Asmongold LOSES IT Seeing Warcraft Book Labelled RACIST
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- Asmongold reacts to a controversial article World of Warcraft: Exploring Kalimdor Heavily Criticized for Depicting Racial Stereotypes and progressively loses his mind trying to explain his point of view to viewers in chat. Asmongold re-watches the "Old Soldier" cinematic for WoW and compares it to the book Exploring Azeroth: Kalimdor.
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I am part Native American and a bunch of other shit and when I was a kid I really enjoyed hearing stories my dad would tell me about our ancestors. I love seeing Native American or Irish symbolism in media and the Taurens are my favorite WoW race. I really hate how people now are trying to ban representation of minority culture saying that it's cultural appropriation or racist. I like seeing the stereotypes, the jokes, the symbolism, the representation, and appreciation of my ancestors culture. The thing I don't like is when it's clearly malicious or demeaning and ruining characters is always a feels bad man, doesn't have to be race related.
I'm not even very much native American, but I even love the native American design of the Tauren! I've always been fascinated with native American culture :D
@@Bladezeromus Amen!!!!
This world is just full of butt ass hurt people that want to cry over things. Nothing resist about WoW holy fuck!
Why is nobody offended when Norse or Roman/Greek culture is used but black people or Native Indigenous people can’t be shown or borrowed from...?
I agree with you entirely the only thing I would add is that some stereotypes are harmful, especially negative ones. I don't think this should apply to fiction mind you. Fiction should be a matter of what feels right or is appropriate in the setting you have created. If it includes negative stereotypes or Goblin Nazis (Which Uldum does.) I think that's fine. Just because we as people should strive to be more harmonious and sensitive to each other doesn't mean our Fiction should be. You cannot know the good without first knowing the bad.
Imagine getting upset about racism in a game that's centered around race wars.
Politics destroy everything. You can't do anything today without it becomes political.
@@queenbrightwingthe3890 you can avoid politicized entertainment
@@queenbrightwingthe3890 Every piece of media which tells a story has a deeper meaning. And lo and behold-those deeper meanings are drawn from people’s experiences and interactions with the world. Therefore politics are an unquestionable part of any media when analyzed properly.
lmao i didnt even think about that
It evolved to faction wars tho.
"The horde is BIPOC coded" now thats racist lmao
those who call this racist are In fact closet racists who try to redirect their own frustration. noone in their right mind ever thought orcs are blacks. I bet these people usually say 'I have black friends btw, but..'
It is in fact leftists who constantly equate negative stereotypes about minorities to EVERYTHING THEY SEE. It is their obsession. I can totally see how a leftist would look at a game like WoW, with racials and many conflicts with cultures based loosely on real life culture, is bigotted in its framing. But in reality it is their framing of reality that reinforces bigotry. Just look at Seth Rogen's new santa special. It's FILLED with racial stereotypes about black people all in the name of "bringing attention to those stereotypes." It's like racism repackaged.
@@alihorda Bingo! They accuse others of what they are guilty of. I was a horde player, never ever did i equate Horde races with real world races. I chose Horde because i love the brute, warrior, rough and badass aesthetics. These people are crazy and we shouldn't give these crazies too much credit.
@@alihorda but orcs are green and they still often seen by local races, especially humans, as outsiders.
@@Megoover well invading a different planet, mindlessly massacring people while being high under the effects of demon blood does the trick. but to be fair the story went to out of control we fight in space so we could move on
The Orc's are also based on old school Hungarian culture but no one ever talks about that. Hungarians (specifically the ones who originated in the Urals and migrated westward to settle in what is now Hungary in the 9th century AD) called themselves Magyar/Magyars which looks like Mag'har and is almost pronounced the same as Mag'har. Same as Orcs, Hungarians strongly believed in shamanism. They lived in huts, were extremely good archers and warriors who revered their companions (horses in their case) as the Orcs respect and revere their wolves. When Draenor was dying the Orcs came to Azeroth through the Dark Portal, raided countless towns, villages until the humans were able to push them back, causing the Orcs to make their home in Durotar. Hungarians came from Asia to Europe (for Europeans it was like Hungarians came from another world) in hope for a better future. They did the same as the Orcs did in the lore, by raiding countless towns, until European countries stopped them and they made their home in the Carpathian Basin. Not trolling at all!
Damn, I never made the Magyar Mag’har connection.
Once I realized it I was like .....HOLY SHIT. There;s also some comparisons you could make with the 12 orc clans and 12 tribes of Israel and their whole situation and homeland and the ancient Hebrews in the old testament. Just makes Thrall "Green Moses" instead of "Green Jesus" xD
As a hungarian reading this Im offended... Just kidding its not a habit in my country (yet).
Sounds cool I should play orc. I've never released the connection between Maghar and Magyar.
This was the only thought of value in this whole video and comment section. Thank you!
Orcish features are based off the Turkish.
I get where Asmon is coming from. It's beyond frustrating that you cannot have a conversation about topics such as racism or stereotypes without people immediately jumping to both extreme ends. The second someone throws down the racist gauntlet it's like you're obligated to choose a side and start screaming at the other side. And if you don't agree with either side that somehow makes you a racist too in their eyes.
Also, guess who are the only ones accused in the entire history of poisoning wells in medieval times.-------------- yeah, 'll prolly be suicided with 3 shots in my back, soon. WoW is propaganda now.
Wait till these people hear about lord of the rings.
i mean if youre not soley against racism, youre 100 percent racist. not sure what your point here is?
Dont play the game people who take either side just need annihilation so we can get back to a more reasonable human mindset
@UCH_1p98NZQHa_TE7kzH-gQg or there’s a third point of view. I don’t give a fuck about all this racism debates cause 1) my country has problems that are more important to me that some dumb bitch losing their shit about tanning 2) i think that the world would be a better place, if “black” and “white” were just colours and the only race was “human”.
The term Asmon is looking for when he says “pushing an agenda” is manufacturing consent, in that the article attempts to frame public opinion in agreement with their position without offering counter-arguments or dissenting opinions.
@M J I would quibble with bits and pieces of your broader perspective but I whole heartedly agree with your conclusion.
The reason Asmond was analyzing whether goblins and other fantasy characters are racist depictions, is because we are all being thrown into the Maelstrom of Wokeism. It;s everywhere now and increasingly becoming part of our perspective. We are judging things with Woke concepts in mind.
Even just learning about these allegories are making us more racist or at least, identitarians, judging things like leftists. naturally, even I am affected by this. Which is why I noticed.
@@joshanonline manufacturing consent is a term coined by Noam Chomsky, a leftist. Discarding ideas because they came from the opposite side of the aisle is indistinguishable from “wokeism.” Don’t become like the people you claim to hate, brother.
@@joshanonline oy vay! Noticing things is racist!
@@HuckleberryMartini Screw principles. This is war. I intend to win.
The same person "discordiankitty" who is just so hellbend on stopping racism also believes you can't be racist towards white people. That's all you need to know about this "person".
@@authenticinari-fox8164 It's funny how they don't have problem when asian, black, near eastern person is Irish or German, but they have problem to accept that white dude can be korean.
"White people can't be racist" = Marxist dogsh!t
@@marr737 lol damn dude not letting someone publish their opinions because of their hair and twitter bio sounds like some real fascist shit to me lmao
So the usual
Basically they redefine racism and discrimination to fit their narrow world view
Everyone: "orc, trolls, goblins etc are racist"
Me a black guy: *playing hatsune miku project diva while waiting in the FFXIV login que*
I love you XD
bUt BlAcK pEoPlE lIsTeN tO jAzZ aNd TrIbAL mUsIc, ArE yOu EvEn BlAcK ? - Probably a "it's racist" young white liberal that sips Starbucks (and that statement is racist as well then)
@@TigreDemon "bUt He'S nOt BlAcK eNoUgH" - chief diversity office from BBC
Based
@@justsomeguywithnoeyes7303 i see that Luther Reference hehe that officer is a weirdo lol
Title: ASMONGOLD ABSOLUTELY LOSES IT!
Content: "Idk if I agree with the article completely"
gotta do it for the algo
Plot Twist: McConnell is the owner and manager/editor of the channel who works for Asmon where his titles are just his take on Asmon's takes on the topic of the video.
Haha JK
Unless...?
You obviously didn't watch the whole video because he has an adultbaby tantrum 3/4 ways through when people aren't buying that representation = racism.
If the person who wrote this article had invested any time in researching historical portrayals of goblins in all cultures throughout history; they have always made goblins ugly, greedy, mischievous, thieves that sometimes helped humans.
The unique part about goblins in wow is that they arent just greedy and mischievous, they have a stereotypical "New York Jewish" voice. The problem with wow is that when you attach the voice acting, the stereotype becomes incredibly obvious.
@@abjak2026 Exactly, I've always pointed out that goblins are poor caricatures of jews.
@@abjak2026 I got much more Tony Soprano / Mafia / New Jersey out of the Goblins. But whoever had that clever idea at Blizz clearly didn't have anyone who could tell them how close to the other interpretation they could easily stray, and clearly some people took it the other way.
Not the point of the conversation buddy, do better
@@abjak2026 their mob bosses stfu
Well the author of the Wowhead article "DiscordianKitty" is a lunatic. She blocks everyone she disagrees with and is highly opinionated in the worst ways possible. Wowhead has shifted so much from what they were set out to do. Any opinion that is not far left and agreeable with their staff gets block and canceled which is idiotic.
@@authenticinari-fox8164 so it is tainted. Better safe to keep yourself keep your distance from it.
What a shit turd of a site now, they could of been a beacon that fought back against this woke shit but no they just add fuel to the fire.
They literally have "discord" in their name, thats all that needed to be said to know how deranged they are.
@M J wait what happened
Of course they did, it's a business, outrage sells that's not new (sadly).
I mean, that channel do it too from time to time
People living their lives with racism colored glasses. 👓
Such racismz. Much bigotries!
@@theperfectbeing if in WoTLK classic Arthas turns into Arthasia, much proggresive coompany with strong female as leading character in the story however... she was DEFEATED by hateful *cough* gladiator *cough* old WHITE MALE oh no, poor Arthasia better bring her back or fanati- I mean fans will be upset.
As a Scottish person I fucking love seeing our poorly mimicked accents in the game.
the drunken slovenly scot or irishman trope is never highlighted because you are white so its ok to poke fun without cries of racism. do the same to anyone else non-white and suddenly everyones grabbing their pitchforks and torches. all or nothing I say, either its ok to mock everyone or no one.
@@Shiirow I wouldn't say that is true. Being a Scot and white myself, it can be pretty frustrating at times. I have nothing against Dwarves with Scots accents but it can be difficult when the Scots accent is always associated with the drunk, racist engineers. As someone who travels a lot, it is clear that these stereotypes proceed us and it makes it harder for others, in my experience, to look past it.
@@Shiirow
But the Irish and scots were e slaved weren't they? So why aren't they mad?
Flintheart Glomgold from Ducktales makes me wish I was scottish because god damn he might be a horrible caricature of a "scot" but that shit's hillarious and I'd be super proud to have him be part of my "culture" or whatever
@@tahmkench118 Western Europe had Barbary(Northern Africa) pirates problem too, raiding their coasts to kidnap for slavery specially the girls/women, same for the native Russians called “Slavs” of Eastern Europe(which by the way where the word “Slave” itself originated from) to their middle eastern neighbors, so why aren’t they mad?
When your life is so boring and insignificant that you're trying to find drama and make a scandal from fantasy world video games.
Never change, journalist.
On second thought, please do.
it's saddening that Asmon bends to "tauren/troll representation has been racist this whole time" and compares those races to a hypothetical nahtzi race he makes up on the fly that's not in the game.
Gamer gate was an organized Harrassement campaign masking itself as a anti-game journalism movement
@@maallos334mi8 Gamergate was a a bit more complex from that; from the ancient man vs woman battle regarding literally anything to a bunch of jackasses overly sucessfully trolling and failures of society with way to much free time on their hand swallowing the bait with the entire boat. The fact that social media was present at time to witness the shitshow is just unlucky.
Honestly, its way less dramatic if you have something else to do than cry about everything.
@@BusJustice Also, wtf, they literally are a bunch of pixels, neither it nor Asmon has to do much with "nahtzis"
@@tibik.8407 no, it was literally a harressment campaign against a single women, and it’s not Anita sarkesia. She got dragged into it cause she was vocal about it
Presenting racism in games is in itself not bad. Promoting it outside of it is. Witcher 3, as my example, definately hass racism, classism, etc. Because it was part of the universe. It didn't promote it, yet people have been all up in arms about it like it was wrong to even portray. Yikes.
It also helps with immersion, seeing a dark age peasant as very open inclusive SanFran hipster is one of the cringiest trends on modern gaming.
Murder and death is fine to portray, but god forbid someone is racist, even if he's portrayed as the villain doing a bad thing. God, racism in media? Only racists write about racism!
Maybe if we keep pretending these things didn't exist in the past, they will suddenly vanish one day.
It baffles me that some people really think like that, I know some of them. Funny enough it was about The Witcher too, they basically sad it's bad that this game has racist characters, ignoring that it fits into the world and that the overall message is that racism is bs. I hate this so much and I hope that not more people will think like that, it's just pure stupidity and people like that shouldn't be allowed to watch movies or read books when they can't even figure out that racism isn't portrayed in any positive way in these games wtf
I really hope that this will never effect the media industry
Yes, it uses racism as part of their story but doesn't have dark skin elves going "yo yo yo my Scoia'tael in DA HOUSE!!! We Finnin' to figh racism against our people!". Huge difference.
i love, that how during the livestream he had to argue for an hour with people in chat, if it racism against goblins = racism against real people. Went so far, that he wanted to stop, because people keep asking the same questions.
Censorship is going baaaaaaaaaaaaallsdeeeeeeep again on this channel too.
F°°°ing leftists.
@@paranidherc you think it doesnt make sense for germany to be wary of nazi symbology? Are u legit defending nazis or just being a useful idiot by accident?
@@asd3601 that is why democracy does not work. *meme*
@@Froggeh92 so they shouldn't be aloud to play ww2 games like the rest of the world?...
@@Froggeh92 Believing that depiction in a historical context in media, games, movies, tv, should be allowed is not even remotely close to defending the nazis. Fuck the nazis. Not that you actually care at all, you just want to get a zinger off online to feel good.
I can't imagine what they must feel like every day being a professional victim or thinking everyone is racist.
without racism there wouldnt be WAR in world of WARcraft, humans hate orcs, nelfs hate trolls etc etc etc
without stereotypes and certain features and traits there wouldnt be so many races in this fantasy game... just get over it at this point, dont interpret too much in a video game, its not healthy
@@lel90 Humans don't hate orcs because they are orcs, humans hate orcs because orcs don't belong in Azeroth and came pretty much illegally and started killing and pillaging immediately when they got there.
@@ragnardanneskjold7675 Same like immigrants came to my country to do the same , but when I say they are bad, people tell me I'm racist..
@@ragnardanneskjold7675 they hate them because they have a history... i know, i didnt thought i have to get into detail 😅
i use n word frequently but i don't hate black people. its just a word without intent
Goblins are made to be shady American bankers, merchants, bookies, not Jebs. They even have accents to reinforce that. If you see WoW goblins and think Jebs instead of Joe Pesci that's on you.
kekw🤣
"never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
this wasn't racist, it's just bad writing - blizzard's recent MO
it should at least had been reviewed by an editor or something before publishing to be honest.
however is kinda hard to imply is not racist, I imagine it was unintentional, but the fact that the writer used the old RL stereotypes on wow races that don't even have those stereotypes in lore to begin with is mind blowing.
I'm just dumbfounded that this got green lighted like that.
Ok you're my fav comment here, thank you.
Thank you for that quote, it really fits with... well... almost everything that's been going on lately. ;-)
Wise words
@Mark Sheymus You make this real fucking easy you know that right?
Pretty sure what made him "Lose it" was the chat. Not the book tbh
To be fair it was Hasan's chat that seem to be invading other channels now that he got temporarily banned for racism on Twitch.
@@bgill7475 unfortunately only temporarily
@@bgill7475 what did hasan say? hilarious that he got banned for racism in the first place, doesn't surprise me since hes commie.
@@Shyzenth He dropped the C-word with a hard R.
@@Shyzenth
He said cracker ctfu
It’s so sad how he always has to hold his viewers hands so they can think critically about things
Better than not having them think at all
Well, sometimes it is necessary to hold the child's hand to help him understand the situation, even with adults it is that you must do the same in some situations.
sadly most poepel cant think critical because they never learned it
Maybe people don't realize racism exists in fantasy as a core part of the fantasy. Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and Demons are racist against each other. They work together once in a while but discriminate against each other due to their differences.
The issue is that fantasy should remain a fantasy. The fictional races should operate based on a fictional culture and not a culture that exists in reality.
We are probably lucky fantasy fiction has dwarves, elves, humans, demons, goblins, and etc because if all these entities were humans of different origins, these stories would have been canceled years ago because people wouldn't be able to handle it although it is FICTION.
His thoughts on racism are wrong at best. I don't need someone to look like me to relate to them or their culture.
When someone says Orcs are "black coded", I would really want to ask what made them think Orc are black coded? Whatever their answer is still comes off as a racist though.
imagine being such closet racists like these people that seeing anything remotely tribal and their first thought is "that's black people"
Same when not too long ago someone said that Orks in DnD are a racist depiction of black people, because the Orks in DnD are primitive and brutish and get -2 intelligence, which in itself reminded that person of black people. And then Wizards of the Coast agreed with that. I mean there's not much to say anymore...
@@viysnjor4811 Not too familiar with how they've been characterized through out the years (never played much of the Warcraft games in any form) so that they've been attributed to that seems really odd to me as an outsider. If anything, they seemed almost Nordic Viking to me from the glimpses of their depictions I've seen over the years. Lots of stylized wood structures and carvings, heavy axes as the tool of trade for weaponry and wood cutting, armor more designed for mobility and intimidation than for protection, ect. But there's lot of tribal style cultures which those descriptions can fall under.
@@jirue Orcs specifically are an honor culture mish-mash, something that has existed at some point or another on all continents. The most overt cultural associations warcraft orcs have with real life, are mongols, not africans
But yeah they're basically heavily stylized, fantasy mongol-vikings culture wise
@@viysnjor4811 Yeah I was going to say that the political structure of the Orcs is drawn from the nomadic steppe tribes like mongols/huns/turks. A lot of people see shamanism and think Africa because it is mostly extinct elsewhere, but it was a fairly common religious practice worldwide if you go far enough into history.
Same with the tribal structure of the Tauren, yeah Native Americans are the most represented in modern times, but tribal societies have existed everywhere at one point. They mostly share similar lifestyles though the customs and languages vary based on culture and region.
If you can’t have a race with similarities to native american culture you can’t have a race that is similar to medieval european culture
Nor can you have races of enemies in northrend with similarities to old norse culture
You can’t have it only go one way where you’re allowed to do whatever to “white” culture but not any other culture.
People just want to be activists and complain about everything & get victim points
Guaranteed the article writer is a liberal who gets insulted on behalf of other races
That's not the whole point tho...I think that mirroring prejudice from the real world to a game isn't only lazy writing, but "weird" at best.
@@AgiotaRural But you can't only have it for one group and not for all others
Remember one thing: this used to be a game about racism. Two factions fighting each other. Orcs were racist towards other Horde citizens. Humans are racist to other races too (blood elves, undead...). That's why we have a lore in the first place. Jeez...
Don't forget how Garithos, a seemingly forgettable character that was exclusive to Warcraft 3, played a much bigger role in WoW's lore than you think because of his racism. Think about it. If it wasn't for that one guy, the Blood Elves and the Forsaken would've joined the Alliance, since their relationship go waaay back
No. It was about faction warfare. You think Axis and Allies irl fought each other cuz they disliked the opposing races? No. Its about alliances or empire conquest power and money, always. Including WoW
At certain point someone in the chat stated that Garlemald would stand for a Nazi empire. That’s incorrect.
Garlemald, if there’s any correspondence to real world, equals to the Roman Empire.
Damn straight. When I heard that I got a tad mad like wtf, did u even play the game?
garlemald has references to a lot of real world empires tbh
You would think that Garlemald's Roman names and titles would make it obvious 🤦♂️
I feel like Garlemald is a mix of both the Roman Empire and Soviet Russia
Legatus, different Legions, use of "us" and "i" suffixes, just general use of Latin and incorporating conquered kingdoms into their empire as vassal states, the list goes on.
How can you be offended on behalf of fictional races, thats a whole new level of snowflaking
@@authenticinari-fox8164 I think the problem here is that there is a difference between something where the point is to get you to walk away with a real-life stance about literal things being directly alluded to versus an exercise in crafting a completely different context which is borrowing elements or using them for inspiration.
Has there been any storyline in WoW that even begins to suggest there is some real-life message about the parallel races that is being told, that's really specific to them in any way? If anything there is a generic throughline of "jeez we sure can do a lot better when we're not fighting one another", and that's about it.
Saying "well, you could write with a thin veneer" like this is irrelevant, because WoW isn't written like that. The puzzle pieces for what stands for what requires insertions overwhelmingly from outside the text, which simply cannot be applied to the actual story beats in any consistent manner.
Whether fantasy is racist or not. The genre is called fantasy. It doesn't exist. Simulations and simulacrums exist for the sole purpose of not being real.
The quality is dictated by the narrative, not the topic.
I'd say its even more racist not including it. For some people in EU or Asian they dont know nothing about Native Americans and might assume they are more like Mongolians.
And I personally think the tribal look with cut leather strips, red zig zags or bead dresses looks cool as fuck.
@@freezingcicada6852 Sorry but we do know some stuff about Native Americans. We aren't countries that only know things in our own countries boundaries. We also aren't countries that name our Natives "Indians" when a country called "India" exists.
@@XxSilenceBladexX uh yeah Colombus named the natives that..so uh yes Europeans did name them Indians as last I checked he was from Genoa which was occupied by Italy.
Fantasy is a medium like any other. It's inspired by reality because our imaginations can't create something out of pure nothingness, there has to be inspiration, a synthesis of ideas or concepts. It can be used for many things - an exploration of human values, to explore challenging topics, for satire, for pure entertainment value, or, as has been seen recently, as a form of social commentary or as a representation of ideologies.
I have no issue with fantasy stories containing political or religious elements. They're part of human experience, after all. The biggest problem I have is when characters are flanderised and only one side of an argument is represented. In my opinion, it works better when exploring various different aspects of an issue and posing questions to its audience. Challenging them to think for themselves. Not using it as a trojan horse for a one-sided argument.
But stormwind humans are based on european middleages humans. What’s the difference
Asmon teaching twitch chat critical thinking and logic is like speaking to toddlers in kindergarten.
in this video asmon says representation in wow that's existed for 20 years is now racist because he's pandering to the left, so you sound like an idiot.
@@BusJustice who hurt you
@@LooneyClipse does that mean asmon’s convinced you that representation = racism? Mom’s real proud, idiot.
@@BusJustice go on a metaverse, maybe someone will listen to you there.
@@LooneyClipse You’re listening. The video is right above this comment for everyone to see I’m right and you’re trolling, but you’re listening :) No reasonable person thinks representation = racism. No reply is necessary, idiot.
I think lazy writing and lack of imagination can often be misinterpreted as racism.
Literally Asmongolds entire point summarized into one sentence, perfection.
I mean, it depends on how you go about lazy writing and lack of imagination. If your lack of imagination leads you to making your fantasy groups into racist stereotypes because it is easy, it IS racism. Lazy writing, lack of imagination, and racism are not mutually exclusive. These things can all be present and often times are in fantasy media.
People don't know what racism is. They overthink too much because they have too much time on their hands
@@abjak2026 This is exactly the issue with this book.
Example:
Race A struggles to speak the language of Race B.
1. You write it such that the book emphasizes how complicated and clever Race B's language is. This makes Race B look good while leaving Race A neutral.
2. You write it in such a way that the book emphasizes how poor Race A is at speaking, and then rely on inserting real life stereotypes for emphasis.
The book repeatedly leans hard into #2, and that's why it's a racist *and* lazy.
@@christianclark9494 It's not really a secret that lots of Asmongold's fans are shitty people. * shrug *
So are Tauren now guilty of cultural appropriation? What a trivial shitshow.
I mean... The Tauren was 100% Native American coded though, but it's done respectfully as it mish mashes all of the tribes together and does it the right way without cutting any corners. I've yet to see any Native Americans say this at all, being full blooded myself I've zero issue with them. I hate how other people talk for us =/
I like how we think appropriation is a crime. If I like your culture and hang a picture of it on my wall, I am honoring it. Disgraceful.
I say its more like cultural appreciation, the tauren are usually portrayed in a very positive light.
I am of the mind that books should be able to explore themes of Racism and Nationalism.
And then the reader should be able to respond with disgust to said themes and hate characters that DO persecute other characters on those characteristics.
You're not meant to LIKE every group of characters in the books you read, you're not meant to ENJOY some passages.
Let me be quite frank, I enjoy reading novels about bad people(fictional). Because it is fiction it allows me to delve into topics I would be highly afraid and disgusted to explore In real life. I squirm at the sight of suffering IRL , but contemplating books I can resolve unanswered questions about life and death.
This reeks of Warhammer 40k in the best way possible (despite Games Workshop itself)
why is nationalism disgusting? globalism is whats disgusting.
@@Sneedmeister From the words I see: "persecute other characters based on those characteristics", it's not about whether nationalism is good, but what you do with it. Some form of cultural or national pride isn't inherently bad, nor is exercising it in every way, but using it as a tool to specifically "persecute" others (which is inherently defined to exclude any rational reason to perform some action besides basing it on some immutable characteristic), this seems like a logical conclusion. Perhaps I'm reading more sense into the comment than the writer intended, but that's how I read it.
I think people are also afraid that if they understand the steel-manned rationale of an evil group, that they or others will somehow be duped into agreeing with that evil. But what those people don't understand is that if your only exposure to evil is a strawman, you're more likely to conflate understandable with correct. People who fail to acknowledge that sometimes evil starts with grain of truth are more likely to be swayed by elequent justifications without really thinking through the moral quandries for themselves.
@@Dahras1 Fantastically said.
In Witcher 3 there was racism against dwarfs, mages and elves and i thought that was super immersive. I never got the impression that it was trying to be a vehicle for some sort of real life ideology.
Exactly, it's like we are able to differentiate pushing an agenda and not from a fantasy world, somehow. Imagine that..
same with dragon age..and no one gave a shit, and still no one gives a shit.
Bro ppl were upset about kingdom come: deliverance for lacking diversity in bohemia back in the fucking medieval era calling the game director racist for portraying everyone as europeen white and cumans as enemies, it's just cancer at this point
Yes Geralt is even forced to fight that Catholicism
Firstly, being intelligent and having a broad vocabulary as well as writing skills are completely different.
Zekhan is not bared from being an insightful character because he lacks education.
A lack of vocabulary is not a sign of lacking understanding, knowing what the word erosion means is not a barrier to observing or understanding it's process.
Being given a formal education doesn't make you intelligent.
As for the in universe aspect of Zekhan:
The Darkspears lived as refugees for most of Zekhans life, at least since he was 5 (assuming he is 18 at the start of BFA and assuming that the Darkspears met Thrall within a year of being driven from their homeland). The idea that there have been literate trolls around for a long time doesn't take into consideration the life circumstances of the Darkspear tribes history at all. If you know anything about the lore of the Darkspears the fact that young trolls, raised during arguably the most disasterus time in warcraft history (as well as Darkspear history), have poor educational prospects shouldn't be shocking to you, it should just make sense.
Edit: Not defending the quality of the book in question. I am saying that the arguments brought up in the article are mostly stupid and don't stand on their own, additional elaboration would be necessary to make an actual point.
also Zekhan is a war orphan and joined the Horde military as a frontline grunt...
his intelligence and compassion allowed him to get recognized, and he is now becoming an ambassador
but for those new duties he needs to learn new skills, like reading, writing, and "fancy language"
the argument, that ancient Troll tablets proof that the Trolls are literate, so Zappy must be literate is also just dumb af - "people in ancient rome could read and write, so a war refugee that lives in that area CANNOT be illeterate"
To be absolutely fair. The author of this book prolly has the same ideology as the person who said it offends people.
I think it goes like that a lot, they go full circle on themselves.
"It was so bad they were like okay it's racist too" So fucking funny
It is and it's honestly so true too, like just from these few snippits you can tell how bad the book is written (and mind you I have never even played WoW in my life and even I can tell).
Like, it's such a cluster fuck.
Nope. Normal people aren't upset by stereotypes in fantasy races. Its not a cultural divide like Twitter would have you think
Doesn’t help when dumbass companies don’t realize that. wizards of the coast just did that. A monster that reproduces by eating brains isn’t evil it’s just misunderstood
@@robertbartley2409 if dumbass companies don't understand that, they'll continue to lose money. Stop supporting bad practices even if you have to find new hobbies/games. It's that simple.
@@Zukoiu WoW isn't losing money though. They're losing subs but making money back in tokens/boosts/store. Even years ago when WOD was record low subs, they were record high sales.
Blood Elves definitely take some character from Nazis. Sure they ally with Orcs, but they’re also a race in a post-defeat state are they not?
@@sweet5694 Blood Elves have more in common with american west-coast celebrity culture than anything else...
Back when warcraft, goblins, trolls and everything was being thought up and brought to life in WoW, western culture was drastically different. The trolls being Jamacian was that era's version of inclusivity. People didn't take fantasy nearly as seriously as we do today, where everybody is looking for the next 'dog whistle' to earn twitter points. Back in the day you would include any given racial or cultural sterotype for fun and not think much of it. Today its much harder to do anything multicultural without gatekeepers criticizing everything not 100% congruent with the real world, or what they believe to be real
Asmon, I love you, but I heavily disagree here. Fiction should be allowed to be fiction in whichever way possible. The Scarlet Crusade has parallels with Nazis, also the Empire in FFXIV. However, who says they were inspired by Nazis? There were many dictators and atrocities committed in history. And the same can happen in fantasy/fiction, I don't think it's weird.
@@AuspexAO but all islanders share common traits , because of similar stuff affecting culture development. Same with hill people. Doesn't matter if you ask about them in Caucasus, near kilimanjaro, in tyrel etc you get the same answer from their neighbours. Aggresive assholes, with no care for animal or female life , that over use alcohol.
@@AuspexAO Trolls have more themes than just Jamaican, they have also a lot of Native American and propper African in them. Also, the Orcs have more German (well, Germanic) in them than the Scarlet Crusade (which looks more stereotypical Spanish Inquisition, Monthy Python style red robes included), yet no Nazi stereotypes there, not even during Garrosh. And Germanic is not even the only RL influence on orcs. Goblins do look likecJewish stereotypes, but most people you ask will tell you they are Americans with the scrappy unreliable tech and the corrupt to ridiculous levels society...my point is that no author ever picks just one parallel.
World of Warcraft is literally about racism though? The races also aren't real (besides human). So what the fuck is actually going on
It's not necessarily lazy to take inspirations from cultures, it could be a valuable framework to bring people into the story. I think that a race like the tauren is pretty tasteful. If you bring in a setting without any foundation, in any way. The reader might be lost in abstract concepts. There must always be some kind of anchor to work from, otherwise you never know how a character will react. Some kind of logic to follow. it's a effective way to expand a universe that otherwise would take a lot longer. Time that might not be willingly given by the reader!
Also isn't this just the perfect example of how incredibly racist the tolerant progressive really are? Could we enjoy a fictional setting for once without talking about skin color?! Haha
Depends if your ancestors exploited, displaced and murdered the very people you now ‘characterise’ as dumb trolls… it feels a bit wrong.
You're 100% on point with this. Tauren being derived from Native American's make them relatable and makes them feel almost real. Less contrived. You could say similar about Trolls and Pandaren.
Take away these tropes and you pretty much have the Shadowlands. A bunch of abstract/contrived-feeling groups that no one cares about.
I disagreed with that aswell.
It's not lazy just cos it's inspired or whatever. Because if it was, literally 99.999% of things ever written are lazy cos they are always inspired by somenthing
I’m Caribbean Hispanic and I really appreciate the in universe troll culture and accent, it’s very unique and they on the most part do and explain it well. But clearly in the book passages shown on in video the writer not only dumbed down an established intelligent troll but when saying how uneducated he is used the troll accent to effect. That I did not appreciate
Nearly everything we find in fiction has some inspiration from real life cultures, it only becomes a problem once you combine that with inspiration from racist stereotypes (like the noble savage) and don't listen to people who are actually from the culture you're taking inspiration from when creating your fictional culture. Characters based on stereotypes are lazy writing.
And you might want to look up the definition of racism, talking about skin color in a fictional setting does not make the "tolerant progressive" racist. That's just idiotic.
people who see orcs as racist clearly see black people as orc like
Absolutely. And without question. I’ve been a lover of fantasy since I was young and not until this hellish time period we live in did I ever consider Orcs as being a caricature of the black race.
I think everyone is looking too deep into the shit. Fantasy is always and has always been based in reality. There are no original ideas and everything is based in reality. Good luck reading or indulging in anything fantasy without being able to pick out something that could possibly offend someone.
It is also crystal clear when something is coded as an offensive steriotype, Like Goblins in Harry Potter
Imagine calling world of warcraft racist when the whole story is always about setting aside difference and hatred in order to work together
and its rubbing off on asmongold. what a shame ! we got to the point where we talk racism about inventet fantasy....GG america you are on the good track to burn, keep it up
I disagree with you on the taurens and trolls having stereotypes being a bad thing. I think it's okay to take inspiration from real world culture and make a fantasy race off of it. Pandas share many chinese tropes, are they a racist race too? I don't think so personally.
What about the humans being typical European colonials? It is all fake outrage at fake problems.
It should only be considered "racist" if the comparison is like, insulting. Pandaren and Jinyu only share cultural themes with real world China, but aren't made to look Chinese or like caricatures of chinese people. Their origins are baked into the lore from early on, Pandaren and Jinyu being advanced evolution of more primal groups like Furbolgs and Murlocs.
Then there's the Goblins, Blizzard didn't invent Goblins and I would argue Blizzard actually did a really good thing by making Goblins more of an American stereotype than anything. Any old stereotypes that you attribute upon them to Jewish people can only be done by yourself. They're a fantasy staple and Blizzard has, despite its other failings, done a good job of "taking" goblins "back" so to speak. (as have games like Styx or Warhammer)
Anyways, the article writer is "DiscordianKitty" so it can easily be disregarded. She is 1000% the reason why Wowhead opinions should immediately be ignored. She's full of shit and makes mountains out of molehills.
@@kabrozkabroz Plus goblins already look like this in real life folklore already, all Blizzard did was add savage capitalism. Like you said, any parallel to real life racial stereotypes one attributes to them is purely your own doing. The author of this "critique" is clearly biased and went into analyzing this book with the objective to find this kind thing to begin with. It's what Nietzsche really meant by "And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee." Literally just seeing what they want to see, if you want to see monsters everywhere you are gonna see them until everything becomes a monster including you.
it is racist if you can make money clicks online
I made a similar point to this in the stream and he agreed with it, didn't make the video though for some reason. 5:32:30 in the "everyone's favorite game" VOD if you wanna see it yourself.
As a native american, I often enjoy any native depictions in pop culture, excluding obvious racism such as Peter Pan Etc., The Tauren are neither offensive nor a direct parallel to any specific tribal practice or culture. They took the concept of early peoples living with the land and put it in a fantasy world with it's own context. That isn't to say WoW is completely without its stereotypes, but it isn't blatant racism made to disparage a real world people. In the case of Zappy boi and goblins, Goblins in lore have continuously been assholes and deserve to have tension with the members within the faction.
perhaps the funniest part of minorities complaining about racism in media is that the simplest solution is to leave them out of it
Doesn't really excuse them for destroying Gazlowe into literally making him to Gallywix for some reason.
@@cecilrhodes1057 the funniest part is that it's not minorities complaining about these, but yt ppl virtue signaling on the behalf of minorities
@@KingCrimeTime well you say that but there are people who complain about it, like the peter pan representation of native americans I don't see what's really bad about it besides being a very simplified representation of native americans, people think all white people are americans am I supposed to be offended?
Not having interacted with Peter Pan stuff in over two decades, what exactly is the obvious racism in Peter Pan?
FFS........ no one is going to look at a troll and say "AHMAGAWD IZ BLACK!!"
if you make any fictional race its going to be somewhat based on real human cultures because its literally all we know. at some point you're going to be making or re-making people. sure, it gets a bit repetitive, dwarves are always scottish for some reason, but whatever.
so; an edit - The Elder Scrolls universe has Nazis, they work fantastically, its not lazy IMO. the Altmer are obsessed with racial purity, and in particular the Thallmar are actively trying to overthrow the other races in the world, slaughtering as they go, to restore the rule of elves over the world. by Skyrim this is the 3rd rise of the Thallmar; the literal 3rd reiche ....I APPRECIATE that because it makes the world feel real and lived in. I want some racism, some sexism, some dirtiness to my world, some shades of grey because its REAL. the history of the actual world is a terrible and filthy expirence, game worlds can, and should, reflect that, its simply realism. at the same time it causes us to reflect on the real world equivalents. by fictionalizing certain unsavory elements it helps us analyze and examine the real ramifications. this fucking stupid ill-conceived push to sterilize and whitewash game worlds or other media franchises is only harming the cause of equality in the real world. its the boy who cried wolf, when you point out actual racism, you get ignored because you were upset by a book based on a video game, you have zero credibility. its one of the reasons BLM has no traction, its because people like this blog author are equalizing black men being shot by police and whether a blue man with walrus tusks in a video game is racist.
Uh. People write high fiction all the time with races that don’t have to borrow heavily from actual cultures.
funny thing is trolls are a real mythological creature.
@@stede9304 give me the race and the work it's presented in and I'll give you the RL culture
A race may have certain behaviors like dwarves being obsessed with mining, but that's taken from Tolkien who got it from the Anglo-Saxon mythology, the drinking and droll is stereotypical Scottish....
Since we've never met aliens ALL cultures real or imagination fit within our understanding of human culture, either myths which are representative of the culture that created the mythology, or the actual culture of people
But find me a example otherwise, I'm happy to be wrong
.
That whole article is basically white girl offended so the "actual victims" won't be offended. Try to ask latinamerican warcraft fans if they like our culture (myself being ecuadorian) portrayed in the game as Zandalari. It's cool dude. And so Aztec culture with the Amani. I can assure you noone in Latin America is pissed bc of how trolls can be harmful to our ancient culture
The only Hitler type character has been Sylvanas, hell she even gassed a few races.
The Goblin accent snaps my mind out of being able to see Goblins as Jewish. That Brooklyn (?) accent calling people 'mooks' overrides whatever coding people are apparently seeing.
Band of Brothers, Boardwalk Empire, The Plot Against America off the top of my head have Jewish characters with that accent. There are many more I can't remember the name of. It's a pretty common accent for Jewish people in stories.
Who the fuck gets offended by a WoW book LMAO
I really don't get how people put real-life racism and match it with a random game's character races(it's a fictional world), just because they can, and make it political for real life. It almost seems insane, on a "come check-in at this asylum for a month or two".
And another point. Literally, every single race/creed culture has gone through a" racist state point in time" throughout the existence of human history, throughout history, if you go back 5000 years, everyone has literally had a turn at being in power or falling to a slavery-type state. Everyone is stuck on the past 500 years when everyone culture has had a spotlight in being the top of the "Ruling charts"
Let's use logic and stop making a fantasy world in real life. There are only so many scenarios that a civilization can go through. war, slavery, genocide, peace, Ruler of the entire planet, conquests, crusades, romance, love, hate...etc Stories are told based on these points/aspects. Has we really become this mentally soft, where fiction/stories/ movies are being told?
Yeah the woke culture and large companies catering to these mentally ill retards gives them power
I mean the fact that they see orcs/other races as people of color makes them racist. You can’t argue with racists because you’ll never win.
They see them as people of color because they’re different than the humans in game, that would mean that they see people of color as different from the humans in real life because if they did not, then they would not say that orcs are racist because they’re different.
There are some old Disney cartoons that were racist but it was a fantasy cartoon.
It was not real but the implication to anyone(kids) watching that cartoon got the racist message. Boomers are real and they got that message all their life. However, as I never played WoW, I do not know about this games lore, I just like Asmongold.
Saying that racism in fantasy world does not matter is true as long it's not connected to any real life nationality.
It's cause the article writer is DiscordianKitty in this situation. Not much else to say really, she's just a fucking waste of air.
@@callingyourphone1212 Based (on truth)
If you look at an orc, Tauren or Goblin and think “is that suppose to be me” and you get mad
You got problems buddy… it’s a fantasy game.
You’d be surprised how many people think this way. Perhaps it’s how society crafted itself over the years. Growing up I rarely ever saw Black people in major movies except as the odd token character. So when I’d see characters with Black tropes and mannerisms projected onto typically villains or monsters it’s easy to make that association of hey this is how society see us, so is it really that outrageous?
Imagine commenting "ratio" on twitch
In the wise words of Morgan Freeman “You want to stop racism? Stop talking about it.”
This is a nazi take btw. Just a heads up. I know ur probably not a nazi but if no one talked about it america would still have slaves
If you wanna stop cancer? Stop caring about it
As someone who has never even heard of Zappy Boi and my first exposure to his representation is that cinematic, I don't think it shows he's that intelligent or clever. It does, however, show that he has a good grasp of reading a person and choosing his words somewhat carefully. D&D character-wise, I'd say he's an 8 intelligence, 16 wisdom, 8 charisma and somehow rolled a nat20 on persuasion.
@@Ordo1980 The passages in the article don't even appear to me as plain "stupid", but sort of "lacking book smarts", to put it some way. He knows what the phenomenon of erosion looks like, he describes it, but he's not familiar with the word "erosion" itself.
Gee, it's almost like there are multiple languages in the lore and he might not know the words in common Orcish, which is what Lor'themar has been teaching him.
Luke Skywalker: "What's in there?"
Yoda: "Only what you take with you."
👀
Bravo, I love this comment especially in this context.
Fun fact: Orcs and goblins don't exist IRL. These lunatics need some reality checks.
As an Aussie im disappointed we havent got racial representation yet lol
When it comes to races in fantasy worlds, with how they act and how the world acts around them, i can sort of agree with what asmon said. I do believe though, that if the world is believable enough, stereotypical things and "racism" inside this world is totally fine. If an Orc is laughed at for not being smart and being a brute, because of its ancestors invasion and acting towards other races and not because sometime the writer decided that, im totally fine with that conclusion.
Imagine when these people are finally gonna discover Morrowind... "N'wah" is going to be banable one day...
without racism there wouldnt be WAR in world of WARcraft, humans hate orcs, nelfs hate trolls etc etc etc
without stereotypes and certain features and traits there wouldnt be so many races in this fantasy game... just get over it at this point, dont interpret too much in a video game, its not healthy
@@WLS_Churchill haha yes, dark elves hate everyone
when it comes to zappyboy... i think the point asmon is trying to make is that zappy is emotionally intelligent. he mistakes it for being educated tho. you see that when he talks to Lord Regent Theron talking about stuff but not knowing the correct word for it, its just because the level of education is a big difference between a darkspeartroll that is a rather simple tribe compared to the high level of knowledge of the bloodelfes
@@lel90 exactly, it's a game not reality. Entertainment is about having fun and making jokes about whats going wrong in reality, it's called humor...
Couldn't it just be that Trollish doesn't have a word for erosion and he was taught it. He understood the concept (being a shaman and all), but linguistically distant languages not sharing words for concepts happens all the time.
Aye thats somewhat what it felt like, like being a foriegner and someone explaining what the term gravity means.
Add in some layers of trolls being more spiritual/shamanistic then blood elves more, arcane/scientific ways and yeh..
Plus IIRC isn't zappy boy an orphan who got swept into the horde war machine? (Not like the Hordes known for its stunning education system either... Illiteracy was extremly common less then 200 years ago..)
Remember when Blizzardwatch released that garbage article where they blasted Blizz for not having enough strong women characters?
Wowhead is now on the same level as that garbage.
The sad thing is they supported Blizz while knowing what was going on there.
without racism there wouldnt be WAR in world of WARcraft, humans hate orcs, nelfs hate trolls etc etc etc
without stereotypes and certain features and traits there wouldnt be so many races in this fantasy game... just get over it at this point, dont interpret too much in a video game, its not healthy
I totally disagree on asmons take around the 6 minute mark.
It is the same thing. Horde culture doesnt need to have any similarity with german culture for Nazi and Garrosh to be "the same thing". Nazis were not Nazis cos they were german. Nazis were nazis cos a dude had an ideology, found more people who shared said ideology and found a way to spread it. That dude, Hitler, wasnt even German... So ...
literally every fantasy race/city/country has aspects of real life human cultures that exist or existed, most are just not as obvious to those unacquainted with history. What asmongold is asking for is nearly impossible, you can't make up a culture based on nothing cause it would be nonsense, everything you can think of has probably been tried by some people at some point in history.
No, you're missing his point. He was repeatedly quite explicit about it being numerous factors consistent with their real-world counterpart, some being clearly derogatory, that is the problem. He didn't say don't borrow from any culture, or don't be inspired by any culture.
Imagine not being racist in 2022.
Really appreciated this video and Asmon's take. I thought the Germans/Nazi example was a really good example to use to show this argument from a different perspective. Unfortunately he also got to show how difficult it is to be reasonable on the internet
Yeah but let's not kid ourselves... I'm pretty sure Nazis did a lot of things that would be considered "german" whether it be mannerisms, way of speaking, religion etc etc. I fully understand that people want to draw a hard line between Nazis and regular German people and there certainly is a difference. How do i put it... while all germans were not Nazis all Nazis were German. (or at least the vast majority of them).
Making a new defias brotherhood like the way Asmon described wouldn't be anything new... it's been done so many times in fiction and it's always been okay. Sure you can think it's boring and lazy writing that's fine, but saying its morally not okay or even go as far as saying it's not okay legally is a totally different ballpark.
Nazism was propagated by Austrians at the time and a minority of Germans were in favour of it. This is exactly the problem with stereotypes and caricatures
@@idno4856 Yes the nazi ideology. Not the german way of life. You think the germans just stopped doing anything german like once they became nazis?
Seriously who would give a fuck if they added a aspect of the game that drawed parallels to Nazis. What's the big fucking deal, we used to be able to draw from that part of history all the time in culture. Also how is a rasta or a spiritual native american a negative stereotype, so the comparison isn't even apt. That point was mute and stupid, if they drew inspiration from my culture good and bad I wouldn't give a shit.
Well maybe they can choose to be offended, but I can proudly say I am NOT offended with the Scottish accents for Dwarves. That shit’s awesome.
Dwarves are dope. Top tier race with my boys the Tauren.
CHAMPION! WE NEED MORE AZERITE!
@@decilence6184 Rolf “CHAMPIONS OF AZEROTH!” always followed by the “Oh God, please nooooo” Hilarious trolling anyone who used to play WoW with that one
WoW has Species not Races. Orc is not a race of Human. Idiotic article.
exactly, woketards want to be offended
the "keep real life out of video games" crowd has been real quiet about historical racist tropes being used in the book
i dont think the 'keep politics out' crowd even read the book
just because you depict a different race or culture in the characters doesn't make it wrong. everyone needs to stop being snowflakes
It's wrong when there are numerous clear references to a single cohesive group/culture/ethnicity and some of them are clearly derogatory... especially when the derogatory bits are also consistent with reality.
@@jacobunderwood4957 There is nothing wrong with depicting derogatory aspects about certain groups / cultures / ethnicities. I hate how ppl think we have to pretend that every group / culture / ethnicity is perfect and we can only say nice happy things because there are no derogatory aspects and everyone is perfect. Thats not reality. Its fake and its not authentic. People have to have some thicker skin and not get all butt hurt over trivial issues....WOW has been out since 2004.. It hasnt been an issue until now. Stop being a snowflake. Its the ppl like you who get offended by every little thing that is the main problem.
@@MrExclaimed Right, right, you're still walking right past a piece of criteria in my and somewhat in Asmon's statements - it's really a combination of the various parts, really creating a one-dimensional narrative about an entire people. Especially when one or a few are exaggerated, especially when they're very specific or graphic about their depiction.
You're saying that these individual concepts aren't inherently wrong and you're right. It's them being wielded disrespectfully or even uncreatively - this being Asmon's main point.
@@jacobunderwood4957 These are not people. Trolls, Tauren, Orcs, undead....There is nothing wrong with fantasy trolls or orcs having a one dimensional narrative. Its like saying its wrong and offensive to one dimensionally portray the orcs in lord of the rings as violent, dirty, poor, uneducated and always dressed in black because its racist and derogatory towards black people. I think its really uncreative, offensive and RACIST of JR Tolkien to portray the orcs in only one dimension that is stereotyping certain groups of black ppl in poor crime infested areas.....Its a slippery slope... Also, its your opinion that these concepts are being wielded disrespectfully. There are PLENTY of minorities that love seeing certain parts of their culture or group or race portrayed regardless of it being a negative or positive aspect. Ill copy and paste an example
@@jacobunderwood4957 Example: ""I am part Native American and a bunch of other shit and when I was a kid I really enjoyed hearing stories my dad would tell me about our ancestors. I love seeing Native American or Irish symbolism in media and the Taurens are my favorite WoW race. I really hate how people now are trying to ban representation of minority culture saying that it's cultural appropriation or racist. I like seeing the stereotypes, the jokes, the symbolism, the representation, and appreciation of my ancestors culture. The thing I don't like is when it's clearly malicious or demeaning and ruining characters is always a feels bad man, doesn't have to be race related."" This comment got 1,300 likes...... The way the Trolls and Orcs and Tauren are portrayed doesnt come off as malicious or demeaning at all.. Its not disrespectful and im sure if it was then WOW would have done as good as it did for so many years.
I don't think Zekhan not knowing the word 'erosion' makes him stupid at at all. There is no singular word to cleanly describe the concept of 'falling in love' in English. The Greek language has four separate words to describe different kinds of love/affection. But English-speakers can still understand these ideas.
Most humans who have walked this earth were illiterate. If Zekhan comes from an ordinary family without formal education then this would mirror many real-life scenarios of intelligent but uneducated foot soldiers receiving special treatment because of their intelligence.
yes, the words and writing may as well been some kind of comon dialect or something more required for his new position and then aggain he may be fluent in trollish scripture but with diferent reaces and sometimes diferent in race cultures one may need to up its knowledge on linguistics
It's painful to watch the Old Soldier cinematic. BfA had such potential and was set up well in this piece. Too bad Blizzard went and squandered it all away to set up Sylvanas for Shadowlands which has been an abysmal piece of hot garbage.
Its hard to write fantasy without having people to compare fantasy cultures to real world cultures. Wizards of the Coast had the same Shitshow with Dungeons&Dragons last year.
While Blizzard did an absolute lazy job, you even get those claims in fantasy races like the Drow.
Im really worried that all that will lead to really blunt and simple fantasy stories and settings in the future. Since people seem to compare fictional stories with their real life experiences.
People should realize one thing here: bestial/tribal/dark-skinned evil things are not a universal code for racist tropes. They’re only that way if you choose to see them that way.
Thing is, where would you stop to rewrite Fantasy? Are most Vampire stories showing prejudices against eastern europeans? Is Jabba the Hut smoking a hookah and being a criminal condecending on middle eastern culture?
I mean, races in fantasy don’t like each other all the time, even allied races. Lord of the rings has plenty of that going on, just look at the dwarves and the elves. I think it’s fine for Zekahn to not like goblins, and characters without character flaws end up being boring and annoying.
Twitch chat truly is what the last human is supposed to be.
Garlemald is 1000% an amalgamation of WW2 Axis powers.
Nazi Germany, Italy, and USSR - With sprinklings of ancient Rome (whom the Nazis were obsessed with, btw)
It's completely fine to tie real-world cultures and nations into fantasy nations and cultures.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Yeah, like extreme nationalism wasn't bread and butter of Japanese culture...
The interesting thing about this is that WHITE people see racism in many things and will spend the time to write articles about how bad this is, but never address the real issue that BLACK people are living every day especially since the WHITE people don't understand what the problem actually is. In reality no one should be fearful when walking down the street, going into a market, or doing normal things just based on their race. We really need to be good humans to everyone regardless of their race not because of their race.
It's a fictional world that pulls inspiration from the real world... like almost every other, coming up with wholly unique new cultures is a really difficult thing to do let alone like a dozen of them, they aren't representative of real races even if they take inspiration from them and I really don't get why people make such a fuss about it like wasn't there that dude that made that whole "orcs are racist" video that got shit all over?
To be honest..... even Asmon's words don't make sense. Nazis were not a race. At best, Nazis were a behavioral subset of a fictional ethnicity within a confederation of ethnicities that was formed around 1848. There is absolutely no problem showing a fictional allegory to Nazis in some other fictional world. Describing a group by the culture they voluntarily decided to practice is not a vice. You're not describing someone's ethnicity and saying "therefore, they have to behave or feel this way..." .....you're describing a group who adopted a behavior and a set of beliefs and habits and practices by showing those beliefs and habits and practices. Nobody listens to Boris Johnson and notices he has an english accent and then says..... "gee, the Star Wars Imperial Moffs must be stereotyping all British people." ....no, the Star Wars Imperial forces are an allegory for people who genuinely do want an empire and do bad things to secure an empire. Being a British person does not equal you being evil and wanting an empire of suffering and subjugation.
There is nothing racist about jamaican accents or plains indian accents. Frelling frell..... both of the aforementioned were put in the game because they were viewed positively....they were liked....they were welcomed....they were valued.
As a jew, someone saying "ahhhh goblin=jew analogy" seems more anti-semitic than not even acknowledging it is xD
Most games / movies etc take "some" ( or a lot ) of inspiration from real life, from real cultures and countries.
The scarlet crusade "ARE" the nazi of wow. They are humans believing that they are the superior race.
You can dislike that kind of thing, but the more you know about history, the more you'll see the parallels in every fiction around you.
Asmongold has the right viewpoint on this. He's right about the ppl who can only think in black and white. The world is nothing but shades of gray and he's calling it out. I can appreciate that wholeheartedly. It is so frustrating when trying to make a point and then someone says "Well, if that's true, then EVERYTHING is this or that way!".
@@123Juniiorr well your wrong history shows violence being one of the answer we can choose.
also by not picking a side your choosing aswell.
@@123Juniiorr wel you view them as a group of "bad people" and "good people".
you already made 2 faction.
let me give you a example.
you walk a see a group for people bullying persoon.
there are multiple options but let use the base options most people choose.
1. you tell the bully off protecting the victim.
2. you join the bully's.
3. you ignore the situation proceed with your day.
i dont consider any of your choice a wrong.
you just have to face the consequence/repercussion of your actions.
and they can vary.
nothing can even happen because they share "your" opinions aswell.
your right about that both the good and bad people in your comment wil dislike you.
but i understand them aswell because with
your answer: "hey this is kinda messed up".
you do not side with "good or bad" creating a 3rd faction because of your opinion.
history show this throughtout in many wars we have fought.
tribes against tribe
Kingdoms agianst kingdoms.
Sect agianst sects.
race wasn't even involve but we would still kill eachother
by answering the way you did declared independs agianst both the "good and bad" factions.
but be prepared to face you repercussion
agian your choice and answers are not bad.
your point is right but this is also the reason why they treat you like this.
lol might as well remove all fantasy lore from all books because these tropes will always be present, there's nothing wrong with it at all. what's really weird is people getting upset for other people for them. Real life politics has no place at all in fantasy and anyone that actually gets hurt over fake stories really need to reevaluate their life.
Man the community destroyed this game. Aside from the awful gameplay blizzard caved so much to these fanatics now they're looking for anything.
This is true
Nah game being shit has nothing to do with dumbass journalists or racism in game. It's shit because the gameplay is shit, also systems and mindless and endless grind every patch we do are shit. Stupid ass people being angry at Warcraft books never impacted the game itself.
@@smashing-3291 you literally proved his point
@@carliemorgan1871 how come?
@@smashing-3291 cause you dont seem to be the brightest bulb on the strand?
Worgen are based on English culture and stereotypes. It's not bad or wrong. The Tauren aren't shown as evil nor are the trolls.
I always want to know who the "who" is in these claims. Just for fun I went out to look at comments made by people who had purchased, read and reviewed the book. It was a significant consensus that it was a horrible book and racist stereotypes. For example one reader stated, "Zekhan, the narrator of most of the book and a kind troll character in game, has been turned into a goblin-hating, illiterate savage with a constant misuse of habitual "be". Gazlowe has been turned into a horrible slave driver comparable to the likes of Gallywix, the goblin he was supposed to be different from, but apparently the author of this book only sees goblins as all the same; evil, walking anti-Semitic tropes. Seriously, there's even a reference to poisoning the well. I'm not joking. It's that bad. Also, these are only two examples; I can promise you there's even more." There were dozens of these types of comments made by purchasers of the book. You can find these under the comments in Amazon, Good reads, ect. Additionally apparently they get lore facts wrong over and over.
I can only assume (unfortunately) that the author of this article did the same thing I did, which was to use google. It doesn't appear the author actually read the book and developed her own opinion so this is disingenuous article at best.
I'm playing videogames to escape from this political bullshit, now we're gonna call racist remarks against certain IMAGINARY NONEXISTENT races racism? I get it that some imaginary races are based off real world cultures; but hey, you gotta have some canvas to create your imaginary thing, right? Everything imaginary is based off something, I quite honestly never thought for a second that tauren really resemble native americans or trolls resemble the carribeans (forgive me if I spell it wrong, not a native speaker). It's just that tauren are very shamanistic and spiritual people and trolls are tribal, and quite frankly that seems to fit both races. This is a slippery slope, we can go further and say that WoW promotes war and violence, having undead in the game is also dangerous because this is desecration and also opressive against religious people and so on and so forth. Please, leave political bullshit out of videogames, this is the place we people who are tired of real life shit escape to
edit: I also get where the author is coming from; he tried to show every side of the character, good and bad; yeah, it seems kinda weird, but calling it racist is next level "journalism" bullshit
I think people need to separate normal aspects of bad writing before getting into higher literary analysis.
Good job asmon that's what I've been saying. People just can't have a conversation about anything anymore without being overtly offended
Racist and tribal behaviours have existed in nearly every single human culture in history. This is a true statement.
Given this true statement, a fictional story that incorporates these ideas of racist and tribal behaviour, doesn't mean it is directly supporting that said behaviour.
It may be used as a literary device to undermine or subvert, presenting a moral dilemma, then resolve it or leave it unresolved for the audience to ponder, and draw personal conclusions.
Who would disagree or agree and why?
Humans have been literate for millennia, therefore no humans have been illiterate for millennia… is something no one has ever thought. Being illiterate does mean a character is just a simpleton, especially in a world where reading doesn’t seem to be as necessary as in reality.
To be fair WTF isn't racist or offensive these days
That's USA and UK for you... rest of world is fine...you just can't see it.
Insulting white people isn't. because of course it isn't.
@@HladniSjeverniVjetar Don't mix UK with the shitshow that is USA.
@@derbigpr500 ok fair nuff, you got your own shitshow with loicences for everything. 😆
"Well poisoning is a well-known anti-semitic stereotype"
A guilty conscience often has trouble separating implication from accusation.
nah its what nazis saids about jews in germany internally to their own ppl. just stupid horror propaganda stuff to scare children and dumb ppl. well poisoning and eathing children hearts is like one of the most well known idiot propaganda done by nazis back then
@@gandi8959 All stereotypes are based in truth
@@hydromancer4916 This statement. This one right here. I absolutely hate it.
But the reason I hate it, is because it is so damn true. They can be based in a truth older than the parents of the people that use them now, but it is, or at least was, true to an extent. And I think the fact so many stereotypes are deemed 'hurtful' is because they are caricatures of a culture's worst aspects ("Asians are smart" being an exception) and nobody ever wants to see that part of themselves.
America, as the example I am most intimately familiar with, has a stereotype of being obese, trigger-happy morons that spread 'freedom' through warfare. Putting the actual, deep, and endlessly divided politics aside, there is a history to back this image up.
In order of succession, the US has the highest obesity rates in the world. We absolutely DO love our guns, extending from our Constitution's amendment, to military design doctrine, to childrens' toys. As for being morons... I mean, go look on Twitter, or those random quizzes Watters gives people on the street. And spreading freedom through warfare, it's a bit of a mixed bag; I don't think anyone would disagree that Germany, and arguably even Japan, is in an overall better place after our intervention than it was prior, and our standing up to the Barbary States helped shift attitudes towards the pirate states, leading to them being defeated all together. But then, things like Vietnam happen too.
The point I'm making is that the overall image is definitely not flattering, but it isn't totally inaccurate, and shows us characteristics that we're not always proud of. But that shred of truth is all it needs.
P.S. I have no idea what kind of point I was actually trying to make with this long, rambly reply. I would delete it, but maybe someone will get something out of it? Sorry for letting it drag on so long.
@@mariofan1ish
Your last paragraph is an absolutely solid point.
In the moment, I thought i loved the backgrounds to these races but now they're all just metaphors for other races or communities and can be boiled down to just a few phrases.
Human: British.
Night Elf: Vegan.
Dwarf: Irish
Dark Iron Dwarf: Scottish
Gnome: IRL Dwarves
Draenai: Russians
Lightforge Draenai: USSR Russians
Worgen: British Furries
Kul Tiran: American
Pandaren: Chinese
Void Elf: Angsty Gen Z
Undead: Angsty Boomer
Blood Elf: Homosexual
Goblins: Jewish
Trolls: Caribbean
Tauren: Native American
Vulpera: Native American Furry
Highmountain Tauren: Native Canadians
Orc: Warcraft Fan
Mag'har Orc: Warlords of Draenor Fan
Nightborne: Extreme Vegans
Zandalari Troll: Aztec
Mechagnome: Returning War Vets
Nightborne: Drug addicts
Once again sjw fans attacking blizzard (who deserves to be attacked) but for the completely wrong reasons
I would honestly love to have an honest talk with Asmon about these kinds of subjects, seems like it can actually be a productive and intresting conversation
@@__-fi6xg lol. Must gain value beyond meaningful conversation. Disingenuous definition.
@@__-fi6xg nono, i am not putting myself up there, i am just saying that an actual talk on some topic with asmon seems really intresting to either watch or participate in, coz he is streaming alone most of the time and you can't expand on topics too much when you can only talk with twitch chat
I worded the comment poorly, mb
He's saying that after playing wow for 15 years or whatever, that yes tauren/troll representation is racist, comparing them to a nahzti faction he made up on the fly... How is that productive? I can see interesting because it takes him some mental gymnastics to back up that claim.
Schizo wowhead writer being offended on behalf of people who didn't ask, what's new lmao
So. I read this article. First of all. This is apparently all from Zekhan's perspective. A mortal perspective that doesn't have all the information on the world, on the situations, and all the backstory like us players do. We, as players, know things that the inhabitants of Azeroth would have zero way of learning. Plus, this is a troll, he has racial bias. We all do. To say we don't is lying to others and yourself.
The worst part, the most petty bit, is how this person goes on about how Zekhan doesn't know the word "erosion", stating that as a shaman, he should know the word. Wow. Just... wow. Just because he doesn't know the fucking word doesn't mean he does not understand the concept. That's so fucking stupid. You go to the doctor, and they diagnosis you with hyper flatulence. WTF is flatulence you wonder... It's gas. You've got bad gas. Oh. You knew that. You understood the concept, you just didn't know the fucking word.
Zekhan's quip about night elves is also true. Yes, they lost their homeland, so many of their people. To further waste lives in pursuit of vengeance will only insure that the kaldorei become extinct. He acknowledged the horror of it, the tragedy, their right to desire justice. But he also pointed out that their hatred might end up killing those that remain. That's called wisdom. You nitpicking ninny. I need a drink.
Edit: Looking over this person's history. It is clear, as someone once said, this individual is a shit poster. Couldn't agree more.