Warhammer 40k (Amazon Prime)

Necrons are robots, they are genderless by essence. I would say their gender issues are on par with that of Tyranids.

I seem to remember seeing female Eldar minis. Maybe Tau too? Never bothered too much with their lore to be honest.

The one marines Legion in which you could somewhat (very somewhat) have kinda-sorta-female characters in would be the Emperor's Children but...whole can of worms doesn't begin to describe how hard it would be to depict them without offending anyone. In retrospect, they kinda look like very evil, very queer-coded characters.

I did notice that the newer Necron books, which are from the perspective of the Necrons and go into their pre-robot culture more, have zero female characters in the first book. The Eldar have plenty of prominent female characters, maybe even more than male. The Tau I think are pretty gender-equal.

All around, the most obvious place to start is with either the Imperial Guard (who can be as gender equal as you feel like) or the Inquisition (which opens up tons of options).

Man its gonna be interesting seeing the visuals for this show.

Cause its a really high-level setting even when you don't focus on the aliens.

Hell of a wait to see how everything is gonna look. An actual big-budget Warhammer production that isn't just made by underpaid web animators (hearts out to those guys slaving away on Warhammer+).

Strictly speaking the 'Crons are living beings who have had their consciousnesses uploaded into mechanical bodies. No physical sex any more but Gender Identity would still probably exist as holdover from their lives as living organisms.

I mean there are ways you can explain it with minimal retcon (The necrontyr were like Discworld Dwarfs. Very minimal sexual dimorphism and no gender as a social construct and no that there biological differences are gone no one cares any more.)

Hasn't some newer lore indicated that all Space Marines being male is more due to the God-Emperor having some hang-ups rather than actual limitations? Or am I misremembering?

The Emperor dismissed out of hand having female Primarchs, and almost as an afterthought added that the organs would not function properly. It may well have been the Emperor was a bit of a misogynist, but for practical purposes there is a strong indication he regarded the Astartes as a whole as another disposable stepping stone on the way to his Master Race plans-Thunder Warriors 2.0, basically. The Emperor never bothered to fix the baseline geneseed problems, never gave any indication of improving upon Astartes or broadening the techniques to apply to a larger subsection of the population; and gave no declarations of the Astartes future role in the Imperium at the end of the Crusade, which made it very easy to sow seeds of doubt amongst the Primarchs and Legions.

Yeah it's a bit of both I think. The Emperor probably COULD have found a way to solve the issue and make Femalerines if he really wanted to. He just didn't really care about it.

I mean space marines are not a good master race replacement: they are two time consuming, require implating organs into boy and they cant reproduce meaning they are totally dependable of the goverment(the imperium) to exist but since they exist for war they dont want to have power.....in theory.

Well yeah, because they were never supposed to be one.

Just like the Thunder Warriors, they were a tool.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Dec 23rd 2022 at 8:40:03 PM

The Space Marines and Primarchs were only made to last as long as the Grand Crusade went on.

It's heavily implied that once it was over and all of humanity was reunited, Big Emp would have locked his son's in these big-ass apartments deep within the imperial palace.

They were cages, spacious, well furbished, and great to live in but cages nonetheless.

Centuries warring in the name of humanity, giving their all and sacrificing everything so much, and that would have been their ultimate reward.

Edited by slimcoder on Dec 23rd 2022 at 3:13:30 AM

Yeah, the Astartes were intended to serve as the Imperium's primary military and only that. Even the Primarchs knew that if the Great Crusade succeeded that the Astartes would likely not have much to do, so they encouraged them to have other pursuits so that when peace came they wouldn't just go mad. That's why in the Horus Heresy books some of them sculpt, or paint, or read, or write, or do other things.

Perhaps they could start off with the Imperial Guard?

It's by far the easiest option. I think the only reason not to do that is because the Guard can look pretty generic at times. Don't get me wrong, the Guard are a great introduction to the universe, but it's very easy for someone less familiar with the franchise (such as, say, an executive approving the budget of a new series) to dismiss them as boring.

What if they use some of the more colorful regiments? The Iron Guard for example.

Caiphas Cain might be fun, though it would be hard to do in a visual format (maybe a Cain narration could balance things out?). I'm not a particular fan, but the First and Only series has a bunch of fans too and might work for this.

I'd definitely prefer an original story rather than a direct adaptation, though as I said before, just bringing in those authors to write the initial script wouldn't be a bad start.

One big advantage to start with the Guard would be to easily make people understand that space marines are almost otherworldly powerful by introducing the viewers to just a squad initially and show how they contrast simple troopers.

They should have a look at Vader's introduction in Rogue One to show what they look like for the common people.

Man the special effects are gonna be something considering the scale this universe. Like Space Marines are on average 7 feet, Primarchs are even bigger.

Sure I don't expect a Primarch to show up but I'm curious to wonder how they would be handled hypothetically, especially the finer details of the individual Primarchs.

Such as Angron's nails, Ferrus Manus' iron hands, Magnus' red skin, so many wonderful things to imagine.

Edited by slimcoder on Dec 24th 2022 at 6:03:20 AM

Honestly, all of those could probably be handled by make-up and prosthetics (with some effects work for the property metallic gloss on Ferrus's hands). Honestly the only one where there would be any issues with Sangiuinius's wings if only because they need to be articulated and mobile.

Isn't Magnus a red-skinned, ten-feet tall cyclops? It's going to cost a lot more than prosthetics to make him realistic.

I highly doubt that the Primarchs are going to show up. Starting in the Horus Heresy era or earlier would be an absolutely bizarre choice. I don't even think the Space Marines will be the main characters.

Another advantage to Imperial Guard is that you don't need to have any Space Marines, or they can be special occasion characters rather than constant requirements.

x3. Honestly I always figured that the Primarch's immense height would be mostly handled by forced perspective tricks and other things like that. And Magnus's skin and one eye is easily within the bounds of what can be handled with make-up.

If you want to show the difference between Astartes and normal Imperial Guard troopers, you could have a sort of Astartes style encounter. Maybe a squad of troopers trying to keep up with a squad of Astartes through a huge enemy stronghold as they absolutely slaughter everything in their way.

Edited by theLibrarian on Dec 26th 2022 at 3:51:31 AM

That or the classic scenario Guardsmen are trapped in a hopeless battle about to die until a drop pod suddenly enters and out marches the Astartes to save the day.

And one of the Guardsman whispers "His Angels" in awe as the massive armored being walks by him.

Edited by slimcoder on Dec 26th 2022 at 2:06:39 AM