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Guys I will say the truth as long as I live but you need to hear the eternal truth:
WoW was only good for the rule34 content .
I will die on this hill.
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I mean…it does. Because the lore was that there was some sex slavery before.
But it is a good retcon to make.
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I appreciate your take on it, but I challenge the idea that the story earlier showed us a character who is evil we fought against.
Why? Because the Consorts themselves are raid bosses, and it is not portrayed in a way that makes Lei Shen evil, but instead in a way that normalizes them being trophies of a male emperor. Noone in the story tries to sympathize with them or show disgust towards Lei Shen for keeping them as his personal concubines.
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Perhaps I should rephrase that as no essential lore is changed here.
It’s not essential to Lei Shen’s villianization that he treats his consorts like objects. It does more to normalize the existance of sex slaves to the emperor more than villanizes him for it.
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Many don’t understand the concept of media normalization, or endorsement of a behavior, and just think fiction is totally separate from reality.
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You know, this does remind me of a problem I have been facing with the creation of my own fantasy setting.
It is something I have worked on with the intention of being the setting for a future D&D campaign, and a big part of it is that magic is a relatively new force. That nations and cultures developed mostly without magic. I have been trying to walk a fine line between fantasy and realism, and blurring the lines between myth and folklore and what really exists in the setting.
To do this, I have delved deep into history and old mythologies and folklores, drawing what inspiration I can from it, but I have been struggling with something else. Throughout most of human history, slavery, be it for sex, labor or entertainment, was normalized. The moral objection to the idea that human beings can be considered property is a relatively new idea, and you are more likely to find arguments for equal treatment of slaves than you are to find for the abolishment of slavery altogether (Excluding slave revolts, which are numerous throughout human history).
In all honesty, I have struggled with this a bit in my setting, as I feel such a practice is likely to exist in more than a few of the civilizations that exist in that setting. My thought process has been. “It can be a part of the setting as long as it is not gratuitous” which is easy for me because the whole thing does make me a bit uncomfortable. But I also find that the whole thing is rather gratuitous. One civilization is inspired by Ancient Rome, which is nearly defined by the extremes.
It is interesting to me that you talk about Lei Shen’s Villainization and what is or isn’t essential to it. That the existence of sex slaves is not essential to making him out to be a villain. Of course you are not wrong, there are a lot of ways to make a villain, but no matter how you do it, one thing remains true. A Villain is a villain because they take actions that we morally oppose.
From a world building perspective, it is tricky, because I am not trying to villainize an entire culture, but that culture may or may not hold practices that people of the modern era, and even people within the setting, would find abhorrent.
But a Villain though… it is a little strange to me that we would draw the line with one thing but not another thing, when it should be widely known that this individual is a POS, and his role in the story is to be hated. What constitutes as “essential” at that point?
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While you are trying to make a point that slavery was normalized by ancient cultures.
The history that we know was greatly impacted by British imperialism in the 18th and 19th century. Ask yourself, why they would normalize historic accounts of slavery?
Lol, I mean, if you are implying the Slavery was never normalized in human history, and the evil British Empire just rewrote history to make us believe that, you are just being silly.
By the moral standards of modern era humans, humanity has been pretty awful. Celtic, Saxon and Norman people were taken as slaves by the Romans long before they ever had an empire of their own.
And you kind of bypassed the real question. Why draw the line at one thing, but not the other, when villainizing a character?
Empathy for your fellow human beings did not just magically appear in modern times. Do you know how those slaves felt about it?
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Depends on a number of a factors, but I am sure most hated it. If the numerous slave revolts wasn’t evidence of that. As mentioned, even slave owners argued for the fair treatment of slaves, like Plutarch’s anecdote of 100 AD, or the 47th letter of Seneca’s Epistulae.
Did you even read my post?
Thing is, Empathy for your fellow man is an easy thing to bury. Villainize them as your enemy. Separate them from yourself. Which most slaves were conquered peoples from elsewhere. Put yourself in a position as to be superior to them. Sandford’s Prison experiment comes to mind. It is more likely than you think that these would become cultural norms within a society.
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I’m not saying slavery never existed, I’m saying “modern morals” as you called it normalizes it and continues to normalize it. I don’t think you realize this but there was just as much political polarism back then as there is today. There was many anti-slavery stances in ancient Rome. There was even a festival of Saturnalia where masters would be the slave for the day and dote on their slaves, on that day the former slaves could be as mean as they wanted to their former masters.
I’m not bypassing the question.
- MoP was supposed lure in chinese players and was a kind of ‘love letter’ in itself to Chinese imperialism, which got a lot of backlash even in it’s day.
- Lei Shen is a actually based on a real historical figure in Chinese history/mythology who WoW basically culturally appropriated and turned into a villian.
- the real Leishen never had consorts, he had a monogamous relationship with Dianmu The Goddess of Lightening.
All of this shows not only yet another example of World of Warcraft culturally appropriating mythology, but the “harem of the Emporer” is fetishism of patriarchal cultures and sex slavery.
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Just saying you guys are literally having this debate over a change that barely affects the lore at all.
Consorts or Bodyguards at the end of the day they’re two female Mogu who are super loyal to Lei Shen and stand in the way of killing him.
They’re some raid bosses that I doubt any of you even thought much about before now
I wouldn’t necessarily call that political polarism. The festival shows the normalization of the idea of slavery more than anything. Again, you are more likely to find arguments for the fair treatment of slaves rather than arguments for it’s abolishment.
The appropriation of culture and mythology is a totally separate topic. So you have bypassed the question again… What is the point of drawing the line at one moral issue but not another when you are already dealing with a villainized character?
OK.
The problem “Twins are concubines” is missing. Twins are a construct, so their title / status is not important. Twins do not have “free will” (whatever that means), any dismissive / rude / derogatory (pick the appropriate one or insert your own) perception of their title is an observer’s problem.
The construct has no “free will” (whatever that means). Mogu - the construct of the Titans. Twins is a construct created in accordance with Titan technology. They can be owned because they are constructs.
Statement: Constructs can be owned.
Claim: ownership allows any use.
Statement: Twins are constructs.
The fault must be in the third assertion if the fault is present.
Slavery is bad.
Human trafficking is bad.
Sex slavery is bad.
There’s no justification for any of it. These are bad things. When you add fetishism of these things that’s essentially what this argument is about: should WoW still have fetishized depictions of sex slavery in it’s game?
You say yes?
I say no.
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Divine law provides a basis for anything.
What divine law are you referring to exactly?
Well, what do we mean by fetishized depictions? Because I don’t think there was anything about Lei Shen’s consorts that was depicting sex slavery in a positive light. Hell, we are not even sure if they were there against their will. The lore describes them as trophies, yet they still seemed willing to fight in the defense of Lei Shen and his evil plans.
So what are we talking about here? That villains are no longer allowed to do evil things? Have evil practices?
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