When Games Workshop revealed its new Adeptus Custodes miniatures for the Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40k during the Warhammer preview, I was doubly delighted - first by the quality of the miniatures, and second by how small and feeble the minority was who were complaining about the new female heads on some of the models. Your social feed may vary - in mine, the bigger controversy was how the Custodes fire their Guardian Spears without any visible trigger (twist grips or nerve impulse feeds, I assume). It's almost as if, despite the howling and tearing of shirts when GW first retconned female Custodes into the lore, most people who are involved with the hobby don't give that much of a damn about the imaginary gender of the imaginary Emperor's favorite super soldiers.
To be clear, I don't think this means that everyone likes female Custodes, or likes how they were introduced to the lore. Would it surprise you to learn that I, the author of an article clearly in favor of the new female Custodes models, think the retcon that added them to the background was inelegant? It was workmanlike storytelling, well below the quality that makes the best Horus Heresy books so remarkable. But - like most people in the hobby - I'm a grown-up who recognises that my sense of the best way to tell the story is never going to dictate Games Workshop's business decisions.
Games Workshop wants to sell more models to women, and a good way to do that is to make models of women. That means diversifying representation across its range. I've argued in another article that GW is too fiscally conservative to make a female Space Marine - why risk tinkering with something that already makes cash hand over first? But it apparently saw an opportunity in the Custodes, who have had comparatively little written about them (and no explicit 'no girls allowed' clause in their lore), and it decided to run with them.
For GW, it's a business decision. For fans, it's a retcon. And hardly the biggest we've had to stomach - I have another article listing eight other retcons bigger than female Custodes. The Custodes are posthuman and effectively post-gender: they don't do any of the things that make gender relevant in stories, like fall in love, or sleep with people they shouldn't, or traumatize their kids. Gender is so immaterial to how Custodes function in the lore that it's basically set dressing.
So for all practical purposes, female Custodes amount to a few different pronouns sprinkled into books, and optional female heads on a new range of miniatures. Totally sick miniatures, too, based on Adrian Smith's killer art for the Horus Heresy card game, a loving homage to one of the most iconic and foundational depictions of the Custodes. They're very good models.
In Custodes groups on Facebook and Reddit I'm seeing lively discussions about the models' proportions, the quality of sculpting, size comparisons, how to convert them with elements from other kits, discussions of whether or not kits that are currently usable in 40k will be sent to Legends rules. People are engaging with the new release through the topics that actually matter if you're building models or playing the game.
This doesn't prove that 'real Custodes fans' are totally fine with the female Custodes. In a poll in the Adeptus Custodes Facebook group about attitudes to female Custodes (at time of writing), 63% said they didn't really care, 8% love them, 22% thought they "destroyed established lore" and weren't that fun. The mods of r/AdeptusCustodes implemented a no-warning ban policy for "bigotry and absolutely dumbfuckery", stating "you kick off about female Custodes in an uncivil manner, you are gone", leaving the door open for people to express disagreements, but shutting down any parts of the community that are, in fact, violently opposed.
I don't think r/AdeptusCustodes is losing anything by kicking out people who cannot express a disagreement civilly. If you want to find people angry with new femstodes, they're easy to find in anti-woke Reddit groups like r/KotakuInAction and r/JustMemesForUs. By their own admission - people literally saying "I don't play Warhammer 40k" - these commentators aren't actually part of the fandom. They're in the discussion purely for the culture war.
The female Custodes are part of Warhammer 40k lore forever now, with sick miniatures and - to my mind at least - bugger all influence on the lore, for good or ill. I'm happy for anyone who feels represented by them. For some people their existence will forever be a grumble, like the big Necron retcon or the Primaris Space Marines. But I'm heartened by how many people - which statistically will include a fair few people who don't care for the change - are just getting on with their day. That's the basis of a functioning community.
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