Eh, I don’t really think Christie Golden’s white boomer feminism is what should define character expression. She did lowkey write Thrall and Aggra’s relationship as a black relationship sterotype, and Aggra as a stereotype ‘strong woman.’
While on paper that is a very good reason to not make Anduin gay, I do think they are using him as a poster boy against toxic masculinity. He’s not inherently anti-masculine or effeminate (not really) so he could just be a masc gay man, or like Aki says, Bi. Which would be alright. Everyone’s a little bi nowadays.
Anduin being cute is one of the main reasons it’s hard to hate him. He’s not a bad character, just the story and devs use him poorly in situations he should be in over his head
Well, he did just spend the majority of the last expansion literally being the Jailer’s personal muppet. Now he’s too mentally broken to go back to being king.
I really would love if they had him legitimately bounce more off of the other more cynical characters; the same way they do Captain America and Spiderman in the MCU. Or John Snow in Game of Thrones. While respected and capable, they aren’t actually in charge of anything, and the friends/organizations they’re with can be pretty shady, so they actually have some interesting interactions with their allies.
But by putting Anduin in the ultimate position (High King) in what’s arguably the most widely influential world faction (Stormwind Humans), he can basically call the shots. And everyone else pretty much always listens to him. Like imagine if Captain America was a literal king. And whenever he told the other Avengers and other organizations to do something, they largely did it. And under his reign, things are peaceful and calm.
Of course it’s boring.
I think a similar thing happened to John Snow. His journey was fun up until it seemed liked he was a dead-obvious candidate for the goody-goody pure hearted down-to-earth chosen one hero everyone loved and rightful heir to the throne who would obviously be the best king ever. They had to artificially create conflicts by having him constantly insist that’s not what he wanted and turning others into dumb villains to subvert him.
Which is why I think removing Anduin from the high king position was a good idea. When he comes back now, assuming they don’t do a thing where everyone hails his return as the one true king, then he can be a bit of an outsider to the Stormwind/Alliance political system. Give him a struggle and some allies that he’ll actually have to compromise with. Let’s see what he does when the right thing needs to be done, but he’s not the one calling the shots.
I mean more how the devs are still using him as WoWs good moral compass. Even all he’s been through, he likely won’t suffer any long term affects and his personality probably won’t change all that much.
But the Maw thing was…interesting. Nice to see him doubting himself and his ability to lead and wondering how much of the choices he made, were really his.
That’s honestly a good thing. I like Anduin. Admittedly I like him because he’s an Alliance character that’s always and continues to give the Horde a fair chance, but still.
Internal instability is a thing that only happens to the Horde; any Alliance characters who don’t express eternal undying wuv for their leaders are merely exposing the fact that they’re about to be revealed as traitors to be killed on the spot as part of a quest.
Soo sad, yet soo true too. The devs seem dead set on never ever giving the alliance any sort of moral greyness. They have to remain soo morally pure that it’s killing the games fantasy
(At least none that they can’t immediately hand wave away as being the hordes fault in the end that is)
The thing about “moral greyness” is that the writing team seems to be dead set on the idea that a strong reaction means they’re doing something right. Writing complexity is tough, so once they get that strong emotional response? They don’t go further.
You look at any Alliance character that has been more warmongering, or ruthless, or pragmatic, and it nets as strong a negative reaction as anything the Horde does, or nearly so. That’s all they want, so why would they put in the added effort to create more complex situations when it comes to morality on the Alliance? They can have Tyrande say something mean and it’ll be talked about as this terrible thing for months and months later.
This moral greyness was, ironically, way more present on Alliance before Cataclysm, but it was more subtext in a lot of cases, like Magni skimming from gemstone shipments meant for the war effort to line his own coffers.
Yeah, a lot of people forget that in Wrath of the Lich King, it was Varian who declared war on the Horde following the events at Wrathgate. Fast forward to Cataclysm, and the faction conflict is suddenly presented a result of Garrosh being the aggressor and escalating conflict on various fronts.
And the Blizzard has continued to use this kind of bait and switch.
BFA trailer shows us Alliance attacking Lordaeron; Sylvanas fighting on the front lines with inspirational cries of “For the Horde!” We’re left thinking it’s a continuation of Genn’s campaign, given what happened at the Broken Shore/Stormheim.
Nope!
BfA is really about Sylvanas creating superweapons, invading Northshore, burning down Teldrassil and wanting to kill us all. During the Siege of Lordaeron, instead of fighting on the front lines, she’s overseeing the blighting her own troops before raising them as undead and planning the destruction of her own city. And instead of her fist pump line from the trailer, we get “The Horde is Nothing!”
I feel like the faction conflict in Wrath - Cata - MoP might’ve been inspired by WW1 and the politics behind it. Going to do a summary here. Following the assassination, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia as they felt Serbian intelligence aided the Black Hand. This caused Russia to declare war on Austria-Hungary, as Russia saw itself as the mother of the balkans. Germany declared war on Russia to defend their ally. France declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary as they were allies with Russia. Yet no-one made an aggressive move until Germany invaded Belgium. As they wanted to defeat France asap before Russia could mobilize. Therefore preventing a war on two fronts. Germany was then declared as the sole aggressor and the cause of the war following their surrender in 1918. Even though they were not the first one to declare war (Austria-Hungary were). Nor were they the ones behind the inciting incident (that would be the Black Hand). The sad truth is, WW1 was going to happen at some point. New advancements in war technology, the balance of power was destroyed with the unification of Italy and Germany (among other things) and some countries (mainly France) wanting revenge for past defeats.
The first action we learn about following the Battle of the Undercity involving the playable factions is the incident at the Broken Front. Where the Horde attacked the Alliance from behind. Although Blizzard might’ve forgot about that detail. Much like WW1, a war against the Alliance and Horde probably would’ve happened regardless. Garrosh wanted a conflict with the Alliance. In his conversations with Saurfang in Warsong Hold, Garrosh proposes the idea of attacking Valiance Keep to obtain a beach head. After their landing site was taken over by Kvaldir. Garrosh antagonized Varian in both the Ulduar cinematic and the Argent Tournaments (to which Varian reflected in kind). Making him Warchief would allow him to obtain the war he wanted. Even more so after he pushed away his advisors in favor of yes men. Regardless if Varian declared war first or not. Hell, The Wrathgate could be viewed as the assassination of the Arch Duke. We know that it was the Legion who unleashed the new plague onto the Alliance and Horde. But after Varian saw the Undercity with his own eyes, how could he believe that the Horde did not have a part to play in the incident. After all, the horde knew about the new plague the Forsaken were creating and did nothing to stop it.
I feel that a WWI-style scenario is more in line with what Vanilla WoW had. There were already lots of tension points and we had leaders that really didn’t want all out war. And like you said, the ignition point was the Wrathgate incident, a situation where the details and who is culplable for what are murky.
What I'm saying is that Blizzard threw out much of that out in Cataclysm. In Cataclysm, Blizzard decided the reason for war was no longer the Wrathgate setting off a powder keg, but overt Horde aggression in the form of Garrosh and Sylvanas making landgrabs in the wake of the Cataclysm. And the Alliance was just doing whatever it could to survive.
Back to WWI example…
Austria-Hungary (of the Central Powers) declared war on Serbia. Serbia had a nominal ally in Russia (of Entente Powers). This resulted in the other members of the Central and Entent powers prepping for conflict before Germany (of the Central Powers) invaded France (of the Entente Powers).
If WoW were using this model, then we would have seen Stormwind (Alliance) declare war on Undercity (Horde), only for the rest of the Horde/Alliance fall in behind their respective allies. And the first move would have been a different Alliance member vs a different Horde member. Like Night Elves attacking Orgrimmar or something.
Instead, after declaring war, Stormwind and the rest of the Alliance did absolutely nothing. Up Until Blizzard decided a better reason for war would be to introduce evil Warchiefs that want to take over the world/destroy Stormwind.
If WWI were like what happened in WoW: Austria-Hungary would blame Serbia for the assassination, declaring war on the Entente powers, and then not actually do anything. Instead, France and Russia and other Entente powers would decide to start invading German territories for unrelated reasons. Like wanting to be the only world power left or something.
And then in Legion, we had something similar, where Genn was out here declaring his own war on the Horde. And again, the opportunity for a war born of misunderstandings and treaty entanglements and actual politics and a chance for the Alliance to be on the offfensive. And again, they ditched all that and decided the war was really going to be because Sylvanas wanted to kill everyone on Azeroth.
The Council of Nobles is a mix of evil and grey. They stiffed the Craftmasons after all, sure Onyxia had something to do with it, but it was their choice after all.
Uther’s banishment of Tirion from the Paladin Order, for what? treating Etrigg with honor. Uther’s handling of Artrhas alive and dead, are major strikes against him.
Just about everything about the history of Alteraac.
Tyrande’s murder of Maiev’s wardens because she couldn’t think of another way to handle them.
Her neglect of the Wardens allowed Maiev to turn them into a cult of personality.
Camp Tauraje.
My own guild attacking a Tauren village to get at the Blood Elf they harbored. (yeah it’s not story canon, but it’s MY PVP canon.)
Most of those didn’t happen to the current Alliance that’s existed since Vanilla though.
It just occurred to me that making Anduin gay is superfluous: the story itself metaphorically forces NPCs to hurl them to their knees in front of him, desperate to please him.
