Honestly, I think this is why creators of fictional worlds are so unwilling to come out and say any person (or even cosmic force) is unequivocally good. They’re too afraid of it backfiring on them if players/audiences don’t agree.
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A few year back I say it could but they should risk it…But now a days… yeah you might be onto something there because its happening on different franchises even as I type this! lol
You can’t refresh a screen without an articles or video bring this stuff up! The backlash is real and SAVAGE when it comes to the entertainment and fantasy stuff! 
Vietnam: “oh, word?”
India: “oh cool, can we get our land back then?”
Tibet: “mmhrmmm…”
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I forgot
Also forgot.
For some reason I thought that was before the founding. Also Tibet wasn’t free before Mao took over.
I meant they didn’t send troops across the sea to invade anyone.
I should’ve phrased that better. You’re right that people aren’t going to have 100% the same values, and the rest. It’d be better to say on the big issues, or the moral issues that’ll apply to the plot; that they should be in accord on.
I was thinking characters are either proven right or wrong, or those in the wrong admit they were wrong and affirm that those who were right were right. An out of game source would sidetrack from the story, though it can happen (eg; Chrisite Golden has stated both Arthas and Garrosh were in the wrong morally).
That inconsistency with power levels is one of the flaws of WoW’s writing. I do know that that Pit Lord Illidan beat wasn’t the strongest Pit Lord, but Xe’ra was supposed to be the strongest Naaru encountered thus far.
I’m conflicted. While your points are good, this can be abused to do the writers’ job for them, and give them a license to keep doing lazy or inconsistent writing. It will hurt the story in the long run if every time there’s inconsistency or lazy writing we excuse it by inventing our own theories.
You and me both.
That is based on how the media and people involved in this discussion treat both. There is a clear double standard on display when comparing media coverage, the slant of the articles/reports and speaking with certain people. That said, you’re not wrong about not tarring with the same brush and looking better.
Since China’s invasions of Vietnam, India and Tibet have been brought up, there’s also their covert colonialism in Cambodia and countries of Africa like Kenya and The Congo.
And the US has never had concentration camps, unlike China. Or as many civil wars. Or the same level of media censorship.
I think I’d take that risk. So much “morally grey” in fiction these days, some black and white would be a breath of fresh air and add some much-needed balance. A lot of people forget that good vs evil/black vs white can have tension, twists and drama.
The heroes can fail or make mistakes without ceasing to be good. The villains can win battles, hide out of reach of the heroes’ justice or conceal their evil behind a mask without ceasing to be evil.
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Bro wants the game to be a saturday morning cartoon where it all ends in some character looking into the camera to say some moral lesson
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Nah, but even that would still be better than WoD, BfA or Shadowlands.
It absolutely would not cause what you’re describing is just anduin pre ptsd, Cause literally everyone would always point how right anduin is
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Cool story, bro.
Yeah I don’t see how black-and-white storytelling is how we’d get anything but the BFA we already have, writing Sylvanas as lacking logic as long as Maximum Evil was chosen while Anduin represented Maximum Good of choosing peace and understanding, which utterly ruined the entire narrative premise for the horde in the process.
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While I see your point, the writers and story treated Sylvanas as morally grey, so that wasn’t black and white morality.
Not during BFA they didn’t. And it’s that story that went on to make Shadowlands even worse than it already otherwise would’ve been. Writing from a more even-handed grey from the start should’ve prevented that because night elf genocide wouldn’t have even been on the table to begin with.
This same black-and-white writing is also present in Jaina’s and Tyrande’s writing, too. Peace good, vengeance bad, no nuance allowed. That’s why Jaina flips yet again while Tyrande’s constantly derided in the story about how she needs to let go of her anger or she’ll destroy herself, because that’s a very common trope in itself poorly applied to what the game did prior.
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Yes, they did. They treated Sylvanas’ action as “being in service of a greater goal” according to her and plot-armored her like crazy. Because Sylvanas’ lore in BfA was the product of a tug-of-war between a dev who loved her and a toxic dev who hated her (the toxic dev was one of the biggest pushers of “morally grey” in the story).
Jaina in BfA had some nuance. That’s why she went “not all Horde bad, but some are”. It seemed to me more like Tyrande was right at the time and Anduin was wrong at the time, especially given how Shadowlands played out.
None of what you said show show the writers showed the morality of her actions, Being in service of a greater goal doesn’t change the morality nor does plot armour
The writing for Sylvanas’s “greater goal” at the time of BFA’s writing was literally nothing more than “kill the world and make everyone zombies”. Nothing about Shadowlands’s story was actually written out at the time Afrasiabi was kicked out.
And “not all horde are bad” is not the moral Jaina was given; it was “vengeance is bad”. The same one Tyrande was written to be failing at because her refusal to let go was literally destroying her. You can’t get more on-the-nose than that.
BFA was black and white. BFA is also telling you that you are wrong in what good and evil is if you disagree with it.
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Ignoring the fact that the US goverment put American born Japanese people in camps during WW 2 after pearl harbor
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There was Sylvanas’ nihilistic claptrap about how the world is unfair and we’re all prisoners was sloppy foreshadowing for Shadowlands. Some of it was in BfA, though the tug of war between the toxic scumbag Afrasiabi and hyper-fanboy Danuser clouded the issue.
I’m not sure the “vengeance was bad” moral was what Jaina got. That’s not how it came across when, for example, Baine reunited Jaina with her undead brother. And there was valid reason for them to imprison Talanji and Zul (especially Zul) and the Battle of Dalar’azor came across as that “morally grey” business. Though that is a good point about Tyrande.
Goes to show that the writers at the time did a poor job of morality, as is often the case with WoW (I even wrote a thread covering part of this).
I hadn’t heard that so I looked them up. Strangely, they were called concentration camps even though they functioned like prison camps. While I condemn those US camps from what little I saw, they were still far better/less bad than what China’s currently doing to the Uyghur Muslims and what the Japanese did to THEIR prisoners of war during World War 2 (look up Unit 731 - hope you have a strong stomach, because their crimes against humanity involved crossing moral lines even AUSCHWITZ didn’t cross). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
Also remember that in World War 2, the US fought against the Third Reich while Japan allied with the Third Reich.
Jaina was ready to kill Baine before her brother spoke up.
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Jaina finding out her brother had been turned into a Forsaken given what she knew of the Forsaken’s war crimes and what she knew of Sylvanas… and Baine brought him to her like that. Since she didn’t know Baine’s intention at first, her reaction was understandable. Especially since using him to kill Jaina and others was exactly what Sylvanas intended before Baine and the Horde PC intervened. Jaina’s “Is he the bomb this time!?” line was almost spot on - and Derek even says Jaina was right at first.
[Spoiler] An Unexpected Reunion - YouTube
Jaina sounds more morally grey than black and white. Genn definitely was.
I don’t care if her reaction is understandable or not. I’m talking about the motivation of the writing itself. In that moment, Jaina becomes momentarily blinded by vengeance until talked out of it and realizes her immediate reaction is wrong.
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