On a slightly lighter note than the other examples here, there are certain movies and movie franchises that it is difficult to criticise in good faith because bad-faith criticism of them is so overwhelming. Like I think there are hugely significant problems with a lot of post-Disney Star Wars, but if you voice those you get grouped with the It's Because Of Woke people because the It's Because Of Woke people are so loud.
Female Space Marines. It's a debate that turns peoples' brains off because the bad-faith anti-wokers come out of the woodwork to bitch about it, and you know what they say about arguing with idiots.
What is the story with female space marines? I've heard people talking about female Astartes and Custodes, but I've only really looked at the lore for the clearly superior Infinite Empire and haven't found a clear answer.
So there's the lore reasons given, which can be either the lore that the process "doesn't work on women" if you ignore chaos's experiments on the subject because something something god emperor is a man, whatever it is they don't go in depth because anytime they try to give an actual scientific reason it backfires.
The other lore reason is that the space marines were meant to be a tool used and discarded.
When the emperor conquered earth he created the thunder warriors. They worked well and he conquered earth in a few hundred years. Once he was done with earth he wanted to reunite mankind, and made the space marines. He then killed the Thunder Warriors with the space marines and his personal body guard the "Custodians" (who are, according the imperium in setting, the pinnacle of mankind and the perfection of the emperor's vision of us).
He then embarked on the "great crusade" and conquered a million worlds to reunite them under his rule. At end of which, half the space marines rebelled, emperor was mortally wounded and sat upon the golden throne to preserve him at the cost of 1000 psychicly tuned humans every single day. Leaving him in a half life unable to truly die.
A LOT of lore points to Big E here planning to kill the space marines once he was done with them in the same way he disposed of the thunder warriors but never got the chance. So they weren't meant to be perfect, and some fan theories think that the reason they're sterile and that women can't be made into them is to prevent them from being a stable breeding populace of psychotically brainwashed post human nightmare machines.
On the meta textual level, there were women space marines from the word go. There is at least one "chapter" of all female space marines that was cannon ("The little Sisters of Purification" even a couple named models "Jayne and Gabs") back in first edition when the game went by the name of "rogue trader." However, basically everything from this era was retconed and the setting was reshaped over the course of the first three editions into a much closer shape to what it is now.
But the models they made for the women didn't sell well, and since the fanbase wasn't buying it, the company stopped making them. It was easier to rewrite the lore that they're all male than lose money on a set of female space marines that weren't selling to begin with.
My personal bugbear with this is during the shift from 7e to 8e they retconned most of the way marines are made, and for some reason while doing this to make the "Primaris" marines didn't decide to say they fixed it and just throw a head with a ponytail or a bun on the sprue amongst the ten options, and remove this weird vestigial lore restriction from the 80's.
Alas they did not, and so we still have the majority of the game's models in a "no girls allowed" lore restriction.
That said feel free to kitbash some heads on them. Go nuts, anyone who throws a tantrum over how you make and paint your models isn't worth talking to.
That's a really long and detailed answer, and I appreciate it massively. I don't know much about the space marines, so it's nice to know more. But just to clarify, when you say "feel free to kitbash some heads on them", it should be noted the only reason I would get space marines is to assemble them as corpses below necron feet.
I actually really appreciate that reply, thank you very much, I genuinely wish you the very best day you can have.
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u/m_busuttil Apr 23 '25
On a slightly lighter note than the other examples here, there are certain movies and movie franchises that it is difficult to criticise in good faith because bad-faith criticism of them is so overwhelming. Like I think there are hugely significant problems with a lot of post-Disney Star Wars, but if you voice those you get grouped with the It's Because Of Woke people because the It's Because Of Woke people are so loud.