Check it out for yourself, just look up ‘Shadows Rising’ on Wowpedia, with it’s linked sources, it explains where she made lore mistakes.
Which, y’know, is cool. It’s like ‘A Good War’, the author wrote some dialogue that basically retconned an entire incident and reason for a race joining a faction, and later had to go back and say “Yeah, I got that wrong, That didn’t happen”.
People make mistakes. It happens.
Three retcons does not a non-canon source make.
Given the book is contracted and bullet-point written by Blizzard Ent. before it makes it into an author’s hands to write, I’ll take it, like Chronicle, as the ‘most canon source’.
“It’s not canon because I disagree with the author,” does not a good argument make. I don’t agree either, but I’ll agree with the pre-written contract by the ownership company.
Madeline is amazing. You must be a mad mansplainer that you attack her here. Stay mad. Madeline is better then you. fake bloodelf.
Not necessarily so. It has happened before, with a variety of their novels and authors. They don’t get told exactly what to write, in the slightest. They do get an overview, but are given a very broad canvas to work from after that. Now the more dutiful of the writers will do their research in game, however whilst that obviously seems like common sense, common sense isn’t all that common. Sometimes authors will get things completely wrong, Such as Malfurion forgetting that the Kaldorei did indeed mess with the Sin’dorei, completely counter to what actually happened lore wise. Fair play to that author, they fessed up and admitted they either hadn’t done their research, or had ‘forgotten’ it. Another example would be Genn having a tail in a novel, It would take ten minutes of logging in and generating a Worgen character to realise that Worgen do not have tails.
Ten minutes. Who wouldn’t do ten minutes research if they were getting paid a phenomenal amount to write a novel?
Then you get the even crazier retcons. “There are two Windrunner Sisters, Alleria and Sylvanas, and Two Windrunner Brothers, Lirath and one as yet unnamed.”
Richard Knaak goes “Damn, Sylvanas is undead, and Alleria already has a human husband…How am I going to make my self insert Rhonin (Who can already do -everything- even speak Furbolg) look even cooler, I’m thinking something like having an elven babe hanging on his arm…but damn…Alleria is already married to Turalyon…Oh! I Know, I’ll just invent a new Windrunner sister! I know there isn’t one, but It’ll be cool!!”
Yeah, not really that cool when you then also state that Rhonin gets her pregnant, just after stating that she was sent with him because she was too young to fight in the Second War. We know at what age children are eligible to fight in High Elven armies, so we know what age Vereesa was -under- That’s not cool Knaak… There is a name for older men who prey on underage children…
But hey, he just totally made her up and Blizzard had to go with it. I don’t think they realised how Jimmy Saville-esque Knaak had made Rhonin seem. I mean he was always an insufferable Gary Stu, but making him -that- dodgy was, well, remarkable.
A different author then simply -deleted- another Windrunner because it didn’t fit their agenda with regards the story. Now there -were- three Windrunner sisters, but only one Windrunner brother, who was dead. And there only ever had been one Windrunner Brother. Totally…
There is a big difference, between a Retcon, and an Author simply getting something wrong. Sometimes they can blur into one, but as basic terms they are not the same thing. Sometimes something is so glaringly wrong that it ruins the very basic premise of the story, because you can no longer take the rest of the story (Even the bits that make sense) seriously. Anyone who has ever read a Dan Brown novel will know this sensation. In Angels and Demons, the Pope can fly a helicopter. Thats plausible. Even the current real life Pope, Franky, was once a bouncer in a nightclub, they have varied skillsets. However -in- this book he flies a helicopter, delivers plot exposition, initiates an anti matter bomb and jumps out of the crashing helicopter with a parachute. All very dramatic. Who knew the Vatican had a helicopter on standby ( No one, because it doesn’t)
All very impossible. There is a reason Helicopter pilots don’t have parachutes. That would be a horrendous idea. You can’t jump upwards out of a falling helicopter. That would be like trying to jump a few feet off the ground in a falling elevator and somehow surviving just before it hits the ground. (That doesn’t work either) Problem with a falling helicopter that you have just jumped out of, is that they have this big things, rotorblades. They’re kind of famous for them. Helicopter comes down, you are coming down slower because of this parachute, The rotors will chew up the parachute, but it’s OK, you don’t have to worry about falling to your death. The Helicopter has you covered there. It will have turned you into puree before either of you hit the deck. Also, a bomb big enough to destroy the Vatican would pretty much be able to destroy a helicopter. Making Angels and Demons an impossible book that you want to hurl violently away in disgust as to it trying to retcon the laws of reality. It would also mean Dan Brown could never use the same character for the equally dire Da Vinci Code, so every cloud does have a silver lining.
Now you’re thinking. “But what is the point of that rant about a grossing film and book franchise?”
The point is, that once you simply -know- that one thing in a book is factually incorrect, it becomes very hard to actually take the rest of it seriously. Even the bits that might be true. Which means you have to go with the ‘Everything you thought was true, isn’t true’ stance. Which can work brilliantly. The Matrix does it right, Inception does it right. But they don’t -pretend- to be operating in what we shall call Earth’s real life Lore Canon. Their entire point is that the Lore Canon is wrong.
That is the problem with some of the WoW fiction. Because of errors or just flat out changing the lore, you no longer know what to believe, and so placing any faith or belief in a story is meaningless.
Look at William King’s ‘Illidan’ That all actually fits the lore, it fits the game setting, whilst we learn -new- things, it doesn’t tear down anything existing and go ‘Nope, I’ve decided this is how it is, and I don’t even write the lore!’.
More recent novels do not follow that pattern, hence we end up with a mess of retcon after retcon, sometimes things being retconned to previous versions of a retcon.
End result being, it becomes incredibly difficult to take any of the novels seriously, because they are -not- the vision of the actual WoW writers themselves, it is the vision of the Authors who do not decide the lore, but are given pretty free rein to do what they will.
Anyone know that it was Christie Golden’s Warlock character who saves Varian Wrynn at the end of ‘War Crimes?’ She pulled off a double whammy, Self inserting not just -one- of her characters, but two. And saving a Faction leader.
Actually she’s not. She is like many authors, including the published authors I know. She has a particular talent. She can write good fiction, but has certain strengths. Oddly, for a sexist, she does have a talent for romantic exposition. Shaw and Flynn seemed pretty natural, as much as homophobes scream about it. It was like "Yeah, Flynn always seemed to swing both ways like a loose privy door, and We never knew anything about Shaw, I just assumed he was married to the job, but apparently he is gay or bi, fair enough, " and there was something sweet about it. Actually made Matthias Shaw a bit less bland, to have him actually show some emotion. So she -can- write well.
I think (If I am right) that she actually volunteered to write ‘A Moment in Verse’ for Blizzard, rather than being contracted, to expand on a theme she wanted to do in Shadow’s Rising, and just as a kind of sweet, uplifting story that shows that Azeroth is not just protracted screams of misery and angst, two people just actually falling in love.
And it was good. It was believable. I think she nailed the characters of both Lor’themar and Thalyssra pretty well, when it comes to how they would both react to that situation. Obviously it is all from Lor’themar’s point of view, but the portrayal of both was pretty solid. Her writing there is pretty much spot on. It actually reads far more like an actual -romance- as opposed to a clumsy Val’shara Tyrande/Malfurion type thing. So she -can- write-
However…
Yeaaah, about that. I don’t actually have prejudices. Not ones I’ve noticed. I don’t actually think one sex is inherently flawed. Because…y’know, they aren’t, but she does.
I also don’t think you can racially profile people in a way that you feel comfortable saying that people are more likely to become violent criminals because of the colour of their skin, and that the cause of said criminality is the fact that they have a certain colour skin.
I’m pretty sure that is -not- OK? I mean last I checked, sexism and racism were not OK? Unless you’re telling me that the pendulum has swung back and now these things -are- OK? In which case I’ll still just not be sexist and racist, if that is quite alright with you?
Actually, morally and societally I think you will find, that the fact that I am neither Sexist, or Racist, objectively makes me a better person. Also, I damned well -hope- I am a fake Blood Elf. I mean I would hope that was just a character I was playing in a computer game. I was pretty sure that like all of us, I was a human being playing a computer game?
I know Erevien has the tendency to draw it out of people, but lets be honest.
The guy is nothing but a big, fat, troll or atleast such a Horde fanboy that the only thing he’ll settle for is the absolute decimation of the Alliance and supremacy of the Horde, even if this is an MMO. He refuses to acknowledge the Alliance has (writen) problems of its own.
To be fair, yeah. They do have a tendency to just come out with some bizarre stuff that makes no sense…
In order to make way for Illidain being the hero in Legion it rewrites all of TBC up to the Black Temple to remove his sheer panic of Kil’jaeden seeking vengeance and his insanity, which rewrote portions of WC3 in Kael’thas’ self-sacrifice and Illidain’s quest to SERVE the Burning Legion, which rewrote…
However…That -was- Blizzard’s choice. Not William King’s, who has been a fantasy writer for a long, long time, in fact he was the first author to write for the Black Library of Games Workshop, from which Blizzard took a lot of inspirational material. Blizzard -wanted- Illidan redeeming, it was not the author simply deciding that he was redeemed. The Kaldorei as a whole, didn’t even exist as they do, until Blizz kind of fudged around.
William King didn’t retcon or change anything, probably because he has been writing for fantasy settings owned by other people for decades, since at least 1999 if I remember and knows what they want. He doesn’t -need- to put his own spin on things. He doesn’t -need- to insert his own characters into the story. He stays on brief.
He pulled off something I never expected. I hated the idea of playable Demon Hunters, and think that RP realms (As well as other realms, but frankly non-RP’ers don’t really care about lore, so why should we care what they think?) would be overwhelmed by suddenly all these dark, brooding characters, who were frankly going to be utterly bad trash played by people who listened to too much ‘My Chemical Romance’ during their final years at school.
What we got instead, was the story of Vandel, who he was and why he became a Demon Hunter, the story of TBC -between- Vanilla and TBC, and why someone would make that choice. The fact that rather than being uber-emo badbottoms, that Demon Hunters are actually pretty damned fragile. Mentally. Yeah, they can do ninjamatics and all the other stuff that makes no lore sense, but actually, these are really damaged people, in a way that WoW itself had not even explored, because, welp, Illidan himself was kinda a Retcon.
Best scene I remember, not even an action one. It is Vandel, hidden in a bush, watching some of Kael’thas’ Sunfury troops having a party, and he -sneaks- out of the bush, and drinks from a half empty wine glass.
He’s a bloody Demon Hunter. He could have swaggered up and demanded ten bottles of bloody Champagne!
But inside, he was actually scared, and he knew he wasn’t right. In the Head. Oh he wasn’t scared of Demons, not a bit. But he was scared of trying to be ‘Normal’ again.
That’s the point where I changed my mind and went “Yeah, you know what…if that’s what Demon Hunters are, then playable Demon Hunters, whilst they will be stupidly numerous, I can get my head round”
Because William King went with what he was asked to do…
The Whole rubbish about Illidan actually being a Goodie?
Nothing to do with the Author. That was all on Blizzard and every black leather trenchcoat wearing fan who kept screaming for playable Demon Hunters.
That is the difference.
Reading is important.
It sure is. Vastly so. -Unfortunately- that there is a direct example as to how to put an obstacle into reading comprehension. It is unnecessarily obfuscation. The Reading Rainbow was a TV Series started in 1983. Now, if you think that making a suggestion that I catch 21 series’ of a program released on -television- in a foreign country when I was 9 years old, just in order for you to try and make a point, then you kind of missed the point of that enterprise. As in the entire point.
Now if you can paraphrase the particular bit which refers to how Blizzard Entertainment brief their authors, that would be a salient point I could address.
I don’t necessarily want to get into a widdling contest about this but the implication that I do not understand how literature and artistic interpretation work, given that my career revolves around these factors does irk me somewhat.
I am recording an Audiobook, I have sent the Author previews, they have turned around and went “You know what, yes, I did not envisage that character having that accent, however not only does it make sense, but it added to what I had written, Do it like that please!”.
It is like a film. You do get a certain amount of license. Now I couldn’t rewrite the author’s book, she’d probably get rightly annoyed, and I wouldn’t blame her. As long as I get her book right, I can change a line of dialogue here and there, because spoken word flows differently from narrative on paper. As long as it is the story she wanted to tell, I can narrate it for Audio using what flows.
So I know how this goes. I mean that is my 9-5 job. Well, Not exactly, as a VA you kind of write your own working hours in your home studio, but you get what I mean. You get license to put your spin on things, you don’t get license to change someone else’s intellectual property.
As I say, given that this was mostly a discussion emerging from a known Forum Troll’s latest post, I don’t really want to get into an argument about this, especially not with someone from my home server, of a guild I get on with very well IC (Say Hi to Rogmasha from me, I’ve been offline a while but will be resurfacing soonish! 
)
Also enjoy your weekend. I’d say I’ll enjoy mine, but in the next chapter I am recording I have to do a conversation that slips between Cork Irish, Belfast Irish, Mancunian, and bloody Australian, in back to back dialogue…I imagine I will have a busy weekend of re-recording stuff… 
I’m glad you work as a VA! It’s a tough field to crack into, and it’s nice to see another excel in it. I hope we get to work on a project together in future.
To reiterate the point I’ve made repeatedly, thus prompting the ‘Reading Rainbow’ dig:
Blizzard Narrative Team heavily writes and formats the storyline, character developments and beats prior to authors even being contracted out. Roux goes into depth about it in a now unavailable interview with Nobbel87:
- Writing a book for Blizzard has many constraints. She was given an outline with specifics, including details for specific character beats that will have payoffs later in-game.
This is the case for every main-line book in the current era (MoP-SL). Blizzard has always had direct creative control over major story beats, Lore Adjustments, retcons, etc., and has final approval and say. Obfuscating the fact that it’s been pre-written and post-approved by Blizzard with, ‘Roux wrote it,’ does not change the fact that it is the most current and available ‘canon’ source.
Same goes for Illidain, which rewrote major story beats from TBC in order to jive with Legion’s direction. There is no difference, as both were contracted out.
Enjoy your work-weekend! Try not to overdo the voice, I find mine gets rough with the harsh seasonal change 
Clearly you don’t if you argue the book is not canon simply because you don’t like the writer she didn’t make all of it up. Majorly rather was done by Blizzard. That’s usually how franchises hire writers. They don’t make them write their own full thing. They give them a rough idea of what to go about and what to include and the writer might, undoubtedly stupidly so in her case some freedom to include other things.
Cheers! I did break -very- lucky, to be honest, though I am still annoyed (Not actually annoyed) at my younger cousin, he only went and got the gig for the Aldi Christmas adverts in the UK the Christmas before last one! It’s taking ages for me to make any serious dollar out of it, however the author likes my work, as we’ve worked out a contract for the rest of the novels in her series. Fingers crossed!
Yeah, I’d imagine that would be how it goes, and in honesty it must be quite demanding, writing when you don’t -absolutely- have creative license. I think I would find it a bit too constraining, because it is human nature to want to put your stamp on something, and equally we (as humans) tend to know a lot about -what- we know about, so that when something jars, we do tend to notice it. I’m trying to think of a better way of describing it, it’s like there is a book series I shall not name, where in the opening chapters the author gets a little carried away, and describes an F-18 flying at Mach 2 to a secret USAF airbase at the North Pole. Straight away I was like “F-18’s can’t fly that fast, and you can’t actually build any permanent structures at the North Pole”, so straight away the book seemed farcical. It turns out the book -was- Farcical, but even if the rest made sense it would still have niggled at me…
We are however, Computer game nerds, we know a lot about our favourite aspects of the game, so we have that same problem, when we read something and go “Err, No, that’s not right” it sticks in the old cranium and does somewhat jaundice our opinion of the rest of the work.
This is true, however sometimes it -is- the author who holds the whip hand, so to speak, and sometimes things do get signed off on, that aren’t actually correct, and yet make it into print. A minor example being Worgen having tails, and an author referencing that, when we factually know, that no, Worgen do not have tails. A more in depth one would be the Second in command of an entire race saying that his people could not conceive of doing something, and would never do something, that in fact in Lore, they emphatically did do.
Still got signed off on.
It was the Author -themselves- in the latter case who actually went “Yeah, I got that wrong, ignore that”. I mean, sure, chances are high that -after- the book was published, someone at Blizzard went “Uhh, dude, can you like…say you were wrong about that? As that isn’t how it went down”.
The author graciously did, however surely someone at Blizzard must have proof read it before publication, so the error there is kind of on their part. The Author will have been given the correct information that Malfurion is basically a good dude fighting in a war forced upon his people, and that Lorash Sunbeam is essentially a mercenary scumbag (Which is true, he is definitely not a lovable character), they fight, and X happens to Lorash.
Unfortunately the text that followed, made it sound like the entire reason for a complete nation and species to have joined the Horde, was suddenly retconned, despite what is seen in game.
The Authors, as talented, or as untalented as they may be, are not infallible. Because it is not -their- story they are writing, it is someone -else’s- story they are telling. I think that makes more sense than how I initially put it?
Also…ugh, yeah…The Season change is for real over here right now…"Heeeey guys, It’s your old friend Summer! You might remember me from famous classics like 1940, 1978 and 1991, So I decided to put in a sudden appearance this weekend! I know I only visit the UK once every generation or two but hey, here I am, right up in your face! It’s Summertime!.. Wait, why is no one coming out of their houses?
But yeah, did three hours recording then was like, ‘Nope…that’s deteriorating…’
Whether I like the writer or not, is not the issue. It is possible to admire a person’s skill in a thing, whilst still thinking that the person is a scumbag. Nor does it mean you have to agree that they are -right-, just that how they are saying it, is done well. I absolutely loathe that Austrian silly moustache man, but his oratory skill was absolutely spot on. Mike Tyson was undeniably skilled as a boxer, I still think he is a disgraceful human being. I can enjoy the film ‘Braveheart’ even whilst going “you’re talking absolute mince, Gibson, this is not historically correct”.
In fact that latter is a good example. Good Film, Very stirring. The Canon Lore is rubbish. By Canon lore I mean -actual real life history-. To put that into context it would be like “Yeah, so the main character is Scottish, he is well educated in Rome and is a devout Christian, The King of England is a cruel Pagan, who institutes a policy of Primae Noctae in Scotland. Incensed by his Fiancee being violated by an English nobleman, William Wallace leads Scotland in Rebellion. After a few glorious battles Including one where Irish troops swap to his side he is captured gives a rousing cry of defiance at his execution, after wooing a French Princess in a loveless marriage to the effete and gay Prince of England. There is a lot of Tartan, and he paints his face blue”
Those are kind of the bulletpoints for ‘Braveheart’
They are also almost entirely incorrect.
He was Scottish. Correct.
He went to Rome as a young man and was formally educated there. False.
Edward I was a cruel Pagan King. False, he was instead regarded as one of the most pious of English Kings, who had more churches constructed than any other in history since to this day.
Primae Noctae: False. It never existed. Not anywhere. It was invented by the Victorians. It would have been regarded as an ‘ignoble thing’ for a nobleman to sully their blood with a peasant woman. In the rare occasions where such things did happen, said noble was summoned to court, had their sword broken over their head, stripped of their colours, and were hanged. It was never national policy anywhere in medieval europe.
The Irish joined Wallace’s Army. False. No they didn’t. They hated the Scottish even more than they hated the English (And that would take some doing!) There were no Irishmen involved in those conflicts, apart from potentially individual mercenaries, however there is no record of them.
He Wooed a French Princess and bedded her. False. I mean let us absolutely -hope- that this is false. Said Princess was 2 years old at the point of Wallace’s death. Given the length of his captivity in 1305, this means that essentially she would have been 1 year old when he wooed her.
That’s not really wooing someone, is it?
He Screamed “Freedom!!!” at the end.
No he didn’t. His Larynx was crushed and he was utterly silent, unable to speak, as he was gelded, his chest torn open, his body disjointed, and his head preserved in tar.
Prince Edward was gay. He almost certainly was bisexual, he did however marry the French Princess that Wallace apparently seduced when she was 1 year old, when she actually was legal age. They actually are recorded as having a rather loving relationship.
Now. You ask an American what happens in Braveheart, and whether they think it was history…
That’s what I mean with Narrative as opposed to Fact.
Blizzard will operate the same, they will give them the framework, the author dresses the framework. That is how it works, when contracting someone to write something based on the framework of your story.
Personally, If I had a story I wanted telling…I don’t think I would get someone else in to write it. Because you are simply bound to end up with inaccuracies.
We are however, having a serious conversation about literary license and freedom in a Troll thread so… eh…
Wrong on soooo many levels 
I think you missed a digit there
Actually, you’re right, she wouldn’t have been 1 when he was imprisoned, she’d have been 8. Doesn’t make it any better really, so it is fortunate that Mel ‘I hate the English’ Gibson just made it up, and they never actually met, as she only came to England in 1307, two years after he had been executed.
Which would have made the romance awkward, as she would have had to ride around England visiting the various places his body parts were hanging from.
She did however feature in that she married Edward II, and had sprogs with him and apparently they were quite happy, despite him taking a walk on the Wild Side with his bi lover, Gaveston, But lets face it, it isn’t like Mel Gibson can ever pass up a chance to try and rewrite history to bash the English…(Don’t even get me started on the film ‘The Patriot’) I’m surprised he didn’t rewrite ‘The Passion of Christ’ so that Judas Iscariot was from Peckham and Pontious Pilate was from Sheffield…
Grr. /rant.
Yeah, I always thought it’d be cool to see some Archetictual Advancement that wasn’t “MORE SPIKES!”.
I’ve said it before, but I feel like Zandalari aestetics should be the Horde baseline instead of orcish ones. They have enough “savagery” to be compatible with the tribal Horde, and enough civilisation to be vaguely compatible with… well, the elves. And goblins don’t need to be pandered to, they create their own spaces wherever they are through any means necessary.
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