The Amani are NOT the good guys

Lore Story Forum
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I just looked. This is all I saw, fast transcription so excuse any typos.

Reverence for the Wild Gods, the trolls gathered near a series of peaks and plateaus in southern Kalimdor. This was home to many of their honored Loa. The trolls gave the holy mountain range the name Zandalar, and soon they build small encampments upon its slopes.

The most powerful group of trolls was called the Zandalar tribe. Its members claimed nearly all of Zandalar’s tallest plateaus, believing them to be sacred ground. Atop the highest peaks they constructed a small cluster of crude shrines. In time, these grew into a bustling temple city known as Zuldazar.

Did I miss where the word empty is used elsewhere?

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Speaking of “Temple City”, how many Temples does Dazar’alor itself actually have? The shrines Dreadmoore means are in the other smaller pyramid without the seal as far as I know (the one where the Zanchuli council is). It’s also pretty isolated from the rest of the city.

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See is it started like that. But as I’ve said before, everything started going south in Wrath and culminated in Cata.

Varian is portrayed as a hothead to rival Garrosh and actually declares war on the Horde. As their coalition is marching to Icecrown Citadel. In general a war of attrition based on the grudges of kings is a bad idea. But it’s a super special bad idea when you’re fighting a guy who’s main ability is turning corpses into weapons. Icecrown has soldiers raised from both sides in it’s long valley leading up to ICC.

Hell the Alliance / Horde are boss fights in ICC. That’s like chickens and cows going to war in a slaughterhouse. Insanity. And it was the Alliance’s doing.

I knew we were in trouble when the Alliance canonically killed Arthas. That’s still insane to me. The Forsaken and Sin’Dorei are his biggest victims and the Horde has a leader who’s both. It also makes one of the biggest emotional gut punches in WoW history, Saurfang running into the despoiled corpse of his son, entirely non canonical.

Seriously that scene is a nothing burger on an Alliance playthrough. I’m pretty sure your Dwarf captain just gets frozen in ice. On the Horde playthrough Saurfang is too heartbroken to fight, and cannot follow you because Jesus Christ he just had to watch his son die again. The image of this hulking, unstopable Orc warrior reduced to a despondent mess because this is the second time he’s seen his whole world torn asunder is extremely affecting. Shame it apparently never happened.

Plus ya know Tirion lost it all to save Etrigg and was personally spared by Thrall so him deciding to trust the Horde on this final assault would’ve been a culmination of his arc. Perhaps he rejects the firebrand king Varian, recognizing the hate in his eyes all too well.

But nuts to that. The Alliance won because they’re the knights in shining armor that’s how this works. Sure the last major knight in shining armor character was a deranged sociopath we’re marching up a death tower to kill but the marketing boys said otherwise.

And then I’ve ranted about Edge of Night all too much but I’ll never forget just assuming Sylvanas would do this;

Upon seeing how completely screwed the Forsaken are. Only to change her tune when ya know, being such ruthless husk driven by murder with no care for even the people who put their lives in her hand resulted in a bad ending.

And somehow things got even more ridiculous with Garrosh and even more ridiculous in BFA.

Really hoping if Blizz can’t write nuance, then they remember to keep the bad guys as big monsters.

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686

Also a lot of good videoes to watch on the topic but this one probably sums up the experience;

Let’s just say Van Cleef’s “LAP DOGS, ALL OF YOU!” hits different when you’re aware of stuff like the Battle of Blair Mountain.

And of course it turned out you were being given orders by a dragon in Vanilla. You know a monstrous beast famous for sitting on literal piles of gold.

By Cata ah nevermind the Defias are crazy terrorists who are actually against the working people.

The crown is benevolent. The crown is on your side. The crown’s enemies are yours. You are happy with your crumbs, peasant.

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687

Depends on what you count as a temple. I can’t fly around right now, but I think these are all in the city? I don’t know which are actually judge adjacent.

The Hall of Ritual. The Hall of Strength. The Hall of Castes. The Altar of Gonk. The Barrow of Bwonsamdi. The Terrace of the Chosen. Altar of Akunda. Chamber of Rezan. Hall of Shandra. Hall of Lesser Loa. House of Pa’ku. House of the Lost Loa. Terrace of Torcali.

The issue is I think if you want to make the comparison, it’d be “if you aren’t a fan of the Native Americans in 1920’s comic strips, you aren’t a fan of Native Americans”. Like, if people want to compare Trolls to Native Americans, so be it. But I wouldn’t call it a good or appropriate depiction if so. And disliking that wouldn’t indicate a dislike of actual Native Americans.

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They missed their chance with AU Draenor before it went dust due to Yrel. Sadly. I know Thrall would have led them back if the place wasn’t destroyed.

From existence. They are basically aliens. The trolls and elves are the rightful rulers of Azeroth.

Only because Blizzard’s falling at delivering moral nuances. The players kill anything for enough loot.

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The Orcs aren’t from AU Draenor, they’re from Outland. You know, the place we going in Burning Crusade. It still exists, what some of them left of it.

Orcs are literally aliens…

Anyway, saying we should wipe out aliens for being aliens is silly. And without the Titans, Azeroth would be in the thrall of the Void. Without the Titans, we never would have had Trolls. So they’ve clearly earned the right to place some other stuff.

Thanks for agreeing they are villains.

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Good thing I didn’t compare them to American Indians then. As they’re Afro-Carribean styled.

Americans feel bad about that whole thing. Thats why the ever sensible Tauren get their stylings. As borderline asexual, incapable of wrongdoing and indeed most emotion outside level headed reason minotaurs. But hey an attempt was made. Im not expecting omega nerds who grew up in the 70s to have a more robust view of the first nations.

The Trolls are Afro-Caribbean in their stylings. And thats a much sorerer subject in the USA.

Suffice to say Black Panther hit like it did because it was the first time West Africa was portrayed as not just civilized but opulent, imperial and brilliant. Of course I thought it was meh but I’ve heard the Sundiata by a genuine old school storyteller. Oh for the days when wandering drunks with a flair for the theatric were the only form of entertainment. I’d be richer than Mansa Musa.

And that’s kind of the problem. The Trolls were portrayed as stinky, half literate savages in a lot of WoW lore. But then we had Zandalar. El Dorado by way of Jurassic Park. Not just a Troll city but a troll empire and make no mistake, you were there to impress them.

But then we get to Exploring Kalimdor and the Darkspear are illiterates who need the help of the A̶r̶y̶a̶n̶s̶ Sin’Dorei. And also apparently the Goblins posion wells now?

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Oh, ok. I thought your response was related to me being confused why Erevien compared disliking Amani to disliking Native Americans.

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Yeah the Amani have some parallels there but they’re not styled after American Indians. Or American Natives.

I was told at least Native American is basically like saying Eurasian for how vague it is. That does refer to everyone from Inuits to Incan so I can see how that’s ethnographically useless. I’m Austro-Italian ethnically afterall can’t say I have much in common with a Swedish person. They’ll never be welcome at my door if they come with the mashed horse meat they call meatballs at any rate so I can appreciate the annoyance of generalization.

I’ve come to use American Native instead of Indian, purely to not offend other white people.

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You must be fun to bring to an IKEA.

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I’d certainly treat him for a cup of coffee, his posts always make me chuckle.

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me too, Gurd.

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To an extent in my opinion. They were confused about their new state and asked Ra for aid. But Ra withdrew after learning about the Titans deaths. What happened afterwards though… no.

I would say with Cata’s defias plotline, it is more on Vanessa attempting to exploit the ‘peasants’ out of personal revenge for the death of her father. She even had friends of her family murdered because they knew who she truly was.

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Ikea isn’t a furniture store. It’s a labyrinth that traps people for their dark winter deities. Perhaps you’ve made your way out. Most do. But not everyone does.

Only the progeny of Bluetooth enter and exit freely. Beware. What do you think the meatballs are made of?

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I just found the whole plotline to be a dumb tribute to CSI that completely torpedoed whatever interesting threads SW had going for it.

But that pretty much describes all of human Cata content. Would you like to know more about the troubles of the Kingdom of Stormwind living so close to Blackrock Orcs?

Too bad. But if you liked the 2nd or 3rd Rambo movies you’re in for a treat. Also STV is an Apocalypse: Now reference. If anyone knew that movie itself was based on Heart of Darkness they didn’t tell us and that’s immensely concerning.

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There is a building at my local university that is basically that. You go in, good luck trying to find your way to your classroom.

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Just swap out “Trolls” with “Night Elves” and “Blood Elves” with “Orcs/Goblins” and see how quickly people flip in terms of their logical arguments on whether people who shoot first and continuously rebuff incursions into their lands deserve to eventually be wiped out.

I mean, I’m of the opinion that it’s always a bad thing. At the very least, a tragic thing that one shouldn’t try to defend. And if it’s just a thing that happens and there’s no sense in getting sensitive, and we can be flippant about it, then everyone should be fair game. On the other hand…

The Amani -while understood logically as people with the same capacity for love, loss, hope, despair as anyone else- are often presented in the universe as relatively ugly, violent, savage, technologically primitive, spiritually backwards, and lacking actual civilization. And it’s mostly been portrayed as acceptable -if not heroic- throughout the setting’s history to wipe out those kinds of people when they get between the other kind of people and their desire to settle new lands.

This isn't unique to the Amani, either. You see the same thing in WoW with Quillboar, Gnolls, Murlocs, Drust, the list goes on. Also, the argument that all of this happened a long time ago completely glosses over the fact that they're still fighting at the edges of their still shrinking territory and still being systematically hunted down in the modern WoW. It's not that it happened a long time ago, but that it's that it's been happening for a very long time.

It’s just most pronounced among the trolls. As mentioned before, they draw so much more on real world racist depictions and damaging real world misconceptions of historically colonized peoples when dealing with Trolls. Not just in terms of attire and language, but especially with regard to religion; to the point where Blizzard didn’t even bother to change the name of it or its many real world references in many instances.

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Do you believe night elves deserved to be wiped out because they defended themselves when the warsong clan settled on their territory? Or is that a different situation for you because they are a playable race? Smells like double standard.

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You say “colonialism” like there was a continent ruled by High Elves on the other side of the ocean that sent an ever increasing population of Elves eastward to settle on Troll lands. But that didn’t happen. They were maybe 100 families who became nomads in Lordaeron before eventually settling down, always defending against the onslaught of Trolls, spooky Old Gods or other stuff. And all of the Ghostlands? Like the Trolls wouldn’t just immediately raise an army again to wipe the Elves out for good? No, will never happen. Ever since Warcraft 2, a defining trait of Troll Berserkers was the desire to totally annihilate the High Elves (even says so in the manual). The High Elves, understandably, wouldn’t accept that.

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