in this case i think people are using this word to suggest that she’s a pessimist who has completely given up on hope or she just believes in nothing. But that’s debunked quickly in the No Lies cinematic. She believes in justice therefore she’s not a nihilist.
So from a purely hypothetical WoW standpoint I will push back against this. Even worse I’m admittedly doing it as devils advocate and only as a pure hypothetical. I am not saying “this is the real story.”
The Arbiter is disabled and the Kyrians are still dropping souls on her platform just to see them fall into the Maw. I won’t even get into the Kyrian question. They’re doing this from the entire universe - worlds upon worlds.
Sylvanas has already entered into a pact with the Jailer (after having him yoink her into the Maw and threaten her entire afterlife). She knows the Arbiter is disabled.
Clearly the Jailer is out of her weight class to take on in a frontal assault. She can’t tell anyone because the Jailer has infiltrated everywhere. But to stay close to the Jailer, uncover his plans, and try to stop the entire universe (and herself) from destruction she has to burn Teldrassil - an attempted genocide.
Reasonable people will debate the morality of this action because it boils down to a question of “do the ends justify the means?” or put another way “do the souls of the many outweigh the souls of the few?” From a purely utilitarian view - saving everyone at the cost of a tiny fraction - is in fact the moral imperative. On the other hand, burning civilians alive is pretty unsettling.
That’s ignoring the pertinent question as to whether it’s reasonable for her to even believe she could somehow thwart the Jailer (and we would probably need to know if. Nathanos was mistaken or correct in his assertion about the souls). Or assuming she has to undertake this after her experiences in watching the murder hobos of Azeroth slaughter everything in their paths, but again - just devil’s advocate.
That’s completely neglecting the entire story. Sylvanas literally (not figuratively, literally) had no free will for a portion of her life. Against her will she was risen into undeath and forced to be conscious and commanded to slaughter her own people. That’s serious psychological trauma.
After breaking free she sought only vengeance against the Lich King taking whatever (extreme, hypocritical, and selfish) actions that would help her achieve her goal of wiping his evil from existence. And then she killed herself.
Then the Jailer took her soul straight to the Maw (via the Valkyr). She was offered a choice - enter a pact with them or spend eternity tortured in the Maw (where she saw Arthas as a child, thrown there by Uther, both pawns in the Jailers schemes).
Everyone has their free will hindered by others. She hasn’t even had the free will to die and face a normal afterlife (and based on what we’ve seen in Revendreth, it’s pretty unlikely that after the death of the Lich King she deserved the Maw). Cosmic powers, far above her speck in the universe, have screwed with her in one way or another for 30 years.
I don’t believe the Jailer is going to somehow reconstruct a more fair universe. After all he is the one who has been screwing with her life. But comparing her comments about a lack of free will to those of a guilty child lying about their actions seems pretty disingenuous.
Then again, this whole story arc has been more than a bit of a mess. Blizzard has failed to deliver on the nuance for any part of any potential morality debate, instead portraying her as someone who hasn’t just “turned evil at the drop of a hat” (like Garrosh) but rather turned evil (at the drop of a hat) a decade ago and has been evil ever since and we were stupid for never knowing. What a twist! And she’s now a mid-level minion for the guy responsible for pretty much the major terrible milestones in her life.
I hope it gets better, but it’s been about as subtle and nuanced as a brick to the face and we all know Sylvanas is evil and will die in the end.
1 Like
Irrelevant. She had free will when it mattered.
Was that not free will? You can’t argue she has no free will and then state she had choices. Anduin is/was given the same choice and made a different one.
Yes and no. She made a series of choices which pinned her in and limited her choices, but she still could have chosen not to act. In her arguments, she is avoiding accountability; she is deflecting.
(BTW, the child simile is just that. My point is that she’s resorting to simplistic arguments, made all the more transparent in that she argues there is no free will and then gives Anduin a choice. Though, she’s still more interesting than Anduin.)
4 Likes
Ultimately if you wanted to side with her you would need to delete your character and die so that you would join the Jailers army.
She has no need for you other wise and never has shown an interest in keeping any allies among the living or outside of the Jailer.
Ultimately she is just a puppet of the Jailer in every way everything she has done and has happen to her was at his design nobody else. She is apparently too stupid to see that though.
So sure side with her so we can beat down another amalgamation of the Jailers.
You need help.
To be clear, she did not have free will while enslaved by the Lich King. Unless you’re of the belief that if she just tried harder she could’ve broken free earlier (I’m not saying you believe this, just acknowledging that there has previously been debate about how much mind control is really control when sometimes characters break free).
From a strict definition standpoint, she has a “choice” between two options. Except that it’s not a choice made freely and it is very much a false choice.
You’re arguing that it’s a choice when she’s literally choosing between spending an unjustified eternity in torment vs making a deal to try to find a way out of said torture. That’s not a meaningful choice. At best that’s blackmail.
If your argument is she should have simply rolled over and accepted an eternity in torment, with little knowledge (at the time) regarding who she was making the deal with (initially she made it with the Val’kyr, not the Jailer) then I would simply put to you the same deal. You’re kidding yourself if you would reject it.
She has gone up against ridiculous odds previously and still come out successful, of course she’s going to try to delay the outcome and find a way out of an eternity of torment. You could call it her “choice” to have defended her homeland and therefore been slain by Arthas and raised into undeath, and her “choice” to delay an eternity of (unjustified) torture to hopefully escape it somehow. In that case it was also Anduin’s choice to become the King of Stormwind and therefore be abducted and subjected to the Jailer.
If you think she had a reasonable option to flee in front of the Scourge and hope to survive somehow in hiding or accept an eternity of torment, then sure, it’s her choice. But that’s akin to saying that the Donner party had a choice in whether to partake in their activities or just die (and then tack on being tortured for eternity). If someone has a bomb strapped to their chest (in the common TV narrative) and is told they will explode if they don’t rob a bank - yes they can choose to be blown up. But it’s a false choice - it’s not one made freely because of the sword of Damocles hanging over her head.
You can argue Anduin is choosing to endure an eternity of torment, but his soul hasn’t been detached from his body (and from the cutscenes we’ve seen, he’s sitting in a little bubble) being asked to serve them. He’s under the threat of being made into a Death Knight or Scourge (not a minor threat by any stretch, but again, not the same as an eternity of torment).
Eventually if the Jailer wins, he’s likely to face the same fate that every other soul (and Sylvanas) currently faces (an eternity in the Maw), but these consequences are at least somewhat down the line.
Fandral did not exactly make it public knowledge and he had already put Malfurion out of commission.
You know, im always hesitant to use the word “simp”. At this point it has been basically robbed of all meaning- but boy does this thread have a lot of people simping for sylvanas.
And not even in ironic, spiteful, rebelling-against-the-writers kind of way. Like god, i dont know how basically destroying the universe can be painted in a good way lmao
4 Likes
I just came to this thread to add that Sylvanas doesn’t actually plan to save millions of lives. She just says she does. It’s like abusive parents thinking they know what’s best for their kids . Giving the Jailer supreme power over the material universe isn’t going to help any of those souls but damn them forever.
Also, I don’t buy the “kill 10 innocent people to save a thousand others”. There is no moral or philosophical basis to it. If that was an absolute requirement, a true dichotomy, and Sylvanas had no choice, then she may have been right, or at the very least be in grey territory. But she did have a choice and she always had a choice. She chose not to tell anyone about her plans until now, and until now has waged a war only to kill as many people as possible without considering alternatives.
4 Likes
very true.
I wonder how deep that rabbit hole goes with Sylvanas, since she was one of the people affected by the Emerald Nightmare in Stormrage. i wonder if she ever questioned the connections between N’zoth and the Emerald Nightmare and Yogg-Saron and the Scourge. I do feel like there may be more complex layers to the burning of Teldrassil than “she was just mad because Delaryn called her out.”
I don’t think she was pissed at all. She didn’t really seem upset, especially during a Good War. It seemed like she just realized based off what Delayrn told her that killing the NE leadership would not have amounted to the wound she wanted to create. To lock both factions into a War to generate a massive death toll. Frankly, Sylvie’s BfA plan was both really simple and was vague enough to have tons of room for error. It was just the biggest Kill X Mobs quest in Warcraft history. With anything past the goal a bonus objective.
2 Likes
Attention banshee simplords!
You may stand with with Sylvanas but it is solely I that laid with her last thursday morning while the servers were resenting.
One of those spikes poked me in the sternum but it was worth it.
3 Likes
Step 1: Be hot.
Step 2: There is no step 2.
7 Likes
Does those who joined him REALLY know what he did either? Or just the sobstory I’m sure he told them that makes him the Victim of the Dastardly Eternal Ones.
I mean, there is. We know this from BlizzCon. She did it to bloat the Maw with souls, and to start a brutal war that’d send even more from both sides there as well.
If you ask me, knowingly sending thousands of people to superhell is worse than killing them all cause you were pissed.
2 Likes
Grandblade I ask this in good faith. Is there any evidence that Sylvanas would have known that she was sending souls to “super hell”?
From Before the Storm her goal was to take Stormwind and in A Good War the goal is very much to demoralize the Alliance.
This is very specifically her own internal monologues at play.
And we the players still do not know exactly who, or what, or when the Arbiter was destabilized.
From where I’m sitting the Kyrian and the Archon are more at fault for sending souls to the Maw than Sylvanas is.
2 Likes
It was revealed at the BlizzCon 2019 What’s Next? panel (the BlizzCon where they announced Shadowlands) that the Burning and the Fourth War were both started by her knowingly to increase the power of both the Jailer and herself.
2 Likes
Sorry I watched those panels live, I don’t recall them saying that she knew all souls were going to the Maw. I know there is speculation that she caused the souls to go the Maw with the Jailer, but now that we know what happened to the Arbiter and we still don’t know who or what caused the Arbiter to fail or even if the Jailer himself was involved I find it hard to believe. Did Blizzard say Sylvanas knew the Night Elven souls were going to the Maw?
How do you reconcile that with the Shadowlands being connected to infinite realms with Teldrassil being a drop in the bucket? Or that Sylvanas brough so many Night Elves back to Azeroth?
Where’s the logic here?
Ion says that Sylvanas’s motivations have often seemed calculated to cause as much death as possible (accompanied by a large picture of the Burning), and he follows this up by asking “what if they were?” I don’t know how much clearer that needs to be other than them actually spelling it out word by word - her actions for sure line up with this, and at this point, believing otherwise is just wishful thinking born from needless scrutiny.
And honestly, people say “oh, Azeroth is a drop in the bucket” but we’re really not considering that at this point, most of the worlds in the cosmos have already been wiped out by the Legion, and the majority of their souls very likely didn’t go to the Maw. Hell, a lot of them might not have even made it to the Shadowlands. If you ask me, just because Azeroth is a single world out of many, that doesn’t say to me that the deaths on it are insignificant.
The only way the logic of Sylvanas knowingly sending people to the Maw doesn’t make sense is if someone doesn’t want it to.
6 Likes
How would she have known though?