The Empyrean

Corsets everywhere Go and scan the shelves of your local Warhammer or gaming store—what do you see? Behind the Eavy Metal paint schemes and shiny new logos, you’ll find boxes and boxes, rows and rows, of little plastic space and fantasy people showing off their chiselled abs, ten inch-wide arms and metal corsets. From Khornate priests to Sanguinary Guard, from Battle Sisters to Blissbarb Archers, so many of your favourite characters, if you push past your desensitisation to their forms, have been literally sculpted with traditionally beautiful bodies, representations of the traditional sexualised form, weapons slung aside, chests forward. And yet, as RS Benedict puts it: “A room full of beautiful, bare bodies, and everyone is only horny for war.”               It might be tempting to dismiss the lack of sexuality in the setting, beyond the aforementioned aesthetic sensibilities, as a function of its satire. Afterall, the essay I just quoted is speaking on Starship Troopers —a milit