10/27/2018 11:46 AMPosted by
Amadis
Well that depends on how terrible your undead body is, but that could possibly sway even the most loyal of Sylvanas' follows to decide to go back into the ground.
Baring that factor, Sylvanas is actually the example of the danger to that. If undeath warps your mind, you now have the rest of eternity to end up doing things that will deserve you a worse afterlife.
That's not fair. If you earned your afterlife, and a twisted version of you can unearn that for your soul, who you were in life has had everything they worked for taken away without getting to play any factor in it at all.
I personally don't think feeling sharper negative emotions is enough to make you decide to do something to damn yourself for eternity at a moments notice, especially if you're already afraid of hell to begin with. It's a buffer of shadow magic between your soul and your body, numbing yes, but will it make your personality completely 180 by it being there?
Sylvanas has had years to entrench herself in her current mental state, and it's largely due to seeing what waited for her on the other side ironically enough. If you do something to damn yourself after having time to mull it over, to process your negative emotions, is that on the Forsaken or is that on you?
10/27/2018 11:54 AMPosted by
Darethy
I personally don't think feeling sharper negative emotions is enough to make you decide to do something to damn yourself for eternity at a moments notice, especially if you're already afraid of hell to begin with. It's a buffer of shadow magic between your soul and your body, numbing yes, but will it make your personality completely 180 by it being there?
Sylvanas has had years to entrench herself in her current mental state, and it's largely due to seeing what waited for her on the other side ironically enough. If you do something to damn yourself after having time to mull it over, to process your negative emotions, is that on the Forsaken or is that on you?
Oh, it definitely is on the Forsaken, but it is also on you. Arthas is to blame for a lot of Sylvanas' sins. What makes it clear for me that Sylvanas deserves to abyss afterlife in
Edge of Night was the scene in
Arthas: Rise of the Lich King where Sylvanas forces her experimental plague on a poor living girl and she dies in a horrific and painful description. That alone makes Sylvanas deserve eternal damnation, no matter how much in the name of preparation for justice and vengeance against Arthas it was.
It was on Sylvanas' for killing that girl.
But it is also on Arthas for having taken a soul that deserved to go to its blissful afterlife and creating a monster that would do what Sylvanas did.
On top of that, the CDev description of undead being raised in a frenzied state and turning against their friends and family immediately is definitely something that should be considered. If you die in combat, get raised as undead, and in a frenzy kill your brother, only to regret it immediately after your frenzy wears off, how much scarring would that put on your soul? And who would that be on? You? Or the person who raised you in frenzied undeath?
10/26/2018 05:05 PMPosted by
Amadis
In celebration of reaching 100 reputations exalted on this character, I decided to treat myself to posting my life story. I still have the Champions of Azeroth, Storm’s Wake, and Tortollan Seekers left to go until I have gotten all possible reputations to exalted that could have been possible in this game, but that should happen shortly as well.
Before we start at the beginning, lets start with more current events. Earlier this year I posted up a thread titled “Fate worse than death for Sylvanas,” in which I posited just that: What if Anduin used shadow priest powers to mind control Sylvanas for the rest of her life? This was one response I got in that thread:
This is like the 10th version of this thread we've seen in 6 months. Should we be worried about the posters and start linking them to websites that offer help?
The irony in Threeslotbag’s post is that shortly before this thread I had been diagnosed by a psychiatrist with severe depression. Now, this did not actually determine a start time my depression, not any more than the statement Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity means that electricity didn’t exist before the legendary kite experiment. No, this had been the case my whole life. I just had never sought out to address it before.
For convenience, I have placed bullet points like this at places that are relevant to WoW if you want to skip around to those parts.
I was born in Mexico. My parents got work visas and brought me over to California when I was two and a half. Shortly after they applied for green cards, and the three of us were granted them and permanent residency in the U.S., which all happened before my earliest memories. I was technically Mexican, and my brown skin definitely always reminded me of that, but my first language is English, and my Spanish is terrible. But I grew up a very happy, very energetic, very outgoing, and very social child, and went to elementary school in the most affluent part of northern California, during a time in which I was one of two Hispanic children in my grade. I was a rarity, and for the most part people didn’t bother me, but they didn’t really know what to make of me, either. I wasn’t black, I wasn’t white. This was a time and place where people didn’t know what to make of brown, except for the occasional yelling of “You don’t belong here!” from the doorway of wealthier people’s houses that I did not comprehend at that age. What I did comprehend, though, at the time, was a message I heard over and over again. I don’t remember who said this specifically to me, but I remember reacting at the age of seven to the message of “I always feel God’s love.” Whether you were white or otherwise, most everyone was Christian of one form or another, or Jewish. But at the age of seven, I looked around at the world after hearing that, and then looked inwards, and I realized… I didn’t. I didn’t feel God’s love. I didn’t understand these people. They looked content and happy from God loving them. Why didn’t I? I looked around, at the age of seven, and saw the world as very limited. There was no magic in this world. There were no super powers. There were no Yoshis or leaves that could give a racoon tail that would let you fly. Imagine, if you can, at the age of seven, looking around at the world, lacking a comprehension of how the rest of the world comprehended the world, but still saying to yourself: There is no God.
This, along with body issues from being so slim and skinny, completely shut me down. I was no longer extraverted, but deeply introverted. In hindsight, this was actually the depression taking hold of my life, but as a child I didn’t understand that. And this carried through to middle school, which I entered into right after a time where there was a flood of Hispanic immigrants into my part of California. I was no longer a rarity because of my skin color. Now brown people were just as common as white people. But that didn’t mean I fit in. The opposite. I was so culturally different from other Hispanic people that the moment I uttered a single word they knew I wasn’t one of them. So now I was alone. I wasn’t American, because at this time American still meant white. But I certainly wasn’t Mexican, not any more than technically, as I was treated as an outsider just as much for how I was on the inside, my personality and mannerisms, by other brown people. Now, my middle school was not very academically successful, though, and because of that, I was treated as special in one regard: I actually did my homework and got good grades. My middle school made a big deal of this, and recommended me to a private high school as I approached graduation. And that private high school offered to pay for my tuition, which I was pressured into accepting.
So, I went to a private high school for very rich teens. To be a token Mexican so they could meet their diversity quotas.
From my earliest school memories up through my freshman year of college or so, I was a loser. Early on, a lot of this was an extrinsically imposed label, but by middle school or so I'd internalized that narrative and sunk into a fair amount of self-loathing.
This quote inspired me to write out my story. I do not know any of Feldaran’s story. I do not know how much we can actually relate to each other. But imagine, if you can, being surrounded by high society white kids who lived in multimillion-dollar houses, while you were an under the poverty line brown skinned kid that lived behind a cantina. That you knew that you had been a big fish in a small pond, but here you were a guppy academically compared to your new supposed peers that had nothing in common with you. That you had nothing in common with anyone. When anime was a thing you stayed up until midnight for on Saturday nights to catch Toonami because that was the only mainstream way to connect something you actually felt spoke to you when nothing else did. That you wore every day a giant, oversized suede leather jacket to hide your body, and sword-themed necklaces that clanged with every step you took. If you want the story of a self-loathing loser, you just read one.
This was around when WoW came out, though. And so the start of my WoW story. My two best friends that I had retained from middle school – a white boy of Irish heritage and a half-white half-Japanese girl, both who were as poor as I was, if not poorer – played WoW, and as we had gone to different high schools, this presented itself as a chance for us to stay connected. They played Horde, so I rolled my first character, a Tauren Druid. I never got to play with my male friend, as I never managed to finish leveling up to get to the end game with him. My female friend played Forsaken, and started a new character and had me hike it all the way out to Tirisfal so she could show me how awesome the zone was. I mistook it for it wanting to be A Nightmare Before Christmas, which wasn’t an aesthetic I was really into. In the end, I didn’t get to play much with her, either, as she stopped playing WoW because – get this – her boyfriend – who she lived with – broke up with her so that he could have more time to lead his guild for Molten Core. It wasn’t until my last year of high school were I met my third best friend and he got me to get back into WoW, this time on Alliance, with this very character, and my best friend, who plays the character D̶i̶e̶r̶l̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶D̶r̶a̶k̶a̶ Díerle on Sargeras, has stuck with me ever since.
But I am considerably older than a high schooler, and so my story carried on. In high school I came to study physics and chemistry, finally understanding the limits that I had always seen placed on the world but not understanding what they were yet. And when my high school told me I had to choose a career path, I fell into heading towards engineering. And so, I went to UC Santa Cruz after that high school to be an electrical engineer. I had also gotten accepted into UC Berkley, but after four years of being surrounded by rich kids, I wasn’t about to put another four years on top of that. Unfortunately, I only made it three years through UC Santa Cruz. My freshman year I had an amazing roommate. My sophomore year I rented an apartment with my roommate, his girlfriend, and his best friend. That ended up being too many people for me, and on my third year I got a solo hotel room off campus through a partnership UC Santa Cruz had with the hotel. This was a mistake. Self-isolated and alone, my depression completely crippled me. I stopped getting out of bed. I stopped eating. I stopping going some of my classes. Other classes I went to just take the finals, which was all it really took to ace the classes I did choose to finish. A college counselor looked at my grades and saw a dizzying arrangement of A’s and F’s and Withdrawals and Incompletes in the same term and could not make heads or tails of it. Just before I would start to head towards my last year and my thesis, I knew I wasn’t going to make it, and so before the school could kick me out, I dropped out on my own.
I publicly admit, I was a college dropout. For three years after I didn’t overcome my depression. I gave up almost entirely on life. The only thing that even got me up in the morning was my best friend paying for my WoW account for me. That’s all I ever did any more. I slept. I occasionally ate. I played WoW. And at first, not in any way that could be considered even living through WoW. I used this time to do insane grinds. My first level 60 mount was the Winterspring Frostsaber, because at the time it was the only full speed mount that did not require max riding training, which at the time cost 90 gold, which at the time felt like an impossible amount of gold that I would never get. So instead I spent weeks mindlessly running back and forth through Winterspring doing turn ins because I had nothing better to do with my life. Later on, I would spend weeks and weeks killing an NPC in the Badlands named Jazzrik on a seven to eight minute timer to get exalted with the Bloodsail Buccaneers back when that was the only way to, and then after that I spent weeks killing pirate NPCS that would raise my Steamwheedle Cartel back up without lowering my Bloodsail Buccaneers rep so I could have exalted with all five. I wasted away my life, and couldn’t even pay for my own account to do it. Eventually my best friend convinced me to join him in raiding, and I joined a hardcore guild for Burning Crusade, pushing Feral to its limits in every possible way, getting through Vashj and Kael’thas, and eventually taking down Illidan before Wrath came out, though never getting into the Sunwell before time ran out, but still getting the Hand of A’dal title for our efforts. Unfortunately I never actually got any satisfaction from raiding, but it was still my best friend keeping me getting up every morning.
Eventually what helped me recover was connecting with my two younger siblings – both born citizens of the U.S. and inheriting such fair skin from our Italian and Spanish ancestry while I inherited more from our Aztec and Mayan bloodlines that we didn’t look anything alike, and, frankly, they passed for white. I was five years older than my brother, and almost a decade older than our younger sister, and if you can imagine, during high school as a teenager I wanted nothing to do with them, as I locked myself in my room and blared angst music as loud as I could. But years later, I was finally getting to know them for the first time, and they helped me pull myself together. So, three years after I dropped out of college for electrical engineering, I went through a program at a homeless shelter where I got culinary training in a program fittingly named Fresh Start that put me to work in the cafeteria there. Then I started working in a café. And then got a job a Cheesecake Factory as a busser, and climbed my way up through every position up to being a server. I then was a banquet server for a luxury resort, at which point my younger sister, who loved baking, proposed to me that we go to college together, to The Culinary Institute of America. I couldn’t turn my sister away, so I waited for her to approach graduating high school, we both applied, and we both got in. So, very unusually, I ended up going to college again, this time alongside my little sister. And a bunch of other kids her age fresh of high school when we got there. If you ever want to feel older than you are, try being more than a decade older than some of fresh-faced teens and being in the same college classes as them. It was a very strange experience, but I kept mostly to myself, my sister helping push me through the times when my depression almost got the better of me and I would have been serial repeat dropout if it wasn’t for her. Both our parents – long since divorced – became U.S. citizens during this time to help co-sign private loans with me so we could pay for going to The Culinary Institute of America, as banks required at least one co-signer be a citizen, and we had to juggle both our parents as co-signers for the loans I took out to make things work. But in the end, I graduated second in my class with a Bachelors in Culinary Science – second to my sister, who was the top of our class, for though I had more academic experience than her and so was able to help her with all the science material, my sister will forever be a better baker than I will ever be at cooking anything.
I still played WoW through all this time, though I never did more than pug raiding until Firelands, which I joined a dedicated group again so I could get Dragonwath, Tarecgosa’s Rest, and then starting with Dragon Soul until Hellfire Citadel I only did LFR, with reps being my main focus again. I started pugging raids again in Legion and got Ahead of the Curve throughout, but have found no interest in raiding at all in BfA so far.
After finally being a college graduate, I got hired on to do regulatory work for a specialty food company, combining my ability to comb through data with my knowledge of food. What started as a $22/hour a job in less than two years became a $60k a year salaried position in reflection of how much my company appreciates and cares for me. I also became a U.S. citizen earlier this year myself. So, to boast a bit, I’ve achieved the American Dream. I picked myself up, dragged myself out of the pit I had dug myself into with the help of my sister to keep pushing me, and have secured a job that pays me enough money that I can pay the crazy expensive rent out here in California and pay all my bills and repay my loans and be financially stable and secure and on par economically with the rest of most of the country. And having cleaned up my sense of fashion and wearing clothes that fit my form, I can even look in the mirror nowadays with a bit of vanity.
But the depression doesn’t go away. Things go wrong. Things go right. It never matters. Everything always feels the worst and never enough for this meat sack and its twice warmed-over goo casserole of a nervous system I’m trapped in. I can’t fairly perceive the lives of others and I can’t even enjoy my own comfort because of this crushing weigh on me that I can literally feel like pressure squeezing down on my mind and heart. Like the antithesis of love. The same heft of that fluttery feeling of admiration and hope that makes your heart ache and makes your head groggy with smothering haze, but instead of elevating you it’s just bearing down on you with remorselessly. No particular focus of wonderment, instead a sickening sloshing perception that everything is horrible. Every last little thing gnawing on your nerves and no ability to imagine even the slightest reprieve.And people celebrate this in the Forsaken. So often people post about how the Forsaken can’t feel positive emotions. That in undeath they only have the negative ones. “What are we if not slaves to this torment?” “What joy is there in this curse?” And they inflict this on others. They know how this feels. To one day see the mountains and ocean behind them and be inspired by their beauty, and then the next to only be disgusted by the very same sight. But the picture hasn’t changed. Merely the mind has. And they drag others back from whatever their lives have earned them to do this to them as well. To know what this feels like and to inflict it upon others is unforgivable.
10/24/2018 05:25 AMPosted by
Darethy
the sheer amount of vitriol directed at the Forsaken, and how they should suffer for their culture over the last several years, honestly makes me feel little empathy when we get something and the other fanbase suffers.
Which isn't logical. I understand the Night Elves have gotten completely !@#$ on this expansion.At the same time it's hard to feel any sympathy for a group rumbling for the destruction of my cultures core identity.
Forsaken fans, I want you know, from the bottom of my heart, I hate everything that you probably enjoy at the Forsaken. I hate them forcing more people to suffer the same fate they have. I hate every act of evil they have done – in the name of survival, in the name of Sylvanas, in the name of hatred, or even just because they can. I hate that people try to justify them for having their positive emotions stripped away and left with mockery of who they were when they could feel alive. And above all, I hate the nauseating use of the word "pragmatic" people keep using over and over again.
I want the Forsaken replaced entirely. I want a pre-BfA Voss to lead them into an era of preventing the furthering of undeath. I want Sylvanas replaced with a new Desolate Council that encourages a reunion with family. I want the Forsaken replaced with more of those from Before the Storm and the likes of Thomas Zelling showing Undead that can still feel and appreciate what they did in life. I want the evil Forsaken entirely gone from existence.
But, here’s the thing, Forsaken fans, I know you don’t want what I want. I know you might take this as a personal attack. But this isn’t one. Even if I hate the Forsaken, I hold nothing against you personally. I don’t know you. I don’t know your lives. I hold no ill will towards you for enjoying the Forsaken. I simply don’t understand you. I will never understand you. You are not a matter of black, white, or grey morality to me. You are a matter of yellow and purple morality to me. So alien – and I do not use that word lightly, being an alien citizen myself in a country that does not want me here – is your mentality that I cannot comprehend you any more than anyone who would respond with “But it’s just a game” “It’s not real” can comprehend me.
I hate the Forsaken because I see everything I hate about my own life in them. Being trapped in skin that disgusts others for no fault of your own, and being unable to feel positive emotions and festering in negative ones instead because of a cruel chance of luck that left your mind like this. This alone is enough to make me flinch at the Forsaken. That they would do this to others makes me outright despise the Forsaken. Loath the Forsaken. Want the Forsaken gone from existence.
But the Undead in Before the Storm and Thomas Zelling give me hope. Hope that the undead can get help. Along with Genn, I can see now that not all Undead are evil. But Hamuul Runetotem believed that as well. That the Undead can be helped, cured, even if just spiritually. That’s why he helped bring them into the Horde in the first place.
It took me a long time to get help. Weeks can go by where I can feel okay – what I assume it feels like to feel normal, to be able to feel happiness and joy and wonderment and awe and laugh lightheartedly and maybe even enjoy existing. These weeks tricked me for years, always making me think I’d finally just be okay this time. But the depression always came back. Even after I got myself in a place in life where my life is, frankly, great: The depression still came back. I finally had to admit that I needed help. And I was diagnosed with the obvious. And, maybe, that helps you understand me a bit better.
TL;DR: https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=xrmM51Kldv0&t=2m36s
Its only some forsaken that feel no positive emotions. Many feel the same emotions like they did in life. Same goes for death knights too a extent.
Sad thing is, if Blizzard wanted the Scourge 2.0 story, they could've had the Forsaken free Scourge members. Both strong and weak willed. The world should want them dead, while Bolvar wants them jailed. Giving them a chance at freedom could've been heroic. Why not add the Cult of the Damned to their ranks? They jump at the thought of becoming undead.
And if we had to force it on people, then why not do so against the Scarlets, or the Syndicate? The Forsaken narrative exists solely to antagonize the Alliance.
1 Like
Sad thing is, if Blizzard wanted the Scourge 2.0 story, they could've had the Forsaken free Scourge members. Both strong and weak willed. The world should want them dead, while Bolvar wants them jailed. Giving them a chance at freedom could've been heroic. Why not add the Cult of the Damned to their ranks? They jump at the thought of becoming undead.
And if we had to force it on people, then why not do so against the Scarlets, or the Syndicate? The Forsaken narrative exists solely to antagonize the Alliance.
I agree with this as well. These are unfortunate avenues Blizzard did not look to explore.
10/27/2018 12:04 PMPosted by
Amadeus
.
This has nothing to do with anything, but your character name haunts me to my very being.
"Hi! I'm Amadis!"
"Oh! Like Mozart?"
"... No."
Amadís. Rhymes with Peace.
10/27/2018 12:01 PMPosted by
Amadis
Oh, it definitely is on the Forsaken, but it is also on you. Arthas is to blame for a lot of Sylvanas' sins. What makes it clear for me that Sylvanas deserves to abyss afterlife in Edge of Night was the scene in Arthas: Rise of the Lich King where Sylvanas forces her experimental plague on a poor living girl and she dies in a horrific and painful description. That alone makes Sylvanas deserve eternal damnation, no matter how much in the name of preparation for justice and vengeance against Arthas it was.
It was on Sylvanas' for killing that girl.
But it is also on Arthas for having taken a soul that deserved to go to its blissful afterlife and creating a monster that would do what Sylvanas did.
On top of that, the CDev description of undead being raised in a frenzied state and turning against their friends and family immediately is definitely something that should be considered. If you die in combat, get raised as undead, and in a frenzy kill your brother, only to regret it immediately after your frenzy wears off, how much scarring would that put on your soul? And who would that be on? You? Or the person who raised you in frenzied undeath?
Personally, I don't buy into that because that brings up a lot of questions of faith If you kill someone while frenzied you're basically in a mindless state, at that point whatever cosmic entity is in charge of you should damn you for being scourge. Though Defenders of Darrowshire pretty explicitly shows that you aren't damned for being a threatening force without any control of yourself.
Second, would that kind of person
even make it to eternal bliss to begin with? being a good person means being good, even when you're feeling bad, to hold on to your principles even under duress. If I didn't think the concept of heaven was bollocks, i'd personally think that whatever person deserved it could still be good even when they are feeling negative.
To
not believe this has...troubling...implications.
It indicates that our lives are just opportunities for damnation, that really the idea of eternal bliss as a reward for being a good person is meaningless. Because consistently good people simply don't exist, it's only a matter of time until a number of negative situations and negative emotions occur that eventually results in them becoming a villain. The only reason we don't kill ourselves to reach our eternal bliss is because that would be seen as a 'bad' action.
Thus the only meaning to the concept of the 'good person' is that someone managed to be heroic while also finding the quickest path to killing themselves before they had one bad day.
.....
So basically, the WoW-Verse would be run by the Joker.
10/27/2018 11:54 AMPosted by
Amadis
Honestly, I chalk that up to the same lack of efforts Blizzard puts into detailing any of the races in game and hefting that sort of description into outside material
Thing is, all of that stuff is in-game. The game itself is incoherent on how the consent works. And, as far as I know, outside material doesn't clarify. Edge of Night and Dark Mirror focus on Sylvanas, and BtS mostly just looks at how Forsaken are going about their lives now, instead of what happened when they were raised.
1 Like
10/27/2018 12:10 PMPosted by
Darethy
Personally, I don't buy into that because that brings up a lot of questions of faith If you kill someone while frenzied you're basically in a mindless state, at that point whatever cosmic entity is in charge of you should damn you for being scourge. Though Defenders of Darrowshire pretty explicitly shows that you aren't damned for being a threatening force without any control of yourself.
Eh.... People strongly use frenzied state as not being mind control. And it's more a matter of being aware of what you did changing you. If you kill your brother in a frenzied state, and you remember it, you're going to have to work through a lot of stuff that you wouldn't have had to if you weren't raised to undeath in that frenzied state. The Forsaken hating Arthas for mind controlling them into doing things that they would have never done was a core part of their story, not just because they were mind controlled, but because the memories haunt them. Unlike Saurfang, they don't have the haz of personality alteration clouding memories they should regret into memories of feeling good. Most descriptions of their time as mind controlled is of anguish and desperation to prevent something that they had no ability to and were forced to witness, unable to even close their eyes.
10/27/2018 12:10 PMPosted by
Darethy
Second, would that kind of person even make it to eternal bliss to begin with? being a good person means being good, even when you're feeling bad, to hold on to your principles even under duress. If I didn't think the concept of heaven was bollocks, i'd personally think that whatever person deserved it could still be good even when they are feeling negative.
To not believe this has...troubling...implications.
Sylvanas herself is a good example to this. Sylvanas in life, as we see in the flashbacks in
Edge of Night, was not a perfect person. She had flaws like most everyone else. And she still made it into her pleasant afterlife despite not always being consistently good.
10/27/2018 12:10 PMPosted by
Darethy
It indicates that our lives are just opportunities for damnation, that really the idea of eternal bliss as a reward for being a good person is meaningless. Because consistently good people simply don't exist, it's only a matter of time until a number of negative situations and negative emotions occur that eventually results in them becoming a villain. The only reason we don't kill ourselves to reach our eternal bliss is because that would be seen as a 'bad' action.
Thus the only meaning to the concept of the 'good person' is that someone managed to be heroic while also finding the quickest path to killing themselves before they had one bad day.
.....
So basically, the WoW-Verse would be run by the Joker.
Did you see my early response about Elune and the afterlife? You never responded to it. Pretty much pertinent here.
10/27/2018 11:54 AMPosted by
Amadis
Honestly, I chalk that up to the same lack of efforts Blizzard puts into detailing any of the races in game and hefting that sort of description into outside material
Thing is, all of that stuff is in-game. The game itself is incoherent on how the consent works. And, as far as I know, outside material doesn't clarify. Edge of Night and Dark Mirror focus on Sylvanas, and BtS mostly just looks at how Forsaken are going about their lives now, instead of what happened when they were raised.
True, but the lack of effort I mean in this case is that Blizzard is assuming we will just imagine that all possible scenarios will play out and we will just fill them in with our imagination while they only have to put in the minimal effort of what would be needed for gameplay. That is to say, Blizzard probably assumes that we imagine in all the cases after Deathknell that there are people who choose to go back to the grave, just that Blizzard doesn't have to put that effort in again, since they already showed it, and that's good enough. Unfortunately we don't accept "good enough," which leads us to bringing that up here.
10/27/2018 12:22 PMPosted by
Amadis
10/27/2018 12:10 PMPosted by
Darethy
Personally, I don't buy into that because that brings up a lot of questions of faith If you kill someone while frenzied you're basically in a mindless state, at that point whatever cosmic entity is in charge of you should damn you for being scourge. Though Defenders of Darrowshire pretty explicitly shows that you aren't damned for being a threatening force without any control of yourself.
Eh.... People strongly use frenzied state as not being mind control. And it's more a matter of being aware of what you did changing you. If you kill your brother in a frenzied state, and you remember it, you're going to have to work through a lot of stuff that you wouldn't have had to if you weren't raised to undeath in that frenzied state. The Forsaken hating Arthas for mind controlling them into doing things that they would have never done was a core part of their story, not just because they were mind controlled, but because the memories haunt them. Unlike Saurfang, they don't have the haz of personality alteration clouding memories they should regret into memories of feeling good. Most descriptions of their time as mind controlled is of anguish and desperation to prevent something that they had no ability to and were forced to witness, unable to even close their eyes.
10/27/2018 12:10 PMPosted by
Darethy
Second, would that kind of person even make it to eternal bliss to begin with? being a good person means being good, even when you're feeling bad, to hold on to your principles even under duress. If I didn't think the concept of heaven was bollocks, i'd personally think that whatever person deserved it could still be good even when they are feeling negative.
To not believe this has...troubling...implications.
Sylvanas herself is a good example to this. Sylvanas in life, as we see in the flashbacks in Edge of Night, was not a perfect person. She had flaws like most everyone else. And she still made it into her pleasant afterlife despite not always being consistently good.
10/27/2018 12:10 PMPosted by
Darethy
It indicates that our lives are just opportunities for damnation, that really the idea of eternal bliss as a reward for being a good person is meaningless. Because consistently good people simply don't exist, it's only a matter of time until a number of negative situations and negative emotions occur that eventually results in them becoming a villain. The only reason we don't kill ourselves to reach our eternal bliss is because that would be seen as a 'bad' action.
Thus the only meaning to the concept of the 'good person' is that someone managed to be heroic while also finding the quickest path to killing themselves before they had one bad day.
.....
So basically, the WoW-Verse would be run by the Joker.
Did you see my early response about Elune and the afterlife? You never responded to it. Pretty much pertinent here.
The thing is I might view that as 100% objectively, depressingly, true.
The problem. Is I wouldn't blame the Forsaken in that case
anyways because in order to *believe* that you would have to have such a cynical, pessimistic, view of the nature of man and of the cosmic force you've been worshiping your entire life that you'd probably be tempted to eat your gun even were you not a zombie.
10/27/2018 12:27 PMPosted by
Darethy
10/27/2018 12:22 PMPosted by
Amadis
Did you see my early response about Elune and the afterlife? You never responded to it. Pretty much pertinent here.
The thing is I might view that as 100% objectively, depressingly, true.
The problem. Is I wouldn't blame the Forsaken in that case anyways because in order to *believe* that you would have to have such a cynical, pessimistic, view of the nature of man and of the cosmic force you've been worshiping your entire life that you'd probably be tempted to eat your gun even were you not a zombie.
I don't think you saw my post on Elune, as it's actually the opposite of what you're saying here. The presentation of Elune forgives everyone, even the worst of monsters (Satyr, Twlight's Hammer cultists) if you just repent enough:
10/27/2018 10:41 AMPosted by
Amadis
10/27/2018 10:21 AMPosted by
Darethy
This kind of goes into a broader question about WoW's morality that I kind of find to be !@#$ed up, and encourages this.
The entire side plot of Arthas in WotlK is that he had done so much stuff at this point that he was beyond redemption. If there's no hope for rehabilitation, is there ever really an incentive to try and be a good person again? and if you do, what does it say that no matter how good you are, you may still wind up in hell?
Oddly enough, I've found the opposite side with Elune. Two Satyr are reverted back to Night Elves in game. One was Priestess Driana in Azsuna, who was a ghost Satyr, and was reverted into a ghost Night Elf, and she rejoined the Court of Farondis. The other, more obvious and prominent one, is Avrus Illwhisper in Ashenvale that tears his own heart out to cure a dying Night Elf and he does become a Night Elf again, Avrus the Redeemed, by Elune's will.
This seems to be a tendency for Elune, as we see it with Zamael Lunthistle's ghost in the Searing Gorge, who joined the Twilight's Hammer, but repented to Elune, and his soul was forgiven by Elune.
This is a strange story trope that a lot of media has accustomed us to. This moral paradigm that doesn't work on a "scale of deeds" system but is rather simply having an all-forgiving god that will accept any repentance as long as it's sincere enough.
10/27/2018 12:32 PMPosted by
Amadis
10/27/2018 12:27 PMPosted by
Darethy
...
The thing is I might view that as 100% objectively, depressingly, true.
The problem. Is I wouldn't blame the Forsaken in that case anyways because in order to *believe* that you would have to have such a cynical, pessimistic, view of the nature of man and of the cosmic force you've been worshiping your entire life that you'd probably be tempted to eat your gun even were you not a zombie.
I don't think you saw my post on Elune, as it's actually the opposite of what you're saying here. The presentation of Elune forgives everyone, even the worst of monsters (Satyr, Twlight's Hammer cultists) if you just repent enough:
10/27/2018 10:41 AMPosted by
Amadis
...
Oddly enough, I've found the opposite side with Elune. Two Satyr are reverted back to Night Elves in game. One was Priestess Driana in Azsuna, who was a ghost Satyr, and was reverted into a ghost Night Elf, and she rejoined the Court of Farondis. The other, more obvious and prominent one, is Avrus Illwhisper in Ashenvale that tears his own heart out to cure a dying Night Elf and he does become a Night Elf again, Avrus the Redeemed, by Elune's will.
This seems to be a tendency for Elune, as we see it with Zamael Lunthistle's ghost in the Searing Gorge, who joined the Twilight's Hammer, but repented to Elune, and his soul was forgiven by Elune.
This is a strange story trope that a lot of media has accustomed us to. This moral paradigm that doesn't work on a "scale of deeds" system but is rather simply having an all-forgiving god that will accept any repentance as long as it's sincere enough.
No I did, which is why I would view that as the most cynical pessimistic option. Because then, if the Light, or whatever cosmic force was in charge knew your circumstances were brought about by those outer forces and your mind was clouded then it should redeem you. Whether or not you get on an alter and beg forgiveness. It would recognize you were still a good person.
But this means that basically being a good person doesn't matter, being a good person is just a matter of time and circumstance. Eventually everyone, everywhere, would be put into a situation where they would deserve damnation.
At that point, it's just a race to see if you can die before then.
10/27/2018 12:37 PMPosted by
Darethy
But this means that basically being a good person doesn't matter, being a good person is just a matter of time and circumstance. Eventually everyone, everywhere, would be put into a situation where they would deserve damnation.
At that point, it's just a race to see if you can die before then.
That is the philosophy behind Harvey Dent's line "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain" in
The Dark Knight, as you brought up the Joker.
10/27/2018 12:43 PMPosted by
Amadis
10/27/2018 12:37 PMPosted by
Darethy
But this means that basically being a good person doesn't matter, being a good person is just a matter of time and circumstance. Eventually everyone, everywhere, would be put into a situation where they would deserve damnation.
At that point, it's just a race to see if you can die before then.
That is the philosophy behind Harvey Dent's line "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain" in The Dark Knight, as you brought up the Joker.
Pretty much, and it's no coincidence that two villains state that.
If you believe in a benevolent force, this shouldn't be a thought process that really crosses your mind. It devalues the idea of what means to be 'good' as a matter of time and place, at that point morality is just a meaningless label we stamp on ourselves to feel better about who and what we are. Telling ourselves we'd never be like that is just a lie.
Which in the WoW verse, and in real life might be true but.....I think it's better for the world if we
don't believe that.
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10/27/2018 12:47 PMPosted by
Darethy
Which in the WoW verse, and in real life might be true but.....I think it's better for the world if we don't believe that.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt in WoW's setting, given people like Velen and Malfurion and various people who have lived for nonsensical number of years and actually pull off being consistently good in those ridiculous time spans.
I will also agree that at the very least the Light is often portrayed as benevolent in accepting the freed souls of mind controlled, mindless, or feral undead that we have released in various quests over the years.
10/27/2018 12:53 PMPosted by
Amadis
10/27/2018 12:47 PMPosted by
Darethy
Which in the WoW verse, and in real life might be true but.....I think it's better for the world if we don't believe that.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt in WoW's setting, given people like Velen and Malfurion and various people who have lived for nonsensical number of years and actually pull off being consistently good in those ridiculous time spans.
I will also agree that at the very least the Light is often portrayed as benevolent in accepting the freed souls of mind controlled, mindless, or feral undead that we have released in various quests over the years.
The crux of my argument isn't that those people can be consistently good, in fact we've just demonstrated that they can't. That you can be deserving of paradise one moment, but go to hell the next.
At that point my hangup isn't with the light, or shadow, or raising even. It's with the idea that the Forsaken should frame and think of bringing someone back from the dead in that capacity, that they might be giving someone an oppertunity for damnation as it were.
They might but, it's a really ugly way to view the world in that light. A way that I honestly don't think anyone should.
1 Like
10/27/2018 12:37 PMPosted by
Darethy
Because then, if the Light, or whatever cosmic force was in charge knew your circumstances were brought about by those outer forces and your mind was clouded then it should redeem you. Whether or not you get on an alter and beg forgiveness. It would recognize you were still a good person.
I think some of this is just due to the nature of the Light. Irl, people would believe the answer to your problem would be a sentient, sapient deity, who understands the imperfections of the human condition, and can be appealed to.
WoW has somewhat bungled this up by tying their paradisical afterlife to an impersonal force. Sure, other beings can intervene, like the Naaru for Bridenbrad, or Elune. Then there's the Plaguelands quest where you kill ghouls, releasing their spirits, who join the Light. But the Light doesn't know you, or any of your circumstances. It's just magic.
And who knows what they're trying to do with the Shadowlands. Sometimes it's Purgatory, sometimes it's eternal punishment, not to mention domains carved out by entities like Bwonsamdi. Sometimes everyone is going there. Sometimes only those unfit for the Light are going there. /shrug
Tl,dr: It's all just a big mess, because they kept the imperfect human condition, made a traditional, Judeo-Christian Heaven like afterlife, but then made the "deity" associated with that afterlife an impersonal school of magic.
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10/27/2018 12:57 PMPosted by
Darethy
They might but, it's a really ugly way to view the world in that light.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I cannot at the moment describe how I view the world better than I did in my first post.
I mean as a side note: I'm both sleepy, AND I think we have thought about this way, way harder then Blizzard has.
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