Make sure to delete the door on your way out
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I’m sorry you and so many others have been #### on by life. But nothing you said will ever change my opinion on the Forsaken as being genuinely evil, if tragic villains. That ship sailed with Cata, I guess. Blizz took their opportunity to show who the forsaken could be after they finally got their justice on the one who cursed and ruined them, and they (Blizzard) threw it away to double down on the ‘Just Another Scourge’ characterization instead.
If you relate to that, I mean I guess I can’t argue- you relate to who you relate! That’s an own personal thing after all.
I’d say I like the ‘Honor Horde’ (tauren, trolls, orcs-when-not-being-written-as-maniacs) not because of who I am but who I’m not. They’re strong brave and confident, not shy and spineless. Outgoing and in touch with nature, not spending so much of their life in a little room in front of a computer wrapped up in fake worlds instead of actually going out an engaging with the real one. Who Stand The #### Up For Themselves- though they (again, the damned orcs, go too far in that regard)*. But hey, let’s not get too into self-bashing, I have my good points too.
Anyway, I’ve only ever seen the Forsaken as villains, ones who’s only chance of escaping that role was unfortunately wasted. I seriously doubt that that’s ever going to change. I mean, look how Zelling got used! “Oh, finally, an interesting Forsaken character with a good reason to WANT to be Forsaken and a good story about inner conflict- AAAAnd he’s dead. Because Sylvanas needed to be a b*tch.”
*I’ll admit that the Forsaken have this virtue too- “We Are forsaken! We Will Slaughter Any Who Stand In Our Way!” but like the orcs, they take it too far- often WAY too far. “We Are Forsaken! We Will slaughter Any! Just any at all, at any time, for any reason, or even no reason!”
edit: removed some of the pity-party. on self-reflection, it was more bad self-image than reality, though working out a lot more certainly wouldn’t hurt
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Hey you take that back, nothing screams misunderstood hero more than “Death to the living”.
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Which is the problem.
Coincidentally, if we recall, Cata was when the LGBT Guild was being shut-down in-game same time that the LGBT Listserve and Women Listserve was being shut down within Blizzard.
Wonder if Blizzard’s internal creative imagination was in any possible way responding to contempt for the growing number of people on the gender/sexuality periphery (women, lgb+, trans, etc) within the company and with greater agency in the playerbase
Like it’s funny when you realize Calia was introduced by Golden (cishet woman) with the help of Taliesin (cishet man) in the wake/concurrent to Afrasiabi on the out and they’re now being forced to grapple with his very long impact on the game’s direction that disproportionately demonized anything and everything LGBT and POC players related to in-game.
But as far as “fixes” go, Calia misses the mark because it fails to grapple with the Victorian Gothic and US Southern Gothic foundation of the Forsaken that is why so many Queer players and Women and Subaltern peoples otherwise relate to them.
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The danger of making a fantasy race (in any media) an actual representative of that RL culture means you are making that culture responsible for the actions of that fantasy race.
So Forsaken spreading blight on poor innocent white humans?
Surely that means “Insert Minority Group Here” in RL is also spreading their idological blight upon our small, pristine town.
Suddenly everything the Forsaken do is hyper scrutinized and now subtle messaging from racist authors to their unsuspecting audience.
This is not even considering how incredibly racist it is to boil down an entire group or RL culture that could be thousands of year old to a fantasy race in an MMORPG.
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Calm down please. I’m getting sick of you being so aggressive.
I didn’t want to go any further with that analogy because I knew someone would misinterpret it into “are you trying to say LGBTQA+ people are evil because they relate to the evil faction?” and 
reverse racism Certain posters in this forum are just that predictable.
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Sidenote, was told by a dev on twitter than there was no POC group until circa MoP/WoD, and that all the “working groups” for all the varied subaltern groups demographics wise were streamlined into one giant minority council (so women, POC, LGBT, Poor People, Disabled, etc)
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Yeah, I agree. Metzen is far better than the alternative that we have right now. At the time though, it was really easy to blame him for a lot of the ills found in the story. Plus he irked a lot of people making his OC such a pivotal character in Cata.
Metzen, Morhaime, et al are definitely guilty of turning a blind eye to a lot of the problems happening in their company. I don’t believe they’re necessarily bad guys but it was very easy for them to ignore what was going on because their position at the company was tenured.
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My question is what exactly is the end goal here ? I mean if any inspiration from an RL race or culture is to be considered to be representation and that apparently if you as a person cannot portray said cultures unless you re from them, wouldn’t that result in less stories being told about those people and less representation overall ? I mean what happens to an extreme minority, would a story about such a character never exist because no one that shares that status is writer ?
I delete a lot of posts I regret, including that one. I don’t want to talk about it, sorry.
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I’m pretty sure people would rather have no representation than poor representation.
This is why it’s important that marginalized groups tell their own stories, and not let others tell it for them.
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Well, really? I’ve seen LGBT people say that Pelagos isn’t great, but he’s better than nothing.
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Pelgos being the Arbiter wasn’t great until we saw he keeps his male form.
That’s not because he’s an LGBT character, it’s because he’s new and his appointment to Arbiter doesn’t make much sense. Even as an Aspirant, he’s still new to the Shadowlands. It’s like promoting the seventeen-year-old intern to Regional Manager.
He’s probably not qualified for the job he’s been given. It’s a big responsibility.
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Was just making a joke.
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I’d rather poor representation because we get zero representation otherwise and it allows us a foot in the door to critique and demand more
Or at least have the care to handle it carefully, e.g. Roux researched some into the cultures the trolls are based off to develop characterization/practices within Shadows Rising + refused to do the “Dollar Store Patois” unless Blizzard gave her resources (eg translator) which they didn’t, ergo why the book doesn’t use the fake patois
(This is from the now-deleted Roux/Nobbel interview, which I imagine because she spilled the beans on too much internal blizzard dynamics)
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lol that is a good point. Though I was talking about Renautus comparing them unfavorably to Satanists.
It only takes one person to do mass violence with a certain weapon. Again, have they ever beat up or killed anyone?
I don’t think there is anything wrong with people identifying with a certain race in wow or any other game. But they NEED TO STOP making things they personally identify with as somehow representative of actual RL peoples or cultures.
Much of my disagreement with Baal started when he took it upon himself to declare orcs as representative of muslims and middle easterners. If he wants to do that its on him but this is all very subjective.
Anyway the point is any media is perfectly allowed to take inspiration from history and different cultures. They just have to be respectful about it and make it clear its NOT representative of these real people.
Why?
Because when you have the Orcs commit genocide against the Draenei who are really closely inspired from Jewish tropes it really makes it super super awkward when someone like Baal making Orcs representatives of Muslims and Draenei as Jews.
And to be clear there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with making orcs inspired from middle eastern cultures (if they actually were but I don’t see it) and Draenei inspired by Jews.
And there is nothing wrong with Blizzard making a story about Orcs genociding the Draenei. I think the writers should be allowed to use inspirations where they want and tell the best stories they can.
The problems are something like the Movie 300 where actual history shown in such a black and white manner where a valiant stand of democratic white people with british/american accents standing against a literal tide of evil brown people dressed in black trying to pass through a passage/border in great numbers in the name of freedom.
Despite the fact that in history it was the greeks that were enslaving people and both peoples were probably almost indistinguishable from one and another besides the banners they flew. Anyway the point is what Blizzard is doing is clearly different than the creators of 300 did. So equating them as the same just devalues real criticism that ought to be considered.
I honestly do not understand what Baal and people like him are trying to accomplish by doing as they do but I doubt people like him would be satisfied until any and all references to all other cultures are eliminated from media in fear of offending people like him who have nothing better to do than hyper analyze every little scrap of lore and be offended for all the wrong reasons.
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WBC ideology is bad, Stalinism is also bad. Stalinism has killed more people because Stalinism has actually held sufficient power to kill large numbers of people. The WBC would do the same if they had the power to do so, but thankfully they do not.
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…I regret making the damn joke. And I hate that the atmosphere in this thread has gotten so toxic that joking seems impossible.
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