ive seen a couple of good threads about this already but i kind of wanted to touch on it myself, kinda bc no one has brought up what ive been thinking about and i want to try to articulate it. WoW opinions inbound

this is of course about the horde, sylvanas, forsaken, and belves

sooooooooo apparently calia menethill is the new leader of the forsaken. and i guess, it makes sense, in the respect that there may be a lot of lordaeron natives who are glad to see a menethill back in lordaeron after it was wrecked. a lot of what made the forsaken--

--what they were, and abhorrent to the alliance and why they weren't allowed into stormwind, is because they were natives of lordaeron who wanted to go back to their home and find a semblance of normalcy or life because they lost it.

on the other hand, i hate it. i hate it a lot. i hate it so much. nothing against calia as a character because i've yet to see enough of her to have an opinion, but boy do i have a lot of frustrations mostly to do with the horde's portrayal and especially ... sylvanas

whether or not you like sylvanas as a character and whether the writers want to admit it or not, there is something that has to be said about her and her relationship to the forsaken as a rather integral and formative one. she is the banshee queen for a reason.

sylvanas was among the first, if not THE first, undead to break her connection to arthas and regain her free will. the entire idea behind the forsaken as a race is that they are among those of the scourge who regained their free will, and they are miserable yet want normalcy

sylvanas gave them their name--it was her who said "What joy is there in this curse? We are still undead, sister--still monstrosities. What are we if not slaves to this torment?" and later --

"...we are no longer part of the Scourge. From here on out, we shall be known as the Forsaken. We will find our own path in this world...and slaughter anyone who stands in our way." and those are direct quotes from WC3, not just random ambient dialogue from WoW.

Sylvanas is clever and ruthless, but because she was forced to be because of what Arthas turned her into. she was traumatized and stripped of her humanity and what's left is someone who is, in my opinion, rightfully angry--and they never gave her an opportunity for good closure.

the forsaken, as a race, were drawn to her because they understand this. they are miserable, they are forced into ruthlessness because they otherwise do not have a chance at survival because the rest of the world deems them abominations.

the blood elves in turn would not be part of the horde had it not been for sylvanas wanting to reach out a hand to help quel'thalas. lor'themar touches on this during the sin'dorei heritage armor quest, and it's paid back later when they offer a hand out to the nightborne.

the blood elves were also similarly pushed into a "villainous" role because of lack of sympathy from outside parties. garithos refused to give kael'thas support after the sunwell was destroyed and expected him to throw away the rest of his people ... for the sake of humanity

kael'thas then turned to the only people willing to help him--lady vashj and the naga, and illidan, who understood what his people were facing (addiction to mana) after the destruction of the sunwell.

the forsaken and the blood elves have this in common in that they turned to the only people who would validate their trauma, and have contentious relationships with the people who won't. the forsaken are denied humanity by the remaining humans of stormwind, and--

--well, im sure the remaining two windrunner sisters refusing to ally themselves with the blood elves and instead remain with the alliance and continue to call themselves "high elves" is invalidating to the sin'dorei leadership

the reason i bring this up is that sylvanas, kael'thas, and the trauma of the forsaken and the sin'dorei is integral to their identities as races, and placing calia menethill as the leader of the forsaken undermines this and misses the point

i also want to talk about kael'thas but i want to see what shadowlands will do to him first. i feel like vilifying him was a mistake, the reasoning illidan was ever considered a villain is also ... bad, and we're going to pin thinking about all of this bc i have a point to make

i mean i guess we did eventually realize that illidan was more or less mistreated and pushed to what he became and it wasn't entirely his fault, and that was a good call, and hopefully kael'thas and lady vashj and ..... i hope, sylvanas, will get that same sympathy

but let's talk about calia. i, again, have nothing against calia. i don't know enough about her as a character to have an opinion but she does have quite a lovely design, contrary as it is to what we expect from the undead. i don't like her as a replacement for sylvanas.

not wanting to completely dismissed the, uh, "lightbound undead" concept or w/e it is, calia doesn't quite understand the same trauma that the forsaken do. she has never been rejected for what she is on the same systemic level that the forsaken have.

jaina was even willing to invite her back to the alliance with open arms, probably regardless of whether or not she asked calia to help derek or not. calia has not been shunned by her own people in the same way that the forsaken, and sylvanas have ...

... and yet she is somehow qualified to "help" them? to lead them? i guess she was apprenticed to an undead priest or whatever but, the whole concept doesn't sit well with me--because calia is socially acceptable to the alliance.

and this is kind of getting to what annoys me about the direction of wow's writing in general. in wc3, for example, morality is somewhat relative--you sympathize with the orcs who need to raid ashenvale for their own survival, but also with the night elves who live there.

well i closed my browser like a big dumbass and lost my train of thought and the process i'd made on this thread so fuck me, i guess.

anyway

ashenvale in wc3 is a good example because the relationship is contentious--they are at odds with one another--but the argument isn't necessarily over who has the moral highground, because they are both justified. the orcs need the resources of the forest for survival,

because they have nowhere else to go; but the forest is sacred to the kaldorei, and destroying it is physically hurting them. both motivations are sympathetic and neither is necessarily better or worse than the other. and that's what makes it interesting.

who you sympathize with is even based on which perspective you might be standing in.

this is good! or a good place to start, anyway.

would have been nice if they actually kept ... working with that.

instead it feels like instead of contentious for opposing but not necessarily morally opposing, they've decided to go with morally opposing. which has now led to ... alliance good, horde evil. which strips both factions, their leaders, and their sub-factions of nuance, imo.

the alliance is a faction made up of people who believe they have good intentions or in the name of nobility, but sometimes these things end in repercussions or have unforeseen consequences. a good example, while not necessarily an alliance-aligned character, is xe'ra

xe'ra was the naaru prime, with good intentions--but she was ultimately hurting illidan rather than helping him, and hindering the progress of the army of the light rather than aiding it

the horde, meanwhile, has the shared experience of merely trying to survive and live on azeroth, while the alliance makes this difficult for them--not because the horde is evil, but because there are conflicts of interest. this does not have to mean that it is good vs evil

the orcs, trolls, tauren, and forsaken are united because of this. they want to survive, they want to be allowed to exist, but the alliance does not let them for one reason or another. this is how thrall befriended sen'jin and cairne bloodhoof in the first place.

and yet, it has been decided that ... alliance good! horde evil! in maybe the worst way possible. you see, your player character isn't evil, they just took orders from someone who is.

despite that, you know, thrall being a good leader to the orcs is part of, you know, the horde

so thrall steps down and we get garrosh, garrosh decides he wants power instead of leadership and we have to kill him and vol'jin steps up. vol'jin gets unceremoniously killed so sylvanas can step up and throw her character nuance out the window after taking stupid pills

we lost nuance in garrosh and sylvanas in order for them to build up to ......... whatever the hell it is that they're building up to and this is like, this isn't good writing. like, ruining iconic characters or destroying established order or not, it's bad.

garrosh had a lot on his shoulders and he had a lot of what thrall had in him--taking what is good about the horde and putting it in the forefront of their ideals, rather than letting their anger get ahead of them, even if their anger is justified. see: cataclysm stonetalon

sylvanas was also clever, and willing to do anything for her own survival even if it meant ruthlessness as a defense mechanism, though that may have also been in part to her misery. and, again, she was the one who coined the identity of the forsaken.

that's what makes these characters interesting, and why they are looked to as leaders. the same, honestly, goes for kael'thas--he was the one who coined the term of the sin'dorei.

it wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem if the alliance had the same problem, but they don't!

what would make more sense is having factions defined by their own sense of morality that reflects differently depending perspective. the alliance as defined by "we have standards to uphold for the sake of our people" vs the horde defined as "we must endure, whatever the cost"

reducing them to a black and white good vs evil would make sense in, like, swtor, where the empire is outright a fascist regime, but the horde is not that! especially when the horde is very explicitly coded as people of color, especially indigenous people!

the morality being defined as alliance good horde bad is what's led us up to sort of "rebranding" the horde and its races (especially the forsaken) is more or less moving it from being what was pushed as "bad" or "evil" and now to what is morally acceptable by alliance standards

so the horde, who was united by what is abhorrent, socially unacceptable, or conflicting interest of the alliance is now .... rebranding itself to be more socially acceptable to the alliance.

someone kinda, someone missed the point here

that's why making calia menethill the new leader of the forsaken is a bad call. lilian voss would have made a better choice even just because she represents the best of the forsaken and the kind of trauma they've endured. calia menethill is just ... alliance-friendly forsaken

it's this almost like, christian-esque idea of purity that you must conform to in order to be even considered for personhood

the horde does not owe that to the alliance

i think one of the reasons wrath of the lich king was a satisfying expansion to so many people is because of how long arthas was built up as a villain. the entirety of wc3 was more or less about his fall from grace from the prince of lordaeron to his ascension at icecrown

what escapes me is why they didn't let jaina and sylvanas, the two people on both factions who had both been hurt by arthas very severely in wc3 have a chance to face him at the finale of icecrown--or even why they killed off kael'thas before also giving him that chance