I just reread Aaron Rosenberg's Beyond the Dark Portal

Lore Story
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If you believe that all the chapters that delved into, tried to explain, and expanded on, how the Flynn/Shaw relation came to fruition and worked, were indeed but one line, then you are the one that should check on how character focus, development, and novel spotlight, works.

And all the above could’ve been handled in a way that it focused it’s resources into tackling the world issues. Not as a means to highlight the relation per se.

That’s the difference between “I want to focus on the events”, and “I want to focus on this character feelings”.

Ps:

:rofl:

Guess you had to roll over and ignore the fact that I’ve argued identically against the short story that featured a straight elf couple.

That’s not as fancy and convenient material for the strawman now, is it?

God, just when I start seeing people in other ways, they must remind exactly how pathetic they are willing to go. :yawning_face:

That’s true. Mainly because the Titan explanation you have gone for now, is but the headcanon bits that some players grasp at in order to try an give any sort of reasoning, that the human race in WoW lacks (even if every other race ingame had such). Blizzards stance was: They were always there, deal with it.

But well, from that past thread we concluded that you are fine with tokenism as a valid form of inclusion (regardless of how damaging its usage may be to the settings credibility), so…nothing new under the sun.
Do wonder how is it that this is relevant now? :man_shrugging:t3: (Beyond the strawman fallacy I mean).

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The fact you focus on these characters feelings not the fact the entire novel was about characterisation and “feelings” (Anduin, Zekhan, Talanji) is why people are questioning your motives.

Anduin has entire sections based on him being undercover as a peasant, which served no purpose besides fleshing out his character, and you haven’t touched on that in the slightest.

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The quality depends on the depth of the story, right. And the characters are represented poorly.

Zappy boy is an incompetent idiot that rushes into combat just for the sake of rushing in.

Turalyon and Alleria destroying minds together is extremely out of character. Maybe not for Alleria. For Turalyon? Surely. Lacks of continuity with the Old Turalyon I read in Aaron’s book. Oh, and there’s lack of continuity with Jaina. Her character is just “idiotic good” for the sake of having a good lady that would oppose Alleria.

And then we have Flynn and Shaw with the line “He hadn’t noticed that Flynn smelled as strongly of salt and soap as he did of whiskey, and the combination was intoxicating” should tell you everything. Seriously. Even a mediocre hack writer won’t write that. And out of all hack writers, she’s the worst.

There’s lack of depth. The plot is sluggish - I was literally struggling to finish the book.

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That would probably be because those bits were treated as standalone factors that furthered the character itself, instead of having the plot be defined by the soap opera effect that drives it all into the “how I met your mother” theme about coupling/romance.

But don’t worry, those other bits were about as awful.
Talking about Flynn/shaw ones came because these were the bits this thread seems focused on.
The rest of inconsequential deep dive into character fee-fees, was included in the “superfluous embellishment” tag I labelled most of the novels work as.

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If a gay character engaging in a single kiss makes this book a “romance novel”; when almost every single novel concerted Jaina did the same, with Knaak novels focusing far too much on it, then I don’t really see a point in trying to pretend you are arguing with any standpoint besides being against gay characters in the fantasy setting.

You’ve lost, Zaroa. They are in the lore and in the game, and none of your whining will change that.

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You argued once against straight couples, while provided post after post for the gay one.

Sorry, it is just how it came off.

You make it sound like he was a genius strategist in BFA…If anything she gave him a role, he is now a Horde ambassador, has an actual struggle and purpose, instead of HAHA MEME character or a cheerleader for Saurfang.

Perhaps you did not play LEgion? where Turalyon was in support of a despot Naaru? He is a light “extremist” now. He spent thousands of years away ofc he is going to change. That is also not on Roux that is on Blizzard.

That is literally Jaina since MOP, one minute she is either crazy and bloodthirsty and the other is nice. Did you not play BFA?

I can assure you, there was nothing wrong with that sentence :rofl:you are just triggered by something else. I wonder what? :roll_eyes:

Plot by Blizzard. Novels are now just extra tidbits of lore, nothing essential. Most people don’t read novels so they can’t have lore developed outside the game.

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You shouldn’t have to apologise for calling out homophobia, and him calling you pathetic for doing so doesn’t change the very cores of his arguments.

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Agenda. They’re trying to make the church look bad. Can you guess when they’ll turn Flynn or Shaw into villains? Never.

The story in BFA was nice and had depth, about Jaina having some internal struggles and had to be accepted back in her family. It would have been good to have more depth in Roux novel.

Excuse me, have you ever smelled a mix of salt and whiskey? And have you tried at least imagining it? Jeez. Have you thought that some smells don’t mix?

Yet even with being mostly retcon, the Illidan novel (pre-Legion) was cool. One of the best novels ever.

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What was that about this not being a conspiracy theory? :joy:

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Me’dan was in the Lore too. Not for long :slight_smile: I wonder how much this one will last.

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Are you genuinely advocating for all gay characters to be removed from the lore? How pathetic can you be?

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Ah, see you’ve now reverted to the strawmen army backpedalled from acknowledging this bit:

Yeah, sorry if its tough to have a point against an argument that doesn’t come from the racist/bigot you so crave to find in these forums, but that doesn’t negate the point being made:

People will call out, speculate, and unfortunately, think badly of plot developments such as irrelevant romance, if they detect that it occupies narrative space in a way that sidelines lore issues that should’ve been tackled.

And this applies to novels and shorts stories, with both straight and gay couples.

The latter may raise even yet more eye brows, because people are far more sceptical regarding the intention and the hows of their implementation.

Because, regardless of whether you’ll admit it or not, there is a history of forcefulness and virtue signalling, to be had with the narratives that all of a sudden, decide they are going to “keep up” with RL values.

But worry not my SJW White Knight!! :rofl:

I do believe the whole homosexuality behind it all was handled rather fine.
Unfortunately for it, given it was part of the same unnecessary romance focus, people will still criticise it as irrelevant embellishment piece that does nothing but take on narrative space from relevant lore issues, and does nothing but devalue the overall quality of the narrative piece where its implemented.

Because the main topic in this thread seemed to be the Flynn/Shaw bit. I never cared about the circumstances of said coupling (beyond noting the fact that these would obviously be held under tighter scrutiny). And in fact treated them the same as i did with the other romancing bits.

This was the bit that the blue-balled SJW itching for a cause, argued against:

Even if i repeated stuff like:

Honestly, had this whole thing been about a straight couple, i would’ve not need to change a single beat of my argument. (Whereas Mogi would’ve probably required to swallow half his posts :joy:).

No problem. We did agree initially on the premise of it all.
I’m sorry for bristling back.

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That was actually funny. What happened to not wanting representation from the real world? Yet you consider the Church that worships magical light the same as Christian church.

Flynn is a pirate, a thief, and a criminal…

You know it’s not literal right? Smells do not mix sure. Plenty of best selling authors have written worse. Stephen King comes to mind.

Because it was centralized on Maiev and Illidan, not multiple characters. They used the novel to set up the expansion.

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Romance is a standard subplot of most novels…

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And i’ll always criticise its usage if i note it comes in detriment of other, far more pressing, issues that end up sidelined.

That’s one of the reasons why i quoted these two short stories:

As a way to exemplify the uneven quality of lore they provide (in terms of acting as complementary material that expands on relevant lore information).

EDIT:

I also got roped into this mudfest, because i understand how some may sense that if the above is done with certain topics, there might be additional motives.

Because honestly, in a world such as ours, arguing that these sort of inclusions are innocent or thoughtless acts when suddenly presented in a narrative, is top acting and insincerity of the highest kind.
A company doesn’t coincidentally give a novel’s spotlight to their first gay couple in the history of their story.

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You still fail to understand my point. I said that I prefer no representation, and I elaborated that what’s worse than no representation is bad representation. I gave you an example - centaurs-bad, khan leadership-bad. Same goes with the Church. Here’s another example with bad representation. Bulgarian quidditch team in Harry Potter. While it was nice to see, the feeling didn’t last long when it turned later that Rowling totally messed up Bulgarian names. Even Viktor Krum sounds awful. Totally non-Bulgarian.

And none of this is obvious in Roux book - he’s just a passenger on a ship. Another minus for Shadows Rising.

And that’s why the commercial Stephen King isn’t the king of Horror. Lovecraft is much better.

They should have done the same this time, instead of putting agendas.

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You make it sound like detracting the romance subplot = emphasis on races and unaddressed lore issues.
It is not the case and you know it. They are not dependent nor related.

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Could we stop discussing as if we were actually either interested in the other side’s restating of their well-known perspective, or that we were willing to be challenged in ours? Let’s just go back to mocking the other side, at least this way your side gets entertained when you get a good line in. Being unproductive is more productive than pretending to be productive!

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In these instances? I honestly think that was the case.

Take for example the short story.

Lets put LTT in Suramar, and simply avoid the unnecessary romance. What else could we address in said setting?
Well, for instance we could have interactions regarding how the people of Suramar feel about Teldrassil being destroyed. We could have Thallyssra dealing with the repercusions of said act, or having some sort of exchange with the Moonguard at her doorstep, or with the Druids of Valsharah (most of which would’ve probably fought her people in Darkshore warfront).

In the novel? We could’ve had more time tagging along Turalyon and Alleria, whom traversed pretty close to other hot topics such as Lordaeron and Gilneas.
When interacting with Zekhan and Rokhan, we could’ve had clarification over Darkspear issues, and with Calia/Voss, regarding Forsaken ones.
When Thrall went to Hyjal, we could’ve have an explanation regarding Ashenvale, or about exactly what their settlement in said zone meant.

True, substracting certain plots doesn’t automatically feed on other ones as much as for example we’d have with instances that included contradicting lore. But changing the mindset into “I’ll tackle relevant information” in lieu of superfluous stuff, does.

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You oscillate between Nihilistic angry gnome and lore doomsayer :grin:

The main plot of the ‘‘very short’’ short story was the romance for the sake of characterization of Lore’themar who is also commonly known as Bob. People severely criticized him for being bland.

I would have enjoyed any lore info added but once again you are ignoring the fact that Blizzard didn’t want to reference or deal with these issues. They didn’t want to deal with them now. They have a habit of doing that. Any lore immersed person knows their methods (You most certainly do) Omitting the Romance plot would not have added more important lore.