If anyone legit thinks that then something’s wrong with them. This is more speaking to a tiring trend of “oh boy, here’s another person of this race/class/gender combination at it again…”
It’s weird that we keep talking about Sylvanas like she’s a brilliant mastermind with spies everywhere and eyes and ears that see and hear everything when all evidence presents her as a dope that happens to win because she usually fights people dopier than she is.
She embarked on a genocidal rampage because an elf hurt her feelings.
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it’s my favourite sentiment because if you ask me, playing both factions, the Horde has been behind from the start
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I mean, it doesn’t matter. A character’s intellect is limited by the plot–they are as dumb or as smart as needed for story events to occur.
Sylvanas is a brilliant tactician that is too dumb to think that the Alliance might possibly sabotage the navy she’s come to steal.
Anduin loses more often only by virtue of being too dumb to suspect people might be lying.
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Sylvanas is supposed* to be a brilliant, cunning and dangerous tactician.
*The problem is that Blizzard isn’t brilliant, cunning or dangerous, so their attempts are… not good, and often result in Sylvanas being a dope and doing strategically sketchy things.
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It’s kind of like reading a book about Sherlock Holmes written by a different author who isn’t smart enough to write Sherlock Holmes.
Honestly though, I think Sylvanas’ downfall isn’t stupidity - it’s ego.
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I remember a video comparing the writers of modern Sherlock Holmes and the antagonist in “No Country For Old Men”
Sherlock Holmes is written to be smart by “dumb” people, which means that his intellect is entirely extraordinary; the man’s inhuman with how analytical he is and how fast he can solve puzzles. This means that things don’t essentially make sense because they’re pulling from all angles to show how smart he is.
In truth intellect is best shown in a constrained environment. Where the antagonist in No Country For Old Men rents a room, scopes out his targets and then ruthlessly eliminates every single one of them. He’s completely at ease at what he does yet there’s a very human element to him that makes him all the more scarier when the confrontation happens.
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KIRSY. REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Augh, I can’t believe you’ve done this.
Blinks
What?
Also, that movie “No Country for Old Men” is one of the few that seriously scares me. That there could be someone like the killer IRL is just terrifying. The worst scene in the movie is where he does the coin flip dialogue with the shop owner…omg. And I can’t tell if the shop owner is being obtuse to try not to commit to anything so it saves his life, or if he’s genuinely obtuse.
I just wanted to point out we’re 130 posts deep into a thread about how to handle balls.
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Yeah I’ve said before, Sylvanas is written as a low-functioning psychopath. They’re making a mistake a lot of, frankly stupid people make, in thinking people like Dexter are real. Psychotic geniuses with inhuman cunning. The truth is the human brain is almost physically incapable of most forms of psychopathy, in tandem with what we’d consider genius.
If Sylvanas were a real person she’d likely be institutionalized or homeless. A person with that level of lack of self control, violent tendencies, and paranoia, simply wouldn’t last long in any position of leadership, except as a puppet- POSSIBLY.
You think that, but you haven’t had a couple of the bosses I’ve had. There was an RN who literally went through medical assistants every 6-8 months when she decided they were suddenly incompetent after being her “golden child” for the first few months. It happened the minute the assistant disagreed with her over something. She would then spend weeks of psychological torture on the former “golden child” until they broke and left. She was smart about it, too. Reporting her didn’t work because she managed to always doctor paperwork or lie to patients to make herself look like the party in the right. Her crap could have potentially been dangerous - not only to patients but also to anyone who could have a malpractice suit filed on them. She decided it was my turn when I took the opportunity to clean out our samples cabinet of outdated medicine samples on a day she wasn’t there. She’d told me not to clean it out, but I did.
Then there was the lady who worked for the marketing department of a national magazine (I worked for a different magazine, same office). She would throw huge temper tantrums at her employees and have them in tears as she blamed them for her mistakes. It got to the point that no one would work with her, but she couldn’t be fired because for some reason she had great rapport with customers. Our very sweet office manager took on the responsibility to be her assistant, and about a week in, ended up a gaslighted mess after being screamed at for about 20 minutes along the lines of: “You didn’t understand what I said to do - this is your fault! You did it wrong, now fix it!” I found the office manager hiding in a store room, crying while shakily trying to pull samples that were not on the original order she was blamed for messing up (I saw the original order - I knew whose fault it was). It took me about 15 minutes to calm the office manager down and convince her it wasn’t her problem - it was the tantrum thrower.
Both these bosses had psychological issues and should have been fired. But they weren’t. People in both offices knew what was going on and they kept their mouths shut and let it happen.
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I mean all those people have issues, clearly. But I’m talking about actual psychopathy. Mental health terms get thrown around a lot, and lose meaning, but Sylvanas is written with symptoms and tendencies of someone with actual psychosis. Physically violent actions without provocation, paranoia, no regard or concept of the value of life. I mean specifically things she does that we can’t really compare anyone we know to (I would hope anyway).
Someone with the level of self control she exhibits simply wouldn’t remain in control of anything for that long. You can be sick, sadistic, manipulative, and all kinds of horrible stuff, but still be high functioning. It’s self control that typically defines that, and she displays basically none.
Again, you didn’t meet the two bosses I mentioned.
Did… did your bosses kill people? 
Did yours not?
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I was a union rep for a few years. I know exactly what some bosses are capable of, and I honestly do not know.
I wish I was kidding. But a couple of them, if I saw them on the news for it one day, I’d say… yeah that seems about right.
I don’t think I’ve dealt with any truly cruel people as bosses, mostly just callous ones. The kind that doesn’t care about personal circumstances or effort and just reward for superficial reasons.
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I had a guy threaten me once, and another one dent my car with… we think it was a tree branch. It’s still there. I drive around that dent with pride.
The nurse wrote down untrue information in patient charts to make it look like whomever her assistant was at the time made major mistakes. She tried to get me on a vaccination I gave to a child once, but the doctor happened to see it when I gave it, so I wasn’t blamed for something fun like incorrect dosing and shot location that I didn’t do.
But I could have been. And incorrect medical information can lead to administering unnecessary and possibly harmful treatment. The parents of the vaccinated child were scared because it was their first child and she had a mild reaction. If the nurse had convinced them I screwed up, it might have ended them getting their daughter vaccinated again.