Politically Correct Main Characters and Story Writing

[Aucald]

Not really. You can be woke and use politically incorrect terms. The fact that one side views wokeness as a bunch of bunk and often gets triggered over people using non gendered pronouns or people pointing out that systemic racism exists, means it's not inherently politically correct.

I do believe if one is being truly politically correct they would use proper terminology regarding issues that would make one woke. But one is about language the other is about issues.

If you define "woke" as being aware of and noting standing or allowing racial, societal, and gender injustices - then you would sort of have to be politically correct in your choice of terms, otherwise you're actively triggering and/or irritating people? I'm an old man so I'm not really hip with the modern vernacular on these things, so you'll have to excuse me if I don't fully follow.

I also don't believe there's any real way to divorce language from issues, because language is about communication and so, intrinsically, are social issues. Pretty much in the same vein that everything could be said to be intrinsically political to some degree because politics is the lens through which we codify what is or isn't socially acceptable, applicable, or worthy of promotion. You can't divorce politics from communication, nor from language.

[egethas]

There's a difference from a narrative standpoint between the evil/good paradigm when it comes to characters and being politically correct or "woke" if you prefer the modern lingo. Basically put, it's fine if an evil character evinces evil or problematic viewpoints - they're evil, and you'd expect them to believe in evil things. The problem comes about when you leverage certain kinds of tropes and end up with characters either glorifying or justifying intrinsically evil ideas or social notions.

Evil characters who are obviously evil and not at all earmarked for emulation who promote evil shit are generally fine.

Morally ambiguous (or outright good) characters with some degree of intrinsic sympathy who promote evil shit are kind of problematic, depending on context.

First of all thank you for understanding what I am trying to say. But I think there shouldn't be forced pure evil and good characters. We should be able to empathize with every character wihout saying this character is doing this because it is evil. In real life even the purest souls have some flaws and people we consider "evil" can do" good" thing. We are living in societites built on the immoral foundations governed by self-seeking leaders. And in my opinion fictions should be able to reflect that reality without turning into a Disney Movie.

[schwank05]

i would not say „hate“. i would just say, they decided some day, that horde are the „evilz bad guyz“ (whyever). maybe its easier for them and costs less money. or marketing says its better selling to 12 year old kids. or Danuser decided there must be more black/white than gray in game (for whatever stupid reason).

wow lore and both factions was/were great, once in the long ago past, because both factions had light and shadows. but then some strange ppls decided that plain simple, lame, good guys is alliance trademark and plain stupid, evil, bad guys is the horde trademark. and then Danuser showed up and he fucked up the whole plot anyway.

tbh, i no longer care about lore or faction since years. i simply can no longer take any of that shit serious. they fucked it up. completely. i read all the books till Illidan and wow had a great lore, also reflected in game. but the last 5-6 years were a complete clusterfuck joke and i can simply no longer take that shit serious.

even the most horible netflix series or a 12 year old kids story is better than wow these days. so, maybe wow is just milked to death and recycled to death and its days are long long over.

however, i have zero faith in that horrible company Blizz became (actual harassments totally asside) and do not believe they will ever manage it, to find the way back to the type of company they were, to write lore they did in the „good ol days“. that ATVI Blizz just used a high quality name and milked billions out of it, before ppl realized that this thing, for what the name stands for, years ago, is dead and over.

but maybe thats just me.

ps: „our faction“ ???

But I joined the Horde to be the evil monster faction, not Thralls Lovey dovey green humans horde we had. I loved the Undead since day one they were supposed to be the sort of shadowy kinda evil faction and worked great in that Light I loved the Wrath Gate Cinematic "Do you think we have Forgotten, Do you think we had Forgiven" Loved it bomb the shit outta everyone.

[UndedoKoleda]

OP, if you keep posting you'll ruin your "Posts" : "Years registered" ratio.

[stross01]

Blizzard, bad writingnhas existed in all of Blizzards games.

It was very acceptable writing when they wrote less, when certain parts of the plot weren't elaborated on, or when every character wasn't* a modern allegory to perceived a real world problem.

[Powerogue]

I think you're mistaking "politically correct" for "heroes."

WC3 was different because you played as both heroes and villains. As long as they were main characters. In WoW, we are somewhere on the sliding scale between "murder hobo hired to do heroic things" and "actually good person" depending on how you RP it.

Garrosh died an unrepentant villain. When you're evil, "standing up for what you believe in" isn't a good thing. We kill people like that every expansion.

[Aucald]

First of all thank you for understanding what I am trying to say. But I think there shouldn't be forced pure evil and good characters. We should be able to empathize with every character wihout saying this character is doing this because it is evil. In real life even the purest souls have some flaws and people we consider "evil" can do" good" thing. We are living in societites built on the immoral foundations governed by self-seeking leaders. And in my opinion fictions should be able to reflect that reality without turning into a Disney Movie.

"Forced" evil and good? No, probably not. But I think there's a difference to be underscored between characters that are relatable (e.g. good or evil characters having flaws, not being paragons, etc.) and characters that are sympathetic or evoke empathy (e.g. one we identify with and whose goals, ambitions, or plight garners our sympathies). It's fine to have villains that are relatable, although you can also have villainous characters that aren't relatable at all, and whose drives are outside of context or exhibit blue/orange type morality, like malicious inscrutable gods or primal forces. What you have to handle carefully are evil or villain characters that are sympathetic - especially if they have viewpoints or rationales you don't want to be emulated in a polite or civil society. The same is true of good-aligned characters as well, even more so depending on context.

That being said, there's a place for Disney movies and there's a place for gritty, grimdark fiction. Nothing is served by going "all or nothing" to either extreme, really. A moral parable should be chopped, lowered, and have an easy-to-digest endpoint, so to speak. A work of entertaining fiction should contain richness and complexity, like a really good beer or a fine meal. Both things have their place and purposes.

[VinceVega]

Well I don't get why do you attack me while I am trying to be as self explanatory as possible with my opinion, suporting it with examples wtihout using an offensive language.



I thought it was obvious that I was refering to characters developments not the ending.



Maybe I should have used morally correct instead but I think my point is clear.



I understand that there are no good and evil side of Sylvannas with that soul thing but still this fact destroys her character for me. It was still her half soul state when she tried too much not to force Anduin to join Jailer's without his will or in the end realising that she was wrong and shoot and arrow to the Jailer. But now we will see a changed Sylvannas not because of realizing what she did but beacuse she merged her souls.

Still no. There is no half soul. That is the complete point of the cinematic. It was all sylvannas. She completly. They jailor moved pieces in the back. But she did what she did. Not half of her. She moved down a dark road which let her to where she is now. But it was a slow descent so she never saw it. Her locked in time self however gets it all at once and shes better what happend. The Jailor only gave it back to her to show her how majorly she fucked herself since she died. And the arrow was also she. Not because she realized the jailor is evil. But becuase she realized the jailor doesn't want to free anything by destroying the way the universe works but dominate everybody. (that is stupid as hell... his name is THE jailor... but nevermind that...)

[stomination]

Anyone who's not tired of war by now is a fucking Psychopath. Azeroth has had continuous wars for the last 20 years.

It's a miracle there's still people capable of fighting.

Sounds like earth

[Super Kami Dende]

There's a difference from a narrative standpoint between the evil/good paradigm when it comes to characters and being politically correct or "woke" if you prefer the modern lingo. Basically put, it's fine if an evil character evinces evil or problematic viewpoints - they're evil, and you'd expect them to believe in evil things. The problem comes about when you leverage certain kinds of tropes and end up with characters either glorifying or justifying intrinsically evil ideas or social notions.

Evil characters who are obviously evil and not at all earmarked for emulation who promote evil shit are generally fine.

Morally ambiguous (or outright good) characters with some degree of intrinsic sympathy who promote evil shit are kind of problematic, depending on context.

Problematic characters should never be excluded, purely because Human Beings should be able to differentiate Fiction from Reality. Using real-life societal norms on a fictional world is just idiocy.

[Hctaz]

You completly missread the split souls situatuion. There is no good or bad side. Simple as that. The Sylvannas that did all those things IS sylvannas. The part in the crystal is ALSO Slyvannas. Like a snapshot of her at the moment of her death.

The merg didn't suddenly give he rback her good part. it was never gone on the first place. It just let hger reflect on what she did through the eyes of her past self. Same with Uther.
Sylvnnas decent itno madness an in the end her being manipulated by the jailor was a slow decent.
Her "snapshot" saw it in one go and was horrified how she was able to become something like that. I don't really see much of a redemption tbh for now.
It will definetly come. But for now it is a internal struggle to own up to what she did. Not to get absolution.

She even said herself there is no redpetion fo what she did in the cinematic....

AND: WOw still is quite bloody. I think the stuff where you are coming from mainyl: Exploring Kalimdor was not even remotly jsutified to be so harshly criticted on twitter. But for people on the outside it really does not look good. Still i didn't see anythign wrong with it.

Okay except that doesn't make any logical sense. You're saying there's no good or bad side except there CLEARLY IS.
Saying the merge didn't give her back her good part is spitting on the lore of Warcraft. Undead even after freeing themselves of the Lich King's control do not feel whole. They are NOT their original selves. They're supposed to lack strong positive emotions and feel constant negative emotions. They are essentially a metaphor for suicidal depression where they really would rather be dead except they have some driving force keeping them alive. They need to constantly battle with themselves by finding a reason to keep "living" despite all the torment that they feel.

Giving Sylvanas back her full soul would essentially make her a different person, and this is even shown in the 9.2 dialogue where she shows her love and compassion for... probably Nathanos but whoever it is isn't mentioned in the sound clip that we have.




But I also want to make it clear that I'm not mad at this because I think she shouldn't be punished for her actions. I'm mad because Blizzard should have taken the scenario to one logical extreme or another. They chose some weird middle ground option to try to make everybody happy/give each side an argument for their side to be right.

If they wanted to go the Redemption arc and piss off everybody who wanted to see her get justice then they should have just done that by using the soul merge as an excuse to say that she wasn't whole and therefore wasn't wholly responsible for her actions but would need to prove it.

If they wanted to go with the Justice route then they could have scrapped the idea of her soul being split or at least scrapped the idea that her split soul could or would come back to make her whole again and just tell the story like she had a change of heart by speaking with Anduin and seeing what the Jailer was doing to him. Like she chose to do all these bad things, there was no other side of her soul that could have possibly prevented these actions from occurring had it been inside her all this time, and she just realized she was wrong at the 11th hour. Chop her head off for her crimes.

Instead, they did the soul thing but then threw in some BS line from Uther about how she and the banshee were the same person despite that part of her soul literally not doing any of the things that the banshee portion did. It's pretty clear from the way the lore is presented that having a full and complete soul would have prevented Sylvanas from going down the same route, and she didn't willingly choose to sacrifice her soul the same way that Arthas did. It was forced upon her.

[Aucald]

Anyone who's not tired of war by now is a fucking Psychopath. Azeroth has had continuous wars for the last 20 years.

It's a miracle there's still people capable of fighting.

As long as two or more parties are unable or unwilling to communicate and come to terms, there will always be conflict. As for continuous wars in real-world history, 20 years is child's play. The Roman-Persian war lasted a whopping 681 years, the Iberian Religious War or the Reconquista spanned an amazing 781 years, and the Mexican-Indian that began with the conquest of the Aztec empire was a 414-year conflict.

[Beefhammer]

If you define "woke" as being aware of and noting standing or allowing racial, societal, and gender injustices - then you would sort of have to be politically correct in your choice of terms, otherwise you're actively triggering and/or irritating people? I'm an old man so I'm not really hip with the modern vernacular on these things, so you'll have to excuse me if I don't fully follow.

I also don't believe there's any real way to divorce language from issues, because language is about communication and so, intrinsically, are social issues. Pretty much in the same vein that everything could be said to be intrinsically political to some degree because politics is the lens through which we codify what is or isn't socially acceptable, applicable, or worthy of promotion. You can't divorce politics from communication, nor from language.

Not really, you can stand against people or organizations that discriminate and use politically incorrect terminology. I mean someone could call the owner of an establishment that won't hire transgendered people an asshole. That's being woke and politically incorrect.

I could use politically correct terminology and still discriminate or be ignorant to issues.

Yes they are tied to each other in some ways, but they are not interchangeable terms is all I was getting at.

[Aucald]

Problematic characters should never be excluded, purely because Human Beings should be able to differentiate Fiction from Reality. Using real-life societal norms on a fictional world is just idiocy.

I'm not arguing for exclusion, just saying that one should be careful that they don't inadvertently (or purposefully) promote such views in a positive light. As for using real-life societal norms in fiction, this can be very useful at breathing realism and relatability to fictional content. It can be very difficult to relate to characters whose views and values are entirely alien from our own, especially if those characters are primary protagonists or antagonists. That's why neutral mask and everyman type characters exist and are popularly used in fiction, after all.

[Susanoo]

What the game needs is more characters that are controversial yet have redeeming qualities. I agree that not every character should be written to be almost perfect. Characters should have problems that make them flawed. That’s what made Garrosh an interesting character because he loved the orcs so much he would do anything to put them in a better spot. A well written character is one that people still are arguing about whether their motives were genuine, selfish, or a bit of both. There’s a strong population of people who hate Garrosh but there is also a strong population of people who love Garrosh. I believe the game could use more characters that aren’t evil but flawed and because of those flaws cause problems and advance the plot.

[Aucald]

Not really, you can stand against people or organizations that discriminate and use politically incorrect terminology. I mean someone could call the owner of an establishment that won't hire transgendered people an asshole. That's being woke and politically incorrect.

I could use politically correct terminology and still discriminate or be ignorant to issues.

Yes they are tied to each other in some ways, but they are not interchangeable terms is all I was getting at.

Hmm, I've always seen them used rather interchangeably, though I suppose I can see the semantic distinction as well. I didn't think the term "asshole" was politically incorrect, either - it's profanity, and therefore not polite or civil, but stripped of context doesn't really have much of a political charge (unless its meaning has changed mightily in the past few years). Using politically correct terminology and still being discriminatory or ignorant to issues in my view would be akin to malicious sophistry or equivocation, basically trying to smuggle in a bad argument by masking your intent with deceptive use of language. In the end, your intent still isn't what I'd think of as either "woke" or PC. I guess that's a means vs. ends thing at the end of the day.

[egethas]

"Forced" evil and good? No, probably not. But I think there's a difference to be underscored between characters that are relatable (e.g. good or evil characters having flaws, not being paragons, etc.) and characters that are sympathetic or evoke empathy (e.g. one we identify with and whose goals, ambitions, or plight garners our sympathies). It's fine to have villains that are relatable, although you can also have villainous characters that aren't relatable at all, and whose drives are outside of context or exhibit blue/orange type morality, like malicious inscrutable gods or primal forces. What you have to handle carefully are evil or villain characters that are sympathetic - especially if they have viewpoints or rationales you don't want to be emulated in a polite or civil society. The same is true of good-aligned characters as well, even more so depending on context.

That being said, there's a place for Disney movies and there's a place for gritty, grimdark fiction. Nothing is served by going "all or nothing" to either extreme, really. A moral parable should be chopped, lowered, and have an easy-to-digest endpoint, so to speak. A work of entertaining fiction should contain richness and complexity, like a really good beer or a fine meal. Both things have their place and purposes.

I completely agree with what you say. And I do agree that there should be a place for every fiction and I enjoy Disney movies myself. What I am criticizing is how narrative of Warcraft has turned from a story with multi-dimensional characters to a "we gud people we punish every bad people" story and trying to "fix" every "flaws" of hero characters like Thrall and Jaina. I know that we always fought a big villian at the end of an expantion. But a character with an ideology like "I hate orc because they killed my family" shoud exist without making him/her a baddie. The communities opitions about real-world problems and ethics or portrayal of a character should not affect the writing at all.

I don't think you understand what politically correct means. Nice troll post btw.

I don't think you understand what self explanatory means.

Since your only contribution to this post is limited with declaring what I dont know, let me tell you: "I know that I know nothing."

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The current writers do not believe in absolute right or wrong. They don't believe in accountability. Hence why mass murderers constantly get let off the hook and their victims are told "you must forgive! Justice is actually revenge and revenge is bad! You must learn love and peace!".

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The preview for the Exploring Kalimdor book has a hilarious line from Velen, where he hopes that the Night Elves will stop defending themselves from their murderers and longs for "peace and healing!". Velen's people were brutally massacred by the Orcs and used as pavement just a couple decades ago.

[Aucald]

What the game needs is more characters that are controversial yet have redeeming qualities. I agree that not every character should be written to be almost perfect. Characters should have problems that make them flawed. That’s what made Garrosh an interesting character because he loved the orcs so much he would do anything to put them in a better spot. A well written character is one that people still are arguing about whether their motives were genuine, selfish, or a bit of both. There’s a strong population of people who hate Garrosh but there is also a strong population of people who love Garrosh. I believe the game could use more characters that aren’t evil but flawed and because of those flaws cause problems and advance the plot.

Garrosh is kind of WoW's marquee example of taking a problem character (e.g. an Orcish racial supremacist with a tyrannical streak a mile wide) and inadvertently imbuing him with a number of sympathetic qualities that made his awfulness palatable to a degree. Nothing wrong with having a character like Garrosh, what with his many flaws and failures of understanding, but it's what you'd call "bad writing" to then use that character, and the storylines surrounding him, send mixed messages about whether his views were good and/or justified or whether they're something to be confronted or redeemed. Sylvanas had a lot of the same issues, albeit to what I feel is a lesser degree, in terms of the whole mixed messages issue.

Garrosh and Sylvanas were both great characters in terms of their composition but used rather poorly from a technical standpoint in the greater story.

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I completely agree with what you say. And I do agree that there should be a place for every fiction and I enjoy Disney movies myself. What I am criticizing is how narrative of Warcraft has turned from a story with multi-dimensional characters to a "we gud people we punish every bad people" story and trying to "fix" every "flaws" of hero characters like Thrall and Jaina. I know that we always fought a big villian at the end of an expantion. But a character with an ideology like "I hate orc because they killed my family" shoud exist without making him/her a baddie. The communities opitions about real-world problems and ethics or portrayal of a character should not affect the writing at all.

I agree pretty definitively on that score - it serves no one, including the story, to try to smooth out every single blemish or complexity in the characters in the name of some kind of strange emphasis on "clarity of vision" or some kind of polemic. That being said, I sometimes feel people are too quick to bring the hammer down on organic change when it comes to characterization out of a misplaced desire to ensure the characters they know and love never really grow or change based on their circumstances. Jaina, for example, is a character whose growth feels kind of natural. She endured trauma which hardened her resolve and gave her some rough edges, but over time and with contemplation some of those edges naturally abraded and smoothed away, and while she kept some aspects of her previous hardening - flashes of which you can easily see when she confronts Baine in BfA, or when she heaps scorn on Sylvanas in the most recent SL cinematic. She didn't do a dramatic and somewhat unrealistic heel-face turn from idealistic dreamer to crew-cut warhawk, but rather over time gained the intermingled traits of both characterizations the same way a real person might. Thrall, by contrast, is a character with a more problem-ridden characterization - with wild swings between hyper-competence and abject incompetence, amazing power or powerlessness as the plot demands, etc.

[Ersula]

The alliance are colonizers & yet they are constantly portrayed as the good guys. /thread