GW are the worst at keeping to the existing canon, retcons on top of retcons and things like The Leagues of Votann have always been hiding in a small section of the galaxy and obviously the female custodies. I think canon does matter but 40k always has had a large 'create your own' side to the lore. Now with 40K Fans actually treating the lore better than GW does, Fan Fiction has become more appealing to me than the actual books and Fan made projects like 'ASTARTIES' and 'Death of Hope' were so good they were treated as canon.
I agree with you. Having a stable setting for fictional property is essential because that allows people to understand and relate to the setting. I’d put it this way... cannon can evolve, but it shouldn’t just spontaneously alter. Specifically... female Custodes. I’m disappointed for two reasons. First it was a sloppy and unnecessarily abrupt rewrite of history. Second, it had nothing to do with the 40k setting and lore. It was solely driven by factors external to the IP.
Honestly, there is no excuse for bad writing. I absolutely agree with you that things can change and develop, but it has to fit the overall flavour of the universe one is writing for. Many things, especially retcons, I have the impression that they're just poorly executed in most of the cases. Thanks for the video, keep 'em coming! :D
Wholeheartedly agree with your assessment. In regards to the female custodes, there are a couple of basic ideas of how they could have incorporated them into the story without breaking the canon, both of which involve Belisarius Cawl. Version 1: While developing the Primaris, Cawl accidentally discovers a way to enable women to become compatible with the Black Carapace. He notifies Gulliman and after much deliberation decide to give it a try with the consent of the Custodes commander. After a few years of trial and error they eventually succeed in creating the first female marine. Version 2: Eve with the reinforcements of the Primaris, the Imperium stands on the tip of a sword. Gulliman, in a bid to push the balance in favour of the Imperium, tasks Cawl to figure out a way to make the Black Carapace compatible with the female genome. After a few years of trial and error, Cawl succeeds in creating the first female space marine. This is what I could think of on the fly. Obviously it can be improved on. Who knows. Maybe Gulliman and Cawl conducted these experiments with the assistance of the Aeldari, making use of the same alien technology that enabled Gulliman to walk once again.
First, They are under no obligation that we have like it. They can do whatever they want with it, it's their property. But it is in their interest so thread the customer because he is the one who buys stuff. GW is a company (some might add a greedy one) and they know what to tell so others buys their stuff. If they would introduce for whatever reason female space marines, and they would upset half of their fanbase and 500.000 customers would leave, but they would gain (guaranteed) 1.000.000 new customers, they would throw the Lore out of the window. Their primary focus is to make money, and not to satisfy customers. One often causes the other, but not always. A littel addition: im talking just about the lore and not the game. If the Space Marines are now female, that would change the game in no way. They would not do suddenly more or less damage on the table or have a different size. And a huge part of Warhammer is just the game. Now for implementing new stuff. Like already mentioned they can add whatever they want, but preferred if its in a good way. But the grade of change is also importand. To take the example of peacfull klingons. It is something different if the whole race is suddenly peacfull, or one isolated tribe on a remote planet is. For star wars example, sure names should say the same. When the Protagonist changes his name from "Takohil"o to "joe", its sure confusing. But if the ship has now a weapon that that has enver been fired before, you can do that but you have to explain why. But if the Ship has suddenly 5 toilets more installed, i dont think you have to come up with an explanation. Not only would that be boring, it would not serve the plot (technically you can build a plot around it but whatever) And this is the jump to the female custodes. The only thing that changes with the "introduction" of female custodes are the pronouns, nothing else. They are not more skilled or competent with weapons than males. On the table, they dont do more damage and the models are still the same. You could even argue that in your head canon the one Custodes Models without the helmet are male and the ones with are females and that red feather stuff on the helmets are her hairs. Now for redcons. those are delicate. I think its best to avoid it at all, but sometimes you you writeyourself in a corner (GW is good at it) and you have to get out or otherwise the whole setting comes either to a hold or whatever comes afterwards is even worse. Redcons are drastic and bevore you do a Redcon, you better implement something new, even if its bumpy. Also, Redcons work better on PC games, where its digital and not printed. I mean, you could even argue that there was never a female custodes bevore, but also nowhere is written that all custodes must be males. When some say "the army is 10.000 man strong" dones not mean there are only males in it. I dont have to add male/female when i say i go to the doctor. But why change canon? there is so much trouble so why change it? in the end, its to lure more customers into the hobby and therefore in extansion to make more money. Why female custodes? either to lure more females into the hobby or now you can make female models and sell more plastic.
Cut and pasting it as it's own comment, I think it will get more giggles: Wasn't there a Custodian leather daddy stage? Pretty sure we would have noticed then!
Yeah, I'm aware of that. It was good that they explored that avenue, because certainly you still need engineers and doctors. Not everyone can be a warrior. But my example in the video was specifically if they said all Klingons were pacifists suddenly.
Thank you! The models on the table are 3D printed, the name of the game is my upcoming Mass brutality War game. I'm almost finished with my federation army and I've got dominion and Klingon on the way. It will be genre agnostic and model agnostic so you can play your AOS versus 40k, your Star wars legion versus both action, etc. It'll be out this fall
This is how you can tell what motivates these companies and how shallow the modern lore changes are. The fact that consistency and respect for the lore/canon isn't a motivator in anything they do, but instead they are clearly drastically shifting to speak to an entirely different audience, then you know that dumb, desperate people are making marketing changes and crapping all over the canon/lore/existing audience. People and companies that do this deserve the same amount of support and respect from the original audience as they give, which is zero.
I 100% agree with you. I'm a millennial and now that my generation is the majority of writers in media, we've done an awful job and have a terrible legacy. Most modern rating is schlock.
I concur, but here is the problem. Game Workshop is being Consistent, it always comes down to pushing little bits of plastic. I think it is far better for us, the readers, to accept this 'meta' and try to work it into the things we like in a more grounded and realistic way. Instead of getting upset over the inclusion of the Ferengi, as an example, you simply accepted they somehow existed and hope they do something good with them going forward. Worse comes to worse... unreliable narrators are always a thing, and if a series has dozens of writers then unreliable narrators might be a good thing to have just to smooth out the inconsistencies. To bring the Klingons in this video as an example: Unreliable Narrator means the statement of 'have always been pacifists' can just be false.... Likely be the core element to some plot line, figuring out why the narrator is lying. So let us get to the real topic... Custodies. From what I have seen presented in other places, minuture discourse is a good one for it, there doesn't appear to be anything definitively preventing a female Custodies. A line or two about selecting from the noble families male linage, but nothing telling us what goes into the process for making a perfect super-human. There is even meta-evidence that the writers wanted to explore this topic previously but... game workshop exists to push Models, and they hadn't made a female Custodies yet. That really is the reason we haven't seen lore based around it... they haven't got the plastic molds figured out yet. So when that plastic hits the table we will have to accept one of two things: a) Something changed in the recruiting process and now girlies are in. 2) The line about only taking from males... was a false narrator. I will 100% agree with everyone annoyed over the announcement though. You don't just slap the fans and say 'no, you where just too dumb to notice.' I mean... wasn't there that leather daddy stage? Pretty sure we would have noticed then!
Counterpoint. Instead of looking at "Klingons are a pacifistic race", what about looking at "Klingons have a very recognizable bone ridge across the tops of their heads"? Star Trek made the switch from them looking entirely human when they switched from low-budget TV show to high-budget movies. No explanation was given, and no fan-made explanation fit the race, but it looked cool enough that they got away with it.
You're right, although they ended up retcon in it and giving it a reason. Because fans brought that question of constantly. But you're also talking about budgetary and special effects problems, not writing problems.
@LetsTalkTabletop Go back and revisit The Trouble with Tribbles. Then go back and revisit Trials and Tribble-ations from Deep Space 9. Here they effectively doubled down and confirmed that it wasn't just a lack of money for special effects.
I recall that DS9 episode, but I'm not certain what you're getting at. They ask worf about his ridges and he says they don't talk about it. The original reason why the original series had human looking Klingons was either lack of imagination or lack of budget. In enterprise, they explained that it was a cure for a virus that made them lose their ridges but eventually The ridges would come back after a few generations.
@LetsTalkTabletop What I had been trying to get at was that you could get away with it under the "Rule of Cool," though it's pretty obvious that GW didn't pull that one off. I also undercut my own point by inadvertently pointing out that this was not the same kind of retcon, as Trek didn't try to pretend that they had always looked like this. My bad. I apparently didn't watch far enough into Enterprise to catch when they finally addressed it, either.
Voyager had some good moments, in my opinion, about 25% of the show was really good. And about 40% of it was pretty bad. The rest of it somewhere in the middle.
By the way, I own a female "Space Marine" - original GW - from the first 40K edition. GW changed the canon felt like a thousand times. People are unhappy.. and then forget. What's really sad about 40K is that the story is now more interesting and deeper than the game. That's why you p*ss off more people than you have players. Plus the influencers who thrive on people's anger. (sigh) More noise. GW will survive this. PR consultants say "The main thing is that people talk about it, it doesn't matter how". They burned the entire canon of WFB and the players mostly moved on to AoS. Some people still try to put it nicely to this day. Stockholm Syndrome and forgetfulness. And finally: Another good discussion video. 👍
Doesn't beat the chearleading Ork. Joking aside, I do concur. The early history about Game Workshop models, the logistics and marketing decisions.... Cannon is whatever sells models at the time.
I’ve always considered canon important because the game’s story is the starting point for my stories when I play. I do agree with the idea that canon can change. I had friends LIVID over the changes/discarding of the Star Wars novels when Disney got ahold of it. I didn’t mind as much. In fact, I eventually saw some wins. For ex: Lucas added more detail in his special edition remakes to confirm Boba Fett died in the Sarlacc. Disney has him riding a Rancor… I’ll take Disney.
When disney got rid of the Star Wars extended universe, I was pretty mad. Many of my favorite characters, about whom I had written well over 100,000 words of fanfiction, were EU, and even if they decided to include Thrawn eventually, their version was never quite the same, there was still no Revan, no Mara Jade etc etc, and disney had lost my trust. Never really got into disney star wars, though I read a few books and saw one very bad movie. Went off and wrote for other fandoms instead. Having something you've invested that much time and effort into suddenly made to no longer exist... why be a fan when they'd amputated what I'd liked most in the first place?
GW are the worst at keeping to the existing canon, retcons on top of retcons and things like The Leagues of Votann have always been hiding in a small section of the galaxy and obviously the female custodies. I think canon does matter but 40k always has had a large 'create your own' side to the lore. Now with 40K Fans actually treating the lore better than GW does, Fan Fiction has become more appealing to me than the actual books and Fan made projects like 'ASTARTIES' and 'Death of Hope' were so good they were treated as canon.
I agree with you. Having a stable setting for fictional property is essential because that allows people to understand and relate to the setting. I’d put it this way... cannon can evolve, but it shouldn’t just spontaneously alter. Specifically... female Custodes. I’m disappointed for two reasons. First it was a sloppy and unnecessarily abrupt rewrite of history. Second, it had nothing to do with the 40k setting and lore. It was solely driven by factors external to the IP.
Honestly, there is no excuse for bad writing. I absolutely agree with you that things can change and develop, but it has to fit the overall flavour of the universe one is writing for. Many things, especially retcons, I have the impression that they're just poorly executed in most of the cases.
Thanks for the video, keep 'em coming! :D
Wholeheartedly agree with your assessment.
In regards to the female custodes, there are a couple of basic ideas of how they could have incorporated them into the story without breaking the canon, both of which involve Belisarius Cawl.
Version 1: While developing the Primaris, Cawl accidentally discovers a way to enable women to become compatible with the Black Carapace. He notifies Gulliman and after much deliberation decide to give it a try with the consent of the Custodes commander. After a few years of trial and error they eventually succeed in creating the first female marine.
Version 2: Eve with the reinforcements of the Primaris, the Imperium stands on the tip of a sword. Gulliman, in a bid to push the balance in favour of the Imperium, tasks Cawl to figure out a way to make the Black Carapace compatible with the female genome. After a few years of trial and error, Cawl succeeds in creating the first female space marine.
This is what I could think of on the fly. Obviously it can be improved on. Who knows. Maybe Gulliman and Cawl conducted these experiments with the assistance of the Aeldari, making use of the same alien technology that enabled Gulliman to walk once again.
First, They are under no obligation that we have like it. They can do whatever they want with it, it's their property. But it is in their interest so thread the customer because he is the one who buys stuff. GW is a company (some might add a greedy one) and they know what to tell so others buys their stuff.
If they would introduce for whatever reason female space marines, and they would upset half of their fanbase and 500.000 customers would leave, but they would gain (guaranteed) 1.000.000 new customers, they would throw the Lore out of the window. Their primary focus is to make money, and not to satisfy customers. One often causes the other, but not always.
A littel addition: im talking just about the lore and not the game. If the Space Marines are now female, that would change the game in no way. They would not do suddenly more or less damage on the table or have a different size. And a huge part of Warhammer is just the game.
Now for implementing new stuff. Like already mentioned they can add whatever they want, but preferred if its in a good way. But the grade of change is also importand.
To take the example of peacfull klingons. It is something different if the whole race is suddenly peacfull, or one isolated tribe on a remote planet is.
For star wars example, sure names should say the same. When the Protagonist changes his name from "Takohil"o to "joe", its sure confusing. But if the ship has now a weapon that that has enver been fired before, you can do that but you have to explain why.
But if the Ship has suddenly 5 toilets more installed, i dont think you have to come up with an explanation. Not only would that be boring, it would not serve the plot (technically you can build a plot around it but whatever)
And this is the jump to the female custodes. The only thing that changes with the "introduction" of female custodes are the pronouns, nothing else. They are not more skilled or competent with weapons than males. On the table, they dont do more damage and the models are still the same. You could even argue that in your head canon the one Custodes Models without the helmet are male and the ones with are females and that red feather stuff on the helmets are her hairs.
Now for redcons. those are delicate. I think its best to avoid it at all, but sometimes you you writeyourself in a corner (GW is good at it) and you have to get out or otherwise the whole setting comes either to a hold or whatever comes afterwards is even worse. Redcons are drastic and bevore you do a Redcon, you better implement something new, even if its bumpy.
Also, Redcons work better on PC games, where its digital and not printed.
I mean, you could even argue that there was never a female custodes bevore, but also nowhere is written that all custodes must be males. When some say "the army is 10.000 man strong" dones not mean there are only males in it. I dont have to add male/female when i say i go to the doctor.
But why change canon? there is so much trouble so why change it? in the end, its to lure more customers into the hobby and therefore in extansion to make more money.
Why female custodes? either to lure more females into the hobby or now you can make female models and sell more plastic.
I think we're agreeing with each other. Your comment is well thought out.
Cut and pasting it as it's own comment, I think it will get more giggles:
Wasn't there a Custodian leather daddy stage?
Pretty sure we would have noticed then!
😄😄😄
depends on the changes and how they are implemented.
Re: Peaceful Klingons: ENT did a pretty solid job in exploring "A warrior culture cannot survive solely with warriors."
Yeah, I'm aware of that. It was good that they explored that avenue, because certainly you still need engineers and doctors. Not everyone can be a warrior. But my example in the video was specifically if they said all Klingons were pacifists suddenly.
what’s the name of the game and models on the table? They look stunning
Thank you! The models on the table are 3D printed, the name of the game is my upcoming Mass brutality War game. I'm almost finished with my federation army and I've got dominion and Klingon on the way. It will be genre agnostic and model agnostic so you can play your AOS versus 40k, your Star wars legion versus both action, etc. It'll be out this fall
This is how you can tell what motivates these companies and how shallow the modern lore changes are. The fact that consistency and respect for the lore/canon isn't a motivator in anything they do, but instead they are clearly drastically shifting to speak to an entirely different audience, then you know that dumb, desperate people are making marketing changes and crapping all over the canon/lore/existing audience.
People and companies that do this deserve the same amount of support and respect from the original audience as they give, which is zero.
WHERE DID YOU GET THAT RUNABOUT!?
I 3D printed it. It's the right scale for 28 mm too!
I blame millennials raised on anime for the current state of fiction, because animes and jrpgs love twists and ignoring everything from past plots.
I 100% agree with you. I'm a millennial and now that my generation is the majority of writers in media, we've done an awful job and have a terrible legacy. Most modern rating is schlock.
I concur, but here is the problem.
Game Workshop is being Consistent, it always comes down to pushing little bits of plastic.
I think it is far better for us, the readers, to accept this 'meta' and try to work it into the things we like in a more grounded and realistic way. Instead of getting upset over the inclusion of the Ferengi, as an example, you simply accepted they somehow existed and hope they do something good with them going forward. Worse comes to worse... unreliable narrators are always a thing, and if a series has dozens of writers then unreliable narrators might be a good thing to have just to smooth out the inconsistencies.
To bring the Klingons in this video as an example:
Unreliable Narrator means the statement of 'have always been pacifists' can just be false....
Likely be the core element to some plot line, figuring out why the narrator is lying.
So let us get to the real topic... Custodies.
From what I have seen presented in other places, minuture discourse is a good one for it, there doesn't appear to be anything definitively preventing a female Custodies. A line or two about selecting from the noble families male linage, but nothing telling us what goes into the process for making a perfect super-human. There is even meta-evidence that the writers wanted to explore this topic previously but... game workshop exists to push Models, and they hadn't made a female Custodies yet. That really is the reason we haven't seen lore based around it... they haven't got the plastic molds figured out yet.
So when that plastic hits the table we will have to accept one of two things:
a) Something changed in the recruiting process and now girlies are in.
2) The line about only taking from males... was a false narrator.
I will 100% agree with everyone annoyed over the announcement though.
You don't just slap the fans and say 'no, you where just too dumb to notice.'
I mean... wasn't there that leather daddy stage?
Pretty sure we would have noticed then!
Counterpoint. Instead of looking at "Klingons are a pacifistic race", what about looking at "Klingons have a very recognizable bone ridge across the tops of their heads"? Star Trek made the switch from them looking entirely human when they switched from low-budget TV show to high-budget movies. No explanation was given, and no fan-made explanation fit the race, but it looked cool enough that they got away with it.
You're right, although they ended up retcon in it and giving it a reason. Because fans brought that question of constantly. But you're also talking about budgetary and special effects problems, not writing problems.
@LetsTalkTabletop Go back and revisit The Trouble with Tribbles. Then go back and revisit Trials and Tribble-ations from Deep Space 9. Here they effectively doubled down and confirmed that it wasn't just a lack of money for special effects.
@@LetsTalkTabletop For the record, I do think that change in their Canon was a good move in the long run.
I recall that DS9 episode, but I'm not certain what you're getting at. They ask worf about his ridges and he says they don't talk about it. The original reason why the original series had human looking Klingons was either lack of imagination or lack of budget. In enterprise, they explained that it was a cure for a virus that made them lose their ridges but eventually The ridges would come back after a few generations.
@LetsTalkTabletop What I had been trying to get at was that you could get away with it under the "Rule of Cool," though it's pretty obvious that GW didn't pull that one off. I also undercut my own point by inadvertently pointing out that this was not the same kind of retcon, as Trek didn't try to pretend that they had always looked like this. My bad. I apparently didn't watch far enough into Enterprise to catch when they finally addressed it, either.
Stupid voyager! Worst series of started and I watched Discovery
Voyager had some good moments, in my opinion, about 25% of the show was really good. And about 40% of it was pretty bad. The rest of it somewhere in the middle.
By the way, I own a female "Space Marine" - original GW - from the first 40K edition. GW changed the canon felt like a thousand times. People are unhappy.. and then forget. What's really sad about 40K is that the story is now more interesting and deeper than the game. That's why you p*ss off more people than you have players. Plus the influencers who thrive on people's anger. (sigh) More noise.
GW will survive this. PR consultants say "The main thing is that people talk about it, it doesn't matter how". They burned the entire canon of WFB and the players mostly moved on to AoS. Some people still try to put it nicely to this day. Stockholm Syndrome and forgetfulness.
And finally: Another good discussion video. 👍
Doesn't beat the chearleading Ork.
Joking aside, I do concur.
The early history about Game Workshop models, the logistics and marketing decisions....
Cannon is whatever sells models at the time.
@@lostbutfreesoul Sad but true. 😢
I’ve always considered canon important because the game’s story is the starting point for my stories when I play. I do agree with the idea that canon can change. I had friends LIVID over the changes/discarding of the Star Wars novels when Disney got ahold of it. I didn’t mind as much. In fact, I eventually saw some wins. For ex: Lucas added more detail in his special edition remakes to confirm Boba Fett died in the Sarlacc. Disney has him riding a Rancor… I’ll take Disney.
When disney got rid of the Star Wars extended universe, I was pretty mad. Many of my favorite characters, about whom I had written well over 100,000 words of fanfiction, were EU, and even if they decided to include Thrawn eventually, their version was never quite the same, there was still no Revan, no Mara Jade etc etc, and disney had lost my trust. Never really got into disney star wars, though I read a few books and saw one very bad movie. Went off and wrote for other fandoms instead.
Having something you've invested that much time and effort into suddenly made to no longer exist... why be a fan when they'd amputated what I'd liked most in the first place?