Black Gods and Female Space Marines; A Sexy Study

[skywalkerlion]

..is there really THAT much of a difference between Space Marines and Sisters Of Battle? Why not just have one made of males and the other of females?

I agree with the first argument you brought up. It's not like the 40k world is a shining utopia us humans strive to live in of racial and gender equality.

Also, did anyone ever notice THERE ARE NO BLACK SPACE MARINES?!? *gasp!*

 

[mshcherbatskaya]

I'm mostly just here to poke Ultrajoe. *pokepoke* Hi Ultrajoe!

I don't know as much about WH40K as I wish I did, but I do know it's already been retconned halfway to Dr. Who and back, and since all the shit about how Spess Muhreens are created is totally made up, all they'd need to do in order to overcome any real or perceived biological gender differences, if they wished to overcome them, would be to make more shit up. I have total faith in their ability to make up whateever shit they needed to make up, because if you can weaponize a massive blender full of psychics, there's really nothing you can't make work.

The idea of referencing anything in Real Life (tm) as a justification or delimiter of anything in WH40K makes makes me laugh until Psycker Smoothie shoots out my nose. No, the only legitimate delimiter on WH40K is the aesthetic of it. In this case, the aesthetic of the Space Marine is the lonely, fanatic, sacrificial isolation of those two masculine castes, the Priesthood and the Military. If you added women, you would add cross-currents and dualities, complications, and most importantly, remove the scary specter of Teh Gay that puts the proper finishing touch on those two Fine Manly Institutions.

No, we need to preserve the isolated and avoidant purity of that totally-not-gayness and that only works if you make it No Girls Allowed.

Rather than have Femarines, I'd much rather have something that takes the Feminine to the same lunatic extreme as the Spess Muhreens take the Masculine. Instinctive, primitive, swampily biological, not a scrap of hardware in or on them, they'd be pure bioweapons bonded by and communicating through a complex pheromonal signals. Every survival trick and trait found in the animal world would be present somewhere in the constantly mutating churn of their genome. As luridly colored as poison dart frogs, and for the same reason, their faces bear the aspect of Cheshire Cats, all wide, sharp-edged smiles and luminescent, predatory eyes, and their pendant dugs are glandular factories for everything from neurotoxins to molecular acids. They would enter battle not like militant ascetics but like Kali dancing, and they would scorn the idea of men among them. "No man," they would say proudly, "could ever survive what it takes to become US!"

 

[Canid117]

As I recall the "Gene seed" (the thing that actually makes a space marine a space marine) or whatever is incompatible with women because all the primarchs from which the gene seed was created were male. (primarchs being the mutated clone sons of the Emperor) So there is an actual story reason for the lack of female space marines. There's always the sisters of battle though. As for the black guy playing a god? Let him go for it I heard he was a good actor and who ever said Asgardians couldn't have different skin tones?

 

[2fish]

Reasons there cannot be female space marines:
1. The Imperium would have won already
2. um other than the fluff about who made them I am out of reasons. Maybe the men made space marines to look like them only with a fridge inside?

Why there could be Female Marines:
1. Who can tell what sex you are in that armor?
2. Women can be great soldiers
3. New space marine power/rule? Bleed for a month and doesn't die.

I mean Dark eldar have females and we can eat marines.

Black Loki, well until he shows up I will keep beliving all gods are green. I demand they make Thor GREEN!

Doing somthing just to make it pc can take away from the experiance, doing it because you want to can improve it.

le snip
There are good reasons to oppose such inclusions, although having people come into a thread about using the right ones and parroting the bad ones is pretty depressing.

Well at least they are posting and if they post in your thread it means they love you.

Also all female spacemarines died from cooties during training. It was a secret test held on cadia.

 

[thahat]

i think fem marines falls under the sign of 'woman rights orginisation' they shout equility, but they want superiority.
for, there are already the sisters of battle.
equal, not to the letter, equally worthy, yes.
marines = muscle bound powerhouse
sisters of battle nearly there, but with godpowers, and more kickass since they pull it off without being steroid junkies.
to finish: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHHHHHH

 

[Latinidiot]

I f vikings knew about black people, they might have included black gods. And who knows? Maybe Heimdall is black, but no one could tell, because he never comes to earth.

 

[jodko]

Inuits and Siberians for centuries ate a diet high in vitamin D as such there skin colour remained dark...however now they don?t eat all that much seal liver due to a change in diet (modern food like chips and stuffs) so they are currently having some health problems.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Femarines would spoil the massive amounts of poorly veiled homoeroticism surrounding Spess Mehrens.

 

[GotMalkAvian]

A white man can't play Nelson Mandela in a movie about him. A black man can't play Adolph Hitler (would be quite strange, no?). As much as I love Cris Rock, I couldn't see him in the part of Thor without thinking it's not quite right.

This is basically the argument I always present against any cries of racism in entertainment. I would've listed many of my own examples (Lindsay Lohan as Jesus is a personal favorite), but Suki did a damned good job.

Actually... Wait... I just remembered... A lot of people did make a fuss over an English actor being cast as Jesus in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. As far as I'm concerned, he played the character well and actually appeared as Jesus often does in art (I know that the European interpretation of Jesus was pretty racist in itself and looks nothing like Jesus would, if Jesus actually existed), but a lot of people were up in arms because they didn't choose a middle-eastern actor.

That being said, I pose the following question: How is it okay for a character to be rewritten as a minority, but it's considered racist for a character to be rewritten as white?

Does anyone else remember the big issue with the Last Airbender movie? A lot of people were up in arms that the kid cast in the lead was white, even though he went through the audition process and was simply more talented than many of the Asian actors who tried out. People were essentially asking for an ass-backwards version of (dear gods don't let me get modded for this...) affirmative action.

For my part, I'll see the Thor movie, and I'll give the actor playing Heimdall a fair chance, since I'm sure he was actually cast based on his acting abilities and not just to give fans something to whine about. However, it will always rub me raw that misguided bleeding hearts have chosen to defend what I see as a poor casting decision; Heimdall, in both Norse mythology and the Marvel interpretation, looked Norse. It makes sense for deities to look like the people they preside over.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

Israel tried to have women on the front lines, it didn't go well at all, so they stopped.

 

[Unspeakable]

Hiemdall is not a very good band. None of them are black, or women, but they might be Space Marines.

 

[Ishamel]

I f vikings knew about black people, they might have included black gods. And who knows? Maybe Heimdall is black, but no one could tell, because he never comes to earth.

Actually he did, calling himself Rig, and in the Eddas he is the paternal ancestor of most of the classes of men - thralls (slaves), thegns (minor nobles), and jarls (high nobles). If Heimdall was black, then so would most of the Norse peoples be, mixing their own crazy mythology with Science!
If he's actually an alien, then obviously he could easily take his preferred (black) form in Asgard, and adopt whitey guise as a cloaking device in Midgard. Never read the comics so don't know if this would be canon, but fuckit it's not like any of it stands up to massive scrutiny anyway.
Also: Stringer Bell is already a God.

 

[WolfThomas]

As I've said time and again. I have no problem with Black Heimdall. The films are in their own continuity as opposed to the comics (616 in the multiverse). And in the comics the nature of the Ragnarok cycle means that the Heimdall that visited earth to inspire our legends is not necessarily the same as in the film.

If vikings knew about black people

They did know about Black people. Vikings travelled as far as the west coast of africa, the middle east and North America. They would have brought back tales of all the places and some would have brought back wives and/or slaves.

 

[Nickolai77]

I f vikings knew about black people, they might have included black gods. And who knows? Maybe Heimdall is black, but no one could tell, because he never comes to earth.

It's very likely that the Vikings knew about black people. Their trade routes stretched as far as the Middle East, plus a number of Vikings known as Varangian Guardsmen fought for the Byzantine Empire. Still, i doubt many Vikings imagined their god's to be black. Christians don't imagine their God to be black, and i doubt Chinese pagan's imagine their god's to be white Europeans.

In Norse mythology, Hiemdall was the son of "Nine Mothers"- now this could be a reference to the Nine Daughters of Ægir, Ægir being the Norse sea-god. But we don't know if these nine mothers are actually the nine daughters, it's an assumption. At any rate, if we imagine a literal birth, that would mean that Ægir or Ran (sea-goddess) were black- which is very unlikely.

Alternatively, one could make the interpretation that these nine daughters, each representing types of waves, could mean that Hiemdall could be any damn colour. There could also be the argument that god's don't have to follow normal human patterns of gene inheritance, and could be any colour they like regardless of their parents.

But anyway, i think all this is moot anyway- it's marvels universe, they can do what they like with their characters. I carn't imagine them keeping to the actual mythology.