aura-idalia ~ hello!

Compression actually has me pulling my hair out. I'm not sure if I've ever posted a really high effort painting here before, but as it is all my details have been eaten up by The Fuzz.

as someone who has been frequently disappointed in colonization narratives as of late, even in media I enjoy, I fully expect to be saddened by the writing decisions, but I hope it’s not as bad as I think it will be. I love the elves and their complexity, and I hope they are allowed to reckon with the atrocities they’ve committed on the Amani people. I care about the Amani and I want to know more about their cultural heritage and how they’ve dealt with being pushed out of their own lands for so many years.

Alright. This is my long in the coming rambling over Kael’thas Sunstrider, perhaps my favorite WoW character. Or rather, I like him because of his Warcraft 3 incarnation and have Thoughts about his later writing. I’ll probably have more to say later but for now: the handling (and mishandling) of Kael'thas's character.

To start, I think we should establish a bit of who Kael was in WC3. Although I have not played WC3, my understanding of his character is that he was someone dealt a very bad hand with Arthas’s near genocide of his people and the expectations he put on himself to both take his father's place and lead the elves out of one of the most traumatic events in their people's history. To examine those expectations a bit closer, I think it's notable that Kael struggles to see himself as a successor to his father, to the point where he can't even take on the mantle of king. Even though Kael often disagreed with his father's isolationist stance, it seems that he saw Anasterian as a deeply stabilizing force both on him and his people. I would go so far as to say that Anasterian needed to die on a thematic level, because he represented stagnation for the elves (and to an extent, you could say that Sylvanas’s death represented the death of the youth, and subsequently the future- and in defying death and Arthas and giving the Forsaken a new beginning, she shows that the future was not lost). Therein, Kael’s leadership both represents and reckons with change for the elves.

This change is of particular interest to me, because it connects with the idea of expectation. When Kael returns to Quel’thalas, his people do not trust him, and he has to rebuild a connection with them because of all of the years he had spent in Dalaran. It makes a lot of sense that he decides to rename the elves as specifically Blood Elves, because of the incredible loss of life that they had recently experienced and the death of his father. Invoking blood reminds the distrustful elves that he too has his own trauma from the fall of Quel’thalas, even if he was not present for it; he shares in the pain that was fundamental to the elves of this period. I would wager that the turning point in terms of the blood elves' trust in Kael happens shortly after this renaming because they began to identify with Kael’thas again. However, I would argue that this identification isn't so pure.

Consider how many statues of Kael there are in BC Silvermoon City– in fact, one stands at the city’s gate, the first time you’re introduced to Silvermoon. They called this gate the Shepherd's Gate, because it is the gate that Kael’thas returned to the city through. In other words, they consider Kael a shepherd - someone they expect to lead them out of their plight. I distinctly remember when playing through the starting experience that certain NPCs would comment on how they were confident that Kael’thas would find either a new homeland or a cure to mana addiction in Outland. It seems a little absurd: Kael’thas returns, his people distrust him, but then a few months later he leads 10-15% of them, their strongest, on some expedition that ultimately leads them to a completely different planet, and through all this he somehow has their trust. Kael’thas couldn’t have possibly earned the faith his people invested in him, no matter how earnest he may have been upon his return to Silvermoon. I think the elves needed a savior, and he was the most realistic option. It is worth noting that the big moment for the elves is how they manage to join the Horde on their own strength, something that allows them to reclaim some of their pride and overcome helplessness and despair. The elves need this to happen at the beginning of BC, because Kael’thas will break their hearts. If they had not learned to stand on their own two feet before his betrayal, it would have hit them doubly hard, because Kael’thas was who they looked to for hope.

In BC, I think the elves are very well written. Kael, however, has some inconsistencies. It's not that I don't believe that he could fall prey to Kil’jaeden (literally the greatest deceiver ever) and his lies, or even fel addiction, it's that they wrote Kael as a leader who has abandoned all semblance of treating his people well. I have seen many explanations of his behavior connect to the idea that in his mind, everything he did was for the elves. I don't think that is out of character to say, however I do think it conflicts with the text of BC, where Kael’s actions are so radically based on coveting power that even his speech in Tempest Keep about how his people suffer from addiction isn't enough to overshadow how he treats the pilgrims (who made the incredibly dangerous journey to Netherstorm) as little more than slaves. He does not withhold power from other races, or people he does not trust, he withholds it from his own people. For as much as he laments the shackles of mana addiction, he created a system that used addiction to keep people in his service, constantly striving for a taste of the power he hoarded. I don’t think he was looking for a way to cure the mana addiction by the time we found him in BC, because by that point it would simply not benefit him to do so.

This selfish image of Kael’thas is what I struggle with – he was obviously under a lot of pressure from the expectations his people put on him, as well as those he put on himself. He was also well established to be prideful, and unable to course correct easily because of his difficulty in admitting where he might have gone wrong. These play into each other – Kael’thas could not afford to be wrong because his people were counting on him. I can’t see him falling so far into the drive to hoard power (which is rooted in Illidan’s teachings that the only way to overcome mana addiction is to sate the hunger) that he would sacrifice his own people to do so. Kael’s whole purpose was his people- the point is very much that he would do anything for them, and that he had to in order to have any pride at all.

Looking just at WC3 and BC, I don’t think this writing is the most egregious thing ever. I don’t like this addition of overwhelming personal selfishness to Kael’thas, but the consequences of his fall from grace are interesting. Moreover, I would argue that Kael is more meant to support two other facets of writing – the blood elves and blood knights, and Arthas.

The Blood Knights play with the fixation that elves have with control and power. From what we know now about mana addiction, it seems clear that harmony with nature is perhaps the best way to be freed from its shackles, as seen with the Night Elves and Nightborne. The High elves, however, were a society with a deeply ingrained hierarchy that was closely tied to the use of arcane magic. Kael’thas could not seek a cure for his people because even in great societal upheaval, he could not free them from arcane hierarchy, perpetuating an even more abusive system. Ultimately, the Blood Knights enter a more harmonious relationship with the light by the end of BC, relinquishing the control they clung so tightly to. To invite uncertainty and faith back into their lives and society seems symbolic of the Blood Elves formally entering the world of mortals, after many years of insularity.

Regarding Kael’thas’s obvious parallels to Arthas, it is quite likely that by the time BC rolled around the writers already knew they would be addressing the frozen throne soon. Kael’thas and Arthas did have a rivalry and deep running hatred for each other in WC3, so it stands to reason that Kael’thas is a foil. They are both young, blonde, and prideful princes with strong convictions and deep care for their people. Following this, the strange and out of character shift that Kael’thas goes through between WC3 and BC makes more sense when viewed through the lens of an Arthas parallel. It would make sense to vilify Kael’thas not only to have an exciting raid boss, but also to mirror how Arthas’s attempts to save his people led to their ultimate downfall, even though this trajectory may have been less believable with Kael’thas’s personality.

To see Kael’thas as a character whose writing supported the blood elves and represented WC 3 does make me more sympathetic to the writing decisions made in BC. With major blood elf characters like Lady Liadrin and Lorthemar Theron, was there space to give Kael’thas an individual spotlight? As a lieutenant of Illidan, it was probably more compelling to have Akama be our ally on the inside, and for Kael’thas to be an antagonist (unless his fight was structured so that he would see reason in the end, and in that case his actions would have to be framed as desperate attempts to genuinely protect his people). Lastly, although I don't believe that Kael’thas is a good representative of the rigid or traditional ideas of blood elf hierarchy given his disagreements with his father about the elves’ insularity, I'm not sure there was any other character who could represent a negative, alternate path for the elves. Kael’thas shows that if the blood elves had failed to achieve harmony and compassion, their desperation and high emphasis on hierarchy could have resulted in a culture of self consumption and oppression.

tagged by @lightsfeather

no pressure tags: @hummingbee57 @ashes-of-a and. um. well I don't know anyone else but whoever is interested?

Last Song

I love Beyoncé and this album has to be somewhere in my top 10. Maybe top 5.

Current Obsession

This is a hard one- obscurely it's drawing because as of late I've lost steam on (good) writing and embroidery.

Outside of hobbies though, I've obviously gotten really into Witch Hat Atelier and I truly think it's one of the most interesting and well crafted stories of our time. The manga in particular is so intensely well-drawn and dense with symbolism that it makes me wonder how the dimensions of a craft connect with writing. Is presentation a part of writing? In the case of multimedia, how do you resolve screenplay with music and visuals? In a video game, are the game's designers responsible for the bones of the story that will be written just by designing mechanics? How would you adapt a story like wha that's perhaps at the pinnacle of its medium into another medium entirely?

Ah. I suppose I should say the current (and all time) obsession is analysis.

Currently reading

I rarely read (most of my analysis is for games and films/shows) so this is a bit tricky. If it counts, I recently got a photo guide for insects of the Amazon rainforest? Which I've been flipping through recently. My reading backlog for the summer (that I might... fail to get through) is to dabble in the 3 books of poetry that various people have given me (Emily Dickinson, Sappho, and Mary Oliver) and maybe finish the extremely interesting nonfiction read, Pathogenesis, a history of human civilization through the impact of diseases across time.

Currently wearing

...a night gown. It's got red and white stripes? Don't judge me too hard, it's 1am. My usual fashion is actually very dressy, I don't really get the reasoning for why people save outfits for special occasions unless its something impractical to wear. I like feeling pretty!

Last search

"kali"

Just the one word. She's one of my favorite goddesses (if it isn't too informal to say that T-T) but I keep forgetting the specifics of what she does other than being the manifestation of the divine feminine and having power over death and time. Apparently she's also seen as the manifestation of Durga's rage. I don't think I'm terribly religious but I think learning about it and thinking about the art and culture that surrounds it is fascinating.

Favourite Flower

I have a few for this one. I've always loved water lilies, but over time I've come to appreciate hydrangeas and magnolias more. Hydrangeas remind me a lot of my mother and one of my close friends, and they've always felt calming. Magnolias are maybe an unusual pick; I'm not sure if they're well known outside of the US and even then, I see them as the quintessential flower of the South. I always found them to be so grand, maybe even a little lofty - you can't even touch the petals without them browning from your skin oils. They're a beauty that can only be observed, and I think there's something interesting in that.