Illidan skin for WoW in non-combat

[Haven]

Glad to have demonstrated my point. It was a direct reflection of this "commentary" here.

Nah, mine was satire (without even attempt at provoking anyone), and yours was a lengthy personal attack on my horse. I mean avatar.

<snip>

So many words... but the amount of words in your explanations doesn't invalidate the existence of such terms as "distasteful", "pretentious", and "show-off". And their application. You have the freedom to like the coolness of Illidan and imitate him, fine; but I have the freedom to call it pretentious, and if someone agrees with me on that, your grievance is your problem. You can choose to wear pink thongs on your head, but don't be surprised if this particular style will be criticized. Some things are just criticized more than others. Some things are acclaimed universally, some are not. Everyone loves Hugh Jackman, few love Boy George. Everyone accepts warrior class, few accept demonhunter.

Perhaps you grasp the analogy now.

I only see that you're hurt more than the matter deserves. Chill out, bro.

Lovecraft is to zombies what Janet Jackson is to Michael Jackson, currently.

What the hell do zombies have to do with Lovecraft? Have you even read a single story he wrote? He's one of the fathers of horror genre; writers like King and Gaiman called his works their greatest inspiration.

[Yig]

I understand perfectly why a demon hunter is targeted in this manner as opposed to the warrior, but really, they are just two sides of the same over the top distasteful brand of glorified late 20th century SuperHero mythology and self denigrating fantasy satire that WOW is founded upon. Warriors are known for being bearded (you're not a warrior in the warrior community if you don't have a beard) with giant shoulders who can't fit through doors and who are covered in as many spikes and chains as you can fit on them.

Demon Hunters are just as self effacing and light hearted in their silliness when you don't choose with selective judgement when to focus on the 4th wall breaking silliness of WOW and when to focus on the inner world of it's emotional turmoil filled war torn characters of antiheroes and super heroes

I don't personally like Illidan particularly, and it took me a long time to appreciate him. I see a large distinction between demon hunters as specialists and Illidan himself, as I was introduced to them as something completely contrary to Illidan based on the lore of WC3. I was reared a Warhammer fan, raised and nursed on the teet of Gamesworkshop, Brian Froud, Jim Henson's creature shop, Alan Lee.

A guilty indulgence of mine is the dwarf trollslayer and the wood elf wardancer, with their giant flamboyant ridiculous hair styles and reckless and suicidal fighting styles, who the demon hunter seemed an obvious extension of in Warcraft's Frankenstein fantasy fun bag, mixed with a Zatoichi like wandering monster hunter akin to Van Helsing with the tortured cursed soul of Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone.

It seems unlike you I admit there is a time and place for sophisticated nuanced tasteful literature and a time and a place for big chunky over the top over indulgent absurdly flamboyant and silly over rendered cartoons on steroids. I can study Anglo Saxon poetry and Nordic Sagas and still enjoy some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and some Maxx while smashing He-Man toys together in the sand box.

I digress, I don't like Illidan's knee jerk association with demon hunters but it's absolutely understandable and unavoidable to anyone who doesn't give more than a shallow glace at the two. And you are by no means getting away now with the claim you're calling demon hunters pretentious. You're calling them tacky, the World Wide Wrestling Federation of fantasy meets Sephiroth. You don't call something a 13 year old's wet dream and then claim it's pretentious. Yes, because 13 years olds value existentially conflicted exposition and tragedy so much. Talk about a contradiction. You're likely I'd opt projecting your own proclivity to "show-off" by distancing yourself by principal from anything you deem puerile and immature by making sure you avoid anything too "rule of cool", that's intentional avoidance is what is pretentious. The whole "i'm so dark and cool looking" aspect of demon hunters is part of their joke in WOW's silly meta world of self effacing self denigration. How can you possibly conflate the two with intellectual honesty?

And to reiterate once more, I'm not hurt. Far from it. Again, your covert passive aggressive attempt to avert my focus to my personal inadequacies is noted, if you wish to do so, have the respect to do it blatantly as I am at least.

I'm weary of Warcraft fans trying to make Warcraft something it's not, as if they are ashamed of it for being on par with a glorified Saturday Morning Cartoon series. People are practically initiated into the lore community and taught to dismiss the lore entirely as something Blizzard used to care about but gave up on in the old corporate sell out canard. So when I see someone calling out demon hunter fans in this overt and patronizing belittling tone, I am compelled to offer my opinion of your opinion and the disrespect you're showing your fellow nerd. Of course you expected to be universally praised I imagine with "you nailed it" posts, right? And I'm just hurt and need to chill out for actually challenging your completely insulting and denigrating dismissal. If you don't see the humor in how over the top a demon hunter is, you need to seriously for one second reconsider what credence you're affording them here. Or not, you're of course "free" to denigrate others and assert your superiority all you like while talking on a World of Warcraft fan forum. Freedom, we can't forget the freedom.

Yes, I am absolutely free to like the coolness of Illidan and imitate him, but that was never my intent or desire. And further, as to these formats over freedom you've opted to present this issue in, I never called my freedoms or yours into question or said you had any restriction on the denigrating of my taste or others, I merely just pointed out denigrating others as shallow and tacky and superficially distasteful at the price of other's sense of taste and self worth makes you obscenely pretentious considering we're talking about fucking Warcraft here of all things. Who are you trying to kid?

Beyond not being hurt, I don't need to chill out either. Perhaps all my words and many syllables suggest otherwise, but I don't like people playing games with context, so I like to deprive you of that manipulative tactic to the very best of my ability with being very thorough in my presentation. I'm chillin' out max and relaxin' all cool and shootin' some b-ball outside of the school. You implying I need to chill out however is again a typical covert passive aggressive attempt to put me on the defensive rather than address the actual issue, namely that you're claiming some aspects of Warcraft are somehow tasteful or sensible while others are not. You don't need to do that, but it's a habit many of us are prone to using in the tiny manipulative tactics we develop when we're more interested in personal denigration and winning arguments than we are in honest debate and discussion.

And I've known Lovecraft well for over 17 years come this summer, I was making an analogy of how the internet has made Lovecraft into something once quite obscure in popular culture into something of meme like foundation in geek subculture, as zombies once were not that long ago too after their decline in the 1980s, but now have gone full on mainstream as one of the most highly rated television shows being broadcast. It may be hard for you to believe this, but I can appreciate critically acclaimed and nuanced authors and media while enjoying innocent indulgent over the top grandiose entertainment as well. There is a time and place for Shakespeare, and there is a time and place for Troma. There is a time and place for Robert E Howard and Tolkien and Derleth, and a time and place for Samurai Jack and Hellboy.

Sometimes a critically acclaimed filmmaker like Del Toro makes Pan's Labyrinth or the Devil's Backbone, sometimes he makes Pacific Rim.

Sometimes big fucking robots beating the hell out of monsters is a good enough reason to watch something when it's executed with an equivocal facsimile of integrity. Frank Darabont is the poster child for this, he approaches horror and the fantastic in film with all the integrity and discipline as he showed with the Shawshank Redemption. He made me feel intense sorrow and pity for a mindless cannibalistic mummified legless torso the same way he brought me to tears in a story about a man who was wrongfully convicted for decades and who found freedom through his unbending conviction and determination in the face of soul crushing adversity alone. He explored the nature of human beings in an atmosphere of degraded social structure akin to the Lord of the Flies in what was basically Half Life the movie should a grocery store be located off base near Black Mesa (Black Mesa originally was to be called Quiver in homage to the Arrowhead Project of King's short story), and Darabont's soul crushing ending accompanied by the Dead Can Dances' requiem for humanity was praised by Stephen King for not thinking of it himself, FYI TRIVA.

And now?

Darabont's taking on Godzilla, something easily dismissed with a knee jerk as a summer blockbuster of mindless distasteful puerile eye candy and destruction, but not with Gareth Edwards realizing Darabont's screenplay. They will approach this with the integrity of any Oscar worthy drama or art house cinema film. Godzilla is among the pantheon of ultimate horrors, man's inability to escape the inevitable reality of nature. A horror so vast one cannot but hope to escape in the face of such a thing beyond the sheer chance one has in a universe indifferent to your existence while you may as well prostrate yourself face down and give yourself to the awe that is the wrath of the power contained in a single atom, a hurricane, a tsunami, or the quaking grinding continental plates of a living planet's crust.

My tangent laden point is this.

Do not be so quick to denigrate, especially at the cost of what could be another person's innocent child like appreciation for something you would belittle them for having, no matter how much it offers to assert your own convictions. And do not expect to not be called on it and then act like you have a right to announce an opinion without having that opinion's voracity challenged.

'All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.-Douglas Adams

You would do well to broaden that procedural list of rules you seem to live by and recognize that there is a spectrum of media to enjoy along with a spectrum of sophistication you are free to let your inner child appreciate without feeling your taste is being called into question and ridiculed, from the nuanced to the indulgent. But that is of course the price one pays for opting to take part in a discussion board. Of course you seem to understand that in some sense that for some reason demon hunter's elude you in. I like my enemies dead, and my blades flaming. Demon blood is thicker than... regular blood.

Demon Hunters r srs bsns




TLDR WALL OF TEXT /YAWN GG

[Haven]

I was reared a Warhammer fan, raised and nursed on the teet of Gamesworkshop

/brofist

However, GW knows how to do it right. I love it how they handle humorous side of things - there is lots of it, but they don't create purely comedic things for the sake of comedy alone and then try to pretend it's srs business like Blizzard with gnomes. One could argue that orks are lol-worthy, but you surely don't feel that way when you're on the receiving end of WAAAAAGH.

It seems unlike you I admit there is a time and place for sophisticated nuanced tasteful literature and a time and a place for big chunky over the top over indulgent absurdly flamboyant and silly over rendered cartoons on steroids.

That's the point right here - there's the time and place for this, and there's the time and place for that, but it's wrong to put them together. And that's the problem with Warcraft at large, it was a fantasy epos all until late into WoW, where they added pandas, anime-style stories and shit, things that are inherently comical no matter how you look at them. They're still trying to be serious and whimsical at the same time for the sake of appealing to maximum audience.

DHs do have a place in lore, in game, but it's not supposed to be widespread, they were always an exclusion to begin with. If everyone is exclusion, it loses meaning.