"The Night Elves deserved it" - a conversation on another kind of villain batting

[Drahliana-earthen-ring (Drahliana)]

@Kyalin-cenarion-circle

• Tyrande, she who must be corrected - Faction War Edition: For some time, I have watched Horde posters salivate over the idea of Tyrande becoming a raid boss. Blizzard likes to wheel her out to verbally abuse (but not actually attack) Horde players, but more recently, through the theming of the Night Warrior paired with Blizzard’s typical penchant for making her look unreasonable, she was for a time presented as being on the wrong side of the Alliance’s moral direction, most notably with the confrontation in the Stormwind embassy over the peace treaty. While players can suggest that Tyrande is probably right, the scene paints her as being the “darker” disruptive figure as Anduin lectures her on why the path that she’s taking is wrong. In this patch, Tyrande appears to be getting her motivations lobotomized away in favor of “renewal”, but the Night Warrior previously existed to cast-as-evil the Night Elf cause of wanting to strike back over Teldrassil.
• Tyrande, she who must be corrected - Nightborne Edition: In Warcraft 3, upon encountering Kael’thas Sunstrider, Tyrande acted cordially and selflessly in order to assist the Blood Elves. In Legion, meanwhile, the character comes off as a jerk towards the Nightborne. Now we can argue as to whether her position could be justified, but the two elements I would again point out are a) the writers gave her or the Night Elves no opportunity to advance or argue for their position - it was simply cast as wrong, and b) the point of this seems to have been to paint Liadrin and the Blood Elves as the reasonable party. Again, I don’t care who you think was right here, my point is that the authorial intent again appears to have been to villainize Night Elves in order to elevate the moral standing of another party.

Tyrande as anything other than shrew incarnate is a Richard Knaack WOTA novel creation.

Tyrande is a female leader created by male writers and she suffers from birth from the "Btch Leader mode that many men seem to feel that is the only way to create a female leader. Her main action as the player character in WC3 was to murder Maiev’s Sentinels to free the Betrayer that Malfurion had sentenced to eternal confinement. (Mal’s less than pleased about this development.)

The fact that she allowed these Wardens to become so distanced from her over time does not speak well of her abilities to keep in touch with those of the Sisterhood that she delegated leadership to other parties. (I mean really over 13,000 years didn’t she have SOME time to look in on them?)

Some players took exception to Varion’s reigning her in at the Temple of the Red Crane as if Tyrande had been struck by deranged author syndrome and made out of character in order for Varion to look good. What they neglect is that Tyrande was simply showing her normal behavior in a crisis situaiton. Behavior just as in character as when she dived into the Maw on top of the Frozen Throne. Her taking on the Night Warrior mantle was nothing more than just an extreme example of behavior that she has been prone to since she was introduced in the RTS.

If you’re upset about how Tyrande is portrayed, keep in mind that this is the way that she’s been running from the start of the franchise.

[Shernish-nazjatar]

I know. If the father is a murderer, then the child is innocent.
If the father was humiliated, should the child feel humiliated?

[Treefolk-elune]

There was one moment with High Elves.
In Chronicles when its written about Hight Elves exile, it said that High Elves were very very happy. They finally got freedom, and started to build their own nation.
So, Night Elves that decided to exile Hight Elves instead of execution, were portrayed as pretty good people.

But in the "The Good War " book, where the Horde was killing Night Elves, in one episode 7k years old Blood Elf rogue tells, that Night Elves actually are evil. He told how unhappy were High Elves after exile. How they were dying on the snow in the cold winter e.t.c.
So, author definitely was trying to portray Night Elves as villains in that book, so that the Horde could say that Night Elves really deserved to be killed.

[Cursewords-tichondrius (Cursewords)]

@Drahliana-earthen-ring

Tyrande as anything other than shrew incarnate is a Richard Knaack WOTA novel creation.

I was jauntily reading this thread, thinking :

“Drahliana always has the sober take.”

And then I read that. Yeesh. If Tyrande is Shrew incarnate, that speaks well of the shrew.

In WC 3, she was fine enough. One of my favorite lines from Tyrande comes from WC 3. Malfurion says: “I forbid it.”

And Tyrande says something like:

“Oh no this fool didn’t. Look here , mother trucker. I will beat a sucker!”

And she gained a fan. Tyrande won’t let some male forbid her against her Goddess. And I can appreciate that.

[Ariël-drakkari (Ariël)]

@Treefolk-elune

But in the "The Good War " book, where the Horde was killing Night Elves, in one episode 7k years old Blood Elf rogue tells, that Night Elves actually are evil. He told how unhappy were High Elves after exile. How they were dying on the snow in the cold winter e.t.c.
So, author definitely was trying to portray Night Elves as villains in that book, so that the Horde could say that Night Elves really deserved to be killed.

Indeed the guy dropped the ball AND created an issue regarding thalassian elf ageing in addition to this contradictory development. When asked in twitter why hadn´t he used the Ghostlands stuff instead to justify Lorash´s “anger”, he apologized over literally forgetting the Ghostland questing.

[Setiosiris-borean-tundra (Setiosiris)]

horde should want to destroy the alliance with anymeans and with no regrets the alliance should hate the horde as well. im for the horde and alliance going back to their roots interms of how they do stuff. sylvanas as saurfang said was leading the horde how blackhand the first warchief did. and frankly the horde are trying to hard to become good guys alliance should be the oposite. when it comes to the teldrassil in terms of battle burning teldrassil stopped the alliance from having that foothold as the bombing of theramore was a good move in terms of war.

[Setiosiris-borean-tundra (Setiosiris)]

a good war is cannon thallassian elves DO infact live forever unless killed or diseased your dislike and fannon saying otherwise has no standing the how the thalssian elves age has been offically retconned to not doing from aging. sorry if you dont like it but you dont get a say in this.

[Gantrithor-myzrael]

@Kyalin-cenarion-circle

the Night Elves, who I will argue often DO get villain batted

TTS - Necrons Laughing Condescendingly

No.

The Night Elves may get used in a way that is, arguably, antagonistic. But to say they often get villain-batted?

No.

In the WoW universe as a whole? No.

Relative to the other Alliance races? No.

Relative to the Horde? HA! No.

I can only remember the 2 Night Elves that side with Ragnaros in Cata, Fandral and Alyssra (?). Even that is arguable as villain-batting because Fandral had been actively working against Malfurion since Vanilla. The PCs are never asked to do something questionable or outright villainous under Fandral after he sides with Ragnaros (that is, after he officially becomes a bad guy), AFAIAA. Likewise, the Alliance (Night elf) PC is infrequently, if ever, admonished/shamed by the game for the actions they take when playing.

Now, with that said, I can understand how this characterization can feel like villain-batting when placed alongside characters like Anduin who always have to be in the right to the detriment of everyone else. This can be a glaring issue with how those situations are played out with other members of the same faction. The faction that is advertised as the hero faction, no less.

Look at Horde grievances such as Taurajo. Male human antagonist does something bad, eventually is killed off but gets post hoc justification from the leader of his victims.

Or the purge. Jaina Deus Ex Proudmoore does some, arguably, bad thing. Gets post hoc justification afterwards in the form of an apology from Aethas.

Now you look at Night Elven actions and … well… you get things like the Quelthalas thread. Were the Night Elves made the villain in those scenarios? Eh… the reasoning and extent to which they are contributing to the plight of the Blood elves is flimsy. Were they used as a plot device to justify why the blood elves joined the horde? Sure. Same thing when Tyrande gave Thalyssra the side eye in Legion. Villain? No. Plot device? Sure.

Now, not saying that just because I don’t consider the Night Elves to have ever really been hit by the villain bat that there aren’t issues with how they are portrayed. And it comes down to, as usual, Blizzard working to maintain an expectation for the faction (Alliance) while needing an entity (Night Elves at times, humans at others) to play the Antagonist. This leads to shoddy storytelling that involves post hoc justification, whitewashing and hand-waving for the Alliance. For Horde there is shaming, destabilization and a whole lot of “sweeping things under the rug”. Neither is good for the story or for the player experience.

This now brings up another point:

What qualifies as being hit by the villain bat?

[Ariël-drakkari (Ariël)]

For starters, it’s “canon”, not “cannon”.

For seconds, how about you go back and read once again my post, cause I clearly remember it was focused in criticizing the F tier writting choice made by the author of “A Good War”.

Nowhere it’s said I believe the story per se is not canon. As a matter of fact it being pretty much canon IS what makes the writting choice so controversial, cause now we have “Blood of the Highborne” saying Anasterian was a decrepit elf AND “A Good War” portraying Lorash as a springy young adult elf… and according to the timeline Lorash could be OLDER than Anasterian ffs… We have TWO coexisting canon lore sources contradictory to each other and somehow we will have to manage with both being right.

Trash tier writting back there.

[Setiosiris-borean-tundra (Setiosiris)]

im sorry but you are wrong.

[Ariël-drakkari (Ariël)]

I’d say getting portrayed while fulfilling the requirements I’m about to post could qualify as “getting the villain bat”:

1. Incoherent character behaviour in regards to the narrative path previously covered by the aforementioned character (Ex: Kael’thas attacking Quel’thalas in TBC. Cause while he was indeed desperate in WC3:TFT, he certainly cared by his people too. Him attacking Silvermoon to summon his Daddy Demon regardless on the safety of those same people came from nowhere).

2. Putting clearly malicious motivations as the “cause” for the character’s morally questionable actions and getting this exposed as such by the narrative. Sometimes this is the result of retcons applied retroactively to the original story (Ex: Sylvanas and Wrathgate. Up until SL pre-patch, the canon explanation for Wrathgate was Varimatras betraying Sylvanas, nucanon says she was behind the murder of both the Alliance and the Horde soldiers present since the beginning).

3. Most if not ALL the character roster of the game both directly and indirectly involved in the narrative explicitly condemning the actions of the “evil” character several times.

Hmmm… That would be it as far as my analysis, feel free to complement.

[Dalrond-moon-guard]

@Ariël-drakkari

For starters, it’s “canon”, not “cannon”.

For seconds, how about you go back and read once again my post, cause I clearly remember it was focused in criticizing the F tier writting choice made by the author of “A Good War”.

Nowhere it’s said I believe the story per se is not canon. As a matter of fact it being pretty much canon IS what makes the writting choice so controversial, cause now we have “Blood of the Highborne” saying Anasterian was a decrepit elf AND “A Good War” portraying Lorash as a springy young adult elf… and according to the timeline Lorash could be OLDER than Anasterian ffs… We have TWO coexisting canon lore sources contradictory to each other and somehow we will have to manage with both being right.

Trash tier writting back there.

The writing in the book itself was decent, tbh.
But yeah, I agree, I absolutely hate the fact that we are given contradicting lore pieces in the book, and even in the game.

[Quard-lightbringer (Quard)]

@Kyalin-cenarion-circle

• Azshara: This one is more on the metanarrative side, but it’s also one that pits the trolls in particular against the Kaldorei but not against the Sin’dorei, even though the latter has more of a history with them. This is that Night Elves uniquely catch blame for the actions of Azshara and her empire, despite that they overthrew and replaced said system, and as the successor societies that tacked closer to Azshara’s way of doing things are largely spared the blame.

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a troll talk about Azshara or the War of the Ancients.