Too Hot to Handle: On Removing Slaanesh (RANT WARNING)

Art by the ever awesome TD-Vice, who draws pretty well for a Nazi.

So, this is going to be less of a reasoned article, and more of me just yelling my frustration into the ether, so rant warning, this is going to be somewhat less concise than most of my other articles. I know I should just stay out of the debates of Warhammer fans, because, well, I know it would usually just irritate me. All my favorite elements of the the Warhammer 40k setting (I have not really gotten into Fantasy, but I've heard it's very good) have been slowly bled away from it. I loved the Necrons being unimaginable alien horrors being controlled by the star gods, but, we can't have that, so now they're just a bunch of robot skeletons who nicked the play book from the Goa'uld from Stargate and have made their gods into Pokemon. I really like the Eldar Harlequins when they were just a mysterious third faction of the Eldar, and not as an entire fucking army, but whatever. Most of all, I love, love, love the Chaos god Slaanesh, and I seem to be the only one who does, given that most of the very vocal fanbase seem to have some massive problem with the character. Games Workshop sure does, as I've now recently heard that Warhammer Fantasy has been turned into Age of Sigmar, something that would take an entire article to properly lambast, but to be sure, has not been met with a lot of love from the fanbase. One big thing that has been changed is that Slaanesh has been effectively removed from the setting (getting kidnapped. How that fucking works is beyond me, given that it's one of the four supremely powerful chaos gods and it just ate a shit ton of elf souls but whatever.) and I've heard rumors (I don't know if they're true, but they seem pretty fucking likely) that they're going to be getting rid of him/her in 40k as well.

Sigh
Let's take a look at Games Workshop and Warhammer 40k as a setting, and you'll truly see exactly why Slaanesh gets the company head's knickers in a twist. 40k, at least initially, started out as an adult setting. It's violent as fuck. It contains more ways to kill someone then I have ever seen in a work of fiction, and creatively too, in ways that make Mortal Kombat drool. Chaos gods embodied very family unfriendly things, like hatred, warfare, decay and disease, mutation and body horror, and of course (gasp) sex and depravity. Now, in its inception, Fantasy and 40k had a lot of flavor, but this wonderful company Games Workshop, this bunch of fucking idiots even their fans hate, who drag their IP through the goddamn mud every time anyone looks at it funny, who tries to copyright the term Space Marine of all fucking things (Starship Troopers and Doom oughta be fucking insulted if they weren't too busy rolling on the floor laughing) has slowly, and surely whittled away every sharp, objectionable edge to the hobby until it's bland and as mass appealing as it can be. Slaanesh has been getting neutered in terms of flavor for decades. First, they refuse to mention sex, then they mention it's the weakest chaos god (because I'm sure the desire to fuck is much less than the desire to make bloody warfare, sink into despair or go schizophrenic) and then they even made it's formerly really hot and creepy daemons into backup dancers for Lordi. So now, Slaanesh in Age of Sigmar has been removed in a SIDEBAR of all fucking things, and replaced with the Horned Rat, because the emotion of being a backstabbing shitstain wasn't already covered by Tzeentch, and I dunno, maybe being eaten by rats and the bubonic plague is a very deep intrinsic emotion for the people of Warhammer Fantasy. I don't know, I'm not a fucking psychologist.

Hand me my flamer, naked, parchment wearing masochist, so I can burn more minorities. You know, for Kids!

 Grimdark and PG-13
40k is often credited with coining the phrase 'grimdark', as 'In the Grim Darkness of the 41st Millennium, there is only War'. Now, I would agree, 40k is an exceedingly dark and visceral setting. The main protagonists are a theocratic dictatorship based on torturing, murdering and killing anyone who looks different or thinks differently from you. One of the main antagonists, the chaos god Khorne (There are three others but Khorne gets the most screentime because his fanboys want to assure you that their dicks are indeed tiny) is all about the brutal murder and slaughter of your enemies in an endless bloodbath to feed his intense hatred. Blah, blah something something honorable combat. Wait, that's too much character? Fine. Remove it. There are guns that flay their victims alive, chainsaw swords, viruses that make their victims explode into gorey puddles, guns that shoot little bugs that eat their victims alive, my personal favorite, a hypersonic whip that's injected into a person and liquifies their organs and blades  that drain moisture out of the victim and turn them into piles of dust.

Now.....just from that brief overview, do you think this is a particularly good setting for 13-year-olds to be immersed in? I know that if it were a movie or a video game, it probably would be rated Mature at least. Case in point, in the country I'm in, Mortal Kombat 9 got banned temporarily because the Fatalities proved too problematic for any ickle impressionable children. I still can't buy a legal copy of Hotline Miami 2 because some people might be offended by a pixellated (and in universe SIMULATED) rape scene.

What I'm trying to get at, is that the setting of Warhammer 40k was never particularly family friendly. It tells the story of humanity's darkest hour, the last glimmer of light before its snuffed out by darkness FOREVER. Horrifying acts of murder, torture, depravity and other unpleasant things have been in the setting since its inception. To decry Slaanesh as too offensive, as too 'family unfriendly' for a setting like Warhammer 40k (or Fantasy for that matter) is so ludicrous that it's almost a weird commentary on society itself. Why are we so OK with horrifying violence, murder and torture but we draw the line if god-forbid someone wants to put a pare of boobs on something. I'm not endorsing rape or sexual violence in any way, but I'm equally not endorsing torture or mass murder. Why are acts of genocide, monstrosity, outright racism and religious persecution ok to portray? We all know they're bad. It's pretty unlikely that any of the millions of fans of the hobby are going to go out and gather some skulls for the skull throne because you let them buy miniature army men with axes. Chaos, and what makes Chaos a great antagonist, is that it exemplifies every part of the human psyche, and Slaanesh was arguably the best and most in-depth because s/he's the only one who lures victims in with what they want. What drives people more than the pleasure principle? What drives people more than feeling pleasure? be it sexual, perfectionistic or prideful? In fact, to shy away from portraying these things ignores such a fundamental part of the human psyche that it almost just takes away the flavor of Chaos as a faction, and makes it as arbitrary and boring as a list of the DnD Demon Princes.

No girls allowed. They are icky and have cooties.

Misogyny
Now, stop. I know what you're thinking, and I'm not saying that Slaanesh is a faction for girls specifically, because it's not. The thing is though, because of its hermaphroditic nature, there is a disproportionate amount of female daemons and symbols within the Slaaneshi faction that contrasts with the ridiculous testosterone poisoning of the rest of the setting. Now, Games Workshop is no stranger to misogyny (our genetically engineered space monks can only be from MANLY MEN, 'cause there's such a difference between men and women genetically, and obviously women can't truly embody the EMPRAH!) and Slaanesh's chosen colors, Pink, and her chosen daemons (usually females) contrast with this. Now, I know I'm getting into a tricky topic here, and I can just feel the hate mail about to pour in.  Normally, I hate it when women are presented as nothing but sex objects. Women are presented as sex objects in almost every other part of 40k (Sisters of Battle who have form-fitting power armor and sometimes whip themselves in battle wearing only parchments and Jesus Christ the Dark Eldar), but I would argue that being presented as a sex object is all about what Slaanesh is about. Even males should be portrayed as sex objects, and that's the point, because Slaanesh is about objectifying people. We as a society should know it's wrong. That's why it works and that's why it's part of an army of DEMONS. Seriously, everyone knows that mass murder, spreading diseases and burning people alive are wrong, and we have no problem selling Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeentch armies. But the instant the players hear about an army of succubi or pink-armored space marines, they head for the hills for fear of catching teh gay.

I'm tired and all ranted out, but in conclusion, I feel that removing Slaanesh is just one more example of Games Workshop caving into mass appeal and (surprise surprise) not having any respect for its IP or quite frankly, the intelligence of its players. Again, I don't know if Slaanesh will be removed from 40k, but the way things are, let's just say it wouldn't fucking surprise me for my favorite faction to go the way of the Squats and the Lost and the Damned. Hardly would be the first time Games Workshop screwed over a less popular demographic of players in chasing the almighty dollar. Once again, I know I should just keep my head out of this shit. Just play Dark Heresy and the other really good RPG's that Fantasy Flight makes, that kind of rise above the turd ocean that Warhammer 40k inevitably becomes, that expect maybe a glimmer of intelligence and (gasp) maturity from it's players. I mean, it's sure as fuck more than anything Games Workshop gives us. Right. Rant over. Hope you enjoyed it. I will return you to your regularly scheduled Mad Scrawlings soon.

- Kephn