I made this post for a laugh and to see how people would respond however I not surprised that it turned into some completely different.
Blizzard has a bad track record of representing religion in Warcraft and honestly I wouldn’t draw any real world comparisons. They should probably avoid trying to villain batting any of them to hard as people draw these false comparisons.
I wouldn’t trust the current writers at all with such a subject as the are very have show to be very bias and lean politically a certain way.
If Blizzard does what Driote suggest and just paints all light bound as villains with no argument that wouldn’t make for an interesting story. Vice versa if they fully Justify the Lighbounds actions it wouldn’t be interesting. They have to have nuance and carefully show reasoning on both sides. This is why I hate the Mag’har recuritment scenario as it only shows one side of the Equation with little to no context.
I acknowledge there’s ugly parts of Christian history, and that both both Christians and non-Christians using the religion as an excuse for debauchery. Plus YOU compared them to the Conquistadors; if I’m guilty of that, so are you (and others on this topic).
People using Christianity as an excuse to do bad things doesn’t make Christianity itself bad, and the same can be said for every other religion and even non-religious stances including atheism. Problem is, you and others like single out Christianity but practice selective outrage (such as flinging baseless accusations of Islamophobia whenever someone points out criticisms of Christian history that also apply to Islamic history).
Your ethnic background and gender, like mine, is neither here nor there in regards to this discussion, why bring them up? I hope Blizzard brings more nuance to the Light and Yrel’s group than you have to this discussion.
I thought your prior politeness was a ruse. I see I was right.
I never said Catholicism never did anything bad. Heretics is a term for people within the same religion, a person who follows one different religion or no religion cannot be a heretic.
My Yrel thread wasn’t nuked. Some people agreed with me, some didn’t. Despite it being flagged (by you, I suspect) the moderators clearly saw there was no problem and allowed it to remain. I hope if the mods have any connection to/are WoW’s writers, they can bring that same clarity of thought they showed when judging my thread to the plot.
Luxio misrepresented me (as usual) and my thread. Given they’re misrepresented you in other arguments (such as arguments you two had about Sylvanas), I’d be surprised if you took what they said about me at face value without reason.
While I understand your position. I think your political outlook + religious views makes you biased towards believing that any fictional religion that shares similarities with Christianity is inherently “good” based on your faith, and should not be criticized. Like I said in the comment you were quoting, I’m a recovering Catholic, my world and my outlook on life and spirituality got better outside of the church. You don’t want a ‘crisis of faith’ to be normalized and romanticized, but I beg to differ.
The best advancements in humanity came from questioning/critiquing religion.
Just to be clear here, I’m not criticizing your faith, or your belief in God. I’m criticizing organized religion, and the many evil things people have done, with religion as the excuse.
As I did, however I´m NOT the one complaining over “Light NOT being declared the Snowflake Special Cosmical Entity that has to be Lawful Good or Lawful Good a disaster”. That´s you.
Dude, Xe´ra nor Y´rel are NOT the whole avatar of the Light, it´s FINE if they´re a villanous antagonists because this only means that, like any other cosmological entity in this game, the Light is available for every kind of people, no more and no less. This doesn´t make the “Light” evil per se. This doesn´t erase A´dal as a Lawful Good individual.
Exactly, then explain why is it SO important to keep WoW´s christianity influenced “Light” as perfect, with perfect individuals acting perfectly lawful good?
You don´t even believe in this you say, your complains are a direct contradiction to the words mentioned above.
Wrong, we single out THE WHOLE package you are so ardently defending: not only the faith per se, but the whole cultural background too -cause you can´t say Humans, Dwarves and Gnomes have NOT clear influences from European cultures of the middle ages-. So when you combine ALL these things and start preaching the game HAS TO sustain their faith -and themselves by proxy- as only “Lawful Good” with ZERO chance for them to get “antagonistic characters” then the message is quite controversial. And Downright despicable when the story goes a step further and makes them interact AGAINST other races that use other cultural and religious backgrounds as a base.
Because the MHP made a post that could be interpreted with pretty ugly connotations.
Sure dude, cause “Y´re and the Light are perfectly perfect Lawful Good individuals with zero chance to do anything wrong” is the deffinition of “nuance”, amrite?
Especially given that yeah, there is a viable explanation to her behavior if you are not taking all Naaru as a hivemind, or conflating the capacity for darker shades of Light Use and Worship as “Villain Batting the Light Cosmology expected to be only Cosmological Force with zero layers or nuance”. Because, as mentioned above, AU Velen dumped on Yrel probably one of the worst powers you can give to someone without training. Prophetic Visions, with no instruction on how to properly interpret or validate those things she experiences or sees.
Which leaves Yrel very, VERY open to either misinterpreting those prophecies, or even being manipulated through them. Especially if those manipulations are coming from an authority figure that she would recognize, like a Prime Naaru (which it seems highly likely that this Light Mother is). But this would be far too reasonable an excuse, that also leave a prospective window for some redemptive path for Yrel. That’s villain batting.
It’s Blizzard’s favorite trope of all time, though. They apparently find it “compelling” to corrupt characters and make us kill them.
They also seem to be enjoying the idea of really thoroughly killing characters off right down to the outright destruction of their very souls, too. For instance, I definitely think that we’re killing Kel’thuzad for once and for all in 9.1, where we destroy his very soul so that he’s gone for good.
It seems that outright killing souls is going to rival “good guy becomes corrupted into pure evil incarnate and absolutely must die” as Blizzard’s favorite trope. We all know that Blizzard loves the “killing souls” trope because of Final Fantasy VII. It aligns with the “Rule of Cool” that Blizzard abides by.
You say your politeness was genuine, but in earlier posts you were rude and flinging baseless accusations. Plus you claimed my first Yrel thread was nuked when it was merely contentious.
“Best advancements in humanity came from questioning/critiquing religion”? Citation needed? Which “advancements”? When you say religion and organized religion, do you mean every religion, or just Christianity?
Didn’t you refer to yourself as a “recovering” Catholic? You spoke as if Catholicism (or all Christianity or religion itself) were a disorder or a disease.
Organized religion shouldn’t be exempt from criticism, but its positive contributions should be remembered too (something many people are ignoring or forgetting). Something I think Blizz is forgetting given the new round of villain batting. Makes me wonder what they’re going to do with Anduin, who’s being built up as a big role guy.
I think I understand where you are coming from, Thadeus.
You don’t want Blizzard to say having faith is wrong, you clearly have faith in innate goodness of humanity and I respect that. I don’t think they want to commit to any one religious philosophy with the intention to exclude anyone from enjoying the story. At the end of the day there is hopefully going to be something empowering for everyone.
Anyone can go read it for themselves in the “Dont give Velen the Villian bat” thread.
Please enlighten me how you got from that, that I found religion to be a “disease” or a “disorder”?? Please don’t project onto me. thx.
pathological alturism can be just as physiologically damaging.
I respect your beliefs, I was raised Roman Catholic, that being said I’m a recovering Catholic who has embraced spiritual philosophy instead and I’m learning that it’s okay not to sacrifice myself and put myself first sometimes, and it’s ethical to care for myself.
When I see a character like Illidan, what he did was empowering. It’s empowering to break free from something that intends to hurt you and what X’era intended for him would have changed who he was without his consent and forced him into a role he didn’t want.
He didn’t want to be a messiah.
Stop making baseless claims when you can’t handle discourse in your threads. Maybe you should stop making threads relating to Catholicism and the Light if you don’t want discourse about religion.
Having the Light have the capacity for Darker shades =/= Villain batting. Yrel taking on a more fanatic and dogmatic vision of the Light =/= invalidation of other forms of Light Worship or those that practice them. And not arbitrarily making one of 6 universal cosmologies “Always benevolent”, where as the others are being built up with layers =/= “Faith is Bad”. Just that the Light comes in a spectrum, some not so benevolent.
it wasn’t nuked but the last time I checked in on it before it disappeared was that there were a lot of people upset in that thread by some of the claims Thadeus was making about how the Mag’har orcs were savage and deserved what they got from the Lightbound, so even if it wasn’t nuked it was really controversial.
I can’t find it anymore so I dunno what happened tbh.
Especially when pressured with such justifications due to how Yrel’s Light Crusade has apparently not targeted ONLY ex-Iron Horde members. But all indigenous peoples of Draenor, with Thad handwaving it away as “OK” due to their cultural savagery. Which is more than a little ironic when you consider that of the two “Powers”, only one of the two ceased allowed use by their practitioners; due to those practitioner’s actions taken under Demonic Influence. And it wasn’t the Light. The Scarlets were able to wield the Light without any trouble. But it was the elements and spirits of MU Draenor that condemned the MU Orcish peoples actions taken under KJ’s influence.
By Thad’s own reasoning the Elements and Spirits of the “Savage” Orcish faith of Draenor would actually be more inherently benevolent than the Light due to that denial of use. Right?
I think Thadeus may be in denial about how Christianity, and any organized religion for that matter, can be weaponized. It’s not good people weaponizing religion, it’s bad, or mislead people doing this.
Turalyon weaponized the Light by using it to torture innocent people. Turalyon is well on his way to being an antagonist.
I know and haven’t denied that any religion, including Christianity, can be adversely weaponized by believers and non-believers alike. Such as happened with the (over-represented) Spanish Inquisition and by Italy’s dictator Mussolini - and Mussolini was an anti-religious atheist who hated Christianity more than any other religion.
Turalyon didn’t use the Light to torture people in the novel “Shadows Rising”. He used the Light to restrain people while Alleria used the Void to torture and/or mind probe them to get information.
While him being party to that is surprising, it’s a funny double standard how people assume the worst of some characters based on a small amount of choices (Turalyon, Xe’ra), but give other characters with many more atrocities (Sylvanas, Garrosh) the benefit of the doubt.
You just showed where you referred to yourself as a “recovering” Catholic
I never said you did it in this thread, and you just shared the thread where you did it, my Velen thread. I respect your right to your beliefs.
My complaint is that you said “recovering Catholic”, as if implying Catholicism’s a disease or disorder that needs to be treated and overcome. That’s not a baseless claim, that’s an accusation based on evidence.
It’s no secret that you have to give up some things to be part of many religions or religious group. So, when you leave those religions or religious groups, sometimes you can recover the things you gave up. That’s the implication.
Although, it can be like a disorder when someone has unwanted thoughts or behavior from religious training that linger. But that’s not to say the people still practicing the religion have a disorder.
"The term "recovering Catholic " is used by some former practicing Roman Catholics to describe their religious status. The use of the term implies that the person considers their former Catholicism to have been a negative influence on their life, to be “recovered " from. The term first came into use in the 1980s.”
Sometimes you have to recover from things that traumatized you. Organized religion was that for me. like I said I’m not a fan of organized religion. That doesn’t mean that you can’t absolutely enjoy it and enjoy your involvement in the Church, but you seem to have a really negative view of people who left the church and that bias comes out when you talk to people about this topic.
If you want to know more, you should probably read The Recovering Catholic: Personal Journeys of Women who Left the Church- Joanne H. Meehl
They’re not going to hit Anduin with a villain bat. All the work they put into developing him as a natural, and demographically unique, leader for the game’s audience?
Anduin is this games Luke Skywalker. He’s not as interesting as Han Solo, or Darth Vader, but he grounds the story and gives the more extreme characters a foil to act off of.
Anduin’s going to have, at worst, a bad couple of weeks that will only make him cooler in hindsight.