Arthas and the Thermian Argument

I know this blog was originally about Starcraft 1, but I've gotten bored of that and want to move on to other topics. Such as bad writing in Warcraft 3! (Terrible joke, I know).

For example, Arthas' fall to darkness doesn't sit well with me. Ignoring all the hot takes about "he was a born sociopath" from Sylvanas stans, in the original game his arc is obviously intended to be a tragedy where a well-meaning hero is tortured and gaslit by the villains until he goes crazy and joins them. The problem is that key parts of this narrative undermine the emotional arc.

When Arthas culls Stratholme, Uther and Jaina just leave rather than try and stop him. This goes against their personalities! But the writer forces them to act this way because it would break the plot. This is bad writing. (BTW, Stratholme was supposed to be an impossible situation. There was literally nothing Arthas could've done that would've made any difference. I have problem with how this makes the Scourge/Legion boring invincible villains, but that's outside the scope of this post.)

When Arthas has his soul stolen by Frostmourne and turns evil because magic, this completely undercuts his entire arc where his motivations were driven by loyalty to his people. He has zero agency when this alignment happens. The villains didn't use logic and reason to convince him that his goal was best served by joining them, they used magic to remove his choice in the matter entirely. I don't find this emotionally satisfying.

Of course, when I've brought this up, fans tell me it makes perfect sense because magic! They completely ignore my point about the metatextual emotional impact and expect that magic the writer invented to justify sloppy writing was sufficient. It's not. That is a Thermian Argument.

A "Thermian Argument" is one that replies to criticism of a text with an in-universe justification for why the thing happens in the text, ignoring the actual argument in order to defend the text. It's a type of non sequitur fallacy. The phrase "Thermian Argument" was coined by Dan Olson in 2015, although since then it has become politicized and Google search results have been polluted with garbage data.

Arthas' arc is a good example. It's not satisfying for the author to have Arthas turn evil because a sword ate his soul. What would've been satisfying is if the author wrote the villains using persuasion to convince Arthas that joining the Scourge would save his people. This would required a lot of rewriting and, well, effort. After all the bullshit we've seen, it is obvious that Blizzard writers suck at writing so instead we got typical sloppy writing. I hate it.

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