Clarifying Garrosh's Stance

[Super Dickmann]

I really dunno about consistency. Naga are only changed physically, at least from what we know. Demon Hunters are both changed physically and have at least as much mental challenges to overcome as any Void touched being. Creatures in Ny'aloatha proper are changed outwards, including Ra-den himself. Entire planets are known to become purple wastelands when Old Gods are done with them. Being infused with Sargeras's very essence didn't change Medivh physically as well, and even fairly powerful Warlocks don't necessarily change outwards. I think there's at attempt at consistency perhaps, but 20 years of ever-changing lore makes it impossible to stick so all the cosmic powers kind of blur together for the most part in regards for what they can do beyond changing colors, with the Light being a bit of an exception but even then it's still somehow capable of necromancy. And just wait till the Light gets its focus and what it's capable of will be "recontextualized" or some other nonsense.

Every power in WoW can expand your hitbox and fill your bags with shit people will want to kill you over because of the needs of the game, but there's a respectable level of variance for something that was obviously not intended to be consistent at all. The warlock point is one I've gone over at a few points but to whit - that the warlock himself doesn't physically mutate doesn't affect that there's a price being paid. Gul'dan only turned green despite being the most powerful regular warlock we know up until he transformed himself, but what he does still comes with a price tag in terms of the environment and people. There's a physical cost attached to fel by default whereas with the void provided you have the relevant personal qualities you can change. Both can turn you into something raidable, mutate you either bodily or by soul but the mechanics and effect on the world around you varies and that variance has been consistently portrayed.

Anyway, as to Garrosh, I think the core issue is that he talks about his father and the old Horde far too much for that not to seem like his biggest motivation, not just as to the Heart but in literally everything he does. He's Daddy Issues: The Character and is hardly ever shown musing on the specifics of what power is acceptable and what isn't while he spends every waking moment overcompensating for the failures of these aforementioned people and institutions, it's the drive of his entire character. I guess our difference is mostly one of interpretation.

There is a Freudian element with the effect it had on his dad that's primary to his character. That's why I emphasize how he viewed his father drinking the blood because at the end of the day Garrosh had no real relationship with his father. It's all projection and he impresses the qualities he and by extension the ideal orc has to have onto his dad and assumes he already has them. And what he appends to Grom is that Grom wanted to prove his ability to control the blood's effects so others didn't have to bear it and that because of the nature of the power he couldn't do it and was corrupted despite being, to Garrosh, the ideal orc. This helps shape his view of the power but it also tells us what Garrosh values, which is something controllable and which emphasizes the qualities of the person using it. Also, while we're on the topic of personal backstory to lend to his overall positions, the dude was in Outland a place that's a shithole in large part due to fel use and later was among the orcs who are the direct descendants if not just literally the same people who used fel magic.

Plus I doubt his view is THE traditional Orcish one. Desecrating the elements certainly would be horrifying enough to a lot of them (even the Dark Shaman themselves lament their actions upon death) and most Orcs canonically didn't back him up; sure, their chief issue might have been that they didn't want to become Nazi Orcs due to how bad it looks on a resume but I don't see many of them looking at the spooky scary tentacle monster power and going "hell ya I want more of those!" not too long after being freed from spooky scary space demons. And the AU!Mag'har seem to despise, or at least distrust, any and all cosmic influence in the first place, judging by female Thrall's reaction in the Visions and generally how they wanna be free of corruption. And to me that's a reasonable PoV considering even the Light has skeletons in its closet, and everyone else is a good bit worse except for Life which they have been subject to the one negative instance of, the Everbloom.

The 'only a minority of orcs' thing aside I think it helps to remember that the canonical majority of these tards later backed Sylvanas, so them actually being extremely committed to racial inclusivity when waging indiscriminate war is among the more compelling readings of their otherwise incomprehensible motive and moral code. Your point about the Mag'har is exactly what I'm getting at - they do mistrust all cosmic forces and associate the Light and fel because the two subvert their will without a chance for pushback. The main difference between the void and light which both are based on willpower is that the void's willpower is entirely personal, if you control yourself and push it towards your goals you can do it. While the Light requires allegiance to an abstract creed, so it'd be more suffocating. Their view and Garrosh's in that case are analogous, but it's a view that the MU orcs don't have since they come from a different cultural mileau. In turn, Garrosh entertaining not just void magic but also machines, dinosaurs and whatever other retardation Blizzard found cool at the time speaks to his overall lack of attachment to any power in particular and more towards what power can be bent consequence-free towards the achievement of his political objective of benefitting orcs who agree with him. That the second he had opportunity he killed all warlocks and how later all the groups he even slightly influenced like the Iron Horde and Mag'har didn't entertain fel as well pushes to that point. As does that the warlocks were extremely unpopular even under a Horde that was majority drunk on fel and had to rule from the shadows and Orgrim was quite popular for promptly killing all of them.

[Jastall]

Every power in WoW can expand your hitbox and fill your bags with shit people will want to kill you over because of the needs of the game, but there's a respectable level of variance for something that was obviously not intended to be consistent at all. The warlock point is one I've gone over at a few points but to whit - that the warlock himself doesn't physically mutate doesn't affect that there's a price being paid. Gul'dan only turned green despite being the most powerful regular warlock we know up until he transformed himself, but what he does still comes with a price tag in terms of the environment and people. There's a physical cost attached to fel by default whereas with the void provided you have the relevant personal qualities you can change. Both can turn you into something raidable, mutate you either bodily or by soul but the mechanics and effect on the world around you varies and that variance has been consistently portrayed.


There is a Freudian element with the effect it had on his dad that's primary to his character. That's why I emphasize how he viewed his father drinking the blood because at the end of the day Garrosh had no real relationship with his father. It's all projection and he impresses the qualities he and by extension the ideal orc has to have onto his dad and assumes he already has them. And what he appends to Grom is that Grom wanted to prove his ability to control the blood's effects so others didn't have to bear it and that because of the nature of the power he couldn't do it and was corrupted despite being, to Garrosh, the ideal orc. This helps shape his view of the power but it also tells us what Garrosh values, which is something controllable and which emphasizes the qualities of the person using it. Also, while we're on the topic of personal backstory to lend to his overall positions, the dude was in Outland a place that's a shithole in large part due to fel use and later was among the orcs who are the direct descendants if not just literally the same people who used fel magic.


The 'only a minority of orcs' thing aside I think it helps to remember that the canonical majority of these tards later backed Sylvanas, so them actually being extremely committed to racial inclusivity when waging indiscriminate war is among the more compelling readings of their otherwise incomprehensible motive and moral code. Your point about the Mag'har is exactly what I'm getting at - they do mistrust all cosmic forces and associate the Light and fel because the two subvert their will without a chance for pushback. The main difference between the void and light which both are based on willpower is that the void's willpower is entirely personal, if you control yourself and push it towards your goals you can do it. While the Light requires allegiance to an abstract creed, so it'd be more suffocating. Their view and Garrosh's in that case are analogous, but it's a view that the MU orcs don't have since they come from a different cultural mileau. In turn, Garrosh entertaining not just void magic but also machines, dinosaurs and whatever other retardation Blizzard found cool at the time speaks to his overall lack of attachment to any power in particular and more towards what power can be bent consequence-free towards the achievement of his political objective of benefitting orcs who agree with him. That the second he had opportunity he killed all warlocks and how later all the groups he even slightly influenced like the Iron Horde and Mag'har didn't entertain fel as well pushes to that point. As does that the warlocks were extremely unpopular even under a Horde that was majority drunk on fel and had to rule from the shadows and Orgrim was quite popular for promptly killing all of them.

Oh, Garrosh is all about daddy issues and projection. He projects his ideals on the Orcs, projects his version of the Horde on everyone within it, projects his idea and hearsay of both Grom and the old Horde on reality, and makes these projections a (practically unreachable) standard that must be met at all times even if only for the purpose of maintaining the image of muh true orcs, and blames any failing to uphold such a standard on everyone but himself, raising even more parallels between him and the guy Blizzard clearly modeled his Mists persona after. I suppose our difference is that I view that as a massive failing in and of itself rather than just a character trait. It's funny, because while you made a good case that Garrosh was more consistent than I thought on one or two points, you also made a case that he was an even more inadequate leader and awful person than I already pegged him as . It's no wonder he's up to the very same tricks during WoD and fails just as badly there as well.

As for the ideals of the Orcs at large, they're way too inconsistent to ever take seriously. They didn't back Garrosh presumably because they don't like racial supremacy (one thinks the wanton desecration of the Elements should play a part but I digress), but backed Sylvanas's increasingly senseless total war, but in-game we see only the Mag'har siding with the screamer, but they took Saurfang's honor and sacrifice very very seriously as well, and they were just fine with Anduin giving them a speech right in the middle of Orgrimmar too so I guess they can't hate the Alliance that much? I guess Warcraft being such a character-focused story means the opinions of the general populace doesn't matter that much but even then those are some pretty severe swerves in public opinion.

[Super Dickmann]

Oh, Garrosh is all about daddy issues and projection. He projects his ideals on the Orcs, projects his version of the Horde on everyone within it, projects his idea and hearsay of both Grom and the old Horde on reality, and makes these projections a (practically unreachable) standard that must be met at all times even if only for the purpose of maintaining the image of muh true orcs, and blames any failing to uphold such a standard on everyone but himself, raising even more parallels between him and the guy Blizzard clearly modeled his Mists persona after. I suppose our difference is that I view that as a massive failing in and of itself rather than just a character trait. It's funny, because while you made a good case that Garrosh was more consistent than I thought on one or two points, you also made a case that he was an even more inadequate leader and awful person than I already pegged him as . It's no wonder he's up to the very same tricks during WoD and fails just as badly there as well.

Garrosh's view of his father is entirely projection. Grom is a much worse and much pettier person than Garrosh but due to his lack of any actual interaction with his old man, Garrosh builds himself off of a mostly fictional person as described to him by Thrall. Someone who cares about the orcs over much else and is the representative of all those values Garrosh heard about but didn't actually live out until later. I will say that Blizzard massively fucked up in making an analogue of a certain real individual, mostly by virtue of the situation they put him in and the people they had him interact with. Garrosh's expectation of the rest of the Horde is to actually pay in what they received, which none are willing to do and most spazz out about. His turn from simply being displeased with them to being actively hostile is not intended to hold together very well, but it nevertheless does so as his expectation of them to uphold orcish values fail in every instance. I consider these things both a character trait and a failing. Like I said before, a cannier leader who actually bothered to communicate with his allies could've gotten more done to benefit the orcs, but Garrosh as a person couldn't have ended up like that without some major skewing.

As for the ideals of the Orcs at large, they're way too inconsistent to ever take seriously. They didn't back Garrosh presumably because they don't like racial supremacy (one thinks the wanton desecration of the Elements should play a part but I digress), but backed Sylvanas's increasingly senseless total war, but in-game we see only the Mag'har siding with the screamer, but they took Saurfang's honor and sacrifice very very seriously as well, and they were just fine with Anduin giving them a speech right in the middle of Orgrimmar too so I guess they can't hate the Alliance that much? I guess Warcraft being such a character-focused story means the opinions of the general populace doesn't matter that much but even then those are some pretty severe swerves in public opinion.

I'd argue that the orcish honor ideals are fairly consistent, but the MU orc populace is a fucking circus who's positions make no sense. Both with Garrosh regarding dark shamanism and Sylvanas regarding necromancy there are endless opportunities to bring up their ancestor worship and how this violates their values in some tangible way but Blizzard stubbornly decline to do so. There's no way to consistently tie their views together. We can assume they're not racial supremacists since they oppose Garrosh at the end (in a tweet, in game they're on board). They have to be at least hostile to the Alliance to a pathological degree when they back a total war by Sylvanas which involves the destruction of the very lands they are fighting that war for, but that doesn't work since the moment she's gone they are okay with listening to him. They're a complete mess. The Mag'har are far more consistent since it's spelled out in as many words that they have zero issue with Sylvanas's goals or program, only that she didn't really mean it. The Mag'har are lowkey Blizzard's most consistently portrayed group in the last expansion.