Moral Relativism Is Boring

Lore Story Forum
81

There is a massive difference in scale between the Alliance reacting realistically towards Horde aggression and that translating into vendettas, and an assertion that the Alliance is chomping at the bit for genocide and the only reason they haven’t followed through with it was because they never had the power to do it or because they are all Anduin’s mind slaves.

The former would absolutely be a better story. The latter is just the opposite extreme of what we have now, and you don’t need to go to the opposite extreme in order to get a better story.

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82

Nothing unrealistic about people wanting to wipe out zombies that destroyed their homelands, eat flesh and have engage in chemical/psychological warfare for years. It is more unrealistic to think otherwise. Real life humans genocide for less.

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83

Your pleas that you just want a more realistic, morally balanced story are ridiculous in light of your simultaneous pleas that the Alliance go full Third Reich.

You already have a faction of humans that believe what you’re espousing, they were called the Scarlet Crusade.

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84

I’ve never pleaded that. Another strawman.

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85

Clarify what you mean by “wipe out” then.

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86

Bolded the relevant parts. How exactly is someone supposed to interpret your statement as anything other than you believe that the Alliance is composed of ethnic supremacists bent on exterminating entire races?

If you don’t want your arguments to be interpreted as extreme, then don’t use extreme language to describe them.

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87

You’ve confused describing with asking for.
Further, none of that involves being a N*ZI.

Because I don’t think ethnic supremacy plays as much a part as what they’ve actually experienced.

I’ve explicitly tried to correct you on things before, you’ve shown yourself as incapable of interpreting anything I say in good faith. Try asking more questions instead of incorrectly restating if you are confused.

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88

You are arguing that the Alliance judges the Forsaken entirely on the basis of the Forsaken’s cultural or ethnic identity, and that the Alliance would, in your own words, “exterminate” them given the chance. How is that not an argument in favor of the belief that the Alliance would conduct itself as ethnic supremacists?

The fact that you rationalize it with “but it’d fine because the Forsaken deserve it” is an unexpected angle though, I’ll give you that.

Just because I’m not agreeing with your poorly conveyed arguments doesn’t mean that I’m not “interpreting in good faith.” It could just mean that you’re conveying your argument poorly.

This is what I’m doing when I ask for clarifications of your position, you just consistently seem to respond by complaining about the fact that I’m asking you to do so.

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89

No. Largely based on their actions. Unless you are including the cannibalism, psychology/biological warfare, and destruction into cultural identity.

Not about disagreeing, but the continual and constant mistating of positions, ones at times you were corrected on already.

Except you make an incorrect statement blatantly before that makes the basis of your question not clarifying my position but asking about something else.

Clarify what you mean by wipe out is a good example. But you immediately moved off it.

‘How does this not make them ethnic supremacists?’ after stating a non-position isn’t asking me to clarify my position, it is asking me to explain something I’m not behind.

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90

That’s still arguing that the Alliance treats or would treat the Forsaken as one giant monolithic group on the sole basis of their shared cultural identity. It still has its basis in the thinking “All X are Y” with the X being ethnicity.

It does seem to be about disagreeing, because all I’m doing is quoting your posts. You’re the one who used language like “exterminate” and “wipe out.”

When I ask you about what exactly you seem to think that implies if not an assertion of the Alliance being genocidal in nature, you complain that I’m “misinterpreting your position.”

It sounds like you either just suck at explaining your position, or can’t get over the fact that I’m disputing it.

You believe that the Alliance would exterminate the Forsaken if not for Anduin’s presence. Is this an accurate presentation of your belief?

“Stating a non-position” AKA quoting your posts

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91

I don’t think that’s good thinking. But I think it is realistic. Doesn’t seem to relate to their culture or identity as much as perceived actions.

Or you are bad (intentionally or not) at understanding what is being written, given you are not ‘only requoting’, you are incorrectly restating as well.

No. As I said several times, several factors are currently holding that back. I’ve said this a lot.

I quoted the list because I posted it twice a few posts apart. Somehow I’m bad at explaining after I’ve said this so many times. But hey, I do appreciate you asking. I hope it is clear now. No, I don’t think genocide would just start without Anduin.

This right here? Not my post.

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92

Then you and I have radically divergent views of what constitutes realistic, especially in the context of how humanity is presented in this fictional fantasy world.

Okay, so the Alliance would not exterminate the Forsaken if given the chance?

It’s the literal reading of your post. Don’t use words like “exterminate” unless you mean “exterminate” and don’t use “Forsaken” as a primary identifier in the context of a theoretical ethnic conflict if you don’t want people to interpret that as an ethnic identifier.

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93

As I said, real life people do it to other people for less.

It depends on the circumstances. Probably not at this time given everything I listed. I don’t know the specifics of the hypothetical.

It isn’t, but go off, king. The fact I had to say it isn’t just Anduin so many times leads me to think you are the issue.

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The Alliance’s idealistic optimism in the face of adversity is one of the things that I find most appealing about the faction. Maybe they don’t act like people do IRL, but that’s because they aren’t people IRL.

I like that they don’t mope around feeling sorry for themselves or stewing in their anger despite the fact that the universe itself constantly seems like it’s out to get them. I like that they don’t surrender to base urges or abandon their beliefs the moment they become inconvenient.

Obviously this is a problem when we have it portrayed to the extreme it is now, where all this seems to have translated into a stilted pacifism on the part of the Alliance, but it’s still one of the core aspects of what I like about the faction.

This version of the Alliance that you’re proposing already existed, it was called the Scarlet Crusade, and the Scarlet Crusade and the Alliance were enemies, because as it turns out the Scarlet Crusade’s goals and intentions were at odds with the multiracial and idealistic Alliance.

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95

I generally agree with a lot of this. The difference like a middle ground. Between Do No Wrong Shining Alliance and Scarlet Crusade. Having people like Genn and Tyrande clashing with Anduin and Velen. That’s what I liked about Varian, he had to struggle with his demons.

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The problem is that “Do No Wrong Shining Alliance” was taken to such an extreme that any kind of action or aggressive sentiment at all, no matter how minor or justified, was treated as being a moral blemish. The mere act of fighting and winning wars, the thing that the Alliance was originally created to do, was subject to endless handwringing to the point of paralysis.

I loved BfA’s opening cinematic, especially the opening bits with the Alliance just laying into the Horde, because I believed that the Horde had this coming for a long time. But believing that doesn’t require believing that the Horde should be exterminated.

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97

I will argue this, or at least that most citizens of the alliance would have until BtS… BtS I have already argued is just bad. BtS had any aspects of Sylvanas that were not one dimensional and villainous retconned before BFA was over. Until Golden gave us back to back forsaken lore train wrecks and associated quests, it was an accepted fact of the lore that humans and many of their allies would exterminate the Forsaken and take back Lordearon if they could. They did not see the Forsaken as anything but undead monsters. That is how they became forsaken. They didn’t earn some level of human trust at the wrathgate. On the rare occasion that some mad undead defied his nature and defected to the alliance he was treated as an acedemic curiosity and an intelligence asset. Not as a fellow living thing (at least not by most of his handlers).

In A Good War it was established that the continued existence of Undercity was due in part to the proximity of Darnassus, and great care was taken to develop a strategy that would give the Horde control of Darnassus as insurance for the Undercity. Throughout most of Forsaken history, the only reason they were not 3rd Reiched out of the Eastern Kingdoms is membership in the Horde whose capital is next to Darnassus.

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98

Everyone did. Its almost like the “cycle of hatred” speech resonated with fans of the franchise. Good thing they abandoned that shortly after launch. /s

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Something being an “accepted fact” doesn’t make it correct, and I’ve been railing against this for years because the lore doesn’t actually support that assertion. It was an assumption that everyone (or rather, most Forsaken players) made but it was never actually backed up by concrete facts, and there was plenty of evidence to dispute it.

Again, this is straight up untrue. What is true is that many of the Forsaken probably believed that this was the case, but as it turned out it was a false belief that Sylvanas intentionally instilled in them in order to gaslight them into sticking with her. It’s more classic abuser behavior.

Sylvanas would fill their heads with the idea that the world was out to get them and they’d never be accepted (she could point to the Scarlet Crusade to make that argument way easier) and that their only hope for survival and/or happiness is to stay with her and do what she says.

Again, it’s textbook abuser behavior. Lots of Forsaken probably believed that the Alliance would exterminate them if given the chance, but that was never true, and the fact that it’s not true can easily be demonstrated by the numerous opportunities the Alliance had to cruelly massacre Forsaken in Vanilla and even in Cata that they never took.

Sylvanas would provoke the Alliance, and use the Alliance defending itself as “evidence” of Alliance aggression in order to maintain control over those she ruled.

That’s why The Gathering was such an important event. The only reason that Sylvanas agreed to it at all was because she thought that most of the Forsaken who attended would be rejected and that it would all end in heartbreak, thus cementing her control over them. When this didn’t happen, and in fact a number of Forsaken actually realized that they could in fact return to the Alliance and attempted to do so, she called the whole thing off and killed all the Forsaken present so that they couldn’t return and expose her lies.

The Forsaken in this sense are victims, but they aren’t victims of the Alliance. They are victims because Sylvanas deliberately and forcefully kept them separated from the Alliance.

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100

It is accepted fact because the lore supports it. The existence of the scarlet crusade is a perfect example. The members came from the same population pool as the humans of Stormwind.

The reason the Scarlet Crusade has a presence in the plaguelands at all is because of human hatred of undead. The undead starting area pre cataclysm is about fighting off the scourge and the humans who refuse to acknowledge a difference between Forsaken and the scourge. Alliance player raids into the plaguelands to kill Nathanos were adopted into the lore as cannon. In spite of Before the Storm and its wild departures from established lore, even BfA manages to remind us, through Lillian Voss and Thomas Zelling, that the default experience of Forsaken is cruel rejection by their living loved ones. This isnt to say I blame the living for rejecting the repulsive animated corpse of a once-living relative, with scraps of human viscera dangling from a jaw that seems to be from another corpse entirely. Thats natural. Thats what the story should be. Pretending thats not the norm is willfully ignorant.

Alliance presence in Arathi, the battle over the contested territory of Arathi Basin is further evidence of Alliance agression. If the Alliance was willing to recognize the Forsaken as living things and not a zombie horde then Arathi Highlands is the territory of Lordearon and their birthright. Hillsbrad also. Alliance internment camps in Lordearon should have been abandoned after the Third war. This isnt to say that this would have been good strategy, sound leadership nor very much fun, but the Alliance was never written to be innocent victims. Both the Horde and Alliance were written to be rival nations at war.

This is straight out of the pages of Before the Storm. In a more subtle narrative its even partially true that Sylvanas was telling them this and for ages actually believed it because that was the forsaken experience.

In a world where better writers were at the helm of BfA, a positive development of the Alliance to one of accepting the undead could have been given to us, and Sylvanas could have refused to accept it, leaving the Forsaken in a huff, but the way that was attempted was horrible, hamfisted and forcefed. Instead of acknowledging the Alliance rejection of the undead people of Lordearon, setting into motion the conflict in the Eastern Kingdoms and the acceptance of the Sindorei into the Horde, healing old wounds and moving forward in peace under the leadership of Anduin, writers like Golden whitewashed the entire history of the Forsaken, painting them as the unwitting pawns of Sylvanas (again partially true) fighting an alliance bogeyman that never really existed (conpletely false).

All the flavor text of the lore aside, Sylvanas rightly predicted that without Darnassus, the Alliance would move to take the Undercity. True, it was Sylvanas order to burn Teldrassil that created an excuse for the Alliance to move against the Undercity, but the Alliance wasn’t there to kill Sylvanas. They were there to move against the Horde. The burning of Teldrassil was only the most recent reason for the Alliance to hate the Horde, and there was no reason to think that any other reason humans, dwarves and nightelves, Gilneans and Dreanei had to exterminate the Horde as individual NPCs or even PCs would not be enough motivation for the Alliance to move in the future under less pacifist leadership. Varian taught Tyrande patience in Pandaria, only so she wouldn’t be led into a trap by Garrosh not because he wanted to save horde lives.

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