I am once again using my access to the forums as a gateway for Kyalin to reach out to the Lore Community. The following will be a copy past of her recent post on the Scrolls of Lore Forums that you can find here:
https://forums.scrollsoflore.com/showpost.php?p=1626695&postcount=337
I want preface by saying this is a bit of read. But it’s a good read. And I won’t be providing a Tl;dr. Without further ado here is the copy paste:
I want you to imagine a story with me.
Here’s how it goes - there’s a commander of a small special forces squad. This commander has worked with their soldiers for some time and considers them to be personal friends. They also are working with a military attache from another country who is an ally - but relations have usually been a bit arms-length, and there’s sometimes been a hint of underlying racial tension. Regardless, the commander knows of this person, knows of their accomplishments, and respects them.
During the story, which concerns their attempt to put down a dangerous militia leader, the commander loses their entire team. It’s enough that the commander screams out their soldiers’ names as they die, and swears revenge after they have. But then they learn that the attache survived. The attache expresses regret, and states that they should have died instead of the commander’s friends. The commander replies with: “We are all equals. No one is more valuable than another.”
Presumably while staring blankly at the camera.
We don’t have to imagine this story - it exists in WoW. That last line is taken verbatim from Shandris Feathermoon to John J. Keeshan after her friends died. The whole story stops in that instance so that Shandris can tell the viewer “diversity is our strength” - and by so doing cheapens the deaths of people that she was supposed to care about.
This is a worrying repetition of a trend that’s hit recent writing overall, but it has always been with WoW. I call this problem “Peak California” - which may be defined as an intense, but clumsy attempt to have your story promote left-wing progressive values in a way that (possibly intentionally - in a way so as to say that the context itself does not overcome the value) ignores the context of the situation - and by so doing results in a strange, unrealistic, or even immoral message.
The Night Elves, being a traditionalist, territorial, and nominally xenophobic race are frequent targets of this despite being WoW’s only female facing race. Since I concentrate on them anyway - I’m going to continue to do that as I map out this problem.
"If you don’t take their drugs, you’ll die!"
Let’s imagine another story - a world even. The elite in society have found a way to make themselves stronger by making a permanent choice that affects their very physiology. In exchange for this power, however, they have to partake in a highly addicting ritual, and if they don’t do that, they’ll wither and die. Their new power has profound ecological and social consequences - and because of this - they face intense hatred from the rest of society. Eventually their power nearly leads the world to destruction and plunges it into a dark age. Now, society has to ask deep and painful questions about how to deal with them.
If you guessed that I’m asking you to imagine Deus Ex: Mankind Divided , you’re right - and with that in mind, spoilers ahead.
In the world of Deus Ex: Human Revolution - only the fortunate 1/125th of the population can get physical augmentations. They have to take an addicting drug called Neuropozyne for the rest of their life or their body will reject their augmentations and kill them. Their augmentations also result in a widening economic gap. People are often told that in order to work, they need to be augmented, but augmentations are hideously expensive and so is Neuropozyne. If you can’t afford augmentations, you are left behind. As a result, hatred for the augmented is often the preserve of the underprivileged.
The game presents reasonable figures on this side of the augmentation debate and exposes you to their perspective. William Taggart for example, is a philanthropist, a psychologist, and someone who genuinely believes that augmentation poses a danger to society and should be regulated. The game will even let you take his side at the end if you are persuaded by his arguments. There ARE clear bigots and bad guys on this side of the argument. The narrative doesn’t defend them, but they’re not the only voice, and it’s clear that you can oppose augmentations without that opposition simply being hatred. You also aren’t forced to agree with their message - you are yourself augmented. You work for an augmentation firm - and you are free to choose - as I did - to side with that firm at the end of the game as well. The game is mature enough to present the issue to you fully, with all of its complexity and even ugliness, and let you make your own decisions - as fans of this franchise come to expect.
Mankind Divided was different.
After the clumsily-named “Aug incident” - a worldwide disaster where what the world thinks was a glitch causes the entire augmented population to spin into a murderous rage until your protagonist stops it (in the last game) - millions are dead and the world is shocked into hating and fearing augmented people. After we just got done explaining that augmented were super-wealthy, privileged super-people whose hubris like Icarus made them fly too close to the sun, we’re now supposed to accept that they are downtrod apartheid-allegories who we must now protect from bigoted LGBT Czech policewomen.
What?
I’m not the only one who was… confused, by the racism allegory in the second prequel to Deus Ex. Do I love the game? Absolutely. Was this part of it strange? Also, absolutely. My point is not that your game cannot have an allegory to prejudice, or that it should present characters who belong in American History X in a positive light. It’s that augmentation is a bad allegory for prejudice.
So is the arcane in Warcraft.
The fact that arcane addiction can be passed to your kids makes the question a bit more complex and therefore interesting than augmentation - but many of the same elements are there. It conveys a supernatural power to you. If you are an elf and you don’t feed your addiction, you will wither and die. It has brought dire consequences to the world, including multiple demonic invasions. It has historically been the province of the rich and powerful. In Wrath, we also established (but never picked up) that the use of the arcane causes a strain on the world that if left unchecked, will one day turn it into the Netherstorm.
In Warcraft though, when a Night Elf has a concern with that, none of that matters. Their points are never regarded as reasonable - those concerns are not even allowed to be expressed. Instead, Tyrande looks down her nose at Thalyssra - she and Liadrin have a nice session for the Horde where the Night Elves are chastised for being bigots. The Nightborne join the Horde. The Night Elves are punished for their bigotry rather than being rewarded for their assistance by being invaded and subjected to a genocide which the Nightborne are complicit in.
How’s that for a moral?
The Cycle of Hatred
Warcraft 3 contained within in two stories which have been on repeat in WoW since the writers evidently can’t figure out what else to do.
The first is Grom’s redemption at the end of the Orc campaign. He is taunted first by Cenarius and then by Mannoroth that he (and by extension the Orcs) hasn’t changed and is no better than Mannoroth. They’re referring quite plainly to the Orcs’ bloodlust, and Grom’s defeat of Mannoroth is in that sense symbolic. He doesn’t just save Orcs from demon blood - he rejects that very mentality.
Then a little man named Dave Kosak came along and drove a spike into that. Garrosh and the Mag’har that he manipulates are clear statements that actually no - they are the same. It was this that the current team I feel tried to rectify - and they would have come close if not for the other story. Saurfang could have confronted Sylvanas in front of Orgrimmar. Sylvanas could have then confronted him with his own contradictions - his own complicity in the war. Like Grom then in the canyon before him, he could have rejected her attempts to call him (and by extension the entire Orcish race) no better than she was - and THAT could have been what turned the Horde against her. That would have been meaningful. That would have redeemed the faction. THAT would have showed real change.
But they didn’t do that - and I think that’s because of the other story from Warcraft 3.
During Mists of Pandaria - Taran Zhu chastises Lor’themar and Jaina for the cycle of hatred. He states that every reprisal begets a further and more terrible reprisal - and that the solution is for both sides to turn around and walk away.
Jaina’s inclusion in this and her arc through Battle for Azeroth is directly tied to the first coining of the “Cycle of Hatred” - which came from Admiral Daelin Proudmoore’s racially motivated invasion of Durotar. The cycle of hatred made sense then as a problem to point out - and it came at the right time because while one could understand Daelin’s hatred, they still also knew that he was working off of bad information. That this would establish the Alliance as a mistrustful, skeptical entity seeking to contain the Horde, which had legitimately changed - was good worldbuilding as well for setup into a complicated geopolitical situation.
That died at least in Mists of Pandaria - possibly Cataclysm. In Garrosh, the Horde was given a fascist dictator who promoted Orcish racial supremacy to the point where approaching the end, that hatred was turning on other members of the Horde. Worse, much of the Horde, including the majority of the Orcs - were said to be following him. Cycle of Hatred shouldn’t apply here - here is a line that no one should cross and Garrosh crossed it. Yet we have, in war crimes, the Celestials - who are framed as being morally correct by virtue of their status as gods - messaging that Tyrande and the Alliance were just as much on trial as Garrosh. The moral authority of the story is telling us that Tyrande, for being the leader of a people who were brutally invaded (remember, the Horde did not take prisoners - civilian corpses litter the ground at Silverwing Outpost, and Horde troops were torturing captive sentinels to death in the Shatterspear War camp), was morally equivalent to Garrosh Hellscream, who froths and rages at the end of the book that he was going to hunt down and kill every last Night Elf on the planet.
Those two are framed as being morally equivalent. That’s how the cycle of hatred’s moral framing of war - which is always bad and is always motivated by hatred, specifically racial hatred - operates.
This didn’t end in BfA. Jaina’s prominence in BfA directly calls to Daelin Proudmoore. Saurfang proudly tells the camera that they’re going to Azeroth to break the cycle. The Horde’s ‘redemption’ just before this is Saurfang expressing regret for the Horde’s actions, and Anduin telling him that the Alliance is bad too because of Arthas. These narrative decisions pretty much preclude the idea of the Horde redeeming itself in a believable way that firmly rejects the idea of militarism, yet the narrative treats it as though they have.
Trying to focus on the Cycle of Hatred, and regard the Alliance as being equally culpable in a war that kicked off with the Horde committing and recommitting acts of racially-motivated mass murder targeted at civilians meant that the Horde never got a chance to firmly reject that ideology. Peak California got in the way of that.
A time for choosing
In 1964, Ronald Reagan gave a pro-Barry Goldwater speech entitled “A Time for Choosing” - at the end of which he expressed the importance of standing up to the Soviet Union and rejecting appeasement. As Reagan states: “Where then is the road to peace? Well, it’s a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies there is a price we will not pay. There is a point beyond which they must not advance.” It’s absolute conservative red meat, and you can find videos of it on YouTube set to transformers music, eagles, American flags, laughing middle class children playing in auburn meadows, and the full might of Freedomland being brought down on some terrorists. It’s also the foundation for Reagan’s ideal of “Peace through Strength”.
California today doesn’t like this product of California, and Peak California abhors it. So when Tyrande shows up at the peace treaty signing with the message that she doesn’t trust that the Horde has changed and won’t sign the treaty, she may as well have been wearing Reagan’s cowboy hat. The author-designated exemplar of non-toxic masculinity condescendingly lectures Tyrande that the Horde has changed, and Tyrande is once again framed as a racist bigot who can’t let go of the past.
That past being a history of repeated invasions, driven by a combination of greed and racial hatred, where no prisoners were taken, and where attacks designed to extract the maximum number of civilian casualties were staged - culminating in the burning of Teldrassil… and once again, the Horde never gave any indication that it actually had changed. The leadership changed, but there was no firm rejection of the ideology that led to that past, and no guarantee that Tyrande’s people could never again be the victims of the ideology that sought to exterminate them.
This is where the moral perversion comes in. The “Cycle of Hatred” isn’t rejecting “A time for choosing”. It’s rejecting “Never Again”. Peak California thought it was going after Reagan. In reality, it was going after FDR.
If you’re wondering why Night Elf fans are worried that Tyrande will be a raid boss, by the way, this is why: it looks like she’s being groomed as the new Daelin Proudmoore. Peak California’s twisted morality states that war for even this reason is wrong and racially motivated. Anduin is the writer-designated moral voice of the Alliance - and he’s not allowed to be wrong. It’s an absolutely monstrous moral lesson that comes out as the result of this - especially if via a Sylvanas redemption, we end up with a moral message that states “genocide is okay in certain circumstances” - but that’s what Peak California does.
As I conclude, please don’t misunderstand me. This isn’t a statement that you can’t have politics, left-of-center politics, diversity, representation, or stories that speak up against racism and bigotry in video games. I personally think that you should - but if your pursuit of that is so focused and so blind that it ignores the surrounding context to the point where you are delivering even more monstrous moral “lessons”? You might want to reconsider what you’re doing.