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 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Lets be honest though, can you really tell female and male eldar apart :^}

Yes, quite easily.

Depends. According to Xenology the Eldar don't have any body fat, if we accept that we might conclude that the boobplate is ceremonial (Howling Banshees are taking on the image of Morai-Heg, for instance, and as such have boobplate whether the Eldar in the armour is male or female).

What kind of shoddy writing is that? How are they not starving to death if they have no body fat?

 Cheesecat wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Lets be honest though, can you really tell female and male eldar apart :^}

Yes, quite easily.

Depends. According to Xenology the Eldar don't have any body fat, if we accept that we might conclude that the boobplate is ceremonial (Howling Banshees are taking on the image of Morai-Heg, for instance, and as such have boobplate whether the Eldar in the armour is male or female).

What kind of shoddy writing is that? How are they not starving to death if they have no body fat?

They're a biologically-engineered psychic superweapon created by precursor aliens hundreds of thousands of years ago, who blew up their own civilization by partying too hard. 'They have no body fat' is something I'm willing to accept without looking too closely, honestly.

(A better question might be 'why do they look like humans with weird ears?')

 AnomanderRake wrote:
(A better question might be 'why do they look like humans with weird ears?')

Why is a soap bubble always round?

 Ashiraya wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
(A better question might be 'why do they look like humans with weird ears?')

Why is a soap bubble always round?

I prefer 'the Old Ones looked like that' as an explanation, personally.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Lets be honest though, can you really tell female and male eldar apart :^}

Yes, quite easily.

Depends. According to Xenology the Eldar don't have any body fat, if we accept that we might conclude that the boobplate is ceremonial (Howling Banshees are taking on the image of Morai-Heg, for instance, and as such have boobplate whether the Eldar in the armour is male or female).

What kind of shoddy writing is that? How are they not starving to death if they have no body fat?

They're a biologically-engineered psychic superweapon created by precursor aliens hundreds of thousands of years ago, who blew up their own civilization by partying too hard. 'They have no body fat' is something I'm willing to accept without looking too closely, honestly.

(A better question might be 'why do they look like humans with weird ears?')

I for real laughed out loud.

On a serious note, I think the answer would be that the statement in Xenology is descriptive, not literal. (They have very little body fat, not zero point zero zero percent body fat.) Dark Eldar and Harlequin art clearly shows the Eldar do in fact have some body fat.

Or they possess a non-fat substance that has a similar effect on their anatomy. Like, an eldar lady's breasts might be full of whatever pseudo-psychic substance causes an eldar to crystalize. For all we know, eldar draw energy from a crystaline stone located where their brains should be and handle most of their digestion in their hands. Probably not because that's a heck of a lot of re-engineering to do on a body that resembles a human, but... Also, have an exalt, AnomanderRake.

Regarding boobs and whatnot, I'm in the camp that says a given eldar could very easily be female. I use my farseer (the one from the previous image that is dual-wielding blades) as a female one in fluff all the time. Despite what many sources of scifi and fantasy art would have one believe, many women have breast sizes below an E-cup, and armor is typically designed for protection rather than to accentuate a soldier's curves.

In the case of howling banshees, the boob armor is probably at least as much a ceremonial/symbolic thing (they're personifying feminine spirits from their mythology) as a reflection of the wearer's assets. I'd argue that the same logic could be applied to sisters of battle, the boob-plate basically being a reminder of the whole "no MEN at arms for the ecclesiarchy" thing. Guardian boob plate is a bit harder to explain, but you could make the case that its wearer is a former banshee (many guardians used to be aspect warriors). Or maybe it's simply a symbolic or aesthetic choice for the wearer.

Or maybe it's hard to tell whether or not a model has the slight under-armor curve of a B-cup on a 2" tall model across the table, and the model designers simply emphasized certain aspects of the model's form to get across the point that this is an army where there are women.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Lets be honest though, can you really tell female and male eldar apart :^}

Yes, quite easily.

Depends. According to Xenology the Eldar don't have any body fat, if we accept that we might conclude that the boobplate is ceremonial (Howling Banshees are taking on the image of Morai-Heg, for instance, and as such have boobplate whether the Eldar in the armour is male or female).

What kind of shoddy writing is that? How are they not starving to death if they have no body fat?

They're a biologically-engineered psychic superweapon created by precursor aliens hundreds of thousands of years ago, who blew up their own civilization by partying too hard. 'They have no body fat' is something I'm willing to accept without looking too closely, honestly.

(A better question might be 'why do they look like humans with weird ears?')

None of that sounds unbelievable to me (within the internal logic of the universe) except the "no body fat" part.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jimsolo wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Lets be honest though, can you really tell female and male eldar apart :^}

Yes, quite easily.

Depends. According to Xenology the Eldar don't have any body fat, if we accept that we might conclude that the boobplate is ceremonial (Howling Banshees are taking on the image of Morai-Heg, for instance, and as such have boobplate whether the Eldar in the armour is male or female).

What kind of shoddy writing is that? How are they not starving to death if they have no body fat?

They're a biologically-engineered psychic superweapon created by precursor aliens hundreds of thousands of years ago, who blew up their own civilization by partying too hard. 'They have no body fat' is something I'm willing to accept without looking too closely, honestly.

(A better question might be 'why do they look like humans with weird ears?')

I for real laughed out loud.

On a serious note, I think the answer would be that the statement in Xenology is descriptive, not literal. (They have very little body fat, not zero point zero zero percent body fat.) Dark Eldar and Harlequin art clearly shows the Eldar do in fact have some body fat.

That's probably it, that being said GW has so many people working on the properties with so many different interpretations there's bound to be some stinkers once in while, like back flipping space marines with multi-lasers. Plus GW's policy on canon is "whatever you want it to be, pick

and choose your favourite bit of our fiction" so I can always ignore the bit about Eldar having no body fat and it still being valid..

 Insectum7 wrote:

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
I'm pretty sure nobody wants to have Brienne of Tarth as the normal shape of a woman.


My guess is Farseers need reason and accountability.

Wow.

Really?

It's from a movie. Lighten up.

Yeah, I think Farseer models are pretty asexual/universal. I don't think they need boobplate to show it's a female.

Also, who cares about DoW3 or any 40k game? TableTop design > game design in terms of model aesthetics.

You know, a good follow-up question, would be "why hasn't one of the third party companies, who subsist on making clearly-for-40k-but-not miniatures, ever made a female not-farseer?"

There are female Imperial Guard to be had, and I have a nice female Striking Scorpion I got from Chapterhouse back in the day, but I've never seen a female Farseer knock-off. (Or a male howling banshee, for that matter

 jreilly89 wrote:
Also, who cares about DoW3 or any 40k game? TableTop design > game design in terms of model aesthetics.

All the DOW games are very attentive to detail, and thus character models look much like the tabletop versions. Of course the developers apply their own artistic merit when making characters in the game, such as Kaptin Bluddflag or Lord General Castor.

But yes, the Farseer models can easily be passed off as male or female due to all the flowing robes that aren't skintight and the negligible need for breast accentuation. That being said, it'd be nice to have a clearly female model, as although I'm happy to pass off the current Farseer as my own female Farseer, I'd be much happier if I could visibly show she's a female with both a bare head and a body shape more reflective of female structure than male structure.

G.A

As evidenced by the illustration of Iyanna Arienal in the Iyanden supplement (pg.38, digital version), female (in) rune armour =/= boob plate.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Lets be honest though, can you really tell female and male eldar apart :^}

Yes, quite easily.

Depends. According to Xenology the Eldar don't have any body fat, if we accept that we might conclude that the boobplate is ceremonial (Howling Banshees are taking on the image of Morai-Heg, for instance, and as such have boobplate whether the Eldar in the armour is male or female).

What kind of shoddy writing is that? How are they not starving to death if they have no body fat?

They're a biologically-engineered psychic superweapon created by precursor aliens hundreds of thousands of years ago, who blew up their own civilization by partying too hard. 'They have no body fat' is something I'm willing to accept without looking too closely, honestly.

(A better question might be 'why do they look like humans with weird ears?')

You know, in-universe, the question you really should be asking is 'why do Humans look like shorter, stockier Eldar without pointy ears'?

In any case, isn't Xenology pretty much the only book that was so full of nonsense that GW actually regards it as not being canon? I'm not sure I'd trust anything out of there, to be honest.

Can somebody explain to me why Dakka seems to have such an obsession with seemingly everything being non-canon?

I've never seen any other site where just about any and every source is dismissed as non-canon.

Oggthrok wrote:
You know, a good follow-up question, would be "why hasn't one of the third party companies, who subsist on making clearly-for-40k-but-not miniatures, ever made a female not-farseer?"

There are female Imperial Guard to be had, and I have a nice female Striking Scorpion I got from Chapterhouse back in the day, but I've never seen a female Farseer knock-off. (Or a male howling banshee, for that matter

I'm sure there has been, as well as an unreleased sculpt by GW.

I will probably be doomed to try to find the document (maybe one of the old codex's?) where they stated that male Eldar would wear the Banshee outfits since they are taking on that "aspect" the cross-dressing is supposedly not an issue so why not have the Farseer outfits with little emphasis on gender?
I thought for that aspect it was important to have a big head...

What about the Farseeer miniature released to coincide with the release of the first Dqwn of War game?



I clearly see boobplate on it.