Reconciling The Horde

[Soon-TM]

@omeomorfismo I really don't understand that disproportionate focus on Anduin, especially as him being the source of everything that is good and holy in Azeroth. I mean, I do like the peacenik, "nice guy" archetype - but only if he actually struggles to make his (or her) pacifist ideals bear fruit, as is often the case with RL pacifists. Even in fiction, well-intentioned, nice, "pure" characters such as Tommen (from GoT) are relatable because of the loops they have to go through... And even then, the results are never taken for granted.

But in WoW, the whole story warps around Anduin in order to give him the spotlight, and to make him look good. Everyone who opposes him is portrayed as unreasonable (unless they kowtow to him later) or straight up evil... With the sole purpose of some cringey (in fiction) world peace and non toxic masculinity wish fulfillment. If that isn't a textbook Mary Sue, I don't know what it is.

[Verdugo]

@omeomorfismo I really don't understand that disproportionate focus on Anduin, especially as him being the source of everything that is good and holy in Azeroth. I mean, I do like the peacenik, "nice guy" archetype - but only if he actually struggles to make his (or her) pacifist ideals bear fruit, as is often the case with RL pacifists. Even in fiction, well-intentioned, nice, "pure" characters such as Tommen (from GoT) are relatable because of the loops they have to go through... And even then, the results are never taken for granted.

But in WoW, the whole story warps around Anduin in order to give him the spotlight, and to make him look good. Everyone who opposes him is portrayed as unreasonable (unless they kowtow to him later) or straight up evil... With the sole purpose of some cringey (in fiction) world peace and non toxic masculinity wish fulfillment. If that isn't a textbook Mary Sue, I don't know what it is.

He is the creation of "award winning" Christie Golden, so of course she is going to push him to the front as the perfect spiritual liege of every living being in the universe. He is the son she never had and by god is she going to make everyone worship him.

[Aresk]

But in WoW, the whole story warps around Anduin in order to give him the spotlight, and to make him look good. Everyone who opposes him is portrayed as unreasonable (unless they kowtow to him later) or straight up evil... With the sole purpose of some cringey (in fiction) world peace and non toxic masculinity wish fulfillment. If that isn't a textbook Mary Sue, I don't know what it is.

We must've played very different BFAs since Anduin is regularly depicted as inexperienced, uncertain, and absent. We see him at Lordaeron, where he gets baled out of his disastrous attack by Jaina's arrival. He marches into the throne room to confront Sylvanas with several powerful characters at his back, and he nearly dies while she escapes. He sends the PC to Kul Tiras at Jaina's suggestion, and then he's basically only seen a handful of times until Orgrimmar: once to congratulate the PC on successfully bringing Kul Tiras into the Alliance and then again after the Battle of Dazar'alor to say that he thinks the battle was a big mistake. Oh, and he denies Tyrande help with Darkshore. Horde don't even see him again after the escape in Stormwind (during which he just sort of leaves) until Orgrimmar, at which point he just sort of plays lackey to Saurfang. Anduin seems incapable of coming up with any solid ideas on his own, second guesses his advisors after he's allowed them to take action, and then loses face with Tyrande and the Night Elves. He talks big about peace, but his only real accomplishment during BFA was opening Saurfang's cell. Everything else either came from someone else or failed without other people seizing initiative.

I'm not saying that his characterization is bad; he's inexperienced, naive, and idealistic. But he's rarely in the spotlight, and frequently he doesn't look good within it. With respect to his opposition, Sylvanas was just really badly written (particularly along the loyalist path), and I didn't feel like Talanji, Tyrande, or Genn were portrayed as unreasonable or evil in my opinion (though I suppose that's largely subjective as to what constitutes unreasonable). No one else really opposes him, and I feel like that is the greatest travesty, particularly on the Alliance side.

[Grazrug]

He is the creation of "award winning" Christie Golden, so of course she is going to push him to the front as the perfect spiritual liege of every living being in the universe. He is the son she never had and by god is she going to make everyone worship him.

Its true Christie Golden is very biased in her presentation on the lore. you are either with Jaina, Baine and Anduin or you are part fot the bad guys. One sided biased writing for the alliance right there.

[Verdugo]

Its true Christie Golden is very biased in her presentation on the lore. you are either with Jaina, Baine and Anduin or you are part fot the bad guys. One sided biased writing for the alliance right there.

I dare to say even Alliance suffers from this. Only faction that comes out on top is the Stormwind humans.

[omeomorfismo]

frankly i dont loathe golden for what she writes.
there is an audience for these particular stories. but im not part of it, and most importantly im not playing forsaken exactly because im not part of it. forsaken were even included in the game because they would appeal other audiences than the standard "boring" fantasy fans

[Soon-TM]

Anduin is regularly depicted as inexperienced, uncertain, and absent.

And yet, all these supposed flaws never seem to impede him in the slightest.

[Aresk]

And yet, all these supposed flaws never seem to impede him in the slightest.

What kind of impediment would you like to see? I'm genuinely curious, as I really like to see how other people would tackle the problem, and I feel like you'd give some good insight.

The way I see it, Anduin had two goals in BfA: defeat Sylvanas and ensure peace. Sylvanas is defeated, but Saurfang was the one who bore most of that burden; all the Alliance really succeeded in doing was surviving until he could challenge her. Anduin's bigger goal was peace, and he failed: the peace treaty he strove so hard to accomplish goes unratified, because after persuading his enemy that peace was necessary, he couldn't convince his own people to agree to it. This directly stemmed from his failure to support the night elves both during the War of Thorns and during the Battle for Darkshore. Ultimately I hope that more of the Alliance leadership question him, but as I've mostly been avoiding SL spoilers, I'm not sure how it's going to go.

[Jastall]

And yet, all these supposed flaws never seem to impede him in the slightest.

I wouldn't say that. He wanted to ensure peace between the factions prior to BFA and failed spectacularly because he doesn't understand Sylvanas (to be fair nobody does including herself and her writers, but that's besides the point). He wants the Alliance to be BFFs and while he's largely successful to an unreasonable degree, there's still some cracks in there, for the moment at least. His terrible assault on Lordaeron causes massive Alliance casualties which would have mattered in a world where logistics are taken into account. He wanted the Battle of Dazar'alor to take the Zandalari out of the fight and it did the exact opposite. His greatest success, and really the only action he masterminded himself, was converting Saurfang to his cause which brought about more to end the war than anything else and was one of the less egregious plot points of BFA if you ask me, which is no mean feat.

If you mean he doesn't get physically harmed from his failures, well, welcome to major character plot armor. Even prior to BFA Sylvanas has had 15 years of blunders and the plot devices only lined her to give her more one-ups and personal power. Not to say it's a good thing Anduin also benefits from it just as much, but still.

No, what sucks about Anduin is that neither the story nor the characters truly challenge his world view. Idealists are best foiled by pragmatists with sound arguments, not by cackling villains straight out of an anime like Sylvanas. Blizzard already wrote that character decently well, he was called Valerian in Starcraft II, so it's not like the entire company is unable to fathom the concept.

[Soon-TM]

What kind of impediment would you like to see? I'm genuinely curious, as I really like to see how other people would tackle the problem, and I feel like you'd give some good insight.

Well, you pretty much said it yourself:

I hope that more of the Alliance leadership question him, but as I've mostly been avoiding SL spoilers, I'm not sure how it's going to go.

I'd add that "questioning him" should amount to more than a few harsh words from a soon to be gone racial leader, who by the way has been made to look dumb time and time again.

No, what sucks about Anduin is that neither the story nor the characters truly challenge his world view. Idealists are best foiled by pragmatists with sound arguments, not by cackling villains straight out of an anime like Sylvanas. Blizzard already wrote that character decently well, he was called Valerian in Starcraft II, so it's not like the entire company is unable to fathom the concept.

That's what I mean when I said that the world and the story bend over to accomodate him, even to illogical levels. The one who should be the most interested in foiling him, i.e. Sylvanas, has been written as a cackling, omnicidal maniac in order to make sure that she will never have a point. And the rest of the cast simply bows to him, whether implicitly or explicitly, lest they find themselves cast aside, e.g. Tyrande.

[Super Dickmann]

Anduin's decisions are always cast as unequivocally in the right and he bears no cost to it - not physical, not personal, not political. After a genocide that had the backing of most of the Horde up until the last five minutes, he makes his goal to remove a single person and enlists the architect of the opening invasion and he receives no criticism or pushback for it and no one opposes him. No more than when he sent an army in to kill themselves to secure a victory that he didn't follow up on because he's a pussy, no more than he did for cocking up the attack on Lordaeron entirely and so forth. Every decision he makes the narrative makes amply clear is the correct one - every character that opposes him either changes their mind and adopts values identical to his own or is turned into a cartoon baddie. He is narrative poison and this comes not from his concept, which is servicable, even done well in Legion, but from the execution.

[Gann Stonespire]

For goodness sake, man. You can't just go "those counterexamples don't count because I don't like them."

Baine forgiving the loyalist player for conspiring against him, but showing no remorse for what he did to the Horde's defenders who were doing his job when he on his ass makes him worse.

You also took me out of context from the previous thread, I was restating his interpretation of the story as if to say "I have now re-read the story, is this how you interpret it?" and said it should be addressed in canon, where I would expect Baine to reconcile with them because that's how he does things. Even holding that petty grudge against him, I say that it should be buried with the other grudges as Baine has been willing to do for the loyalists who likewise wronged him. That is how the Horde heals and moves forward.

Being angry at a leader for actively betraying their people and his oaths when they were being persecuted and killed is not petty, its common sense.

On a side note of all this, always keep in mind with these stories that "a specific character interaction has not been written" is not the same thing as "X character sat on the sidelines with popcorn and watched it happen, doing nothing to stop it!!" Don't infer motivations from nonexistent writing, they can't write everything. Was Mudmug complicit in burning Teldrassil because he didn't show up in the War of Thorns?

Baine literally said in the novel that:
1. no civilians died at Taurajo, an obvious falsehood given we see unarmed low level tauren civilians who are cowering killed in the attack.
2. That he exiled everyone at the camp that was defending the gates of Mulgore, Camp Vendetta point, because it was fighting Alliance Soldiers.
3. That he told locations of a force of Horde soldiers to Theramore.

So your example would only work if MudMug mentioned he burnt Teldrassil and killed Night elves fleeing it, then saying MudMug can't be said to have burnt Teldrassil.

[Powerogue]

Anduin's decisions are always cast as unequivocally in the right and he bears no cost to it - not physical, not personal, not political.

-mind controlling one of his guards and running off to get his ass captured
-attempting to reason with Garrosh at the Divine Bell
-holding The Gathering, trusting Sylvanas's word
-sieging Lordaeron without a blight counter-strategy, clearly not expecting them to fire it onto Horde forces
-refusing to reinforce the night elves retaking Darkshore, causing a schism in the faction that is still a problem

I genuinely have no idea what you're talking about. None of this is me calling him an idiot, but it's clearly established as core to his character that his idealism gets him into trouble and he's learning to temper it with realism to grow into his role as a leader.

[Soon-TM]

-mind controlling one of his guards and running off to get his ass captured
-attempting to reason with Garrosh at the Divine Bell
-holding The Gathering, trusting Sylvanas's word
-sieging Lordaeron without a blight counter-strategy, clearly not expecting them to fire it onto Horde forces
-refusing to reinforce the night elves retaking Darkshore, causing a schism in the faction that is still a problem

I genuinely have no idea what you're talking about. None of this is me calling him an idiot, but it's clearly established as core to his character that his idealism gets him into trouble and he's learning to temper it with realism to grow into his role as a leader.

Well, if all we knew about the character was what you mentioned, he would pretty much be an idiot. But, as Dickmann said, even if Anduin !@#$s it up...

He bears no cost to it - not physical, not personal, not political.

Btw, if you think that Tyrande's tantrums mean ANYTHING, you are for a real disappointment methinks. We will see soon enough, anyway.

[Powerogue]

Well, if all we knew about the character was what you mentioned, he would pretty much be an idiot. But, as Dickmann said, even if Anduin !@#$s it up...He bears no cost to it - not physical, not personal, not political.

Those are the costs! What are you expecting, exactly? Him to get killed off? They're clearly building him up as alliance leader, with him learning from past mistakes. At The Gathering, he shows much less naivety compared to MOP, but still enough for Sylvanas to take advantage of with depravity no one could have anticipated.

Characters can't go through an arc where they learn from past mistakes and grow as a person into a stronger, more capable leader if they get killed off at the first whiff of messing up.

Ooh, we could kill off Anduin, wasting his character development, have Genn suddenly be in charge instead, and kickstart a third damned faction war. Is that what you want?

We're moving away from the faction war after an expansion full of characters I previously despised having character development and redeeming moments like Jaina, Thrall, and even Baine. For the bumps along the way, having that as the takeaway going forward into new stories is what I wanted.

[Soon-TM]

Those are the costs!

I see no costs! Because bolded letters and exclamation marks supposedly make a stronger point

[Raisei]

@omeomorfismo I really don't understand that disproportionate focus on Anduin, especially as him being the source of everything that is good and holy in Azeroth. I mean, I do like the peacenik, "nice guy" archetype - but only if he actually struggles to make his (or her) pacifist ideals bear fruit, as is often the case with RL pacifists. Even in fiction, well-intentioned, nice, "pure" characters such as Tommen (from GoT) are relatable because of the loops they have to go through... And even then, the results are never taken for granted.

But in WoW, the whole story warps around Anduin in order to give him the spotlight, and to make him look good. Everyone who opposes him is portrayed as unreasonable (unless they kowtow to him later) or straight up evil... With the sole purpose of some cringey (in fiction) world peace and non toxic masculinity wish fulfillment. If that isn't a textbook Mary Sue, I don't know what it is.

I really don't know where you see this.

Arathi - Anduin fails to achieve his goal
Teldrassil - Anduin fails to save people he wants to safe
Lordaeron - Anduin fails aprehending/killing the woman he wants to get
End of BFA - Anduin fails to secure peace because not everyone is as forgiving as him

He struggled the entire time and failed more often then not. The only thing he achieves is turning Saurfang on Sylvanas and thus preventing the Banshee from murdering everyone. The one goal he could not fail, because it would have ended the story of WoW.

If anything the story wraps around Sylvanas to give her one undeserved victory after the next while she constantly outplays Anduin.

[Super Dickmann]

-mind controlling one of his guards and running off to get his ass captured
-attempting to reason with Garrosh at the Divine Bell
-holding The Gathering, trusting Sylvanas's word
-sieging Lordaeron without a blight counter-strategy, clearly not expecting them to fire it onto Horde forces
-refusing to reinforce the night elves retaking Darkshore, causing a schism in the faction that is still a problem

I genuinely have no idea what you're talking about. None of this is me calling him an idiot, but it's clearly established as core to his character that his idealism gets him into trouble and he's learning to temper it with realism to grow into his role as a leader.

None of these things are treated as negatives, as has already been discussed in a million topics - at the Gathering, he with his singular vision succeeds in solving the undead-living divide within an hour, having Genn and Turalyon instantaneously change their mind and is more beloved by the Forsaken than their ruler within that timeframe. Everyone present explicitly tells him he's a good boy and did nothing wrong and what comes of it is positive since he brings back Calia to enact the above. No one calls him out on completely cocking up Lordaeron - his fuck up is entirely in the mind of the audience, there's no indication that that's how it's meant to be perceived at all. We on forums call Anduin a tool who survived only due to factors solely out of his control and knowledge like Jaina popping up right before he gets gassed - the characters don't. They tell him he's doing all he can and it's all fine. And when it comes to Darkshore, do you genuinely think that Anduin is cast as the mistaken party here and not Tyrande, who gets an evil voice, is the only person to not oppose his wargoals of removing one person and the world peace and is cast as blinded by revenge to the point of ignoring her people and lashing out at unrelated parties like Calia in this one.

You point out times when the character has fucked up - but at no point does it amount to anything. We don't have a scene where Genn for example goes up to Anduin and says 'Hey, sire, it was very nice of you that you didn't want to win the war after we had an army's worth of people kill themselves to give us an opening at Zandalar, but now we've lost a lot of people. Maybe give command of the armies to me for a bit, the stress is getting to you ". Or how not a single person takes issue with his freeing and teaming up with the architect of the invasion of Ashenvale. I have not called for Anduin to be killed because it's pointless, he's not inherently bad the way Calia or Baine are, all you need to do to fix Anduin is bring your headcanon into the game and introduce moments like those I've just mentioned. I've called for situations like Stormheim, where he is actually naive and this comes up as a plot point. He gives Genn latitude because he's stressed by the loss of his dad and the job and Genn does something different than what Anduin intended. Not out of hostility, but because Genn is a much older, much more experienced statesman and Anduin doesn't command the authority his dad does.

Even then, the Gathering isn't really his fuck-up, everything he's involved in goes off without a hitch. It's Calia spazzing out and deciding to tell everyone to defect, which by Anduin's own admission violated the terms. But this is beside the point, emotional appeals about how depraved it is to execute twelve high officials in the process of joining an enemy state under a competing claimant to the throne aside.

@Raisei

This is some really, really tortured attempts at damage control. At the end of the war, everyone except Talanji - who'll be neutered in a book, and Tyrande - who is so transparently going to learn the meaning of love and peace and how genocide is like a lego in the foot, agrees with him on all orders of the day. He holds a speech at the center of Orgrimmar over the body of the dude who helped start the war for fuck's sake and no one on either side sees anything ever so subtly off about this.

[Quaade]

There can be no reconciliation until the Horde reconsciliates with themselves and come to terms with their nationalistic past and the fascistoid nature of their society.

1. The Orcs were never tricked into drinking the blood of Mannoroth. Gul'dan told them that the brew would make them stronger and then they accepted that without question. All that Gul'dan did was that he lied by omission and left out some details that no Orc ever asked about anyway. There would be an argument if Gul'dan had sold the brew as a cure for the Red Pox.

2. They need to stop the irresponsible hero-worship of Grom as pretty much every problem that Grom solved was one that he had created himself.

3. Garrosh and Sylvanas were never glitches in the system, they were products of it. The glitches were Thrall and Vol'jin as they kept the most hideous aspects of the Horde in check.

4. The whole "Alliance is as bad a Horde" is wrong. The Horde as whole committed atrocities based on orders from Garrosh and Sylvanas. Members of the Alliance committed atrocities based on their own values instead of the values of the Alliance.

5. "They're the good guys who are willing to make the pragmatic actions." This is literally a talking point within supremacist, Nationalistic, and Fascistoid cultures. No one is the villain within their own narratives. Saying that unironically is unintentionally defending those kinds of cultures.

6. Blizzard should really hire someone with Sociological qualifications to read through their stuff before they release it into the wild.

[Popokolara]

I think thats the point. he fails but where is the cost? Not the abstract something something in a book some off character cried. Actual other npcs turning against him, stormwind suffering, alliance division, basically anything that matters-which wont happen just like mekkatorque and jaina dont die.

- - - Updated - - -

There can be no reconciliation until the Horde reconsciliates with themselves and come to terms with their nationalistic past and the fascistoid nature of their society.

1. The Orcs were never tricked into drinking the blood of Mannoroth. Gul'dan told them that the brew would make them stronger and then they accepted that without question. All that Gul'dan did was that he lied by omission and left out some details that no Orc ever asked about anyway. There would be an argument if Gul'dan had sold the brew as a cure for the Red Pox.

2. They need to stop the irresponsible hero-worship of Grom as pretty much every problem that Grom solved was one that he had created himself.

3. Garrosh and Sylvanas were never glitches in the system, they were products of it. The glitches were Thrall and Vol'jin as they kept the most hideous aspects of the Horde in check.

4. The whole "Alliance is as bad a Horde" is wrong. The Horde as whole committed atrocities based on orders from Garrosh and Sylvanas. Members of the Alliance committed atrocities based on their own values instead of the values of the Alliance.

5. "They're the good guys who are willing to make the pragmatic actions." This is literally a talking point within supremacist, Nationalistic, and Fascistoid cultures. No one is the villain within their own narratives. Saying that unironically is unintentionally defending those kinds of cultures.

6. Blizzard should really hire someone with Sociological qualifications to read through their stuff before they release it into the wild.

If the orcs knew do you think they would agree?
And why do you treat and ask for them to treat their past as a real life modern meritocracy? Btw alliance is autocracy as well, why isnt it corrupt? Because writters didnt want it to be, even though there wre some real.scummy nobles that would pose immense problems and craft plots against anduin if the story was properly.made.

Why do people want to apply rl concepts to fantasy environments? It's also unrealistic. The only reason we had atrocities with sylv and garosh is because the shallow writing needs conflict between factions that does not really mean something. So atrocity=bad guy which is so bad he seperates from the player's horde!