Know Your Lore: Alexstrasza the Lifebinder

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

7-10-2008 @ 4:56PM

r.a-c.r. said...

"despite my issues with the author."

What issues are those?

7-10-2008 @ 5:11PM

Doffencrag said...

I'm guessing one of them is Knaak's relentless push for Rhonin to be the ultimate WoW hero (thus the "Rhonin Sue" snipe).

At least, that was my beef with Knaak.

7-10-2008 @ 5:20PM

alex.rushing said...

Knaak is not a bad writer, but let's just say that his WoW writing could be summed up as 'bad fanfic endorsed by Blizzard' and leave it at that.

7-10-2008 @ 5:17PM

Siona said...

I would say the issues include the fact that Knaak the Hack ACTUALLY gets work at Blizzard anymore. e_e

7-10-2008 @ 8:31PM

His writing style is a poor fit for Warcraft. His writing comes across as trying to further his own characters ('Rhonin is a maverick!' 'But he's our only hope.') with no regard for the lore characters involved. Warcraft also has a history of strong female leads. Jaina, Sylvanas, Alleria, etc.

Knaak seems to love him some weak females. Sylvanas and Alleria are sisters. The Windrunner family. Both are obviously very strong female leads, who can stand on their own. Sylvanas leads the Forsaken now, even. Knaak created himself a third sister (Vereesa), which was ogled and manhandled all through Day of the Dragon, and despite her claim to hate humans, Rhonin was the dreamiest guy in the world and then they did the nasty. And then Vereesa spent the next three Knaak-written books pregnant and barefoot in Dalaran with -gasp- twins! There have never been half elf twins before! :O

My list goes on, but we can sum it up this way: Knaak is an old school fantasy writer. He clings to old school pulp fantasy ways of writing. He's the kind of fantasy fiction that the genre got mocked for, for so long. Warcraft broke out of that in a lot of ways (though not all of them) and Knaak took all of that a step backwards and plunged it into stupid.

7-10-2008 @ 9:51PM

Medros said...

I agree, Alex, that Warcraft has strong females, but they are not the only leads. I did not see Vereesa as "manhandled all through Day of the Dragon", but that she wisely used her attributes that made the Paladin and the Dwarf and many others want her to her advantage. Still, even though she was very cunning and careful with herself and her heart, she still fell for Rhonin. Perhaps you are the one and only person in the world who cannot fathom falling for the unlikely one.

You mention that there have never been half-elf twins as if this is an absolute impossibility, but I would ask you, how do you know? Do you know with 100% certainty that the anatomy of the Elf and the Human is incompatible? Are you Chris Metzen's pseudonym, and therefore can make the decisions on whether this is biologically possible? If you are, then you should be fired if this travesty, as you seem to think the entire works of Knaak in the Warcraft universe was, was allowed to be published.

Richard Knaak is a writer. Chris Metzen oversaw, and still oversees, the lore side of the Warcraft universe, Starcraft universe, and all the other franchises Blizzard has. If you have issue with what was allowed to be published, take it up with him, not the person he hired to write it. Personally, I look forward to seeing Rhonin, Tirion, Krasus, and Vereesa in the Wrath expansion, because I have loved all but one of the Warcraft books so far, and look forward to the many coming out soon.

7-10-2008 @ 10:02PM

Alex Ziebart said...

I don't think "using your attributes" to your advantage is an example of a strong female at all, if you are referring to her using her body to get her way. I would say that's a very large step from a strong 'Warcraftian' female. Yes, I just made that word up. Using her body to get what she wants is exactly what I was saying. Knaak is an 'old school' Fantasy author. The type that would write about the busty barbarian woman thrusting her heaving bosom in the bad guy's general direction to give him a nosebleed.

"You mention that there have never been half-elf twins as if this is an absolute impossibility, but I would ask you, how do you know?"

It was something that had been pointed out by the author. It's another layer on the cake of Rhonin's Unbeatable Epic Awesomeness. He's so awesome that he traveled back in time, taught Illidan magic, saved the world (for the third time), and oh yeah, he didn't just get Vereesa pregnant, he got her pregnant with TWINS. Oh man oh man, Rhonin is SO AWESOME.

7-14-2008 @ 4:24AM

ErsatzPotato said...

"Knaak is an 'old school' Fantasy author"

I don't understand what you mean by this. I'd like some explanation of him being "old school".

Never having read any of the WoW novels beyond the first few pages I'm quite curious. Do you mean Howard old school? D&D novelizations? Dunsany? Old school covers a lot of ground and I need a framework to get your statement.

If you mean, as I suspect, nothing but jugs shoved in the faces of heroes, Joanna Russ covered that in S&S long ago, as did Fritz Leiber (who coined the phrase Sword & Sorcery). If you're coming from D&D novelizations, back up and read the roots of the genre before it got massively blandified, to coin a word. Truly good fantasy novels are rare stuff last twenty years. It's mostly Terry Brooks and Wheel of Time snore fests spread over ten volumes.

Fans of the bland: send hate mail too...bah, just send it to yourself.

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