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Women Custodes Cause Manly Meltdowns
238 Plays1 year ago
This week, we talk about the new lore that expands the universe of Warhammer 40k. The Custodes Codex introduces the idea that they can be women.
Joined by Mikey from Hellstorm Wargaming - lets talk about all the wild antics of children on the internet having a meltdown because the "canon" of Warhammer 40k was changed again.
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Transcript
The Warhammer Ideological Shift
00:00:00
Speaker
Brothers! The gates have fallen! Warhammer is over! The world has ended! The ideological battle on the forefront of nerd gaming is over! And the ex-JW's have won! They broke their game brothers! It is fucking crazy what they've done. They've made a custodian as a woman. And for that reason I'm selling out. I'm selling all my models, Mikey. How about you?
00:00:25
Speaker
Yeah, I'm out. Listen, look. They happened to Marvel, they happened to Star Wars, and the last bastion has finally fallen. The last bastion of white male gaming. That's what someone at 4chan called it when they were, um, they were criticizing me for my female space marine video.
Podcasting and Controversy
00:00:42
Speaker
They're like, he's infiltrated the last bastion of white male gaming. I was like, fuck.
00:00:46
Speaker
Excuse me. I wanted to do a whole bit where we just do a whole like woke hammer podcast thing anti-woke book But cuz the first episode of a podcast and I plan to do more I have to be very careful about scaring everyone off right cuz the chuds aren't gonna like this if they've clicked on accidentally Hello, you're not gonna like what we have to say If we just keep up this act for too long, which it wasn't a very good act I'm bad at acting like anyone who might be like I thought Vince like was okay with this shit as he comes in and I'm like the works of one
00:01:19
Speaker
I've started to unironically blame the wakes for things. I'm like there's no milk in the fridge because of the work
00:01:26
Speaker
It's like the new thanks Obama meme, isn't it? Do you remember when people used to thank Obama for everything? So let's, let's lay out what it is. What's happening, Mikey? Do you want to, do you want to go first? What's, what's happening? Okay.
Female Custodians in Warhammer: Controversy and Canon
00:01:40
Speaker
So there is a custodian's codex that is on pre-order right now. And in there, they have short stories. They've expanded the law of the custodians, like they're doing every codex and every novel that they do. And one of them are wamming.
00:01:55
Speaker
I can't remember a name though. What's the name? Fuck. You've got the book there, haven't you? Look, look, I've come prepared. I'm going to read the excerpt, Mikey. I don't have it. Go for it. Mikey's got a copy because he's actually a games workshop employee.
00:02:11
Speaker
Is that the correct term? I had the intern and the intern that wrote it. Oh, you're the one that's letting all the wokeness in, right? Okay. I'm rogue, baby. I go, I'm rogue, baby. So, Kostonian Kalidase Torivalia Kesh stood upon the bridge of the Cobra-class destroyer named Vigilant Flame.
00:02:31
Speaker
And it goes on to say the warship belonged to the mighty battleship Fleek Solo. He mentioned the solar system, her watching everyone. She's got super high cognitive function because she's a custodian. And we'll go all into the actual timeline, because the timeline's really funny. Because this showed up in Spanish or something first, and everyone was like, it's got to be a misterisation.
00:02:52
Speaker
Yeah, because there's a new review of Oxty Horace who did the break, really. He was like the first one to post about it. And then people went on to Grilla Miniature Games. That was the 9-11 for Chuds.
00:03:07
Speaker
I was like a second woke and spit the game's workshop. Yeah, and then they're like, oh, it's, oh, it's blurry. It probably doesn't say she, it's a he, obviously. It's so blurry. And then it's like 1080p. So it's the same thing you said from the start. Have you watched any of the reaction content? Have you, have you watched any of the? Oh, I've watched, I, I was watching so much. I felt like my brain was going to fall out of my ear. Yeah. At one point, I wasn't even like a first. They're all selling the Warhammer. Yes. They're all selling up, by the way, just to make sure.
00:03:34
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I'm hoping I set fire to it. Did you remember? So if people don't know, I'm getting ahead of myself. This is a podcast episode one. If you listen to the Spotify platform, I have successfully uploaded it. That's great. The videos we're going out, I'll be doing it every two weekly. Mike, you'll probably be semi-regular because he's a friend of mine, but I'm going to invite loads of different people on and just get a different perspective
Extreme Reactions in the Hobby
00:03:56
Speaker
about the hobby. Right. That's that amble out of the way.
00:04:00
Speaker
Something that I was hoping we'd see. So, you know, when they squatted, which is the whole topic that I want to do for an episode, maybe we'll do it. When they squatted the first-born Dreadnoughts, that guy set fire to his Dreadnoughts? Did you see that? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I saw that one. I thought you were going to refer to the original when Warhammer Fantasy became Sigmar. The guy set fire to the Dark Elves. What a whole army. Have you seen that? No. Have you not seen that? Oh, mate, it's hilarious.
00:04:28
Speaker
You need to watch it. You need to watch it now for content. But he's like trying to set fire to it. There's boxes, there's plastic. It's not setting on fire very well because plastic is inherently not good for like setting on fire. So he's there trying to light it with like lighter fluid or something and it's like
00:04:46
Speaker
30 minutes, so he tried to belt it. And these dark elves are me, which then became Doors of Cane, which made to the models that he burned are still playable today. I was going to say, do you reckon he regret that when Doors of Cane came in? Or now, with the old world, they'd be worth an absolute bomb as well, some of those models. It's so good. So I was hoping we'd see that this time around. That was the first one I've ever saw. So how many of these are there? I've only seen the first one.
00:05:17
Speaker
the first Pawn Drennall and Fard. That's the original one. I feel like that was the first one. The trend set up. This will be funny. The innovator in rage reaction videos.
00:05:29
Speaker
I would say so, yeah, very innovative. So, yeah, he must have been the first one then. The first one I saw the dreadnought as well, which I thought was just a mistake of that one. That might be it. I might be missing that context. It could be that it is a reference to a thing that I think that's a problem with like memetic and ironic comedy is that if someone's tuned into this, for example, and I did the very bad attempt at pretending to be angry about woke isms. I don't know. And they haven't got any context. They don't understand the context.
00:05:56
Speaker
They're like, this guy seems fucking weird. Like I did about the Dreadnought, right? But in reality, the Dreadnought might just be ironic, like, I've got a Dreadnought spare, why not? You know?
00:06:05
Speaker
That's quite funny because it's almost like most of 40k is like that because they're just like women custodians who've been introduced multiple times in the past. They're angry at this one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're going to get to that as well. We're going to talk about whether this is new or not. Okay. So before we get into that, let's do some side ambly. I can't say preamble ramble because that's stealing from Miliac and Ninjom. So I've got to call it before we get going on the main topic. Let's talk about other shit. So firstly, what have you been doing?
Warhammer Game Changes
00:06:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, this is the artificial and forced segue into other shit, but I'm actually interested in whether you've been doing the object.
00:06:42
Speaker
So I've actually got rid of my Warhammer, I've been playing other games. So I've actually been playing Warhammer fantasy. Understandable. So, yeah. You sold out and bought into a different games workshop. Bought the newest thing they released. Yeah, it's crazy. There won't be any woke-isms in this old world shit, will there? No, no, exactly. So I've been doing fun. I've been doing that. I went to a big tournament recently, the Manchester GT, and I took Tank Spam, which was great. Good fun. Was that our install?
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah, black Templar. I installed specifically with a librarian love to see it. I love the lovely But tell me why there's a librarian so if you listen to this or watch this you I don't Can't play why are you doing this you have to bear with us for like two minutes? Okay, sure
00:07:29
Speaker
Why is there a librarian? What does it do? It's a tangent. So because the Phobos librarian, the guy in the cloak who's like doing nine powers with his sword, he can attach to infiltrator units. And they can't be targeted over 12 inches. And then the infiltrator is denied deep strike within 12 inches, which is really good in the meta right now because there's so much that can deep strike or deep strike over three, like all of Grey Knights, all of Necrons, et cetera. So he's really good. But obviously the Black Templars famously hate librarians.
00:07:59
Speaker
Yes. So I'm running a black temple as lace because they have tanks in multi-melty rather than noble tanks and then a library to stop people deep strike and I'm bringing it as iron storm because it's the best one. Yeah this is why this is why the casuals and narrative players hate comp players, Mikey. Because of you. Yeah that's fair. Sweaty, try hard like you. Here I am talking as an authority on the law after doing that.
00:08:21
Speaker
Well, I don't claim to be an authority on the law. I assume you don't either, right? I do. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume you don't either. I assume
00:08:43
Speaker
I dropped two games at 3-2. Okay, that's not terrible. It's not where you want to be. It's a 3-3 heart, but it's not terrible. No, so I played against custodians. They were like, you know, on topic, but you know what they're like to play. If you roll four ups, you just win. It was kind of one of those games. They played one of the best Necron plays in the country. But perhaps not for much longer though, because they're losing a lot of their good tools and points. Week and a half.
00:09:07
Speaker
The irony is you paired into them on perhaps their last weekend or second from last weekend where they're going to be as good as they currently are. For those who don't know, by the way, there's a second layer to the Custodes Codex thing of like, the book is coming out and it is quite objectively not very good. This is not into that overreaction like it was with the last book where everyone said it was bad and it was actually incredible.
00:09:29
Speaker
Um, so there's this bit where like people are going to stop playing custodies, shelve their armies or sell them because they're, if they're in the comp scene, they're just not going to be good for another, maybe six months at a minimum. But people are going to use that as an excuse. They're going to be like, see, people are selling out and not playing custodies because there's a woman in an excerpt from a short story. It's a great time to buy her army.
00:09:48
Speaker
Because all the competitive players are selling offers, so all the lore players is great. I reckon a lot of lore players won't even sell them. That's a confirmation point for in a moment. So GT, and then you did Salute, which is a thing I don't really understand. When I saw you tweeting about it, I started looking at it. Yeah. Yeah. So I've never been to Salute, but it is a one day convention in London at the Excel, which is weird. One day is not long enough for a convention. How much game did you get done in a one day?
00:10:16
Speaker
Zero baby, how could you like it was like you could get you could start queuing from eight to get in at ten But then everyone it shuts at five you get booted out by security But also everyone starts packing up at like half past three
00:10:31
Speaker
Because I did a stream there. That is no time at all. You can't play anything. No. No, exactly. So if you do a demo game, which is what?
Convention Gaming Challenges
00:10:40
Speaker
You're going to have to queue for it, realistically. There's loads of cool stuff talking about. There's demo games, there's like participation games. So like, oh, there's like loads of like historical games. There's like a huge board playing a rule set known as what a tanker, which I thought was great because the W and the logo is huge.
00:10:56
Speaker
uh i thought it was cool but they're doing like a band of brothers reenactment which is cool and people can just like yeah so it's like a world war two system i've never seen it before but i thought the day of it was funny but they were playing essentially like a reenactment from one of the stories of that and the table was like 12 foot by what must have been 30 or 40 feet it was huge right what bit from band of brothers was it like diving on i have no idea i couldn't get involved was it snowy was it snowy
00:11:25
Speaker
It wasn't snowy. I could probably send you a picture. Okay, it's probably like the Twitch bit at the end. But I fucking love that show. What a show. Yeah, maybe. Let's get into our proper wargaming thing, like, yeah, World War II fiction, yeah. Let's play off women. See? A lot of participation games. Imagine people with women in band of brothers, Mikey. That's why it's so good. That's right. They would know that, so okay. It's the last bastion of male hobbies. Yes, yes.
00:11:54
Speaker
But say, loads of participation games, loads of stalls selling stuff, you know, showing off new products or whatever. But because it was so short, you could hardly see anything. And again, I started streaming. I was like, oh, it's just a five. I'll start streaming at like four. By the time I'd started streaming, everyone was like starting to roll things, like wrap it up. Like stalls were shutting down. People were like putting their models away. It was like, oh, this is a problem I've had. I mean, it's cheap. It's 15 quid on the door. Right. Because like, why is it only one day?
00:12:22
Speaker
It was, I guess it makes it cheaper to run. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I guess because it's at the XL, which obviously like a huge, like famous convention center in London, in the center of London, it's probably quite expensive. It gets to be in the XL.
00:12:38
Speaker
Is there another game? Is there an expo? I think I don't think so. No, I think that is the only one part of the country as well. It's only 50. Yeah, exactly. But I was talking to the people they were saying that like it feels too big this year for one day because last year it felt fine.
00:12:56
Speaker
But it must be because they're growing. I feel like the teething issue is, oh, actually, there's a bit too much stuff to do. So if you're on a mission, you're like, Mantic is showing off Halo Flashpoint. You want to get a debit game. You will be fine. You will get a debit game. But you just won't see anything else. Yeah, exactly. Or like you always get a bit. I feel like when you go to Comic Con, and it's all these stores that you buy, I'm not going to be too harsh about Comic Con, but I don't really enjoy Comic Cons that much when I've been to them in terms of what you can get. It's just a big sales thing, right? It's like a market, if anything. Yeah. Venter Village is a general.
00:13:26
Speaker
Yeah. And you can just wander around and you can look at stuff and then buy a few things and you can do Comic Con in a day easily. But like, if you want to stop and play anything, like there's this old thing with like magic where it's difficult to get enough magic in whilst also seeing as a magic convention as we call it.
00:13:41
Speaker
But when it comes to wargaming, like the average skirmish game is longer than the game of magic. The average wargaming is like three times the length of a game of magic. It's impossible to actually play anything, whether it be, you know, your once a year Necromunda game. Because when people go to Adepticon and take like their stuff to try and play Necromunda once a year, like if I travel to Adepticon across the Atlantic, how much gaming am I going to do? It's going to happen more of a social and like, you know.
00:14:16
Speaker
I know, I know, how weird. They must be like, be ready for expansion as well then. They must be like, bigger venue, less money, let's get more people in. But yeah, if I went, I'd probably go and play like the singles event and then skip the team events over the weekend. So you actually do the social bit or vice versa. Yeah. Cause I feel like if you're going to go that far or even, even like to London, I felt like for me, obviously it's like four hour drive or something. Oh yeah, for people at home, we don't know.
00:14:30
Speaker
Have you done a depth con yet? I've never been to a depth con, no. I would really like to. I keep thinking about it.
00:14:43
Speaker
Because the majority of my audience are Americans, that's why I'm saying it. Although I say this, and the Warhammer side is a lot of points, right? But anyway, American audience is tuning in from over from Magic and stuff. We want to hear about Wokestones, and now we're talking about Adepticon, sorry. But also Mikey is like four hours north of me.
00:14:58
Speaker
Which for Americans isn't very far, but for Brits is like, it might as well be a different world, like a different planet. Yeah. Just, just remember, look, we built the roads that invented cars, not the other way around. Okay. And the last time I drove back from one of your events, because you're a TO and you've had old events, right? The last time I drove back from one of your events, there was a crash on the M4, whatever it was. I was incredibly hungover. I think it took me six and a half or seven hours to get home. It was an insane drive. Like I was going to be home midday the next day to see my wife and I was like,
00:15:27
Speaker
It's like dinner time, I was like, hi, I've been stuck on a motorway for like, oh.
00:15:34
Speaker
And when I came back from filming with you the same thing happened to me because the main motorway got shut down so it's going through all the back roads. It's like a regular thing though because like going into the arse end of nowhere. It's that quirky little thing of whenever we want to do anything with some major motorway shuts down. Well I think I'm just very unlucky with roads. It happens so much. Like as a running joke I said my wife pictures of traffic but I'm like yeah I thought I'd make it in an hour to this thing and now I'm in traffic.
00:16:00
Speaker
I was late to a GP once. I just got in for the first round, but I drove up in the morning to a magic tournament. And I gave myself like two hours to get to Birmingham or two and a half hours to get to Birmingham or wherever the fuck it was. No, no. I got in just in time because of traffic because there's a crash. This is a bit more. It's a privilege.
00:16:19
Speaker
influence of privilege and Air Ambulance landed next to the motorway and I had to sit in traffic. Spare it up late. Goddamn YouTubers. No, it got in just in time for the player to meet, but you don't want to rush in, like run in and sit at your table, do you? You want to get there, say hello to people?
00:16:37
Speaker
Right, anyway, I agree with you. Oh, okay, you're agreeing. I thought... Because there's a little bit of delay on the chat that we're using to record this, so when you said no, then I thought you were giving me shit. My hobby-ing, I bought... I went to buy a ticket for an RTT, Mikey, put it in my basket, didn't click sell, went forward two weeks, found out I wasn't in the event, and then just painted some fucking ashram and a taram instead. That's crazy. You didn't buy a ticket until you spent it to turn up. Goddamn YouTubers.
00:17:02
Speaker
I actually did. I was like, if there's a cancellation, can you let me know? And they're like, yeah, I can. Because, you know, when you're a big deal, but yeah, check out this that I painted. Look at this. Look at this, Mikey. Oh,
Painting Techniques and Preferences
00:17:13
Speaker
yeah. Look at him. It's my little guitar. I know. And there's a Station Force third party mini because I've stopped giving money to GW because of the Wokes.
00:17:20
Speaker
And I was also... Yeah, and then it comes on these bases and I put it on there and start painting and I was like, hang on a minute, hang on a minute, because I was going to use it as a guardsman, right? As much as I love how I painted him, he's fucking massive. This can't be a guardsman. Yeah, it's a marine base, I think. Would you allow this at your event as a...
00:17:44
Speaker
That's too big. That is too woke for me. Even as a veteran in a command squad, he's still slightly too big. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's too woke. He can't come. Sorry. Oh, OK. And I started painting these as well.
00:18:00
Speaker
You'll have to stay at home and play his woke SGW songs on his guitar. I'm getting there, look at that. That was cool. Yeah, look at the shading and everything. That was great. All done with an airbrush. Everything you don't say in one of my videos is that you don't mention airbrushes because people like you. No. Did it by hand. Did it by hand. Yeah. You're cheating. You're cheating because I can't. I've got no space for an airbrush. I've got to hate it. Right. Shall we do more impressions of weird chuds on the internet? So let's talk about the timeline.
00:18:41
Speaker
Well, you know, that's also fine. They're all just wearing armor that's made out of repurposed woks, if you will. Yeah. Right. So woks. Yeah. Yeah. Seasoned. It helps deflect the oremite stronger if they seize it in oil first.
00:18:49
Speaker
of the,
Woke Culture and Community Reactions
00:18:58
Speaker
You don't read the lore, you fake fan tourist. I bet. I'm the expert here. I do that.
00:18:59
Speaker
and I want to call it woke stodies. That's the term I want to call you.
00:19:04
Speaker
It's actually, so let those people at home know why the custodians oil up their armour. It's actually a holdover from when they used to wear no armour, just oil up their muscles. Because the early custodians didn't wear any armour, right? If you look at Rogue Trader, they're all like really sexy men with spears. They had questionable hats and capes and that was it. Yeah, their hats look like eggheads, or maybe even bellends if you're really unfavorable.
00:19:25
Speaker
But the weird thing is no one was upset when they retconned that, which is something we'll come to. Let's run a timeline. So, early last week, White Wolf came out and the first plane hit the GW, which was we got the gate crashes, right?
00:19:42
Speaker
Which is like, um, uh, submarines that are all color-coded and painted in the paint scheme. I'll put them on screen now for the video one, maybe, if I edit this enough. Um, it's all painted up to look like different LGBTQ flags. And this got into White Wolf. Yeah, they're all different pride flags by Cerberus XT. That's it. That's the Twitter account people should follow. They're a good painter and they're doing all this stuff to like, just paint how they want to paint. They want to show off.
00:20:04
Speaker
and put damn politics into our current game. Sorry, I'm on the wrong channel. Damn politics into our miniature games, right? So White Wolf showed this off and it looks sick. And that obviously was the first thing to cause a minor meltdown among the, we're going to call them the chud community. So if people don't know the chud community or like the right wingers or just people who are angry at like the most minor amount of like politics in their game. They're on the right side of the culture war. Yeah. Or they're the ones fighting the culture war. I do believe that like,
00:20:33
Speaker
I'm gonna say this now, the lefty side of things, the progressive side of things, the LGBTQ adjacent side of things, or whatever you wanna call them, they don't tend to be fighting a war, they're just trying to be like, we exist and we're accepting of other people. Meanwhile, other people are like, why is there politics in my game that started out as a satire of 1980s political Britain? That's the other side of things, right? How could they? How could they?
00:20:59
Speaker
Wait until they find out that Gaskell, Margaral, Thraka or whatever is a parody of Margaret Thatcher or... Anyway. No. Not in my game. What do you mean, no? Yes! Not in my game. Not in my game. Not in my game. So White Dwarf has fallen and Mikey, who is the intern, this was your, you put this in the White Dwarf? That was me. I did. And snuck it to publication, passed the gatekeepers? I'll take all the credit.
00:21:28
Speaker
So people were like boycott white dwarf, boycott white dwarf. And then as like a one-two punch, GW accidentally, I mean, I don't know if this is a purposeful leak. If you believe the leaks about leaks, they claim that all leaks are purposeful from GW. But we've got a translation of a short excerpt, or at least the first two paragraphs, from a vignette in the new Codex. And that showed off a Sheel Captain, that's a woman. And Q, the most hideous amount of copium for about 12 hours, right?
00:21:53
Speaker
yeah it's so funny it's mistranslation you know because it's from spanish to english it's like it's got it's got to be he obviously it's kind it's just ridiculous obviously they don't believe them it's just a leak you know yeah did you know that spanish is a little spoken language there's not many people who can translate it because spanish is so unusual that has very clear
00:22:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that has very clear male and feminine, uh, but I didn't change it or something, right? Yeah. Well, no, don't forget, Mikey, that the people who are upset about the pronouns in the Spanish translation don't believe in pronouns. So when someone's like, actually, uh, the Spanish language has clear pronouns, they're like, well, I don't believe in those. What? What? Not in the pronouns. They weren't in my Bible.
00:22:45
Speaker
So, my other favourite part of the Cope, I saw this in a reaction video where this guy was like, that's right, there's a female because he invites four friends on to live react to the news. It is the most embarrassing video. I'm not going to name drop them. I think they're a right-wing crowd. Yeah, I've seen it. Yeah, OK, you're aware of the one I'm thinking about. They invite them on, and one of them is like, oh, maybe it's just the words. Oh, do you want to name them then? Fuck them.
00:23:10
Speaker
Do you want it? Okay, we'll leave it out. We'll leave it out. They don't need free press. Exactly. I don't want people watching their fucking dog shit videos. Honestly, this... I just wanted to shit on other YouTubers, but this guy's got like 400 views per video, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with having low video accounts. But then he's got 8K views on any video that mentions woke-isms. Because he was going off on what about Aragorn being black in Magic a few months ago. When he obviously doesn't play Magic, he's just jumping on the latest cultural talking point.
00:23:34
Speaker
Anyway, grifting. Yeah, it's absolute grifting. It's just, it's absolute grifting. It's like, oh, maybe I'll get big if I copycat the people who are like, you know, onboarding people into the far right through being upset about black people or women. Anyway, we'll get more into that in a moment. His friend is like, maybe it's just the word custodian. Maybe it's the little C custodian. Like it's actually a janitor or a cleaner for the custodis. So the custodis codex, maybe they're accidentally using the word custodian to mean someone who like tidies up after them.
00:24:03
Speaker
And even the main guy is like, dude, I don't think so. Like, maybe you are huffing. Look, look, if it's a woman, it's obviously just the cleaner, okay? It's not a real custodian. Yeah, get back in the kitchen. The woman can really be silent or a cleaner, right?
00:24:23
Speaker
fuck you know you've seen the image macros right of like there's one that's going to the circles and the right wing designer thing which is like oh they should have kept all the women as such as of silence because that's what women should be silent right have you seen that one yeah have you seen the other one that builds up to it and then goes the reason that this is a metaphor for how warhammer players perceive women because warhammer players have never seen a woman have you seen that one fuck it's good i started a point where he claims escapism
00:24:50
Speaker
They claim it's escapism, but they're doing the same thing in real life. Hiding from women. Fuck. I started sharing that on Twitter. It's like all these like fucking overtly racist people and shit that were like replying to me. But I had to stop because I didn't want Twitter to flag me as a bot. And like Shadow banned me for posting the same image backflow more than ten times. That would be awful. So that's the...
00:25:15
Speaker
Well, maybe it'd be good for my mental health, which is something we'll come to in a moment. I want to talk about that, like whether even responding to these people is a very good thing. So that was the misunderstanding from the screenshot. So from the mis-translation, then the screenshot came and there's all this coping about maybe it's maybe it's a sister of science and they're writing about it wrong. Then GMG or what? Is that what they call it on Twitter? They've got it on YouTube. Gorilla, military, gaming. Yeah, great. That's it. Yeah.
00:25:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I've watched their codecs reviews since the start of the past. They do the the famous, this is a little bit of shade, but it's friendly shade, the famous Warhammer YouTube practice of reviewing a codecs by really on camera. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of this content style. But got a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure I do video. Okay. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Anyway, so they flip open 1080p full story, and it immediately destroys a couple of the copium things.
00:26:06
Speaker
One, it's the mistranslation. Two, it's the, it's too pixelated. And three, preemptively, oh, it's just a paragraph. One singular paragraph. That's such pandering, like, non-think. No, no, it's an entire short story vignette. I'm sorry, this is what they've always done since the days gone by that you guys weren't in the hobbies. And it's like, we were children. They've always introduced stuff through short story vignettes that welcomed. And that screenshot everyone's sharing is just the first bit. It is a full two-page spread.
00:26:34
Speaker
yes and that's the funny thing people are like oh it's not just it's just not enough anything like that yeah like what do they fucking want dude they want like a 600 page novel it's just to explain away how there's women can studies now is that like it's like everyone the argument
Narrative Retcons and Canon Debates
00:26:49
Speaker
is always just like
00:26:50
Speaker
god they need to introduce them properly like with like short stories and stuff it's like what is this other than a short story about female custodians it's not the first time they've been mentioned as we've already said but they're copious it's like well we want short stories to explain why they're there it's like well there is a short story about telling what she's doing
00:27:07
Speaker
if we unpack the argument a bit, because I want to try and like go into it with good faith that some people, some people are caught up in this, where they're like, they're buying into the bullshit, they're buying into the, the woke has got us, and then they hear some of this stuff, and they may have not self examined enough to, or examined the point enough to really understand that it's kind of shallow. So the idea that there needs to be a story explaining canonically why there's female custodians, it's this idea that we need an explicit
00:27:31
Speaker
hold your hand, explain why there is now this thing that there wasn't before, which suggests that we need that for all canonical changes. We don't need a short story explaining that Bellasaurus call has found the STC for the Rogal Dawn. We can just be like, this is a game where we want to expand it. Let's just say they were always there. And this happens for the heresy. Every model and unit in the heresy did not exist in the heresy at some point or another. And we just softly hand wave away the idea that we didn't see them before because either A, that's how games work. We just want to introduce new stuff.
00:28:01
Speaker
Or B, we all agree that we can even make canonical reasons for it by saying that the reporting in canon, the literature in canon, the stories that we read are all parts of propaganda and similar and thus are completely not comprehensive of the world that we are perceiving. But you can even explain it that way. But ultimately, you don't have to
00:28:19
Speaker
hand-hold, explain shit. You can just have a short story that posits new information to expand the world without going, actually, this is the explicit reason why women are allowed. You don't need that because that's artistically bankrupt. It's so shallow.
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's boring. It's just like, why do we need to help? Why do we need to explain away everything that exists in Warhammer, you know, when it can just be there, you know? You can have open stuff for mysteries. You can have open stuff that you introduce via an interesting short story, as opposed to once upon a time someone made the bureaucratic decision to open the process to women.
00:29:02
Speaker
Like, how is that even a remotely interesting story? Like, there's a, there's a whole, there's a two book series with a thermal coming called Watch to the Throne that I quite like. I really like them. It's the books from Black Lives with the Institutes of Valerian, right? And in that, they explain how the custodians left earth and why they left earth.
00:29:18
Speaker
And ultimately, I don't need that explained. Like at some point, they're like, you know what, maybe we should send our best soldiers to fight these intergalactic wars. It's reason enough. But they do expand on it in a really interesting way by talking about how, because they did not want to leave because they're guilt over the Emperor getting injured. That's only when Kadia gets cracked in half and demons show up on Earth. They're like, oh, maybe it's time to go out into the stars and fight the war and stuff. Like you can expand on reasons in an interesting way.
00:29:45
Speaker
But you don't have to, otherwise we just spend all our time explaining minor creative decisions and it's just pointless. Yeah, if you could make it interesting, then that's probably a good thing to do. Because again, there's the whole backstory of the fact that they feel guilty. That's why they've got oiled up and took their armour off. You know, walking around naked is because they're so ashamed and the reason they're leaving is because of this, right? But not everything has to be that way. Sometimes it can just go, okay, now this is happening.
00:30:13
Speaker
So the big lore update recently that I remember is the McCarrie. Do you remember when the Orc Codex dropped in 9th and we got one lore update for the Orcs? So we found out that McCarrie... Yeah, so he's the character that's existed since Rogue Trader, right? And I'll let you explain it, because I'm talking a lot. You go ahead and explain the update to him. No, no, no, it's fine. I don't know the update, so it's okay. I got him!
00:30:37
Speaker
I caught him! He's nodding! So basically the lore thing was really simple but it's just Wilson. He's a tourist! You're an orc tourist! To be fair to Mikey, he doesn't change armies when the meta changes, he always plays marines. To be fair to him.
00:30:54
Speaker
always, baby. So, McCarrie has existed since not Rogue Trader. I think actually the Gaz model and the recurring model might have been made at the very end of Rogue Trader coming into second edition. He's a key selling point for Ork second edition because they're not the poster boy bad guys, right? So, Gaz Goldtracker, big Ork man, had a little assistant who carries the banner for him because Gaz is too busy fighting to carry a banner, right? Because Gaz is the fucking man. Yeah. Or the Ork in this case.
00:31:20
Speaker
Macquarie carries a banner and is his little goblin assistant. In the latest book, 30 years after Gaz was introduced, maybe 32 years after Gaz and Macquarie were introduced, they had a very small, not even a full story, I think it's actually a small breakout passage that explains.
00:31:36
Speaker
Macari is not actually an ongoing character. This goblin dies horribly all the time, run over by a land radar, blow up by a grenade. He gets killed all the fucking time. But what happens is the boys don't want to upset Gaz, because when Gaz is upset, he doesn't treat the boys very well. So the boys will just replace Macari with a new goblin to keep Gaz happy.
00:31:55
Speaker
And what this leads to is, in canon, Mikari seems to be the luckiest grot ever. Because he'll get run over by a land radar, and he'll just be around in the next fight. And Gaz is like, oh, you're a lucky little grot, aren't you? But he's not lucky. They just keep replacing him. And that manifests mechanically. They just say, do what?
00:32:13
Speaker
So this was introduced from Squarebox, and all Ork players, all Ork fans, all Ork purists like, that's pretty fucking cool. That's a funny, interesting bit of lore that just makes Ork's colour. Did it need a novel? Did it need a Mikari novel? Mikey, is that what they needed to do? Can't just retcon it. Can't just retcon Mikari. That's not my Mikari. I'll have a Mikari, wouldn't do that. Yeah, I'm gonna burn away past the Mikaris and only play metal ones from now on that I've bought off eBay for ยฃ100 or whatever. So...
00:32:42
Speaker
And that's the point I want to come to, which we'll segue to now, is about retconning. Like, I was tweeting madly about this yesterday because it's a really interesting topic and I find all this fascinating. Like, retcons aren't bad. Like, it is a dirty word, right? When someone says retcon, they really don't like it. Yeah, but it happens all the time to advance the story or expand the story that we've got, right, in every aspect of storytelling. You know, retcons happen all the time. And they can be to make things make more sense, or they can be just to adjust sensibilities, right?
00:33:13
Speaker
Yeah. Or, sadly, a lot of the time when it comes to Warhammer specifically, retcons are really good for selling models. Like, look, we all call the law the last bastion of random order. It's the only place where the folks haven't got to yet hold the gate. But ultimately, the law you're defending is there to sell stuff to you. Whether it's a story, whether it's a model, whether it's a paint, it's clippers to build those models. That's all it's there for.
00:33:38
Speaker
Whilst we enjoy it, don't get me wrong, I think the lore's great. It's a wide thing and it's really fascinating. It's really interesting. There's loads of mini stories within it. All those mini stories are a big marketing platform for you to go buy some. So are you telling me that the that Belisarius call improving the Emperor's plans and introducing a whole new type of marine? Was it simply to sell me a whole new type of marine? No, not that one actually.
00:34:10
Speaker
But Primaris is probably the most egregious, artistically bankrupt retcon they've ever done. Or let's say retcon, updates to the lore that completely actually damages this bastion of lore. And I know some people are upset about Primaris.
00:34:25
Speaker
Go on, because you were playing when Primaris got introduced. I jumped into the hobby and was like, what the fuck are all these? Because it was relatively new when I jumped in. Yeah, like, everyone complained about the bad writing then. You know, everyone said it was like, oh, we can't, how could he improve on the Emperor's perfect gene team or whatever, you know? And it's like, like, his perfect plan, how could he improve? But ultimately, that's what it was, that was what it was about. Everybody already had space marines.
00:34:47
Speaker
They're expanding with they're supposed to be like their modes the basic army on the tabletop with the most basic models and now they've got like Stalker tanks and and Vanguard veterans which are like crazy complex and ultimately they just wanted to just stop You you can't keep selling people the same thing if you've been playing for 10 years been playing for 15 You're gonna have everything already. So what did they do? They reintroduce everything again, but different
00:35:08
Speaker
You know, it's like the tactical phase, you know, which is like the design aesthetic of Primaris because I think they wanted to just update the marine line as well because they're trying to hold scale to the old. Yeah, they're trying to hold scale to the old stuff. And when they were first designed, because I spoke to Jez Goodwin.
00:35:26
Speaker
around the time, because there was a war hammer there, so I was chatting to him about it, and he was like, we just designed new space routines, then they went, well, we could make them a new thing to sell us more people, and I was like, that's actually goad answered, you know, that's exactly what a big company who's publicly ed would do, they'd sell you stuff, that's crazy.
00:35:44
Speaker
But yeah, Mark X, as a Primaris concept, was designed to be the next mark of armour. They were like, how do we sell this to every space we can play around the planet? Is we make it a new unit? Because then they wouldn't want it. This is interesting. They could have done that without the story change.
00:36:00
Speaker
They could have just been like, Gilman is, because Gilman being back was all part of this whole thing, right? So Gilman comes back and he re-institutes the old heresy era tactics of, you're a squad and all of you carry a plasma gun, right? So that's what Primars kind of do, they kind of, they ape the heresy. For those of you that are new to this, or are coming in for the Wokeslody's laughs and don't know this shit,
00:36:20
Speaker
in the heresy era and the heresy game and the heresy literature, squads are bespoke and carry all the same gun. And then as you get 10,000 years later, somewhere on the line, they changed how they start this function. And you have like, for the most part, multifunctional teams that one guy's got a heavy weapon, one guy's got a melter. That's a tactical squad, the backbone of Marines, right? So they had an incredible...
00:36:41
Speaker
They made it to like, rather than being like Brotherhood, they made it like, each space marine is a one-man army, so each one could carry a heavy bolter or pick up a jump pack or whatever. But like- But I also think, from a thematic perspective, them doing that again with Primaris and going back the other way, kind of, it removes some of the specialness of that Brotherhood, we're a unified thing of the heresy, because Brotherhood's a key theme about betraying, like, you know, the people in kind. We use Brotherhood here, because then the Chuds can catch us. See? You said brother.
00:37:09
Speaker
You didn't say sibling. Oh, shut the fuck up. You know what I mean? Um, so anyway, they have, they had an easy in space Marines. That's why. Yeah, exactly. Whoa. Well, that's, that's going to be the points. How soon, how soon is now? How soon is the female space Marine? But like they had an easy in to do that, but they decided to go really convoluted. Do all this law shit that call is better than the emperor, which opens up all this weird baggage in one way. I love it. Cause I think the, the emperor like, like cocksucking and rimming.
00:37:39
Speaker
is just too much. Like for these macho men who don't like, it is crazy that they're so into the Emperor as this like, because he's basically a super duper war criminal, right? I don't think we should hold on the pedestal of the hobby that we do. So have to have Cole come along and be like, wow, he wasn't that good and I can do it with my little rubber fingers. I actually quite like, but they didn't need to do that. They really, really convoluted with how to make them work in canon. Could I just sold you new models? New models, new units would have still sold in some capacity.
00:38:10
Speaker
And they sold and they wrote it to you, they handheld you. They did exactly the same thing that we said doesn't need to happen all the time. Is that the reason we have Primaris is because this robot designed them better and now everyone's getting introduced so they're all shaking hands and they're like, oh, is he a baddie? Might be. Obviously, and again, explaining every step of the way. Which is the way to do it, allegedly.
00:38:33
Speaker
Yeah. I would say that's the way to do it, allegedly, but it was shit. Everyone hated it, but ultimately... Exactly, exactly. To go back to that example I said earlier about making it interesting as to why the custodians actually left Earth. When it came to the Primaris Project and that retcon, we're getting to the reason about Primaris here. Sorry, everybody. It kind of makes sense.
00:38:54
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think so too. When they did the whole thing about, oh, are they a baddie that you just mentioned, like that Alftacuff thing of like, there was some skepticism and some, oh, is this going to cause another schism or a civil war, or is it a chaos influence and so on and so on and so on. That was an interesting thematic element that they completely buried and didn't engage with. Like, it's just not a thing, right? There was no real tension whatsoever.
00:39:18
Speaker
It's just like, they're better. And even the risk of the heroes of the old Imperium going through the process to become taller and get an extra heart, like Dante and Helbrecht and shit. Helbrecht's part. Yeah, he is, right? Every character. Going over the Rubicon. Yeah, almost. We're not quite there yet. We've still got, like, Tycho's... No, Tycho's dead. There's a lot of random characters that aren't quite there. I'm trying to think of one off the top of my head. Yeah, the main one. The Martez. The main pinnacle of this faction. The Martez isn't primarily fine yet, right?
00:39:43
Speaker
So he will be eventually. But there's this risk of going across the Rubicon may kill them. And they again, they kind of abandon that. But not a single character has died across the Rubicon. Meanwhile, they'll just kill off Yorick off camera. And then the chance to like, oh, they've killed off like one of the most important, one of the coolest Imperial Guard characters without a novel to explain it. Oh, that's fine, though. But women. I just disappeared. Yeah, exactly. But women.
00:40:08
Speaker
But one last point with the Primaris and the retcon is what's quite funny is obviously when Primaris were first introduced, Cole had perfected the gene seed. There were no discrepancies in the gene seed, such as chapter flaws, much as your love, blood angels, you know, they didn't have the chapter flaws. And that was retconned because now we have death company intercessors.
00:40:33
Speaker
you know, which are Primaris, which have fallen to the black rage. That is a retcon in the retcon. And we'll have Wolf and Primaris eventually. There's no way they don't go down that bridge. It's just to sell us some more modelling. It's just a way to sell you new stuff upscaled. That's all it is. So, as we have there, we have an example of a huge retcon, but we're the biggest in Warhammer history, barring, perhaps, Gilman going from being a skeleton in a box to a body that just needs some Eldar help to get better again. Right, that's one of the other big event cons, right?
00:41:02
Speaker
This is a new neck brace. Yeah, exactly. Or the heresy in general. The heresy is like this small little square box in a book at some point, and then they just wrote 130 books off the back of it and just fleshed it out. And fleshing out is probably the one we should use.
00:41:18
Speaker
One of the biggest modern media franchises of all time. Yeah, exactly. Not obviously not. Well, in terms of book franchises, it's probably up there in terms of number of books sold and shit. So, the Primaris Project is a fuck up in terms of actually giving you any genuine depth. Meanwhile, they're like, we want genuine depth. And we've got like a vignette that just softly and organically, like, world built with women custodies.
00:41:43
Speaker
Now, because they weren't always there, this is the next point in the timeline. So we've had the two planes of fit and everyone's having a bit of a meltdown. And the pre-order post goes out for orcs and custodies on Twitter. And a load of people, oh, I say a load of people, I don't know, maybe two dozen people were like, where were the custodies? Why are they women now? Similar comments. And Warhammer reply, they reply with,
00:42:06
Speaker
Let me open it up here. Since the first of the 10,000 were created, there's always been female custodians. And this tweet, which according to Elon Musk has got 1.8 million views as of this time yesterday. So it's like at 3 million now. This gets 2.2K quote retweets. There's like 2000 people talking about this. I think it's actually a 1200 quote retweets.
00:42:29
Speaker
people go fucking ape shit for this on both sides i'm howling i'm just like laughing i'm like this is fucking great let's go i'm sucking up that cow baby yeah it's so good because like at this point this is there's just no doubt in your mind you've got an official story and the official account saying it don't mind the official account doesn't really
00:42:50
Speaker
Here's a thing talking about the official account. It's a couple of marketing people sat in a room that know absolutely nothing beyond what somebody emails them. And as a thought of criticism, it's that people are asking quite in depth questions, and they will just reiterate whatever they've been told. And sometimes it's even wrong in terms of like pre-order dates, or is this moral coming or whatever.
00:43:09
Speaker
But in this case, they reiterated for like a day straight. Yeah, it's funny when they talk about new things, when it's already out, like especially rules and stuff, they talk about new rules. It's like, wow, this rule's so cool. It's like, okay, they've had that for like nine months, but whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're not perfect, but it's basically, it's not basically, it's literally, quite literally confirmation. And this caused a lot of people to lose their minds and start talking about how, well, where were they originally? Where were they originally? And that comes back to the point we've already made and talked about, or I've made at length, is that,
00:43:37
Speaker
You can hand-wave this away in canon by saying the reporting was bad, or you can just say, you know, sometimes you want to update your literature, your narrative, your law, your fluff, and you don't have to explain it in depth. Like, it doesn't matter. Same for Rogal Dawn, same for Kratos battle tanks, same for any of this shit. Except this time.
00:44:00
Speaker
Yeah, for those who might not know, Mikey, do you want to just explain to us about the Votan a little bit and how they got introduced recently? Because it's only been, what, 18 months since they got introduced? It must be something like that, yeah. So, like, leagues of Votan are based on a very old faction known as squats, right? But they aren't the same. They share a lot of traits, but squats were essentially space dwarfs with cold sunglasses and cool motorbikes. Yeah, they had a motorbiker and train motif. That was their thing. It was motorbikes and trains. That was their thing.
00:44:31
Speaker
And fully enough, they might not have been very popular because in, I think, I think it was like early second or third edition or something like that, they were all eaten by the children, it's every single one. Then they slowly started to introduce them again in Necromunda, obviously like super deep cut Warhammer lore.
00:44:47
Speaker
They started to reintroduce them to that, but then they introduced leagues of Votan, which follow AI, and AI is not sacred in Warhammer, it's heresy to look at AI. They follow big AI robots, but they are dwarves, okay? They are space dwarves, but they're not squats, but they are space dwarves.
00:45:04
Speaker
But they've technically never been a thing, unless you wanted to say no, that's fine. They were all killed off and then came back. But then they were always there in the law. They've always been there. They were never missing. It's not like they've just appeared now. They were always there. There's always been space wars in my war hammer.
00:45:22
Speaker
So, Wotan, they did do a slight thing of saying that they were... So, the background law for them, roughly speaking, is that they're offshoots from humanity, right? That's what all the ab-humans, which is a term that is already a bit uncomfortable. But the ab-humans, like the bulgrin, like the vatlings, like the squats, the space dwarfs, they are all humans that have adjusted to their environments and changed.
00:45:44
Speaker
And there's a little bit of background, although they left mankind, got separated from us pre to the unification wars and that sort of stuff. And they went deeper into the Milky Way and thus closer to higher density of star clusters and higher gravity planets and blah, blah, blah, blah, and ended up becoming shorter as a result.
00:46:00
Speaker
And then they come back. So there's this argument that they've gone out of, or they left the Milky Way and came back is like one of the background. It's literally like a, it might even be one line in their codecs, like a hand wave of like, why are they now more present in the law? Same with the towel, to an extent, they hand wave that like, there are new civilization in the sense that they've only had warp tech, warp skimming tech for like a few thousand years. So they weren't involved in the war in heaven. And then the towel appeared. Yes.
00:46:26
Speaker
Yeah. So they do do these hand waves. They roll with that. These very loose hand waves to explain why these factions don't exist in ancient old stories or the old background lore of, oh, the Eldar were fighting the Oracas or whatever they were called, and then the Necrons went into hibernation. All the ancient history of...
00:46:42
Speaker
But it's literally a hand wave. It's not that deep. It's not that heavy. And it just is a justification to use a new toy line that I love. Like, I want more of this. I want more factions and aliens. Like, that's the coolest bit. That's the thing. If they're just doing it to expand the things that we can play with and read about, then does it matter, you know? Yeah. Well, here's a flip side of that. If it doesn't expand things we can play with, like, because I don't think they could ever lease a female custodian model. I just don't think that's even on the cards for
00:47:11
Speaker
I'm going to say the only way I think because.
00:47:15
Speaker
I would say the only way I could see them doing it, like, quickly, is like a Black Library thing. They release a book and they release a model alongside. Much like the Orc, or much like Minskelesk, the guard character. Well, Valerian is an example of that. He's in the main codex and he came from a Black Library novel. They actually, because the custodians were so barren in terms of data sheets, they're like, okay, you can have your Black Library character be a character. Meanwhile, Minske, or whatever her name is, I've got him, I'm one of them now. She's a woman, so I don't care about what she's called.
00:47:45
Speaker
Yeah, she is just a kascarin, right? Or just a cadian shocktrooper, one of the two. She's just the model for that. And then the orc one gets a cool model with a cool gun and he's just legends. So they do that a lot, but Valerian got to be a custodian character because they're like, we really need more sheets.
00:48:02
Speaker
So they could do that, but I've got a sneaking suspicion that they don't even want to commit to this wholesale. I could be wrong. We get this vignette. I think that's a positive thing. I don't think we'll get a Black Library book for a little while. Aaron Dempsey-Boden seems to be keen for female custodians. That might sway it. Can I assume he's got some sway of what he can offer?
00:48:21
Speaker
Because there's the big Reddit post with ADB and he was talking about the fact that he kind of wrote Women Custodies already like five years ago. Yeah, so it's echoes. For people who want to know, it's Echoes of Eternity. There's an excerpt. I'll go read it. That was before that.
00:48:34
Speaker
Oh, before that? Before that? I'm referring to before that, when they first started writing the Custodies lore background, like, coming into the heresy, they were saying, because they were, like, writing stuff for the new Custodies line to come out, because obviously it is relatively new in the past seven years or so.
00:48:52
Speaker
that they kind of wrote in the fact that there was like male and female custodians. But the big, the IP bosses are whole said no, purely because they'd already made the custodian line in the royal blokes. So they were like, we don't want you to write about the women right now because they're all blokes already. I can send this over if you need to read it.
00:49:12
Speaker
I don't know, so I've seen that, I've seen that, sorry. I was confused about where that lays in the timeline of what Dempsey Bowden has written. Right, I'm with you now, I'm with you. So I thought that- So obviously more recently, yeah, more recently he's talked about Echoes of Eternity, isn't it? Yeah, of course, because that book is actually newish, right? Yeah.
00:49:31
Speaker
Yeah, so the publisher, I have it open if you want it, I can read the first mention, the first official mention, in the heresy of female custodians. It's an excerpt from the point of view of Sanguinius. He says, figures clustered around the craft's landing legs, where the ship's great metal claws gripped the radiation-soaked dust of the wasteland.
00:49:53
Speaker
These men and women were plated in the same gold as the ship Rendered upon their bodies with painstaking artistry My father's guardian's sanguineus thought and what i thought he was Not only and then it goes on to say that his dad doesn't actually need guardians. I thought he did So yeah, that is like is that exit not from eternity? Where's that from? That is from echos of eternity. Oh, that is it right? I'm on the same page now. Sorry. I've got my demsky bode and timelines confused. So
00:50:24
Speaker
There's two separate references. He says one, one, they were going to write it into the code expert then he wasn't allowed because they'd made them because of the model line they'd already made. And then the one I've just read is 2022, a horror series book talking about women also being clad in gold. I wonder what gold they're talking about. It's probably the same gold that Olker's done as well as the most of each other.
00:50:45
Speaker
There's two interesting points that I want to pull out of this. The first one, which is the older reference, because yeah, that makes sense, though, because I think the Reddit thread is older than the Eternities, because Eternities is like a CG tarot book, so it's like the last couple of years. Yeah, Eternities, 2022, the Reddit thread was like six years ago. Yeah. So the Model Line for Kostodie's first appeared in plastic, or at all, was burning a possibility, right? The book set. So that's like 2016, I think. So we're looking at like, what's that, eight or so years? Around that time, yeah.
00:51:14
Speaker
Yeah, it was 8th edition 40k for like gaming player timeline. It's 8th edition. They were first introduced into... Oh, was that 8th? Not 7th. They came just after... Oh, I think they came out in 7th, but they were probably introducing 8th. My apologies. They had the line come out in 8th, but the squad was playable in 7th edition. The Custody Guard squad. It was built as a shield captain, a banner, and three dudes as one. So obviously I was playing there for people who want to know back...
00:51:43
Speaker
So back in the day, so people know, especially in each other that have gotten this far, I played as a kid, came back during COVID. So what I mentioned earlier, I'm new to the hobby. You can pretend that makes me less valid if you want, but I can guarantee I've probably paid more models than you if we want to. If you want to do like real braggadacio shit, I've probably paid more models than like 99% of the hobby because I have a bit of an obsessive compulsive problem with certain things. Anyway, second point. So you were playing in seventh. I always find this so fascinating. So quickly as a tangent, explain to me
00:52:13
Speaker
How were the Custodys playable? Were they like an agent of the Imperium? So Custodys were, so in, in seventh edition, like the way you built armies was really strange, but they essentially got their own detachment, which was one Custodys squad. So basically everything was built on detachments, much like it used to be, but the way you built detachments was very, very, in stone, one HQ, two troops. And then they started adding- As it should be. Didn't have that. So they just went,
00:52:41
Speaker
Yeah, right. It's just, that was it. The Combined Arms Detachment. And that's what people, games workshop rules writers like Mr. Crud has still referred to armies. If it's not competitive, it's a Combined Arms army. Okay. They still use this terminology even though it's been dead in the water for like seven years.
Custodians' Role in Warhammer
00:53:00
Speaker
But but yeah, so they started just like randomly adding different types of detachments to play unit So they added like super heavy detachment to bring yeah Knights and stuff and then and then Gulliman was a super heavy so he dropped into there as well But I'm pretty sure that custodians were they were a single data sheet a single unit It was a shield caps in a banner and three dudes in one squawk because they came in a box of five or they came in a set of five because it was obviously in this big board game and And then they just went yeah, this is a detachment on its own. They go go shove it into any army one
00:53:29
Speaker
any army doesn't matter what factor you can put it in. It's the classic shit you can put in any army.
00:53:37
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Those are times. So that was the first introduction of corsades onto the tabletop. And then again, my time, I was so excited, messed up eighth edition is when they first got the range as like, not just the unit. They got trash and they got everything else, you know, they got several space marine tanks. Yeah. And sisters silence with the same, they came out in the same box set with, it was like one unit guard, one unit, a sister of silence. And then, and then.
00:54:03
Speaker
And an arrow man and some some heresy era mark threes or whatever. That was like the box. Yeah. Oh, you're the fell handed in Mark three. Yeah. Oh, shit. There's space because it's the actual burning of Prospero. OK, which for context, everybody is when the custodians and the space balls went and fucked up a thousand sons. And those two books are banging anyway. So. That's a good time to know what to know about. Thank you. This is why you're here. My keys tell me about old competitive shit. I find fascinating that people at home expert expert.
00:54:31
Speaker
He was sweating it in the 7th edition trenches. So, Demsky Bowden wanted to do female orchestodies, but the interesting point is that the law and the canon was explicitly dictated by the product they had ready to ship out.
00:54:46
Speaker
that the artistry, the themes, the flavour, everything was muted and removed from one of the most celebrated Warhammer fucking novelists and person who was in charge of expanding this universe. He got vetoed by a dude who sat with a lot of plastic sprues getting put into boxes in China or whatever.
00:55:05
Speaker
Like, he's like, absolutely not. I've got stuff to sell and I want it. It's exactly the same as he said about Primaris. They're like, actually, let's change that canonical idea. Fuck that. We need to sell this stuff. So that's the first point I thought was interesting. Yeah, because there probably would have been outrage if there was women co-studies introduced then and then no models for them. It'd be like, where are the models for the women?
00:55:24
Speaker
Absolutely. Very true. I also think that, I think custodianified women at the beginning, there'd be less problems now than they did with the Age of Sigma launching with Singaporeans being male and female did wonders for just getting all these decades to just not get involved with the game. AOS doesn't have these problems.
00:55:40
Speaker
And I think, I think the benefit of AOS being so new, it's kind of like not got really like the old hammer grog, for lack of a better term, the old hammer grog nod in there, to like, be like, well, it wasn't always like this, it used to be like this, where A-Sigma is new, it's like seven years old, that may be, but they're 20, 50, so like nearly nine years old. Well, A-Sigma is almost as new as custodians themselves. Yeah, they're both like the same sort of timeline almost, like it's crazy.
00:56:05
Speaker
So, next interesting point. The other thing about the eternity extract that I've seen, I'd seen this extract before any of this controversy had happened a little while back and forth. It was interesting because people were arguing it made female custodians, but I always read it as that it was just referencing Sisters of Silence and custodians because they both wear golden armor.
00:56:22
Speaker
Right. So I've always felt like that. They do. It's vague enough, but also from the perspective of like where GW are at. I'm just like, that's probably just a silence. That's fine. And if people are wondering what the context of the excerpt is trying again, unpack any intent there. It's a flashback to Sanguini has first being brought into the fold of the, I just know maybe it's not a flashback. I'm not going to say that because I could be wrong. Either way, I'm not convinced it wasn't just Sisters of Silence and Custodies.
00:56:50
Speaker
Like, but I mean, it doesn't really matter too much, but I find it, I just want to be upfront and honest when we're discussing and arguing these points about where things might not be. Like, I don't want to use that as an arguing point if I'm like, well, it's probably just a sense of silence.
00:57:02
Speaker
No, it's open to interpretation, which I agree with, and the thing is, is then you're arguing, do you see Super Silence wear the same gold as Custodes? Potentially, especially when you paint them, but law-wise, I can't say I don't, I don't actually, I don't know. No, yeah, yeah, as far as I understand it's not Oromite, it's Ceramite, that's where they're saved as a three-up, not a two-up. Right?
00:57:23
Speaker
Yeah, right. Game-wise, no, they don't wear the same armor. Definitely not. But that's the thing. It's kind of like it's open to interpretation, which makes it an interesting story. You could be like, oh, it's just a silence. And then you can read it back and be like, maybe they were referring to custodians all along. And that makes it like, oh, I never thought about it that way.
00:57:42
Speaker
because it could be read both ways which it makes it interesting in my opinion. I would argue in some circumstances when it comes to literature, here's my, I've got a degree in English by the way, I'm a failed English teacher, but I do think that sometimes being clear on story details so that someone can paint the inaccurate picture of what's going on. So interpretation is good, but in circumstance we're like, who are those women? I really would like to know who those women are. Unless it's an interesting mystery that we can like, you know, make some conjecture on, I'm not sure if I like the lack of clarity in this specific instance.
00:58:10
Speaker
But that's not me saying I don't want female custodians. I'm just saying I don't know if it's the valid talking point that people are making out to be. Similar to how... Okay, here's one for you, Mikey. Someone showed a picture of all the custodian stuff being sold out on GW's website and went, oh, yeah, I'm sure GW will struggle to sell their miniatures. And I'm like, I get the point you're making, but the reality is that GW can't fit anything in stock.
00:58:33
Speaker
Yeah, like the actual reality is that they can't fucking produce enough stuff because they make too much shit Which is an entire podcast that I want to do as I spoke to you about It's not saying that they're selling out because of the demand It's that they're trying to make everything look like it's in high demand by making too much shit and not making enough of it And by too much shit, I mean I'm too much for range So again, I don't want to posit this stuff as defence
00:58:57
Speaker
There's so many, there is lots of like silly arguments you could argue with them. Because I posted one on Twitter the other day, which is like the one day graph of the stock price, which is a famous one. Whenever there's outrage, especially on Saturday and Sundays, people like to post a stock price, even though the stock market side opens Saturday and Sunday, but that's okay. And then, yeah, it is a bit of a silly argument. I appreciate where they're coming from. On both sides, you know, they try to say, look, well, the stock price is down, but you know, it's not. And this is not me both sides here, by the way.
00:59:26
Speaker
This is just me trying to self-examine my own stance and being like, well, let's be honest, that doesn't really excuse the shit, you know? Yeah. Yeah. But again, for this reference, from my point of view, like, again, if they were, if they were like, would you say the Sisters of Silence are the guardians of the Emperor?
00:59:45
Speaker
would you say that just so if we're just yeah so they are from my point of view maybe I could be maybe I'm like not reading it the same way because I don't have the full knowledge either you know
01:00:00
Speaker
You are right. Guardians is a term used to describe both the weaponry and the normal squads of custodians themselves. The actual eight foot tall golden, big boys and girls now. They're called guardians. Absolutely. But also like the combined units, they're meant to be a lot more combined than the tabletop game suggests, because this is a science that's often useless by comparison to what they are in the law. When in the law, they're like a vital part of fighting.
01:00:25
Speaker
um warp entities and psykers right because they're so good at nullifying their abilities so the talons of the emperor which is the combined forces of the sisters and the custodians which is always an interesting idea they are combined the guardians because the emperor took these null maidens and took these uh super soldiers and put them together to create like a combined force so i still i still see sisters as a guardian when they're combined with of the emperor when combined with the custodians themselves but that said the heresy they kind of work a bit differently so
01:00:56
Speaker
Yeah, the only other argument I saw was that if they were, if that wasn't, because I spoke about this a little bit with my Discord and stuff like that, I was wondering about this excerpt. If they were the normadans there, wouldn't Sanguinius be a bit weirded out by them? Because he's obviously not a normadan. That is true, that is a good point. If not, like, quite overtly like, haha, I'm a librarian or I'm a psycho or whatever.
01:01:17
Speaker
But he's obviously like quite quite connected with the warps if they were no maidens He'd be like maybe at least have a headache. They might mention Oh, okay, that is a very good point I can say because again Not to be like doctors should keep arguing that same sentence, but I just think I think with all that extra I'm missing but
01:01:41
Speaker
So for those at home that don't know, and don't know what the fuck Mikey's talking about, and I said Noel Baden's too, I've used a term that I haven't explained. Go on, you want to make a 5D chess big brain?
Magnus and Null Maidens
01:01:53
Speaker
He's, he's revealing now. I caught him out on Makari and now he's vindicated for coming up with a point that I hadn't thought about. That's good though.
01:01:59
Speaker
So the null maidens, I think the term is void or null, both are probably used, they don't have a whip signature, they aren't cyclically attached to the warp like all living beings are and thus they make people uncomfortable. Human beings perceiving someone who is a null is uncomfortable and it makes you feel unease and unwell.
01:02:21
Speaker
And then if you're psychically attuned, if you're more powerful or more connected to the warp, like Sanguidius is very strongly, all the Primarchs are, but Sanguidius has like foresight and all these elements that make him, but people don't know, Primarchs have superpowers. Primarchs are just an internet canon of superheroes with weird powers. Sanguidius is very pretty, he can fly and he fight good because he can see the future a little bit. They're kind of like his powers, right? He would...
01:02:46
Speaker
have some sort of effect from the Nomadians, although I can't recall ever reading in the heresy about a Primark encounter in one, because even in the burning of Prospero, Magnus is nowhere... Well, Magnus isn't even affected by them, to be fair. There's a counterpoint. In Thousand Suns, when Magnus finally stops moping in his pyramid, because he's having a little crywank on his balcony, and
01:03:10
Speaker
Not possible by itself, but the city, Tim Kett or whatever is being bombarded. It's like, I failed my father and he's crying. And then thousands are like, please come downstairs and fight the space wolves. Please. And he walks out and he's like, okay. Yeah. It's like, it's like the end of WrestleMania, right? Lehman Russ is about to lift the belt and there's a gong and like Magnus walks out and you think it's going to be a big flip. And then Lehman Russ is like, fight me one-on-one bro. And they fight one-on-one and Lehman Russ kicks the shit out of him. There's some dogs involved, which people argue as well.
01:03:40
Speaker
I've been leaving where I've snapped him in half. And by snapped him in half, I mean, he breaks his back and he shatters into glass. Anyway, as far as I can remember, Magnus doesn't even mention, and none of the first-person narration or third-person narration of Magnus mentions the non-masons that are all watching from the sideline. Like, Magnus doesn't give a fuck. But however, Magnus is, like, way more powerful than Singuineus in terms of harnessing the warp.
01:04:03
Speaker
yeah he's a bit different but that doesn't mean he's completely ignoring them he might just be he might just be aware of them they're not relevant to him in that particular moment i mean in that moment he's facing like imminent destruction so maybe mentioning that he feels a bit queasy might not some guys yeah and but like if if san this this excerpt is sanguineous in thought right he's thinking if he was like looking at a normal maiden surely he'd be like huh something
01:04:29
Speaker
I feel a bit uneasy. I believe this is the first introduction, right? I think this is the first introduction of him like beating the guardians at him face to face. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't read any of the siege. There's no custodians in the blood angels heresy stuff. I don't think there's nothing unfair to tread or anything like that. But I guess he's also relaxed.
01:04:52
Speaker
like a relaxed prima, seeing a scene, explaining it to you in first person, or 2.5 person, or whatever the exact clause is, you'd think you'd mention it, if a no man was making it feel weird. Where in Thousand Sons, where there's loads, in that book, there are just like sisters all over the fucking city, because the Thousand Sons lose the fight against the Space Force, because as soon as a sister walks into the vicinity of a Thousand Sons,
01:05:16
Speaker
starties, their psychic powers stop working, they start feeling often weird, and they just get fucking bodied by the space wolves. The reason they lose that fight, to get really into lore here, as you can tell, I quite like this shit, the reason they lose that fight is because they're not waiting to completely fuck them up. So it should matter. But Magnus, he's a bit distracted. He's about to wrestle down. It's about to be, I'm not really interesting, so I'm going to try and make an analogy. It's Triple H versus The Undertaker. But The Undertaker loses in this case.
01:05:43
Speaker
Because Lee Minvass has no real powers, does he? He's just a big lad. He's Triple H. He does not. He's just not. No. Yeah. Meanwhile, Magnus is the Undertaker, right? Because he's got all these actual super-actual powers that the Undertaker has.
01:05:56
Speaker
He's got his own theme music. He comes out of a coffee every once in a while. Yeah, exactly. Well, he does come out of a coffee. They kill him and he comes back like three pages later. He comes down a hole in the wall. He's like, come with me, my brothers. Yeah, like the Undertaker. Magnus is like the Undertaker. To the underworld. It's perfect. Exactly. But also being a consumer isn't a dirty thing. Like it's okay to buy something and enjoy
Gender Representation in Super Soldier Programs
01:06:20
Speaker
it. Oh, it is.
01:06:21
Speaker
No, it's... Hold the gate, okay? Hold that gate. Hold that gate and then buy things yourself. You don't have to buy anything, by the way. Because this is the other point that I want to make today, and I've made it on social media quite a bit, is that like the term pandering, which is another one of their straw-mans that they make.
01:06:41
Speaker
It's so funny, we do this whole podcast about they, they, they. I do understand the irony of making a fictional character to argue against them for the last two days. The pandering thing is weird because I believe that having a natural progression towards including women in the Super Soldier programs of games and stuff like that, it's just a natural progression of the game representing the societies on which it both commentates and also appeals to.
01:07:07
Speaker
Meanwhile, avoiding introducing women or any other minority for that matter, because this is a thing we've had before with like, you know, arch and all those fucking scumbags, commentating on like black space moons and shit. Avoiding introducing that stuff is pandering. That's pandering. Avoiding expressing like the full gamut of human- The chud. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The people are just hateful. Yeah, that's the real pandering. Like,
01:07:35
Speaker
But so there's a question to you. Do you think this will actually affect sales in any like noticeable way? In a noticeable way, no. I think people spit their dummy out. I think people they'll screenshot that they've cancelled their warm up even though it's gonna last for the next year or whatever. So like nine months left at the time. Yeah, but at the end of the day, I think it is all
01:07:58
Speaker
uh for show you know i mean it's all a big thing i think in like three like a month if that they'll all back between oh did you watch the latest animation oh yeah i think a lot of people will potentially even which won't because you know it's like a yeah i think that's the most dramatic way of looking at it when it's not there's a lot of reality it's just like a fake stance they're making because they
01:08:18
Speaker
feel like there's been a transgression yeah and i think i think there's a lot of uh camaraderie in that i think where it's like well he's cancelled so i'll cancel and screenshot it as well um and ultimately i think like overall net sales it'll be just a drop in the ocean because i i do honestly believe it's this it's the terminally online silent minorities who are angry you know that's an interesting point about outside of
01:08:44
Speaker
Go on, go on, sorry, go on. I'll come to this in a minute. I was gonna say like, outside of like... Oh wait, god, the connection's gone wonky!
01:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, you go first. No, no, you go first, mate. We're gonna have this now. It's part of the podcast, please. No, you. No, you. No, you. Okay. No, you. No, I insist. I insist. We're both British. Got me polite. I'm talking over you now to extend the joke. People in this are like, this is fucking dreadful. And I'm like, I'm funny, kind of funny. It is over to you. Carry on. Carry on. The online people really care. The people are on Twitter all day. They've got blue check marks or whatever. I hate to make a generalization, but they care.
01:09:24
Speaker
Well, people outside probably don't care, you know? They probably just like buying their toy soldiers, listening to lore videos on YouTube and then going to play games, you know? Or even not even playing games or reading a book or whatever. I was going to say, I think I think lore enthusiasts are actually a larger chunk than people give respect to.
01:09:42
Speaker
Because look at the content. There's a microcosm or a drop in it. Look at how big law tubers for Warhammer are compared to anything else. Painting, collecting, miniature rescuing, playing, tournament, or everything else pales in comparison to your lutins and stuff you're making. It's not shade, by the way. I don't think it's a bad thing.
01:10:02
Speaker
It's just an interesting, like, depiction of what the overall scale of, like, how Warhammer interacts with the public. I think lore and stories and the narratives and the posterity books are a big business. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Because it's just, I don't think it's with that sort of content as well. It's got so much longevity as well. There's so much, so evergreen. Oh, it's evergreen until they, until they wreck on it.
01:10:23
Speaker
And then we got a whole new video about the retcon. That's evergreen as well. That is true, that is
The Path to Extreme Content
01:10:28
Speaker
true. That's what we're doing right now, hopefully I think. Why everyone hated Primaris, yeah. Yeah, well that's been a good topic recently, hasn't it? Between large WAVA YouTubers, and everyone wants to chime in on it. Just like a history lesson on the lore videos they made.
01:10:41
Speaker
Yeah, this is what this podcast might evolve into. It's a commentary on the commentary on the commentary. Like it's like five layers deep. Yeah, hell yeah. I'm going to do a clickbait thumb as well so I can really integrate and then Arbiter Inc can be upset with me. So on going back to the whole thing about
01:11:00
Speaker
People engaging with it or not engaging with it and whether the sales will be hurt and stuff like that. I do want to kind of close out talking about how like Game again 2.0 like fucking talking heads on Twitter. I'm like rage bait is on YouTube who don't play Walmart. They don't care about Warhammer. They don't play the games. They don't read the book. They don't have a ship any of it. I'm now jumping on this to talk about how it's wokeness.
01:11:21
Speaker
And that's an interesting point for me because I feel like that's where it gets to be something that matters because it becomes another talking point.
01:11:31
Speaker
in a way that, I'm going to jump straight to the extreme language and explain myself, it radicalizes your normies, right? So you've got somebody who they will not like jump in on something that has an ism at the end of it. So when your Arch Warhammer, I'm going to say his name again, does a 48 minute video discussing whether or not an ultra-wing can be a black person, right?
01:11:52
Speaker
those videos still turn off a load of normies because they're like well that's kind of racist bro and they don't see themselves that way any of those iss or isms are things that people don't tend to self-describe as unless you're already really fired on a beaten part
01:12:06
Speaker
But your average normie who just plays a bit is looking for the new space marine game and then gets into this via the YouTube video recommended to them and so on. They're more likely to buy into this idea, this concept of, oh wow, the thing I like is being slightly eroded by pandering and soft language like that. Like if you pander to this thing, oh, I don't like pandering. Oh, it's a retcon. Oh, I don't like retcons. All these words that I've got like negative connotations to them, but the average consumer of both media content or even buying into like Warhammer
01:12:37
Speaker
They're not going to be like, oh, fuck, I better not say I don't like pandering because that makes me look bad. But if they say, oh, actually, I'm a misogynist, they're not going to admit to that idea, right? So I think the real problem is, is that it starts to soft load people into
01:12:54
Speaker
getting into the circles where they consume the content, hang out on the discourse and chill out with these people who are like, yeah, a woman in my custodians, that's weird and pandery. And before they know it, someone's saying, yeah, I'm not actually sure. And they start saying more extreme shit. And some people will bounce back out of that. But some people, especially if they are looking for a community.
01:13:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's exactly that. And I'm trying to explain this in terms I don't use, like that's why extremism is a kind of a loaded term at the beginning. But when you say pipeline, do you want to explain what that means? Because I'm talking a lot and I want to give you something. It's kind of like... No, it's good. It's like the term pipeline is kind of like what Vince has just described. It's kind of like, well, this one thing speaks to me. I don't like the pandering. I don't like the reticon.
01:13:37
Speaker
And then the problem is, is that attracts probably the worst part of any community. It's because it's usually, unless it's, usually it's loads of straw man arguments, like as someone who's quite casual will like pick up and like, Oh yeah, I agree with that. And then you start getting deeper and deeper into it, you get more and more videos recommended because that's just how old algorithms work. The more you watch something, the more you're going to be recommended something.
01:13:59
Speaker
Until they're going oh, well, I don't like I don't like women in my game like my models are so annoying I find it so frustrating. It's just like it just feels really shoehorned in and as well. We'll be like well I don't like the pandering. I don't like this and yeah, I agree I don't like that either that it's like I don't like I
01:14:15
Speaker
And then extreme terms, you know, not going to repeat anything. There's a soft point between those two where you go with the soft stuff that unloads you, like pandering, and then you've got like some extreme or just racist term, right? Where most people bounce off that shit now because as a society, we get better with this stuff in theory. There's arguments that we don't.
01:14:34
Speaker
And then in between those two, my dogs are super into this too. In between those two, there is jokes, right? So you get unloaded with your pandering. You get told, oh, it's all right. You can feel this way. The way you feel, which is normally disenfranchised with like just generally the world because the world is a harsh place and getting worse.
01:14:53
Speaker
It's okay to feel frustrated. Here's an output for your frustrations. These people that we're pandering to. And then someone goes, oh look, they're saying you can't make jokes about X and Y, but jokes are just jokes, dude. And then they say a joke that is irreverently edgy to the point of just not being cool, like dropping a slur in something or making a facial stereotype. And they go, oh no, no, no, I'm not the ism or the ist though. I'm just making the joke and you know jokes are cool, right? Jokes are cool. Just a joke, bro.
01:15:20
Speaker
We've all watched South Park, it's just a joke. And then you detach the irony from the joke and you start moving into actually saying weird shit that then people might listen to or be more perceptive to. And mostly everyone is fucking stupid to buy into shit. But the point is we all get softly unloaded into stuff, whether it be just accepting how music streaming works now or accepting how simple things in our lives we get softly unloaded to. So it's people who are looking for some sort of sense of community and they get stuck in the pipeline, like you said.
01:15:50
Speaker
Yeah, they get desensitized to it because, again, it was just a joke. No, it's not, you know. Yeah. And then that then leads to either it can be a real steep pipeline to like the real bad shit. Or you just stuck in the middle where you just you get in with these crowds. Sounds like I'm fucking farted on my kids, but I'm not trying to talk like.
01:16:08
Speaker
But you get stuck in a group where they're like, you don't need to be accepting of other people, dude. You may have never spoken to a trans person in your life and you don't need to, because we don't need to pander to them. We don't need to politicise our hobby by allowing those people in our spaces. And you just get stuck in this fucking, this fucking, what's the word I'm looking for, echo chamber of bullshit, where you don't even meet other people in the books of life.
01:16:32
Speaker
And I'm always scared that when I dunk on people, and this is the point I'm coming to long-winded to ask how you feel about this, I spend time dunking on people and giving people shit. Does that just push them further away? If there is a pipe and I am here and we're chatting, and they're like, I don't like pandering, dude. And I'm like, it's not pandering, you fucking idiot. And they slide. They're like, oh, fuck this guy. And they slide down the pipeline to jokes about minorities or whatever. And they're like, see, these guys get me. They won't tell me that this joke's not okay.
01:16:58
Speaker
And you're like, oh fuck, I've lost it. And as an influencer, to some extent, no matter how big you are on that scale of influencer, I still feel like a relatively small one. I want to influence people not to fall into fucking echo chambers of dodgy shit. I want people to come out and meet other people in these spaces and basically have an inclusive environment. And I feel like I'm not doing that, but I'm just telling someone they're being a fucking idiot online, because that doesn't fix anything, right?
01:17:27
Speaker
Do you see where I'm coming from? It's like a really awkward spot to be in. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like I'm probably the worst person to ask because I'm very similar. Because I'm just, I'm just a bit of a... We are in an echo chamber right now, Mike. I've invited you on because we are lying. We are. We are. Yeah, we are in an echo chamber, but we are aware of that, you know. But yeah, like who's what, like who or
01:17:50
Speaker
Yeah, like, whose responsibility is it to kind of drag people out of the pipeline? Is it us, the influencers? Is it the people in their close lives, you know? Because, like, ultimately, yeah, if we go, they say, they say something dumb and we say, you're a stupid idiot, go away. Where do they go? They go the opposite direction to the people who don't call them stupid idiots. But what they say is idiotic.
01:18:14
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. But Warhammer has this idiocy really at the forefront and a load of creators that are either complicit or explicitly alarming you. And it's really funny when you compare it to Magic because Magic sounds really well at just fucking... Well, I say really well. There's an argument that, like I said, it puts people in these environments and they're doing it any better. But Magic, Twitter, Reddit, all of it is so progressive that they get pushed out. And there's a subreddit called freemagic.
01:18:38
Speaker
which is just like a cesspit of transphobia and bullshit. And all the libertarians, they're going, well, free speech is allowed here. And even the libertarians are like, dude, you can't just drop slurs. And they're like, just try and stop me. It's allowed here. It's like, what is that? But so magic has kind of cordoned off its online communities into that space. Walmart is just more spread and enrooted and everything. And it's a problem to an extent. So here's my next question to you.
01:19:04
Speaker
How much does it affect the average guy you're going to play at your local RTT or your local store? Like the woke stodies or just... Just woke stodies, the culture war, and like the whole thing. How much do you think it affects them?
Addressing Controversial Views in Gaming
01:19:17
Speaker
It's just not going to come up. I don't think it's going to be a thing, right? So here's... They might be one of them, they might not be, but... We're going to disagree here. Because, hypothetically, iShocked's next RTT and my second blade champion that I need to build has a woman's head.
01:19:32
Speaker
And my opponent sees it and may say out loud, oh, I don't really know why, because still these have to be women. And at that point, I don't want to engage in this conversation at the table when we're trying to play a game of Warhammer anyway, but I also don't want to drop it. So that's just a whole fucking kettle of fish to deal with in itself. But then, like I said, that person is at some point engaged with this.
01:19:51
Speaker
And like I said, they're on the tipping point. They're like, I can agree that it's pandering, they say, or the law wasn't done in a good enough way. And before they know it, and again, we know this about Wama communities, they're all making ironic jokes. They're like, I'm not racist, but I'm going to make this stereotype. You're like, that's kind of.
01:20:08
Speaker
That's kind of racist, dude. You can't do that. But that still exists in Warhammer spaces. That happens to me. It doesn't happen to me at magic tournaments, but it happens at Warhammer tournaments where I'm like, come on, guys. So I do think they won't give a shit about the culture itself, but they may still lean into consuming some of the cultural war, tangential edge stuff, which might lead them on to watching a video about how, you know, women don't belong in Marvel movies. And then it just goes down and down and down and down. And before you know it, they're consuming really weird shit.
01:20:36
Speaker
I I do think it kind of does happen Is do you think it's because of the like the nature of the setting because obviously like magic is completely different Um, do you think it's because of the nature of the setting and the people it can potentially attract or do you think it's just I I feel like I for me, I feel that's the only reason right that people feel like they can become comfortable because of the people it attracts and they inherently
01:21:03
Speaker
Their pipeline is actually huge because ultimately we're talking about super soldiers with a big, you know, face fascism. I don't think it captures more people, although there's arguments that magic is probably more people and it makes more money. So if it's all about size of audience, magic is probably bigger.
01:21:23
Speaker
But the comparison I make is like, when I go to my local store to play Magic, it's a load of like, probably around the same age, maybe a bit younger Magic players, anything from college students who want to fall at the simplest deck of thoughtly bounds. The input, the in-road is cheaper too. Though to older people. But how are there's more? And I don't use it harshly because I have, I used to be a bomber for an officer's miss. I don't hate the armed forces as much as I might sound when I say this stuff, but there's a lot of squadies and shit. And they aren't bad people. None of these people are bad people. That's what I'm trying to get at.
01:21:50
Speaker
is that they are just they're in their own bubble and that bubble it's easy to just drip in like it's pandering dude like yeah he's right you know and then the other person's like it's not pandering like if that guy won't let me make a joke about you know this minority or that or whatever or say a thing is gay and like well you probably shouldn't use it as a negative derogatory term dude and then they're like oh oh he's pushing he's pushing the agenda
01:22:14
Speaker
Yeah, my point of bigger was like the pipeline that they can fall into is a lot wider, if that makes sense. Yeah. So like normally it's like, it's quite a, quite a narrow thing. You're going to have to go through and then end up in, whereas in Warhammer, it feels like it's not narrow. It's so easy to fall into because everybody is just shouting this dog shit everywhere that they're like, well, it's normalised boring this hobby, you know, it's normalised. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of what I'm getting at, you know.
01:22:39
Speaker
Imagine YouTube was just like, shut the fuck up. Like, what are you doing talking about? How they basically just made, um, Aragorn was a black man in the Lord of the Rings expansion. And it became this big talking point about it, which could be a whole extra podcast itself. And we're coming to the end. So I'm trying to close out. So I won't expand too much. But the majority of magic was like, it doesn't fucking matter. If anything, the world of talking should have some multiculturalism that reflects the modern day. Of course, it became this thing of like, with those people, when those people exist in a fantasy setting or shut up fucking
01:23:09
Speaker
It's such an obvious, again, it's that talking point that lures a few people in, because people who aren't into actual medieval history or anything about the Black diasporas from those parts of the world and stuff will be like, well, that does seem weird, actually, because the Robin Hood movies I watched in the 90s only has one Black man, that's Morgan Freeman. They don't really have the touch point to unpack it, so they listen to that, then they listen to the next point. And before they know it, they're on this track of listening to this person who's just rage-baiting bullshit,
01:23:38
Speaker
And the people saying it aren't even, they don't even believe half this shit. They're just making those videos because the clicks app and the advertising revenue comes through. YouTube's really bad for this, but we all know that a negative thumb, negative title is much better in road to have an IC as an in road to get people to watch bums on seats, to have a reasonable conversation.
01:23:57
Speaker
But these people aren't having reasonable conversations. They're like, let's get them fucking angry and keep going. Because it worked for Jordan Peterson. It worked for Ben Shapiro. It works for the upper echelons of this bullshit. So I'm going to be the trickle down economics of just talking complete shit in this culture war because these people want to have their opinions voiced because they don't have the words to put to it, which is all content to an extent. So I do think the average Warhammer player who might just watch a little bit of YouTube or a little bit of podcasting
01:24:25
Speaker
may fall into this shit and yeah i don't know what the answer is it's frustrating yeah yeah it's just frustrating especially when you got like people just like just like they're just raking in so many views as well you got like people like sargon avocado whatever his name i assume he's done a video on it i assume he's done pilot venture
01:24:48
Speaker
Yeah, he bought a video yesterday. They're full of Warhammer 40,000. Fuck me. So funny. And then you got like, yeah, and then you got like Shadversity as well. He's shouting about it. And it's just like, they're just, they are just like big right wing talking heads. And it's just like, they're the ones talking like, they're the ones leading people in and it's just so sound to watch. And then obviously like Arch, who's like just cringe and just disgusting humans.
Influence of Media Figures on Public Opinion
01:25:16
Speaker
He's like, he's become the leader of right, right to warhammer. Right to warhammer. We said arch three times now, so people who are unfamiliar, wizards like, sorry, jumping into the other niche, Games Workshop cease and desist at him using being called arch warhammer because he was saying all this dumb shit about fucking
01:25:38
Speaker
the black space means the one that I keep coming back to I remember when the fallen son like book cover came out and he said a lot he's yeah he's done he's done so many he's pretty dumb shit he made a whole video about uh the ogre kingdom's noblas full chest in the n-word with hard r about how their their noblas are slaves just like x
01:26:00
Speaker
very bad, very bad. That's just two examples he's directly done. No, of course not. But he is. To go back to when we talked very early, when I watched one of the reactionary videos about this and this guy called on his friends, there's two really funny points that I didn't mention earlier. One, one of them says, this is our word, he says, and then follows up with the sentence. That's the YouTube friendly version.
01:26:26
Speaker
So he's not just thinking, I can't say this fucking slur. He's just like, I'm not going to say it because you're on YouTube right now. Same dude moments later says, I feel like a certain individual in 1920s Austria in a car getting shot and starting a conflict. I feel like fans are getting shot on the World War One side. I'm like, how do you feel like that person? How does that metaphor even work? Like I said, it's a metaphor you're trying to, but how are you patient zero of this war that you're pretending exists when you're not the one
01:26:55
Speaker
It's just brain raw. What the fuck are you talking about? Yeah, it's just brain raw. Because we haven't laughed in a chance enough.
01:27:02
Speaker
because I've really got into some introspection about what can we do, like how did this tie into the wider like fucking making even just normies complicit in like bullshit. And that's, eventually when I approached you, I was like, we can just laugh about it for an hour, an hour and a half. And now I've bummed you out. Yeah, this made me sad. Just like, why does this happen?
01:27:26
Speaker
You know, maybe I should keep laughing at people on Twitter, even though it's very enjoyable. I think dunking on the ringleaders is good to an extent, although it does give them the press for the people who don't agree with you to then find them. So there's that argument too. It's fucking complicated. And maybe one day I'll have a definitive feeling about it, but we're in the midst of it. I've always felt this way about magic. And this is the most I've seen about Warhammer, because even during the female Marines video that I did like a year or two ago, which got like, like I got a death threat and I got all sorts of weird slurs on 4chan and stuff.
01:27:55
Speaker
like even then i kind of just like brushed past it but now because it's yeah exactly but the femstones thing is so wild that like gamer gators and right-wing talkers you don't like warhammer are reporting on it and like friends of mine in the magic community recurring what the fuck is going like it's weird that it's actually leaving the warhammer circle and that's probably why it's made me
01:28:16
Speaker
It has exploded a little bit. Yeah, it has exploded quite a lot. You see tweets from like tweets on both sides just raking in like these are likes like crazy in just a matter of hours and it's just like wild how it's part of me wants to commentate on it because it is the current thing. I am completely and utterly aware that I'm doing this. This episode was meant to be us talking about removing model lines and having too much product and too many releases. That was what I pitched to you, wasn't it?
01:28:43
Speaker
I started working on that and I was like, actually, no, I want to talk about this. So I appreciate that I'm doing the same thing. So we can't talk about that now. Cool signal. Well, well, you know, removing entire factions and making one model doesn't make it okay. But we will talk about that in another episode. But I guess the point I'll end on is that I'm aware we're doing this, that we're
01:29:02
Speaker
Clicking for views. Someone's going to get to this point and they're going to quote me earlier and then comment down below saying, well, you're just doing it. Yes. But I also fundamentally believe ideologically, which is not a dirty word. Everyone's got ideologies. I mean, ideologically being okay with the inclusion of women in a fictional space army of super soldiers is an ideological standpoint to argue for, but it's morally correct as opposed to the opposite.
01:29:26
Speaker
which is beginning to say don't include these people and veering into much more disgusting shit like conspiracy theories around international banking being about the woke agenda, which is only one step removed from anti-Semitism. I'm not going to unpack today, but that might be a future video if this shit carries on. Anyway, that shouldn't be a hot take. Well, what I'm saying is that this is morally the right stance to take.
01:29:55
Speaker
Yeah, that shouldn't be a hot take. No. What people think it is. Yeah. It should be the norm. Fuck me. Right, Mikey, let's do some plugging real quick. Where are you normally? Where can people find you?
01:30:08
Speaker
Find me on the Halestorm Wargaming YouTube, or you can find me ranting on Twitter under Halestorm Mikey, but if you Google me, I'll probably show up. Exactly, and you'll be tagging all this shit too. This is the first episode of this. If you're watching this and you've got feedback or you're listening to this on Spotify or iTunes or whatever, you get your podcasts. Please let me know if you're back in the description and the comments, and you can email me at plasmkinab.gmail.com, and you can tweet at me and all sorts of shit. I do appreciate that I've probably spoken a bit too much.
01:30:33
Speaker
But I'm figuring out the flow. And also the signal on this has been a little bit off. It's been really fucking irritating for letting you have room to speak. Been a bit off-putting. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to figure out those teething problems as we go. Yeah, it's been fun. So thanks so much for having me on. It's been really enjoyable. Yeah, absolutely. You'll be on board. And hopefully, yeah, it was good. I liked it. Yeah. Right.
01:30:56
Speaker
Love you all, fucking hate some of you. If any of the chuds have made it this far, fuck me, that's impressive. Like an hour and a half of just being told you're on. And if you've been convinced somehow, then maybe we've done something, but I don't, I feel like it's been too reflective of the meta idea than actually trying to convince, but what can you do? Welcome to the podcast, episode one. See you in the next one. Don't forget to like, comment and subscribe.