Remember when threads on this forum had a post limit? Like, after a certain amount of discussion, the conversation would be over. And the only way it would continue is if people made the conscious decision that the discussion was worth making a new thread for.
That was a good system.
Ain’t nobody call night elves medieval lmaooooo
The last time we had a thread on racial tropes in WoW, it reached 1k posts, and I kind of suspect we’re on track to do that again.
Nah, we’re only at 525 posts so far.
Sorry, 526.
I have been watching the series World War II in real time, which includes a sub-series about the war against humanity. In that series, they are currently describing and presenting the massacres that took place during the “Holocaust of Bullets” that took place prior to the organization and systematization of hatred, infrastructure, and mass death that we associate with the Holocaust today.
A fair number of wehrmacht soldiers deserted or committed suicide because they were ordered to participate in horrifying atrocities like Babi Yar. To think that Europeans in the modern day would, even in the abstract, get their entertainment from play-acting as those soldiers in the most transparent of a reference possible is stunning and dismaying.
I was a lot more sympathetic to the idea of where Baalsamael is going until I read this post. But I also used to travel in a lot of right wing political circles, and over the last four to five years, I’ve watched people that I used to respect become radicalized. I have talked to old friends who have lost members of their family to the alt right - the actual alt right - as in they can’t talk to those people anymore because they bought the ideology. I have watched concern with some of the rhetoric coming out of the left wing transmogrify into hatred for people of color. I have had people straight up call themselves racists, and question why I’m friends with “certain people”.
Given what Sarm said here, taken with the current situation, I can see some serious issues with what amounts to encouraging and promoting hatred towards people who are coded as the Horde are. I get the impulse - the Horde was forced to play the villain to Inglorious Basterds, now they want the Alliance to play the villain to Django Unchained. It’s kind of like how you’ll get certain Alliance players who want to make Horde players eat the same kind of humiliation and tragedy that Night Elf players had to eat by doing things like burning down Orgrimmar - just an a moral-authority level. But if doing this to the Horde inspired Babi Yar reenactors, as well as the flood of sentiments that should terrify any student of history spilling out over every forum from here to Twitter (yes, even in the abstract), then I think we should pause before we encourage the “Deus Vult” crowd to whip themselves into a frenzy.
Edit: Does that mean the Alliance should continue to be morally perfect? No, but it does mean that we need to visit some nuance and care to this subject.
Side note back in undergrad had a Muslim acquaintance who also played WoW and he presented a really cool argument about how the Blood Elf approaches to the Sunwell post-BC (pilgrimage, permitting even Thalassian Elves of the enemy faction to enter due to sanctity, belief/use in/of the Light without the rigidness of the others, the elf statues that show them sort of mid-dance), resembles how some Sufi Muslims approach God and Hajj.
Wish I had written down what he said, even referenced some philosophers and theologians.
Which is why I do think allowing at least some form of (racial) prejudice into the Alliance could be done well, but then have it limited solely to Greymane and Turalyon.
Because again: they were there the first time around. They’re pretty much the lore character representatives of the “Daelin Was Right” crowd. And with Anduin—the son who challenged his warrior father, the boy who strove so hard to achieve peace for so long—currently held captive in the Shadowlands, now is pretty much the perfect moment for Turalyon and Greymane—both of whom have pretty much been Anduin’s left and right hands since post-Legion—to instigate the kind of “Alliance aggression” a lot of people are asking for.
It also doesn’t have to be the Alliance as a whole, mind you, nor should it. People want the Alliance to have in-fighting and faction tension? Great, bring in Malfurion, Velen, and the Council of Three Hammers to give their vetoes to whatever act of war Team Second War Veterans is cooking up. Meanwhile, we also have the side narrative of, “well, Greymane’s technically in charge in Anduin’s absence because he’s a human king,” and you basically have the Alliance in the same place that the Horde was during BfA: do we follow the High Leader or do we follow our own consciences?
I don’t think it makes as much sense for Turalyon to have it as say - Tyrande. In Turalyon’s case, it’s hard for me to look at that as something other than a bid for trying to portray religious extremism, and again, hype up the deus vult crowd - but I’m not seeing the linkage here that makes this make sense. Genn and Tyrande are different. Genn has every reason to hate the Horde, so does Tyrande. Both of them I could understandably see as taking their pain and turning it into prejudice.
Now, I have seen replies that “no matter what the Alliance do at this point, they will be justified” - and I disagree with that. Killing someone who had nothing to do with what happened to you on the basis of how they look is not something you can justify, and in that sense, we can take a believable situation and turn that into content that makes people think, and possibly question whether they’re doing the right thing - while giving the Horde a strong antagonist to want to fight.
But I don’t think we get there by injecting wink wink. nudge nudge. I’m racist and prejudiced, guys, Deus Vult! characters so that we can fill out a checklist and conclude that things are balanced now - and that’s kind of how I see the Turalyon situation.
And Alleria and Veressa, former was a little too eager to happily invade Undercity and the latter was a little too eager to happily help Quel’thalas/Darkspear Trolls crush the Amani (again)
I’d also argue that both Malfurion and Tyrande should be anti Orc, anti Troll, and anti Blood Elves and Nightborne
Genn/Turalyon/Alleria trying to take over northern Eastern Kingdoms with Genn/Turalyon focusing on seizing Gilneas and Alleria working north and west from Eastern Plaguelands would in turn lead to a chance for Calia to be attacked by the Alliance (Anduin overruled, rendered powerless, democracy working against him) and her begin to resent the living due to their contempt for the Undead.
Too late for that, Crusader Twitter already have Turalyon on Warhammer memes lol
The problem with that is we’ve already seen from Tyrande that she’s (rightly) focusing her vengeance on Sylvanas personally, and whatever else happens to her by the end of Shadowlands probably won’t make her a “frothing for Horde blood” character in the next expansion.
Which leaves us with Greymane, who does have the most motivation to hate not just Sylvanas, but the Horde as a whole.
Oh, so do I.
Basically recreate the original Alliance of Lordaeron to an extent, exactly.
Because just like Garrosh in Mists and now Sylvanas in BfA have caused people to link Thrall’s Horde with Blackhand’s/Gul’dan’s Horde—Saurfang even makes this reference in-game—we have yet to see the “new” Alliance doing remotely anything that would cause someone like, say, Jaina, to go, “Nope. Stop, we’ve been down this road before, I’ve seen it first-hand, don’t do this!”
Turalyon, perhaps, but it would definitely be interesting to see how a “Jaina vs. Greymane” situation would play out. Both were there during the original Alliance of Lordaeron days, but given the events of “Old Hatreds,” it’s probably pretty likely that they have very differing perspectives on whether or not those were truly the “good” old days.
Its a neat notion. It truly is a shame that so little traction has been made on the BE story since BC. Outside of being used as accessories for Light Based content, they haven’t had much time or passion devoted to them in quite a while. Like Baine, their reps get a lot of screen time because they fall into Blizz’s comfort zone, but also like Baine their reps are sort of rendered rather generic because the race they’re supposed to be representing don’t actually get stories to represent.
How does one seriously get the idea that racism and colonialism is European exclusive?
Do you guys really think that only Europe has made territorial conquest? That wars of conquest of any rising empire have not always influenced Natives, when Rome, for example, partly resettled or killed the Germanic tribes? Or the Aztecs and Maia, or the Indian wars?
Or did you know that in North Africa, the first Muslim empires held the largest slave market in human history to that time, 1000 years before the colonial powers?
Did you know that the Mongols killed all who dared to resist, whole tribes?
I wonder who here is trying to make the just too ludicrous and - sorry to say - also historically simple wrong statement that only Europeans ever did these things? Whoever spreads this narrative is not only a liar, no, he reveals a racist attitude himself.
The difference to the classical empire, in which there was also massive oppression of ethnic groups, was the difference in modern times, that these colonial areas belonged very well to the motherland, but the native there were not the citizen of this motherland jn the first place, but workers or were used as such.
Only later, in the mid to late 19th century, voices were slowly raised and reforms were made to grant citizenship rights to these colonial citizens as well, which is why many went to France or England.
More importantly:
How is any of your post relevant to the Warcraft lore?
Regarding Tyrande, I am aware of her focus on Sylvanas. I’m also aware of her opinions towards the Horde. I don’t think she should just drop those, and after, if not during Shadowlands, I believe she should act on them.
@Zahirwrite
I think we get the idea that racism and colonialism is exclusively European from our primarily Eurocentric and Americentric way of telling history. We are only now, thanks largely to history YouTubers, really diving into histories other than those from those perspectives.
But Velskar is also correct to ask about that post’s relevance.
Nobody is saying that, but we exist in the 21st century during the global Hegemony of Westphalian Nation-states and Capitalism centered on the Imperial Core of the Global North ie mostly Europe with US and China (eg IMF, members of UN Security Council) to the Periphery (Global South) in neocolonial economic and media relations
Sure the Visigoths conquered my Iberian ancestors in the 800s and the Inca colonized my tribe in the 1300s, but neither affects me lmao
What does affect me is when the US arms paramilitaries in my country, or when a US white guy physically assaults me on the street on the way to class because he thinks I “look Muslim”, or when my Afro Indigenous family doesn’t have access to resources because of post revolutionary national history.
It’s interesting that you and Baalsamael both bring up the concept of having Malfurion and Tyrande acting on their anti-Horde bias, because frankly one thing that was missing from BfA was what a group like the Cenarion Circle thinks of all this.
Sure, they’re all druids, but their members include night elves, trolls, and tauren. Rather than get differing perspectives on Teldrassil—which, while being the night elf capital, was still a basion of Life magic—we’re just given the impression that they’re all hanging out at Silithus and the giant sword.
As a US white guy, I am very sorry if this has happened to you, and wish to reassure you that your assailant does not represent everyone in his racial demographic.
I’ve accepted by now that they just don’t care - and I think in future, the Night Elves should call them out on their expectation of having the Night Elves defend mount Hyjal or to protect the wilds if when the situations are reversed, they won’t lift a finger - but that’s a different conversation.
Yup. We are literally starved for background information for Blood Elves, because what we do get makes more questions than answers. As an example.
Meanwhile we get ever-more nuance regarding the Wiccan Moon Goddess Metaphor.
Wtb “Solar First One” narrative development. Maybe the Blood Elves are getting whispers from the Sun via the Sunwell and the Tauren are like “whoa that’s An’she’s energy” etc so Horde can have in on the First Ones party
That is a very good point to make, though; if Mulgore were being threatened, for example, should it be considered Tauren territory first or nature first?
Because yeah; Ashenvale, Darkshore, and Teldrassil all may have been night elf territory faction-wise (as is Mt. Hyjal and Moonglade), but they are all still the epicenters of Life as a cosmic force (read: druids and Ancients). So then we get into the interesting question of priorities and whether or not faction loyalty trumps, well…loyalty to the world itself.
Which has actually been a recurring theme throughout the Warcraft series.
It really is.
When you create a narrative in which a people is presented to the audience as not being capable of mercy and compassion and lead the audience to believe they aren’t worthy of mercy and compassion, having other people in character being jerks to them is a bad way to illustrate the dangers of bigotry.
Yes, I was using Garithos’ racism against Elves and Dwarves as an example of how one successfully shows bigotry as a flaw. That’s why I referred to it.
And it worked was because the audience hadn’t been presented with Dwarves and Elves as an alien species incapable of mercy, remorse, fear, compassion, etc. Or as expies of Tolkien/always CE D&D style orcs. They were presented as people and drew from the more humazined impressions of those races we knew of from Tolkien/D&D.
So when Garithos is racist to Dwarves/Elves, we don’t go, “Well of course he’d hate them, considering what the Dwarves/Elves have done to his people. At least he’s choosing the lesser of two evils by not slaughtering them now.” Instead the reaction is usually more along the lines of, “WoW, Garithos is a bigot. I wish someone would stop him.”
The novelization for Tides of Darkness came out in 2007, 12 years after the game and 5 years after WCIII.
No, there’s no set in stone rules. Only what is/isn’t effective in communicating a message. And presenting a situation where in universe characters and the audience are led to see a race as largely irredeemable to the point where concentration camps are a reasonable/merciful solution- not just from the point of view of in universe racists, but also to the audience- you’ve done a bad job at communicating the flaws of bigotry.
There are good examples of Human bigotry in Warcraft being used to show flaws. We both identified Garithos as an example. We just disagree on whether how the camps were implemented in the narrative were.
You and others have asked, “Well what was the Alliance supposed to do with orcs after WCII considering their experiences with them?” And many have concluded that what the options were only concentration camps or genocide, and gone with camps as the most reasonable and merciful solution given their circumstances. That the bigotry of the Alliance made sense considering what they and we knew of orcs up until then.
Which makes it very clear that Blizzard did a bad job of making it clear in this instance that bigotry is not justified and that concentration camps are bad.
Thrall doesn’t show up until after the camps are a thing either.
I’m saying that for the camps to work as an example of the flaw of Human bigotry as it applies to orcs, we, the audience, should have started seeing characters like Thrall in the narrative (and especially the games) a lot sooner.
Because up until the franchise started introducing characters like Thrall and further humanized orcs (in novels), the camps could only be considered a reasonable/more compassionate choice and not something you’d particularly fault the Alliance for opting for, given how orcs had been portrayed in universe and to the audience up until then.
Yes. That’s why those examples work better.
That’s why I’m not writing off the franchise as a whole. There have existed good examples of writing that reveal the flawed bigotry in the Alliance. The decision to go with camps over genocide as the more merciful option given the way orcs had been presented up until then just happens to not be one of those examples.