A man who underwent Sororitas training would not be a space marine. He'd be shorter for one thing 
Aside from the implants and gene-editing, which is a lot, he'd be trained entirely differently. He'd be a member of the Ecclesiarchy. He'd probably sing a lot and favor flame weapons.
A man who grew up as a woman would not be a woman, in any practical way, same the other way around. There are differences and I see no problem in there being differences.
My point is that the gender split is not what makes the two factions unique. It's unnecessary.
From a purely out-of-universe standpoint, do you believe that if GW pushed Female Space Marines more during the early era, would they introduce Sisters of Battle? Sisters of Battle are the female counterpart to Space Marines, and if there were actual Female Space Marines, Sororitas stop being really important anymore, both out-of-universe and in-universe to some degree.
Sorry, I just found that pretty insulting and absurd
Yeah, as I found the implication that anyone who would oppose FSM (for any other reason than nerd rage over "Well Sexist Emperor Did It") has to be fascist insulting and absurd. I feel like some degree of insulting is fine, of course, because I find that is what makes discussion very much human, but I do not have to say that I feel insulted to make a point.
I also disagree entirely. There are countless meaningful differences between the genetically modified shock troops and the Church's flame-obsessed footsoldiers. They both technically wear power armor (though completely differently) and both revere the Emprah (again, completely differently), and that's... it. The Ecclesiarchy even has loads of male soldiers, they just don't strap into the boob-armor!
Yeah. Which is good, because without that you'd just have Male Space Marines and Female Space Marines, and that'd be diminishing the depth of the setting, which is the core underlying argument. And Ecclesiarchy doesn't really have male soldiers, there are Crusaders but they are passed off as neccessary bodyguards, and thus do not count as soldiers really, especially since there is very few of them, but someone mentioned that already.
There is also the Frateris Militia, who are technically not under the Ecclesiarchy so it's alright. They just volunteered to join our newest crusade, okay? We're not commanding them. I imagine the Inquisition comes down pretty hard if they overstep and take a more active role in calling up these faithful.
Ecclesiarchy since long has stopped really enforcing the "no men under arms", because they pretty much worked out that it's pretty dumb in terms of logistics with other factions. As long as they're not actively raising an army which purpose is strengthening the position of Ecclesiarchy, nobody really cares that much, but if someone starts to do that, they usually get assassinated/otherwise removed, and more often than not those priests are actually influenced by Chaos and staging an uprising, so in a way the problem solves itself.
I'm not demanding or expecting them to make a change, I understand why they won't.
This isn't about demanding, we're just talking about why.
All we're saying is: If they did, it would not diminish the depth of the setting. I say it would increase it, by distancing their creations from just "monks and nuns". Isn't that an insulting oversimplification of what they've created, here?
It would diminish the depth of the setting. "Monks and nuns" is not exactly a shallow field to explore, and I would never consider that to be insulting. There is a lot to explore in terms of medieval convents and military orders that could be adapted to shooting ayys in spess. But then again, in your own words, Sororitas and Astrates are more unique than being just two gendered sides of one coin, so saying they're just "nuns and monks" would be contradictory to your previous statements, and if "Space Monk" Astrates simply would now include "Space Nuns" in their ranks, wouldn't that be closer to just "nuns and monks"?
This is what I mean by using a Lore Knot to escape the question. It's *exactly* this. I'm not asking for a change in lore, I'm asking for a change in context.
This is not lore? If I meant lore, I would just go with the traditional "Emperor did it this way". I am not talking about a change in lore, I am talking about how the change in context, which while I believe comes from good intentions, is resulting in exact opposite result.
The Imperium's claim that humanity was so faulted by aliens in the past is 100% Stab-in-the-back propaganda. Humanity conquered the entire galaxy at least twice. The aliens living throughout it did not fare well from those proceedings. They had weapons that were near-Necron levels of power. Just because exclusively the Eldar fucked up way worse doesn't change that.
We know very little about Dark Ages of Technology, so saying that they were the same level of genocidal as current Imperium is (with those rare examples of planets conquered during Horus Heresy where humanity did work with xenos in some splinter faction implying that they weren't), but we know that during Age of Strife a lot of them got severely FUCKED by Xenos.
The Nids are one thing, but the fact that all the upsides that can be pointed out in Imperial foreign policy are basically "we'd love to exterminate you, but we just don't have the time due to 100 octillion bugs in the walls call back later thanks bye" really says it all.
To be honest if Imperium had free reign and could do whatever they want, my guess would be slave labor rather than outright extermination, but yes. It's hard to pretend that destroying someone to get their shit is anywhere positive from an outside moral perspective, but I don't honestly see that as an negative for the winning side, which, again, is part of the "Manifest Destiny" approach of Humanity.
Humanity is absolutely responsible for the modern state of the Warp. Chaos is almost entirely human. Even daemons follow human psychology and aesthetics. I learned it from you, mon-keigh! I learned it from watching you!
That's pretty dumb though. Chaos is almost entirely daemons, which... are humanoid in shape. Just like Eldar. Just like Necrons. Just like Tau, for all it's worth. Don't equate their designs resembling humans to them being created by humans - most major daemons have existed for way longer than Imperium did, and it's evidenced by Enslavers and other Warp-based cuties that aren't daemons that the primary cause for it was War in Heaven, what with them hunting down most sentient psykers in Galaxy, which was the primary reason behind the whole Shaman mass sacrifice suicide to create one being strong enough to oppose them? Of course there's still Chaos Space Marines which are a major part of tangible Chaos influence on Galaxy, but that's the result of Chaos, not it's cause. The fact that Great Crusade wiped out most Chaos-worshipping xeno cults across the Galaxy doesn't mean they were never there, and as I said, you can argue that humanity as it currently stands is the biggest influencer of Warp, which I would tend to agree with, but they aren't the ones that have put Warp in the state it is, and with Chaos being, well, Chaos and liking to actually influence real space by rape, pillage and torture, it's really a snowball effect that makes thinking nice thoughts not a solution to fix Warp.
You don't have to show the spiritual utopia humanity could have built if not for the Emperor's foolishness. Just to know that they lost out on it because they didn't try hard enough is plenty.
What? The spiritual utopia that Terra was turned into a daemon-world few thousand years BC due to rampant psyker daemon explosions or maybe having the entire race be Enslaver food? Remember, Eldar only managed to not suffer that fate because they were created by Old Ones before Warp went to shit, and they were also taught proper techniques to manage, well, not exploding into daemons (which they did anyway, quite spectacularly, but whatever), and humanity didn't have that luxury. There's a reason why rampant increase in amount and power of human psykers is a problem, and it's not because humans are evil, it's because even the nicest of them can, again, quite literally, explode into daemons if not properly controlled.
The ensured part is the best part, because it's the part humanity writ large divides into Chaos or Loyalist on. Everyone agrees that the Imperium has defeated existential threats, everyone's quite eager to look at that box. But then there's the other box. The box where the Emperor fucked up from square one in moving from non-intervention to galactic conquest with nothing in-between. The box where he literally cut out and cast off his own sense of humanity, because that's so much more unbearable than 10,000 years of undead psychic torment. The box where the social strata of the Imperium all comes together in your mind and you suddenly flash forward a million years into Imperial victory, seeing the last humans dispassionately eat each other.
Not everyone who fell to Chaos opened that box. But quite a lot of them did, even if they could not express it in those terms.
What? I honestly don't fucking understand your point here. The only part I get is that you forgot that the "nothing in-between" was tried before, during Dark Ages of Technology, and it did not fucking work?
What alien groups would you negotiate with, besides the weird-ass unfitting blueberries?
There's bunch of literally one-liner mentions across the lore, but:
What aliens are there out there that AREN'T either A: Talked to, or B: ASSHOLES?
Yeah. Lore doesn't focus on the peaceful parts of the setting in which the main part of introduction is "THERE IS ONLY WAR", but as I said, authors have long ago decided just having constant war everywhere is kinda stupid in terms of suspension of disbelief, so they are mentioned. a bit. The closest you could probably get to seeing those parts is Rogue Traders, because those can have interesting and combat-heavy adventures in otherwise peaceful regions due to their swashbuckling nature.
EDIT: It should be noted that taking with the Blueberries is actually difficult, with their religious push on trying to force Greater Good on other races. Like trying to buy candy from a drug dealer.
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Topic: WH40K discussion thread: from Tyran's heart I stab at thee. (Read 965440 times)