So, why wouldn’t Blizzard put a male character in charge?
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Makes the Horde all-male in terms of primary singular leader for each race save for Talanji. Bad writing.
And Mayla. And Thalyssra. Is that a problem?
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Mayla and Thalyssra are Allied Race characters, not Core Race. That distinction is meaningful until I see any of the Allied Race Origin (as in, pulled out of Non-Core Lore) do anything important in a cinematic or in-game.
Zandalari are a core race?
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Nope. Which thanks for pointing out! All of the Horde primary core race leaders is Boys™ save for Allied Race characters. Amazing.
I mean Alliance has
Anduin
Tyrande and Malfurion
Mekkatorque
2 male and 1 female dwarf
for its core races…
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Yup. Ain’t it terrible? There one on the Alliance and if they replace Sylvanas with a dude zero on the Horde.
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Not really.
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You mean advocate for peace with the opposite faction but in so doing inadvertently setting up potential rifts and inner conflicts within their own faction over the mutually exclusive options of peace and vengeance?
Because if that’s a negative, I think the Forsaken getting some therapy for the decades of baggage they got totally outweighs that.
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On the contrary, there is ingame lore specifically stating that some Forsaken actually DO think of their curse as a malady or dis-figuration, something that they seek a cure for.
Which I think is awesome storytelling, because it means that not all Forsaken are one-note stereotypes, all buying into the same perception or philosophy that the Forsaken fans want to portray them as.
If by “a lot” you mean TWO…
A couple more if you count secondary characters.
Sorry? Isn’t that already what the Horde is? Bland, colorless and boring.
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Nope, as a matter of fact is what they became after years of villain batting, lore retconning and blatant favoritism put on Alliance flavored self inserts in detriment of the Horde characters.
You know, yesterday I was watching Mad Max: Fury Road (amazing movie, that´s how you write a femenine action hero AND and anti-hero playing support) and wnen Max gives that crucial dialogue to Furiosa et al about better going back to confront their sins and to maybe achieve redemption, is when I realized why I hate so much what has happened and is still happening to the Horde narrative post WotLK.
You know what was the Horde about in WC3? Redemption. And only the sinners can redeem themselves. That´s why Calia is such an aberration narrative wise, cause she´s literally a hard retconn designed to take all the bad stuff and all the hyperbolic villain batting put on the Forsaken to hide it and pretend it never existed.
That´s why with actual decent writers, we would have had Nathanos or another Forsaken proper character relizing they can´t continue running away anymore excusing themselves behind their trauma and that they have to confront their bad stuff and move on with a healthier way of life. And Calia is anything but this, cause she´s literally portrayed as an airheaded care bear that doesn´t even seem to realize how monstruous those undead can be.
When people go to therapy, it doesn´t matter how many hours the therapist devotes to them; the results only are achieved WHEN the patient realizes there´s something they need to change with themselves -no acceptance of a problem, no bettermen-. Calia is merely some therapist, but certainly NOT the patient that actually NEEDS to realize he has to change for his own betterment.
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Yes, but you know what happens when the Inmates are running the Asylum, don’t you?
You’re never going to have the character have that realization when they exist in a vacuum of self-decay. The Forsaken need someone to help them realize they need that redemption, to confront their trauma and move beyond it. That’s what Sylvanas did to them. Always keeping them locked into a state of perpetual rage and grief, the same prison she as kept herself all this time.
(Yes, During WotLK, you saw something different in her, maybe even the notion of her letting go of that but… hell.)
Point being, The Forsaken needs someone to tell them that they’re doing it wrong. Or show them there’s another way. Someone who won’t try to exploit them. Maybe that person isn’t Calia. But Calia’s so far the only one who cares enough to try.
(I even had the passing notion that Voss is actually using Calia for exactly that purpose somehow…Putting her into a leadership position is just the only way to get them to listen.)
And what do you think it was their unliving Goddess kicking them out of the curve?
That + Horde support from the other Horde races was all we needed. Alliance flavored light undead becomes very irrelevant very fast once one realizes THIS.
People complains Forsaken “didn´t felt Horde / weren´t Horde enough”. How about Darkspear Trolls and Shadowmoon Mag ´har Orcs giving them their support in this the Forsaken “most desperate time” instead of importing an Alliance flavored undead made by the magical alignment (Light) the Forsaken have NOT believed in since they were created, for example?
How about making THEM (the actual Forsaken) develop by their own means instead of putting the usual Alliance figurehead in charge of that?
Dear, Calia doesn´t even realize they´re bad people. That´s hoiw SAD things are; she doesn´t SEE them, she only sees the idea of living people with a skin condition.
I told this in another thread but any actual decent writer pretending to put Calia in charge of a race that´s literally her antithesis needs to make her suffer a HUGE amount of rejection first. Something Voss abstained to do, for example.
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Maybe that’s your view of the Forsaken. Mine has always been in that, they are well undead, zombies, dark, black humorous race who love skulls and gooey experiments (sort of like the Crazy Adams but a little more sadic). Sylvanas was just the perfect Morticia to them until someone decided last expansion to make her go wacko and all this forsaken in need of living human acceptance is just 
.
Something like a Metal song turned into cheap Pop.
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Sylvanas has been consistently characterized since her introduction in WC3.
The fact that she was consistently characterized as a liar who used everyone around her and dropped them the moment they outlived their usefulness and you still somehow deluded yourself into thinking she somehow cared about the Forsaken is more your issue than anything in Blizzard’s writing.
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That’s the issue. They never were supposed to be like that according to John Staats, an original WoW developer.
Metzen wanted the Forsaken to be misunderstood humans. The others on the team wanted them to be “Evil monster zombies”. They met in the middle.
Except they didn’t meet in the middle. The middle ground of misunderstood and evil is not “evil but sad.”
That depends on what the writers deem evil.
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The writers don’t get to deem what is and isn’t evil.