That’s probably the saddest thing I’ve ever read.
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Sounds accurate to me. You basically exist to be taken advantage of by smarter people.
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So we agree his portrayal -as incomplete as it is- DOES invoke toxic irl behaviour? (let´s not limit the self destructive personality trait to males only… females can be self destructive too).
Also I´m not sure I believe your last paragraph with that soundtrack rolling in the background of our conversation 
I regret to inform you most people that belong to the political caste of most countries are remarkably stupid, and your average Class Elite making 6 figures cannot hold a conversation with someone about something out of their range of expertise. Academics too, something about getting a PhD breaks most candidate brains.
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Again, sad. And just makes me want his character preserved more. I like the Hero’s Journey, I’m not here for gritty realism. Realism is garbage. The Snyder Cut still sucked.
Anduin is a fine character on paper, the problem is the narrative warping around him because they decided to make him the author mouthpiece for the correct pov in a situation, instead of being an actual character.
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Don’t feel like defending separating Self Destructive (which harms the self) with Toxic (which is violence/harm to others) for the same reason I don’t think the suicidal are “toxic”, but yolo sure lol
Point is, Anduin root is that he’s Lawful Good Mary Sue and because of that he is placed at the head and focus of the Alliance narrative because Blizzard only permits the Alliance to be Lawful Good.
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Doesn´t make it any less true dude… let´s not pretend the Sun doesn´t exist cause we put our thumbs in front of our eyes to hide it.
Natural Selection is called. Indeed the “good bois” get taken advantage from the bad ones… and this is NOT exclusive to the Human species.
Ergo, pet character with Purity Sue syndrome…and nothing else.
Well I´m no psychologist nor mental health professional but we can agree BOTH types of behaviour are toxic for individuals by deffinition (first case is against themselves, second case against others. But destructive and damaging just the same).
Lawful Good Mary Sue = Purity sue… seriously, I even checked on TvTropes.
Exhausted lmao
And watch after Shadowlands is over, he becomes even more obsessed with being Lawful Good, and Shadow Death Anduin being some alter ego he actively has to suppress like some Discount Arthas-Worgen lol
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Yup!! you got it now…
Sooo… you signing this harmless petition over my character becoming the new Housekeeper of our lord and saviour Zooval? I promise NOT to lose any key related to important rooms in Toghast /crosses finger
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People who don’t like Anduin seem to fall into two categories
1 - people who don’t like that he’s a Priest and a diplomat instead of a violent “manly man”
and
2 - people who play Horde and don’t like that he doesn’t make a good antagonist for them
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You forgot one:
- People with higher “reading material” standards than your average tale for little children
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Sounds about right. It’s usually the same people who excuse Sylvanas’ actions because “at least she’s a badass.”
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I wasn’t interested in a faction war to begin with, but this seemed like a major issue to me. Anduin doesn’t want to be anybody’s antagonist. Everyone knows it on a meta level, and even the horde player character has grouped with him at one point to see this. So unless you REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to hit up Zandalar, or you just didn’t care and wanted to bounce some alliance NPCs anyway, then it seems like BFA really didn’t have any reason to get invested in anything.
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The Alliance has a pretty long history of being led by people who would prefer not to be anyone’s antagonist though. I guess Varian came off as a good antagonist if you looked at his character devoid of any context and ignored his background?
The Alliance as a faction tends to be made up of people who absent any threat would default to being gardeners/farmers/pastors/blacksmiths/rennaissance cosplayers whose behavior is largely motivated since Warcraft started by not wanting to be beheaded/turned into zombies/burned alive
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I don’t think that was really possible either. Even if you never read his comics, Varian’s first introduction is the post-Wrathgate scenario of clearing out Undercity and he starts to monologue about how much he wants to kill you all for having made him a gladiator slave, which probably made most horde players go “what the hell?” because the idea of the horde running a slave ring sounds ridiculous and hypocritical, given its WC3 roots and it sounding like a cheap copy of Thrall’s backstory.
And even then, nothing came of it until Cataclysm when Garrosh is inexplicably put in the leadership position specifically so he can start warmongering and then the alliance is on the defensive anyway. The Twilight Cultist excuse for starting it was a paper thin pile of garbage to make it happen and there was no reason to take that seriously.
I remember during the MoP questline where Anduin’s vouching for you, the horde player, to enter the Vale of Eternal Blossoms and one of the tests involves you fighting against what you hate most. And the quest spawned an illusion of Varian, and I was instantly knocked out of what little immersion I had because I couldn’t fathom why my character would hate him that much, yet the game decided for me that I did anyway.
I actually tried kiting it around for a bit because I was certain the game was trying to trick me into a lesson about not giving into anger or some nonsense like that because, c’mon: Anduin’s NPC was standing right there and I was supposed to kill a likeness of his dad in front of him? It was weird.
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The Alliance just might not make a very good antagonist period. When it has been in an antagonist role in stuff like the RTS games it was always in the context of the extremely tongue-in-cheek, borderline comedic Orc campaigns.
The closest from what I can see to the Alliance being a compelling antagonist to the Horde was Daelin, and even then that was in the context of a familial schism between the Alliance’s major representatives in that story and if that storyline had taken place in WoW I suspect that Horde players would still feel melancholy after it given that the climax involves Jaina’s agonizing decision to look the other way while the Horde kills her father in the name of the greater good, a dynamic of that campaign that everyone seems to forget nowadays as though it was some kind of heroic and celebratory moment for the Horde instead of a necessary but depressing one.
Aside from that, the Alliance being satisfying antagonists for the Horde has historically required some, uh, very ungenerous assumptions on the part of Horde players (in places like Ashenvale and Hillsbrad) as to why they’re killing Alliance.
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Which is some respects is a bit overly unrealistic. Real humans obviously have at least a fair handful of people ready to aggress on others. I think there’s even references to wars between the human kingdoms? But certainly something we don’t really see.
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Granted, I’m probably on the extreme end, but I feel like the only way the alliance could be a proper antagonist was if the factions were in a position where it felt unfair for them to hate the horde. And lol that ain’t happenin’ anymore. Even before BFA came out, I kinda resigned myself to “no reason to get too into it, the horde deserved a punch in the mouth anyway” and this was under the assumption that the alliance was attacking first at the time.
You can’t exactly get pumped to fight an antagonist whose entire motivation for fighting you is “you abused me.”
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I believe it can be done however they don’t have to beat the Alliance the the villain stick to make them appropriate antagonist. They simply need to write the alliance as it should be at the moment. You have multiple displaced refugees all huddling in what is likely an over crowded Stormwind. You have people that have seen the horror of war and want to take back their homes. You have leaders who are left without kingdoms to rule because Stormwind will not help them take them back in order to maintain its Peace.
You just need a new leader to step up and push the Alliance take back their homes. To punish those in the Horde that had wronged them and make sure the Horde can no longer harm them again.
Should be a cold war state where the Alliance starts pushing the horde back in small engagements that will eventually leads to war.
There isn’t a need for as you stated over the top Alliance antagonist like Daelin or Garithos who are just singular men. We just need the Alliance as a whole to have had enough and become more warlike after being driven to it by the Horde.
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