Post by Harkovast on Apr 27, 2015 18:28:23 GMT
Let's have a go at 40K fluff!
GW love what tv tropes describes as the "amazon brigades".
This is the idea of an exclusively female unit or formation in the army.
So an army would be all or predominantly male than have a particular unit that was entirely female.
Witch Elves, Howling Banshees and others are all examples of this odd trend in gender division.
In 40K, the Imperium eventually got its own version of this, known as the Sisters of Battle.
They are basically power armoured nuns, who struggle to find a role being not kinda space marines but not quite.
But's I'm not here for the crunch, I'm here for the fluff. (Crunch is rules, fluff is background, for the uninitiated.)
Seeing as this was the first ever female centred army in 40K, this was a good chance for GW to show some progressive credentials, and possibly attract some real world females into what has always been a very male dominated hobby.
So when the army book came out, as you can imagine the background in it was all about a man who takes over the Imperium and another man who speaks out against him and rallies the other men of the Imperium to stop the guy.
Whaaa?
So where are the Sisters of Battle in this Grim Dark Sausage fest?
Well the bad guy tricks this religious over into being his bodyguards/concubines and they defend him against the good guys.
Eventually another man manages to convince the leader of the bodyguard/concubines that she is on the wrong side and gets her to change sides and finally kill the bad guy.
So the Sisters of Battle are technically involved in their own backstory...being tricked into fighting for the wrong side by a man and needing another man to explain why they are wrong.
The background for the sisters seems to barely make any mention of how bad ass they are, about battles they've won, enemies that fear them etc.
Other than their historical fucking up, that's all they ever seem to have accomplished.
After this very strange choice of information in their Codex (each Codex is a book that describes one of the factions and gives you rules for them), the Sisters of Battle never received much support and seemed to have been basically set up to fail.
Unfortunately this led to them only appearing in other peoples back ground in order to get killed.
In the bad guys fluff they get killed off almost casually, in the the good guys fluff they get killed by the bad guys so the other good guys can then come in to avenge them.
This rather uncomfortable situation where the only predominantly female army getting constantly slaughtered reach its head when back ground was written where some Grey Knights (the anti-demon warriors of the Imperium) kill a load of sisters of battle, smear the blood on their armour to give them protection from some demons.
Yes this did really happen.
They grey knights are treated as a good guys and heroic for defeating the demons.
The sisters of battle, supposedly elite fanatical warriors of the Emperor are now so expendable other servants of the Imperium can and do casually kill them in order to get an armour buff.
So if you bought a Sisters of Battle Army, GW has a middle finger they want to extend in your direction.
They technically have a codex in the newest version but its download only (you still have to pay for it, they just don't want to bother printing it) and the models are all about twenty years old. A squad of ten battle sisters now goes for £45 on the webstore (I shit you not.)
You could draw a ven diagram of all this to see the exact points where stupidity, disregard for the fans and sexism all over lap.
GW love what tv tropes describes as the "amazon brigades".
This is the idea of an exclusively female unit or formation in the army.
So an army would be all or predominantly male than have a particular unit that was entirely female.
Witch Elves, Howling Banshees and others are all examples of this odd trend in gender division.
In 40K, the Imperium eventually got its own version of this, known as the Sisters of Battle.
They are basically power armoured nuns, who struggle to find a role being not kinda space marines but not quite.
But's I'm not here for the crunch, I'm here for the fluff. (Crunch is rules, fluff is background, for the uninitiated.)
Seeing as this was the first ever female centred army in 40K, this was a good chance for GW to show some progressive credentials, and possibly attract some real world females into what has always been a very male dominated hobby.
So when the army book came out, as you can imagine the background in it was all about a man who takes over the Imperium and another man who speaks out against him and rallies the other men of the Imperium to stop the guy.
Whaaa?
So where are the Sisters of Battle in this Grim Dark Sausage fest?
Well the bad guy tricks this religious over into being his bodyguards/concubines and they defend him against the good guys.
Eventually another man manages to convince the leader of the bodyguard/concubines that she is on the wrong side and gets her to change sides and finally kill the bad guy.
So the Sisters of Battle are technically involved in their own backstory...being tricked into fighting for the wrong side by a man and needing another man to explain why they are wrong.
The background for the sisters seems to barely make any mention of how bad ass they are, about battles they've won, enemies that fear them etc.
Other than their historical fucking up, that's all they ever seem to have accomplished.
After this very strange choice of information in their Codex (each Codex is a book that describes one of the factions and gives you rules for them), the Sisters of Battle never received much support and seemed to have been basically set up to fail.
Unfortunately this led to them only appearing in other peoples back ground in order to get killed.
In the bad guys fluff they get killed off almost casually, in the the good guys fluff they get killed by the bad guys so the other good guys can then come in to avenge them.
This rather uncomfortable situation where the only predominantly female army getting constantly slaughtered reach its head when back ground was written where some Grey Knights (the anti-demon warriors of the Imperium) kill a load of sisters of battle, smear the blood on their armour to give them protection from some demons.
Yes this did really happen.
They grey knights are treated as a good guys and heroic for defeating the demons.
The sisters of battle, supposedly elite fanatical warriors of the Emperor are now so expendable other servants of the Imperium can and do casually kill them in order to get an armour buff.
So if you bought a Sisters of Battle Army, GW has a middle finger they want to extend in your direction.
They technically have a codex in the newest version but its download only (you still have to pay for it, they just don't want to bother printing it) and the models are all about twenty years old. A squad of ten battle sisters now goes for £45 on the webstore (I shit you not.)
You could draw a ven diagram of all this to see the exact points where stupidity, disregard for the fans and sexism all over lap.