Friendly reminder, all stories told today are drawn from the same well of myth and folklore. Fantasy as a genre tends to borrow more directly from said folklore than others. If you go looking for something that clashes with modern sensibilities, you will find it. The existence of reprehensible subject matter in fiction is not an endorsement of. Appropriate example for the matter at hand: a vampire in a work of fiction is not an endorsement of sexual predators.
I think you’d be better off pinning the outrage on the actual person doing the actual bad thing than trying to reinterpret decades of history as problematic. It would be exceedingly difficult to unravel who wrote what, when, and at whose direction at this point. Broad condemnation of the entire body of work is not fair to a tremendous number of people who poured their hearts into building something that have nothing to do with events just come to light.
And? I´m german with slavish roots, i don´t look for any idenfication in a game with a fantasy race. Its about your moral…you want to lesson someone about moral desiccion and character choises, but your own choise is inmoral aswell if we held everything by your position.
Actually I can call out an in-game rape metaphor the game was repeatedly forced me to side with as per the will of the writers while the abuser in question gets away free while the survivor is cemented as a villain, and in fact affirmed as uniquely insane, and never gets a semblance of justice, because I myself am a survivor
And again you do it, you identify yourself with it, hold this standard objectively above all and with that not enough, with that not enough, you argue in an attempt to objectify it for all in this standard.
No, that is not right, Baal, THAT is wrong. You are projecting your own suffering onto a character, and identifying with his story, although the story A) didn’t involve rape (only the feeling you have about it is very close to your own helplessness at that moment), and secondly you are trying to frame the character objectively, and to tell this narrative further, to impute things to him that he didn’t commit, for example, or to take it to extremes and compare it to something you yourself sadly had to experience.
Maybe because here things are compared that should not be compared, it weakens the real crime and pushes an act that was not committed in this context to this crime.
Odyn’s story is the story of a character who oppressed someone for power reasons, who enslaved Helya, he’s an oppressor, he’s a tyrant in that sense, it’s all legitimate to call him that and have him account for it, but it’s not rape, it’s not and making it so weakens the horror of real rape.
That’s my position on it, you don’t have to like it, no, but it is.
I think there’s still not enough information to draw conclusions about the treatment of female staff but enough for a court case to verify things, as is happening (especially due to the death involved, which is already tragic in and of itself).
As for stories, Blizzard is the same company that put out Overwatch, and that hasn’t attracted accusations of sexism… but virtue-signaling is a thing (they did remove Tracer’s picture of Emily from the China release of the Overwatch 2 trailer, so much for promoting diversity), so I’m not sure.
While there is enough to ask this question, I think Sylvanas’ blatant plot armor, patriarchal groups becoming more equal opportunity as the story progresses - such as the Orcs under Thrall, the Ironforge Dwarfs and trolls in general, plus characters such as Liadrin, Shandris and Azshara make accusations of sexism dominating WoW’s lore doubtful… and claims of misogyny dominating the lore dubious at best.
We should also mention that many of the victims who TRIED to issue complaints about the game’s direction were ignored and punished, so I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them wish they could have a clean slate as well.
As others have said, I agree that this shouldnt be the focus of this discussion, but it’s an aspect that we have a right to discuss.
Bro I agree with your overall point, but it is kind of disrespectful and “white knighty” to decide what these victims want.
I will say though that Gold has admitted the overall direction of the story was out of her hands in a since deleted or unlisted video.
So yes, I agree with your main point about rebooting the story (and I also admit I’m biased), but I think we need to handle this with a bit more tact, while acknowledging that it’s the victims who need to be heard here.
I understand why you’d think that, but it seems like you’re starting with two common assumptions.
One is that sexism knows it’s sexist — that is, if person’s writing falls into sexist tropes, it’s because the writer is sexist and knows they’re sexist. I’m a woman and a writer, and I work hard to be aware of my own internalized biases and how they may break through in my writing, and I catch myself at it all the time. And I still get it wrong sometimes and wind up writing sexist tropes that I don’t notice until either a beta reader points then out or I see something similar somewhere called out as sexist and a lightbulb goes off. Some I’m sure I still haven’t caught. It’s because this is the stuff we’ve all grown up consuming and are still consuming. It’s normalized. That’s part of the problem.
And another common assumption is that people who write sexist tropes don’t enjoy writing women and would avoid it. A person who is sexist and aware of it may enjoy writing women in a way that reinforces their biases. And a person who has unconscious sexist biases may genuinely like and enjoy women and enjoy writing them, and not notice the sexist tropes because, well, the same reasons it happens to me.
I’m certain they already knew what goes on to a certain degree. When the lead Creative director steps down, people are going to ask questions. But I don’t think they really needed to ask, since they worked with the guy, they had to know what was going on, and probably even had a hand in having him removed.
So yeah, I think accepted taking what was already sowed and are attempting to lawnscape it into something more along their vision.
Make no mistake, I don’t think Alex was just going quietly step down, he’s probably already facing some criminal litigations.
But ‘resetting’ the last ten years, what do you hope that will accomplish? Just remove everything he had a hand in? I’m sure it dates back further. Or are you just trying to course correct the story to something you’d enjoy more?
The most realistic solution would be actually rectonning a lot of the events and stories to make a tighter narrative and admit to that, not just saying it was another perspective. They aren’t going to invalidate 1000s of people’s work over this.