silriven

[silriven]

[silriven]

Retribution, Chapter 2: Dornogal

Art by @claret-ash

On the Isle of Dorn, Anduin adjusts to living life adjacent to the Alliance and harbors suspicions that, despite his isolation, he is still being closely watched.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/61490317/chapters/164137186

[silriven]

Happy New Year all-!!! I hear the fireworks are excellent in Dornogal! 🎆✨🎆✨🎆✨🎆✨

[silriven]

And Take Away Its Pain: A Comparison of Masculinity, Trauma, and Queerness in Warcraft and Warframe

First, I want to shout out my friend Silriven at BluSky. (If any of you are mean to her I will Find You.) This thread she wrote recently reflecting on if/how she still likes Anduin as a character was what got me started writing this essay. She talks about the fandom response to Anduin, and the ways both the fandom and writers contradict themselves in discussing the character. The reason I wrote this essay is because I can think of another character and video game that work as a counterpoint to the way Anduin is portrayed.

Even before this specific thread, I made made a thread on BluSky comparing Warcraft and Warframe much earlier because both these games had major update reveals at around the same time. Not only that, but their content served as an interesting contrast between the different games' stories, and my own reactions to each.

The War Within[1] trailer and related announcements were revealed at Blizzcon 2023, around the same time as Digital Extremes, the developers of Warframe, held Tennocon 2023, which included a thirty minute demo of their next major story update, Whispers in the Walls.

For those unfamiliar with either/or World of Warcraft and Warframe, I’ll give a quick summary of the trailers.

In TWW trailer trailer we see Anduin Wrynn sitting by himself in a desert. Anduin is a character the players have known for a long time, and last time we saw him he chose to disappear in response to a trauma he suffered in that expansion’s story. Here his face is dirty, he’s grown out a beard, and his hair is cut short. He has a vision of something that looks like a star calling his name. A second character appears, an orc named Thrall. The two talk; Thrall is calm while Anduin is angry and confrontational. They discuss the visions they’ve been having, how someone at “the heart of the world” is calling out to them. (Anybody who’s kept up with Warcaft's story even a little bit will know this voice is the Titan Azeroth, who lives inside the planet Azeroth.) When Thrall touches Anduin’s shoulder, Anduin has a brief flashback to when the ghost of his father touched his shoulder. Anduin draws his sword and declares “I’m not that person anymore! I have no Light! Not after what I’ve seen, not after what I’ve done!” Thrall replies “You are not your past, Anduin” and expresses his trust in Anduin, who struggles to not cry, and lowers his sword. Both of them experience a much stronger vision of the star calling for them, then Anduin accepts Thrall’s hand, and Anduin pledges to stand with him. They both express confusion at who could be calling out to them. (It’s Azeroth you dinguses!!!) The trailer ends with a cool shot of a giant sword sticking out of the desert, before switching to The War Within expansion logo.

Now, the Whispers In The Walls showcase was a full demo including gameplay, but to keep the comparison as fair as possible, I only talk about the opening three minutes [2]. You can see the whole showcase here.

In the Whispers preview, we open with a cutscene. We start with some spooky eldritch speech, then we shift to someone the player will have heard of before, but never seen, Albrecht Entrati. Albrecht checks a beeping pager, and then an old computer, both out of place against the stylized sci-fi future setting of Warframe. He is followed by his feline companion. He gives his cat some pats, then he sits in a sci-fi casket, where his kitty also curls up. A second character, who we’ll learn later is named Loid, approaches Albrecht with his head bowed and eyes on the floor. Albrecht reaches up to Loid to touch his cheek, and wipes away a tear with his thumb. (Remember this moment, it's important for a point I'll make near the end of this essay.) Albrecht's dialogue is subtitled as (Quiet whispering). Then Albrecht lays down, and the casket closes. Loid raises a hammer as the casket makes loud sounds and lights flash, before he finally brings the hammer down to smash the casket. The screen cuts to black, then the gameplay starts.

Comparing these two teasers at the time, I thought about how Whispers was much more effective at building a story hook by creating mystery. Even if I limit myself to that opening cinematic, we have one character, Albrecht, who we’ve heard a great deal about and is important to the story, but we’ve yet to meet him in-person. The contrast of his 90’s tech and fashion against the more fantastical technology common to Warframe’s universe is stark and creates interesting questions. We’re introduced to this relationship Albrecht has with Loid. I don’t know who these people are or what their circumstances are, but I see genuine love and conflict. I’m already invested in learning more and seeing what happens to them. It’s a great hook! I actually rewatched that opening three minutes a few times while writing this because I have brainworms!

The TWW trailer is about creating a hook based on seeing where beloved characters are now, seeing what’s become of them when the player wasn’t looking. Azeroth the Titan is speaking to the main cast, which is clear to the audience familiar with the game but not the characters for unclear reasons. Anduin is still suffering, unable or unwilling to heal from his trauma. Thrall wants to him to come out of hiding. Anduin agrees to. That’s it. What’s the story hook here? Anduin seems to have gone nowhere in the years since he was last seen, and I have no sense of where his story (or Thrall’s, or Azeroth’s) might be going. I don't even know why Anduin changes his mind and chooses to help Thrall. What, just because there's another big threat to the world? The last one wasn't enough to bring you out of hiding? It’s just stuff happening, a general sense of vague Peril. I can't even get that excited about the shot of Sargeras' sword! Blizz should've thought to address that earlier, like, when the planet got stabbed! That was cool and exciting! Our planet got stabbed by Warcraft Satan! Then it's ignored for years until now, after people kept asking what was going to happen to it. The trailer tries to build a mystery about where the visions are coming from, but it's the Titan Azeroth, the players figured it out right away, there's no mystery. I don't have any reason to feel like the writers care about the story, setting, or characters. I’m left feeling nothing for any of it but a vague sense of disappointment.

Even more, the TWW trailer feels like it’s deliberately avoiding adding any details. Anduin talks about how he’s lost his Light, how he’s “not that person anymore” which is not a bad way to take his arc, but I can’t connect it to when Anduin was enslaved by the Jailer in Shadowlands. I know where his trauma comes from, but the trailer makes no effort to explain or expand on how those specific events affected him. I’m not even going to explain what any of that means to people unfamiliar with Warcraft because it doesn’t matter! In both dialogue and in visuals, the trailer gives little texture or meaning to what Anduin is feeling. In the Whispers trailer, I know Loid is sad, not just because Albrecht is leaving, but that he has to have a role in that departure. I don't know what happened to Albrecht at this point, but the emotional hook is there along with the questions about the story. I care because I believe these two characters are in love. Why should I care that Anduin feels he's lost his Light? I have no sense of what this loss means or feels like. I have no sense of what he's struggling with, or what he might face in the future.

Since those trailers were released, Warframe had its promised Whispers update, and I’ve played the full quest and leveled up the linked faction, which contained more story. While I know I’m being unfair comparing a trailer to a full release, I will continue to do so anyway because 1) I’m a bitter old faggot, and 2) the full story of Whispers makes the comparison between Loid/Whispers as a whole and Anduin/TWW even more interesting/saddening.

This is your warning that I’ll be spoiling the quest Whispers In The Walls. Eventually. I've got some foundation I want to lay first.

I found a tweet thread by Christie Golden, one of Warcraft’s major writers. She links a TIME article about a woman struggling to raise her son to be gentle and kind in a world that encourages anger and violence in men. Golden lists Anduin (among others) as an example of nontoxic masculinity in fictional media. In her replies she goes on to expand on her thoughts.

Here’s the tweet by Golden that stuck out to me: “Too often men and boys who gravitate to the gentler side are automatically perceived as being gay, whether they are or not. ALL men/boys should be able to display these qualities, just like all girls/women can be tough and fearless and athletic if that's who they are.”

What’s wrong with being perceived as gay, Golden?

To be fair, there is a point here about assuming someone’s sexuality based on their personality or behavior. That is nonsense, and assigning traits to someone based on an observer’s opinion isn’t good. I even agree that not all straight characters should be one thing and all gay characters should be another! The problem with Golden’s statement is the implicit bias, being “automatically perceived as being gay” is framed as something bad. Why shouldn’t straight men and boys look up to a gay character? Can they not see themselves in a queer character? Why?

This is another reason why the comparison between TWW and Whispers is so interesting, because Whispers is gay. Sure, there are people who will argue Loid and Albrecht weren’t in love, because no one explicitly says they were together, but if you’re paying attention that’s unneeded. Loid refers to Albrecht as “my Albrecht”, and later, in a diary entry, we hear Albrecht refer to Loid as “my Loid”. There's a moment in the quest where we watch a recording of Albrecht, and he says, “I need Loid to understand why I had to leave. Without him. Why I forced him to destroy the device after I had gone. And why I could never say the words he so needed to hear.”

If you listen to the codex entry “Albrecht’s Notes: The Aftermath” about what he went through after coming back injured from the Void, you get even more. Albrecht describes Loid as “crooning motherly” and how “Loid nursed me then” back to full health. His descriptions, and the voice acting, are entirely earnest. There is no sarcasm or veiled disdain as he describes Loid in these feminine terms. The affection Albrecht both received, and gave, was genuine.

“The agony bit deep, but it was clean. Blameless love bled up from me.

I had decided to live.”

Yes, yes, this section is partly for me to be snappy at the people in the Warframe community who insist Loid and Albrecht aren’t a couple. What I want to demonstrate here is mechanically how Warframe tells its audience these characters are in love without needing to spell it out. Why it’s reasonable (and valid) to interpret characters as queer even if they don’t list their labels on their bios, so to speak.

To bring this back to the character of Anduin Wrynn: while he’s never been officially portrayed as queer, his story, at least in its earliest years, very much was.

Though we don't see much of Anduin in-game early in Warcraft's life, his first story plays out in the supplementary comics and novels. There’s a conflict between who Anduin feels he is and who he is expected to be. He’s expected to become a warrior like his father, Varian, but Anduin finds wielding weapons difficult. He's unable to reach Varian's standards for who he should be. Instead, Anduin chooses to become a healer, in Warcraft terms he chooses the priest class, and focuses on spellcasting and support. At one point, as Anduin is about to leave home to go and train in healing magic, Varian reaches out and nearly breaks his son's arm in his attempt to force him to stay. Varian is horrified at what he's done, and Anduin leaves.

Anduin's story is literally about rejecting the traditional masculinity his father represents to pursue his own, alternative path. We see how the life Varian's lived, a warrior's life full of violence, has poisoned his relationship with his son, how his toxic masculinity was a destructive force. Varian’s story in parallel is learning to accept Anduin’s choice, and learning to understand that his son is still powerful and capable, even if he’s not “strong” in the way Varian himself is. In addition, Anduin is one of the few characters who objects to the war(craft) between the two player factions and wants to find peace between them. Anduin’s story was, in theme if not in content, very much a queer narrative! It's about challenging tradition and finding a path that's more true to who he is and what he believes in.

This was why I connected with the character of Anduin initially. I started playing Warcraft in late Wrath of the Lich King, after ICC came out. When I first met Anduin he had a default human child model, and he said and did basically nothing. Then Cataclysm was released, he got his own teenager model, and a whole questline to himself. Suddenly he was someone with agency, wants, and personality! And then Mists of Pandaria came out and Anduin got to be a major focus of an entire expansion!

Anduin was absent from the next expansion, but the one after, Legion, Anduin returned with an adult model, and his father dies during the story's prologue. While he didn’t get the same focus he did in Mists, in Legion Anduin still had a whole storyline about becoming king, accepting his new role, and making peace with his father's death. It's smaller than his role in Mists, but it's a storyline I enjoyed!

I’ve literally watched this character grow up in real time. It’s a powerful experience!

(Side note: there’s a lot that can be said about Anduin as a monarch, what kind of state head he is, how he treats his people, and is an aspect that largely goes unacknowledged in the canon story. I'll shout out Silriven again, this is a topic she's gone a good job of discussing before. I want to acknowledge this part of his character, but I consider it beyond the scope of this specific essay. I do think making him king, making him someone who extracts taxes and sends people to die in war, does have a major impact on his character, his masculinity, and how he processes trauma. However, talking about monarchy, even a fictional one, is its own topic and needs its own space to explore. It's something to keep in mind whenever discussing any major character in Warcraft who is also a major political leader.)

Through all this I would say I saw Anduin as queer. At no point does he express serious romantic interest in anyone, nor does he appear to be under any pressure to find a partner through either societal or political norms. The themes of his stories made me think he was gay, especially as the only other character he grows close to is another boy. Anduin was a comfort character for me.

This began to change in the expansion after Legion, Battle for Azeroth.

Anduin begins to wear a set of plate armor, looking more like his warrior father, and the role he once rejected, than the priest he chose to be. He leads his armies in a war that he used to be wholly against, a contradiction he never fully confronts. When he punches Wrathion, a childhood friend who reappeared in the last expansion patch, players responded with praise in real life. “Manduin” punched Wrathion, who Anduin claimed was responsible for his father’s death. Which he wasn’t, and can only be seen as responsible through a Five Degrees of Kevin Bacon type web. I'm not sure why Anduin says this, unless the writers wanted to either smear Wrathion or erase the history of friendship the two had previously. Or, maybe they didn't want to bring up any legitimate reasons Anduin might be angry at Wrathion, like abandoning him. If I had a nickel every time one person abandoned another to go on an ill-fated time travel adventure, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't much but it's weird it happened twice.

(Here's a tangent: Imagine if Albrecht ended up in alternate Draenor and/or Wrathion ended up in 1999. Those stories would've gone VERY differently.)

Since I’ve brought him up, it’s time to talk about Anduin and Wrathion.

This topic is. Divisive. In the Warcraft fandom.

Wranduin, the ship name, is something that appeared in fandom mid Mists when the two characters first met. Anduin was curious about who this Wrathion person was and set out to investigate. Long story short, their families had a long history of conflict, and Anduin had every reason to be suspicious and mistrustful of Wrathion. Was openly mistrustful of Wrathion. They continue to hang out together through the rest of the expansion.

This all leads up to a particular moment in the novel War Crimes, taking place after the main events of Mists of Pandaria. Anduin and Wrathion continue to spend time with each other in that book, playing games and discussing politics. When Anduin expresses how tired he is, Wrathion declares “I shall, if asked politely, take you on my back and ferry you to fascinating places, where we will have adventures that will age your father ten years in one night.”

I've never read any of the books myself, but I’ve seen this passage passed around online and it stands out to me. It feels genuine, two teenagers who are close friends but also bad at vulnerability and Feelings, making a connection and finding comfort in each other. I’m not even asking anyone to see a romantic angle to this, just to understand the emotions of the moment. It feels specific to them.

I was in the Warcraft fandom during Mists, I thought their relationship was interesting, and it could make for an interesting romance. Despite ideological differences, they were very much kindred spirits. People born into power who’ve also suffered immense loss of agency. Both were forced to grow up quickly, had their lives endangered at young ages, and both want to protect the world they live in, even if that means different things to both of them. That tension, the clash between their ideals and their personalities, the potential for connection and division both, was what made their relationship so interesting.

Then Wrathion disappeared for several expansions, came back in BofA, and the first thing that happens is Anduin punches him in the face. We never see them in a scene together after this moment ends.

It's worth noting that while Wrathion isn't human (he's a dragon in disguise) his humanoid form makes him one of the very few non-white characters in the main cast. They reintroduce him by having a white man, who was once a friend, punch him in the face. This is an action Anduin has never apologized to Wrathion for.

There’s another Warframe character I want to talk about briefly: Ticker. She’s a trans woman.

She's been in the game much longer than Loid and Albrecht, but like them, her identity is never explicitly stated, but at the same time it's unambiguous. She has a deeper, more masculine voice, has a masculine appearance (Old Mate rank spoilers, but if you know you know) while her body language is very feminine and she uses exclusively feminine pronouns and terms for herself. One her voice lines when you speak with her is “A person gets told a lot of things over the course of a life. Who they are. Who they should be. Amateurs, lecturing a professional.”

She is a trans woman, she has some of the best lines in the game, and I love her.

My greatest disappointment with Ticker is that she isn’t involved in the greater storyline associated with her zone. We do meet other good characters (Eudico in particular is a lady character I adore) but Ticker’s exclusion sticks out to me. Sure, one could point to Smokefinger as also being largely absent, but Ticker’s role in the story is to help pay off people’s debts so they don’t suffer more than they have to. This is something she has to do in secret (to her boss’s boss, not to the player natch) or risk facing harsh punishment herself. This could tie directly into the area’s larger story about a workers' union violently revolting against its hyper-capitalist overlords. Why isn’t she in Vox Solaris DE??? By the way, the player sides with the union.

(Side note: Blizzard is an American studio, while Digital Extremes is Canadian. I can feel a potential discussion of these two countries, labor unions, and these two games, but like the point about monarchy in Warcraft, that needs its own space. There's definitely things to talk about, but I'd need to do real research before I could begin to approach it.)

So looking at Ticker, then looking at Whispers, this update shows growth to me. Warframe is showing two men in love[3], both characters and their identities are treated with respect by the narrative and other characters. Yes, this isn’t the same as depicting a canonical trans woman, but I’m inclined to be patient and kind when I sense that creator(s) are earnest about portraying experiences that aren’t theirs. We all have internal biases we need to uproot, it’s a journey that will last our whole lives, and one that will inevitably end incomplete. We can all and always learn to improve our art, as well as our compassion and understanding of other people. For me, forgiveness for earlier depictions that were poor or problematic is easy when I believe the creator(s) are making a sincere effort. We all make mistakes, and we all grow. Hopefully DE will add another canonical trans person to their game who will have a bigger role.

I’m hammering this point home because I have never felt this level of sincere effort from Blizzard.

I know I’m comparing an middle-ish game studio to a massive AAA company, and I do not care. Whether it’s because of the writers’ cowardice or a producer’s mandate, Warcraft takes only small steps to be inclusive, while Warframe is genuinely trying. (DE also updated skin shaders specifically so darker tones would look nicer in their new lighting system!) It's things like this that make Golden's talk about Anduin being an example of nontoxic masculinity ring hollow. Only one of these games seems willing to engage with marginalized stories, with people who live outside of the strict roles we're assigned. The concept of "nontoxic masculinity" cannot exist if one is unwilling to engage with queerness. Allowing men to embrace more gentle behaviors also means not shaming anyone for being gay. Allowing men to do and be things that aren't the pinnacle of traditional masculinity means understanding and embracing that men can and will engage in more feminine behaviors or roles, and this doesn't diminish their gender identity. These concepts are linked.

(I know this is a very binary way of framing these concepts, but let me tell you, Blizz is NOT ready for that discussion.)

Warcraft has added gay characters or made some existing characters gay, but never anybody in the main cast, nothing that would get a major spotlight. Anduin could’ve been an easy solve for this, whether he started a relationship with Wrathion or someone else, it doesn’t matter! Having a major character in a game as large as World of Warcraft would've meant so much. Instead they hide their queer characters in secondary roles, in supplementary media, and made them into easter eggs in the game. Never major characters, never the focus of the story. Nothing they would, for example, show off at a major convention in 2023.

Moving away from talking about queerness for a moment, something that struck me watching the Whispers demo again is that DE isn't afraid to make their new character flawed. I don't want to say unlikable necessarily, because I did like Loid right away, but he's also rude to the established character traveling with us ("Resume your duties, construct!) and then dismissive of the player. He's supposed to wait for an "operator" to arrive at the labs, and thinks it's obviously not the player. By the end of the quest (which I'll talk about in a moment because yes it's relevant) Loid comes to accept that the player is the one he's meant to work with. When you level up the related faction in the full release, Loid eventually tells the player that his role was to care for Albrecht, and it would be his honor to extend that same service to the player. This arc is sweet and feels earned because Loid started so abrasive, the writers weren't afraid to make him abrasive, and even by the end I wouldn't say he's flawless. In fact, in the next update, Dante Unbound, DE has hinted that Loid will have to confront the established character he was rude to in Whispers. Loid feels like a person who's going through shit, in the way that people go through shit. Not with grace, but trying his best anyway.

I bring this up because one of the long standing issues with Anduin as a character, which has gotten worse as time goes on, is the unwillingness to give Anduin flaws. I wonder if this connects back to the point about the lack of specificity about his feelings or experiences in TWW trailer, why Thrall's simple "You are not your past" feels so strange, and why the trailer seems reluctant to acknowledge Anduin's anger as a problem. Anduin has, for a while, been positioned as a moral core for the game, the character who is primarily interested in peace for unselfish reasons. Part of the reason I enjoyed Anduin as a character in Mists was because, sometimes, he got to act like a shitty teenager. He'd be sarcastic or smarmy or do something objectively dumb, like run off to fight a major enemy of his nation on his own. This is especially true when interacting with Wrathion, which includes Anduin using the taunt "You're what, two years old?" To which Wrathion replies "Two in DRAGON years." It's very endearing! Look at these brats, they're believable teenage friends to me. Yes, Anduin is one of the few peace-seekers in the story, he tries so hard to be good and kind even to his enemies, but in moments like these he still feels like a person.

We could look at TWW and say Anduin is demonstrating anger issues, which would be interesting because, like in the example of almost breaking Anduin's arm, this was something Varian struggled with. Except it doesn't feel like the trailer recognizes this as a flaw. The moment goes by and is quickly forgotten. I can look at Loid in Whispers and I recognize where his bitterness comes from: he felt abandoned and so pushes others away. The one detail I did like in TWW trailer was the comparison between Thrall touching Anduin's shoulder, and Varian's ghost doing the same in the past. That moment felt like a trigger for Anduin, reminding him of that moment when he was so vulnerable, but also of his grief for his father. (Nevermind we had that story in Legion about Anduin coming to terms with his grief. Let's ignore that.) It's the most sincere moment of the trailer, but it doesn't follow through! As soon as the second vision dissipates, Anduin takes Thrall's hand and pledges to help. Why? Again, "because there's another big cosmic threat" isn't a good enough reason. What does he feel in this moment? Why did he change his mind now?

Nontoxic masculinity doesn't mean "flawless person". I would still say Loid is a good example of nontoxic masculinity, regardless of if or when he does engage in more toxic behaviors. I'd say as a character Loid is a better demonstration than Anduin of nontoxic masculinity because he's capable of self-reflection, realizing he did something bad, and correcting himself. One interpretation of events in the story of Whispers (because much of Warframe is open to interpretation) is that the local eldritch horror was feeding off of Loid's resentment towards Albrecht, and this was fueling its assault on the labs. Only in reminding Loid of Albrecht's feelings for him, specifically in a way Loid had been deliberately avoiding, can the player begin to take down the bad guy of the quest.

This is a great time to move to my last point about Whispers’ full story: the ending.

I know we can talk about ludonarrative dissonance about two games where the player regularly enacts mass murder and trying to square that with certain story themes. Listen. Hear me out.

In Warcraft, the solution to the final boss is always kill them. (Or arrest them in the case of Garrosh in Mists. In truth this was only a stay of execution). Part of this is the limit of always putting an expansion’s conclusion in a raid. There always needs to be a big fight in a specific kind of setting with specific player expectations. I wish Blizz played with this more; maybe we can only seal away the bad thing? Or maybe the goal is to hold something off while an NPC does a magical ritual that saves the day by some other method? I’m sure there are possible, creative solutions other than “hit bad guy (or his toes if he’s big) until bad guy falls over”.

How does the player save the day in Whispers in the Walls? I’m going to cover this in detail because it’s one of my favorite moments in the whole game.

You spend much of the quest fighting off The Murmur, constructs summoned by the local eldritch horror, called the Indifference (among many other names[4]) which is trying to break into the labs the quest takes place in. The final encounter, the story's climax, has the Indifference possesses a Vessel, one of many unfinished biomechanical giants Albrecht created and left scattered around his lab. The evil Vessel moves in to attack the player, who then possesses a Vessel themself.

The player’s Vessel holds up a hand, and we see a button prompt.

I'm stealing a point from another Tumblr user because it's great. Go read their post and the replies if you're curious about this particular moment!

This button prompt isn’t unusual. There aren’t many quick time events in Warframe, they're not a part of regular run and gun gameplay, but they do appear. If you’re like me, you’ve gone into the accessibility options and toggled button mashing off because wrists hurt. This prompt isn’t unusual to see for me.

But if you didn't use that accessibility toggle, you'll still get this specific prompt. It will be unusual that you're being asked to hold to interact with the scene, rather than the usual smash a button to make thing happen.

So you hold the button, the player’s Vessel reaches out, and when I first played I got excited because I think I’m powering up a big blast to destroy the enemy Vessel!

Then this happens:

I encourage everyone who can to watch the video for the full effect, but I’ll still describe it here:

The background music is ominous, and as you hold the button there's a heartbeat sound. The player's Vessel slowly reaches toward the enemy Vessel. When then the prompt button disappears, the scene goes quiet. The player Vessel gently holds the enemy Vessel's face, mirroring how Albrecht did to Loid at the beginning of the quest. As the music changes to a calming vocal track, we see the enemy Vessel's face change, drop from aggressive to lonely longing. The camera backs away as the two Vessels slow to a stop, posed to echo that "memory of love". The camera switches to Loid, who holds a hand to his own cheek, then looks back at the Vessels. He understands the connection too.

This kind of thing isn’t unheard of for Warframe either! I'll keep additional spoilers to a minimum, but a previous main story quest, The Sacrifice, has similar themes. In fact, my favorite moment from that quest involves a monologue by a major villain about how he is literally unable to comprehend the idea of empathy or compassion. He doesn’t understand why the player character, in a moment of vulnerability and understanding, is able to do what he couldn’t, with all of his violence and brutality.

“And it was not their force of will - not their Void devilry - not their alien darkness. It was something else. It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing —

— and take away its pain.” [5]

In a story where the primary antagonist is a mysterious entity called “The Indifference” we don’t defeat it with force. With hate. What’s the opposite of Indifference?

It’s old man yaoi love. We defeat Indifference with love.

I don’t feel like I was cheated out of a cool moment. I suspect some people did. It’s not like Whispers didn’t have cool moments! I’m not even going to argue that this moment was uncool, just that it brought up different and unexpected emotions in me! It was an interesting and affecting twist on how we expect these encounters to go. It’s moments like these that tell me that Warframe's writers, for all their flaws, are putting genuine thought and emotion into their game. They’re thinking about characters and themes, trying to follow them through even with the scattershot way that video game design demands writers work.

Writing this description reminds me of a moment in Shadowlands, the expansion that traumatized Anduin. It takes place in (surprise!) the Shadowlands, the afterlife of Warcraft’s universe. Thrall, the second character we see in the TWW trailer, meets his mother in Shadowlands. She died when he was a baby, and now that he meets her in these weird circumstances, they begin to create the bond they couldn’t have before. In particular I found this conversation they have touching. A mother who didn't get to know her son, and a son who never knew his mother, finally get to connect. “I knew who you were the moment I saw you,” Draka tells him, “Do you really think I would not recognize Durotan's eyes?"

“Come, I wish to know more of your life, all of it,” she says to him, sounding tired.

It’s such a sweet moment, and bonus points for focusing on Draka, a woman who was functionally fridged prior, who now gets to be a character with personality and (some) agency in Shadowlands. It’s such a perfect demonstration of everything that could’ve been interesting in Shadowlands, what was and is interesting in Warcraft’s story, and what’s so often set aside or overlooked. Can they continue to have a relationship when the current conflict is over? Questions like this are interesting, but Shadowlands doesn’t engage with them at all, and it's poorer for it.

In Warcraft, trauma is aesthetic. Pain is aesthetic. It doesn’t matter what caused Anduin’s suffering in TWW trailer, all that’s important is that we know he’s suffering. We know he's important because he’s a main character and he’s sad about something. But, like, not sad in a way that would make him cry. That part is critical because we all know boys don't cry, right? That bias feels implicit in much of Warcraft's emotional moments. How much more touching would Thrall and Draka's reunion be if Thrall was allowed to cry at finally getting to meet his mom?

Loid does cry, at the beginning of Whispers' quest and during the story of the faction associated with the update. His emotions, and thus his story, feel more genuine and engaging for allowing him that vulnerability.

Warframe wants to engage with specific traumas, how they can make us bitter towards others, perpetuate our own and others’ pain. The point of pain is to understand it, because in understanding, that pain can be taken away. Warcraft has no interest in taking away pain, and it has no interest in understanding it. It’s not about emotional connection, because that requires a vulnerability and a capacity to self-reflect that Warcraft has no interest or courage to engage with. Pain is aesthetic.

Whispers is setting up a longer story arc for Warframe. At the time Whispers was revealed, Warframe was celebrating its 10th anniversary, and the previous main story quest wrapped up the storyline the game told from its release. In this way, Whispers is again an interesting comparison to Warcraft’s The War Within. TWW is also meant to be the start of a new story arc that will last several expansions. I know which story I’m excited about, and which one I feel nothing for.

Loid was a character I met for the first time last year, he immediately felt like a person, and I was emotionally invested. As a player I so badly want Albrecht to finally say the words Loid needed to hear. Anduin Wrynn is someone I’ve known for years, but is now a cardboard cutout. I don't feel compelled to follow his story because... what could it be? Warcraft doesn't seem interested in any conclusion or goal for him. He just is.

I have a lot of complicated emotions about World of Warcraft, as a game and as an influential piece of media. I played the game for many years, and it was an important part of my life. In many ways I’d say it's still a part of me, even after I stopped playing the game itself. Part of writing this essay was following up on some thoughts I shared with friends on BluSky, but part of it feels like exorcising a demon, or bleeding out poison. Part of me grieves for Warcraft, what it meant to me and what I thought it could have been. In Warframe though, I've found a place of comfort and compassion. In between all the space ninja nonsense and vast quantities of horrific violence the player commits, Warframe offers growth, and a way to let go of what hurts us.

—

I'll take a moment and shout out an excellent video essay by Shaun on Youtube called Andrew Tate: How to be a Real Man. It's a great resource for a more general discussion of masculinity in the real world. The video is a criticism of Tate and his approach, why it appeals to some men, and further dissects what masculinity means, and what nontoxic masculinity means. (Is it an inbox full of pictures of Aragorn?) It's a good dissection of masculinity as a concept, and one I'd recommend if you're curious about the topic of toxic/nontoxic or negative/positive masculinity.

—

Yes not only do I have my paragraph long asides I've now also added footnotes. This isn't a peer reviewed journal, you're not my mom, I do what I want!

[1] One of Warframe’s major quests is also called “The War Within” which might be confusing to a reader who knows Warframe. Don’t worry about it, I’m talking exclusively about the upcoming Warcraft expansion here.

[2] For bonus points, if you haven't played Warframe, go to 20:55 on the demo video. You'll see a logo and release date for Whispers In The Walls, hear the live crowd cheer, and the creative director will start to speak... until she's interrupted by something in the game. What you see and hear next is almost exactly as it is in the final release, including the music, minus an extra line of exposition from Loid. This wasn't just a stunt for the convention. I fucking LOVE Warframe.

[3] To be honest this is part of a personal measurement I use to gauge how queer friendly a work is: if they have queer women do they also have queer men? A good example of why I use this is Mass Effect. That franchise always had queer women and an option for lesbian romance, but only in Mass Effect 3 did they add one (1) queer option for a masculine Shepherd. I am a (nonbinary) lesbian so on the one hand I don’t want to dismiss all queer women in media as “pandering” and queer men as “valid”. It’s more of a guideline to estimate how willing a piece of media/creator is to transgress heterosexual norms. Depicting men who love men is seen as more transgressive than two women in love by the gaming community at large. The reasons for this are complicated and they all suck.

[4] hey kiddo

[5] I wanted to avoid spoilers for other Warframe story quests, but The Sacrifice is, again, an interesting point of comparison for Anduin's story. The Sacrifice is, largely, about a character coming to terms with his grief over the death of his son. If you see the whole video I link there, you'll see the player presented with three options: Wrath (We use this memory. It fuels our wrath), Acceptance (We accept this memory and move beyond its reach), and Emptiness (We return this memory to the Void and find peace in our emptiness.) I just wish Anduin's grief over Varian was, at any point, treated with this level of nuance and care.

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Something for Valentine's Day.

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This Wrathion statue has been cancelled and I want to save the photos from the Gear Store somewhere.

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I managed to get the special dialogue from Wrathion in Chapter 6 of Embers of Neltharion, since I waited so long to do this on my main.

This seems to be triggered when your character completes the portions of the Badlands storyline that involve the creation of Wrathion. So, from chapters "Rhea" through "The Fate of a Dragonflight" as part of the Badlands Quests achievement.

He says: "My friend...you know me better than anyone. You were there when I came into being. My birth was anything but natural."

This is instead of: "Some call me a miracle, you know. Yet my birth was anything but natural."

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Thoughts on the Waking Shores Campaign

The one thing I wholeheartedly like about the Waking Shores quests, and by like I mean "oh, man, I think I seriously love this a little more every time I rewatch it" is this conversation between Wrathion and Alexstrasza. There's a lot going on here that I adore*

*but...

The reason why I like this exchange so much is because I am an idiot reading Wrathion as a sympathetic character, and I'm pretty/definitely/99.9% sure that was NOT the intent behind this scene.

The thing I've been wrapping my head around is that I really, really like the premise of this storyline: the pressure of being one of two surviving black dragons (as far as he and Ebyssian know) to return to the Dragon Isles and take responsibility for their flight's inheritance causes Wrathion, who is relatively young and inexperienced, to crack. He starts compromising his morals, lashes out and gets sloppy. Blacktalon notices and they're concerned. Ideally Ebyssian would be here to comment on that and call it out, too. Then Sabellian shows up, Wrathion's insecurity tanks, and things get worse. I love the idea of throwing this problem at Wrathion.

The problem is that would require the narrative to frame all of this as somewhat sympathetic, not JUSTIFIED, not EXCUSABLE, but as an understandable character reaction. And it just does not.

"My condolences for having to deal with those two for as long as you did."

"The red dragonflight is charged with the preservation and nuturing of all dragons, even those we may tire of at times." Wow, Alex, really?

So when you get to the end of this questline and there's this exchange between Alexstrasza and Sabellian: she's reprimanding him and seems to be denying him entrance to the Ruby Life Pools. Sabellian is present for the renewal of the ruby oathstone and oversees the eggs placed in the black dragonflight's life pool, anyways, but that's not really important.

What IS important (to me, the idiot who's a fan of this character) is that Wrathion is hanging back, observing everything at a distance. For all of the fuss he made about being involved in this task, now that he's here, he doesn't know what to do. He's out of his element, he isn't comfortable.

So when I first saw this, I thought: "Oh, now's a perfect time to tie up that loose end from the argument. Alexstrasza can notice that Wrathion is hanging back, beckon him forward, maybe say something sympathetic or poignant alluding to the way he was created by her flight. She could say something like that she wishes he had been better cared for, like these eggs will be, because Alex is supposed to be, you know, a kind and empathetic character.

This bullet cuts right through Wrathion's impressively thick emotional barrier, which was already pretty cracked from the stress he's put on himself. Wrathion apologizes for being a self-centered asshole and pledges the black dragonflight's defense of the Life Pools (the Obsidian Citadel is practically their neighbor, after all). Alex forgives him, blah blah blah, nice emotional landing just like all the other leveling campaigns have. Cool."

But we don't get anything remotely like that. The thing that struck me while playing through the Waking Shores a second time is how the purpose of the black dragonflight in this story is ultimately to service the red dragonflight's arc. The ruby oathstone is what gets a nice, tidy emotional resolution, the black dragon eggs are more like props.

Sabellian doesn't comment on how he feels about his flight finally being able to rear children on Azeroth again after "millennia" of struggling to survive on Outland. Wrathion has absolutely nothing to say after the shock of realizing that he and Ebyssian are not, in fact, the only black dragons left.

Another thing that I thought was a missed opportunity is what if Sabellian wasn't allowed into the Life Pools and it was up to Wrathion to oversee the placing of the black dragon eggs? Wrathion finally gets a taste of what he wants, he's the leader here, and he's utterly at a loss for what to do. These aren't his eggs, he doesn't know the broodmothers, he doesn't know how the hell his flight used to raise their whelps, he's not good with kids, etc.

Instead of leaving him flounder, Alex beckons him forward and teaches him what to do because, again, she's supposed to be an empathetic character.

I think I would've liked Dragonflight a lot more if Wrathion had had some moments to breathe in-between the arguing and the showboating. It just really doesn't feel like he was written to be a sympathetic or even likable character, not at least until Aberrus and the final chapter of Embers of Neltharion, "A Flame Extinguished."

I really like this next bit I've taken a screenshot of, too. I love the way Alex's voice actor says "Please, find Wrathion" in exasperation. You can tell she cares about him and empathizes with him even though she's clearly frustrated with the way that he's acting: stubborn, tunnel-visioned, and insecure.

tldr; to have a line like "My heart aches, I worry for Wrathion" conclude with only "the red dragonflight is charged with the...nurturing of all dragons, even those we may tire of at times" with that extra insult of "my condolences for having to deal with those two" just absolutely boggles my mind. There's so much more that could've been done with this setup.

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Thoughts on the Badlands Campaign

So I finally got around to playing the Badlands storyline for myself. I went into this thinking "oh, maybe I'm reading way too much into the quest text, maybe when I play it myself, I'll see why everyone tends to find Rhea the sympathetic one in the story here."

I'm here to report that, uh, no, when I was the one actually taking eggs from the imprisoned mother and then murdering both her and her children in game, I found it just as impactful. Maybe a little more. We do some really despicable things for "the greater good" here.

The black dragon body count racked up by you, the player character, in this questline is thirty-six: 12 darklight soldiers, 22 whelps, Velarok, and Nyxondra. Alliance characters get a trio of enthusiastic dwarf sidekicks to help us with some of this.

The saddest part about playing this, for me, was realizing that when Rhea sends you after the escaped Nyxondra, you find her circling above her brood. So her first act of freedom was to go to the surviving experiments to try and protect them. You then kill 12 for the quest.

Another sad thing is her one line of dialogue, which is also the last thing she ever says: "My kin won't forget what you've done! We will rage, mortals!" Have her kin actually forgotten? We don't know, because so far, none of the black dragonflight have brought this up.

(There are these lines from the recent "Misfit Dragon" quest line with Wrathion and Vyranoth in patch 10.2, though, which I still love. It's a stretch, but it could be a nod to a lot of Badlands story things, including this, so there's that at least.)

All of this is on top of the suffering endured by Nyxondra "off-screen" as Rhea forced her to lay eggs while she was an invisible prisoner trapped within eyeshot of her unaware kin ("right in the middle of their breeding grounds"). It's unknown for how long.

One last interesting thing that stood out to me was that Rhea refers to herself "an envoy of Alexstrasza herself", so I think it's not a question of "if" Alex knew about this but "how much" did she know.

There's also a very dark joke about draconic diplomacy somewhere in here

The part of the quest that I think is really most affecting is when Rhea seems to have an epiphany and realize the extent of the pain that she's caused, but then she immediately doubles down on the excuse that Nyxondra's sacrifice "was necessary." Nyxondra, of course, seems to disagree strongly. Her free will has been taken from her by Rhea, she has no agency in this situation.

After this, Rhea sends a Champion out to "put her out of her misery," like she's a wounded animal. It's barbaric.

Then there's this line: "The Red Dragonflight is as benevolent as it is powerful." This is the final bit of salt in the wound. The Red Dragonflight was anything but benevolent in this quest. I think the only way you could come to that conclusion is if you see the corrupted black dragons as not only past the point of saying, but as lesser beings who are disposable, whose pain is some kind of comeuppance for having succumbed to the Old Gods.

It's another case in World of Warcraft of corruption being associated with moral "badness" by the narrative. The narrative in this game constantly implies that the dragons who succumb to corruption do so because they have some kind of moral failing or moral weakness. The narrative tells us that black dragons "deserve" not just to be killed but be made to suffer for their madness and for the actions they took while under the Old Gods' influence.

Rhea even says this somewhat explicitly: Nyxondra supposedly deserves what Rhea is doing to her because of what her flight did to Alexstrasza. Her suffering isn't just the consequence of cold science being done to save the future of the black dragonflight, it's deliberately retributive.

I'm not really going anywhere with this, just kind of wanted to talk again about how (intentionally or not) Wrathion's origin story is dark as hell.

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I kind of pushed it a bit too far but I wanted to try making him look scruffier and...worse. I still need to get a feel for the new look

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"Long was the way that fate them bore, O'er stony mountains cold and grey, The Sundering Seas between them lay, And yet, at last, they met once more." - The Tale of Tinúviel (Song of Beren and Lúthien)

A belated birthday gift for @claret-ash

The quote is from "The Tale of Tinúviel" also known as "Song of Beren and Lúthien", a poem sung by Aragorn in The Fellowship of the Ring. This is a very beautiful rendition of the poem that I've been obsessed with for about a year now.

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Title: Every Action Has Consequences

Summary: An urgent message is delivered to Ebyssian from the Blacktalon, who request his presence at the Obsidian Citadel to help settle a dispute.

Rating: Mature

Category: Gen

Tags and Content Warnings: Negotiations, Serious Injuries, Wrongful Imprisonment, Hurt with not much comfort, Alcohol

https://archiveofourown.org/works/46494493

My sincerest, most heartfelt thanks goes out to @claret-ash for drawing this beautiful illustration of Ebyssian approaching the Obsidian Citadel for the fic.  I love it so much and I’m so proud and grateful to have this as a fic banner 🙇‍♀️ 💕

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Revisiting “The Vow Eternal”

Some spoilers for Dragonflight Patch 10.1: Embers of Neltharion.

I decided to go through The Vow Eternal again to see if it'd read differently knowing how the story shakes out in Embers of Neltharion and I realized there are so many references to Wrathion wanting to be an Aspect or trying to act like he will be that it's kind of depressing lol

Overall I still really like the story and how Wrathion is portrayed...but this ending definitely doesn't hit as hard knowing that most of the in-game story to follow will be all about why he's unfit for the role and basically not a great individual.

It's like er, sorry, Wrathion, you actually won't find kinship and a home on the Dragon Isles.  In fact you're going to immediately be at odds with pretty much everyone including both of your brothers, whom you will fight with and belittle...constantly. And you'll be so lost in your drive to ascend to this position you now think you're "owed" that it'll undo the progress you've made and the character development you've undergone from spending your entire life trying to prepare for this responsibility.

So I...uh don't how we're supposed to revisit and interpret this short story now.  Is this like another unreliable narrator/biased perspective kind of thing where we, the readers, are supposed to recognize that Wrathion is being arrogant and delusional here.  Are we supposed to look at his flaws, like the alcoholism, his discomfort at the wedding, his arrogance, loosing his temper, all of which I still like and think make his character more interesting, and go "oh, clearly this is all more evidence for why he shouldn't be Aspect"?

I don't think that would be as much of a disappointment if Dragonflight dealt more with Wrathion's personal struggle over all this, if it seemed like learning this about himself was the point or that the story was going this way with him for a reason, but as it is, it just seems like the reason is that the narrative has to knock him down a peg or twenty for the purpose of making Ebyssian the obvious choice.   

 I think how this whole thing resolves, how Ebyssian becomes Aspect and how Wrathion handles this, will matter a lot.  Lately I've been starting to wonder "oh, god, how far is this going to go?  Are they going to make him have a fit or something when Sabellian and the rest of the black dragonflight side with Ebyssian and storm off like he did in MoP?"  But if this ends up being a personal reckoning for him that leads to some character development and we get BfA Wrathion back for a bit, that would be something.

In retrospect, it's also a little funny that Ebyssian wasn't in this story at all, not as Wrathion's plus-one or at the end when all of the dragons travel to Wyrmrest to answer the call of the isles.  He's not even mentioned once.  Like a good chunk of this short story is dedicated to Wrathion observing and interacting with other characters in a way that seems designed to get readers back up to speed with who's who in Azeroth's main cast.  You'd think they would've wanted to at least remind readers about Wrathion's known brother, too, if he was going to play such an important role in the expansion lol  Not to mention that he is Wrathion's one known family member and there are so many references to Wrathion feeling lonely or being the "only" member of his dragonflight.  This also would've probably been a really good time to mention if Wrathion and Ebyssian's relationship, which seemed really good at the end of BfA, had become strained or if their personalities were already clashing.

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A bit more complaining about how Wrathion is written in the 10.1 PTR

Ok last post on this for now, promise.  I'll end this one with some things that I liked about the Dragonflight 10.1 PTR (Embers of Neltharion) to counter all of the salt I've been sprinkling around here.  Here we go.

I've nit picked Wrathion's individual lines but I don't think there's any one single exchange in particular that brings him down...with maybe one exception which I'll get to.  It's more like, by the end of the campaign, his entire character winds up worse than the sum of the parts.   Because on paper I'm not opposed to Wrathion butting heads with his siblings or loosing his edge because Sabellian has thrown him off guard.  This is like a "death by a thousand cuts" situation.  Each line on its own is maybe not so bad but everything all together is...a lot.

This bit here though is definitely the worst, my least favorite. Wrathion comes off as almost unforgivably callous. He enters this scene with a clear view of the smoking remains of a village he got to know earlier, Ebyssian and Sabellian are horribly injured, there's a DEAD BODY like a STONE'S THROW in front of him and THIS is the first thing that comes out of his mouth?  And he needs to be told by Ebyssian that this is inappropriate?  Really?  This out of everything just lingered with me in an irritating way.

It also comes right after a harrowing questline which features some very touching, mature moments between Ebyssian and Sabellian as they work together and help each other.  After watching all of that play out, Wrathion rudely crashing back in like he does is such whiplash.

And it's not like he gets it together after Ebyssian snaps at him.  He still acts weirdly aggressive when everyone returns to Valdrakken, getting defensive and snippy with Ebyssian and Sabellian for no reason WHY IS HE LIKE THIS NOW??

Ok, so now that's all off my chest.  Time to talk about stuff that I liked.

I loved this bit where Wrathion helps the elderly niffen field dress her game and carry the meat back to Loamm. I have such a soft spot for characters knowing wilderness survival. It's also a rare moment where Wrathion is being courteous so it's like a breath of fresh air.

I really liked this bit of dialogue.  I don't know what it is but something about the idea of Wrathion giving up the life he's built for himself to conform and become one of Sabellian's soldiers is so *depressing*, but in a delicious angsty way, like yes, Wrathion would hate that and I would hate watching that.  Don't know if that was the intention or not but thank you for the hearty fanfic food, that would make such an interesting AU.

This was a nice bit of horror: the charring flesh of Sabellian's burning arm saying 'hello' to him in the voices of the old gods.  Love that, excellent suffering.

"Salt returned to the ocean" is a really nice line.   It was also clever seeing Ebyssian use some kind of earth shaman magic to put out fires.  I liked how much he did in general during the campaign, it was really good to see him in action again.

Ok and to close out I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this: after everything, Wrathion does get this nice little mature and considerate line at the end.  Thank you, I'll take it.