Problem with that is that GeeDubs don't understand how to do female faces that aren't stereotypical butch lesbians.
Except these lovely ladies right here...
Tragically these seem to be the exception rather than the rule, though.
Full agree. Thus stems my belief that becoming a shareholder requires one to allow themselves to be lobotomised... it's the only way to explain how they fail basic maths.
I'm glad that I'm not the only one that feels that way.
It would honestly make the most sense as a mindset... as you said
@NIGHTBRINGER, it's been commonly accepted now that GW is a model company first and foremost... the quality of the balancing of many of their games even nowadays is a testimony to that. Unlike Mantic, for example, who are seen by many as the reverse - a games company who happen to make models on the side.
Not to mention that GW cannot control what people play... so it just makes so much more sense for them to just not care about what game the models are being used for - they're still getting the same amount of money for said models at the end of the day, so why should they care?
And to be honest I reckon this inter-company politicking seems to be indulged in by one side more than the other - the TOW team purposefully added in the option for Squig Hoppers to take spears and light armour to allow players to use the Boingrot Bounder models from the plastic AoS kit, and created full, usable PDF army lists for the Warhammer Fantasy factions the AoS team seemed to want to hoard for themselves, so the TOW side are clearly a lot less bothered about what models you use.
So in the first quote you can see that I'm taking a
guess that they might be female models. The sentence includes a "maybe", a "supposed to be" and a "?". So it is speculative in nature (I mean they are either male beardless CD or female beardless CD, so 50/50).
It was then
@Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl who did the detective work (as presented in the second quote above) by noticing that the Warhammer Underworlds Warband (which also included some beardless CD) had been confirmed by GW to have female names.
Indeed - for
@Canas' benefit, not only did the names sound female, but GW also used 'she/her' several times in the article relating to those female-sounding names:
All the proof one needs
To repeat, I suggest some combination of these elements should be employed alongside of the beardlessness:
- hair (usually longer, with a hair style that is more consistent with how women in the real world wear it)
- slightly softer facial features (via google AI: Men generally have more prominent brow ridges, larger jaws and noses, and thinner lips compared to women. Women tend to have fuller cheeks, smaller chins, and noses that may be shorter or have a slight upward curve at the tip)
- attire (alter their uniform in some way, it doesn't have to be boob armour but it can be. The alteration can be a complete overhaul or a series of slight modifications)
- body proportions (hips, chest and shoulder ratios differ between the average male and female)
I will add that GW seem to have followed these rules up to a point on the female Chaos Dwarf models:
- They have generally plumper and rounder faces, compared the gaunt expressions and more defined chins of the male Chaos Dwarfs beneath their beards
- They have small button noses (compared to the long, hooked noses of the male Chaos Dwarfs following the classic Big Hat aesthetic), and generally lack the pairs of tusks that their menfolk have
- They also seem to have fuller lips than their male counterparts (most clearly demonstrated by the female leader of the Underworlds warband, as ugly as she is)
But I agree GW didn't do enough to make it clear - they could have given the female Dawi-Zharr long hair that is curled in a similar style to the beards of the males, and made their armour look slightly different to take account of their... chest assets
At this point you're just dumping good money after bad. You'd be better off to concede the point and maintain some level of credibility than try futilely to save a sinking ship that is beyond saving.
The final result is so bad that the intention behind it only makes it worse. At least if it was purposefully goofy, it could be
partially forgiven. But to fail so miserably is just laughable. It's not only goofy, its ridiculously stupid. Imagine trying to pitch that design concept in a meeting. How does that go?
It doesn't come off as serious or as a threat. It comes off as a poor joke. Whatever it was supposed to be, it didn't stick the landing.
But don't take my word for it, here is a second opinion provided by
@J.Logan :
And a third from me - even when the model first came out, though I was fine with the crocodile head version and the idea that it was a bone-collecting machine, that little chestnut was a mildly disdainful brand of disturbing and silly more than anything - a penis joke for pre-pubescent teenagers in an army that was meant to be cold-hard serious.
To be honest the 'rictus grins' on the heads of most of the models are too mirthful (and similarly goofy) for my liking too - too much like the Joker and too little like the actual impassive gritted teeth of a skull. To this day the only Ossiarch models I really like are Kainan and the Mortisan Soulreaper (both of which have much more sinister mouthless heads that are nicely reminiscent of Necrons) and Vokmortian, because he alone of all the range with teeth managed the impassive skull look without the derpy Joker grin or a constipated-looking gurn.
Why do you want the not-chaos-dwarfs to follow the same physical dimorphisms and cultural distinctions of (certain sets of) real life humans? It's a monstrous fantasy race.
Er... it makes sense for them to, because not only do their ordinary Dwarf cousins follow said dimorphisms, but all Dwarfs as a whole, ever since they were first concocted in Norse Mythology, are meant to be based upon real-life humans, because as entities they have been imagined into mythological existence by humans. Not to mention that, as humans, we are innately programmed to try and interpret male/female dimorphism for most things, especially things with humanoid gaits and faces (even if they're ugly and deformed) like those the Dawi-Zharr have. True, the Dawi-Zharr are a fantasy race, but if you really want to try and get away from human-like dimorphism, either you need to look for a race that looks a lot more inhuman, or at the very least have background to establish why they might be, say, asexual. Such a lore idea is certainly plausible for a Dwarf race - perhaps they could fashion new members of their race from stone or such like? - in a fantasy universe of your own creation, but this is Warhammer, and it is already established, in both Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar, that Dwarfs have females and reproduce sexually, in the vein of both most earlier depictions of Dwarfs and humans.
GW have confirmed that the Zharrdron are more AoS Dwarfs, and thus they innately follow the same gender patterns of Fyreslayers and Kharadron Overlords (who both have female models now)... and so it's pretty obvious that, much like the Fyreslayers and Kharadron, if a Zharrdron model doesn't have a beard, it must be female.
And that's before going into the fact that it wouldn't necesarly even work on these models. For example, how do you want to show off different hairstyles when one of their distinctive traits is wearing massive hats?
Hair spills out from under hats, especially when it's long as it would have been a good idea for these female Chaos Dwarf models to have.
Quick question; what do you think of the human centipede movie? Is what they do in that movie goofy? Cuz both that and this model is just weird body-horror created by a madman.
Except while one is a sick aberration concocted by a clinically-insane mind with the qualifications to become a Dark Eldar Haemonculus, the other is just an afterthought that was likely considered by marketing execs as a joke for aforementioned pre-pubescent teenagers. I'll leave it to you to determine which is which... I don't think there will be a film called 'The Skeleton Crocodile Willy' coming out any time soon (unless it's a spoof comedy
).
Quick word of advice matey - it's a mistake to try to defend the fabricated in-game lore behind a design choice, when the criticism is aimed at the design choice itself (I'm pretty sure I've done it myself in ages past)
This is about to be the easiest debate point of all time. Words not required...
