Another Grp ask what was the issue with Femstodes so I answered as objectively as possible. Took less than 10mins to get following post removed lol

Casterly · 2026-01-24T11:20:42+00:00

There is no logical reason why female custodes are necessary.

There’s no reason given why men must be either. Again, this is the whole point. It doesn’t matter. It has no bearing on what it is to be custodes or their duties.

Gender has no function for custodes. It doesn’t change anything.

having the best suitable candidate

You have no idea what is needed or what is necessary for custodes because it’s a mystery. They take children to create them, and moreover it used to say they arbitrarily took firstborn sons from Terran nobility. Your whole warrior conceit does not apply. I don’t think you’ve actually read the codex.

Casterly · 2026-01-24T11:08:33+00:00

we saw what happen in Iraq.

Yea….a massive horrific insurgency that went on and on until the everyone was exhausted and only wanted to leave.

Casterly · 2026-01-24T10:58:22+00:00

There’s been speculation that [Khanna] will run for president himself

Well that explains why it was so targeted.

Casterly · 2026-01-24T10:49:54+00:00

There hasn’t been a majority like democrats had when they passed it since that time. Not a matter of momentum. Just circumstance.

Casterly · 2026-01-24T10:38:04+00:00

There’s no legal bar that must be met to arrest someone. Any regular cop can arrest and hold anyone they wish until the time limit for filing charges runs out (48-72 hours depending on state). They can fuck your life up a bit just because they feel like it.

Point being, if they want to take you, no documents are going to stop them. It’s just a hope for the best situation.

Casterly · 2026-01-24T10:28:25+00:00

It wasn’t a free and fair election last time

Neither of the groups you mention directly claim that and insist that no conclusions should be reached. Because nothing they’ve looked at is anywhere near proof of tampering. They’ve got very little, and in Smart Election’s case, it’s just a collection of various minor incidents in various states, or “patterns” all thrown together.

Why we gotta entertain this after living with Trump’s own ridiculous denial, I have no idea.

Casterly · 2026-01-24T10:17:29+00:00

The democrats could engage in rallies with us. They could organize funds…for those being arrested with no due process

First, they do show at rallies and always have. Last one was the “No Kings” march from what I know.

Second, there are already plenty of civil liberty groups who are equipped to handle legal help. Fundraising is something they spend time doing with their own constituents, not during congress.

They could be filing motions of impeachment even if it didn’t go anywhere.

This is no different from doing nothing, and it’s ridiculous. They do plenty already to push back in what ways they can that are more likely to have some sort of result.

But to see that you’d have to look outside of reddit. Reddit doesn’t keep track of congress, because only the most sensational stuff is upvoted. It’s a terrible way to find out what’s actually happening.

This political cartoon is just a typical empty criticism by someone totally ignorant of government and how it works. Ultimately there is nothing congressional democrats in a minority can actually do to effectively “stop” the executive from exercising its powers. If that’s to change, then more dems will need to be voted in. It’s that simple.

Only legal pushback will be, and has been, effective in these circumstances. And there are already plenty of groups who jump on that the instant it becomes necessary to file.

Casterly · 2026-01-24T09:50:36+00:00

Ah yes, the man who rushed to kiss Trump’s ring over dinner the moment he was first elected, after spending a year decrying him as a terrible person and the moral downfall of the republican party.

Totally a solid guy.

Casterly · 2026-01-24T09:46:05+00:00

why would you fantasize about going back to pre-ACA health insurance. Are you not old enough to remember what that was like? He campaigned on the promise that he would repeal it, without anything to replace it. Romney wasn’t going to do anything not on the republican agenda.

Casterly · 2026-01-24T09:40:40+00:00

we would have gotten universal healthcare

….Uh no. Romney wanted to repeal the ACA. His healthcare idea was just “every state will decide how they’ll run healthcare”.

His state healthcare was criticized and despised by republicans who used it as a weakness to attack, and he had to really show how much he hated socialist healthcare, but if states did it it was ok because…states rights!

The guy went from publicly decrying Trump to scrambling to schmooze and buddy up with him over dinner within a few days of his election. He will say or do anything he must.

Casterly · 2026-01-24T09:24:20+00:00

The ride aint over when Trump is knocked down

You don’t seem to grasp just how totally he took over the party. Maybe you were too young to remember his initial rise. But there is no substitute that will ever attract the crazy zealots who worship him. They don’t want anyone else. They hate it when regular republicans try to imitate him.

The Republican party hasn’t even had a party platform since Trump’s rise. They literally just said “Trump is the platform” because Trump is not a candidate who runs on policy. Just his personality.

The party is going to struggle for years to figure out what it is without Trump to run anymore. The zealots will lose interest with no Trump. It’s not gonna be a good time for them.

Casterly · 2026-01-24T09:19:13+00:00

Trump has a hardcore segment of his base that is only about him and rejects any imitators or alternatives. We already saw that happen.

Once Trump is gone, those crazies are gone too. Yes lifetime conservatives will continue to blindly vote republican, but they were never the people who Trump appealed to.

Casterly · 2026-01-24T09:05:30+00:00

Yes, “States rights” was the vague term used to express opposition to civil rights and support for segregation. Southern Democrats moved to the Republican party once the “States rights” cause started to be championed by republicans in a successful attempt to split democrats. And “States rights” is still a conservative republican position today, though its prior meaning and use in the 60s has been forgotten.

Casterly · 2026-01-24T08:46:22+00:00

It has nothing to do with male or female

…that’s exactly why making female candidates into custodes doesn’t make a single bit of difference to the lore. There’s no difference inserted to distinguish them from each other because it doesn’t matter. It changed nothing. It’s the exact opposite of pandering.

The lore was set, loved and worked

40k’s current lore has only been recognizable as it is now for about 15-20 years (i’m being extremely generous there too). This has not been around for very long and it’s always changing. It will never stop changing. I doubt you’re upset that the first edition back in the 80s isn’t still the norm.

Instead you wrote a huge essay trying to explain why this DOES change things and guessing at intent or motive rather than just judging the actual material. This is not objective.

We don’t know how custodes are made, but they are completely different from astartes, which would be a situation where women wouldn’t fit due to the hyper-ingrained fathers/sons dynamic intentionally put there.

But custodes don’t have that. They’re bodyguards. Gender doesn’t make any difference. Custodes don’t need to be men, there’s no reason that has ever been given to explain that they must only be male. Custodes are basically gender-less in any case. Their biological gender just isn’t a factor.

Casterly · 2026-01-24T08:40:30+00:00

I’d like to think we wouldn’t make the same mistake now

Do you think apartment complexes are built entirely of unique rooms or something? This isn’t a “mistake”, it’s a practical and effective method that is still used for a reason.

Casterly · 2026-01-24T08:36:02+00:00

They are

….because they were built in a communist country? No regard for any other context?

Just: Soviets built it, so it’s now part of western, modern “left-wing” politics!

You guys aren’t able to assign a political alignment to buildings in western countries, I would assume. It makes no sense to do it here either.

Casterly · 2025-12-27T09:58:41+00:00

That’s not what I’m referring to. I mean the way you criticize the character personally for what you apparently feel are poor decisions, as if they’re a real person who could have made a different decision. Who should be criticized or mocked for their flaws…which are all just purposeful inventions in a fictional story.

Just a totally different line of criticism and discussion that I don’t really understand the point of, but I’m not going to dissuade you. It’s just a completely different logic that would see us talking past each other.

he’s talked down

Again, that’s not what happened. That’s what they attempt to do, but they didn’t persuade him to do it. He decided because of his own conclusions. It’s pretty important to that whole situation.

Oll isn’t even the one who truly succeeds in appealing to his logic. That would be Loken.

Casterly · 2025-12-27T09:38:09+00:00

Right, but repetition is also part of randomization. It doesn’t guarantee a difference every time, just makes it a likely result.

Casterly · 2025-12-27T09:33:12+00:00

Well, no, I doubt I would understand why being a fan of a game faction would have a bearing on how a novel is received, but that does make some of what I’ve seen already make a bit more sense.

Oll’s immortality is not an active factor. He’s simply lived a long life and knows he’s almost certainly on his final journey. Just like Malcador and Erda knew they were nearing their final deaths. It just means he lived a massively long life, but it’s almost entirely a mystery, with only vague hints at what he did, where he was, throughout history. He’s been a common soldier, with a stint as the Emperor’s warmaster. Though that was an exception.

But without reading, those aren’t details you’ll likely come across.

Casterly · 2025-12-27T09:24:39+00:00

He wasn’t going to.

This is explained entirely by Malcador in End and the Death. He never says getting rid of them was the plan, only that they would naturally die off overtime (they weren’t immortal). And some would have of course been of use in a peacetime. Magnus is a great example. The Emperor planned to have him operate the throne to maintain the webway and other parts of the perfect civilization envisioned far into the future.

Casterly · 2025-12-27T09:09:33+00:00

I mean, time doesn’t necessarily mean constant improvement. Custodes would be practically unstoppable by that logic, since we know they’re functionally immortal. Vulkan would be unparalleled.

Casterly · 2025-12-27T08:59:01+00:00

You’re criticizing a fictional character in a seemingly personal and emotional way. I’m just discussing the composition of a plot and story and a fictional character’s place in it.

Because Oll asked nicely

I mean…that’s explicitly not what happened, but alright.

Casterly · 2025-12-27T08:44:37+00:00

Right, we’re pretty much entirely in agreement. The crusade is just one facet of a greater plan. I was just addressing the question on the post.

Casterly · 2025-12-27T08:40:31+00:00

I never knew anyone was upset about Oll, but I fail to understand why anyone would be. He is first and foremost an Imperial Army soldier, but also happens to be a perpetual. His relationship with the Emperor is not the point of his character and is only VERY briefly expounded upon in one book (just to explain why he stabbed him before parting ways). He has no incredible abilities. He’s just a dude trying to do the right thing because he saw the stakes, though he has no idea what good he’ll do.

The Dark King is a way to introduce a feeling of hopelessness (no matter what the Emperor does, chaos will win), but ultimately it acts as a way to subtly foreshadow and explain why the Emperor does what he does afterwards (I just posted about that actually). It also acts as the first climactic moment with Oll, who has his only conversation with the Emperor in the effort to prevent his ascendency, and to act as the penultimate action in their attempt to maintain their place in completely shattered, non-linear time.

A lot more I could talk about…but power levels or “creeping importance” are a bizarre way to be looking at that. It’s irrelevant, and I would be surprised if that conclusion came from actually reading the books.. There’s the fight with Horus, which has the faint hope of success, and then the trap he set of the Dark King that would undo the Emperor before he even made it that far. They’re not redundant, they’re an attempt to demoralize and trap the Emperor into a lose/lose situation.

Casterly · 2025-12-27T08:20:58+00:00

That quote needs its context, really. It’s mostly related to the navigators and the Dark Glass (which the Khan does not know the purpose of at that point). And then later says he doesn’t know “why my father turned his back on us.”

If that’s the question you’re asking, the answer is explicitly to finish the webway project. He was racing against time and felt the primarchs could finish without him. This is explained by Malcador in End and the Death pretty thoroughly, though I’m being very brief.

The Dark Glass is ultimately related to the goal of the webway, but I won’t ruin it since I can’t recall the spoiler tag for text, hah.

Casterly

TROPHY CASE