Dominion Zephon in the literature and the model

[Etruscan]

I was relistening to some HH audiobooks and noticed that Zephon was described as being beautiful, having long hair and wearing MKIII armour. The plastic model couldn't be any further from this description seeing as he has short hair and wears MKVI.

 

I can't for a minute believe that their own literature was ignored in the design process so any idea why there is such a discrepancy?

[Agramar_The_Luna_Wolf]

The typical lack of coordination and communication between artist, writers, in one side, miniature designers in the middle and marketing/sale departments in the other side, in GW. I must admit Zephon's case is one the most radical, but is not the unique.

 

One thing is what the writter describes or an artist illustrates and miniature designer, design and the bosses want. They want to sell impacting miniatures and if the literature or illustration doesn't fit in their idea of a mass selling product...they change it.

And the sell it. Sad but true.

 

In the end, art and background are always the first in be "sacrifice"  in this cases. GW don't want to have restrictions made by themselves to sell more and more good looking miniatures.

 

[Petitioner's City]

I think the only way to understand the Zephon model is it is Zephon after he returns to the frontline on Terra - it can't be him earlier in the crusade, it can't be him in the webway, it can't be him in the Sanguinary Guard - this is Zephon during the Siege. Mark VI armour makes much sense then :) 

 

However it isn't "miscommunication"; to be fair, a miniature isnt a realistic similitude, its something else. The adaptations of BL characters has always been less of a similitude than ab evocation - the 28mm Eisenhorn, for example, who is too young to have elements of his wargear he is depicted having, while his bolt pistol was lost by the time of other elements. This was something the designers did deliberately, to evoke Gregor's career.

 

(Nevermind you then also have this very young Eisenhorn, or very out of time Ghosts, having rules for a setting centuries later).

 

So Zephon is just another example of these "indicative representations"; just as all our models don't actually depict the actual person in the books, comics, codices, whatever - after all people don't move through life locked to one pose, one set of clothing, one style or colour of hair, one set of tools, etc :) 

Edited April 18, 2023 by Petitioner's City

[Etruscan]

Thanks for the informative replies. 

I had considered the concept of Zephon at the siege of terra wearing MKVI armour because of him undergoing restorative surgery etc. but I think it’s open to interpretation whether they would have patched up his old armour or given him a new one. In some respects one could argue that it would make just as much sense to repair/customise his damaged MKIII armour rather than having to carve up a set of MKVI to fit his bionics. 
 

I do like the Zephon model but I will attempting to convert my own interpretation in MKIII. There’s a rather lovely illustration of Zephon which looks like some Renaissance angel.

 

On an aside, it’s interesting to note that the Fafnir Rann model seems more or less accurate to the books.

[Marshal Mittens]

On 4/18/2023 at 5:47 AM, Etruscan said:

Thanks for the informative replies. 

I had considered the concept of Zephon at the siege of terra wearing MKVI armour because of him undergoing restorative surgery etc. but I think it’s open to interpretation whether they would have patched up his old armour or given him a new one. In some respects one could argue that it would make just as much sense to repair/customise his damaged MKIII armour rather than having to carve up a set of MKVI to fit his bionics. 
 

I do like the Zephon model but I will attempting to convert my own interpretation in MKIII. There’s a rather lovely illustration of Zephon which looks like some Renaissance angel.

 

On an aside, it’s interesting to note that the Fafnir Rann model seems more or less accurate to the books.

Tortuga Bay has MKIII with bionics, for conversions.

[lansalt]

On 4/18/2023 at 10:07 AM, Petitioner's City said:

it can't be him earlier in the crusade, it can't be him in the webway, it can't be him in the Sanguinary Guard - this is Zephon during the Siege. Mark VI armour makes much sense then

There's a few issues with this:

1. There's no explanation about why Zephon left the SG so soon. He's clearly using non-SG red armour duting the Siege, though
2. His bionics are explicitly supposed to be DAoT tech and look like flesh limbs that are covered by his armour. They aren't exposed like in the miniature.
3. He's blonde with long hair unlike in the mini.
4. His sword isn't hollow and has text along the blade, unlike in the mini.
5. He's never described as a Moritat, or leads Destroyers after becoming maimed.

It's a mess and another example of the FW/GW designers doing whatever they like and ignoring the original source material (another example is Remus Ventanus)

[Petitioner's City]

22 minutes ago, lansalt said:

There's a few issues with this:

1. There's no explanation about why Zephon left the SG so soon. He's clearly using non-SG red armour duting the Siege, though
2. His bionics are explicitly supposed to be DAoT tech and look like flesh limbs that are covered by his armour. They aren't exposed like in the miniature.
3. He's blonde with long hair unlike in the mini.
4. His sword isn't hollow and has text along the blade, unlike in the mini.
5. He's never described as a Moritat, or leads Destroyers after becoming maimed.

It's a mess and another example of the FW/GW designers doing whatever they like and ignoring the original source material (another example is Remus Ventanus)

 

But that's ok - it's not like ADB minds (or Abnett about Eisenhorn or Samus). It's not a "direct from real-to-paper" photo-portrait of this (fictional) person at a specific point in time, it's a (for want of a better word) "summary" of him - just like any other miniature is a evocation or suggestion of these characters, an icon of them - but not actually them. To be so literalistic is to approach the media with a flawed approach, one which will just disappoint you because the mini never "is" them - it feels kinda like the debates undergirding iconoclasm (is this image believed to be really that saint?) 

 

And again, these aren't photoportraits - it is part of the creative process to take things in different directions, to make new and original versions of that idea. That is part of anyone's hobby, including miniature designers, and worth understanding - everything is adaptation, and all adaptations are "fan fictions", inviting change and variation. There's a fantastic literature around this (eg. here, here and here), sometimes in academia focusing on the oeuvre of Bryan Fuller who is a vocal proponent of this going back to interviews during Hannibal to recent tweets.

 

Ultimately, trying to project conflict onto the designers versus writers is silly, it's not a "mess". Such overstated language doesn't help any situation, it's too invested; it denies that difference, adaptation, appropriation are allowed - or that indeed an adaptation can serve a different purpose (as this mini does versus the text on the page).

[lansalt]

Calling the Zephon model an "adaptation" doesn't make sense when we're talking about products of the same company within a few years made pretty much by the same group of people, and calling it a mess is not overstated language when even the illustrations of BL books do not match the descriptions of the characters in the stories many times. Characters like Zephon, Fafnir Rann, or Amit change their appearance and gear due to bad planning/communication or authors/designers changing their mind without caring for continuity.

 

For example, note how the Zephon/Fafnir events in the "toy ad chapter" in The End and the Dead do not match the art at all, besides both characters suddenly looking like their minis once those were released.

 

 

It's not about "trying to project conflict onto the designers versus writers", it's simply recognizing that GW is sloppy and it's not a deliberate conscious choice or policy by them at all.

 

[Petitioner's City]

@lansalt i just think you are thinking about (or rather caring about) it far more than you need to - you want some kind of monolithic consistency, or continuity, but that isn't what the creatives involved clearly want, nor seem to care about? 

 

And that art - the issue is Zephon wields his serpentae (unsuitable for the close quarters), rather than (the suitable) bolt pistols as described in the text? Again this isn't a "direct capture of a real moment in time", it's an evocation of the text, but it won't be that text.

 

That's ok, thing can be different and there is joy in that :)

[lansalt]

20 minutes ago, Petitioner's City said:

you want some kind of monolithic consistency, or continuity, but that isn't what the creatives involved clearly want, nor seem to care about? 

I agree that there's built-in room for ambiguity, unreliable narrators, and "impressionistic" despictions of the setting, but the Heresy has been marketed as a consistant continuity since the start, no matter how many minor visual or narrative retcons may have happened. They've always appealed at the fans that love to connect the dots in stories and the ones that love to count rivets.

 

It's also not a question about limiting the creative freedom of authors, artists, and designers. What's the point of making a Zephon mini that looks nothing like he's described in the books? If they're not trying to appeal to book readers, why not use a previous FW character like Aster Crohne that fits the same role instead of making him redundant? If they wanted to make him look different, why not even explain the change in the fluff or books?

 

I know that many people do not care about this stuff, and see it all through a vaseline lens filter where armour marks or a primaris marine in the heresy does not matter because a marine is a marine. But while fantastic, this is not a high fantasy setting and GW sells us miniatures and pages full of specific markings, rules about different terminator armour marks, exemplary battles, and characters with background book series about their exploits between 30k and 40k.

 

It's not outlandish to ask them to do it better when they clearly make mistakes or disregard their own previous works.

 

 

 

[Noserenda]

Yeah it's a bit of a problem if a character is a face of yours and then gets a weird spin off version, because that's it, your guy is the weird spin off now, and even if you kitbash your own you are constantly having to explain that, which kinda sucks.

[Etruscan]

Can I just interject and say I am absolutely not a fan of these daft ‘hollow’ swords that GW seem to have a penchant for with Heresy releases (Zephon and plastic praetor). Give me a sexy sword with some lettering down the middle!

 

Whilst I firmly believe that one of the greatest appeals of the Warhammer setting is that there is a lot of creative license to interpret things how you want but when there is official artwork that flat out contradicts itself then frankly it’s sort of a disappointment. 

[JeffJedi]

I feel a mk6 marine in prototype stage  was pushed to become him and the bionic added. Not that he was designed from the ground up to be the character.

 

I guess we are lucky Rahn got his armor rather than mk6 tacked on.