Do you believe Horse-drawn carriages and industrialization only happened in Victorian England?
The point of that statement wasn’t to deny the aesthetic influence, but merely to contest the idea that those things are cultural staples.
Yes it is… Elves and Dwarves in Generic fantasy are vastly different than they exist in European Folklore.
No, but as mentioned, mounted, armored Knights existed outside of Europe.
When everything meaningful about a culture is stripped away, leaving only the bare aesthetics, it’s no longer culture.
Take a European knight, strip him of his Order, strip him of his code of Chivalry, strip him of his noble titles and duties. Fail to accurately depict the armor and weapons as the practical tools of war, turning them into impractical fashion statements. There isn’t much left of the culture.
For sure but like if want to see “my people” I look at Zandalari society.
That’s because of Tolkien who based his stuff on modern folklore evolution of older myths.
Zandalari is my generic fantasy.
Stormwind is European centric generic fantasy.
Pandaria is east asian generic fantasy
You realize this yes? Your average Caribbean or Indigenous person, or Chinese or Japanese person, who looks at WoW and asks “what is based upon my culture’s typical fantasy” IS NOT Stormwind? You know this?
The Victorian Era was literally named after England’s monarch, Queen Victoria.
Are you denying that England was very much the technological/imperial global superpower of that time period?
…except literally nothing meaningful about a culture has been stripped away.
Tauren are instantly recognizable as Native American.
Night elves are instantly recognizable as Ancient Greek.
Gilneans are instantly recognizable as Victorian British.
Between architecture and culture practices, there are literally so many examples that have been deliberately put into the game to signify this that you have to purposefully ignore them not to notice this.
I also miss the pagan/celtic flair they added to Gilneas, with the whole Harvest Witch idea. It was pretty cool, shame it’s never been bought up or shown since the Cata intro
That is the main issue here. These guys can’t make the distinction between aesthetics and culture. They want to claim something is cultural representation, when the culture is barely even present. Yet, they want to call me racist on the basis of my faith. Bunch of morons.
No it’s not. Generic fantasy is what it is. There is nothing generic about the Zandalari in the realm of fantasy, because it’s cultural influences were not used in the development of generic fantasy.
That diversification in fantasy is a good thing for the genre. However, because it is new to the genre, it has not yet been watered down to the point of being culturally irrelevant yet.
Everything meaningful in European culture is not present in Azeroth’s humanity. In fact, I find more culturally significant aspects in the Kaldorei than I do in Humans.
And you’re ignorant.
No, they aren’t.
Industrialization is not a staple of English Culture. It was a global renaissance of engineering.
When it comes to Stormwind, everything of cultural significance has been stripped away.
When I look at Stormwind, I just find a boring, generic fantasy human kingdom, that really doesn’t have much of anything concerning European culture. Castles and knights or their equivalents aren’t just a European thing, they’re all over the world
Lol, it literally is how it works. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t change the facts. Get over yourself. Learn that the world doesn’t owe you anything.
Correct me if I’m wrong with these two statements, but I thought the whole point of the term “generic fantasy” was due to certain themes being oversaturated in the concept to the point that it became the baseline. It’s not “generic” in the sense that it doesn’t represent anything, but that it’s the primary setting used in most historical mythical fiction.
And how are aesthetics not a part of culture? Buildings, fashion, setting, it’s all part of an overarching aesthetic.
Nope you’re refusing to recognize the European origins of the “generic fantasy” the West has exported and refusing to recognize that what is Generic is specific to cultural realities of what is Normal or Typical and Stormwind is not a Typical Fantasy City of Amerindigenous, African, MENA, South Asian, etc societies.
You are a literal crazy person being intentionally obtuse on some weird stuff and I’m now simply going to block you lmao
Yeah, generic fantasy is Tolkien-esq, DND fantasy, at least that is how I mean it.
It’s not so much that aesthetics are not part of culture. It’s more than aesthetics stripped away from the cultural context and meaning isn’t really cultural representation. It’s just the result of a writing team that thought it looked cool.
No I am not, in fact, that is my entire point. The cultural significance has been stripped away from generic fantasy, which is why the Zandalari are more culturally authentic to their source material than Stormwind is.
Just like you can’t make the emphasis between representation and representative.
The Victorian Era—which again, was literally named after England’s monarch—is famous for being a period of industrial revolution. This is a historical fact.
The fact that you insist on peddling an “Us vs. Them,” “‘They’ are against me” argument really doesn’t help you here.
Nor does the use of the word, “moron.”
Which, at the time period, was most prevalent in…
…England.
So, I’m sure someone who dislikes being called “racist” such as yourself is familiar with how this very argument has been used by actual racists as an excuse for their behavior.
i.e., “I don’t owe you anything, so I can be as racist to you as I want.”
I’m not saying this applies to you personally, but I would advise you to exercise a little more caution and self-restraint.
To be fair, that goes for everyone, calling her a racist because of a different opinion is just as wrong. If we’re going call people out, lets call out everyone for bad behavior okay?
Nope just the ones who insist none of the races in-game are representations of anyone and that blizzard can have a disregard for the meta narrative implication.