Could be. I was raised by some interesting boomers, though, so I wouldn’t write off their generation. Personally at least I was gifted a fascination with history and culture by my mother and father respectively. As I later learned my parents skipped out on a fantastic deal in like Montana to raise me in fair Chicago. And growing up in a major city did expose me to most of the cultures of our lonely planet. Even if they were less than excited when 14 year old me turned up twirling butterfly knives because an allegedly Filipino man sold them to me with a crash course in usage for only $75. Seriously the sheer amount of weird daggers I’m going to find hidden away in the attic when they pass would probably embarrass the Uncrowned.
I’d blame more pasty Gen X dorks with accountants for parents who thought rebellion was Tolkien fan fic.
I am probably alone in this, but I hoped Bwonsamdi would be a villain and be killed. I lament that they changed course. It irks me that basically because every one other than me liked Bwonsamdi, he was spared, and turned into one of our Allies. He was actually designed to die, and be a villain, and the Players would have likely killed the jerk… but then he his spared by “Fan reaction”.
I wanted him dead mostly because he said he wanted the head of a Warchief for a long time. It made it seem as if he didn’t care which Warchief. As if he would have been happy with Thrall’s, or Voljin’s, and just wanted Sylvanas’s head because she was currently Warchief. As if he were an enemy of the Horde. I am a bit peeved that they were going to villain bat him, and build that road… but then changed course.
Bwonsamdi and Odyn have alot of fans, and they are our Allies, but I can’t stomach them. At least Bwonsamdi is being built up as more benevolent each time he makes an appearance, and the Winter Queen puts him in his place now and then. He is being built up as a good guy, who respects the value of his worshipers, as well as takes grief from higher ups, so I can warm to him. Unlike Odyn, who shows no contrition or respect.
Well, like I said, he stated he wanted the head of a Warchief for a long time, and Sylvanas was new to the position. They were building him as a villain, and that could have been an early thread.
But they changed course. It is what it is. And that makes me all the more frustrated, knowing he actually was most likely to be killed by us… and then not.
He’s not even an anti-hero though. He’s just a rude hero. His motives are shown to be completely heroic. It’s hinted in The Otherside dungeon that he has a dark past but so what?
He’s shown in SR literally killing himself saving all his faithful’s souls away from the Maw. He even protects heretics who raised weapons against him.
His only ‘villain’ quality is He’s kind of a dick about it sometimes. And tbh say whatever you want about the Horde in BFA, we got a real and benevolent deity out of it.
Are we sure about that, though? He implicitly saves all our souls in Zuldazar.
If he loves trolls why would His love not extend to their allies?
I’d love to see an interaction between him and the Forsaken. Maybe he’s talking a bit too loosely about how he became a Loa to a curious RAS agent and realizes they’re taking dedicated notes before he clamps up and shoves them off, muttering ‘No spoilers’.
Yeah. I think his heel turn development in Shadows Rising, and his actions in Ardenweald, have done alot to build him up as a selfless ally willing to put his own skin in the game.
I just think back on BfA, and how I felt about him then, and what could have been. But, at least he was properly developed into a hero “post BfA”. I can warm to him.
Especially when he tries to get something out of the Winter Queen, and she says: “Depart.” It makes him seem more like a blue collar worker in the Death Industry.
I love that moment, though. Bwonsamdi is, frankly, annoying as all hell and another example of Blizzard totally changing their plans for a story just because they liked the voice acting. Rather than just making a story and sticking to telling it. Crowdsourcing your story never works out, as WoW recently is evident of.
So seeing the Winter Queen just being like, “man I can’t stand this guy” is really satisfying.
I know disliking current Bwonsamdi is not a popular opinion. However I found his original version, the one all the way back from Retaking the Echo Isles, the Vol’jin Book, and BfA, much more interesting to me. Almost like a neutral evil trickster god who very clearly (At least at the time) outswindled Rastakhan to his detriment.
Now he’s just like a good guy and and an ally of ours. And while there are still smatterings of his original self in certain lines of dialogue, he suddenly is now framed much more positively in the story than negatively.
I agree with all of this, which is why I was surprised that I liked him so much in Battle for Azeroth. Because he didn’t come off as SUPER westernized and still felt kind of true to his inspirations. But now, like every other character who gets any story focus, he’s just memeified into a worse version of himself than previously.
I don’t care that they can’t predict community perception. You shouldn’t write your story in a way that you’re trying to like satisfy a thousand disparate fanboys all wanting different things and just commit to writing something you want.
Sometimes it will be seen as bad. But hell man at least you’ll have the integrity of writing what you wanted to instead of trying to appease a thousand voices screaming for different things.
Not like Bwonsamdi would be the only example. They made Damballah a super minor villain in Ardenweald too, and I think you said that real world equivalent’s basically a God creator-like figure, right? I wonder if they just made it killable because snakes are scary and left it at that.
Maybe they were aiming for Dr. Facilier from ‘The Princess and the Frog’ if they were first planning to off him.
Give her a break. She seems very fond of the Primus. And is maybe just salty about another skull face trying to wine dine her.
I’d at least think that would be fun. Life and Death being in a uwu anime relationship where the former sends gifts the ladder keeps forever seems kind of nice.
When I was younger I used to clear vines and moss off indifferent tombstones. They were almost universally children who died decades ago. Nobody is coming to pay respect to their great uncle who died at age 9.
But pushing 30, I never would. There’s a beauty to man’s foolishness. We may die, and that may well be the end of all things for them. But worry not. The Earthmother feeds on corpses, and she will turn their corpse into a tree or flowers. Beauty blooms in the wake of tragedy if you have the patience to witness it.
And on that note I’d love if Bwomsamdi, An’She and a hitherto unmentioned true Dark Lady were appointed leaders.
For the Dark Lady I’d position it as a goddess of death. Particularly a Reaper sort who appears at the last breath. And she’s just been fascinated by the Forsaken and helping them out in subtle ways. A Raven Queen of the undead.
I mean even considering in-game lore, Damballah is why Shadow Hunters are able to disappear and other stuff. Basically the troll-equivalent of Ashamane arguably.
And yet here we are
Which I was excited for!
You know, Winter Queen the sister of Elune and Primus the father of Necromancy helping resolve the current Night Elf vs Forsaken melodrama
But alas. Here we are lol
Hey now, Primus is called Prelate in most other languages he is a man of chastity and brutality
My main antipathy towards him was that he seemed a threat to the Horde if he was hunting for Warchief heads. And the way he said it, it seems like he was coveting the head of a Warchief even before Sylvanas took the position.
Just being a threat to the Horde is reason enough, for me. Blizz’s design worked as far as I was concerned, and it didn’t have anything to do with cultural refrences. I was ready to go down the “Bwonsamdi Bad” road with just the vague intonation that he was a threat.
