Warcraft and Racism

Is this a problem?

Long-time readers of Be Healed! would rightly guess that I am an Alliance patriot. I mean that in the best sense of the word "patriot." I make no bones about it: the Horde is the instigators of most horrors brought on Azeroth. Yah yah, the ultimate evil of the Burning Legion played a hand in that, but the orcs made their own choices and need to reap their own consequences. And anybody who wants to stand next to them can get what's coming too. The basic orc point of view-- that they should be able to take whatever they need to survive because they have the strength to do so-- is no different from how a bully justifies his actions. And I won't stand for it.

Anyway, That's not really what I wanted to talk about today.

What I really want to talk about is, "Am I being racist when I slam on the orcs or Blood Elves?" I am always struck by a lot of people using a morally flexible point of view to justify actions or plot twists in Warcraft: WoW presents a "morally complex" story with many shades of grey and no absolute rights or wrongs. Or is it really a lot simpler than that?

And, yes, Warcraft is a game and that's a good thing. But playing games gives us chances to make bad choices and to explore morally gray areas in a context where the consequences aren't as dire as they are in real life. In order to get this benefit, though, we do have to examine the quandry.

Blood Elves. Just Blood Elves.

The reasons are better than just that this guy's hair bugs me. Though, this guy's hair does bug me.

Yerp, we're not mincing words in this blog.

Actually, I will mince words. I think I shall write a sonnet on this topic:

Why dost I hate blood elves?
Let me count the ways:
They think too much of themselves
And magic addiction leaves them in a haze.
Their hearts, filled to the brim with spite,
Leaves no space for friendship.
Though, the Alliance, their Sunwell did light,
Their loyalties, they hold out like a bargaining chip.
Though the Belf women be cute
Their attitudes are quite fissilingual.
The Belf men, from veteran to raw recruit,
All seem, really, to be very metrosexual
But if there is one supreme reason for loathing a Belf
Is that there are no greater tools on the continental shelf.

Does that clear things up?  No? Well, I had fun writing it anyway. And look up "fissilingual" to figure out what a good job I did choosing my rhyme scheme!

I wrote in the sidebar recently that I try hard not to hate Belves more than most bunches of pixels that appear on my screen. However, the former followers of Kael'thelas have come to deserve some special attention. A great deal of this is based on my interpretation of WoW lore, while some of it is sort of meta-game thinking: