On some level I can’t blame Malfurion for the flip flopping, just as I cannot blame Jaina for her flip flopping.
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I blame him for telling everyone to chill and not be rash, and then getting Ysera killed by breaking his own golden rule the second it was inconvenient for him to follow it himself.
Self righteous people are the worst. Self righteous hypocrites are worst than the worst.
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Legion really cemented the negative things about Tyrande and Malf, and unfortunately BfA’s narrative, poor as it has been, can’t really recover all that lost ground. Both of them finally embracing the need for bloody, aggressive vengeance against the Forsaken is a huge, wonderful step in the right direction. Dealing with all the other times this duo has stepped in massive-character-flaw poo, however, isn’t scraping clean anytime soon.
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Where has Jaina flip-flopped, though? She’s been consistent since pretty much day one.
Through the course of MoP, she went from being Horde sympathetic (pre ToW) to drown the Horde (ToW) to wanting to work with the Horde in Dalaran (Pre Purge) to D I S M A N T L E (SoO cinematic).
The development of this was, lacking. Choppy. Not really kind to her characterization. And I think it would be unfair to look at all that and go ‘Well, she’s clearly just unstable, or hypocritical, or emotional, or something’. Because ultimately the characters in WoW exist primarly to facilite the Rule of Cool storytelling, and consistent, coherent narrative and characterization be damned.
This is true of Malfurion too. Ultimately, when you have a character whose bailiwick is something that needs to be accessible to both factions, said character needs to ignore the misdeeds of those factions. When said character is more tightly woven into one faction for one reason or another, this causes issues.
These issues are ultimately solely CDev’s problem. They wrote this mess. They need to own it.
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Malfurion just needs to sound less like a weird old hippy grandpa.
THE CYCLE BEGINS ANEW! BALANCE IS RESTORED!
SPREAD YOUR LEAVES AND FLOURISH ONCE MORE!
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I- …
I’m going to take a step-by-step approach to why her development makes sense.
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Jaina was very pro-peace, yes… until the Horde (the Horde, not one or two Horde, The Horde) didn’t merely turn her city-state into slag but did so in all realities. Then they chased down and massacred the fleeing civilians who had managed to escape the blast. This from the Horde she had supported for years. From the tauren who she had JUST finished helping save their own home. It always surprises me that so many people can’t understand why this would drive her into a killing rage. Like, even immediately after that situation I saw people say “lol psycho [Removed by Forum Moderator for language.]” as if holding the crumbling corpse of a friend would somehow not be emotionally damaging.
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Despite having just recently suffered this extreme personal loss at their hands, Jaina was still willing to cautiously allow the Horde, as represented by the Sunreavers, to be in Dalaran. And then they betrayed her trust again in using Dalaran’s properties to attack Teldrassil. Trust violated once more, she washes her hands of them.
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At a critical moment where many, many problems could be averted, she tells Varian to dismantle the Horde. Not enslave the Horde, not kill all the Horde, but -dismantle- them as a political body. Break their immediate ability to unify and continue waging war on the scale they had just dealt with. Momentarily end the conflict and lay the groundwork for sustained peace. I will grant that Blizzard very bizarrely gave her the Grima Wyrmtongue treatment in that scene, which was baffling–her plea was not remotely unreasonable.
So, her development was not lacking nor was it choppy, save for one awkwardly voiced scene. It’s clear and coherent at each point, and coherency is something much of the game’s arc sorely lacks. I find that people who do look at her and just screech “STUPID CRAZY MONSTER WHO JUST WANTS TO MURDER HORDE” either aren’t really paying attention to her arc or are potentially betraying a misogynist streak. Not YOU of course. But I so seldom see rational objections to her as a character that it’s hard to not assume as much in other cases.
It’s just bananas to me. Jaina has been saying for years now that the Horde can’t be trusted and she’s consistently proven right but so many players hate her with a passion that surprises me. Probably because she’s against the Horde. It’s… almost like, there, we catch a glimpse of that ever-present Horde-biased culture.
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I really never understand the hate for Malfurion, he’s awesome.
I know that for me, it’s because he’s come across as an arrogant, callous brute for so long. He staunchly upheld his “both sides must get along and anyone saying otherwise is a monster” principle even when Horde were actively bombing his people’s settlements and killing their children.
One of the most egregious examples of this was the Leyara questline in the Firelands patch. After being dispatched by Malfurion to kill her (aided by him, too), the player discovers that she was a victim of a Horde attack in which she lost her young daughter. IIRC this also happened to be Staghelm’s granddaughter. They became Druids of Flame because Malfurion abandoned them and this was never addressed by Malfurion beyond “gosh look at these horrible backwards jerks, let’s kill them!”
In theory he could have been a neat character but he’s written so obnoxiously I just can’t stomach him.
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Also on the topic of Malfurion, he’s a priest caught in a brothel to me. It’s been stated already but he hands down all these judgments and rules and morals, and follows none of them, or continues to enforce them even when people are in mortal danger because of them.
Worgen form was okay for me to use because I really needed to. There’s no excuse for you guys though. You’re disgusting.
Acting on impulse and endangering others through your own hatred is wrong. You Alliance and Horde plebs are gross. Xavius appears I WILL KILL HIM EVEN IF I HAVE TO SACRAFICE NINE YSERAS
I don’t care that you lost your children and literally everything else, the Legion is gone and will never come back, so you need to just be cool and let it go. Be prepared? For what? I personally handled them, and I’m awesome. It’s fine, relax.
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That’s a simplification of the thought process behind it, but I do think you’re right.
@ me, people who like using the word snowflake. My body is ready.
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All of this. She was a peacemaker pretty much the entirety of her existence, right up until the issue was forced. She tried pulling back from it, taking a breath, even though it was hard and the proverbial bear was prodded again. You can only piss people off so many times before they’re no longer willing to forgive you - they almost did once, she was trying to look past it, then they did it again.
Then, when she probably needed them the most? Literally none of her allies were with her on the issue until very recently, except perhaps Rogers. She’s just becoming part of the Alliance again.
Try to look at these things from the perspective of an in-universe person. Sometimes, that makes it easier to stomach and handle. It doesn’t for every issue, or even half of the issues with this expansion, but in this case a little bit of empathy and trying to reason things through without logic can help.
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“Don’t mind her, she’s dealing with a visit from the Nathrezim” definitely sounds like a colloquialism.
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A visit from Flonazaar.
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The sad thing is, this is absolutely the sort of joke we could realistically expect to see in game, courtesy of the brilliant minds that brought us such classics as “Ugh, the lok’tar must have been cookin up a turd…”
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TBH I think this is just most characters now of days. I try not to think about it too hard or else I will probably end up not liking every character ever made.
Except Aunduian…I will always love him as my favorite.
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You just don’t get it. It’s funny because of poop ![:poop:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/poop.png?v=6" ":poop:")
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Malfurion isn’t written as inconsistently as he is just… self righteous though. He doesn’t exist in the story unless he’s messing something up, or telling someone why they’re morally inferior.
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What I find hugely annoying about the flaws we see in these characters is if they were actually acknowledged in the arc and at some point confronted? I’d be fine with that. It would be a layer of emotional growth we don’t usually see in this stuff.
Yeah, don’t let me shoot you down. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with liking what you like. Some of us (me) are bitter and will write you a novella about why we don’t like X thing, but I don’t have the right to tell you that you can’t like it.
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Okay I know what kind of point you’re making here but poop is always funny. The day I don’t laugh at a fart is the day I die.
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