlefield the height of brute physical and melee force. few can throw down like they can, but they often work in tandem with the Sisters of Silence, who's powers provide a great shield against the warp and powers that stem from it. think of it as a body/mind combo. it was like a two halves thing they had going on in multiple themes because of one being a brotherhood and the other being a sisterhood. that's gone now. instead of an expansion to the sisters, we get women custodes. "they were there the whole time" makes it worse because now not only has one element of the prior dynamic with the sisterhood vanished, but now they have to scramble to invent women custodes who've been there that whole time. it's a group who gets more names the more they've done of worth, and they have to catch up for the i think decades the custodes have been named in real life. the rest of the response GW put out was bad, but i really want to highlight something that specifically got under my skin, which was the people who defended this in two ways. one was the "muscle mommy" defense, which really made people look like they were into the idea because a fetish was retconned in as a possibility for them in setting instead of staying a fan creation. the second was the "the lore is fluid. it's all meant just to sell models!" people. the first group i feel doesn't need further comment. the second though? I think it's very concerning when ex writers as much as players thought hammering the "lore basically doesn't matter" is a good defense. Yes, GW retcons a LOT, Necron Retcon is my go-to example, but often the retcons had notable possible expansions to the story being told. as much as i had to square the Necron Retcon, it opened up a number of directions for necrons to take, giving them new subfactions and a number of characters from it. to me this one hurts more than it helps, and they have to play catch up to break even because of how. there wasn't even a model to sell, which is out of character for GW. but back to "lore basically doesn't matter". What else am i supposed to think when a change like this happens with no effort put in? Id still be mad it happened because of them bypassing the sisters of silence getting screen time and the dynamic hit, but they could have made it that as of now they are accepting women. state a reason, write a book series about a girl becoming a custodian, anything instead of "they were always here. deal." it's another one out of a multitude of retcons to varying degrees where you eventually have to ask yourself if they respect the setting. and thus the follow up question occurs- if I they don't, why should i care about them and their changes? Tabletop gaming isn't cheap, and GW has secured a harsh lock-in on their playerbase between group requirements, time commitments, and monetary cost. to me, without the story being handled with respect, all that's left is batches of overpriced plastic that's relative quality to me is let down by design decisions I can't stand, and rulesets that are often called out for being a mess. im reminded of how the company handled warhammer fantasy. im reminded of waiting nearly a decade personally for plastic sisters of battle (and i know others waited longer), breaking early from waiting, buying metal ones, only to balk at the cost of the plastics because they didn't wind up much cheaper at all to my recollection, while the poster child factions got new models all the time. I think about GW's litigious nature. because with the setting losing weight due to the next retcon being right around the corner and the only question being where, all thats left is a company I had issues with from the start, but i liked the setting enough to stomach them. when i saw people countering this Custodes change's dislikers going "well, they also just shut down these AOS factions, you should be mad about that too!" or "look what they did to the indomitus crusade? are you mad at that?" the answer is yes, I also didn't like any of that, but citing that or the multiple recent price raises GW has as being "worse" does not help the situation. it's all making various cases that people need to reexamine whether their love of GW's currently held properties is worth paying GW for what they have done with them lately, especially since models, model ranges, and lore that may have gotten you interested is all subject to change since it's all so "fluid" and "there's no real truth". for me? it isn't, and frankly already wasn't.
Let's be real, Female Representation isn't really "lacking" it just isn't front and center all the time. Imperial Guard is just Humans thus has a lot of Both Male and Female Characters in Lore, Many of the most Powerful Eldar are Women and they have entire Armies within them that are Women centric like Banshees, Dark Eldar have very much on equal footing like the Eldar with many Female and Male units, Tau are in Combat Armour a lot which covers the fact that they are very much a mixture of both male and female. Sisters of Battle do exist as you said. SIsters of Silence are also an All Female sect. Many of the Assassins sects have very high Female recruitment. etc etc. People that say Female representation is "severely" lacking are being disingenuous
ngl, when I hear 'do better,' I penta-quadruple down. Tbh, I'm not into Warhammer at all, but in other media inclusion initiatives have almost always felt patronising.
"Do better" is, separated from context, meaningless. It can be incredibly valid or just outright stupid and toxic, depending on what the specific issue is.
@@OrbObserver No, I agree. It's incredibly childish and patronizing thing to say, "do better" is. There are so many better ways to say that that don't make you come across like a twerp.
I honestly don't care about retconning lore, as long as it's an improvement and not done to pander. This comes across as only pandering and shitting on the fans, calling people incels for wanting to preserve the lore they have grown to love and the space they have been in for a long time. It's frustrating and annoying for fans to have todays social politics come in and make downgrades and change things for what is seemingly no reason, in a space they have been loyal to and existed in. This is when gatekeeping actually becomes valuable. As fans we have seen many of our beloved stories, spaces and fandoms get shit on in the name of inclusivity and progress. I'm all for everyone being invited that wants to be there, that is interested in being there and that will be respectful. Things change, they evolve and that's okay, lets just do it the right way so we can invite new awesome people into those fandoms but also preserve why we have loved to be in that fandom for so long.
Man i hope the strong positive response you're getting from the minority that are watching this outways the jargon coming from the potential hate you're forseeing. This workd needs spaces like this, where being wrong or having different opinions isnt a death sentence but rather a chance to communicate and understand. Hats off to you and very well put
I'll say this. I don't think there's any ill intent coming from people who enjoy the traditional gender role aesthetic and want to live out that fantasy through a game. 40K isn't for my tastes at all, but I do have over a thousand hours in Team Fortress 2, and I don't think it's a coincidence that all the mercs in that game are male. And it's not because of some evil reason. I wouldn't want them to change TF2's vision just to give women representation, it would change the vibe of the game. Recently, I've played a game called Rabbit & Steel which only contains female bunny characters. I believe Touhou also only has female characters. It's a part of the aesthetic. You don't see men begging for male representation in those games, that would be annoying.
That's because you don't have to scour games for characters that are like you. Games with female protagonists are a rarity, and often done solely for men to ogle (see: Stellar Blade). So no, men aren't begging for inclusion, because they're already considered the default.
@@yoyopron (Edited) You know what? There is no way to respond to this without sounding like a jerk, because your comment is made in bad faith and you're playing the victim, on top of using the eye for an eye mentality. There is so much wrong here, that it's basically like responding to bait.
I never played the victim. I simply gave you facts: most video game protagonists are male, and men don't need to look hard to find representations of themselves. Female protagonists exist, but they are much less common. The idea that men aren't asking for inclusion in one of the rare all-female games is a false equivalency. But given that you're intent to assign ill intent, that's really all I have to say about this.
@@yoyopron You should never demand that artists include you in media for which you were not the intended target audience. There is never going to be a world where each and every piece of media includes people of every type. Your post implies that you won't stop until you achieve this, but that would rob people of their artistic freedom (and make everything feel the same). Target audiences are not an evil concept. People are free to make what they want to make, for whatever audience they intend to please. So when outside factors cause that to change, don't be surprised when the original audience decides to pack their bags and leave.
When I hear "Do better, improve" what I actually hear is "I dont like what you did but cant explain why its wrong so I'm going to say these cult like phrases to try and shame you into doing what I want to signal to my fellow cultists that I am on their side"
I feel like it’s used in the same way that someone would use “should” - ie: it’s this genuinely coercive and malicious word that reeks of subtle manipulation.
Yeah, I feel that there is a stark divide between the definition Josh laid about about the phrase's content and the context of it's actual use. It's not used as advice, it's used as quote/unquote "subtle" attempt at owning someone and at signaling your comparative righteousness.
Saying "Do better" or "be better" is not only self-righteous and arrogant, but counter-productive. Lead by example, not by berating people. You can't fight fire with fire, nor hate with hate; it's like trying to to clear ripples from a pond by throwing rocks.
The Adeptus Custodes has only been a faction for 7 years. They were only ever background characters prior to them becoming one. For at least 5 of those years, influential people within GW have been trying to include female members. This is a known fact, we have the receipts. The reason why they were pushing for female Custodians was simple: "Why not? There's no good reason not to have them." GW has always, *always* pushed for more sex diversity in 40k. They wanted to do female space marines back during Rogue Trader (40k 1st edition), but stockists refused to keep the models they released on the shelves. In the lore at the time, these women were not part of the space marine chapters, but they were functionally identical and acted as a police force that kept even said space marine chapters in line, according to the decrees of the Adeptus Ministorum. These would eventually become the Sisters of Battle we know today 10 years later, at the tail end of 40k 2nd edition's lifespan. I don't see how GW's response to the inclusion of female custodians is condescending. I think you have to read into it too much to reach that conclusion. Female Custodians were always there because the Emperor invented them, and he's been trapped on the Golden Throne for 10,000 years not inventing things. Female Custodians *HAD* to have always been there. As for the model range, unlike the Sisters of Battle and Sisters of Silence, Custodians don't wear that ridiculous boobplate. There's no telling the sex of the person under the armour until they take it off, and we haven't seen a Custodian out of their armour since Custodians were depicted dressing like the Pillar Men from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.
@@Grubnar The hips on Custodian armour are also universally wide enough to accommodate female hips. As is the case with all armour through the ages that wasn't purely ornamental.
Change for the sake of change isn't always the best. 'Representation' has been a devious ploy of many activists whose interest is only to further their opinions despite the harm they do to the cohesion of whatever they are trying to insert themselves in. You can't possibly tell me that there are legitimate lore reasons that female Custodes should be present in the story of 40k. It just doesn't make sense. 40k is a story which you MAY or MAY NOT like as it is, it's your goddamn prerogative. You're not allowed to change it nonsensically though to serve your personal needs or sense of 'Inclusion'. We as 40k fans have seen the despair & dread, similar scenarios have played out in other fantasy entertainment brands and we are not likely to let eager busybodies to destroy our little corner of peace & enjoyment in an ever increasing crazy world. The EMPEROR protects.
So what threat does a woman custode pose to your little corner, as you call it? I don't get it. I don't get how it doesn't make sense. Can you give me a logical reason?
@@BardianAngel Besides having no lore explanation to take a decision of inserting something like that in the canon (which I would be happy for you to provide)? Besides of building up nonsense instead of supporting already existing female units in the game (SoS, SoB & IG and that's only the Imperium)? How on earth can I not approve of such attitude for my well beloved escapism corner?
@@aephea_3711 "Just say you hate women and black people it's a lot more simple" The only people who clearly hate women and black people are you since you apparently can not stop treating them like children who needs to be cater too.
@@farnball1 No lore explanation for why women would join the custodes? Why does there need to be lore for women to exist? This is why you're in a corner.
"Female representation within W4K has often been lacking" Yeah, imagine a story about factions waging a genocidal war surprisingly lacking female representation... i mean, if you look at all the female battalions fighting on the Ukrainian front, then you instantly understand why it is a problem... right? /sarcasm_off
Also huge respect on this. This is the kind of standard i try to push myself towards, but its so easy to slip down that slippery slope because youre just so into the moment and the huff and puff of the argument. We should all do better, and this simply existing is a reminder, atleast to myself, that there is lots more work to be done on how i go forwards.
You are given them too much grace, they mock, belittle, review bomb, spit on others daily on the internet and they act as brigades. If you give them too much grace, they feel validated in the harassing they do regularly on other people and creators online. And It is going on from so many years I am personally tired of having the moral high ground with those people.
I dont see the problem 40k beeing a male doninated hobby. I mean, do we have to make a remake of despreate house wifes, that fokuses more on the male characters and add more action to get men to watch the thing. Cant bois have their toys, while girls have teirs and if one enjoys the other, they enjoy it because of what it is, not despite of it. This whole discussion was as loud as it was for a reason and i hope all involved partys learned their lessons and dont try something like this again. Gate keep or be gatekept.
"Representation has been lacking in 40K" Yeah, and that's perfectly great. Not everything has to be diverse, Josh. Not everything has to be inclusive. In fact, many hobbies, clubs, and organizations only retain their uniqueness and their desirable culture by NOT embracing DEI nonsense. You do not need to force men and women into every hobby to satisfy some twisted desire for "social justice".
Well done, Josh. Much respect. Wasn’t there for the original video, but this seems like a healthy way to resolve it. For the record, there is also female representation in the Imperial Guard, the Tau, the Eldar and Dark Eldar, the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Inquisition, and the Legio Assassinorum. By far, there are more factions WITH representation than without. But I fall into the camp of not liking HOW they included women into the Custodez, not THAT they did it. For a franchise so focused on it’s developing lore over multiple decades, it really is a slap in the face. I can think of five compelling reasons to start recruiting females that don’t involve a bs retcon.
This is why i love josh man. He is so damn wise and humble. Few people would make a video like this and adress their mistakes without seeking people to feel bad for you.
"Do better" is something that I can only see as a meme from a B-tier Marvel movie that people took as a line to use in real life for the "cool" factor 😂
It is, it's an incredibly smarmy way of being holier than thou to people and writing off their concerns or arguments without giving them any kind of faith.
@@Sujad Can't take people seriously if they think that highly of themselves and so little of others, two words that tell me someone isn't worth talking to
To me it was really the insult of the "they have always been there" lie. No, GW, they haven't. Your lore specifically stated, that they were not. Change it, idk, but have the balls to say "we changed this."
Why does everyone say "it's a male dominated hobby" or "male dominated (area/job/whatever" like that's a bad thing, I haven't seen a single person pushing for more men in female dominated areas that wasn't in direct response to something else.
Perhaps the issue is that women do not feel welcome in male dominated hobbies whereas the reverse is more welcoming. No one said male dominated is a bad thing in this video, but claims of it being bad need to be heard in context to see what the actual meaning is.
@@seifer447 You serious? A woman will generally be warmly welcome into any male dominated space (although awkwardly so if you're entering a space filled with awkward nerds) as long as she displays competency/knowledge and that she isn't trying to change what it is to something else. A man will in general be mercilessly mocked and treated as less of a man in the opposite case ("What are you? A woman?").
@seifer447 The irony is that strong arming change into male dominated spaces is only going to reinforce the biases and reasoning behind why they don't welcome females into them. It turns into "see, this is why we gatekeep" so it becomes a nasty endless cycle.
As someone outside the drama and outside W40k, I do wonder if the line 'they have always been there's is less of a 'why haven't you noticed them' and is more of a lore out. Like from my basic knowledge of this isn't the lore treated as basically mythology? If we found extra books relating to the bible or Greek mythology or something, it's possible it could change our entire understanding of cannon events of those kinds of things. So could it not just be a way of saying if more information pops up, don't be surprised? Not to dismiss the condescending tone the creators might have come across as, just offering another way of thinking about it. Also great vid about online discourse!
I mean, finding out old things about ancient civilisations and reading lore made up by many writers today isn't the same though, I have no horse in that race whatsoever as I really don't care much for that franchise but this kind of argument always feels dishonest, implicit world building is a thing and if a world is written in a certain way for decades you can't write it differently all of a sudden, if you want to make an exception you have to talk about it or else it really won't make much sense
Oh for 40k things like this isn't new with changes to lore. I'd recommend Bricky's video "here's your golden opinion." People just wanted to hop on a bandwagon because it's what gets clicks and views.
It was just phrased badly. There's no established lore reason why Custodes couldn't be female. Unlike Space Marines, that do have such a lore reason. A rather silly one, but hell, much of the lore is rather silly. But GW had never a female Custodes so it was a new idea out of universe even if there was no reason it had to be in-universe. And the statement people keep referring to, deliberately or otherwise, ended up implying otherwise. Of course you also get plenty of folks scared of girl cooties in their macho hobby but so it goes.
So, warhammer player here. There are a couple of things here that are worth noting. It is a lore out BUT, it's the laziest possible one and it's a very hard gaslight. They could have said "Hey, we wanted to add female custodes, so from now on we are gonna treat as if they were always there" and that already would have been a hell of a step up. There were a crap ton of way better cheap alternatives to add them to the lore. There are already easily established thing that they could have done to introduce them that would not only have been less infuriating but actually cool. The lore already has established that whole factions get lost in the immaterium and re appear millenniums later somewhere. We could have had a cool book about a secret order of custodes that got lost in the immaterium and the fight to get back, that could have been a female order that had some secret tech that allowed women to survive the process, or maybe female custodes are just rare and have this cool power and that why they were all together in a mission. The point is there were a crap ton of easy alternatives that were way better than "there were always there you bigot". As it did it only feels like inclusion cuota.
Honestly genuine respect for being able to say “I belittled them and I shouldn’t have done that.” I think it’s so easy to not even realize you’ve done it when you get caught up in the moment. Yet another reason Josh is a good role model
It really really is. I hold myself to an impossible standard, and even i still fuck this simple thing up time and time again. Huge respect for Josh. We should all do better.
the original clip wasn't up for very long, maybe 2-3 hours?
@@matrixcom69 I saw most of it and I left a comment on one of his older vids just telling him to pump the brakes and I knew what approach he was AIMING for but not only was he missing it but that he was wading into something he needed to get better informed about first. Props to him for him taking a step back to have a better take and apologizing for his (likely unintended) tone and commentary towards the people he was trying to meet on respectful ground. (and unfortunately unintentionally failing miserably lol.) I have massive respect for him to take a step back and take responsibility for his original approach. Even if I disagreed with his original opening view, disagreements are fine. It was the execution of the disagreement in this case that had real issues.
Now he must go stand in the naughty corner for 30mins
Only nerds and redditors hate the superior chad homenim argument
The real drama is how Josh killed Tera.
let us never forget 😔
singlehanded.....effortless
Ill never forget or forgive
Can't wait for the reaction to the reaction to the reaction that restarts 4 times
My friend studies to become PR, he is also big Warhammer fun (unlike me, I have zero input on that, so sorry, if miss say something). So I asked him about that topic, because he has both professional and personal connection to it.
So, the dry summary:
- The idea itself is not bad, the modifications(?) done to those soldiers, that gender should not be that influential as in IRL. Also its sci-fi to a ridiculous degree.
BUT
- they did this after ignoring female-based fractions for many years, so it comes of very unnatural
- retrospectively changing lore is always a shaky part, that needs to be handled with care. Like giving something cool for fans from that change. But they just shoved in that change and did nothing. Like adding a cool character that manged to get into the troops, despite it being hard (like Josh said).
- "It always been that way" is insulting both to those, who want to preserve lore as much as possible and to those, who wanted the change like that for a long time
- The brutal nature of Warhammer lays good reasons for in-lore sexism (and other -isms as I understand it). By itself its not reason enough to straight up deny female custodians(?), but it should've been addressed in a way it makes sense within general lore.
- the way PR handled it is so unprofessional , that even junior PR-in-taring should be able to do it better
-- Insulting fans for caring about franchise
-- Forcing a divide between fans, forcing yourself in position, where you need to take side and inevitably loosing customers
-- no damage control. The opposite fueling the fire
-- they never addressed the main point of most emotional fans about fear that it all can lead to loss of Warhammer's brutality by smoothing all edgy corners and making it "socially acceptable", when one of the main appeal of franchise is that is the opposite
The part of the in-lore sexism is kind of debatable as far as I'm aware. The fact the sisters of battle exist and that the actual military of almost all factions with genders do use women make that point very moot. Astra Militarum, Eldari, Tau all have female warriors, the Chaos, Tyranid, Necron and Ork don't have genders so it is irrelevant for them.
Speaking from someone who absolutely has no idea about PR, but sometimes I think GW actively encourages dividing the fanbase. Sort of a divide and conquer type of mentality. Then again, I seriously doubt many people at GW are actually good at PR
@ponytoast1231 the males are nearly always physically stronger. I csn point to numerous books, where the sister of battle say this about space marines. Yes they both have power armor, but only 1 can lift a tank with their own muscles, while the other can't. The females in the lore are always psyker strong OR anti psyker. They are never physically stronger. Sexism exist but out if necessity of survival. The only female commander for the Tau was taught BY A MAN, and even then she needs the most advance armor and uses "stealth" to overcome her own physical weakness. Almost all Daemons on 40k take on male Masculinity.
I'm not against any of this, because it makes sense. Wokeness is a cancer on the reality of the world. Weakness using emotional manipulation to gain strength and force people to conform to ideology.
@@ponytoast1231 Sisters of battle exist because the ecclesiarchy was banned from having a male fighting force. It's essentially a faction that exists entirely because of a loop hole in the law.
Sisters of Silence is a better example of an all-female faction that exists entirely on its own merits.
@@TyphusVonElder Sisters of battle are not genetically modified, no shit they are weaker than Space marines.The point is that the faction exists so they are not trying to keep women out of combat. There is 2 named female Tau commanders, that doesn't change anything to the fact they are common in the actual fighting force so they are not excluded. For Chaos, chaos space marines are obviously males, but the daemons themselves are not gendered, except maybe Slaanesh in which case they are hermaphrodites. Daemons don't reproduce and are created from the warp, not gendered reproduction or organs. Even the Daemon princes that were turned from a human are not gendered since female human that were turned are also considered princes.
Physical strength is pretty irrelevant when you have guns that melt people or atomize them with tanks, planes, artillery and orbital bombardment and your enemies are monsters with way more strength than any normal human male or female.
An internet personality taking accountability and admitting they made mistakes? This is why Josh is my favorite creator to watch. Feels good to support a legit good person.
Yeah indeed. Not like the usual streamers or youtubers that gaslight the viewers
i dont see any need for me to make my own post when this guy is basically pulling words out of my head and writing them for me.
Not the first time for Josh, and likely not the last :^)
His response to criticism makes Josh easy to like. His unending barrage of dad jokes make Josh easy to be annoyed by.
His entire argument still boils down to _"Stop _*_*wanting*_*_ a male dominated space, this HAS to change because it's current year"._ That's not a lore argument, and it doesn't work with the Mechanical-Aesthetic of what draws people into collecting the figures either. This is something a "sexual equality" advocate would NEVER say to shows like "the View", Real Housewives, or Taylor Swift fans.
4 minutes in and im like "i missed the drama, what the fuck did you say?"
i didnt catch the full video it got taken down as i watched but some of the stuff i can muster to remember is "i hire the best person for the job if that happens to be a woman so be it" and it was a back and forth with "dave" who was on team no female custodes
Essentially, Josh has no problems with there being female custodes in the Warhammer universe. I thought he was pretty respectful and he swayed my opinion, but there were a lot of people that he offended with the clip, which I can also understand. This all lead to a ton of backlash and hatred thrown his way and no productive conversation was happening, so he removed it.
Same here 😂
@@cruisinagain1698 I don't understand why Josh would need to apologize for having that opinion.
He pointed out that GW has made many canon-breaking choices in the past with 40k, like making the Primarchs into the children of the Emperor, so this Custodes decision is really par for the course as far as GW goes.
I am Commander Shepard and this is my favorite clip on the Citadel.
I have come here to have a nuanced civilized discussion.
Are you a calm and reasonable person?
Oh you gonna get calm nuanced civilized discussions bucko
I'm hearing ya 👍
I believe in your ability to make society better.
"You gotta do better senator!"
"You can't attack someone into agreeing with you!" Words a lot of people need to hear these days.
You're absolutely correct. The problem is, people tend to be tribalistic by nature, and that's something we have to be more conscious of. As humans, we, out of all of the animal kingdom, are sapient enough to be able to kill some of our harmful urges, or at least stifle them to the point where we can function without resorting to base instinct. Though the way social media is set up, people tend to exist in echo chambers that only serve to enhance the worst parts of us. That's why we need to be more self aware of what we say and do.
You sort of can? You can't attack them into *agreeing* with you, but you can coerce them into submitting and cowering in fear. That's basically what all the modern ideology amounts to. Coercion and fear; and that's also why they never seem to be happy or content, because they know they always have to purge any visible disagreement and seek out total obedience, because there is no genuine consensus, only people pretending to agree to avoid negative consequences.
@@zeriel9148 They who?
You need to learn History if you think this is new.
Sadly, they won't
Does Warhammer really not have female representation? Or is it just the case, that you need to have VISIBILITY? Custodes and Marines are poster children of Warhammer for a few reasons, but the most important is economy. Custodes have the best cost to power ratio, so they are a good army to start playing with. Add to that the fact, that Cavill said he played Custodes and you have a recepe for a popular army.
It's all about the clout. Let's look at the armies.
Marines - all male
Custodes - all male
Orcs - agender
Necrons - agender
Tyranids - agender
Chaos - both male and female daemons
Guard - male and female humans
Eldar - male and female xenos
Dark Eldar - male and female xenos
T'au - honestly, not sure, but I assume there are both
Sisters of battle - all female
Sisters of silence - all female
So we have a lot of representation in different armies. What matters is the spotlight, the visibility, the virtue signalling associated with having females specifically and ONLY on a poster.
Then we have the gaslighting of "there were always female Custodes". Yeah? Where? Did any of them do anything of note? I mean... Besides trying to teleport a nuke to Emperor's Palace?
Well you see if they wanted to highlight Sisters of battle and Sisters of silence then they need to spend money and work for it. For my part I really like to hear form Sisters of silence POV.
At least in recent lore, necrons aren't entirely genderless. Male and female necrons do exist, especially amongst the higher echelons of necron society.
@@arnaktfen3937 Okay, good! Then we have even more representation. And on the CEO positions no less!
Okay so I'll start this by saying I think we're on the same train of thought here but getting off at different stations with our conclusions. When talking visibility there's often the issue of tokenism, for a long while sisters of battle could be considered a token female army because they were the only human army with female minis and got next to no support for a long time. This has been rectified in the fast few years with a glut of new kits, characters and novels thankfully. Sisters of silence on the other hand have 3.5 kits across 2 game systems... And all lore appearances have them attached at the hip to custodes or space Marines. GW hasn't given them the chance to shine on their own and on that I think everyone can universally agree. Unfortunately for the mixed gender armies listed, outside of the xenos ironically (because yes necrons are also mixed gender and have gender identities, they just use uniform bodies) the imperial and chaos armies had no female minis and very little female characters in lore. This is also being recently rectified to reflect the stated mixed gender status with female sculpts in kits (new guardsmen kit, cultists for chaos, etc.) and some women taking leading roles in stories tho. This recent trend is essentially GW putting their money where their mouth is when they said these factions are mixed gender for years. The one that bucks that trend is custodes, funny enough that you brought up their status as an entry level army because they share the same qualities that they marked out for stormcast when they designed the entry level AOS army (small model count, minimal skin showing, lots of metallics, helmet options for everything). I think they may be realizing what everyone else has about custodes being beginner friendly but they've made their bed with space Marines. On principle I'm not against Fenske custodes, I think they open up new avenues for character writing given the wider range of activities custodes get up to compared to marines. The twitter response however was taking a torch to icarus' own wings. With the drama dying down now however, we need to wait and see what they manage to do with it in the next year or two to really judge the value of the retcon. If ADB can write something good with this opportunity then it'll be worthwhile in my books at least.
99.9% of the people complaining about representation don't even play the game. They see some art of hyper-masculine Space Marines or see someone else playing an all-male army and think "Hmm, how can I weaponize my own insecurities into this hobby that I don't even like." This is why gatekeeping isn't always a bad thing, because there are actually bad actors out there who like to enter other people's spaces with the intent of changing and essentially ruining them. I wish that wasn't the case, but its just the world we live in now.
Frankly, even a silly explanation like "Yeah the Emperor woke up from death for 30 seconds, shout 'Muscle Mommies!', made femstodes a thing with psyker bullshit and died again" would be better than a random retcon like they did. The Warhammer universe can be whacky enough that you can slot that lore in. Just put the effort in.
Also:
>Adds female custodes
>Nerfs custodes
What did GW mean by this?
Yeah, this was basically my take on it. It wasn't so much that they changed the long standing lore. GW has every right to change the lore in the universe they created. It was how they went about it and the PR disaster afterwards that annoyed most people. They could have put out any number of little lore tidbits from "long lost records were discovered" or "the research into Primaris marines also resulted in the discovery of ancient techniques" or any number of things. Just saying "it's always been this way" and then literally insulting everyone who even asked why is not the best way to go about things. :P
The best (or worst) part is how stupid easy it is to introduce into the canon as well
"By the will of the gods, they hath spoken - from this day forth, our empire shall invoke the might of every being - regardless of gender. Let this be THE REIGN OF
...THE WARHAMMER"
They where never nefed. They're bad in the meta. Melee is bad in the meta, Chaos is only able to get away with it because it's got the units. Custodes are all big single unit hero dudes who get swarmed.
from now on that explanation is gonna be canon for me :D dont care what others say that is just gold.
they meant they wanted to distract people from their garbage codex and the fact that they where going to raise the prices of models again. So they decided to distract everyone with female custodes.
This right here is why Josh is one of my favorite content creators. Self reflection is scarce these days when it comes to online debates.
You're a good man. Thank you for being noble and sharing this way of handling a complex situation.
I didnt watch the other clip, but this one is great. Its extremely difficult to take a step back and adjust your opinion. Its even harder to admit being wrong or when you make mistakes. Great video.
I'm actually annoyed at the speed and quantity of comments made by buttpic-bots that keeps popping up in the comments section.
We're not bots. We just really want buttpics.
See? TH-cam comment section can be a place for civilized discussion!
Anyone i disagree with is a bot.
@@suchaone6395but there literally is a wide spread “issue” of bots copy pasting existing comments on a video to appear real, and everyone of them has some half naked woman in the profile pic and suspicious links in the account info.
It's crazy, and the comments frequently get hundreds of likes, from others of their ilk no doubt.
While you could see it as patronizing to women who would want to enter the hobby, it is more patronizing to the women who are already.
This!!!! Its just insulting to actual women in this hobby. There is also incredibly important all women factions in universe they keep ignoring....
@@derigel7662 I want sister of battle mutli-pose kits, the mono-poses make me sad.
I'd like an all female guard regiment too, in the lore they do exist.
@@CassieRoseX89X all i can give yea is female custodes lol. I wish the all female stuff did get love insead of just hamfisting it.
@@derigel7662 I do hope they keep space marines as just guys though, i don't want female versions of every faction just the ones it makes sense for.
@@CassieRoseX89X ......those are some dangerous thoughts you are having.
The issue I have with the discussion is that there IS female representation in 40k, already present, in large number... In the lore. With 0 changes needed, there is tons! But we don't see any of that on the tabletop. There are tons of female inquisitors, tons of female assassins, tons of female rogue traders, tons of female guard of every rank, a dedicated faction, tons of female eldar, tons of female tau (the top caste tau is female even), etc etc etc. How much of that is represented on the tabletop? Well... Basically Shadowsun (leader of the tau empire forces), a few female eldar, Callidus assassins, and sisters of battle.
I am not asking for female space marines or female custodes, because I do not think it will add anything valuable to the lore or tabletop and conflicts with established canon. I am asking for female guard, which canonically exist, in massive number. I am asking for rogue traders with fieldable armies who are female (and can have power armor!). I am asking for female inquisitor models, since some of the most well known inquisitors (Amberly Vale) is female and often fights in power armor.
Every time there is a decent groundswell going for female guard or anything, it gets drowned out by people who don't seem to actually care about the setting all that much yelling about "BUT WHAT ABOUT FEMALE ASTARTES!" At this point, the dedicated fans of the hobby have had to deal with female astartes so many times that any token female insertion will piss them off. For anyone who wants to see more female representation in tabletop, female astartes (and now custodes) is a poison pill guaranteed to make it harder to get ANY female units.
You know what would be interesting and fun? How about, instead of female custodes or female astartes, we ask for female arbites? Arbites are a super fun faction, there are women in it, and they get basically no love in tabletop. I'd love to see a set of arbites vs cultists, or arbites vs genestealers, or something like that. Have that be a fun thing.
Tbf, a lot of this stuff could also be levelled against the persistent issue of the massive over-representation of Astartes - especially Ultramarines - more generally. An outsider looking in could very easily think that 40k is only about the blue boys when it’s really not. Especially if they get in through RPGs like Rogue Trader or Dark Heresy whereby the desire to play as an Astartes will be met with “No. Would you like to be a Sister of Battle instead?”
@@Nikelaos_Khristianos which is why i want more non-astartes factions to be given center stage. Cause yes, they are pushed way too hard. And myself and no girl i know who is into the hobby likes them (tho some like CSM's). Hell, you go into a store and you'd think there are no women ever on the battlefield, going off their mini's.
@@Nikelaos_Khristianos True for GWs tabletop marketing push, but for the TTRPGs... I mean, without splatbooks nobody play a marine in RT nor DH at all, closest in power would be Imperial Psyker. Even with extra sources, with the classic options that arent outright merging the (doubled stats) Deathwatch game into are the Sisters, either of the Ork options and the Herektek/Heretek variant for Techpriest as far as raw power lore wise (and tabletop side for the first and last) without highly variable items.
@@ANDELE3025 The latter half of your comment is basically how a DM would mechanically approach the desire to be an Astartes. They’d try and figure out, “What role does the player want to fill?” And then work from there - though it does require the DM to explain why they’re suggesting that the player picks a Tech-Priest to start off with, for example, to later become something like a Heretek. They’re assuming they’re wanting to play as a tank, but DH in my experience tends to be a more fun game if you’re working from the basis of a character, not a role nor a class necessarily. I think “who do you want to be?” Rather than “what do you want to be?” Is a more interesting question from a role-play perspective - even though some would argue that’s “just semantics.”
The issue is 40k is, at the end of the day, about Space Marines. It's not about guardsmen or humans in general. It's focus is on the big dick Space marines and how big their dick is. That said you could just ignore marines and go with your own headcannon. That's kind of the beauty of 40k. The galaxy is a big place, and where Games Workshop fails, the fandom will pick up
Visa should have added the ukelele in post.
Man, i know i was one of the people who put forward polite reasoning because Josh responded to me with "very well put" and I'm just glad of a few things. Firstly, this respectful follow-up is a move of pure integrity and reason. Secondly, i'm just glad that among all the shouting, the reasonable comments were noticed. not to preach but to all those who shouted, i urge you to try the polite approach next time.
This encapsulates why i love josh so much. Sadly is not common to have the opinion of "attacking those who opose my view does nothing to facilitate understanding, only furthers the divide and its ultimately self-serving".
I vividly remember when he had a discussion with a guy blaming him for the death of tera. Not only he listened to him but also commended him for knowing a second language even if it wasnt very good at it. Thats how you treat people.
As a hardcore fan of the lore
It’s not *THAT* GW did it
It’s *HOW* they did it
Thanks to the meme comic and the “there always has been”, I’m only going to see Femstodes as Tzeench Daemons
The fucked up so bad with the "they were always there" comment. If they simply went out and said something like blablabla though times need more heroes can not only restrict ourselves to half the population or the custodes made a breakthrough and can now also make women into them. People would have taken it much better than whatever they actually did.
No, it's that they did it at all. Warhammer is a fantasy setting that calls on numerous tropes and real-world historical events to paint a picture. Among them is the ideal of the warrior monk from the crusades. Men of wealth and privilege who gave all of that up to go serve a higher purpose for God. It's a prominent theme in the Custodes and Astartes, so to just decide one day "nah, that theme is gone now," is insulting to the lore and the fans. Being Battle Brothers is a major part of the theme, and changing it to Combat Comrades is cringe.
It's just as bad of a change as if they retconned the Sisters of Battle (warrior nuns that serve the church because they're not allowed to have "men under arms") to include Misters of Battle. It's a change that ruins the lore, destroys the faction theme, and disrespects the fans no matter how it's done.
@@TheOneAndOnlyLUUUU 10.000 custodes, ~60 of them are named and who are male. That still leaves ~9.940 Custodes where 40% or 50% of them might be female.
It’s both to me, that and how
Instead of creating something cool and unique they forcefully shoehorned change into already established lore, and then acted like there wasn’t even a change made
This is not how to do it
We know you want that sweet sweet investment money that needs you to be more… “woke” so to say, but try to actually use your heads to make it fit more into the lore and the setting
Maybe like a illegal underground programs where fanatical women are trying to change themselves in some way to fight the xenos from the shadows, since they can’t do it publicly
Their approach feels lazy and tone deaf
I just don't get where all the "it's how they did it" people where when the Vothan were announced. Who knows maybe you where there but there seems to be a awful lot of new people who are also upset for exactly the same thing and who insist that it has nothing to do with what they did.
My friend and I have had a similar discussion over the Primaris release. We have both come to an understanding that while the sculpts look amazing, the way GW introduced them was the dumbest way they could have done it.
I looked into the lore behind it and have found myself less at odds against it, but my friend is working on building a Blood Angels force of pure firstborn.
I still think it's dumb that Cawl somehow had them all in some unknown closet on MARS for Omnissiah's sake... If there was ever a planet where EVERYTHING was catalogued, it would be the HQ of the Adeptus Mechanicus. So a closet full of almost-primarchs for every chapter and all the weapons and equipment to arm them seems like a massive oversight.
It would have been 100x better if they just said "we want to increase the scale for Spercs, all new ones will be bigger" and then have a far better in lore (maybe Cawl) reason for the new armour.
Cawl is just a problem character
You don’t understand the lore than. At all. Pls read more books. Local domain of arch-magos - his own sacred land, when only he- has the right to rule and do what he wants. If you have this domain on mars - showing how big your ba… cogitators.
@@UMTongocawl is the best character in lore after Dante.
@@BloodyArchangelus My frustration at it was largely because I had initially thought GW rolled out the Primaris with no in-universe conflict, I did the work to learn more about what changed between the Astartes and the Primaris. I actually found myself quite pleased when I found out there were members of the Imperium that didn't trust the Primaris at all. It largely mimicked the relationship and understanding that my friend and I shared. Even if I don't like the lore behind them, I still appreciate that there were things for me to learn about them.
I was wondering why that video was gone. Thank you for the explanation, Josh.
And so I said unto Visa, "Take it down."
I love how the thumbnail makes it look like Josh has glorious flowing hair on one side 😊
Reminds me of the time I accused someone of using ad hominem attacks instead of attacking my argument... seconds before my brain giving up and resorting to ad hominem attacks myself...
If they have no argument except attacking you… it’s not really ad hominem to do it back since that is their argument (attacking you) so the counter argument of that is to attack them back.
@@draketurtle4169actually the proper way would be to point out the ad hominen and not engage with them anymore in a genuine manner
If someone's argument is to insult you, there's no argument to be had
I think most of us have been there, unfortunately. Sometimes the offenders manage to push our buttons enough to get their way.
@@draketurtle4169 But that’s why ad hominems suck. They just engender completely cyclical ad hominem attacks that go absolutely NOWHERE. To the extent that I just don’t talk to someone if they turn every group discussion into an ad hominem. It just comes across as pathetic and childish.
Like, “I don’t like how this person speaks - so I’m going to attack the way that they speak” rather than what is actually being said.
Good on you for holding yourself to a high standard.
edit: I'm very excited for the upcoming ukulele apology song.
Of course the cheapest popular army gets it. I’d love for neglected factions to get new models. I love the sisters of silence design and lore. I’d love a proper model for a named character for them. Obviously I see now they’ll never get it because they’re not popular. I literally stopped building my custodes army. It’s the only way I can play sisters and clearly they’re going to get neglected. It’s the same feeling I got back when I played competitive league and overwatch. Clearly, I shouldn’t play the game if the feeling I got playing those games that made me quit, is popping up in Warhammer. I should have looked into how they go about adding models, the ancient eldar models should have been a clear warning to me.
>I see now they’ll never get it because they’re not popular.
The question here is, not popular by the player or by GW who can't seem to think they are a faction to expand upon.
Josh being way more good faith in this video than anyone who has unironically said "be better" or "do better."
bro, I love you and how you think about communication. Keep being an inspiration for people!
4:30 I see the people who had an issue with the way they were added, as, to put it as politely as I can, 'clueless normies.'
Female custodes are now part of the setting because activists have always been trying to shove their way into a controlling position in 40K so they can make it less targeted toward teenage boys, and more targeted toward a different audience. I have a huge, huge problem with this. Put simply, I wish very, very horrible things on the activists that are prosecuting this campaign, things I can't describe in detail if I want this comment to stay visible.
4:47 I can. I can absolutely deny that. There is, in fact, I would say, an _overrepresentation_ of women in 40K. Women are present in 40K stories to a highly unreasonable degree given the circumstances of the setting. However, you still have women in the Astra Militarum, you have the Sisters of Battle, the Sister of Silence, female members of the Inquisition, female Adeptus Mechanicus, and I could go on and on talking about _just_ the Imperium of Man, never mind the Xenos and Chaos factions.
That said, it would not be a problem if women _were not_ represented in 40K. Women don't need to be in everything.
4:58 That's a different statement than 'Warhammer 40K's female representation is lacking.' Yes, 40K is absolutely a male-dominated hobby, because women don't generally like wargames, or stories of the kind that feature in the setting that is the grim darkness of the 41st millennium. This is _also_ , not a problem.
5:36 To the women? What about the men? There has not been _a single custodian_ in the history of 40K, that has been female. We have tons of named custodes, none of them were ever female, _until_ the release of the 10th edition custodes codex. It's not 'patronizing,' _it's a lie_ . They're lying, to their fanbase, about the history of their own setting, for the sake of shutting people up. It's almost like they hate their own audience, like they don't _like_ the fact that 40K is male-dominated.
10:02 A reasonable response. Nobody has resources necessary to fight for every cause, and too many people are too eager to jump in without properly understanding a situation first.
Sounds like the classic, dont piss on my leg and tell me it's rain.
"i'm an old man" - you have at least 2 decades before you can play that card, young man!
my big problem with it, is that they try and shoehorn in female custodes in a way that's just straight up insulting to everyone, while they ignore the women only factions and don't have many if any women models for factions that are mixed. people love sos and sob and also a bunch of women from other factions. give us more and better women models along with cool women like shadowsun, lotara, tarasha, ect
My only response to the people who still have an issue is this: Squiqs used to be tyranids, now they're not. Just give it time.
You really are a great person Josh. This was a salve for the soul. Between you and jason thor hall i can finally feel like im listening to measured kind people who just want to make actual positive impacts for everyone. Thanks.
"I did something wrong. I belittled people who disagreed with me."
Instant sub. So many people refuse to acknowledge how doing that poisons the conversation, and even more refuse to admit wrongdoing when the fall into this tempting behavior.
The issue with anyone saying "Do better" isnt for example what Josh said it actually means - its for them to signal and make them look better, like "hey, you fucked up, I dont care why but do better, because it sounds cool" (exaggerated)
Its tough to take anyone saying "do better" seriously because they obviously arent saying that out of goodwill expecting some improvement
Additionally, the whole "I dont feel represented" by females is also kinda stupid because Males have always played female game series (i.e. Metroid - Samus, Tomb Raider - Lara Croft), and we have been doing it for years
These are female MCs in the games, representing females, the males didnt have any trouble adapting so why is this made such a fucking big deal?
When someone says ‘Do Better’ what they mean is ‘Do as my side commands.’
Josh, with this clip, is actually ‘Doing Better’
I mean, if all they are saying is "do better" sure..
But if people are explaining why something is wrong, and closing out with "do better" they are just expressing disappointment, likely in someone they felt respect for.
Like, I'm pretty sure I have used those words before when for example someone took a sponsorship with a genuine scam company that with 2 seconds of research they would have known was a well known scam.
Honestly, I think dismissing people wholesale over triggering phrases, or things that you see said by people and bullies who have no good meaning is a very dangerous game, and can lead to you becoming quite the dick sometimes.. and I say that with past experience of being a fairly spiteful person a long time ago.
@@uuu12343 representation is just the excuse a communist uses to gain power over something. Reality means nothing to these cultural locusts, they care about winning, and representation is one of those lies they abuse to break down mild-mannered old white males scared of being called out.
They've been abusing the word they invented, r*cist, for many decades now under the same pretenses. Far more people who aren't r*cist have been called r*cist, than actual bigots, i'd bet my house on it. This is merely a new front in the culture war against marxism, if you can't recognise that it is a war, you've already lost, and your enemy won.
@@it-s-a-mystery Certain groups on the internet have misused many words and phrases for malicious reasons for years now. So terms like "do better" have lost their weight in discourse or no longer have their intended meaning.
I hear ppl saying men and women need to work together there for female custodes. But they forget the sisters of silence that already do that.
the issue i see the fact that they didnt try to be like we need to open the hiring pool because of how rare they are but like always has been. same energy as there were only ever 9 primarks.
@@mryellow6918 i have no idea what you are talking about
And having female custodies doesn't take away from SoS, the SoS isn't just about being female but being blanks that cover the custodians against psychic threats there main point t isn't that they are female. Having female custodies takes literally nothing away from the SoS it isn't taking away troop options or lore relevance unless we start getting female psyker custodies the SoS still have complete relevance.
Clearly everyone forgot because nobody could hear them.
@@Zeverinsen sure, but every one could feel them when they are around.
I am the demographic they're trying to win over and i hate this. I'm a woman that really enjoys warhammer 40k, and i don't want the boys' toys, i have my own. My sisters of battle, inquisitors, Rogue traders, etc are WAY cooler than the custodes and marines. The problem isn't representation, it's being ignored. As a woman, this move made me honestly hate the direction this franchise is going. It's the wrong move. Insulting, demeaning, and stupid.
Appreciate the nuanced update! Much respect!
Thanks for owning your mistakes. That's the kind of role model folks need.
They also did the "it's always been there" with the Rogal Dorn Tank for the Imperial Guard so you kinda have to suspend your disbelief that this tank which was released a couple of years ago has been fighting for millenia on the side of the Imperium.
But how is that a problem?
I mean, they did the same with every additional faction. Like, when they introduced the Necrons, it was the largest "They've always been there" of all time.
@@Contevent lore says something cannot exists? no, we dont do that anymore.
No, you're confusing it with in lore. They told a customer who asked the official channel WHY they were added. It wasn't in a novel or anything, they tried to retcon real life.
@@Jesujej I mean we never did that in 40k.
It's a setting that has retcons all over the place. Like a superb painting different artists reworked once every months for decade.
@@mandowarrior123 No they did not. The tweet, and this all is just one social media message, stated that there has been women in the custodes since the first ten thousand were created. This is clearly stating in-universe now after the retcon there has always been women in the Custodes. I really hate that this has become like a major point of contension because some people (not all) want to take this into culture war territory.
I mean at the most it could be that there was a single tweet made by the social media team that was not maybe the wisest choice of words. But in my I will say like 15 to 20 years in the hobby have I seen this much of a controversy from a retcon. Only thing I can think of is the Primaris Marines and that was kind of not a retcon. That is the only controversy that is this large.
My opinion why this got such a large thing is because agitators who want to stoke the flames of the culture war did so on twitter. Because in twitter it is very easy for outsiders to go and stroke flames into this kind of thing. You know where this was not a big thing? Reddit. For all of its faults 40k and Custodes specific subreddits didn't have anywhere near this level of controversy. Most of the topics put up about this were met with "Who the fuck cares?" attitude.
And just to add my counter point to the other usual note about this over shadowing Sisters of Silence: Sisters of Silence are not super-humans and in addition they are probably the worst representation. They are literally making people feel worse by their existence.
Also one of the old lore writers came out of the wood work to talk about why they were originally instructed not to make female Custodes when the Custodes came to 40k as a playable army. None of the models would be female so the higher ups didn't want there to be lore about female Custodes. So now that we have them maybe we can receive some badass women Custodes models at some point. (Also some nifty Black Library books featuring some)
TLDR: Controversy in my opinion very much overblown. There are few good reasons to be sad about this change and most of the controversy is driven by non-hobbyist for culture war reasons.
Not a 40k fan at all. No reason, just never tried it. But what I can say is I massively respect Josh for this. We all make mistakes and get emotive about things when we shouldn't.
I just want to ask one thing though, just because it came up on the video. Why is it inherently a problem if it's a male dominated space? I think the reason that we see such frustration at topics like this, is that there is a prevailing notion that everything has to be for everyone. I don't believe that. Sure, that's not to say people should be kept out. But if a hobby has naturally skewed massively into having one main demographic, why is that seen as an issue (I'm not talking about from a business pov, obviously more people = more money in theory, I just mean culturally and socially)
For reasonable people that is not an issue at all. The people argueing inclusion in everything is needed habe lost the plot and in 99% of all cases have zero understanding of whatever they are trying to force themself into.
I think it's because "male dominated" could make someone think it's the "no girls allowed" sign. Which isn't true because anyone anywhere can get into 40k, they can kit bash, they can 3D print something, etc but... people don't think.
@@infinitecurlie that makes it even worse, when you try to force changes where none are required out of a lack of understanding.
@@infinitecurlie yep that's definitely it. To some people, anything that's mostly male is seen as a problem and must be made right, potentially even with forced inclusion.
Having some space be "male dominated" isn't a problem - it's more of an observation, a phrase to describe a statistic. However, it can SOMETIMES be a symptom of some problem that effectively gatekeeps a demographic from that space/hobby/industry.
Take economics for instance - it is male dominated industry, which isn't inherently wrong, but when you start looking into why that is, you start seeing countless stories about bias against women (for instance, nor being taken seriously just because you're a woman or being heckled due to your presentation because of it) or just plain sexual assault. Unsurprisingly, those things can cause women to drop out of the industry.
Glad to have this video back online, i was watching a previous version when it was set to private. I found the whole thing on twitch though.
I really like Josh's approach to this, i was annoyed that the idea of female Custodes because it felt like one of those "modern audiences" changes i had no idea about the constant changes to the lore, this makes sense then or at least it doesn't sound forced like i thought it was.
In this case, it seems to be one of those "modern audiences" kinda change. Apparently, Amazon is to blame. If you want to delve deeper try ArchCast's videos, for example, where he goes into more detail about it.
"To believe in an ideal, is to be willing to betray it" -Kreia from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2
Josh Strife? More like Josh DRAMA! JK, love you bro! If even 15% of the internet were like you, then it would be a much greater place!
I still disagree with "representation" comment lol. How can you feel not "represented" when most factions are nonhuman? What if all of them were nonhumanoid?
Are all tyranid players bugs?
Are all necron players cyborg mummies?
This rethoric heavily implies women at large are really superficial and can only connect to things that are exactly like them
Which, I mean, doesn't sound right, does it?
Do you want to know how representation works?
Because there is a reason actually, why it can be important to some people to be represented in the Custodes.
@@Contevent there is a reason, I know, I just personally think it's dumb
@@Contevent I don't want to come off as ignorant, and my previous comment is not as in depth as I wanted, but I honestly do think if race or gender difference stops you from feeling represented - that's either on you or the author
Because I DO feel represented by barely humanoid girly piece of phospophilite
Because I DO feel represented in struggles of someone like deedlit, who is worried about missing out on creating more meaningful relationships with those she cares about before their passing
And I know there are women who feel represented by Luke Skywalker or necrons (to tie it back closer to the conversation starter, yes, I know a girl with a necron army)
Why then , exactly, should retroactively changing lore, that quite a lot of people are invested in, be needed?
Because GW thinks women at large are superficial and NEED this pandering?
Don't you think that it's quite insulting?
@@Contevent sisters of battle are cooler anways
@@Russian_engineer_bmstu I do not actually.
You are right that you can feel represented by... by well anything, because representation stands on 3 pillars:
-Our identities are determined by how people look at us.
-We have multiple identities
-The importance of our identities can be forced on us by society.
First, we often says to teens to not take into consideration what people think of them, to not let that affect their self worth. Well, we say that because that's what naturally happens. We exist through the perception of others, if you say to a child that he is fat, he will be fat in his mind regardless of the reality. The stronger our personality becomes, the harder it is to impose new identities on us, but it still very much happens to adults.
Second, we have multiple identities. Someone can consider himself white, a man, but also a parent, a Metallica fan, a neat freak, unambitious, etc...
We have plenties of identities, they just don't have the same importance to us. For example if their identity as a neat freak is greater than their love for W40k, they may prefer never going to a convention because of all the sweaty, smelly people there.
It's a matter of priority.
Third, society around us can force us to have identities. If a black woman wants to be an engineer, but every treats her either as a woman or as a black person first and foremost, and not as an engineer, well being a black woman will become a huge part of her identity.
To take your example, you can identify yourself in character of other genders and other races because, well, your own gender and race isn't that important to you.
It's not the case of everyone, and especially not the case of people suffering discrimination. And it's not even their choice, it is because of discrimination that it became a part of their identity.
So why putting women in fiction is not pandering to the audience, insulting them by saying "Ha! You're so superficial you can't identify to someone who doesn't look exactly like you!"?
Well, because to some women, being a woman is a huge part of their personality, whether they want it or not. And being represented in as vast an array of job, motivation, occupation, and physical form is a net positive as it make them feel more comfortable with who they are and encourages them to become whatever they want.
The biggest issue I have is that they say this is about inclusivity but that ignores the fact that the fiction was already incredibly diverse. No one complains when the sisters of silence or sisters of battle are female only, even all those “toxic players” we are lead to believe are flooding the fanbase.
It's really not that diverse.
And some people keep insisting that there are no women in the Imperial Guard, so yeah I don't think it'd be hard to find people who complain about the existence of the sisters. And the fact that their army took 22 years to have another physical codex doesn't reveal them as popular.
@@Contevent lots of nonsense there. Any person who says there are no female in the guard aren’t 40k fans. And yea, it is that diverse.
@@Sammo212yeeee, that was a load of huey that came out of that guy. Anyone that's been around the setting for a while knows that there's a load of diversity.
@@draochvar9646 yeah, female guardsman were an important part of the Caiaphas Cain books as far back as 2003! There were even some all female regiments.
@@Contevent If it's women you want in 40k and not the sisters of battle or silence and you want it in first party models?
multiple regiments of IG are either both male and female, or all women in the lore. it comes down to where the planet hails and what makes up the population. even then in raw models theres only a small fraction of the IG regements they ever showed. on the named character side you have Ursula Creed, who is exceedingly highly ranked and currently being sold, but i also recall a time period of a printed women commissar model.
Staying in the imperium Im also aware of the inquisition and the Assassins where women have not only appeared in the roles (Inquisitor greyfax comes to mind), but there's certain assassin roles at least preferred if they aren't only allowed to be crewed by women. there's also the Imperial Knights, where the same case I believe applies in the lore, but the models you play with there are being piloted and the lore per knight is rather individual, so you can kind of just do as you like. as to the mechanicus... there's definitely women in the faction in the lore, but feel free to judge the models for yourself to see if any passes for you, because.. honestly, thats a lot of metal alteration to spot a form in after a certain breakpoint.
the Eldar factions have many women and entire units dedicated solely to women, and their society has had them reach the highest roles possible before. Yvraine deserves a special notice for functionally being part of an act to herald the creation of a new eldar god, and was a big part of one of the earlier editions, but Ill never forget Farseer Taldeer, whether or not she is canon.
The Tau in lore are a force that is both male and female in deployment, with one of their most well known commanders being Shadowsun, a woman.
The Genestealers have women in their ranks, as they are what happens when human forces meet the Tyranid's sway.
the Demons of the setting take on both male and female form... and a lot of other stuff besides.
The Necron royalty have enough of their minds saved to be like people, albeit exceedingly old ones. your in a metal skeleton body either way, but nothing is stopping your upper crust from being women.
Anyway, thats some options on the women front. personally I flitted between IG, Sisters of Battle, and the Orks myself. nothing like the routes a comedy outlook can take an ork mindset.
6:30 this is why the quote "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." by Lord Acton is such a timeless quote. It's too easy to fall to the allure of power, even the small fleeting moments of power. It's human to get things wrong, to make mistakes and do the wrong thing, but we all do the best we can and that's all anyone can really ask for.
I would have preferred you leave it, but I appreciate any time someone admits their mistakes. It is a sign of maturity and decency.
Most factions except Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines have plenty of female representation. The face of the Eldar has been a female Farseer since like the early 2000s. In novels you got some pretty cool female Imperial Guard. Chaos Daemons have Slaneesh. Chaos has female cultists. The face of the Inquisition has been a female Inquisitor for a long time. It's been there if you look or have been involved in the hobby.
Played Warhammer Chaos Gate. The MC Inquisitioner who gets the respect of the space marines and does the heroics is a lady. A badass one.
And the large amount of assasins and rogue traders
Wouldn’t slaanesh more accurately be genderfluid?
@@LuxxyLux1 yes, but like that does tbf kinda demonize it.
As someone who doesn't watch the streams live, I spent the first minutes of this video fully thinking it was a bait waiting for a silly punchline.
Going to be honest... I didn't expect their was going to be drama. I thought he was trolling with the title, and i'm a little sad it wasn't a troll...
It's also important to be cautious of seemingly sensible criticisms being put forward in bad faith. While it's important to have your work reflect your attempts at inclusiveness, every attempt to do better can't be treated with contempt and scrutinized from top to bottom, else people will be less inclined to improve.
It takes a lot to admit that you were wrong, not many people have that strength.
But if you are right and defend this point then do not bend one just because the pressure is great.
Regardless of your stance on this, do GW come across as a company that have any respect for their customers?
Modern GW doesn't. Way back in the day, you could substitute a can of coke for a dreadnought and no one would bat an eye. These days, no such laxity. I remember taking my Salamander army to a GW shop and it being perfectly chill. Within the last decade or so, they want you in their shops to buy as much as possible and as soon as they've extracted every cent or penny they could get from you, they're practically kicking you out the door till you have more money to spend.
@@Sujad Yeah mate agreed.
I don't think they do at all. But only because of their predatory pricing. I could really care less if they change fictional lore.
Josh is so great. Always the bigger man. I could never 😅
Really well done explaining the context of the situation and where you went wrong. You’re a role model for self reflection and taking on new information, more people should do what you do in this video
Long time 40k player who runs exclusive Slaanesh just so I could have my bright pink ladies charge across the field and take apart all those grim dark big boys. The game really needs more female representation and I am overall glad to see it, but you make some solid points on how we discuss the matter and taking the time to address not just the issue but how we communicate is both classy and a net gain for positive discourse on the internet. Thanks for that!
It doesnt need female representation or any other. Need is a necessity.
It's ok, to not represent someone in your fiction work. Any hobby can be for anyone, but not every hobby should be trying
Joke's on you; I love getting into the TH-cam comments section and inserting nuanced takes into tribalized conversations.
To my own detriment same.
He didn't say people don't or don't enjoy doing it, just that it's not the best way to go about it. But you're welcome to make your stand and I support your ability to make that choice. Go forward brave keyboard soilder *salute
@@SirFluffy100 Warrior implies I'm fighting a battle. I think of it more like a chef, stirring the pot and adding a bit of spice to a conversation.
There is a modern coloqualism in my language and it best translates to "Man of Honor" or technically to gentleman but that does not quite grasp the concept, that is you.
Honestly I think I have my most interesting productive social media discussions on youtube.
In my experience, having an argument has always been 'kill or be killed' because nobody starts one thinking to themselves, "right, I'mma make my point as a way to educate people and if I'm wrong, I will allow them to educate me". People's egos are too big for that. So now, even if I wanna be civilised, I can't. And if the only way you argue is by verbally brutalising people, at some point that becomes the only way you can argue.
Thats the issue with anonymity on the internet, most people who argue agressively like that on yt etc would never have the courage (or stupidity) to do so to a strangers face. If one has to fear no real consequences to their actions people tend to go overboard sadly.
@@Gnarfendorf Not even anonymity , there is a lot of people who have their names and work known and still behave like baboos but like you said the lack of in person interaction
w
unfortunately it is the majority of arguments made in the modern age and likely throughout history, the whole "us vs them", "right vs left" etc. It's because to be wrong is an uncomfortable thing, they hold their opinion too personally and if you differ from their opinion it is seen as a personal attack on them. From what I've seen/heard it's because most people can't see how taking on criticisms to themselves or their opinions can potentially shape them into a better person. Plus even those that can process arguments or debates positively are still human and can make mistakes
I argue for exactly that reason, though. And I succeed in informing or persuading people often enough.
Idk if its the same for everyone else but for me the learning part comes after the argument has happened, when you've settled down and thought about it for a bit. While in the argument you are making your best case. Not all arguments are useful, infact I think most probably aren't useful these days. But as Josh said, when its an isolated conversation/argument it becomes way more civilized.
Idk if its performative as Josh says but I think in a public setting you're way more on guard and you're not willing to drop your guard when in a mass group of people. In a private conversation you are more readily going to drop your guard and listen/know you'll get your piece in too and have time to evaluate the conversation.
Look at this tourist, saying women need more rep in a game they won't play.
Lets list all of the factions that have women in them: Sisters of Battle, Sisters of Silence, Adeptus Mechanicus, Astra Militarum, Imperial Knights, Chaos Daemons, Chaos Knights, Aeldari, Drukhari, Tyranids, T'au Empire, Genestealer Cults
List of armies with only men: Leagues of Votann, Space Marines, Orks, Chaos Space Marines.
Wow with 12 factions with women in and only 4 without, then women should be lining the block to play tabletop wargaming right? No they are not, GW ended up doing the Signified joke of changing a restaurant into a Pakistani restaurant and thinking it was a good idea. Restaurant went out of business, the owner cursing Signified.
GW:"You said if I made 40K woke, I'd get female costumers where are they? My stock is tanking, I'm losing them all."
yea this is how you know alot of the vocal people for this are either disingenuous liers too in their political echo chambers and or new bloods who dont know much about the lore and the tourists coz its trendy to be into "nerd" things these days. And the fact with female space marines and custodes they would look and act no diff then the males so whats the actual point other then tick boxing and pandering to these train seals clapping coz they think their side stuck it to the chuds lol. Its like the popular kids that used to give us shit for liking 40k/nerd stuff back in the day are now in our spaces taking it over and telling us we are doing it wrong basically lol.
This should just be the normal way of thinking. Not many people really want to sit and reflect to own up, just generally, but you did it without really anyone telling you that you should. You lead a path most dont take, but should.
HI TWITCH!
I personally hate "do better" because it seems to only be used now to imply that you doing better would be adopting my stance because it's better than yours.
Think about the implications if female Custodes really had existed for 30 years of storytelling covering 10,000 in game years, and not one of them had ever done anything consequential enough to notice. That is a staggering amount of accidental chauvinism. You would have to be one of the most exceptional women that ever lived to make the cut, and then spent the next 10 Millenia just being completely overshadowed by men. What an insult.
I was able to catch the original clip and in it was a, imo, very good way of articulating a position I like about the usage of the word "woke". It was along the lines of by saying woke you are not bringing a point about a specific someone forcing changes along the lines of their ideology and forcing these changes, using the word woke is a shorthand to something, this is where my memory fails and i'd like to find that again because it resonated with me.
Me asking for this is a sea of 700+ comments is silly and will be dashed against the rocks happenstance, but still I post.
I appreciate your even take on this. "It's always been like this" is just how GW does a lot of retcons and this is a minor one all things considered. No specific lore existed saying it wasn't possible, and GW authors had been trying to include female Custodes for a long time now. They were told no because the brand new model line was already made as all male.
I understand people's dissatisfaction but I think people would have been unhappy regardless of how GW handled it. People hated Primaris and they had massive new lore to justify their existence. GW catches flak either way. I think it's a positive change.
oh frig this again... okay.
Someone here who doesn't like the idea of women custodes. I don't because much like the dynamic of sisters of battle and Space Marines, the Custodes had a different but somewhat akin dynamic with the sisters of silence.
the Custodes represent in the battlefield the height of brute physical and melee force. few can throw down like they can, but they often work in tandem with the Sisters of Silence, who's powers provide a great shield against the warp and powers that stem from it. think of it as a body/mind combo. it was like a two halves thing they had going on in multiple themes because of one being a brotherhood and the other being a sisterhood. that's gone now. instead of an expansion to the sisters, we get women custodes.
"they were there the whole time" makes it worse because now not only has one element of the prior dynamic with the sisterhood vanished, but now they have to scramble to invent women custodes who've been there that whole time. it's a group who gets more names the more they've done of worth, and they have to catch up for the i think decades the custodes have been named in real life.
the rest of the response GW put out was bad, but i really want to highlight something that specifically got under my skin, which was the people who defended this in two ways. one was the "muscle mommy" defense, which really made people look like they were into the idea because a fetish was retconned in as a possibility for them in setting instead of staying a fan creation. the second was the "the lore is fluid. it's all meant just to sell models!" people. the first group i feel doesn't need further comment. the second though?
I think it's very concerning when ex writers as much as players thought hammering the "lore basically doesn't matter" is a good defense. Yes, GW retcons a LOT, Necron Retcon is my go-to example, but often the retcons had notable possible expansions to the story being told. as much as i had to square the Necron Retcon, it opened up a number of directions for necrons to take, giving them new subfactions and a number of characters from it. to me this one hurts more than it helps, and they have to play catch up to break even because of how. there wasn't even a model to sell, which is out of character for GW. but back to "lore basically doesn't matter". What else am i supposed to think when a change like this happens with no effort put in? Id still be mad it happened because of them bypassing the sisters of silence getting screen time and the dynamic hit, but they could have made it that as of now they are accepting women. state a reason, write a book series about a girl becoming a custodian, anything instead of "they were always here. deal." it's another one out of a multitude of retcons to varying degrees where you eventually have to ask yourself if they respect the setting. and thus the follow up question occurs- if I they don't, why should i care about them and their changes? Tabletop gaming isn't cheap, and GW has secured a harsh lock-in on their playerbase between group requirements, time commitments, and monetary cost. to me, without the story being handled with respect, all that's left is batches of overpriced plastic that's relative quality to me is let down by design decisions I can't stand, and rulesets that are often called out for being a mess. im reminded of how the company handled warhammer fantasy. im reminded of waiting nearly a decade personally for plastic sisters of battle (and i know others waited longer), breaking early from waiting, buying metal ones, only to balk at the cost of the plastics because they didn't wind up much cheaper at all to my recollection, while the poster child factions got new models all the time. I think about GW's litigious nature. because with the setting losing weight due to the next retcon being right around the corner and the only question being where, all thats left is a company I had issues with from the start, but i liked the setting enough to stomach them. when i saw people countering this Custodes change's dislikers going "well, they also just shut down these AOS factions, you should be mad about that too!" or "look what they did to the indomitus crusade? are you mad at that?"
the answer is yes, I also didn't like any of that, but citing that or the multiple recent price raises GW has as being "worse" does not help the situation. it's all making various cases that people need to reexamine whether their love of GW's currently held properties is worth paying GW for what they have done with them lately, especially since models, model ranges, and lore that may have gotten you interested is all subject to change since it's all so "fluid" and "there's no real truth". for me? it isn't, and frankly already wasn't.
Let's be real, Female Representation isn't really "lacking" it just isn't front and center all the time. Imperial Guard is just Humans thus has a lot of Both Male and Female Characters in Lore, Many of the most Powerful Eldar are Women and they have entire Armies within them that are Women centric like Banshees, Dark Eldar have very much on equal footing like the Eldar with many Female and Male units, Tau are in Combat Armour a lot which covers the fact that they are very much a mixture of both male and female. Sisters of Battle do exist as you said. SIsters of Silence are also an All Female sect. Many of the Assassins sects have very high Female recruitment. etc etc.
People that say Female representation is "severely" lacking are being disingenuous
ngl, when I hear 'do better,' I penta-quadruple down.
Tbh, I'm not into Warhammer at all, but in other media inclusion initiatives have almost always felt patronising.
How incredibly childish and petulant of you.
@@OrbObserver k
"Do better" is, separated from context, meaningless. It can be incredibly valid or just outright stupid and toxic, depending on what the specific issue is.
@@OrbObserver No, I agree. It's incredibly childish and patronizing thing to say, "do better" is. There are so many better ways to say that that don't make you come across like a twerp.
@@OrbObserver Hmm, yes, shallow and pedantic.
I honestly don't care about retconning lore, as long as it's an improvement and not done to pander. This comes across as only pandering and shitting on the fans, calling people incels for wanting to preserve the lore they have grown to love and the space they have been in for a long time. It's frustrating and annoying for fans to have todays social politics come in and make downgrades and change things for what is seemingly no reason, in a space they have been loyal to and existed in. This is when gatekeeping actually becomes valuable. As fans we have seen many of our beloved stories, spaces and fandoms get shit on in the name of inclusivity and progress. I'm all for everyone being invited that wants to be there, that is interested in being there and that will be respectful. Things change, they evolve and that's okay, lets just do it the right way so we can invite new awesome people into those fandoms but also preserve why we have loved to be in that fandom for so long.
Man i hope the strong positive response you're getting from the minority that are watching this outways the jargon coming from the potential hate you're forseeing. This workd needs spaces like this, where being wrong or having different opinions isnt a death sentence but rather a chance to communicate and understand. Hats off to you and very well put
I'll say this. I don't think there's any ill intent coming from people who enjoy the traditional gender role aesthetic and want to live out that fantasy through a game. 40K isn't for my tastes at all, but I do have over a thousand hours in Team Fortress 2, and I don't think it's a coincidence that all the mercs in that game are male. And it's not because of some evil reason. I wouldn't want them to change TF2's vision just to give women representation, it would change the vibe of the game. Recently, I've played a game called Rabbit & Steel which only contains female bunny characters. I believe Touhou also only has female characters. It's a part of the aesthetic. You don't see men begging for male representation in those games, that would be annoying.
That's because you don't have to scour games for characters that are like you. Games with female protagonists are a rarity, and often done solely for men to ogle (see: Stellar Blade). So no, men aren't begging for inclusion, because they're already considered the default.
@@yoyopron (Edited) You know what? There is no way to respond to this without sounding like a jerk, because your comment is made in bad faith and you're playing the victim, on top of using the eye for an eye mentality. There is so much wrong here, that it's basically like responding to bait.
I never played the victim. I simply gave you facts: most video game protagonists are male, and men don't need to look hard to find representations of themselves. Female protagonists exist, but they are much less common. The idea that men aren't asking for inclusion in one of the rare all-female games is a false equivalency.
But given that you're intent to assign ill intent, that's really all I have to say about this.
@@yoyopron You should never demand that artists include you in media for which you were not the intended target audience.
There is never going to be a world where each and every piece of media includes people of every type. Your post implies that you won't stop until you achieve this, but that would rob people of their artistic freedom (and make everything feel the same). Target audiences are not an evil concept.
People are free to make what they want to make, for whatever audience they intend to please. So when outside factors cause that to change, don't be surprised when the original audience decides to pack their bags and leave.
When I hear "Do better, improve" what I actually hear is "I dont like what you did but cant explain why its wrong so I'm going to say these cult like phrases to try and shame you into doing what I want to signal to my fellow cultists that I am on their side"
"Do better" is mostly used as "Do as I say"
I feel like it’s used in the same way that someone would use “should” - ie: it’s this genuinely coercive and malicious word that reeks of subtle manipulation.
Yeah, I feel that there is a stark divide between the definition Josh laid about about the phrase's content and the context of it's actual use. It's not used as advice, it's used as quote/unquote "subtle" attempt at owning someone and at signaling your comparative righteousness.
Also in corporate speech it's often: "We will do better (job at concealing our hatred for our customers)"
@@mateo0123 If you think so then "you gotta do better, Senator".
Saying "Do better" or "be better" is not only self-righteous and arrogant, but counter-productive. Lead by example, not by berating people. You can't fight fire with fire, nor hate with hate; it's like trying to to clear ripples from a pond by throwing rocks.
you are a great character josh. please dont let the hate get you down.
The Adeptus Custodes has only been a faction for 7 years. They were only ever background characters prior to them becoming one. For at least 5 of those years, influential people within GW have been trying to include female members. This is a known fact, we have the receipts.
The reason why they were pushing for female Custodians was simple: "Why not? There's no good reason not to have them."
GW has always, *always* pushed for more sex diversity in 40k. They wanted to do female space marines back during Rogue Trader (40k 1st edition), but stockists refused to keep the models they released on the shelves. In the lore at the time, these women were not part of the space marine chapters, but they were functionally identical and acted as a police force that kept even said space marine chapters in line, according to the decrees of the Adeptus Ministorum. These would eventually become the Sisters of Battle we know today 10 years later, at the tail end of 40k 2nd edition's lifespan.
I don't see how GW's response to the inclusion of female custodians is condescending. I think you have to read into it too much to reach that conclusion. Female Custodians were always there because the Emperor invented them, and he's been trapped on the Golden Throne for 10,000 years not inventing things. Female Custodians *HAD* to have always been there. As for the model range, unlike the Sisters of Battle and Sisters of Silence, Custodians don't wear that ridiculous boobplate. There's no telling the sex of the person under the armour until they take it off, and we haven't seen a Custodian out of their armour since Custodians were depicted dressing like the Pillar Men from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.
The chest area is not the most important difference between males and females. It is the hip area.
@@Grubnar The hips on Custodian armour are also universally wide enough to accommodate female hips.
As is the case with all armour through the ages that wasn't purely ornamental.
Change for the sake of change isn't always the best. 'Representation' has been a devious ploy of many activists whose interest is only to further their opinions despite the harm they do to the cohesion of whatever they are trying to insert themselves in. You can't possibly tell me that there are legitimate lore reasons that female Custodes should be present in the story of 40k. It just doesn't make sense. 40k is a story which you MAY or MAY NOT like as it is, it's your goddamn prerogative. You're not allowed to change it nonsensically though to serve your personal needs or sense of 'Inclusion'. We as 40k fans have seen the despair & dread, similar scenarios have played out in other fantasy entertainment brands and we are not likely to let eager busybodies to destroy our little corner of peace & enjoyment in an ever increasing crazy world. The EMPEROR protects.
So what threat does a woman custode pose to your little corner, as you call it? I don't get it. I don't get how it doesn't make sense. Can you give me a logical reason?
Just say you hate women and black people it's a lot more simple
@@BardianAngel Besides having no lore explanation to take a decision of inserting something like that in the canon (which I would be happy for you to provide)? Besides of building up nonsense instead of supporting already existing female units in the game (SoS, SoB & IG and that's only the Imperium)? How on earth can I not approve of such attitude for my well beloved escapism corner?
@@aephea_3711 "Just say you hate women and black people it's a lot more simple" The only people who clearly hate women and black people are you since you apparently can not stop treating them like children who needs to be cater too.
@@farnball1 No lore explanation for why women would join the custodes? Why does there need to be lore for women to exist?
This is why you're in a corner.
"Do better" literally just means 'Fuck you" for people who think they are too superior to say 'fuck you'.
"Female representation within W4K has often been lacking"
Yeah, imagine a story about factions waging a genocidal war surprisingly lacking female representation... i mean, if you look at all the female battalions fighting on the Ukrainian front, then you instantly understand why it is a problem... right? /sarcasm_off
Also huge respect on this. This is the kind of standard i try to push myself towards, but its so easy to slip down that slippery slope because youre just so into the moment and the huff and puff of the argument. We should all do better, and this simply existing is a reminder, atleast to myself, that there is lots more work to be done on how i go forwards.
Appreciate the honesty atleast. Love your content man and I hope more actual civilized discussions get produced from this.
You are given them too much grace, they mock, belittle, review bomb, spit on others daily on the internet and they act as brigades. If you give them too much grace, they feel validated in the harassing they do regularly on other people and creators online. And It is going on from so many years I am personally tired of having the moral high ground with those people.
I dont see the problem 40k beeing a male doninated hobby. I mean, do we have to make a remake of despreate house wifes, that fokuses more on the male characters and add more action to get men to watch the thing. Cant bois have their toys, while girls have teirs and if one enjoys the other, they enjoy it because of what it is, not despite of it. This whole discussion was as loud as it was for a reason and i hope all involved partys learned their lessons and dont try something like this again. Gate keep or be gatekept.
"Representation has been lacking in 40K"
Yeah, and that's perfectly great. Not everything has to be diverse, Josh. Not everything has to be inclusive. In fact, many hobbies, clubs, and organizations only retain their uniqueness and their desirable culture by NOT embracing DEI nonsense. You do not need to force men and women into every hobby to satisfy some twisted desire for "social justice".
Well done, Josh. Much respect. Wasn’t there for the original video, but this seems like a healthy way to resolve it. For the record, there is also female representation in the Imperial Guard, the Tau, the Eldar and Dark Eldar, the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Inquisition, and the Legio Assassinorum. By far, there are more factions WITH representation than without. But I fall into the camp of not liking HOW they included women into the Custodez, not THAT they did it.
For a franchise so focused on it’s developing lore over multiple decades, it really is a slap in the face. I can think of five compelling reasons to start recruiting females that don’t involve a bs retcon.
This is why i love josh man. He is so damn wise and humble. Few people would make a video like this and adress their mistakes without seeking people to feel bad for you.
Wokeness turns everything to shit.
Blackrock invests in gw and suddenly wdym fam female custodes have always been a thing. Crazy coincidence that isn't it?
Blackrock doesn't give a single shit, stop slurping down culture war bullshit.
"Do better" is something that I can only see as a meme from a B-tier Marvel movie that people took as a line to use in real life for the "cool" factor 😂
It is, it's an incredibly smarmy way of being holier than thou to people and writing off their concerns or arguments without giving them any kind of faith.
@@Sujad smarmy is a great word to use to describe "Do better", I forgot about that word 🤔
It *WAS* a line used at the end of the Falcon & Winter Soldier series. That series wasn't close to B-tier...
@@Lukus80 that makes is funnier 🤣
@@Sujad Can't take people seriously if they think that highly of themselves and so little of others, two words that tell me someone isn't worth talking to
As someone who's not into 40K, and have just seen other people's takes on this topic, Ireally appreciate you being transparent and honest.
To me it was really the insult of the "they have always been there" lie. No, GW, they haven't. Your lore specifically stated, that they were not.
Change it, idk, but have the balls to say "we changed this."
Why does everyone say "it's a male dominated hobby" or "male dominated (area/job/whatever" like that's a bad thing, I haven't seen a single person pushing for more men in female dominated areas that wasn't in direct response to something else.
Perhaps the issue is that women do not feel welcome in male dominated hobbies whereas the reverse is more welcoming. No one said male dominated is a bad thing in this video, but claims of it being bad need to be heard in context to see what the actual meaning is.
@@seifer447 You serious? A woman will generally be warmly welcome into any male dominated space (although awkwardly so if you're entering a space filled with awkward nerds) as long as she displays competency/knowledge and that she isn't trying to change what it is to something else. A man will in general be mercilessly mocked and treated as less of a man in the opposite case ("What are you? A woman?").
@seifer447 The irony is that strong arming change into male dominated spaces is only going to reinforce the biases and reasoning behind why they don't welcome females into them. It turns into "see, this is why we gatekeep" so it becomes a nasty endless cycle.
@@seifer447 Exactly. When you can't enter spaces without either being hit on or being tested to prove you're a "real" fan, it's not welcoming.
@@yoyopron That has nothing to do with sex though. You see that across multiple fandoms.
As someone outside the drama and outside W40k, I do wonder if the line 'they have always been there's is less of a 'why haven't you noticed them' and is more of a lore out. Like from my basic knowledge of this isn't the lore treated as basically mythology? If we found extra books relating to the bible or Greek mythology or something, it's possible it could change our entire understanding of cannon events of those kinds of things. So could it not just be a way of saying if more information pops up, don't be surprised?
Not to dismiss the condescending tone the creators might have come across as, just offering another way of thinking about it.
Also great vid about online discourse!
Nah, it was 100% a cop out.
I mean, finding out old things about ancient civilisations and reading lore made up by many writers today isn't the same though, I have no horse in that race whatsoever as I really don't care much for that franchise but this kind of argument always feels dishonest, implicit world building is a thing and if a world is written in a certain way for decades you can't write it differently all of a sudden, if you want to make an exception you have to talk about it or else it really won't make much sense
Oh for 40k things like this isn't new with changes to lore. I'd recommend Bricky's video "here's your golden opinion." People just wanted to hop on a bandwagon because it's what gets clicks and views.
It was just phrased badly. There's no established lore reason why Custodes couldn't be female. Unlike Space Marines, that do have such a lore reason. A rather silly one, but hell, much of the lore is rather silly. But GW had never a female Custodes so it was a new idea out of universe even if there was no reason it had to be in-universe. And the statement people keep referring to, deliberately or otherwise, ended up implying otherwise.
Of course you also get plenty of folks scared of girl cooties in their macho hobby but so it goes.
So, warhammer player here. There are a couple of things here that are worth noting.
It is a lore out BUT, it's the laziest possible one and it's a very hard gaslight. They could have said "Hey, we wanted to add female custodes, so from now on we are gonna treat as if they were always there" and that already would have been a hell of a step up.
There were a crap ton of way better cheap alternatives to add them to the lore. There are already easily established thing that they could have done to introduce them that would not only have been less infuriating but actually cool. The lore already has established that whole factions get lost in the immaterium and re appear millenniums later somewhere. We could have had a cool book about a secret order of custodes that got lost in the immaterium and the fight to get back, that could have been a female order that had some secret tech that allowed women to survive the process, or maybe female custodes are just rare and have this cool power and that why they were all together in a mission.
The point is there were a crap ton of easy alternatives that were way better than "there were always there you bigot". As it did it only feels like inclusion cuota.
This was informative and I have gained a deeper perspective upon this topic that you just discussed. I am a human person and I have skin.
Who's skin tho? 🤔
Absolutely applaud this level-headedness.
Something to take home from, for sure.
I have no stakes in the Warhammer conversation, but I very much respect you, Josh. It takes humility to reassess your viewpoint and apologize.
"Do better" invariably translates to "do what I tell you, forever."
its about as useful as "go read a book"
means nothing