this illustrates the stereotypes people already have catalogued in their heads, not any malice on the writers part. you can squeeze racist symbolism out of innocently intended media, especially nowadays as its been forced into the forefront of our collective minds. folks are on the lookout for any type of offense, and they tend to find what they seek.
I’m seeing that Sean also confused the Dark Portal and the Well of Eternity during the War of the Ancients. Basic foundational lore. This is someone whose entire job is to know these things…
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I struggle to think of a job where you know so little about what it entails but you are still employable and thriving in the position.
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I still think literacy should be rare among most races. “White coded” races like humans included.
I don’t see why Lor’themar should be the one to teach Zekhan to read and write though. I think it would’ve been a better lore tidbit if it was an elder troll who did that and it is remarked that it is not uncommon for most people to learn how to read and write later on in life. I think a lot of people really take for granted publicly funded schools that we don’t seem to see at all in Azeroth.
I can only see a few exceptions to this. Those being blood elves/void elves/nightborne, draenei, gnomes, and possibly most goblins.
I think in all other cases reading/writing would be reserved for certain social classes. And even if a common person does know how to read and write, they’d only know how to read and write relevant information to them.
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The most unrealistic part of it is Lorthemar has enough time to tutor Zekhan.
Running a country is not time consuming enough?
I am guessing they did it to show some friendship and interaction between existing characters rather than introducing new ones.
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But, Etrigg is right there!
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Maybe they wanted at least one reference about the blood elves in an arguably Horde focused book.
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Eitrigg is a soldier. Lorthemar is a politician. I think out of both of them Lorthermar would make the most sense to be a teacher. if we look at all this in a vacuum.
It would have so simply, easier, and made more sense to of had Master Gadrin teach Zekhan. Less drama and it allows us to see an example of how the Darkspear elders help their younger members.
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Ok, let me try and help some of y’all see why people are seeing the Zekhan-Lor’themar literacy argument as a bit racist.
Troll culture, troll dialects, troll beliefs are not loosely inspired by Carribean and indiginous American culture; they’re in many places ripped directly from a white male interpretation of it. Voodoo. Loa. The accent. Even the architecture. Cannibalism. Blood sacrifices. All of this is directly taken from those cultures.
So you have Zekhan, a troll with all that coding baggage around him. And he’s depicted as: Naive. Foolish. Simple. Illiterate. All negative stereotypes also attributed to Carribean/indiginous American people in earlier years. And you decide he has to learn to write from someone.
And that someone happens to be Lor’themar. A very white, very male character.
One might call him Zekhan’s very own White Savior. The one guy who looks kindly upon this simple, naive, uneducated bla-TROLL and teaches him the most civilized of skills; proper reading and writing.
All of this, literally all of it, reads just like very racist depictions of race relations in the past. To you it might seem like a big nothing. To some people who might have been born into a non-white family, to have grown up with media of “nice racism” where the good white character tried to lift up the non-white character to their own level, this is a bit of a red flag.
Take from this what you will.
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I get it. I just don’t agree with it at all. I can see how some people might see it that way. But I don’t think that’s intentional, and I think the circumstances are different.
For one, the Blood elves and Trolls are allies. The blood elves are not a colonizing power. Two, the trolls have equal political power in the Horde to the elves.
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If he needs a teacher in general just use Master Gadrin.
However, I am told it is because Zekhan needed to use the Sin’dorei libraries for research and that material is all obviously in Thalassian. Why the Zandalari would not have comparable libraries which he could read far easier I am not sure…
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Strangely, i agree.
It’s a fictionnal world, no more no less and if it lasted 17 years, it means that people liked it as it was.
That’s something these people don’t get too:
The Horde is like a big family of races banding together and with the council more than ever: Each race is equal, simple like that.
So…if it was a Tauren teaching something to a goblin, a Nightborn to a Vulpera and so on, is it racist too?
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I think Lor’themar was used because Blizzard knows his popularity and thought that using him in a situation to show how nice he is would keep his popularity going. He’s still liked by the playerbase but there use of him in this instance backfired.
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I imagine they just wanted to relate a cute, inconsequential bonding moment between two culturally disparate characters and didn’t think the ninnies on this forum would cry bloody murder.
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They literally built their empire on Amani land.
I agree. It’s honestly annoying how they can’t seem to be able to write Zekhan interacting with his own people for once. First he follows Saurfang around, then he is Thrall’s apprentice and now Lor’themar’s student. Because obviously Darkspear have no shaman or teachers of their own…
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And trolls built their empire on Aqir land.
We’re not talking about the Amani, we’re talking about the Darkspear. The blood elves are not a colonizing power to the Darkspear.
She also tried to deflect accusations of racism and lack of diversity behind the book/game by claiming distant Lenape heritage, from what I’ve read in this thread.
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True. But their history remains the same. I’m not against troll/elf friendships per se, but an elf teaching a troll how to read isn’t cute, it’s insulting.
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The Aqir were trying to wipe out the entire planet’s populace.
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