Female Space Marines

[Bean]

Or you could just use regular marine models with helmets. Marines without helmets are pretty silly, anyway, and there's just no reason at all to presume that armor for female marines would have breast bulges.
Realistically, chest plates are bulged anyway, to help shed blows to the sides, and Space Marine chest plates are pretty obviously bulged--there's really no way that there isn't enough room in there for a pair of breasts.

I could put my army on the field and say that every single one of them was female, and, modeling wise, it would look exactly right. There's just no need for feminine features to denote femininity on models in powered armor.

That being said, I can understand wanting some better-looking female heads for those of you who like the cinematic appeal of the occasional helmet-less marine. I still wouldn't use breast bulges, though. Those really just end up looking silly.

[Melissia]

Technically it could very well have breast bulges, but boob-cups just aren't practical. It channels a bullet into the center of the chest. A piece of female armor designed practically would have a slight bulge in the chest (anatomy is anatomy after all), but it would not have a depression between the breasts.


Something like this:

[B_Steele]

...anatomy is anatomy after all...

I'm with Baen on this. Beside the point that female, non-Chaos'd Astartes goes against all written history of the process, it is exactly the process that would eliminate the mammaries from the female marine.

Think about it. The process that turns a man into an Astartes adds dozens of new organs while manufacturing them to be soldiers, not potential breeders. The breasts (mammaries) would likely be eliminated as unnecessary body fat for a being that has no potential for non-geneseed reproduction and/or physical allure.

You want a canon-friendly female Astartes? Play a Slaanesh or Tzeentch force that has mutated in such a way; if you want awesomely female figures that fight for the Imperium, grab up some Witch Hunters and focus on the Sisters (and I hope you eventually get a new codex that is fair and fun).

But hey, I'm a fluff-freak.

-Bry

[Bean]

Exactly, Melissia. If you look at medieval armor, though, most of it looked like that. Breast plates were frequently made with bulges much larger than were necessary to accommodate the wearer's chest. Often, there was even a pronounced keel, like this [URL="http://www.armor.com/armor023.html"]breastplate[/URL], here.

If you look at the breastplates on marine models, they're enormous and have a pretty substantial bulge. I doubt the marine's chest fills in that breastplate anywhere near entirely.

So, sure. You might need a somewhat more pronounced bulge, but it would still be a piece of armor which looked very much like normal marine armor.


edit: Steele has a point, too. It doesn't seem unreasonable at all to suggest that breasts on a woman having gone through the marine-making process, if they remained at all, would be substantially undersized compared to the woman's newly enlarged body, and perhaps even shrunk substantially from their former size due to the hormonal manipulation she'd undergone, making them an even less significant issue when it came to armor-fitting.

Anyway, I maintain that anyone could plop down a bog-standard marine-with-helmet model and tell me that it is a female marine from his chapter of female marines and I wouldn't mind at all--the model would seem entirely appropriate within that context.

[Gotthammer]

Well it would require some serious retcons to the fluff but that's never stopped GW before...

Actually it wouldn't - go into your local GW and say you're thinking of having female marines in your army. If you get told it can't be done ask the redshirt to show you a source that disproves it.

There are currently no in print books that explicitly forbid female marines. The only sources that do have it are the WD article from many moons ago subsequently reprinted in the RT Compendium and more recently in Index Astartes. There was also a second WD article by Andy Chambers (I think, could be wrong), where he answered questions about marine physiology - also where marine sterility comes from. So if a new player who is yet to trawl Lexicanum or the various marine forums (or just has no internet) has no explicit limitations on who can become a marine save humans only. I'm sure someone will quote from it eventually, but it's one line that if it goes away removes all the issues.

All the current codexes are vauge about the process, and the Sapce Wolf codex says "ordinary adolescant human." The human bit is rather redundant, and if they were keeping marineness "members only" they could easily said "ordinary adolescant male". I don't think it's a conspiracy by GW by any means, more that they want to keep options open for people to do their own thing, which is a trend in all their materials of late.

And yes, I use female marines - mostly because it makes a change from painting bald screaming dudes.

[Melissia]

Exactly. If you look at medieval armor, though, most of it looked like that. Breast plates were frequently made with bulges much larger than were necessary to accommodate the wearer's chest. Often, there was even a pronounced keel, like this [URL="http://www.armor.com/armor023.html"]breastplate[/URL], here.

If you look at the breastplates on marine models, they're enormous and have a pretty substantial bulge. I doubt the marine's chest fills in that breastplate anywhere near entirely.

So, sure. You might need a somewhat more pronounced bulge, but it would still be a piece of armor which looked very much like normal marine armor.

On that we certainly agree. That's one of the things I hate about the second edition Sisters models (Which are the models that we are STILL using even in fifth editions) are the fact that their "boob cups" are so huge, bigger than their heads even (okay, so that's an exaggeration, but my point stands :P). Female martial artists (I have been one in the past, though I was by no means a black-belt) typically bind their chest a bit when going through their routines or when sparring anyway, and I don't see why the Sisters wouldn't do the same when going into a combat situation. Not necessarily bound tight enough to restrict air flow, but more than enough to make their presence far, FAR less so than what GW puts on their art and models...

[Commissar Lewis]

^ Could be a design element to attract people to buy the models, as guys do like boobs. As impractical as it is.

I'm sorry, that was rather ignorant and ill-thought out. I've been awake for 24 hours straight; I'm a bit foggy.

[Gotthammer]

And having a large concave area in the centre of your chest is a bad idea from a purely protective POV as it's a huge shot trap. Here's a good discussion on the topic (regarding medieval armour, but still valid): [url]http://l-clausewitz.livejournal.com/384382.html[/url]

[Commissar Lewis]

All good points, but I'm running on fumes at this point and really should be getting off the forums. Sleep-deprived and drunk are two states that do not make for intelligent debate.

[DarkLink]

Technically it could very well have breast bulges, but boob-cups just aren't practical. It channels a bullet into the center of the chest. A piece of female armor designed practically would have a slight bulge in the chest (anatomy is anatomy after all), but it would not have a depression between the breasts.


Something like this:

But how can GW conform to questionable stereotypes then? /jk


Yeah, a lot of medieval armor made the wearer look like they had great big potbellies, because that curvature was really good at deflecting incoming weapons and projectiles.