Westfall is such a waste because it’s such a cool intersection of various fantasy threats in a setting that’s pretty unique. It’s a fairly grounded fantasy setting in a great plains environment, with the potential for demons, undead, evil wizards, pirates… in addition to murlocs, gnolls, kobolds, and so on. There’s a slew of classic adventures to be had there, but the narrative was what we got instead, and it sits forgotten.
On topic, the book is such an odd beast for me. The choice of Zekhan as the narrator, while Exploring EK got Shaw, feels almost like a way to blunt the negative aspects they refuse to change under the guise of ‘innocent unreliable narrator’. It both takes shots at Night Elves and the Horde itself in ways that are baffling, but I have to believe the author was heavily guided in laying things out.
It frames the Night Elves wanting vengeance still as bad, and the line about Elune is insanely misplaced. It reads as “Wow Elune seems like a real mean lady for letting my faction kill her people like that.” which is extremely frustrating because the Light doesn’t receive nearly as much scrutiny, and because we all know the Burning and the War of Thorns was a narrative contrivance.
Conversely, there’s the lore drop that the Horde has poisoned the Southfury River. So you have acknowledgement that the Night Elves are right to be angry, victim blaming them for continuing to want to fight because ‘more of them will die’ but at the same time confirming that them sitting there and doing nothing also will result in suffering because a member race of the Horde is literally poisoning the continent. Not even touching on the ridiculousness of the primary Shaman faction not being able to cleanse a river.
Contract with herbalism teacher in Dalaran in the Broken Isles - okay? He is delighted - or was it irony? - the fact that the hero wrote his name without mistakes.
Don’t assume Blizzard always thinks things through. During the BfA prepatch event, Delaryn Summermoon gave Alliance players a world quest after Teldrassil burned, even though she died.
I think this would be better, yeah. Some no-name troll shaman acolyte who didn’t really do very much in the story consequently speaking shouldn’t just be meeting regularly with a lord of another civilization. Why would Lor’themar take particular interest in him? Makes more sense for it to be an older troll.
Well he did just that. He is a hero of the Horde and was an ambassador for the Zandalari and now he is being asked to go into Alliance lands. Why wouldnt he have contact with high level members of the Horde?
Because Blizzard is trying to bank on a character the community loved since they failed to convince us of any of their own characters.
If they wanted Zekhan to struggle with reading and writing, the narrative should’ve been clear it was a class based struggle.
Maybe while Darkspear education is mandatory, he had to leave school often to help make ends meet.
Maybe Zekhan struggles with a learning disability, they could’ve used one of the Ye Olde names for dyslexia or ADHD.
Lorthemar doesn’t make any sense because it inherently super imposed a White Savior/Colonial trope due to the inherent racial codification.
A French/MENA elf teaching a Caribbean/Amerindigenous troll to read? A mess.
Not to mention Lorthemar was already characterized as Super Busy in the Thalyssra short story, more so now with two leaders kidnapped.
Instead it should’ve been one of Talanji’s ministers after she noticed he needed help. Building more on the crush he had on her and her demonstrating care and appreciation
Could’ve even been a thing where Talanji’s minister was outraged he had to teach a “lesser troll” and Talanji punished him. An allegory of intra-African Diaspora class based struggle that I deal with all the time in Black spaces.
Could’ve done a MILLION different things beyond invoking racist incoherent tropes.
But alas, ergo why racial diversity is important in a team
You can only write what you know exists and have either experienced, witnessed, or been told about.
I’ve joked about it, but the only way I’m dealing with some of the odder lore bits is just assuming Zekhan isn’t very observant, believes what people tell him, and… I dunno, maybe the orphan matron in Orgrimmar was too busy to teach kiddos and he’s even younger than I thought.
But yeah, this book seems to have a heavy burden of “yuck”, “that’s unfortunate”, “that needs explaining”, and “WAIT WE LITERALLY INTERACTED WITH SURVIVORS OF TAURAJO”. I just get the impression that it was kinda phoned in and not nearly enough thought was put into implications.
From an in-story perspective, the Horde Council made him the ambassador to the Zandalari because he helped save Talanji from an assination attempt in Orgrimmar. It was a tactic to help rebuild relations and keep the Zandalari with the Horde by sending someone Talanji would be more inclined to look favorably upon. After it was done Zekhan’s success made the council decide to run with it, which is most likely when and where Lor’themar stepped in to help educate him.
In reality it’s Blizzard trying to take advantage of the unexpected popularity by using him more.
Not to mention that Golden is responsible for Anduin’s character as we know him. Metzen said in an interview that back before Cata they didn’t have any plans for him beyond “father and son disagree”. Golden asked if she could use him as a major character in The Shattering, and they said yes. When you take into account the other novels she’s written starring him, you can see how she pretty much directed the role and characterization of a character who is now one of the most prominent and important in the entire franchise.
I have no idea anymore how the story is made. The big decisions are apparently made by the game devs, who hand it off to the story team to make sense out of. The lore historian supposedly has no control over mistakes in a book he writes, while at the same time outside authors (Golden hadn’t joined the story team yet back before Cata) can make MASSIVE decisions on major characters with barely any oversight.
It is also very out of character for him to even be doing that. Considering he was willing to be seen as a traitor alongside Saurfang and later Baine because of what Sylvanas did that day.
In another thread I did mention that it is possible for individuals to not being able to read and / or write for whatever reasons even in a very literate society. Always remember this number, 1300655506 whenever you are in Australia. Even if you don’t need it. However I will say that I doubt that is what Blizzard was actually going for. Which is honestly very troubling.
Wouldn’t be the first time though. One could say Flynn being used for the Eastern Kingdoms version of this book series is an example of this.
They have even rewrote the fate of certain characters because of the popularity they got. Either because of the player base or even blizzards own staff. For example, Bwonsamdi and Denathrius
I don’t know why but I always saw that as him trying to ease off Thalyssra because of fear. I mean the last women he had affections for tortured a naaru out of spite for the light.
She tried to “clarify the book” in the racist passages (undoubtedly Sean talking through her) after deleting the tweet everyone was replying to in the thread so now all the tweet threads are broken
I called her out on evasion
She did a 180 and went to claiming Sean didn’t write any of the racist passages and hasn’t even seen the book himself and was not given a final copy for approval
She stated that those passages and the Habitual Be failures (ie grammar edits) were done by someone else
That Sean doesn’t know who, and doesn’t know who approved the final copy
So there is (allegedly) now a Mysterious Grey Eminence Racist haunting the halls of the WoW Story Team
I 60% do not believe her but in my experience well-to-do liberals tell the truth when pressured by accusations of discrimination, so I’m at an impasse
So the narrative clarifications are lies, but the racist grey eminence is truth, maybe
