Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[wierd]

If you are to actually role play in that universe, understanding the "conditions" is important.

That they exist to fight is one thing, but the WHY-- Why are there space marines at all---  What do they protect? An entire civilization of space marines wont work; There is no art, no culture, no innovation, no life to such a society-- and-- who grows food, makes the armor, mines raw material?

Space marines, with nothing else, leaves huge holes in the narrative.

I am not that big into WH40k, but my casual exposure gives me these insights:

Humans (and various others) have interplanetary space flight.
The medium by which FTL is accomplished is dangerous as fuck (as in, cosmic evil levels of dangerous as fuck)
Space Marines exist because of the above two. (Space travel is dangerous as fuck-- you need a fucking army ready to roll the instant something goes wrong.)

This means that there is actual "More normal" human culture, that is facilitated by the suffering of space marines.  This means that while the Space Marines have traditions of honor and all that tripe, they really are just disposable meat in the greater picture, that exist exclusively to grease the wheels of human society. Again, this means they are a defacto underclass, that exists exclusively to suffer and die.

Yes, totally misogynist that they are mostly portrayed as male. (rolls eyes.)

[Rose]

Also, it's not like the setting doesn't have female soldiers in literally every other faction that has genders at all.

[Frumple]

... Are Space Marines even portrayed sympathetically very often?  I thought the general flavor of 40K is a universe immune to morality where everyone is an asshole, and space marines are just less cosmic horror than most other things.  People like the setting because it takes grimdark to such extremes that it's comical and stretches the imagination.  Yeah, I don't see how that can be construed as misogyny.

Sure they are? Portrayed sympathetically often-ish, that is. Least by the better writers, ha, and stuff where there's much room made for that sort of characterization. Sometimes. There's a lot of things to play on for characters that are unaging death machines with varying remnants of a connection to humanity.

So far as the female marine thing, while there are genemodded (and otherwise superhuman) female supersoldiers of various stripes, so far as I can recall marine geneseed is literally lethal for anything human that's not male (mind you, it's also pretty lethal for most things human that are, too). Chaos probably is rocking some things and mutation is always there for giggles, but as a rarely broken rule even for a population as large as the imperium all space marines are dudes... albeit chemically castrated and questionably capable of sexual reproduction, iirc.

Gender roles are kinda' weird in the setting, honestly. A lot of the setup (planets, individual spats of hierarchy, and so on, can be radically different; for all the IoM is freakishly intolerant in a lot of ways they really don't give much of a damn in a lot of other ways, too) means any particular work's handling of it boils down to individual writer(s) involved more than anything. The imperium itself is pretty meritocratic in some ways, really. You don't argue too much with the glowing lady that can pimp slap your main battle tanks and have the tanks come out the worse for it.

... that said, space marines are actually pretty cosmic horror-y at the end of the day. They're human shaped (in a general sense, anyway) and ostensibly on the side of man, but they get pretty freaky even without chaos getting involved. Extent it's hammered on varies wildly, though. Still... space marines are seriously pretty inhuman at the end of the day, moreso than some aliens or mutants or whatev'. By the time the transformation finishes, they don't have human brain chemistry, physiology, lifespan, and on, and on, and on, and then they go on to live lives that are centuries or millennium long and near utterly divorced from anything a human can survive.

[hops]

Ran into another "40K is teh ebul filth and people who like it are all fascist misogynists cuz spess muhreens" type, wrote up a few thousand words of rebuttal, and decided not to post it 'cause the drama is more trouble than it's worth. :|

Why not write 40 thousand words?

[Akura]

Also, it's not like the setting doesn't have female soldiers in literally every other faction that has genders at all.

Including a human faction that are an all-female army,  whose fighting capability is nearly on par with that of the genetically engineered all-male super soldier.

[Harry Baldman]

... Are Space Marines even portrayed sympathetically very often?  I thought the general flavor of 40K is a universe immune to morality where everyone is an asshole, and space marines are just less cosmic horror than most other things.  People like the setting because it takes grimdark to such extremes that it's comical and stretches the imagination.  Yeah, I don't see how that can be construed as misogyny.

In theory that's all true, but then there's also the people who think the Imperium are the good guys with the good ideas in that universe (which the setting rejects halfheartedly when it bothers to reject it at all). 40K revels in xenophobia and militarism rather than examines it for the most part, with immunity to morality being a fairly weak excuse (hard men making hard decisions is a popular motif) rather than the compelling argument people seem to confuse it for when trying to counter criticism.

Ultimately though the misogyny mostly gets wrapped in there on account of all the fascism (misogynists and fascists have an unsurprising amount of overlap demographics-wise), with the Space Marines being only the most emblematic, as they're also emblematic of 40K in general, of the general message issue. And considering that they are big, angry, genetically superior, immortal, religious and coincidentally mostly white dudes with Latin-esque names and a hardon for purging xeno scum, probably not very surprising that the level of fash in 40K's fandom is fairly notorious by this point.

[TamerVirus]

Uh, hello? What about the Sisters of Battle? The all women militant order? They're Imperium as well?

[Yoink]

I want to see a Harry Baldman RTD set in the 40k universe.

[IndigoFenix]

Also worth noting that Space Marines are probably pumped full of testosterone and super-steroids to the point that even if they were female to start with they'd wind up indistinguishable from men.  Hormones change people's physiology, it's basically how sex-change therapy works.

That would be a fun twist, to find out that some well-known Space Marine was born female.

[Harry Baldman]

I want to see a Harry Baldman RTD set in the 40k universe.

Yeah, but would you be the Tyranids or the Necrons in that one? Maybe Nurgleites, come to think of it.

[Doomblade187]

I could go for nurglites.

[Descan]

Uh, hello? What about the Sisters of Battle? The all women militant order? They're Imperium as well?

That only matters if they're more than just a token "And THESE guys exist!" thrown in once in a while. I wouldn't know regarding the writers, but in regards to the fans, they're pretty much never mentioned that I can see, except when someone brings in charges of sexism. Which sounds like they're an "anti-sexism totem" to me.

Also, @Frumple: "Gene seed fucks with the female anatomy," I mean. It's fiction. Writers could change that, or could have not done that in the first place. Never understood why people bring up in-universe reasons for things when others talk about how the *writers* are Bad People for those things existing. Like... Yeah, they have an explanation for it? That doesn't address the main point though. :v

just my two cents, i don't give a hoot about 40k, neither to tarnish nor praise it.

[Frumple]

Rest of stuff noted was about main point, tho? Like, it's kinda' okay to have gender locked stuff in a setting, and I'm personally not going to throw shade at someone that's decided to not retcon established lore (even if said junk was established by jackasses). If you want to work outside canon, there's original work and fanfiction to indulge in as you please, and nonexistent gods know I'm the last person that's going to shit on someone for indulging so.

So far as misogyny goes, what matters is how it's handled more than its existence, generally -- see, as an example, every bit of media in existence that involves pregnancy and doesn't play the mpreg card (and probably most that do, for that matter). Least in this case I bring up in-universe crap to note why that particular aspect of the setting isn't seeing a certain sort of treatment, not saying whoever it was that established it didn't have a spud lodged up their cloaca or it somehow makes it impossible to write something in the setting without tripping over the considered issue or... whatever.

Uh, hello? What about the Sisters of Battle? The all women militant order? They're Imperium as well?

That only matters if they're more than just a token "And THESE guys exist!" thrown in once in a while. I wouldn't know regarding the writers, but in regards to the fans, they're pretty much never mentioned that I can see, except when someone brings in charges of sexism. Which sounds like they're an "anti-sexism totem" to me.

They're certainly used that way quite a lot. You'd probably be better off looking at the inquisition or imperial guard for high visibility female characters in 40k media, frankly. The SoB don't get much screen time, or substantial roles even when they do.

... there's kinda' an extent I don't blame folks for that, either. There's some pretty fucked up stuff going on with the sisters even by imperium fanaticism standards.

[TamerVirus]

My knowledge of Warhammer 40k only extends to heresy memes and Dawn of War 1 and its expansions, and the Sisters were a faction in Soulstorm. Ah well

[Rose]

The only 40k book I half read was all about the imperial guard, and they had a good mix of genders, so *shrug*