Tohsaka and Tyrande-Writing badass women

You know the woman, the hardened stone-faced one who dresses like a man and likes "boy things".  The one who never has an emotion that isn't anger. The badass woman.  Except, there's a problem isn't there? yes, there is. She may be a great character, funny, interesting, exciting. There's nothing actually wrong with this character. But...is this a woman? Can a person who shows no vulnerability, who dresses and acts in a way that is stereotypically masculine, really be called a woman? She is female, that is determined by biology. However, a female need not be a woman. Now, are there people who are really like this female character? yes, of course. But are they women? debatable. A real life person, should be allowed to define themself: but a fictional character needs to be defined appropriately by their author.  This type of character really should be written as transgender or third-gender, this is the 21st Century and we can say those words in public. 

Readers, for better or for worse, look up to fictional characters. What message are you sending to your reader? Are you sending a message to a reader that affirms their gender identity? Or are you telling girls that the only way to get respect is to be masculine? Are you telling women who usually would show their feelings, dress and act in a stereotypically feminine way, that they are not strong? Are you sending the message that femininity is weak? if so, you are not writing a feminist text. A feminist text affirms femininity, not just female characters. Now, am I saying that you should never write a female character who is "one of the guys".  No, of course not. Those characters can be very good: they can be interesting and funny and cool.  Just apply a little thought to what the character's gender identity actually is. But, what if you do want a badass woman. How do you write someone who is badass, and a woman?

Tyrande Whisperwind, leader of the night elf civilization in the Warcraft mythos provides an excellent example. She is, without question, a badass. She rides a sabertooth tiger, uses a magic bow, and commands a ghost eagle. She is an effective combatant, using both her weapons and her magic to do damage to the enemy and make her allies stronger. However, it is important that we first meet her alongside her husband Malfurion Stormrage and while playing as his twin brother Illidan. One of the biggest problems with the usual stereotype of the "badass woman" is that she has no emotional expression. Usually this is because she is isolated from others. She generally has no family or friends, nobody that she is truly close to. Tyrande isn't isolated at all, quite the opposite. She is the motherly leader of a whole society, with a small but important and complicated family. Malfurion and Illidan have grown apart over the years, but they are in some ways so much alike: and Tyrande's presence helps to highlight that fact. They are both arrogant in their own ways, and both so convinced of their own rightness that they are both blind to each others' perfectly valid points. 

Tyrande is notably selfless, lacking the arrogance and need to be correct that her husband and brother-in-law both display. If this were a typical fantasy, we would expect Malfurion to be the leader with a grandiose title. But Warcraft is not a typical fantasy.  This society is gynarchal, that is it privileges women. Women make up the clergy, who control the elite military units (which are thus, all-female) and in addition are more likely to be given positions of political leadership. But this is not the only reason that Tyrande is the leader. Tyrande emerges as the de facto leader of the night elves, or Kaldorei as they call themselves, during the War of the Ancients. This war overthrew the previous government, led by Queen Azhara and the Highbourne because they collaborated with an invading army. 

True, she was the high priestess in the Sisterhood of Elune: the main religious organization in this society. However, that is not the only reason that she becomes the de facto leader of the Kaldorei rebellion. Her intrinsic talents justify her leadership position: something that is very important when writing any leader. Tyrande's intrinsic talent is her ability to see the big picture, and stay focused on it. This is an important trait for a leader, obviously. Of course, Tyrande has flaws: she is xenophobic to the point of paranoia, and blindly utilitarian.  The festering trauma of Queen Azhara's betrayal causes Tyrande to distrust anyone or anything that resembles the Highbourne even slightly: without giving consideration to how the situation might be different. This extends to being willing to execute her own brother-in-law. Even though Malfurion convinces her to spare him, she values him only insofar as he is useful to her despite being an actual family member. 

However, because of this story of the War of the Ancients, Tyrande's flaws are sympathetic. We understand why she acts the way she does, even if we wouldn't agree with her actions. She is someone we can criticize and yet profoundly respect. She has worked hard to not only achieve victory for her people, but to subsequently create a mostly harmonious civilization. Tyrande has no title, even though she does the job of being a Queen. This puts her as not just a leader, but a specific kind: embodied by the real life George Washington and the mythical Cincinnatus. While this type of character is hardly unusual in fantasy settings, what is unusual is that this character is a woman. 

Tyrande puts her own pride aside to join the Alliance of Lordaeron: and forms a great professional relationship with the human King Varian Wrynn. While some of her people look down on the humans, elves being so long lived see them as childish, but Tyrande notably does not. Of course, she challenges him: but her challenges come only from a genuine desire to help him make the best decision possible for the Alliance. She isn't constantly pushing her people's agenda, or trying to steal the spotlight the way some other leaders in the game do. Her ability to always see the full context of someone's actions, means she is respected-one might even say revered-across all of Azeroth regardless of faction: one of only a few mortal characters to have that distinction. A truly strong and heroic woman.

On the surface, Rin Tohsaka the protagonist of Fate: Stay Night, could not be more different. She seems like a fairly traditional Japanese high school girl, living in a fairly traditional Japanese town. The story seems to be set in the 1980s, amid Japan's explosive but uneven economic growth, since there are electric heaters and televisions but no desktop computers or cell phones. But, Rin Tohsaka has a secret. She is a mage, indeed her family are famous as mages. A mage, is a person who can summon and control spiritual beings known as Servants.  The central conflict of the story, is the Holy Grail War. Yes, the words "servant" and "holy grail" actually appear in the Japanese text: and yes, Japanese is one of those languages that doesn't distinguish 'r' from 'l'. I can only guess that the writers intended for the voice actors to want to murder them. 

Speaking of murder, that is what this Holy Grail War is about. It is about killing other mages and their Servants. Seven mages are chosen to summon seven powerful Servants: only one can claim the Grail. While it is possible to knock a mage out of the tournament by making them lose their Servant, this is prohibitively difficult. What this does, is set up a story that questions the very notion of heroism.  The Servants are all heroes of the past from around the world, but despite their talk of honor and heroism: what they are doing is little more than a glorified bloodsport. Rin herself is inexperienced, and makes some rookie mistakes. However, even over the course of a few episodes she grows to the point where she initiates another mage into the tournament. Rin is a strong character, and endowed by the writers with some traits usually associated with male characters: such as a sense of honor and duty. She grows into the trope of the samurai warrior: placing duty to family before personal preference, and honor above all else. By "honor" I mean that Rin follows a code of ethics for fighting, it's not made totally clear whether this is a personal code or something taught to her by her absent father. 

But at no point is she coded as unfeminine. She wears a dress, a red dress in fact. She flirts with male characters. The high pitched Japanese voice acting helps a lot in her characterization, by never letting her be seen as masculine even as she acts aggressively. The writers can let her be a little bit masculine as she grows from schoolgirl to commander, but they feel no need to present her as unsexed. There are several scenes where she is carried by her Servant, recalling the romantic ending sequences of old Hollywood movies: but hilariously recast as a vehicle for some indulgence in kung fu movie physics. There is sexiness in this anime, it's about high school after all and emerging sexuality is thus a part of it. But, there are none of the upskirt or cleavage shots that have become standard for the genre. Characters flirt through words, and posture. 

The show uses the honorifics of ordinary Japanese language to characterize the different girls. While I don't know precisely what these words mean: it's easy to get the feeling for them by listening to the tone of voice. Rin speaks softly but with purpose, she never speaks unless she needs to and never says more than that she means to. She speaks to everyone with respect, but reserves deference for the teachers.  Emiya, the naive quiet boy with a special gift for fixing electrical appliances, speaks in a way that shows his lack of confidence. Emiya's adopted sister runs around calling everyone "senpai" which anyone who has been on the internet knows is a bit extreme: indicating that she is trying too hard to be liked. These three main characters all have a strong sense of duty, but to different things. Emiya feels a duty to help those in need, because he was orphaned as a child and brought up by a stranger. His sister feels a duty to her household, to keep it clean and pretty and in accordance with tradition. Rin feels a duty to bring glory to her family, and succeed where her father did not. To highlight this, the show gives them a perfect foil: an incompetent adult. 

She isn't grossly negligent like some of the adults in 90s YA novels: but she is absent-minded and thus irresponsible. She isn't their parent either, which takes the edge off somewhat: she's the daughter of the absentee landlord for Emiya and his sister's house, and one of the teachers. As such, she has privilege: and she exercises it by refusing to be responsible for herself, or others. She doesn't cook her own dinner or breakfast, and she doesn't really try to keep the kids from going out when the city issues a warning. Her lack of a sense of duty to those who are under her care (since she is the only adult present), makes the childrens' sense of duty more obvious. Privilege, what is supposed to be the reward for doing your duty: is blinding her to her real duty. Rin on the other hand, having lost the privilege that her family once clearly had (the house she lives in is large and ornate, obviously a manor house of some kind), has a strong sense of duty to the only thing her family has left: their name. Emiya, forced to depend on the generosity of strangers for most of his life, has a strong sense of duty to help society in any way he can. His sister simply wants other people to like her, and being dutiful helps her accomplish that. This story is one of recovering the most important aspects of the past that is about to disappear, and holding onto them while going towards the future. It is about being a samurai, and a modern woman: about being a hero, in a corrupting and degrading world. A story for our times, and a story for the ages.

Daenerys Stormborn and Wonder Woman-The Warrior Matron

Boudicca, Zenobia, Artemisia, Theodora, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Yoko Ono, Victoria Beckham, Queen Elizabeth II: strong women of history yes...but also all married. Yet in fiction, we almost never see this: certainly not with human characters (elves and/or space elves are often an exception). Our fictional strong or warrior women are single or even actively disinterested in men. Almost all our strong women in fact fall into a single archetype: the shieldmaiden. There is, of course, nothing wrong with this archetype or creating characters based off it. It simply shouldn't be the sole archetype for strong women. Not every woman wants to be that person, not every woman can. Some women desire men. Some women want a family. Some women enjoy their sexuality, and want to share it with someone else. Why can't we consider these women to be just as strong as the unmarried women? 

Because when she takes part in sexual activity, according to our society, a woman becomes impure. She is demeaned and degraded in the act, no matter how much the man who does it loves her. After that point, she is no longer a full human being. She is a wife, and not assumed to have the same capacities as she once had. Something was taken from her, but what? The answer of course, is nothing, and this ideology is absurd. Most of the strong women we know and love in history, were in fact married women. We also at one point told stories of women who were strong, not despite but because of their families. Women who were loved by men not despite but because of their strength. Women like Daenerys Stormborn and Wonder Woman. 

Daenerys (or Dany) doesn't exactly start out seeming like she will become a warrior mother, the Mother of Dragons. She starts off as a scared girl being abused by her brother, who is her only family. He then packs her off to the seemingly savage Dothraki. But, this is Game of Thrones and so all is not what it first seems. Khal Drogo is not the stupid oaf he first appears to be. More than being unexpectedly intelligent however, the Khal is also more interested in Dany as an individual than he has any reason to be. He demonstrates this by giving Dany's brother his well-deserved comeuppance. Later on, there is a tense scene where Dany attempts to communicate her sexual preferences to her new husband in the few words of his language that she knows. Props to GRRM here for delivering appropriate suspense despite the sensitivity of the material. He really keeps the reader on tenterhooks for a while wondering how Khal Drogo will respond. 

Of course this is Game of Thrones, Drogo immediately accommodates her preferences: subverting the expectations of readers around the globe. This gives Dany an inkling that he might truly love her, not simply want to get rid of his wife's enemies. So, she asks her handmaid to show her other sexual techniques. Although this is initially framed as an attempt to seduce Drogo, it soon becomes obvious that isn't really necessary plotwise. But law of conservation of detail: why then does GRRM write out these scenes in excruciating detail? They aren't sex scenes, there is no attraction between Dany and her handmaid Irri and they are doing all of this while fully clothed. There is another purpose to these scenes: Dany is gaining control over her sexuality. 

Sexuality is a form of power, that is why discussions of it are so fraught and so politically charged. Sex is the basis of politics and ultimately warfare, but also art, spirituality and every other form of cultural expression. In gaining control of her sexuality, Dany is gaining the tools to change the world. Khal Drogo [spoiler alert] dies, and Dany expertly turns the tragedy into the beginning of her own story. From fire and blood, she gives birth to dragons: from Dothraki and mercenary she gives birth to a nation. A nation built on the ideal of freedom and justice for all. As she later says to Varys: not to turn the wheel, but to break it. To establish a new order upon the world. But first she must survive the winter.

Wonder Woman is a different, but equally interesting sort of Warrior Matron. She's different in part because she looks to us like she is going to be a shieldmaiden type of heroine: a warrior woman, who has a pretty poor opinion of men. But then she meets a man who changes her opinion about men, and humans in general (since she apparently isn't, despite looking exactly like a human).  Thus, more directly than Daenerys, Wonder Woman is a subversion of the shieldmaiden trope: and given the author it's reasonable to assume that was the intention. She has to teach this man a thing or two about the right way to treat women, but unlike most men in the WWI era would have been: he's an eager student. 

Wonder Woman is placed opposite Ares, a representation of the toxic masculinity inherent in Colonialism. Ares in Greek Mythology is both brutal and bloodthirsty, but also daft as a post and emotionally fragile. He's all ego, and when something threatens his ego he throws a tantrum. When Diomedes spears him in the Iliad, he goes running to his mommy like a scared child. He romances Aphrodite, but also abuses her such that she's constantly running between him and her actual husband Hephaestus. Far from representing an ideal man to the Ancient Greeks, he was something of a joke. A god to be feared for his power, but laughed at behind his back.  

Diana (Wonder Woman) represents what Ares is missing: the calming and rational feminine spirit. She represents how Europeans (but not Americans-subject for another post) largely became disillusioned with the idea of Colonialism, upon seeing the horrific violence that it took to maintain Colonial control. But of course, Ares is immortal: he is an ideology, this egotistical ideology of Colonial Empire. He was only defeated, not killed. He returns again and again. Diana however, is also in the world still. Again, she represents an ideology: of protecting the weak and teaching the ignorant. 

She is not fighting for the Allies because she sees nothing wrong with what they are doing, but because she sees that they have the potential to be something better with her guidance. They have the capacity and willingness to learn.  She is still working with men, teaching them how to embrace the feminine both within themselves and outside themselves. Rather than sequestering herself away and letting the world burn like the rest of her tribe, Diana is here with us. She is fighting against DAESH in Syria, and working with survivors of sexual assualt. She is speaking against sexual predators, and for women's rights. She was there when the Southern Baptist Conference, formally split from the Republican Party and acknowledged it's unfair treatment of women.  

Wonder Woman fights for the world, because she has found a man worth fighting for. An inversion of the trope that we typically see in literature where the male warrior (the most recent example being Harry Potter) fights for the female love interest.  Not that there is anything wrong with this, it is very realistic after all. Nothing motivates a person to fight more than the thought of their loved ones being in danger, that is how we are hardwired as human beings. It is simply that we do not often acknowledge that women also fight for their loved ones: indeed, that is typically the only time a woman will fight unless she is in a political position where it is required. This is because women prefer to avoid situations where their physical bodies might be damaged, at least if they ever plan on having children. Wonder Woman has sometimes been slammed as sexist because of this (and, to be fair, her costume), but this is actually the opposite of sexist. It is an acknowledgement that women feel sexual desire, and behave similarly to men when they feel it. If that isn't feminism, I don't know what is.

Here there be no Monsters: The turn of the milennium, & the mothers of the MOBA.

It is the spring of 2003, and the nascent internet is buzzing with news of an expansion to the already famous Warcraft III, from Blizzard Entertainment. The Warcraft games are real-time strategy games with a high fantasy setting. The gameplay is similar to Go, where the aim is to out-think your enemy and control areas of the map. You are given different sets of abilities to work with in order to accomplish this task. The Warcraft games were particularly famous for their ability to use these mechanics to tell a story, grabbing the attention of RPG fans as well as strategy game fans, and Warcraft III was widely considered their best entry in the franchise yet. But the poster for this expansion to Warcraft III was not simply being talked about on Blizzard's official forums, or on the websites dedicated to gaming.

No, it was being talked about in AoL chatrooms, MySpace, Neopets and Club Penguin: the parts of the internet inhabited in the early naughts by teen and preteen girls. It wasn't the Warcraft name or the Blizzard logo which had grabbed the attention of these girls: it was the face in the center of the poster. The smouldering green eyes set against tanned skin and framed by long blond locks, the smirking mouth framed by a hint of stubble. For many girl gamers seeing Arthas Menethil for the first time, was like what male gamers experienced when they first saw Cortana (the AI in the shape of a beautiful woman from Halo).  It was a revelation.

Games could offer more than simply a way to waste a few hours, a video game character was someone you could fall in love with the same way that you fell in love with movie characters.  It started of course with girls who were sisters, cousins and next-door-neighbors of avid gamers. Nobody reposts faster than a teenage girl, and before long Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne had reached a far wider audience than any game of it's kind before. It was the kind of audience that video game companies could only dream of: the kind of audience that only card games had ever reached before. But this was not a card game, it was not a game which appealed to children but which adults would leave behind.  It was a game for adults, and it was challenging. But the girls who bought it were motivated to overcome the challenges, or find the cheats, because of the other things the game offered.

Prince Arthas Menethil is not a character you would expect a game, let alone a strategy game, to do justice to. The game struck the tricky balance between fairy tale and reality, between the fantasy hero and modern-day military commander. Of course, fans of the other Warcraft games were unsurprised about this: Blizzard was always able to strike this balance well. But the girls who picked up the game had no knowledge of those other games, and they were shocked. The trick was the relationship between Arthas and his girlfriend Jaina. Their dialog was witty, flirty, and realistic: in that it used language which real people would actually use. They might be a Prince and Princess in a fantastic world trying to solve a zombie plague, but they talked like your mom and dad. MySpace exploded with fanart, much of which can still be found on tumblr and Deviantart.

Jaina was not simply a Princess to be rescued, in fact she was more likely to do the rescuing. She was more than capable of handling herself even in the chaotic situations that inexperienced players frequently got themselves into. She had a distinctive character that was related to, but did not depend on Arthas. Her identity as a mage set her apart from him, and she drove the story independently of him. She was also actually useful in gameplay, unlike so many female video-game sidekicks (this was mere months after Goldeneye's infamously useless Natalya).  Her mage abilities synchronized well with Arthas' paladin spells, so that the two fought together in a natural way when they had to face the enemy themselves. The game set them up as a perfect pair, a King and Queen in all but name.

Does one need spoiler warnings for games that are over a decade old? well, spoilers ahead. This being a Blizzard game of course, the perfection cannot last. At the climax of the story, Jaina must choose to follow her lover in killing innocent people or abandon him and face a hopeless future alone. She chooses the latter.  Acting on the words of the mysterious Prophet, Jaina gathers up the survivors of the zombie plague and sails into the unknown. Jaina could have considered the plight of Lordaeron to be no longer be her problem, after Arthas' betrayal. Instead, she takes up the responsibilities of Queen, without any of the perks. Here was a woman that a girl could look up to, a woman she could wish to become. In 2003, that was virtually unknown in the gaming world. There were women in games, but none of them were role models. But this game was far from done amazing it's new audience.

The campaign continues and Arthas continues to become evil after taking possession of a cursed sword. Playing the game is a devastating experience, because you aren't simply watching Arthas destroy everything he loves. No, you are Arthas as he destroys everything he loves. It is a great example of a story that could really only be told in a game, because it's emotional weight comes from the player feeling the same way about Lordaeron that Arthas does. The transition from hero to villain is not sudden, it is gradual and insidious: you can't pinpoint the moment that it happens. Even to this day fans of the series still debate whether Arthas was right to kill the citizens of Strathholme, or not. Although they were innocent, they were cursed to a fate worse than death: undeath. The undead in this world, you see, are also enslaved to the will of the Lich King. Was Arthas showing compassion, or was he murdering them?  Was he using his power to save them, or was it an abuse of his position as Prince? it is genuinely difficult to say.

But there is no difference in how the fans feel about this moment: it is horrifying. And you, you the player, are doing it. You are cutting down innocent confused people, and every time you do it it hurts: no matter how many times you play the game. People like to say that dictators who turn on their own people are monsters: but that is to say that they are not people, not humans. It is a pitiful attempt at equating humanity to goodness. Warcraft III, unusually for a game at this time, confronts the player with the darkness in their own soul. It confronts you with the fact that if you were faced with the same choice as Arthas, you would have done as he did. Even if you believe Arthas is saving the people, you know he is damning himself. In most stories, this is where Arthas would die: either a noble hero sacrificing himself for the good of his people, or a tragic hero overcome by his attachment to his country.

Remember, this is 2003: two years into the Iraq war.  The country was gripped with a fever of blind patriotism. Prince Arthas' zeal was something everyone could identify with, even those who opposed the war were worried about the country's safety. And like Prince Arthas, we were all willing to sacrifice some people for the good of the many. But because we carried out this action in a fictional world, we could be a step removed from it: and understand just how horrifying it really is.
To make matters worse, the story doesn't end with Strathholme. No, Arthas goes on to betray his friend and pick up a cursed sword of evil. Frostmourne is still an icon in gaming, not simply because of it's excellent visual design but because of this story. Frostmourne is a weapon of death, and it turns whomever wields it into a grim reaper.

We've seen the grim reaper before in games of course, but never one quite so terrifying or so human. Slowly, the golden locks turn white and the once glowing skin pallid. The green eyes no longer smoulder with life, and the attractive smirk becomes a grimace. Arthas transforms before our eyes into a mockery of himself, as he destroys the Kingdom he once protected. They can't show the downfall of Lordaeron in the game, not truly: instead they show it in the person of Arthas. His former friend and mentor Uther might call Arthas a monster, but the player knows the devastating truth is that Arthas is still very much a human. There is no escape from that truth for us.  It is not simply a Lovecraftian "the monster is us" message. The message is: there are no monsters.

There are simply people who have different agendas, and people can easily jump between them. The undead Scourge is without a doubt evil, but it is not as monstrous as it first appears. That reaction is a product of our inherent bias, and it's wrong. With Arthas leading it, the Scourge becomes as human as the defenders of Lordaeron. It's evil cannot be dismissed or downplayed, it must be dealt with directly.

Enter, the Banshee Queen. After destroying Lordaeron, Arthas turns on Quel'thalas, the elven kingdom. Like you would expect from an elven kingdom, it is hidden and it protects a fountain of magical power: which Arthas needs in order to resurrect the necromancer Kel'thuzad, and summon the demon Archimonde into the world. During the invasion of Quel'thalas, Arthas captures Ranger General Sylvanas Windrunner who is in charge of the defense. She begs for a quick death, but he instead tortures her and then rips out her soul turning her into a banshee. In addition to being extremely painful, this also gives her additional powers. However, other forces are at work in the world and the Lich King's ability to enslave the undead weakens. Sylvanas and some other of the stronger undead are able to free themselves from the Lich King's control. She realizes this, and gathers them up into a fighting force: which she takes to the ruins of Lordaeron.

Now, Sylvanas is a rape victim. The rape is metaphorical rather than literal, this is a game directed at teenagers after all, but there is no question that's what it is. She behaves and talks like a rape victim. She is someone that a woman can look up to, because she is an example of how to deal with trauma in a healthy way: gather up other people who have experienced the same trauma, and forge a new path together. Sylvanas and the Forsaken, as they call themselves, cannot ever escape their trauma. They are literally walking corpses.

What they can do, is transcend it: that is, they do not have to let it define them. Indeed, they need to. They need to, because the humans who are still around do define them by their physicality (most of them, anyhow).  They cannot allow these people to define their nascent society, otherwise it will never work. But it is the older and wiser elves who recognize them for what they represent: the best chance for the Scourge to be beaten. They are, after all, former members of the Scourge: they know how the enemy operates and have information about it's weaknesses. The practical elves decide to ally with the Forsaken: giving their new nation the legitimacy it needs. As I mentioned, elves are long-lived: and thus, patient. Sylvanas is no exception. Although she thirsts for revenge, she does not rush it. She works intelligently and methodically. First she turns the demons against one another, then she finds out the secret to the plague of undeath. This tells her what can harm the Scourge. Then she crafts her poisoned arrow. Then she shoots it at Arthas, and he is paralyzed. Only the arrival of the necromancer Kel'thuzad foils Sylvanas' plan.

Sylvanas isn't simply an anti-hero: that is, a hero who uses morally questionable methods and doesn't model virtue.  Sylvanas' existence questions one of the pillars of fantasy: the notion of the monster.  She is reviled for what she is: but at the same time she is loved for who she is. The players of Warcraft games have been divided over this character since her very first appearance. She is a smart and competent leader with an unerring eye for talent and the confidence to go against convention. Her decision to train and promote the human Nathanos Marris proved to be crucial for the Alliance's victory in the Second War.  At the same time, Sylvanas is not a kind or generous person and she has no real right to even exist. Her methods can be both morally questionable and truly horrifying. Especially because she is female, her lack of empathy can be shocking and repulsive. It is this last thing which is so revolutionary about Sylvanas for female gamers (or indeed women in general). Her presence gives us permission to not pretend that we care, when really we don't.

Women are particularly vulnerable to emotional manipulation in our culture because we are taught to pretend that we care.  Again it's this issue of pushing the burden to create and maintain relationships onto women. Obviously, emulating Sylvanas completely would be bad. But this too is unusual in fiction: a leader that people want to follow, who they would never want to be. While there is a vocal portion of the fanbase that hates this character, and not without good reason: there are also legions of loyal fans. Although she is definitely a sexually appealing character: sex appeal only serves to pique interest, it cannot sustain that interest. People love her because she is an effective and experienced leader, who values talent over anything else. People hate her because she does not validate them and she acts in a way that is contradictory to their morality.  She doesn't have honor and doesn't subscribe to an ideology. Some people find that monstrous, others find it inspiring.

This ambivalence is unusual in video games. Most of the time the vast majority of a game's fanbase feels one way or another about a character: they love the character, or hate them, think they are good or bad. Then again, most video games do not attempt to tackle questions like "what is humanity?" That is the question however that a character like Sylvanas presents us with, by her very existence. Is she human? at first blush one tends to think the answer is no. But then, if you play as a blood elf in World of Warcraft you can find a locket in a tower which you learn once belonged to Sylvanas. If you bring it to her, she sings a lament for her home and it's one of the most beautiful songs in a game that is well known for it's beautiful music. She might tell everyone else she feels nothing, she might even believe that herself: but you know better. She has a heart, and she does feel. That's why she bothered to free others from the control of the Scourge.  That's why she raises new Forsaken, despite the pain of that existence. She has, in truth, found joy in even these circumstances. Being strong enough and wise enough to find the good in life despite it's horrors is something we can all admire and emulate.

Warcraft as a mythos has plenty of standout characters, male and female, which I could spend a lot of time talking about. Most intriguing however, is that these characters did not simply become foundational to the MMORPG World of Warcraft. No, these characters inspired the creation of an entirely new gaming phenomenon: the MOBA. It's a simple enough type of game: defend your base and take down the enemy's. You have regular units, called creeps for the way that they move slowly forward until annihilated, and hero units which are controlled by players and have special abilities. This is based off of the general structure of Warcraft III, because Defense of the Ancients (or DoTA as it has become known), was originally a custom map for Warcraft III. This is extremely important in the history of gaming because for the first time we have a game genre which was built around having strong and capable female characters. The archetypes represented by Jaina, Sylvanas, and other female characters in the game shaped the entire genre from it's inception.

This is a game genre that could very easily have never featured female characters, look at the (probably) all-male cast of Team Fortress 2. Games are, by necessity, bound to traditions. Gaming is an industry, not yet a true art form: and therefore it is all about what will sell. Most companies prefer to play it safe, and stick with what they know will work. That is why most games have generic white male protagonists and tell the same sexist, racist, homophobic stories over and over again. So, establishing good traditions at the foundations of genres is key.

But more than simply having strong female protagonists, the MOBA genre is also defined by Warcraft III's central message: there are no monsters. This is inherently an anti-prejudicial message: without the need to resort to display of visual diversity that could very easily end up being seen as condescending, rather than affirming. If there are no monsters, no bogeymen, then there are only stark economic and social realities. There is only the reality of economic exploitation and the loss of supremacy. There is only the reality of tyranny oversees and at home, and the slow creation of the inevitable enemy of that tyranny: the terrorist. There is only the reality of eager technocrats rushing to play God. This way of understanding the world can be seen in games like League of Legends through the lore and character concepts. Better than any survey of political beliefs, these games prove what the majority of people believe: the truth is something to be confronted, not avoided. There are no monsters, only people who act on their own agendas.