Why don't Tauren join the Alliance?

[Tamanii-wyrmrest-accord (Tamanii)]

@Tamanii-wyrmrest-accord

But the post I liked also isn’t arguing that trolls aren’t ever used as vehicle for racist stereotypes. It’s not trying to argue that models half the size of adult models called whelps are adults.

But you have to see how those things ARE debatable though. I have already said that your perception is valid one. It’s just your insistence that it HAS to be the objective truth that is the problem.

If people want to debate that with me, I can bring up a number of examples of why I think that, and I can show them the evidence that convinces me….

First, I am not convinced there is any actual racial coding going on. Second, if there was, Night Elves would be a victim of it just as much as Trolls have been. If not more so.

There is no honest debate with you. If you had actual quotes, links, references, etc to back up your claims (well mostly anti-claims) you’d have posted them a long time ago and you wouldn’t crop out others’ responses to rob them of context before responding to them. You’re not even responding directly to me in the thread.

And I definitely don’t expect you to be able to see examples of racism or racist tropes in WoW’s race coding. Afterall, you can’t see any of the real world parallels with the following.

1. Practice a religion called 'Voodoo" that is chock full of references to West African and derived religions.
2. Speak with an African inspired accent
3. Have temple cities featuring Precolumbian stone pyramids, are said to ritually sacrifice their foes, and they wield macuahuitl-style weapons.
4. Travel about in outrigger canoes, triangular shaped sail boats, wear tiki masks and live in Polynesian style stilt houses.
5. Fill all the same narrative role in WoW that indigenous natives fill in turn of the century adventure stories. I.E. that of primitive war-like savages living in ruin-filled jungles, where hunt and potentially eat/sacrifice brave explorers and treasure hunters- when they aren’t being driven back….

You’re also someone who, when confronted with a character that kills a bunch of harpies saying…

Skylord Omnuron has been too gentle with the Wormwing harpies. He allows them to share a perch on this mountain just because they’re creatures of the air. Well , not all creatures of the air are created equal. When the attacks on Hyjal began, the Wormwing went into a frenzy. They’re up there right now, assaulting a sacred shrine they once claimed to revere. I’m not troubled. Now we have a reason to drive them from Hyjal, don’t we?"

And think it’s not expressing any kind of in-game fantastic racism. That such a thing is “the laziest argument I have ever heard and not even worth the time.”

Or in another thread, when discussing the impact of slavery and racism on people of African descent in the US, you try to compare it to the history of racism West Africans give people of European Descent based on Barbary Coast piracy.

But there’s a lot of people who unfortunately think racism begins/ends with swastikas and clan hoods. This is sadly not the truth.

@Akiyass-moon-guard

@Tamanii-wyrmrest-accord

Just that when they do, Blizzard makes a deal about how it’s terrible in a way they don’t do with many other races

That has only been done in War of Thorns.

@Tamanii-wyrmrest-accord

but it’s not the narrative and writers hating the character.

Maybe, but it could be, and it feels that way, is the point. And I argue that prior to war of thorns, the damseling of the Night Elves was done with indifference. There was far less moral signaling with it in Cata, and more over, there was never any resolution to it.

To this day, Ashenvale is populated with Horde deforesting large swaths of Kaldorei territory, and a looming, unanswered question of whether or not Ashenvale has any Horde presence at all. So, clearly, the narrative doesn’t express any concern for the fate of the Night Elves. It is a perpetual, unending and indifferent distress to populate Nelf zones with character motivation.

Unlike preCata versions of those Zones, which was mostly just Night Elves defending their own zones, and tending to the wilds and native flora and fauna found there.

….You are missing the point here. You are not just saying that is has nelf focus, you are using it as a platform to suggest that Blizzard has a pandering bias to Night Elves… Which doesn’t hold any water because not only is it not what nelf players wanted or asked for, it further serves to deconstruct Kaldorei identity and culture.

The readmittance of the Highborne in the Kaldorei society is such an absurd thing, because it undoes something that has shaped Kaldorei culture for the last 10k years, and it serves to homogenize the Kaldorei into the human, more “civilized” races of the Alliance.

If this entire argument began with you making a claim about how Blizzard shows favoritism to the “civilized” and “Imperial coded” races of Azeroth, then you don’t have a better example of that then Blizzards complete defamation of Kaldorei identity.

But if you are going to say that, and in the same breath, say the Kaldorei is one of the main races that is served and advantaged by that bias, then your credibility is totally lost.

No, I’m just saying Blizzard has a disproportionate Night Elf focus - along with Humans and Orcs, but they’re at least the OG races… More specifically, that Blizzard likes to specifically create or frame situations where aggression against Night Elves is treated as being wrong/bad in a way that it isn’t when it comes to violence against many other less popular races.

You’re the one trying to conflate it into me stating that Blizzard would never do anything bad to them, and always gives Night Elf fans exactly what they want.

The past two storylines in which the Warchief goes crazy and starts on the warpath begin with fighting with Night Elves in Northern Kalimdor. And before that, it was the Orcs that got hopped up on demon juice. The race that’s currently clear cutting Azshara (Goblins, especially Gallywix) are not treated sympathetically for it at all. BfA isn’t the only example of Night Elf suffering being played for tragedy or being used to spur the good/right characters to act against the bad/wrong ones. It’s just the most blatant and high profile example.

@Tamanii-wyrmrest-accord

Wrathion’s adult human body is not his real body because he’s a dragon, not a human

Yet his human form appears as a fully grown adult. Explain to me the mental maturity rate of dragons and Trolls.

Because I think if a Troll is capable of wearing armor and wielding weapons, being openly hostile, and cry our death threats with sadistic pleasure, they are not “Innocent, helpless children”

They are warriors.

…What I can’t say is that is an objective truth of the lore. Just like you can’t say that Frostmane whelps are children given how they act. You want to perceive it that way? Fine, but not everyone has to agree with you, and there is plenty of valid evidence to support their perception as well as yours.

The maturity rate of dragons and trolls is a progression from that of a child to that of an adult, accompanied with an increase in size and age. Blizzard doesn’t give exact ages for any children in game, and instead identifies them via model size and naming, Most commonly by using smaller models calling them “whelps”. WoW uses smaller relative size to the adult model, combined with the term “whelp” exclusively to refer to children and never to adults. That is an objective truth in the game and lore.

A child wielding weapons, armor, and crying death threats is still a child. More tragically, they’re a child soldier. Blizzard wrote a scenario featuring child soldiers in which we’re sent out specifically to kill them like it’s the most regular thing in the world. That’s messed up.

@Tamanii-wyrmrest-accord

The amount of people actively RP’ing Night Elves isn’t the same as people playing Night Elves.

Yet are relevant when we are discussing Night Elf portrayal in the story. People will always play a races for the aesthetics. The fact that the Nelf RP population has become near non-existent in the wake of BFA reveals that people who care about the Night Elf portrayal in the story and lore are unhappy with it.

I don’t think there’s any race in WoW whose RP’ers can say they’re especially happy with their portrayal in game.

RP’ers pick races based largely on aesthetics too. Humans/Elves aren’t far and away the most popular RP races simply because they’ve had the best/richest story in WoW. And all RP has taken a nosedive in BfA compared to when it started and countless guilds/communities/servers have dropped in activity. But Night Elves remain among the most popular races.

@Tamanii-wyrmrest-accord

They didn’t fight in the War of the Ancients.

It doesn’t matter. The Highborne is culturally dissimilar to the Night Elves. So much so, that even Blizzard thought the Nightborne were a closer fit to Blood Elves than they were to Night Elves.

if you want to say Suramar was Night Elf pandering, then Void Elves are Blood Elf pandering.

Except, at least, Void Elf and Blood Elf culture is the same. So that is even more true than saying Highborne stuff is nelf related.

Like I said before: Yes, Void Elves are absolutely part of Blizzard’s clumsy attempt to pander to fans of Blood Elves particularly those who wanted to play them on Alliance rather than on the Horde. I mean as far as many people are concerned, they’re still not enough like Blood/High Elves. And if/when Blizzard decided to have Void Elf content that’s all about Quel’thalas, Kaelthas, the Troll Wars, and Magister Umbric’s family, that’d totally double as Blood Elf content and alongside High/Void Elves.

I agree with you on that point.

And as I said before: It’d be awesome if Blizzard expanded more on what Night Elves stuff to things that’ve happened since then, but all that stuff involving Tyrande, Malfurion, Illidan, Azshara, the War of the Ancients (or its repeats), the Kaldorei Empire, Cenarius, the Emerald Nightmare, Ysera, etc is absolutely Night Elf related content. It’s also why so many people were surprised and upset with Nightborne going Horde. They thought they’d go Alliance because, you know, Night Elves.

@Tamanii-wyrmrest-accord

He got over it pretty quick

An assumption made by you, not necessarily the truth. For all we know, it is something he never gets over.

@Tamanii-wyrmrest-accord

The story vindicated Illidan in the end and through his actions, he earned the begrudging respect of the other heroes.

Not really. Illidan’s actions in Legion stand alone from his actions prior to that. He still is denied the respect from Tyrande and Malfurion.

All of that doesn’t change the face that he is, specifically meant to be an outlier and antithesis of the Kaldorei culture and way of life. It’s not nelf pandering.

Taraulyon got over it pretty quick because his initial reaction was to call Illidan a betrayer and try and strike Illidan down. He stopped trying to strike Illidan down and stopped treating him like a betrayer and and instead went back to working alongside him on the Vindicaarr.

Also, Tyrande and Malfurion aren’t the only other heroes in WoW. Illidan works with Khadgar, Velen, Thrall and others. Illidan’s is Blizzard’s segway into more Night Elf lore due to his history as a member of the Kaldorei empire and as a member of the Moon Guard, which is explored in the expansion.

@Tamanii-wyrmrest-accord

genocide/displace them

We have zero evidence of Troll genocide or displacement. We don’t know how much their empire/populations declined. The fact that we hear about Azshara’s expeditionary forces not coming into contact with Troll resistance, and we are explicitly told that Azshara was disinterest in conquest, heavily suggests that there was no Troll denizens in those areas.

So again, you are making assumptions from the basis of headcanon, not what the lore actually says.

The lore tries to paint her in the best light and tries to make it the Troll’s fault for picking a fight, but she’s still expanding into territory that’s not hers, built homes there, had her troops killing trolls, and eventually territory that was once part of the trolls was now hers.

That the text itself tries to white wash it is exactly what I mean by Blizzard framing opposition to Night Elves as being bad/wrong and specifically creating situations to try and make the player feel better about Trolls getting genocide/displaced.

Just as you and I have noticed that despite Blizzard constantly portraying Anduin and Stormwind as being reasonable and not interested in conquest, they’re end actions are still those of an imperialist hegemony. They did the same with the Kaldorei Empire, only Azshara’s campaign included a lot more killing and outright taking land for herself.

@Tamanii-wyrmrest-accord

they have to be regularly framed as being pretty/good/right.

Not really. They just have to not be actively hurting people or doing bad things.

@Tamanii-wyrmrest-accord

they’ve got dozens of other races to use.

But they don’t. Which is why I outright reject your premise that Night Elves are somehow on the advantageous side this supposed racial coding.

You can’t have a Damsel in Distress if the you’re being framed as a bad/wrong person that the story doesn’t encourage you to care about. Just being in distress doesn’t make a character a Damsel in Distress. The villain has to cause the distress, thus spurring the heroes to action.

That Night Elves, of all the races in WoW, are the ones that repeatedly get attacked in order for Blizzard to tell us who the good/bad guys in a conflict are.