Editing Female Space Marines (section)

=What Would A Female Space Marine Look Like If They Could Exist?=
[[File:Silver Skull.jpg|right|thumb|Tina likes long walks on the beach and slaying the Emperor's foes.]]
Obviously, in the land of Rule 63 they are amazingly hot [[Rape|(and would totally do]] [[Mary Sue| you)]], but in dark and gritty fluff-land where they would be optimised for combat rather than jacking off, they would probably have very few notable female features left following surgery and genetic fuckery. Marines are made from pre-adolescent kids who still have very little in terms of sexual dimorphism, and the process of transforming includes total rewriting of the hormonal system (which is responsible for developing secondary sexual characteristics).

To begin with, females would be a minuscule minority among recruits to induct into marines. Apothecaries carefully pick up the strongest, toughest, smartest, strong willed candidates, mostly in top 0.01% of a population on multiple metrics then run them through insanely hard trials to whittle them down to top 0.00001%. And because human males (and in general all mammal species males) have significantly higher variability than females, males would naturally make up overwhelming majority of "best of the best" in any population on any metric, even if females have higher averages at it. This makes female-compatible gene-seed kind of pointless, as most if not all of the aspirants that could pass rigorous tests and trials would be males anyway and the only reasonable way to make sizeable numbers of female space marines would be to lower standards for them. Something most chapters are very unwilling to do even at the brink of destruction: Crimson Fists took centuries to rebuild after Rynn's World war, even though they could have done it in decades if they had lowered their recruiting standards a bit. That's unless you expand your recruitment to some extreme deviations from human genome that arguably no longer count as humans and are probably incompatible with Gene-seed because of it (unless you use Blood Angels gene-seed which is the only one compatible with mutants).

A hypothetical femarine wouldn't have narrow shoulders, wide hips, (big) breasts, delicate face structures (though the blood angels often manage it), feminine voices or even traditional feminine character traits like higher capacity for empathy and increased aversion against danger as those two psychological traits are pretty easily conditioned in or out of people if you can control their social contacts. And unless you're one of the nice chapters like the Salamanders, Lamenters, or Celestial Lions; empathy is almost certainly going to be trained out of most recruits to make them better able to deal with the kind of guilt that killing other people inflicts on humans.  If you don't think that's a big concern, note that this is the kind of guilt that notably caused [[Avitus]] to fall to [[heresy]] when the truth about his chapter master invalidated all of his excuses; all pretense of his chapter being "in the right" fell away and he found himself unable to live with his actions. An entire Chapter of Marines in service to the inquisition who purged civilians who knew too much was also driven insane by the guilt because they simply cared too much for other people. Too much humanity can and will drive space marines to madness over the course of their duties. 

In essence, a neophyte does not mature into man or woman - it matures into a '''marine'''. A female Space Marine would only differ from male Space Marine by having (possibly) different genitalia, so no "Samus is a girl" moments would occur, given that they would never have a traditional female puberty. Either way, Female Space Marines are not going to be conventionally attractive (more than male marines, anyways). Being recreated exclusively for war tends to do that. They would be bigger than an ordinary human, of course, but they would still be proportioned like a normal human. Or like some bikini model if the Emperor decided he wanted to make hot White Scar bikers or something. 

It is worth noting that official art from GW shows that unarmoured space marines look pretty normal if tall and swole discounting all the plug holes in them; like Captain America if he were a head or two taller rather than blob like roid freaks. Which does make sense, as the hulking bodybuilder physique is actually not very good in a fight compared to the more lithe MMA fighter build or the kind of fat looking powerlifter bod and in the military, endurance and leg power matters far more than how big your gains are. It's also worth noting that the sons of Sanguinius in particular are generally handsome in an androgynous, angelic way and that most of the primarchs aren't half bad looking.  The Alpha Legion and the Fallen are also able to pass off as normal if tall and buff humans without their power armour.  Also worth noting is that many, many marines are somehow able to have long, flowing hair or beards (or both) and still fit helmets onto their heads without issue with what can only be explained by space marine helmets doubling as pocket dimensions.     

As Space Marines are surgically altered with organic implants and not traditionally genetically modified, progenoid glands would still play a vital role in gene-seed replication, and any child a female Space marine would have would at most just be guaranteed to be at least somewhat compatible with the chapter's gene seed. All the extra organs that go into a Space Marine are lab-grown things stuck into them that they're genetically compatible with, no more inherently part of the body than a prosthetic arm, and it's very unlikely that they would develop on their own in a Space Marine's child. Furhtermore, given they don't go through normal woman puberty, it's likely female space marines would be infertile, as they would not have ovulations and the Emperor would probably like to suppress periods and hormonal mood swings that come with them. Either way they wouldn't have have a sex drive, unless coming from Space Wolf gene-seed or corrupted by Slaanesh, as in most marines sex drive is replaced with lust for combat (as in it literally stimulates the same brain centers). 

And, assuming that Sister Generica can be considered attractive in any form, she's also wearing a ton or two of ceramite power armor, so you wouldn't tell until she speaks or removes her helmet (Though depending on who you ask, that would make her MORE attractive.) And even if she does, you'd have to be a very lucky man to catch her eye during her limited free time, and she'd need to be from a chapter where fraternizing with normal humans is acceptable.

Finally, we get to the subject of the boob plate, which is a skub landmine all it's own and God Emperor help you if you step on it. Opponents will insist it's a terrible idea, partly from physics and partly from logistics. In truth the physics problems are vastly overblown, because anything strong enough to punch through a Sororitas chest plate can punch through an Astartes chest plate too (although in FFG games SoB armor does have slightly lower AP than marine armor, especially in the chest). Either way, if female space marine have no boobs, she obviously needs no boob plate. At least no more than Sanguinary Guard needs their muscle cuirases with ceramite nipples.

If you've noticed that Blood Angels come up way too often in the topic of making female space marines that actually look at least partially feminine, good - you're paying attention.