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Deamonettes are not supposed to look pretty on the battlefield. They are supposed to look pretty when they are casting their spells on you and fooling your mind into thinking they look pretty when in actuality they are demons.

It's a bit like that scene in one of the Hellraiser films with the twins.



Basically some of the interpretations of deamonettes do pose them looking more alluring, however most of their battlefield models are not alluring as much as they are confusing mixes of male and female (remembering that they are just as alluring to men and women no matter orientation - you'd basically see what you'd desire from them until the shroud lifts and there's a claw in your gut).

Personally I'm not seeing old Daemonettes as nice looking. But horrors from another dimension shouldn't look nice IMO. I think the point is they look awful and monstrous but people get charmed by what's basically magic into loving them.

Well, I'd go with the new Daemonettes, but I'd be thinking of the old ones

tl;dr women can't be beautiful because Warhammer is a realistic setting, slaaneshites can't be sexy because lore, etc.

 vipoid wrote:
I have a harder time seeing men being even remotely attracted to Daemonettes that look like this:

Spoiler:

Marine Scouts also look like they've been hit in the face with a shovel - perhaps they'd get along..?

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
I have a harder time seeing men being even remotely attracted to Daemonettes that look like this:

Spoiler:

Marine Scouts also look like they've been hit in the face with a shovel - perhaps they'd get along..?

Yeah, there's a reason why all my scouts are metal.

Daemonettes probably only reveal their true form once they’ve lured you down the road of vice you’re too enraptured to care how they look.

I get the fluff explanation that they use Warp trickery to make people see what they want to see, but as physical sculpts go the old ones sell the theme a lot better than the new ones.

I don't get an intuitive sense of 'seductive monster' from the current Daemonettes at all- they require explanation. You don't need any explanation to get what Plaguebearers are about, and Bloodletters and Horrors both visually convey their themes quite directly. Daemonettes are just, well, hermaphroditic elves with crab claws.

There's some fantastic art of them in the Libre Chaotica that I'd love to see appear in a new Deamonette unit one day. Even replacing the crab claws with other options like whip arms (sensible whip arms too not those 5meter long lengths of thin plastic that snap if you look at them wrong)

 vipoid wrote:

rbstr wrote:
I think the point in having *good * female representation is somewhat missed when reduced to a "faction/model XYZ is being made for the girls".
Women may or may not be attracted to the game and want to play Sisters or whatever. The gender-matching is not exactly the point. It's more that the models of women that do exist shouldn't be cheesecake-y, objectified representations.

I think this is reasonable to an extent.

The problem is that this rule has also been applied to armies where it makes no sense. For example, Daemonettes are supposed to be alluring. They're basically the incarnations of lust, yet they were instead turned into ugly, single-boob banshee things.

Making naked human women the personification of universal excess and lust is very anthropocentric and also feeds into classic western ideology of the woman as sin which is pretty terrible.

Bewbs are alluring to a very small percentage of the galaxy....


If they were supposed to represent universal excess then from a purely statistical perspective they should look like Ork speed freaks, as they would be the most abundant form of excess-loving life forms in the galaxy...

 vipoid wrote:

rbstr wrote:
I think the point in having *good * female representation is somewhat missed when reduced to a "faction/model XYZ is being made for the girls".
Women may or may not be attracted to the game and want to play Sisters or whatever. The gender-matching is not exactly the point. It's more that the models of women that do exist shouldn't be cheesecake-y, objectified representations.

I think this is reasonable to an extent.

The problem is that this rule has also been applied to armies where it makes no sense. For example, Daemonettes are supposed to be alluring. They're basically the incarnations of lust, yet they were instead turned into ugly, single-boob banshee things.

I'm not sure it is a good example as I'm convinced that in the case of daemonettes it had more to do with being "american kid friendly", violence being less of a concern to this massive audience than sexuality (or even more "american parent friendly" as as a pre teen I kinda liked looking at Juan Diaz magnificent Daemonettes).

Hellebore wrote:

Making naked human women the personification of universal excess and lust is very anthropocentric and also feeds into classic western ideology of the woman as sin which is pretty terrible.

Bewbs are alluring to a very small percentage of the galaxy....


If they were supposed to represent universal excess then from a purely statistical perspective they should look like Ork speed freaks, as they would be the most abundant form of excess-loving life forms in the galaxy...

Slaanesh was formed by the Aeldari, who have "bewbs", and Slaanesh's primary targets are humans, who also have "bewbs",

Humans of one stripe or another make up the majority of the armies in-game, and Orks are pointless to try to 'seduce'.

 harlokin wrote:

Hellebore wrote:

Making naked human women the personification of universal excess and lust is very anthropocentric and also feeds into classic western ideology of the woman as sin which is pretty terrible.

Bewbs are alluring to a very small percentage of the galaxy....


If they were supposed to represent universal excess then from a purely statistical perspective they should look like Ork speed freaks, as they would be the most abundant form of excess-loving life forms in the galaxy...

Slaanesh was formed by the Aeldari, who have "bewbs", and Slaanesh's primary targets are humans, who also have "bewbs",

Humans of one stripe or another make up the majority of the armies in-game, and Orks are pointless to try to 'seduce'.

That's irrelevant. Slannesh isn't the Eldar god of excess, he's the chaos god of excess.

The laer were reptilian/insectoid but worshipped slannesh. https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Laer

Daemons dont have fixed forms. They are ideas. Slannesh doesn't have to seduce anyone. He represents perfection and excess in all things. By your argument a blind person can't fall to slannesh because they can't see boobs.

The conversion of worshippers to gods is based on appealing to their psyche. Musicians are corrupted by the endless pursuit of perfect melodies, until they're converting their own bodies to instruments.

Gormands eat until they explode in pursuit of excess flavours.

Pursuing never ending excess speed is EXACTLY the same thing. Slannesh's shtick is excess, not 'heteronormative sexual seduction using breasts'.

What is forgotten in these conversations is that the chaos Gods are large metaphysical appeals to emotion, they are vast concepts not narrow interpretations.

Just because we've been getting overly simplified boobs and skulls doesn't mean that's actually all they are.

Khorne is about rage, and rage manifests in different ways. It even manifests differently WITHIN a species, let along between species. Ergo it is entirely possible for khorne worship to occur within the tau, but for it to manifest very differently.

It would be more accurate to say rage for the rage god.

You just have to see how the Chaos gods manifest differently amongst human worshippers to see this. They did that in Warhammer fantasy with all the different chaos tribes and their incarnations of the gods, rhe raven et Al. It appears in some older novels as well. They've been explorong this with the warcry warbands as well.

Hellebore wrote:

 harlokin wrote:

Hellebore wrote:

Making naked human women the personification of universal excess and lust is very anthropocentric and also feeds into classic western ideology of the woman as sin which is pretty terrible.

Bewbs are alluring to a very small percentage of the galaxy....


If they were supposed to represent universal excess then from a purely statistical perspective they should look like Ork speed freaks, as they would be the most abundant form of excess-loving life forms in the galaxy...

Slaanesh was formed by the Aeldari, who have "bewbs", and Slaanesh's primary targets are humans, who also have "bewbs",

Humans of one stripe or another make up the majority of the armies in-game, and Orks are pointless to try to 'seduce'.

That's irrelevant. Slannesh isn't the Eldar god of excess, he's the chaos god of excess.

The laer were reptilian/insectoid but worshipped slannesh. https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Laer

Daemons dont have fixed forms. They are ideas. Slannesh doesn't have to seduce anyone. He represents perfection and excess in all things. By your argument a blind person can't fall to slannesh because they can't see boobs.

The conversion of worshippers to gods is based on appealing to their psyche. Musicians are corrupted by the endless pursuit of perfect melodies, until they're converting their own bodies to instruments.

Gormands eat until they explode in pursuit of excess flavours.

Pursuing never ending excess speed is EXACTLY the same thing. Slannesh's shtick is excess, not 'heteronormative sexual seduction using breasts'.

What is forgotten in these conversations is that the chaos Gods are large metaphysical appeals to emotion, they are vast concepts not narrow interpretations.

Just because we've been getting overly simplified boobs and skulls doesn't mean that's actually all they are.

Khorne is about rage, and rage manifests in different ways. It even manifests differently WITHIN a species, let along between species. Ergo it is entirely possible for khorne worship to occur within the tau, but for it to manifest very differently.

It would be more accurate to say rage for the rage god.

You just have to see how the Chaos gods manifest differently amongst human worshippers to see this. They did that in Warhammer fantasy with all the different chaos tribes and their incarnations of the gods, rhe raven et Al. It appears in some older novels as well. They've been explorong this with the warcry warbands as well.

That's irrelevant.

I am familiar with the Laer, but I dont recall the last time they were on the 40k tabletop.

The vast majority of the 40K armies are humans, and therefore the form of the Deamonette sculpts reflect this.

 harlokin wrote:

Hellebore wrote:

Making naked human women the personification of universal excess and lust is very anthropocentric and also feeds into classic western ideology of the woman as sin which is pretty terrible.

Bewbs are alluring to a very small percentage of the galaxy....


If they were supposed to represent universal excess then from a purely statistical perspective they should look like Ork speed freaks, as they would be the most abundant form of excess-loving life forms in the galaxy...

Slaanesh was formed by the Aeldari, who have "bewbs", and Slaanesh's primary targets are humans, who also have "bewbs",

Humans of one stripe or another make up the majority of the armies in-game, and Orks are pointless to try to 'seduce'.

I don't know about that. A big gun saying "hey there. I'm really noisy and make a lot of cool flashes. Come and use me!" seems like a pretty seductive offer to an Ork.

pm713 wrote:

 harlokin wrote:

Hellebore wrote:

Making naked human women the personification of universal excess and lust is very anthropocentric and also feeds into classic western ideology of the woman as sin which is pretty terrible.

Bewbs are alluring to a very small percentage of the galaxy....


If they were supposed to represent universal excess then from a purely statistical perspective they should look like Ork speed freaks, as they would be the most abundant form of excess-loving life forms in the galaxy...

Slaanesh was formed by the Aeldari, who have "bewbs", and Slaanesh's primary targets are humans, who also have "bewbs",

Humans of one stripe or another make up the majority of the armies in-game, and Orks are pointless to try to 'seduce'.

I don't know about that. A big gun saying "hey there. I'm really noisy and make a lot of cool flashes. Come and use me!" seems like a pretty seductive offer to an Ork.

Can't argue with that

 Stormonu wrote:
Daemonettes probably only reveal their true form once they’ve lured you down the road of vice you’re too enraptured to care how they look.

I hope this is not an excuse for the awful look of the plastic daemonettes.

I can argue with that, it makes no sense for eldars to have boobs in the first place. They biology stats say they have less body fat then a pre event body builder. If anything the armour are just props.

Karol wrote:
I can argue with that, it makes no sense for eldars to have boobs in the first place. They biology stats say they have less body fat then a pre event body builder. If anything the armour are just props.

You do realise that breasts are more than just fat.

The plastic daemonettes are ugly thats true but not because of their faces but because the "agile" small demons have the most static poses. Even MORE static than plaguebearers I mean WTF.

I don't like old daemonettes. I don't think warhammer and warhammer demons are the kind of cute succubi kawai desunee anime trope demons. If theres a setting were the daemons of lust should look horrible it is warhammer.
Thats why I love Fiends of Slaanesh. They are the best representation of what slaanesh body horror should be in warhammer.

 Galas wrote:
The plastic daemonettes are ugly thats true but not because of their faces but because the "agile" small demons have the most static poses. Even MORE static than plaguebearers I mean WTF.

I don't like old daemonettes. I don't think warhammer and warhammer demons are the kind of cute succubi kawai desunee anime trope demons. If theres a setting were the daemons of lust should look horrible it is warhammer.
Thats why I love Fiends of Slaanesh. They are the best representation of what slaanesh body horror should be in warhammer.

In fairness they were made in an age when rank and file mostly dictated that sculpts be fairly bland in poses. Although I think it was a skill and design choice in equal parts because near the end of Old World we did get units like Witch Aelves which have very fancy poses and yet were made for rank and file. You can see similar stances in things like dryads and khorne demons. I'm sure if GW were to re-do Deamonettes now they'd be far more lithe and active (and we'd likely all be complaining about them all balancing on the thinnest bit of plastic ever). That said at least one boon of the current kit is they all interchange with the seeker and chariot kits. You can swap heads, arms, stances all around between them as you like for variety. Based on that I'd expect a re-do of the deaomettes would mean redoing the trio of chariot, seeker and deamonette - which is a big block of models to update all at once.

Hellebore wrote:
That's irrelevant. Slannesh isn't the Eldar god of excess, he's the chaos god of excess.

The laer were reptilian/insectoid but worshipped slannesh. https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Laer

Daemons dont have fixed forms. They are ideas. Slannesh doesn't have to seduce anyone. He represents perfection and excess in all things. By your argument a blind person can't fall to slannesh because they can't see boobs.

The conversion of worshippers to gods is based on appealing to their psyche. Musicians are corrupted by the endless pursuit of perfect melodies, until they're converting their own bodies to instruments.

Gormands eat until they explode in pursuit of excess flavours.

Pursuing never ending excess speed is EXACTLY the same thing. Slannesh's shtick is excess, not 'heteronormative sexual seduction using breasts'.

What is forgotten in these conversations is that the chaos Gods are large metaphysical appeals to emotion, they are vast concepts not narrow interpretations.

Just because we've been getting overly simplified boobs and skulls doesn't mean that's actually all they are.

Khorne is about rage, and rage manifests in different ways. It even manifests differently WITHIN a species, let along between species. Ergo it is entirely possible for khorne worship to occur within the tau, but for it to manifest very differently.

It would be more accurate to say rage for the rage god.

You just have to see how the Chaos gods manifest differently amongst human worshippers to see this. They did that in Warhammer fantasy with all the different chaos tribes and their incarnations of the gods, rhe raven et Al. It appears in some older novels as well. They've been explorong this with the warcry warbands as well.

So, to whom who are the current Daemonette sculpts supposed to represent perfection and excess?

Like I said before, you don't need to explain anything about a Plaguebearer, and Bloodletters and Horrors need just three-word descriptions ('God of war' and 'God of mutation') to understand them completely. If you describe the Daemonettes as 'God of perfection and excess', I don't see it at all. They don't capture the theme the way the other gods' minions do.

And there is tons of fluff describing a mental haze that descends upon their victims, where they see Daemonettes as alluring and are seduced- until they start getting torn to shreds. I thought the Diaz daemonettes captured that pretty well. Since we have a human audience buying and playing 40K, it makes sense for the Daemonettes to represent human sexuality, even if they might appear as something completely different to other races in-universe.

Yeah, I know Slaanesh is the god of perfection and excess, not just seduction. And Khorne is the god of martial prowess and honor, not just killing. Tzeentch is the god of plans and cleverness, not just mutation. Nurgle is the god of stoicism and despair, not just disease. But you tell me how you can represent perfection, honor, planning, or stoicism on rank-and-file one-inch plastic toy soldiers that at a glance immediately conveys the theme and doesn't step on the toes of any of the other gods. Slaanesh is represented as seduction because it's what works in miniature form.

The Infernal Enrapturess with a living harp is great, and perfectly fits Slaanesh- now how do you carry that theme to the basic lesser daemons? I'm not saying daemons-with-tits is the only way to represent Slaanesh, but to me the current Daemonettes do a real bad job of conveying any of the themes of their faction, and at least the old ones worked in that regard even if they were one-note.

Worth considering that 40k is presented with a human centric perspective. It makes sense that if something is supposed to be alluring, it would be presented in a way that allures to a human. Not an Ork or Tau. Similar to how blood is red for Khorne. Why? Humans have red blood.

Remember that the recipient is a human looking at plastic models, not some in universe character that may not even be familiar with human anatomy.

Interestingly enough I think GW took their elves, who don't use magic to veil their true forms and whose shapes can pretty much objectively judged, a lot more in the direction of human anatomy. The first instance of this that I can think of is the Dark Eldar remake with their heavily muscled arms. I think Jain Zar is the latest example of this. GW elves aren't lithe anymore and look a lot more like humans with pointy ears.

I get the impression GW's designers don't get enough oversight from an IP manager. This is possibly not true and they may work in more bogus ways than I can imagine, but I like to give them the benefit of the doubt and think their designers just get carried away with their passions, even if the resulting model isn't as good as it could be.

 Overread wrote:

 Galas wrote:
The plastic daemonettes are ugly thats true but not because of their faces but because the "agile" small demons have the most static poses. Even MORE static than plaguebearers I mean WTF.

I don't like old daemonettes. I don't think warhammer and warhammer demons are the kind of cute succubi kawai desunee anime trope demons. If theres a setting were the daemons of lust should look horrible it is warhammer.
Thats why I love Fiends of Slaanesh. They are the best representation of what slaanesh body horror should be in warhammer.

In fairness they were made in an age when rank and file mostly dictated that sculpts be fairly bland in poses. Although I think it was a skill and design choice in equal parts because near the end of Old World we did get units like Witch Aelves which have very fancy poses and yet were made for rank and file. You can see similar stances in things like dryads and khorne demons. I'm sure if GW were to re-do Deamonettes now they'd be far more lithe and active (and we'd likely all be complaining about them all balancing on the thinnest bit of plastic ever). That said at least one boon of the current kit is they all interchange with the seeker and chariot kits. You can swap heads, arms, stances all around between them as you like for variety. Based on that I'd expect a re-do of the deaomettes would mean redoing the trio of chariot, seeker and deamonette - which is a big block of models to update all at once.

I don't think it's design choice at all. I agree with Galas that the biggest issue with the plastic Daemonettes, both mounted and on foot, is the poses. I do not see how the Seekers, possibly the fastest, most agile and graceful cavalry in Warhammer, is represented in a more static way than the old Empire Knights from 25 years ago.

At the time GW said the Daemonettes were supposed to be "dancing". I don't see it, and I think it's hard to do outside of single characters. The Masque is a much better effort at it, but at a squad level you'd have to have pretty impressive grasp of how to translate dance moves into static models. Which, unsurprisingly, I don't think GW had at the time. Like, at all.

Ranking up for Fantasy is an excuse that GW has disproved themselves. Both with "I'm so wide I'm always flanked by the same purpose built guys" Chaos Knights and the "Look at my masonry! Look at it!" Witch Elves. There were no technical limitations that forced Daemonettes into the poses they got. Nor Seekers. More likely just a lack of designers interested in doing Slaaneshi models.

 Geifer wrote:
Interestingly enough I think GW took their elves, who don't use magic to veil their true forms and whose shapes can pretty much objectively judged, a lot more in the direction of human anatomy. The first instance of this that I can think of is the Dark Eldar remake with their heavily muscled arms.

Not necessarily disagreeing with you, but I always put this down to the Wyches' overuse of steroids in the lore.

I think the human-centric representation in Slaanesh models goes beyond just popularity and our preference as players who happen to be human, I'd say it's built right into in the range.

Does chaos appeal to other species? Probably. But until GW puts a slaanesh Lictor model on the market, I don't really need a slaanesh daemon that's designed to corrupt tyranids, whether it happens in the expanded universe of 40k or not.

Give me chaos Orks on the table before we start talking about modifying daemon designs that suggest chaos is also interested in recruiting orks. Once I have those chaos ork models and rules for them, or chaos nids, or chaos tau, then we can talk about how daemons need to be more representative of the appeal chaos has toward other species.

Where are the beefcake demons of Slaanesh for the female and gay male players? How about the overweight models for those into large bodies? Hairy ones for fans of bears?

Why does attractive mean attractive to only a specific male heteronormative gaze?

Slaanesh may have started as an Eldar god but it is now effectively a human god as that is where the bulk of its feeding comes from as humanity has both a large population and vulnerability to falling to Chaos. By comparison Orks rarely fall to Chaos, with things like Stormboyz of Khorne being the rare outliers that prove the rule. Other minor aliens might fall but they have nowhere near the numbers of humanity, so they are effectively a rounding error or the condiments on top of the main meal that is humanity.

Thus it would only be natural that Slaanesh's daemons take on a form that caters to humans, or reflects humanity, rather than some obscure minor alien race. As for why heternormative depictions? One could say that is a reflection of RL social mores, and what is considered "acceptable" to portray in a miniatures game that children and adolescents may see or buy. Maybe one could argue it is based on statistics with the majority of humanity being heterosexual. I doubt GW put that much thought into it though.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
Where are the beefcake demons of Slaanesh for the female and gay male players? How about the overweight models for those into large bodies? Hairy ones for fans of bears?

Why does attractive mean attractive to only a specific male heteronormative gaze?

$$.
It's simple. They're selling to the majority.

ccs wrote:
$$.
It's simple. They're selling to the majority.

Then the current sculpts are fine and people should stop complaining. Model and print your own if you want a different look.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

ccs wrote:
$$.
It's simple. They're selling to the majority.

Then the current sculpts are fine and people should stop complaining. Model and print your own if you want a different look.

This is a forum for discussing the 40K hobby, and some people on it don't like the current sculpt and wish to talk/complain about that.

Why should that be a less appopriate topic than other people whining for 30 pages that their MUHREENS aren't super-special enough?