Not “metaphor races.” That’s YOUR interpretation.
Whitemane and the Scarletts were evil because they WEREN’T being manipulated by Demons originally. The fact the were evil is what attracted the Demons to them. The Demons just “redirected” them.
The Scarletts were Evil long before that… Just not as powerful.
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Tauren being North Amerindigenous Peoples Metaphor (specifically Dine and Pacific Northwest, among others) is not an interpretation lmao
God you’re so bad at ethnography and theory of cultural production.
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Hate to break it to you, but a LOT of players are probably going to interpret it as such; the in-game references like night elf (Japanese) pagodas, clearly-Ancient Greek ruins/architecture, the industrialized/gothic (British) city of Gilneas, the pyramid in Dazar’alor, are fairly obvious, just to name a few.
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I agree to a point there but idk what cultural group the Forsaken are supposed to be. They sure spoke to me as a 12 year old with poor social skills and to be diagnosed mental disorders and still speak to me as a well adjusted adult whos none the less very happy I can position my laptop camera away from the purple skull I use as a pen holder at my home work desk during zoom meetings.
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There’s literally nothing to interpret, it’s point blank what they are. Some of the gameplay races are more “complex” (read: hyperplural amalgamations) than others, but most are simple/straightforward
e.g. Kul Tiras = Colonial Pirate Aesthetics + Lovecraftian New England + Witch Trials New England + Regency Era Navy
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I know. I was agreeing with you, which is why I quoted you first, and then Faelia.
Also,
My interpretation of the Forsaken is sort of the “Tim Burton-Nightmare Before Christmas/Corpse Bride” gothic take on zombies, going by a lot of the humor in-game, but maybe that’s just me. /shrug
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Zombies in Western fantasy are rooted originally from Southern Class/Race anxieties in the US.
Zombi is Caribbean word that survived via Haitian/Louisiana Voodoo controlled by a Bokor (errr, “Bad Voodoo Priest”), survived in Southern US Folklore, that was later incorporated as “mindless undead invading my cities and suburbs” in the late 20th century.
The Gothic/Penny Dreadful aesthetics and motifs gesture to Victorian Decadence.
“Fallen Kingdom”, “Prince Arthas betrayed us”
Forsaken are foremost a Class Metaphor with some in-group Racial Anxiety (Stormwind Humans don’t consider Forsaken to be Real Humans in any way, they are, literally, Forsaken)
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Obligatory post when the word Gothic is mentioned:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c6/73/26/c67326b3b1a2936caed0c5d3a20c26a4.jpg
Tirisfal is #2 and #14 and #17, also 10
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I’m not really interested in asserting colonial tropes and racism into the narrative because Stormwindians are white.
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well at least you recognize it!
but yeah no the intro to some of the Horde races in the narration mentioned “imperialist alliance”, among other things, historically, so uh
And you have a poor grasp on the English Language and/or lack of Creative Reinterpretation and inspiration.
Tauren are not North Amerindigenous Peoples. And even then, they’re probably the race MOST closely resembling their inspiration. But that’s mostly on account of how LITTLE lore they actually have. So players have to imagine them AS North Amerindigenous Peoples just to fill in the blanks.
i.e. Your interpretation. Literally.
I’m well aware of the zombie origins here. Who do you think you’re talking to. I mean go ahead and look at the film White Zombie if you want to talk about those zombies.
But let’s face facts here Romero changed the popular conception of zombies in the 60s. Who are more accurately ghouls. They have nothing to do with fears about, in more ways than one, black magic these days.
I’d also argue the Forsaken are more descendants of Warhammer’s Vampire Counts with a mix of Skaven than zombies in any sense of the word. They sleep in coffins in the Lugosi pose, they ride giant vampire bats and have cauldrons of regular sized ones zooming around their homes, and they have highly exaggerate gas weapons as designed by Tim Burton.
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The narrative of the Horde being victims of racist persecution holds no water in the current setting.
It seems really dumb to base narrative beats solely on the trope that the races seed from. Making the Alliance racist because they have loose (very loose) colonial themes is asinine.
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Fair but I maintain Forsaken would be more adequately described as working class vampires/ghasts.
I feel like I’m misunderstanding something or I’m just not getting what you’re trying to say by denying the associations tauren have with Native American stereotypes. The only other thing I can think of at the moment is that you’re saying tauren aren’t literally Native Americans. And I certainly hope nobody thinks they’re minotaurs IRL.
But it just seems odd to say that their artistic ties don’t have any relevance. If you just took a feather headdress by itself, then whatever. But then you stick a totem pole next to it and now you’ve established the beginning of a pattern. Then throw in some teepees and NPC dialogue literally greeting you with “How” and now you’ve created a theme.
These things don’t have to be accurate, just recognizable. That’s what makes them a stereotype.
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Nope my English is lit, you just think creatives have no narrative obligation to races in their fiction based upon real world subaltern peoples, which is cringe and yikes
IMO Zombies are centered on “class anxieties”/social collapse more than anything nowadays, e.g. why a lot of zombie movies are based in a decaying suburb or similar setting
The Warhammer Vampire similarities is more because both them and Forsaken are derived from Penny Dreadful/Victorian Vampire Fiction in part.
But sure, prole ghoul whatever lol
It makes it a representation meant to represent a truth within the game; a simulacra of North Amerindigenous peoples.
Which Faelia believes that the artists have no obligations to do “justice” to these representations by virtue of their subaltern basis.
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You are misunderstanding because that is not what I’m saying at all.
I most certainly am not saying that their artistic ties don’t have any relevance. Quite the contrary.
What I am saying is just because a fictional culture draws inspiration from real life cultures does not mean that that Culture is meant to represent that real world culture.
You can argue that the Writers/artists can get a little too into the inspiration and might start to lay in on thick. And that’s fair.
But it’s disingenuous to imply that that this fictional culture is meant to BE “THIS REAL WORLD CULTURE.”
I would be cautious with the word “obligation,” imo.
Because technically-speaking, no; artists don’t have an obligation to…well, to do anything other than create. At the end of the day, a story can be based/influenced/inspired by RL material, but it’s still fiction.
And yet here we are with “All Land Is Troll Land, Actually”, wonder why, wonder where that comes from, wonder who else this is applied to IRL that is one of the basis of the various Troll peoples
Nah creation comes with responsibility to what your world is imparting on the reader.
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