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World of Warcraft: Rise of the Horde - Part 3 ft. Afterthoughts
5 Plays1 year ago
Sam and I finish Warcraft! That's it, nothing else will be happening, just like the actions taken by our protagonist. Nothing.
SUPER SPECIAL thanks to SAM for filling in for Phil during his leave! Next guest will be James aka HotCyder!
Sam from Afterthoughts is here!
We have opened up our Patreon so if you are interested in supporting us financially you can do so at patreon.com/pixellitpod. Additionally if you would like to join the community but don't have any coin to spare you can still hop into our Discord!
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Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
Did our opinions change on the war crimes?
00:00:05
Speaker
I don't know.
00:00:06
Speaker
We'll find out right now because you know what else is happening right now.
Introduction & Book Overview
00:00:16
Speaker
Hey there, everybody.
00:00:16
Speaker
Welcome back to Pixel It.
00:00:17
Speaker
My name is Kevin, and with me today is Sam filling in for Phil because...
00:00:23
Speaker
I took you by surprise.
00:00:25
Speaker
I try to like... I'm always trying to take Phil by surprise and that I took you by surprise is a little win in my book.
00:00:36
Speaker
What's happening?
00:00:37
Speaker
Where am I?
00:00:38
Speaker
Where am I?
00:00:39
Speaker
This is not my beautiful house.
00:00:45
Speaker
No.
00:00:45
Speaker
So, yes.
00:00:48
Speaker
Sam's here.
00:00:48
Speaker
We're talking about World of Warcraft, Rise of the Horde, if you will.
00:00:54
Speaker
Oh yeah, you're right.
00:00:55
Speaker
Oh my god.
00:00:57
Speaker
Throwbacks.
00:00:58
Speaker
Jeez.
00:00:59
Speaker
If you will.
00:01:00
Speaker
It's been a minute since... Two separate times.
00:01:07
Speaker
It's been a minute.
00:01:10
Speaker
if you will.
00:01:10
Speaker
It's been a minute since Sam and I got to talk about World of Warcraft, Rise of the Horde, if
Durotan's Moral Dilemma
00:01:15
Speaker
you will.
00:01:15
Speaker
So we're picking it back up.
00:01:18
Speaker
We're putting that body in the marsh, starting with chapter 15.
00:01:24
Speaker
And there's a lot of bodies going into the marsh.
00:01:26
Speaker
Chapter 15 is, yeah.
00:01:30
Speaker
Starts out with Thrall talking about
00:01:33
Speaker
Drek'thar talking about how bad shit got in Telmor, which is the city that they're killing now, I think.
00:01:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:46
Speaker
Oh, boy.
00:01:48
Speaker
So the Draenei are not prepared for an attack.
00:01:50
Speaker
And why would they?
00:01:51
Speaker
The city had been hidden forever with one of the green little crystal things.
00:01:57
Speaker
Durotan duels with Restelon after Restelon pulls him off of his wolf.
00:02:03
Speaker
And Restelon has the upper hand, but the wolf bites Restelon and like rips his arm off or something.
00:02:10
Speaker
And Durotan kills him.
00:02:12
Speaker
Well, this is the one, right, where like Durotan and Orgrim had gone there as kids.
00:02:18
Speaker
So the only way they could get in was for Durotan to kind of sell out the...
00:02:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:25
Speaker
Like, oh, his memory is so good.
00:02:27
Speaker
Like curse his impeccable memory.
00:02:29
Speaker
It's impeccable memory.
00:02:31
Speaker
Why did he have to remember the exact words to get into the city?
00:02:38
Speaker
The special secret passcode and the entire army is waiting on Durotan to give them the secret.
00:02:43
Speaker
To give the rock the secret passcode.
00:02:45
Speaker
And he even has this line where he's like, oh gosh, hopefully my Orcish accent will blow it for all of it.
00:02:51
Speaker
Oh no, it worked.
00:02:52
Speaker
It worked.
00:02:54
Speaker
I guess we got to do a genocide.
00:02:57
Speaker
Don't you hate it when you accidentally say a word properly and then you have to go genocide somebody?
00:03:02
Speaker
I actually remember the secret password.
00:03:08
Speaker
It's so frustrating.
00:03:09
Speaker
It's so, so frustrating how much...
00:03:13
Speaker
The book wants us to think he's fine and good and just like, oh, like circumstances, you know?
00:03:21
Speaker
And it's like this one moment is the whole book.
00:03:25
Speaker
This one moment's the whole book where it's like, no, actually, no, you suck real bad.
00:03:31
Speaker
You suck real bad, buddy.
00:03:34
Speaker
I don't even know if we properly explained that moment.
00:03:40
Speaker
It was very frustrating.
00:03:42
Speaker
It is frustrating.
00:03:43
Speaker
And then, you know, he kills Restelon.
00:03:47
Speaker
Orgrim is just crushing people's heads open with his Doomhammer because that's what the Doomhammer's there for.
00:03:53
Speaker
It's a hammer of doom.
00:03:56
Speaker
What else is it going to do?
00:03:57
Speaker
Durotan sees a crying little girl and she starts hitting him with bare fists.
00:04:02
Speaker
And he's like, well, I'm not going to kill a little girl.
00:04:04
Speaker
And then another orc comes by and kills the shit out of the little girl.
00:04:08
Speaker
And Durotan's like, oh my God.
00:04:10
Speaker
Well,
00:04:12
Speaker
That was a bummer.
00:04:14
Speaker
Dang it.
00:04:16
Speaker
Dang.
00:04:17
Speaker
Golly.
00:04:18
Speaker
Gee, golly, dang.
00:04:20
Speaker
Oh, my gosh.
00:04:22
Speaker
Come on, guys.
00:04:23
Speaker
Let's focus up.
00:04:24
Speaker
Let's stop trying to kill the children.
00:04:26
Speaker
This drink needs to be alcoholic.
00:04:32
Speaker
I'm going to go spake my LaCroix real quick.
00:04:35
Speaker
One second.
00:04:43
Speaker
Yes.
00:04:48
Speaker
All right, continue.
00:04:50
Speaker
All right.
00:04:50
Speaker
I just got back from Kentucky, and so I've got my little moonshine vial.
00:04:57
Speaker
Little moonshine, little bourbon about to be poured in there.
Orc Aggression & Cultural Changes
00:05:05
Speaker
Am I allowed to do this on camera?
00:05:06
Speaker
I'll do it off camera.
00:05:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:08
Speaker
This is vanilla syrup.
00:05:10
Speaker
It's fine.
00:05:10
Speaker
We don't.
00:05:13
Speaker
Phil drinks literally every episode.
00:05:16
Speaker
Okay.
00:05:20
Speaker
Damn ready.
00:05:21
Speaker
He literally has wine or white claw.
00:05:24
Speaker
Here we go.
00:05:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:27
Speaker
Sam has spiked the LaCroix.
00:05:29
Speaker
Ready to talk about this book.
00:05:33
Speaker
Ready to talk about this book.
00:05:34
Speaker
So it's like it's an easy win.
00:05:36
Speaker
The orcs just roll over them.
00:05:38
Speaker
And Durotan's like in his impeccable leadership is like, hey, instead of like just breaking shit, why don't we tend to the wounded?
00:05:48
Speaker
And then Durotan, because he's the good guy, orders the wholesale slaughter of any draenei that are left.
00:05:57
Speaker
that they find alive.
00:05:59
Speaker
And then he wishes that Restalan had killed him.
00:06:02
Speaker
And he's like, ah, if I wasn't alive anymore, I wouldn't have to do this.
00:06:07
Speaker
We totally talked about this in the last episode.
00:06:10
Speaker
Like, you might have to, you know, cut that from the last one, but I remember talking about this and it's funny to talk about the most frustrating chapter twice.
00:06:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:23
Speaker
I feel like there were two little moments where the author's kind of like, oh, you can see where Durotan is coming from.
00:06:28
Speaker
The warlocks are torturing any Draenei that they take prisoner, so it's better for them to not be taken prisoner.
00:06:36
Speaker
And I feel like that is kind of like a nice little mic drop moment where you can see this dark path the orcs are going down where they're just reveling in the slaughter of these people.
00:06:46
Speaker
And Durotan's like, hey, what about your buddies who...
00:06:49
Speaker
Like took a bullet for you back there.
00:06:51
Speaker
Like, can't we like take care of these guys instead of like breaking chairs?
00:06:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:00
Speaker
Hey, Brighton, come here.
00:07:01
Speaker
Are you trying to start scratching the door to get out?
00:07:03
Speaker
Hold on.
00:07:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:06
Speaker
Be like Benny.
00:07:07
Speaker
Oh, you can't.
00:07:09
Speaker
You can't see him right now, but he's.
00:07:13
Speaker
You'll see it when you're editing.
00:07:16
Speaker
I won't tell you what he's doing.
00:07:17
Speaker
I'll just wait until you see it in editing.
00:07:20
Speaker
Right.
00:07:24
Speaker
I had to let Brighton out of the office because he was he was about to start scratching the door, which he does if I don't go open up the door within like two seconds of him like getting to it.
00:07:37
Speaker
Like I acknowledge it, buddy.
00:07:39
Speaker
Just give me a second.
00:07:40
Speaker
But he's I mean, he is part dachshund.
00:07:45
Speaker
So my heart is
00:07:49
Speaker
He's a Chweeney.
00:07:50
Speaker
I love short dogs.
00:07:53
Speaker
He's a Chihuahua, Dachshund mix.
00:07:56
Speaker
Chweeney, you know.
00:07:58
Speaker
So he's got a lot of attitude.
00:08:02
Speaker
So we move on to chapter 16, which starts with Thrall writing about how shadowy the Shadow Council was and that they sucked.
00:08:14
Speaker
Pretty much.
00:08:14
Speaker
That's the gist of what Thrall was saying.
00:08:19
Speaker
Kil'jaeden is super happy with how the sacking of the city went and is surprised that Durotan carried out his orders.
00:08:25
Speaker
Because, you know, Durotan talks a good game and then does nothing when it matters.
00:08:29
Speaker
Right.
00:08:29
Speaker
Yeah, we were all surprised.
00:08:33
Speaker
I don't know who was more surprised.
00:08:36
Speaker
Yeah, I'm I'm I'm I'm.
00:08:38
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think the audience is.
00:08:40
Speaker
I don't think the readers are surprised, but Kil'Jaden's surprised.
00:08:43
Speaker
So good for him.
00:08:44
Speaker
You know, it's nice to have surprises in life.
00:08:48
Speaker
The Blackrock clan takes over the city of Telmore as their home and begins gentrifying themselves.
00:08:54
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:08:57
Speaker
Well, they discover, this is where the timeline gets so weird where it's like, you see things in World of Warcraft where burrows will have chairs and stuff.
00:09:09
Speaker
I forgot what specifically they mentioned, but I think that the author's like, oh, they discovered that sitting in chairs is actually super rad.
00:09:16
Speaker
And you're like, did they just not have chairs?
00:09:19
Speaker
What did they do?
00:09:20
Speaker
Did they sit on the ground?
00:09:24
Speaker
It's just the ground.
00:09:25
Speaker
There was no way to sit on a level above the ground.
00:09:31
Speaker
They never sat on their beds before.
00:09:33
Speaker
They didn't have beds.
00:09:35
Speaker
It was just all ground level.
00:09:37
Speaker
Tables?
00:09:37
Speaker
No.
00:09:39
Speaker
It just kind of makes me wonder what liberties the author got to take.
00:09:43
Speaker
Is it canonical now that orcs got chairs from the Draenei books?
00:09:50
Speaker
Literally no one should care about that.
00:09:52
Speaker
I'm the only one who cares about that.
00:09:58
Speaker
The orcs got chairs from the Draenei.
00:10:00
Speaker
That was the real tech.
00:10:04
Speaker
They also began building the Citadel using Draenei technology.
00:10:10
Speaker
Meanwhile, Gul'dan gets the bright idea that maybe, just maybe, the orcs should team up with the ogres.
00:10:19
Speaker
You know, like, why not?
00:10:23
Speaker
You could team up with the ogres who have killed a lot of orcs over the years to wipe out the draenei who haven't.
00:10:31
Speaker
That's makes sense.
00:10:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:36
Speaker
Yeah, no, they do just kind of gloss over why that's a good idea, but they do do it.
00:10:41
Speaker
Blackhand hates the idea, but Gul'dan is like, but bruh, if you're able to convince them to join this horde, as it were, then people will give you all the props.
00:10:52
Speaker
That's not what the author wrote, but...
00:11:02
Speaker
Orgrim doesn't like it either.
00:11:04
Speaker
Blackrock is chilling where the ogre leadership is, and they attack the ogres.
00:11:11
Speaker
They attack some ogres on their side.
00:11:13
Speaker
The ogres relent after a brief battle.
00:11:15
Speaker
So they use ogres to fight the ogres, and then the ogres are like, yeah, we'll join you.
00:11:22
Speaker
Blackhand's kids, Rend and Mame are little shits and are willing to fuck up the alliance with the ogres just for funsies.
00:11:30
Speaker
And then Orgrim tells them to knock it off.
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:35
Speaker
I was going to mention those two and then you immediately brought it up.
00:11:39
Speaker
Like, yeah, they were so aggravating.
00:11:42
Speaker
But, I mean, I guess they should be, right?
00:11:45
Speaker
Because they're like eight-year-olds aged up to like 18 or 15 or something like that.
00:11:50
Speaker
Something like that, yeah.
00:11:54
Speaker
They're little kids in the body of grown-ass men and they're just like, we're going to kill some ogres for fun and nobody's going to know.
00:12:05
Speaker
And Orgrim's like, I'll know and I'll tell your dad to, you know, that you did it.
00:12:10
Speaker
And then they shut the fuck up.
00:12:14
Speaker
Black Hand negotiates with Kroll saying the ogres will get food and weapons if they join them.
00:12:19
Speaker
And then Orgrim notices that
Critique of Orc Portrayal
00:12:22
Speaker
everyone's skin is turning green.
00:12:25
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:31
Speaker
Yeah, I remember being a little bit confused by that because I thought that when they drank the demon blood, that turned this... I thought it was a very like one-to-one cause to effect.
00:12:45
Speaker
But it just kind of took them by surprise.
00:12:47
Speaker
It's not.
00:12:48
Speaker
It's like the green skin.
00:12:51
Speaker
Basically, yeah, it's weird that they...
00:12:56
Speaker
Yeah, they could have just had it with the drinking of the stuff, but they wanted to make it so that Durotan's skin was turning green as well, even though is it just being in the presence of evil turns an orc's skin green or something like that?
00:13:16
Speaker
Yeah, I want to look that up because I thought that Durotan's skin was, well...
00:13:26
Speaker
No, he's definitely green in these pictures.
00:13:31
Speaker
I always thought that his skin stayed brownish.
00:13:40
Speaker
I don't know.
00:13:40
Speaker
I don't know.
00:13:41
Speaker
It was just a weird... I feel like in one of the earlier episodes, I described how events will pass in this book, and everyone is just like, oh, okay...
00:13:55
Speaker
And this was just another one of those moments where it's just like, oh, everybody's skin is literally changing color.
00:14:02
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:14:04
Speaker
Just nothing feels like it matters even a little bit.
00:14:07
Speaker
Like child murder.
00:14:09
Speaker
We're not going to, yeah.
00:14:10
Speaker
We're not going to get into it.
00:14:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:12
Speaker
No, it's just like, it feels like reading a history textbook that happens to be narrated by someone who's in it.
00:14:21
Speaker
It's so weird reading it.
00:14:25
Speaker
Doesn't matter.
00:14:26
Speaker
Moving right along.
00:14:28
Speaker
Everybody's skin turned green.
00:14:29
Speaker
Who the fuck cares?
00:14:31
Speaker
It was that good.
00:14:38
Speaker
I did not think it was that good either.
00:14:42
Speaker
Sorry, book.
00:14:42
Speaker
In chapter 17, Thrall waxes poetic about the word home.
00:14:49
Speaker
Durotan notices climate change and tells Draka not to worry about it because they didn't subsist on things they grew anyway.
00:14:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:02
Speaker
I love this because he's just fucking like, yeah, you know what?
00:15:06
Speaker
We've hit two degrees Celsius in the ocean water, but it's not a big deal.
00:15:10
Speaker
You know, it's it's we're fine.
00:15:13
Speaker
Climate change is going to be fine.
00:15:15
Speaker
You know, we're great.
00:15:17
Speaker
Don't you worry about it.
00:15:20
Speaker
The orcs have been given the order to relocate to the Citadel.
00:15:25
Speaker
Durotan doesn't like it, even though the other orcs think he doesn't like the Citadel because he thinks it looks ugly, but everybody else thinks it looks magnificent.
00:15:34
Speaker
And it's like tall and pointy and all that stuff and stands out against the horizon.
00:15:41
Speaker
Durotan also doesn't like the new ogres because he's a hater.
00:15:48
Speaker
Meanwhile, elsewhere, Velen is piecing everything together.
00:15:52
Speaker
It's all Kil'Jaden's fault.
00:15:55
Speaker
He finally figures out.
00:15:56
Speaker
The prophet figures out.
00:16:02
Speaker
And there's nowhere to go because their interdimensional spaceship is broken and Kure is dying.
00:16:10
Speaker
Meanwhile, Gul'dan is being smug with how things are going.
00:16:14
Speaker
And he mentions to the Shadow Council that Durotan hasn't been killed yet because he's a useful idiot.
00:16:21
Speaker
So I thought that was interesting where he's like, oh, yeah, you know, we got this guy Durotan who is clearly a moderate.
00:16:30
Speaker
He doesn't even call him like.
00:16:32
Speaker
He's not even like on the opposite side.
00:16:34
Speaker
He just he refers to Durotan as like a moderate, basically like a centrist, which is like the most damning, the most damning description of Durotan.
00:16:45
Speaker
He's like, yeah, if we just keep Durotan alive, you know, people will think, hey, we're not suppressing people's right to speak out.
00:16:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:58
Speaker
Occasionally voice misgivings.
00:17:00
Speaker
He'll occasionally voice misgivings while following orders.
00:17:03
Speaker
He's perfect for us.
00:17:08
Speaker
Oh, boy.
00:17:11
Speaker
And then we get a weird little dream sequence that Kure is dying and the ancestors will fade forever.
00:17:20
Speaker
And some of the people who are like holding on to the ways of the warlock are very sad about having that dream.
00:17:30
Speaker
Chapter 8.
00:17:32
Speaker
The shaman?
00:17:33
Speaker
No, the shaman, sorry.
00:17:35
Speaker
Yeah, the warlock is the evil ones.
00:17:39
Speaker
And the shaman are the crunchy, you know, nature valley bar ones.
00:17:48
Speaker
It's funny because I feel like it's kind of like a really old storytelling thing to have nature be the good thing.
00:17:56
Speaker
And literal demons and hellfire and torture.
00:18:02
Speaker
be the bad thing and the story kind of like hands durotan this like slam dunk where the earth is uh dying and they can't grow things anymore and the soil is um drying up and the plants and animals are dying and everything you know nature is ah everything is bad and durotan yeah literally is just kind of like
00:18:23
Speaker
It's fine.
00:18:23
Speaker
I don't even like carrots or whatever.
00:18:26
Speaker
I don't want to eat plants anymore anyway.
00:18:28
Speaker
Fuck those plants.
00:18:29
Speaker
I don't eat my vegetables anyway.
00:18:31
Speaker
I feed them to the dog.
00:18:33
Speaker
He even fails this most basic protagonist moment where he has the opportunity to be sad that the planet is dying and cannot muster the ability.
00:18:47
Speaker
He can't even find the energy to really care.
00:18:51
Speaker
He's like, it's actually fine.
00:18:53
Speaker
It's actually fine.
00:18:54
Speaker
Did you know that soon there will be, uh, like, uh, the new shoreline will be in Idaho.
00:19:02
Speaker
So you should buy property there.
00:19:06
Speaker
When the sea level's right.
00:19:13
Speaker
Oh God.
00:19:13
Speaker
Durotan, uh, Durotan, the Elon Musk of orcs.
00:19:19
Speaker
Um,
00:19:23
Speaker
Chapter, where the fuck are we?
00:19:26
Speaker
18.
00:19:27
Speaker
We start with Thrall, I guess, talking about being the leader of the second incarnation of Horde.
00:19:33
Speaker
And I'm like, wait a minute.
00:19:35
Speaker
Why are, and I know this book was written after shit got started, you know, after World of Warcraft got started and all that fun stuff.
00:19:45
Speaker
But why would you keep the name?
00:19:48
Speaker
The Horde.
00:19:48
Speaker
The Horde?
00:19:51
Speaker
Hmm.
00:19:51
Speaker
Why keep the name of the genocidal army?
00:19:55
Speaker
No, that's true.
00:19:57
Speaker
It doesn't seem like a good idea to keep that name, the Horde.
00:20:00
Speaker
That's not great.
00:20:04
Speaker
Yeah, they could have used a rebrand.
00:20:06
Speaker
They could have used a rebrand.
00:20:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:11
Speaker
And not like Neo Horde or anything like that.
00:20:14
Speaker
I don't think that would have won them any favors.
00:20:19
Speaker
Well.
00:20:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:22
Speaker
yeah there's opportunities that's okay it's okay duratan is talking with uh gun gahoon just call him gun a warlock uh who misses being a shaman uh gun's skin is turning green and duratan notices uh and duratan loses his shit on the kid when he asks why he can't go back to the sacred mountain uh
00:20:47
Speaker
The orcs move on to take the Temple of Karabor, another sacred site for the Trannite.
00:20:54
Speaker
The battle isn't even described.
00:20:55
Speaker
It's just basically it's like turn the page and there's blood everywhere.
00:21:03
Speaker
Yeah, I don't even remember this happening, so.
00:21:05
Speaker
It's like one paragraph is they mass by the temple, and the next paragraph is it didn't take long, and then Dirtan is vomiting because of how disgusting the gore is that surrounds him.
00:21:19
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:21:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:20
Speaker
Sometimes I'll do that thing where like I'll be reading and then I'll think about what I want to eat for dinner, but like my eyes keep moving.
00:21:27
Speaker
Right.
00:21:28
Speaker
And it must've happened during that time.
00:21:30
Speaker
It happened during that time because Rend and Mame make another appearance and they see Durotan vomiting on one of the bodies and they think this is a good idea.
00:21:41
Speaker
I remember this part.
00:21:44
Speaker
Yes.
00:21:45
Speaker
And they just begin spitting on corpses.
00:21:47
Speaker
Yeah, they're like, that's so metal.
00:21:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:51
Speaker
That's so fucking metal.
00:21:52
Speaker
What a good idea.
00:21:59
Speaker
What a good idea, Durotan.
00:22:01
Speaker
Vomiting all over the corpses.
00:22:05
Speaker
God.
00:22:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's just like this.
00:22:09
Speaker
I mean, they kind of say this like orcish warrior culture thing where they're like, oh, yes, they deserve only our spit.
00:22:16
Speaker
And then, you know, spit on the bodies.
00:22:18
Speaker
And it's like, again, I'm like wondering like how much...
00:22:23
Speaker
Did the orcs already talk like this before one week ago?
00:22:26
Speaker
Right.
00:22:27
Speaker
When they became maniacal demon-possessed, you know?
00:22:33
Speaker
Has it only been, like, you can be honest with me, Book.
00:22:38
Speaker
Has it only been, like, a week since this all started?
00:22:41
Speaker
I've changed over time, but not that quickly.
00:22:47
Speaker
It takes a little longer for me to completely...
00:22:54
Speaker
Yeah, it reminds me of that Cody Johnson tweet.
00:22:57
Speaker
I'm trying to find it right now.
00:22:59
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:06
Speaker
The tweet was, the left got a little too PC, so I changed all my opinions about the economy, social issues, systemic racism, health care, and history.
00:23:17
Speaker
That's the worst.
00:23:21
Speaker
Oh, one of our ancestors reappeared and said, hey, it's time that you guys actually took a violent stance against the Draenei.
00:23:31
Speaker
And they're like, fucking finally, we've been waiting for this.
00:23:36
Speaker
Like all of our vocabulary, traditions, everything was lined up to, you know,
00:23:47
Speaker
make us actually think that this is perfect timing.
00:23:49
Speaker
Great.
00:23:50
Speaker
I'm glad that we finally had this excuse.
00:23:52
Speaker
I keep feeling like I'm saying something like problematic because it kind of feels like, um, Warcraft sometimes does, um, border into that fantasy problem of like racial essentialization.
00:24:07
Speaker
Um, and I know that like, yeah, move away from that, but it does.
00:24:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:16
Speaker
That's the thing is like, it's not our fault that they decided to be race essentialists in their fantasy worlds.
00:24:26
Speaker
We can talk about how absurd it is.
00:24:28
Speaker
It just feels weird because it feels like the orcs are just set up to be so innately violent to the point where they only needed this one excuse.
00:24:35
Speaker
Then really, they were, yeah, the distance between them and fascism was really narrow.
00:24:44
Speaker
Yeah, and it just, it feels super weird that that doesn't feel like addressed at all.
00:24:49
Speaker
I don't know.
00:24:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's not because like Thrall later on is going to be like, yeah, and I'm the new leader of the Horde.
00:24:59
Speaker
Like, OK, clearly, like he's set up as this other perspective where it's like, oh, like we don't need to be this way.
00:25:04
Speaker
That works don't need to be this way.
00:25:06
Speaker
Like we were misled.
00:25:07
Speaker
We were tricked.
00:25:08
Speaker
But then we get to see through like the eyes of this, you know, narrator back in time that they're having the time of their lives.
Narrative Criticism & Character Depth
00:25:17
Speaker
They're having so much fun.
00:25:20
Speaker
Yeah, they're fucking they haven't even drank the demon blood yet.
00:25:23
Speaker
They haven't.
00:25:26
Speaker
This isn't like some grim task.
00:25:28
Speaker
They're like, this is really fun for them.
00:25:31
Speaker
They're loving their love.
00:25:33
Speaker
They're living their best lives right now.
00:25:35
Speaker
And that's, that's, that is the fault of, uh, who, who do I blame for this?
00:25:43
Speaker
Uh, who was the, who was the Warcraft writer?
00:25:48
Speaker
Not the one of this book, but like the guy at Blizzard who was behind all this shit.
00:25:54
Speaker
I don't know.
00:25:57
Speaker
Warcraft writer, dude.
00:26:04
Speaker
What's, oh, Chris Medson.
00:26:06
Speaker
It's all his fault.
00:26:09
Speaker
Well, this is what you get when you need to suddenly build a complex narrative around a broad set of characters from all sides of your story.
00:26:20
Speaker
When it started out with, here are clearly the good guys and here are clearly the bad guys who have a lot of fun...
00:26:27
Speaker
pillaging and murdering.
00:26:29
Speaker
That's what they like to do because there are cartoon bad guys.
00:26:32
Speaker
And then suddenly, you know, 20 years later, the bad guys have to have like a tragic backstory so that you can feel okay playing as them in World of Warcraft, you know?
00:26:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:43
Speaker
It's like, it's like the old Warcraft was like, here's the orcs.
00:26:47
Speaker
They're basically green skinned Vikings.
00:26:51
Speaker
Uh, and they're, they're fighting against the humans to go to town.
00:26:56
Speaker
That's it.
00:26:57
Speaker
Have fun.
00:27:04
Speaker
Take your little action figures and slam them together until you get bored.
00:27:07
Speaker
That was the game.
00:27:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:15
Speaker
So, Durr, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:27:19
Speaker
Gul'dan is talking to Kil'jaeden and his gift of the temple from him, and Kil'jaeden mentions that he has a gift for Gul'dan's little puppets.
00:27:29
Speaker
Goldan is writing letters to the chieftains and Ner'zhul takes the letters from him to deliver them, but not before reading them himself.
00:27:39
Speaker
And then Ner'zhul slips another letter into the pile of letters.
00:27:43
Speaker
Ooh.
00:27:44
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:27:46
Speaker
Somebody doing this.
00:27:47
Speaker
This one thing does.
00:27:49
Speaker
Yeah, he's like the most.
00:27:52
Speaker
This is the most active protagonist thing that's pretty much done in the entire book.
00:28:02
Speaker
Is writing this letter.
00:28:06
Speaker
Durtan gets the letter and is shocked shocked I say by what it says we the audience still doesn't know what's going on and Durtan is going to refuse whatever it is chapter 19 starts with Thrall saying he's thankful for his parents and proud of the decisions they made because he thinks he is glad he didn't have to make those decisions my god Thrall's reading a different book okay Thrall
00:28:35
Speaker
Thrall's reading a different book here.
00:28:40
Speaker
Meanwhile, at the Black Temple, Ner'zhul and Gul'dan are awaiting something, and then Kil'jaeden summons his lieutenant, Manoroth, and they do some ceremony where Gul'dan stabs Manoroth's wrist, and it pools into the fountain, and the bubbly beverage that it makes will burn away any semblance of free will or something.
00:29:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:07
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:29:07
Speaker
And the Orcs, like, freak out.
00:29:11
Speaker
If you don't know what Manoroth looks like, look up Manoroth right now.
00:29:15
Speaker
I don't know what device you're on, anybody, but imagine you don't know that this guy exists, and then suddenly he does.
00:29:24
Speaker
And he goes, yum, yum, drink my blood.
00:29:29
Speaker
Drink of my blood and you shall enter the kingdom of... There was like a drawing I just saw where for some reason I thought his head was that of Garfield.
00:29:42
Speaker
Why?
00:29:46
Speaker
Because there was a picture I saw on the thumbnail version, you know, when it's like really tiny on your screen.
00:29:53
Speaker
I thought his face looked like Garfield for a second until I clicked on it.
00:29:58
Speaker
And it wasn't.
00:29:59
Speaker
But now I'm like, if I'm going to use AI for anything at all, it's going to be to create Manoroth with a Garfield head.
00:30:12
Speaker
I think Jim Davis would approve that.
00:30:14
Speaker
Wow.
00:30:18
Speaker
Yes, we're finally at the demon blood drinking scene.
00:30:22
Speaker
Yeah, we're finally going to drink some demon blood.
00:30:26
Speaker
Before that, right before that, Durotan and Draka noticed that they have green skin now, too.
00:30:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:35
Speaker
So the orc are, they're getting dressed that morning to go drink some demon blood.
00:30:39
Speaker
And they notice that their skin is a little flaky and getting a little green.
00:30:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:46
Speaker
The orc army goes to the mountain to drink from the cup of unity, which is just the blood of Manoroth.
00:30:52
Speaker
And this is what Durotan was warned about.
00:30:55
Speaker
And Grom Hellscream is the first one to drink from it.
00:31:00
Speaker
And he drinks from it and he gets more muscly than ever before.
00:31:07
Speaker
And this makes me think of like that, that, that was it?
00:31:14
Speaker
The, the, the, uh, uh, this episode, the writer's barely disguised fetish.
00:31:23
Speaker
Okay.
00:31:25
Speaker
I just looked up the green skin thing and it says that their skin turned green as a result of prolonged exposure to foul magic, which I guess, yeah, it would mean that like, regardless of whether or not they drank the blood, their skin turned green.
00:31:42
Speaker
That also makes me interested in why you can play as like a human warlock.
00:31:47
Speaker
in World of Warcraft or many other types of warlock.
00:31:51
Speaker
And your skin is just the- Just fine.
00:31:55
Speaker
Whatever color you chosen characters select.
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't get- Yeah, I don't know.
00:32:00
Speaker
Again, none of this matters.
00:32:01
Speaker
It's fine.
00:32:02
Speaker
It doesn't matter.
00:32:03
Speaker
It's fine.
00:32:04
Speaker
It's all fine.
00:32:06
Speaker
It only affects orc skin for some reason.
00:32:11
Speaker
It's so pointless to plot whole World of Warcraft.
00:32:14
Speaker
Like-
00:32:16
Speaker
There's so much time travel.
00:32:17
Speaker
There's no plot.
00:32:21
Speaker
There is no plot.
00:32:23
Speaker
It is all plot and not plot at all.
00:32:25
Speaker
It is.
00:32:28
Speaker
The plot does not exist.
00:32:32
Speaker
So chieftain by chieftain drinks from it.
00:32:35
Speaker
Orgrim refuses and Durotan says he will not and Frostwolf will not.
00:32:41
Speaker
Gul'dan makes a veiled threat.
00:32:44
Speaker
He's like he goes up and he whispers in Durotan's ear and he's like, how the fuck did you know?
00:32:51
Speaker
And Durotan's like, you'll never know.
00:32:54
Speaker
I'll never tell you.
00:32:56
Speaker
And Gul'dan's like, ha ha, very well.
00:32:59
Speaker
Well, it's your choice.
00:33:01
Speaker
And then from there, Blackhand, who's all riled up after drinking the the muscly potion, says they're going to attack the final stronghold without a plan.
00:33:14
Speaker
Right now.
00:33:15
Speaker
Let's go right now.
00:33:19
Speaker
We're going to Leroy Jenkins it right now.
00:33:22
Speaker
Oh.
00:33:25
Speaker
And Durotan remembers at the end of the chapter the old word for twisted souls.
00:33:32
Speaker
Daemon.
00:33:34
Speaker
Demons.
00:33:39
Speaker
It's really deep if you think about it.
Conclusion & Reflections
00:33:44
Speaker
Uh, chapter 20 thrall calls the destruction of this city of Shattrath and atrocity.
00:33:50
Speaker
So horrific that it wants to be forgotten.
00:33:53
Speaker
Uh, they rush off to the city.
00:33:55
Speaker
Kill Jane appears before the army and is like, listen, bros, I gave the ogres siege weapons and now you have new spells in your brain level up.
00:34:04
Speaker
Um,
00:34:06
Speaker
And everybody levels up, gets their new skill points in order, and then the orcs just roll over the city, absolutely demolishing it.
00:34:14
Speaker
And in my favorite moment of the entire fucking book, meanwhile, kill Jaden and Manoroth are like, well, that was easy.
00:34:23
Speaker
And they just fucking leave.
00:34:26
Speaker
Like, well, we got job done.
00:34:34
Speaker
They're probably going to kill Velen.
00:34:37
Speaker
Right.
00:34:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:39
Speaker
We've got other things to do.
00:34:42
Speaker
We've got other things to do.
00:34:43
Speaker
Sargeras has already been like, you know, up my ass about doing literally anything else but trying to kill Valen.
00:34:50
Speaker
So I got to go.
00:34:55
Speaker
Back in the city, uh-oh, SpaghettiOs, Velen is actually not there and Gul'dan is not happy.
00:35:02
Speaker
And we rewind in time for the rest of the chapter to show that Velen had a slick Ocean's Eleven-style plan to trick Killjaden and the orcs by letting most of his people die except for a select few.
00:35:14
Speaker
Yup.
00:35:14
Speaker
Yup.
00:35:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:18
Speaker
It was a really good plan.
00:35:19
Speaker
Um...
00:35:21
Speaker
He's like, you're all going to die except me and a few of my friends, but we'll remember you.
00:35:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's too bad that they don't have magic that can... Yeah, it's too bad.
00:35:33
Speaker
Bad.
00:35:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:37
Speaker
So they're hidden away using one of the crystals to just... They're not findable.
00:35:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:45
Speaker
And then chapter 21, Thrall mentions that after all was said and done, Kil'jaeden just abandoned them.
00:35:54
Speaker
Ner'zhul confronts Gul'dan and tells him, you made your bed, now lie in it.
00:36:00
Speaker
Durotan and Orgrim talk about the fate of the world and how everything has gone to shit.
00:36:05
Speaker
And it's, yeah, and we're dropping, we apparently have jumped ahead three years since the destruction of the Draenei.
00:36:13
Speaker
More orcs have been lost to disease and starvation than war.
00:36:16
Speaker
And it's like, the Citadel has been renamed the Hellfire Citadel.
00:36:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:25
Speaker
They're like, oh, yes, please make it cooler sounding.
00:36:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:29
Speaker
Even just talking about this, I'm like, oh, I want to get World of Warcraft again.
00:36:35
Speaker
Would you be playing regular or classic?
00:36:41
Speaker
Regular World of Warcraft is dead to me.
00:36:43
Speaker
I would be playing classic.
00:36:47
Speaker
Well, I know the regular, the classic one is doing, it's just about to do the DLC that was like the split point originally between regular and classic, I think.
00:37:02
Speaker
Already?
00:37:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's like catching up.
00:37:06
Speaker
So they're going to have to do classic classic, I think, at some point.
00:37:10
Speaker
You can pick which expansion you want to play from, which is very easy.
00:37:15
Speaker
The only downside is that every server is dead.
00:37:20
Speaker
Oh, really?
00:37:20
Speaker
Yeah, at this point, they just need to have like one big server.
00:37:25
Speaker
Yeah, consolidate them down a little bit.
00:37:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, because I was playing on a Burning Crusade server for a little while.
00:37:32
Speaker
You're just running around.
00:37:33
Speaker
You'll walk into a massive city and there's like a guy standing on a mailbox and you're like, whoa.
00:37:43
Speaker
That's sad.
00:37:44
Speaker
It is kind of sad.
00:37:45
Speaker
It's okay.
00:37:47
Speaker
The fall of a gaming legend, so to speak, sort of.
00:37:53
Speaker
I don't know.
00:37:54
Speaker
I guess people are still playing it.
00:37:56
Speaker
Nothing lasts forever.
00:37:58
Speaker
Nothing lasts forever.
00:37:59
Speaker
Especially Draenor, which is about to explode.
00:38:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:09
Speaker
So a planet, a whole planet like Star Wars style.
00:38:17
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's a lot of that's a lot of destruction right there.
00:38:23
Speaker
Yeah, so so Durotan finally asks Orgrim why?
00:38:32
Speaker
Oh, no, I skipped ahead.
00:38:33
Speaker
The stranger who works for Sargeras comes to Gul'dan in his sleep and promises more power if he takes his orcs to another dimension where there will be even more people to kill and plenty to eat.
00:38:48
Speaker
Gul'dan, he's never learned a damn thing, so he says yes.
00:38:53
Speaker
Yes.
00:38:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's so like another moment where it's like if you don't know the story already, like you're reading the book and you're like, who is this for?
00:39:03
Speaker
Because to just have this other all-powerful guy show up and be like, listen to me now instead.
00:39:11
Speaker
Right.
00:39:12
Speaker
What kind of storytelling is that?
00:39:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:16
Speaker
These orcs dragged around.
00:39:18
Speaker
Just getting dragged around the planetary interdimensional whatever map.
00:39:25
Speaker
These guys.
00:39:26
Speaker
Just more guys.
00:39:28
Speaker
And he's described as a stranger.
00:39:30
Speaker
I think they give his name later.
00:39:33
Speaker
I forget.
00:39:33
Speaker
But the fact that he's called a stranger initially just makes me think he's wearing like a trench coat and fedora or something like that.
00:39:42
Speaker
Yeah, that would be better.
00:39:44
Speaker
I would love that.
00:39:46
Speaker
Like, hey, kid, heard you're looking for a new planet.
00:39:55
Speaker
So Thrall mentions that teleporting to Azeroth was both a blessing and a curse in his little thing there.
00:40:03
Speaker
Durotan and the Shadow Council begin redirecting the effort or Gul'dan and the Shadow Council begin redirecting the efforts of the orcs.
00:40:12
Speaker
He gets them to fight in duels.
00:40:14
Speaker
So they have an outlet for their violence.
00:40:17
Speaker
And then he starts building a portal.
00:40:19
Speaker
And Durotan asks Orgrim why he didn't drink from the cup.
00:40:25
Speaker
And Orgrim says something like, it ain't right or something like that.
00:40:33
Speaker
And then Orgrim thinks about the Doomhammer and the prophecy.
00:40:37
Speaker
And he's like, well, I saved things and then I ruined things.
00:40:41
Speaker
So I guess I'm supposed to save things again.
00:40:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:47
Speaker
Yeah, good old Orgrim.
00:40:50
Speaker
They all assemble at the portal and Gul'dan has to sacrifice a Drownei child to get it open.
00:40:56
Speaker
Durotan screams no.
00:40:58
Speaker
Where did you find one of those?
00:41:00
Speaker
Where did, where, where is he just keeping it?
00:41:02
Speaker
In storage, I guess?
00:41:04
Speaker
I guess.
00:41:06
Speaker
What's the deal?
00:41:10
Speaker
I thought they all disappeared.
00:41:11
Speaker
Yeah, okay.
00:41:14
Speaker
Dirtan screams no, and then he starts getting the shit beat out of him by the other orcs.
00:41:20
Speaker
And then when the portal opens, it kind of looks like Swampland.
00:41:25
Speaker
The scouts go through, they come back with fresh game and water, and then they all shout, for the horde!
00:41:32
Speaker
And that's the end of the main story.
00:41:35
Speaker
And then there's an epilogue about...
00:41:38
Speaker
Thrall just wrapping things up in a bow.
00:41:40
Speaker
It's like, yeah, the Frost Wolves got through and then they were exiled.
00:41:44
Speaker
And then the land they live on now is called Duratar and his father and they're after his father and their largest city is Orgrimmar after Orgrim.
00:41:54
Speaker
And he's interrupted by a messenger who tells him that the Draenei have arrived in Azeroth, led by Velen.
00:42:01
Speaker
And Jaina Proudmoore has welcomed them into the alliance.
00:42:04
Speaker
And the last words of the book are, Ancestors, save us.
00:42:09
Speaker
It's so funny.
00:42:11
Speaker
I forgot the book ended that way because I was just sitting here thinking, God, the Draenei must have been so mad.
00:42:16
Speaker
Because they get on their spaceship and they're like, okay, time to go to the next planet.
00:42:21
Speaker
All right, this one didn't pan out.
00:42:23
Speaker
Next planet.
00:42:24
Speaker
And then they land on Azeroth and the orcs are already there.
00:42:29
Speaker
God damn it.
00:42:31
Speaker
Out of all the planets, we both could have...
00:42:34
Speaker
We both could have landed on... It's frustrating.
00:42:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:39
Speaker
And the people that genocided us are right there.
00:42:44
Speaker
And they're calling themselves the Horde after the group that genocided us.
00:42:49
Speaker
So... You break your lease to get away from your shitty roommate, and then you go apartment hunting, and you move in to the first place you find, and your roommate is living there.
00:43:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:03
Speaker
Like, how does it happen?
00:43:07
Speaker
What the fuck happened?
00:43:11
Speaker
Oh, poor Draenei.
00:43:13
Speaker
Poor Draenei.
00:43:15
Speaker
Yeah, so what are your overall thoughts on the book now that we've finished talking about it?
00:43:22
Speaker
How are you feeling about it?
00:43:25
Speaker
I think it would have been hard to make the orcs sympathetic here.
00:43:31
Speaker
I wish that they didn't even try.
00:43:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:38
Speaker
I wish they didn't add thrall to kind of wax poetic about home and family and justice and love and, you know, history.
00:43:52
Speaker
Like, just...
00:43:54
Speaker
Tell it like it is.
00:43:55
Speaker
Some really fucked up shit happened.
00:43:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:59
Speaker
No one made good decisions.
00:44:01
Speaker
There were no heroes.
00:44:03
Speaker
There were no heroes.
00:44:05
Speaker
This is a story about just people making mistakes at every turn.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:13
Speaker
This was a story about the Draenei who never deserved any of this from...
00:44:20
Speaker
Yeah, the peaceful, most peaceful people ever to exist.
00:44:25
Speaker
The Draenei and the orcs who were pretty cool until somebody suggested maybe you could have more power and then they took it.
00:44:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:42
Speaker
Or make Durotan do a thing.
00:44:46
Speaker
That's my one piece of feedback.
00:44:47
Speaker
Just like make him do a thing.
00:44:51
Speaker
Yeah, this could have been very interesting if the whole through line was Durotan running an orcish resistance against the Shadow Council.
00:45:03
Speaker
You know, if he just did anything, even if it was all for naught, like even if it ultimately didn't change anything in the end...
00:45:14
Speaker
Like giving Durotan some agency to like, instead of like the two or three times in the book where he does some active light resistance and the dozens of times where he just thinks about it.
00:45:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:30
Speaker
Like have Gul'dan actually put him in a bind, you know?
00:45:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:35
Speaker
Like there's leverage.
00:45:37
Speaker
He...
00:45:39
Speaker
Doesn't have to just begrudgingly go along with everything and then listen to Draka say, oh man, if it were up to me, I would simply not do the genocide.
00:45:52
Speaker
And then we have to listen to Durotan say, well, it's not up to you.
00:45:57
Speaker
Gosh, I wish someone would kill me so that I would stop doing all these war crimes.
00:46:04
Speaker
Somebody please kill me.
00:46:06
Speaker
What a thing.
00:46:06
Speaker
What a book.
00:46:07
Speaker
What a thing.
00:46:10
Speaker
It's like, you know, you could, I mean, if you're, if you're, you could just resist and get killed.
00:46:17
Speaker
I mean, that's, that's the other way to it.
00:46:19
Speaker
So if you're not, if you don't mind dying that much.
00:46:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:23
Speaker
And,
00:46:25
Speaker
I feel like we also said in an earlier episode that there is value in stories about people who want to think they're the good guys who do terrible things anyway because they're going along with what's easiest or they are just not questioning enough or like they come up with internal justification for why they can't do the hard thing and actually stand up against
00:46:55
Speaker
people who are very close to them.
00:46:57
Speaker
Durotan's not, this is not that story.
00:47:00
Speaker
This is that.
00:47:04
Speaker
Thrall is put into the book to very consciously remind us that Durotan is the good guy.
00:47:12
Speaker
He's not just a bad guy with a conscience.
00:47:18
Speaker
But he, yeah.
00:47:21
Speaker
This is not that.
00:47:23
Speaker
It doesn't, yeah, it doesn't help.
00:47:25
Speaker
It doesn't help flesh out the legend of Durotan at all.
00:47:31
Speaker
It doesn't make him any more, it doesn't make it like, oh, he doesn't deserve to have a land named after him.
00:47:41
Speaker
No.
00:47:46
Speaker
That's what I'm saying.
00:47:48
Speaker
Thrall could have been the character reminding us that all of this sucked and that he is not going to be anything like his parents or.
00:47:59
Speaker
Yeah, his parents.
00:48:01
Speaker
He's going to turn this all around because there is nothing redeemable.
00:48:06
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:48:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:09
Speaker
He could have been that guy.
00:48:10
Speaker
And instead, he's just like being like, ah, the old ways.
00:48:16
Speaker
And my parents had such hard decisions to make.
00:48:20
Speaker
And the Dra and I are here.
00:48:27
Speaker
And oh, no, we're going to keep the name The Horde.
00:48:31
Speaker
There is something potentially very poignant even in that question.
00:48:35
Speaker
Like, oh, if I had been in my father's shoes, would I have done the right thing?
00:48:39
Speaker
Like, that's an interesting question, but that's also not really what he asks.
00:48:46
Speaker
He doesn't ask it or attempt to answer it.
00:48:50
Speaker
I think that there's, you know, that kind of fear like in all of us, like just if I had been in like slightly different circumstances, if I were put in a position where I needed to make a really difficult decision, would I be courageous enough to make the right decision?
00:49:08
Speaker
Right.
00:49:09
Speaker
Thrall can stay.
00:49:10
Speaker
Thrall can stay.
00:49:11
Speaker
Have him ask interesting questions.
00:49:14
Speaker
Don't just have him apologize for people of the past.
00:49:17
Speaker
That's not a good look.
00:49:19
Speaker
It's not a good look.
00:49:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:22
Speaker
So that's that's the end of this book.
00:49:28
Speaker
Not great.
00:49:29
Speaker
Not a great book.
00:49:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:35
Speaker
I think it's towards the bottom of our list.
00:49:38
Speaker
Sam, since I know you're probably just playing Heroes of the Storm still.
00:49:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:45
Speaker
I'll ask you another question.
00:49:47
Speaker
What are you working on right now?
00:49:49
Speaker
I am constantly working on like 17 different videos.
00:49:53
Speaker
And so it's hard whenever somebody asks me, what are you working on?
00:49:56
Speaker
Like, what do I even, which one do I pick?
00:49:59
Speaker
I can say that today I was busy downloading all of the sex mini games from God of War.
00:50:10
Speaker
So I'm working on a video about those, about all the sex minigames.
00:50:22
Speaker
Just the God of War sex minigames or just sex minigames in general?
00:50:26
Speaker
Just the God of War sex minigames.
00:50:29
Speaker
I was sitting at a bar with a friend.
00:50:31
Speaker
We were talking about how next on his two playlist is Dad of War 2.
00:50:37
Speaker
And I just kind of offhand was like, man, like Kratos has come a very long way from, you know, sexing eight concubines at once.
00:50:49
Speaker
And my friend was like, what are you talking about?
00:50:51
Speaker
And I was like, oh my God, do you not know?
00:50:55
Speaker
Integral...
00:50:57
Speaker
part of this is not an integral part of god of war these were very optional mini games but like right but they were there they were there they were they were there they were there somebody made them so yeah stay tuned for that stay tuned for for that somebody made them and thought thought they were like really rad and a good idea to do you know
00:51:23
Speaker
I listened to someone who like worked on the game.
00:51:27
Speaker
He said that in the first God of War, it was there for character building, which fine.
00:51:35
Speaker
Okay.
00:51:35
Speaker
Sure.
00:51:36
Speaker
But then he said that there's no point to them being there.
00:51:40
Speaker
And otherwise, he's like, okay.
00:51:43
Speaker
He's like, I can't take them or leave them.
00:51:45
Speaker
It's like, hmm.
00:51:46
Speaker
Someone put a lot of work into this.
00:51:49
Speaker
Somebody down the chain was like told like you gotta you gotta make Kratos bang and the banging has to be banging and they're like do I have a choice in this and they're like no.
00:52:06
Speaker
It is going to be a pretty optimistic video though, because the real reason that I wanted to talk about it was leaving that conversation and realizing, wow, I'm laughing and joking about this thing that in 2007, when God of War 2 came out, I would have felt very threatened by that, very unsure of that.
00:52:24
Speaker
Women in video games was at a very different level.
00:52:27
Speaker
point when those mini games are coming out.
00:52:30
Speaker
And so it kind of feels nice to look at how far I feel like the industry has come and how far people who play games have come.
00:52:39
Speaker
Because it hasn't really been that...
00:52:42
Speaker
long uh it hasn't been that long since god of war 3 um but i just feel so much more comfortable playing games so much more comfortable interacting with other people who play games i'm so much more comfortable even just like saying online that like i'm a woman like and not expecting what i could have expected in 2007 sure it's yeah yeah it's good that's that's awesome i'm really looking forward to it
00:53:12
Speaker
Normally this part of the episode I talk about what I've been playing recently.
00:53:16
Speaker
What have you been playing?
00:53:19
Speaker
What have I been playing?
00:53:23
Speaker
So these episodes will come out out of order chronologically, but it doesn't matter.
00:53:28
Speaker
I've been playing Fear and Hunger 2, which, speaking of sex minigames, Fear and Hunger Games have... Well, they're not minigames, but there are cutscenes.
00:53:44
Speaker
Nice.
00:53:44
Speaker
Okay.
00:53:45
Speaker
The Fear and Hunger series is very, I guess the word is transgressive in terms of a lot of stuff.
00:53:55
Speaker
I don't know.
00:53:56
Speaker
It's interesting.
00:53:57
Speaker
It's an interesting series.
00:53:59
Speaker
I was inspired to play them after watching Super Eyepatch Wolf's video on it.
00:54:04
Speaker
Right.
00:54:06
Speaker
about you know it being the cruelest and something i find interesting that fear and hunger 2 does and both this and the first uh first one is that oftentimes in video games a lot of um
00:54:21
Speaker
violence is and fighting is your main way of interacting with the world not in all games but a lot of them and in this these rpgs you would assume that combat and fighting is like the main thing that you got to do but in these games it's designed that you
00:54:43
Speaker
the cost of fighting outweighs whatever the benefit is.
00:54:48
Speaker
So for the most part, it's a game about avoiding the conflict as much as possible because around any wrong corner, you could end up like getting your character killed and ending your run, so to speak.
00:55:07
Speaker
I've always had a lot of thoughts about violence in games and how I think it would be more interesting if more games experimented with the way that you interacted with the world in terms of moving or progressing plot forward.
00:55:27
Speaker
And I know there's a lot of games that do that, point and clicks and things like that.
00:55:31
Speaker
They've never really relied on violence.
00:55:33
Speaker
But for the most part, I'm talking about big AAA stuff.
00:55:38
Speaker
I think it would be interesting if they dip more into that.
00:55:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting.
00:55:44
Speaker
I do love just uncomplicated, violent games.
00:55:50
Speaker
It's just a very visceral way to engage with a game, but it's...
00:56:03
Speaker
always weird to step back and think like why is that you know what does it right is there really nothing else that can engage me like this like yeah yeah yeah I get it because I mean one of my favorite games that I played last year was Robocop Rogue City and it has you know you playing as Robocop and you shoot people's heads off and
00:56:31
Speaker
There's a special animation for shooting bad guys in the dick.
00:56:35
Speaker
Like, and I'm like, yeah, fuck yeah.
00:56:43
Speaker
But also at the same time, why is that interesting?
00:56:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:51
Speaker
But I think that'll do it for tonight's episode.
00:56:55
Speaker
Sam, do you want to plug your channel and stuff?
00:57:00
Speaker
My YouTube channel, you can find me at Afterthoughts.
00:57:05
Speaker
Sorry, I've been giving like screen shake this whole time because my laptop is very precariously balanced.
00:57:10
Speaker
But yeah, you can find my videos at wikid.com slash Afterthoughts.
00:57:16
Speaker
And hopefully I'll have a weird video about God of War Saks minigames out soon.
00:57:22
Speaker
Thank you guys so much for listening.
00:57:23
Speaker
You can check out Sam's work on the YouTube channel Afterthoughts.
00:57:28
Speaker
She does amazing work there.
00:57:29
Speaker
I want to give a special shout out to the patrons at the Geek Scholar level.
00:57:33
Speaker
Friendly friend, Jesus loves you, and Ruthless Mutter.
00:57:38
Speaker
Thank you so much for being our $10 patrons.
00:57:42
Speaker
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00:57:46
Speaker
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00:57:48
Speaker
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00:57:49
Speaker
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00:57:51
Speaker
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00:57:55
Speaker
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00:58:00
Speaker
Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe, rate us five stars, all that fun stuff.
00:58:05
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening and have a good evening.
00:58:14
Speaker
Thank you.