skymagpie

[skymagpie]

Bitter man. Colored.

[skymagpie]

hey man everyone loved how convenient and easily forgettable you were on earth. u were the least inconvenient person out there. my buddy told me you were super helpful and nice and didn't take up any space and just slid away from their mind as soon as they stopped looking at you. it was really impressive how little of an impression you made on anyone. sucks that it didn't save you man.

[skymagpie]

I wasn't going to reply to something that sounds like ragebait, but given that you addressed me personally in your original post I will add to that, but I will not address everything in your discussion as this will get too long if I do.

Media does not exist in a vacuum as much as we can pretend to discuss individual topics here as if WoW was written by an unbiased omnipotent creator in a white void devoid of all influences from other media, history and pop culture.

But in the reality that we exist in, WoW is heavily influenced by other media and as such any analysis of said media would apply to it as well. Warcraft has a wide array of characters it has named using words they have derived from our world, which fits their pulp fiction type vibe they went for. You have latched onto the words of "troll" and "orc" and "goblin" in their historical connotation which may or may not be related - and in this particular case they are not. WoW also uses words like "Hell" and "Swiss" despite the concept of Christianity or the county of Switzerland not actually being present. So the words WoW and similar fantasy media borrows from our language are loosely, if not at all, related to the real word. But you know this, because you said it about the Tauren, which is why I wonder why you are confused about the rest. It would be dishonest to say that these two things are in any way the same:

if it were so, perhaps we could argue that Blizzard owes Dreamworks money or vice versa, given that they made a movie after those little wacky haired toys kids at the daycare flush in the toilet. Or perhaps the internet meme face? They are all "trolls" after all. Now where the little "coded" I added in my original post, with coding being when a character or race is given physical, cultural, or personality traits that draw parallels to a real-life group or culture. And the things we see from trolls are:

They don't look very European and Scandinavian to me.

That is cause trolls are explicitly coded after Mesoamerican, Afro-Carribean, Afro-American and West African cultures. From their architecture, clothing, to their religion (yes Loa is taken from the actual African diaspora religions, more commonly called lwa, including Baron Samedi), certain cultural practices, food, art, language, accents and voice actors (troll voice actors are all Black after MoP).

Orcs is a funny one, cause you brought up Lord of the Rings, and it is Tolkien himself that famously or infamously said about orcs "squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types." It is interesting that you brought up LotR as an example yourself, and it is the strongest example of exactly why orcs are non-white coded in popular media (from WoW, to TES, to DnD) - because they draw from LotR orcs. And certainly even though orcs do draw from Nordic cultures (as does a lot of WoW, due to writers bias and love for comic books, specifically Marvel's "Thor") they are in general drawing from these stereotypes of "otherness" that are associated with the cultures of Central Asia.

And finally Goblins, which I do not think I have to talk much about as you had actual American-Jewish people reply to you, but the goblins in Warcraft draw from antisemitic stereotypes and sprinkle in coding that is suggestive of Jewish-American and Italian-American communities. Again, people have replied to this.

Now for the elves, I did not include them when I said "most" of the Horde races, but I was recently told by people that Elves do draw inspiration from Middle Eastern and West Asian cultures. I will leave that to the people who know more about those influences to discuss. So overall, that means 8/14 of the Horde races are explicitly coded as not-white. It still qualifies as most, especially since in the beginning of Warcraft, with the lack of elves and such, it was 3/4 races of the Horde. When it comes to Forsaken for example, it would be too long to go into it, but this thread raises a lot of very valid points from a person and a part of community that has the lived experiences to discuss this topic. Another starting point for a read is this article about the racialized origin of "the zombie" which the Forsaken essentially are.

Bottom line, the Horde used certain stereotypes, mostly drawn from other media to give this sense of "otherness" when compared to the Alliance. They were the invaders, these "uncivilized", "primitive", "savage" brutes who looked alien and scary, speaking in a strange language and broken English. They are meant to give into this fear of the other, and this fear of the other has historically been born from fear of people of color and immigrants (taking over their job, livelihoods and corrupting their values) - which is what WoW, deliberately or not, has the Horde instill in the Alliance.

Warcraft stands out from other works in its genre as it tries to humanize the Horde and make them misunderstood and noble. This however is a process that has been going back and forth of the course of this game, and often the stereotypes that they have relied on to "code" into these races, end up holding it back. A lot of times it is brought into question if demonizing the Horde plays once again into the racist stereotypes it has been built on, or it is simply a natural product of the narrative?

(I am not discussing the internal Alliance racial dynamics, as this was about the implications and coding between the safe to the white western viewer Alliance and the foreign Horde, and a topic about the exotification of races such as Draenei and Night Elves and how they are presented as "safe" to the average white western viewer is a topic all on its own.)

Wrath of the Lich King was fun for everybody, Legion was fun for Alliance but sucked if you were Horde.

I don't think I can ever understand the Alliance/Horde mindset tbh, and IMO it's wild how obsessive some people are about how "the game is bad if you're horde"

[skymagpie]

what if i was fed up with the horrible people in my life and all i wanted was to be in a horror movie so i could brutally hurt them and you were a demon tied to me through a talisman and you said that i had to kill three people in three days or the world would end. what if you made yourself into something beautiful just for me. what if we failed and the world ended but it’s okay because there was nothing in the rules that said anything about you having a human companion in the void you were being banished to. what then???

[skymagpie]

[skymagpie]

Damn, this shit is easy!

[skymagpie]

I am starting to think the original argument was a misunderstanding? Because I was saying that WoW tried to not demonize the Horde and Horde players don't always play to be bad guys, but sometimes WoW ends up demonizing non-white coded races through the Horde. How we got to Draenei erasure and such is beyond me

[skymagpie]

Wrath of the Lich King was fun for everybody, Legion was fun for Alliance but sucked if you were Horde.

I don't think I can ever understand the Alliance/Horde mindset tbh, and IMO it's wild how obsessive some people are about how "the game is bad if you're horde"

[skymagpie]

the question, you see, is not ‘is it too ooc for this character to cry’ but rather ‘what circumstances would push this character to cry’

this is the whump wisdom, go forth and make that character cry

[skymagpie]

I am absolutely not gonna continue with that post because I didn't come to argue or accuse anyone of anything, what I was saying is that Horde players choose to play bad guys, ergo, the Horde is inherently bad guys is not that simple both in what WoW was always trying to do (humanize the types of enemies that were not humanized in fantasy until then such as orcs) and what would be Blizzard's responsibility to do with the cultures they have appropriated for the aesthetics of their game (not make them solely bad and evil).

And this doesn't mean going the "noble savage" route, just not make the Horde evil in relation to the Alliance who whether we like it or not still has white humans and white-western coded cultures at the forefront. And Blizzard has been doing a lot better in terms of equalizing within the Alliance, with quests like the Draenei Heritage.

And it is undeniable that Horde races are very explicitly, directly (Trolls, Tauren, Vulpera) or indirectly (Orcs), taking from real world non-white cultures. Even if it's just the aesthetics, there is still responsibility to not use these "aesthetics" (real cultural elements) to signify something evil, scary and "other".

And it's not like WoW has been completely stripped of nuance on the topic, Shadows of the Horde does a pretty good job in dealing with internal troll conflicts in a way that doesn't dismiss their bad actions and conquests.

A universe spanning over 30 years is bound to have both good and bad and people can want to see more of the good because they enjoy this media for various reasons. People do want to see trolls be black/mesoamerican/indigenous coded, they just wanna see it be done well. My point is that we should be and are beyond that original mindset of "people play Horde to be bad guys" and "people play Alliance to be white supremacists" (yes I've seen this around too) and my criticism was aimed at Blizzard, not any individual person on this platform or any other.

[skymagpie]

I did say most of the Alliance races, not all.

Wrath of the Lich King was fun for everybody, Legion was fun for Alliance but sucked if you were Horde.

I don't think I can ever understand the Alliance/Horde mindset tbh, and IMO it's wild how obsessive some people are about how "the game is bad if you're horde"

[skymagpie]

I think there is something to be said about the fact that a lot of the Horde races have drawn heavily from non-white cultures, almost 1:1 in some places and most of the Alliance races are heavily based on white (western) European cultures. I am sure the average Horde player does wanna play their orc or blood elf supremacist , but it's still Blizzard's responsibility to not make the Horde evil given how they have appropriated non-white cultures for the Horde guys. There are a lot of BIPOC players on Twitter/Bsky that have said these things better than me, but in 2025 people aren't wrong to expect Blizzard to do better than have the "white people" be correct and good and the "non-white people" be evil and savage.

Wrath of the Lich King was fun for everybody, Legion was fun for Alliance but sucked if you were Horde.

I don't think I can ever understand the Alliance/Horde mindset tbh, and IMO it's wild how obsessive some people are about how "the game is bad if you're horde"

[skymagpie]

I'm going to be doing AF again this year!! I'm planning on instead of doing my usual lined style I might focus entirely on lineness painting because I want to improve there

artfight.net/~Alchememe

[skymagpie]

the council just snnounced that it's now "Super-illegal" to draw fanart of that emaciated cheekbone guy from the league of legends cartoon. my heart goes out to everyone affected

[skymagpie]

Character ask game

Give me a character, I'll give you my opinion/headcanons of them, you know how the rabbit runs.

This is primarily meant for Tolkien characters, but you can technically send characters from any medium at the risk that I won't know them. But honestly that risk also exists for Tolkien characters so...

(Template by me, if you want to use it go for it)

[skymagpie]

Tyrande for the ask game?

And Khadgar, even though we all know what you think.

I am doing Tyrande because everyone knows my opinions on Khadgar, and I think both of them deserve their own post 💜

Anyway, Tyrande is one of my favourite ladies in WoW and I think I just love unhinged, dangerous, teeth-baring Night Elf women (regardless if they come in the priestess of the moon elegant flavor, or feral crazy like Maiev)

I know a lot of people have Tyrande fatigue or whatever, but I genuinely loved her more than a lot of the main cast I will not name here, I will never get tired of Tyrande.

Also people have an issue with the way she was handled in Shadowlands because she chose renewal over vengeance and I have a lot of thoughts on that that boil down to:

If she chose vengeance we would either have to see her lose against Sylvanas which is crazy given how much stronger Tyrande is or we would have to see Sylvanas die, which I am guessing no one here wants.

The big issue with the whole plotline is not that Tyrande chose renewal, but that Elune straight up said "Yeah I let everyone die so I can send the souls to my sister in Ardenweald" and this didn't cause any kind of crisis of faith in either Tyrande or the Night Elves, everyone was so chill with this real fast.

The second they had Syvlanas burn that tree down, there was no way out of this for her, she was either going to die or it would be something like this. People are mad at everyone including Tyrande for this whole thing, when the only culprit is BfA.

Anyway, to summarize, Tyrande is great and she is not to blame for stuff in Shadowlands, she was dealt too much after 10,000 years of living and she deserves to retire with Malfurion whom she loves very much (people really need to stop saying she doesn't) and Shandris her baby daughter!!!

[skymagpie]

Okay Maria, its your turn, Devos and or Adrestes for the bingo game

First of all I am stealing your style of answering these, with full credit of course, because I think it's the best way to do it and I am sad it was not revealed to the world sooner 💙

For Devos, I liked her since I watched the Shadowlands cinematics way before I even got to play it like late 2023, cause I thought she is looks cool, pretty and badass.

I still think that she is right, like I guess dying makes sense for her on a greater scale of things, but WoW is not a single story with an ending, so character death almost never has meaning (aside from Varian and Saurfang from the main hero cast), so perhaps she shouldn't have died for her convictions since it wasn't as grand as something like that should. Was hoping she will have a bigger role in the story since she was in the cinematic (but so was Tristane deer guy, and yet)

Still, she was one of the better female characters they introduced and I wish they did more with her instead of us all defaulting to the main chars all the time. I wish we had more new female characters introduced...