Honestly, I think this only blew up for a congruence of two things.
Poor Mrs. Copeland came to her husband’s defense with all the best excuses. It’s not racist because coded fantasy race. Also, he never saw the final draft. Maybe Secret Santa gave everyone a low key racism gift with the book! Also also, we didn’t even get a copy.
She tried her best, but she couldn’t commit to a single excuse and gave all of them, making the entire defense seem disingenuous. And the excuses, piled atop one another, gave it all a worse look.
Then, thing two. People started talking about the low key racism. Other people didn’t see the low key racism. Some saw it when it was written out. Some didn’t. Then a minority of a minority who didn’t see it decided to explain to those who did that they were, in fact, wrong. That racism can’t exist in a fantasy setting, because… Fantasy setting. That just because a race in a video game makes heavy use of very specific cultures, down to the dialect used, down to the tropes and stereotypes, it cannot be racist because… Fantasy game.
This went over as well as could be expected.
So a really convoluted story of why Sean must be innocent of writing a bad book, combined with racism isn’t a thing because fantasy. If you were to remove one, I don’t think either would have made many waves, and this’d just be another very bad book.
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Oh they SHOULD, but if they were they would of quickly done so. To a degree this isn’t up to the writing team, though. It is what the legal department says they can/should do. The present lawsuit is going to make this 100 times more delicate on their end. It is a super ugly optics at the best of times for them to have people accusing them of writing racist books.
I do not know how she could do that and not get him fired. I really don’t.
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Oh please.
As if some other massive faux pas from ABK won’t get released between now and then that makes this all tame.
You’ve heard about the breast milk story, right?
1 Like
That’s my point though. A whole month of new bad news AND Exploring Kalimdor officially releasing at the end of January reopening this wound.
Blizzard has no good option here except to own up to it and try to delay it (if that’s even still possible) or just apologize and learn from this.
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I just saw the GD thread about this article, and it’s full of bad takes, and I just can’t handle it.
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Well, if any good comes out of this week’s Blizzard controversy, it might compel the writers to re-evaluate the whole “PoC-coded races give in to their base, warmongering nature” plot they subject the Horde to every time a faction war rolls around.
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I generally avoid GD, because it is… yeah. It is what it is.
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Orcs are PoC coded?
Oh please…sigh
This is fantasy, sometimes races in fantasy are naturally warmongering or warmongering because of cultural reasons, etc.
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It’s okay if you don’t see it. But just pointing it out for you; you could just ask people to explain it to you, rather than assume that if you don’t see it, it must not be there.
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I could see some parallels drawn between orcs and groups of people seen as “violent barbarians” by others in history. People that came in many skin colors.
Orcs in fiction are like a metaphor for the darkside of mankind amplified, with no restraint. All our bad qualities, with no goodness.
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I’ve played this game for a decade and while the story has never been amazing, one thing I will say is that nobody has ever had a problem with the Horde. It’s never been a secret that Blizzard took inspiration from other cultures. But so what? People love the Horde. Most Blizzard devs play Horde. This is only being turned into a problem because it’s 2021 and everyone needs to find an issue with things. There are so many serious problems with WoW right now. But this isn’t one of them.
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It really is impossible to not take a single inspiration from any irl culture/country/nation when it comes to creating fantasy works.
All writers do it.
The Horde represents Mankinds barbaric side, a side with not much compassion, prone to anger, doesn’t care about the environment, tends to be an invader(not counting Tauren here).
While the Alliance represents Mankinds more noble side, one that strives to be good. Still flawed though.
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I’ve been playing this game since Vanilla. People were noting the issues with the depictions of Horde races, especially trolls and tauren, even back then.
You might not have been exposed to those opinions, or you might have overlooked them. But they were certainly there. This isn’t a brand new 2021 problem. It’s just that over the last few years, people have been talking about it more openly and getting shouted down by gamer bros less.
Also, congratulations on your first post! Welcome to the forums that you undoubtedly have never posted before on a more prominent character!
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The argument would be a character designed from European influences is teaching a character designed from BIPOC influences how to read a language the BIPOC-influenced character should actually know more about.
Zekhan is a troll. He was raised in close proximity to Orcs. Lor’themar is a Blood Elf. Contact with Orcs is a blip on his lifespan. And he lives on another continent.
Why does Lor’themar know more Orcish than Zekhan? Why would Zekhan be learning his Orcish from any Blood Elf? Why not an Orc, Troll, or someone else who actually lives in Orgrimmar?
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Tell that to most major TTRPG game producers. WotC is on record admitting orcs as mindless violent monsters is harmful stereotyping and have said they will be writing them way differently going forward. It is sort of inevitable the same standards would get applied towards MMORPGs as well.
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Lore fans have been very vocal about Blizzard’s propensity to dumb the orcs down to orks since Cata, and especially MoP and WoD. The idea that this race, without a human-raised savior to rein in its worst nature, would start wars and go marauding at the drop of a hat continues to be massively derided. Back then people chalked their relentless rehashing of monster tropes and old storylines down to creative bankruptcy; now they have a more critical eye for the process behind that thinking.
Remember in WC3, when Daelin Proudmoore made the case that orcs were an irredeemable blight on Azeroth, incapable of change? He was never meant to be right. The ineptitude that brought the story to that low point deserves to be talked about.
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Orcs are African-American coded, from the very beginning. Everyone in vanilla understood this.
Trolls are Afro-Caribbean coded.
Tauren are native-American coded.
Goblins are…I don’t even know where to begin with them.
Don’t react defensively to this revelation. Take this information and contrast it with what you now know about the old-guard at Blizzard and you have a new understanding of something that yes…many other people got there before you…but you are now aware of.
Don’t react defensively and dismiss it, that isn’t helping to improve the situation.
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The thing is short of literally rewriting WoW lore many of the issue with this book/WoW lore is a major part of it.
Some could have been avoided(Zekhan could have learned from someone besides Lothermar) others less so(troll accents for one). Maybe they shouldnt have highlighted the goblins poisoning the river but that is kinda a thing they do.(did you see Krasarang). Unless they get a ferenge style makeover where they become more progressive(never watched deep space nine but based on the clips I saw the ferengi did become alot more progressive in the end) this totally fits their character. Same with not trusting them(or at least not all of them) with trade.
And then there is the whole if Blizzard does change it, this is bound to create even more controversy(if removing female paintings cause a panic, what more if troll accents or something similar was suddenly changed?)
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Tentatively it seems to have been pulled entirely from anywhere that was selling it.
I am hearing they may (?) have pulled it for revisions, now.