I am not talking about where other conversations came from. But where ours came from. If you’d linked the one I responded to, that’d make sense, but to assume that my argument is in defense of the person that one person responded to in response to another person in response to another person, so on and so forth is ridiculous.
The Horde losing many of its prominent leaders, undergoing a restructuring, and undergoing an internal purge is indeed the narrative showing us that Blizzard understand that the actions were bad, that characters get framed as being villainous and suffer for it, and imparting consequences on characters and the faction for those actions in some attempt to try and make amends.
They don’t even really try to do this with the Alliance because they don’t acknowledge that what the Alliance characters do is ever that bad in the first place. Not bad enough to warrant any in game narrative consequences or a change in framing.
Yes it is Blizzard’s fault! I’m pointing out how Blizzard’s tendency to call out the wrong doings of the Horde and insisting on narrative punishments, while simultaneously justifying/whitewashing the wrong doings of the Alliance and repeatedly framing them as heroes without sin is not a good thing!
It robs stories and characters of their potential complexity and nuance. It reinforces potentially harmful narratives where ends justify what means, but only for one side. It creates situations where characters don’t have room to act like people, but instead operate in a way that only means to further a particular dynamic.
it’s the kind of thinking and writing that brought us to BfA to begin with. Where the Horde is led by a character like Sylvanas and the Alliance by someone like Anduin.
And bringing up how specifically Blizzard is bad at writing the Alliance is helpful. How can we even begin to discuss how to fix the Alliance if we can’t admit how Blizzard is writing them, let alone acknowledging that there’s anything is wrong with it?
You assume I am assuming you are defending posts that you clearly did not read. Which is not the case. It is simply what I said. You trying to redirect the conversation away from the Horde’s sins, as was the point of post 545 from which you jumped into the conversation from.
This is the right direction Blizzard is taking, yes. And it is a good direction the Horde is taking as well. But you’re still intentionally avoiding my point. A vandal saying they won’t vandalize things any more is a good thing. But that is not facing the property damage they’ve already done.
The rest of what you said is once again more Alliance whataboutism. And I already told you I won’t take that bait.
I’ll talk about the crap the Alliance does that narriatively gets swept under the rug, but I’ll fully admit the Horde has done some awful things.
The writers, and many Alliance fans, act like the sun shines out the Alliances’ collective butt and like to forget everything the Alliance has done immediately after it’s happened.
I don’t get why Jaina can attempt the exact same thing as Teldrassil twice , and be considered a saint, but Horde troops and even leaders are inherently damned because they didn’t know Sylvanas was going to torch Teldrassil? (That wasn’t the plan, nearly every soldier was briefed that preventing unneccesary civillian death was paramount)
Both factions are flawed as hell, not evil, but not entirely good. Taran Zhu should have driven that into everyone’s heads but some of us are more thickheaded than others. The faction war exists because the faction war exists. There is no reason the two sides should have continued fighting other than continually escalating conflicts until things blow up again.
Sounds more like you just want to attack the Horde and can’t defend your own side’s actions
That’s the thing. I’m not trying to redirect from their post because I was never engaged with them to begin with. I’m entering a different discussion with another poster.
I can’t bait you into a tangent from a conversation neither of us were never a part of.
A vandal saying they won’t vandalize things any more is a good thing is indeed not facing the property damage they’ve already done. But if- no matter what the Vandal says, their vandalism results in their best friend dying, them losing their job, then it doesn’t matter whether they promise to stop or not. It doesn’t even matter if they do it again. They have faced consequences and their act of vandalism was acknowledged.
But if the vandal is never called out at all or, if caught, successfully convinces himself and others that what they did wasn’t really even technically vandalism but rather performance art- then not only are there no consequences, it’s acting like nothing wrong even happened at all.
The problem is getting the narrative and people to admit what isn’t squeaky clean, why isn’t squeaky clean isn’t called out in the narrative as such and treated the same way it is in other instances.
Both should go to jail. The car thief should not be able to avoid jail, or even being charged based on the argument of, “At least I’m not murdering anyone.” or “Well that person deserved to have their car stolen. They’re a murderer!”
I’m no lawyer, but their friend dying or their losing their jobs is not them facing the consequences of their crime. Mind you, they might not be prosecuted because the ones in charge of pressing charges might think they’ve suffered enough. But the vandal is still just as open to still being charged and sentenced for their crimes on top of their best friend’s death and having lost their job.
You’re saying the Car thief is okay because they tried to be a serial killer and his victims got away.
The Alliance tried to kill off the goblins of Kezan, who did nothing to antagonize the Alliance. Their failure does not make this any less evil.
The Alliance tried to kill off the Blood elves through letting the Scourge flood through their lands. Their failure does not make this any less evil.
The Alliance tried to destroy an unaware Orgrimmar both before and after Theramore got got. Their failure does not make this any less evil.
I will fully admit that Teldrassil was an absolute crime of the highest order. I will fully admit that even though no horde troops or leaders other than Sylvanas knew of the plan, that there is culpability on those who did not refuse to carry out the orders.
But I refuse to play the game that the Alliance has never tried to mass murder Horde members for their own ends.
If their friend dying or their losing their jobs is a consequence of them vandalizing, then yes, it is them facing consequences. Criminal charges are just yet another kind consequence.
But Warcraft’s a fictional narrative, and as such, operates on narrative rules. Not legal ones. And in a fictional narrative, it’s very common for characters to suffer consequences of a non-legal nature, because the narrative delivers on consequences in some other, more karmic, way.
That’s the thing. Neither are going to jail. For all the shaming people are complaining about, Blizzard never actually prosecutes either the Horde or the Alliance. So, once again, complaining that the Alliance gets written just as badly doesn’t actually contribute to anything.
And ones the vandal, the Horde, is, understandably, afraid to face.
But the Horde did lose Saurfang, Sylvanas, Nathanos, and Gallywix. That’s a thing that happened as a consequence of the bad things Saurfang, Sylvanas, Nathanos, and Gallywix, among others, facilitated. They also got villain-batted, again. Forced to fight against and kill fellow Horde. Again.
This had everything to do with the narrative pushing Sylvanas at large and the Horde to a lesser extent, as being in the wrong. These things are framed as the narrative consequences of those wrongdoings.
But you refuse to admit what, if anything the Alliance lost as a consequence of its wrongdoings. Mostly because Blizzard doesn’t frame the Alliance as ever losing anything as a result of their wrongdoing.
Actually, that’s a good way of looking at it: Blizzard as the prosecutor.
For the Alliance, the prosecutor falls to “This person has such a bright and promising future. We can’t ruin that for them. We will not be pressing charges.”
For the Horde, the prosecutor falls to “This person has suffered enough. They’ve already been punished. Just let them go. We will not be pressing charges.”
The core of the problem is the same. Blizzard is so weak hearted they can’t actually do part of their job.
I don’t know why you refuse to engage with Blizzard’s writers as writers and acknowledge the narrative as a narrative. It’s not Blizzard objectively recalling/judging the accounts of past events that actually happened. They’re writers, deciding when/why/how things happen to begin with and how they’re framed based on (within the limitations of their position) what they want to happen.
Blizzard isn’t the prosecutor. Blizzard is fate itself. Blizzard decides what crimes the Horde and Alliance are going to commit. Blizzard decides that the Horde was going to suffer some kind of karmic justice as a result of their crimes before even getting to the court room, while the Alliance would continues enjoying their bright and promising life free of consequences for said crime. Then, while they’re in the courtroom, Blizzard decides to have the prosecutor makes the decision to find both “innocent” suffering no legal consequences.
But fate’s already taken the Horde for a loop. It’s only the Horde that’ actually been through anything. They didn’t get the legal consequences, but they’ve still suffered.
And you completely ignore the loss of Saurfang, Sylvanas, Nathanos, and Gallywix, as well as losing its own capital city/subzones/NPCs to its own leader, and just the general Horde civil conflict and framing of the tragedy of the Burning of teldrassil as being meaningful in any way shape or form.
And in addition to that, you point out where the narrative specifically calls out the Horde leadership as trying to downplay their involvement- which is a way of calling them out on their involvement and they hypocricy!
So no, people don’t act like the Horde is blameless. The Horde doesn’t get away with avoiding its past. It’s brought up all the danged time. They lose NPCs left and right because of it. Their in game stories are about dealing with the villainous elements of their faction and how they deal with them- or fail to deal with them.
This is almost entirely absent from the Alliance narrative. They’re free to do things, and in the rare event the narrative or players even acknowledge it as in the wrong, convenient excuses are provided by Blizzard and players to try and justify it. It creates a weird situation where the Alliance is nearly always framed as, at worst, the lesser of two evils in every single conflict they find themselves in. I mean, sure they slip up- but why bother examining or calling them out on it? Those guys over there are even worse! Get’em!
Because Tyrande is looking at it from the point of view of someone inside the game, and not a writer for a two faction MMO being written by people who control everything that happens within it.
I wouldn’t expect her to acknowledge her own part in any wrongdoing carried out by Night Elves. Actually, I’d expect her, and Blizzard to try and justify/downplay any wrongdoing she might possibly do so she can escape the narrative consequences of it.
You’re late to the party, it was necro’d a week or so ago by a tauren so that they could offer the amazingly insightful rebuttal of ‘nuh uh’, ten months later.
To be fair, the writers don’t actually have control over the MMO’s story. That comes from higher up, from Blizzard staff that are specifically not writers.
