It’s almost as if when different people write for the same character with six years of space between one story and the next, the signals get crossed.
4 Likes
The difference between Hitler and Slyvanas is that…Slyvanas was ONCE a Good Person.
Before Arthas did things to her very SOUL.
1 Like
Or, the Sylvanas Windrunner we saw in BfA was the very same side of her we saw in EoN, and you were being too generous to her with your interpretation of events within that short story? And I’m not going to sit here and say that there weren’t other sides to her that could have led her to other destinations, of course there were. But, it was this version of her that I saw in EoN that led me to the conclusion we see in BfA. Even if I didn’t know the full details of that destination.
The major difference being, Blizzard created a new character who essentially takes the exact same role I came to believe Yogg-Saron was filling.
That Sylvanas has been written consistently is the part I think is really, really generous, especially since we already know Blizzard writers struggle with a uniform vision for anything. They admitted to mixing signals on Garrosh, they had separate teams for the Horde and Alliance in BfA that resulted in huge gaps of story for one faction or the other. Alliance players may have no idea that the San’layn were courted for membership to the Horde. Horde players may have no idea that the town of Brennadam was menaced in a way that made them look like villains.
In comics, characters like Batman and Spider-man, who have been around for decades, have had many writers taking a crack at the character. The bigger the name, the more prestigious the job, the more important it was for the writer to understand them. A writer for Spider-man has to explore new territory, but has to keep him recognizable and in-character. It takes a very, very skilled writer to do that.
That Blizzard can field writers that good and that they had some grand plan for Sylvanas ten years ago, especially when they only recently began chaining one expansion into another with WOD, is the generous read, not mine.
1 Like
I think they knew they might do this. But weren’t sure. So they wrote her they way that work best ATM and then just changed it when they decided to do it. Whether they change the past story (which they have no problem with) or they simply added things that didn’t fit with the story they told, it makes little difference.
3 Likes
This just reminded me of Konrad Curze (The Night Haunter) from 40K. He had the same outlook about his own cursed existence and the same attitude about his Legion, The Night Lords.
1 Like
Its open to interpretation. Valkyrs probe her brain and they show her that the Forsaken will perish if she doesn’t return. That suggest that she cares for her people. The first thing she does after she returns is go save her people.
About the “arrows in her quiver”
“Another memory flooded her senses. Now she crouched behind an outcropping of smooth stone in Eversong Woods. The autumnal foliage rustled above her, masking the sound of her companion’s footsteps as he dashed forward and then fell into hiding beside her. “There are so many!” he barked, falling silent as she raised a finger. “We have only two dozen rangers up there,” he said, his voice now a whisper. “They cannot survive that!” Sylvanas didn’t turn her gaze away from the dark mass of shambling corpses crushing its way closer to the river ford. It was the height of the Third War, and hours away from Silvermoon’s fall at the hands of Arthas’s army.
“They merely need to delay them as we fortify the Sunwell’s defense,” she answered, her tone measured.
“They will die!”
“They are arrows in the quiver,” Sylvanas said. “They must be spent if we are to win this.”
She was brash. Empty? No—a fighter. She had a warrior’s heart.”
That isn’t the only interpretation of that passage. It’s cold-ish, certainly, but it’s a reach to suggest it precludes entirely any affection or renewed attachment. And in this context, they literally are her bulwark against infinite torment - so the phrase can hardly be said to be deliberately alienating, it’s could just be a literal statement of their relationship. You can care for someone and rely on them. It’s pretty common, actually. My significant other is sure as hell my Bulwark Against Stupid Inlaws.
This isn’t merely ‘it could be’, either. There’s a wealth of context to suggest that she comes out of EoN with more than just a utilitarian aim. After, she says “I was once like you. Those who served me were tools,”, and we have several quests in Cata expressly devoted to showing her renewed connection to the Forsaken. She collects their fallen insignias, rages at their deaths, and has a scene where she rides through the woods with the player waxing lyrical about the importance of the new Forsaken nation. You have to do a lot of conspiracy theorizing to square that away with ‘she don’t give a damn’.
I appreciate the time you take for your analysis but I think you have a real blind spot here regarding your interpretation of Edge Of Night and how it gels with events as they unfolded. I think it’s very likely that Sylvanas’ writing is disjointed and broken, and veered back onto a trajectory that she was expressly moved away from in EoN/Cata, not one that it predicted.
It feels as though you watched ‘A Christmas Carol’ and took away the lesson ‘Scrooge Is A Miserly Jerk’, when the whole point of the story is that he overcomes that and grows into something more. Edge Of Night starts with Sylvanas ready to die and uncaring about the fate of the Forsaken… but the point is that this changes. As we see in other media (cheers Borcan for the full quote) ‘Arrows In Her Quiver’ is not automatically a term of disdain, and Cataclysm Sylvanas is hardly nice but displayed a trajectory that didn’t point towards BFA.
I apologize if this is a little confrontational. As I said, I respect your takes and your contributions. You’re still cool. But it does get a little frustrating that you always talk as though your reading of the narrative is the correct one, when as many people here are showing it is far from settled. The passages you often cite are not automatically evidence of the conclusions you present them as indicating - I’d even go as far as to say your interpretation of EoN is kind of a stretch.
11 Likes
Its fine. I tend to get a little frustrated when people act like this part of Sylvie, the form of her that could create the version of her seen in BtS and BfA, wasn’t at least a major option for her. Not the ONLY option, but certainly one that did exist. Other path’s existed, but this one did too.
The woman once praised for thinking and acting like a Nathrezim, by actual Nathrezim. The woman who countered the only reasons she’s not “The Lich King” is because she “works for the Horde” (of which there was no real sign she shifted on her Alliance of Convenience). The woman who used so many people through her reign as the Banshee Queen, and discarded nearly all of them once they ceased to be of sufficient use. A trait she’s had since WC3. Just nobody cared because she was doing that with scumbags back then.
The woman who’s entire relationship with her Forsaken prior to EoN was revealed to be a lie. That she built them up to use them for her personal quest for revenge, pretending to be their savior; then abandoned them to what she knew to be their deaths … until she realized she still needed them. Meaning nothing she says or does can be taken at face value. This is the character I’m constantly told “was a stretch” and “came out of nowhere”. Which is why I got to spend all of BfA waiting for her to do exactly what she did.
3 Likes
Yeah, I agree, I certainly don’t think anyone should be surprised by BFA. I limit my contention to the fact that Sylvanas is clearly a total mess in terms of writing and that I don’t think its reasonable to line up pieces of that mess and declare the outcome to have been inevitable. Which I think we are aligned on.
I’m still on the fence as to if she is lined up to get some new context which the audience is meant to sympathize with. There’s a lot of different flavors and gradients of what they could look like, and I would not call Blizzard’s total wasteland of character insight a ‘mystery’ so much as a black hole in the narrative, but certainly this sorry excuse for tension has me guessing.
What’s your money on for Sylvanas’ outcome, in terms of intended audience perception? I think the safe bet is problematically on ‘poor woman driven crazy, how tragic, had to be put down but you should feel bad for what happened’ but I’m curious what your guess is given you did call the end of BFA, within what I’d call an impressive margin of error. I’m asking agnostic of the actual events to come, just purely in terms of what the authorial intent is for the closing resonance to be.
EDIT: I’m also trying to find it, but back when I was posting as Yersynia I think I called the ‘Sylvanas Is Trying To Fix The Afterlife’ back in 8.0.0 based on Edge Of Night and all the ‘Sylvanas, is this the darkness you warned us of?’ dialogue. I want to find it to see if I was on the money, but I can’t locate the post.
You want my genuine predictions? I think she’s getting played. I think she’s going into this deal with the Jailor expecting to do what she always does, use him and discard him … but that’s exactly what he’s doing with her. We’ve already seen its possible to snag a person from the moment of their death into another afterlife that is not their own; as long as you are a sufficiently powerful death entity. Helya and likely her Primes are likely servants of the Jailor, which would explain why her deal with the latter always came off as way too good to be true. And how she came to know how to contact Heyla in the first place.
The Maw was a Lie. It was never meant to be her afterlife (at least not right after ICC), but she was convinced it was to get her to move in a direction convenient for another party. Presumably the Jailor (I once thought it might be Yogg). All her actions and choices are her own, but she made them operating on a false motive. As such, he’s going to betray and discard her first, before she has a chance to do the same to him. In response she is going to darn the colors that have always suited her best … “Revenge”. And she’ll probably get her freedom from undeath she’s be yearning for in that endeavor (likely contributing to his defeat).
Sylvanas has a lot of bad Karma headed her way, and her getting treated like she has treated oh so many others is one step to evening out that board.
3 Likes
It did come out of nowhere. There is a sylvanas we see in the opening cinematic. Heroic, cold and ruthlessly efficient. Also dedicated to the horde. The sylvanas at darkshore is a flimsy neurotic, easily triggered by emotions she’s not even supposed to possess.
5 Likes
Okay but I’d like your take on what you think the final authorial statement going to be.
One way I can see that state of affairs playing out is ‘Wow she was after a good thing (a proper death) but got tricked into thinking terrible things were the only way, feel pity for her she was just trying not to be tortured’
Or that could result in ‘She was nasty and awful and someone worse than her played on that, she got what was coming’
Or something else.
And I think it’s more interesting to speculate on what the author will feel is the intended read more than the specifics of who kills her and what she’s up to.
I think she’s totally dying, though. And odds are tight as to if that’s presented at ‘at last…’ or ‘noooo!’, as well.
Like the one who was apparently just “putting on a show” for years for her Forsaken up through the fall of Arthas? She sure as hell didn’t lead them screaming “You’re all my expendable tools, follow and die for me an MY revenge!” She didn’t lead her “Bulwark” rallying the troops shouting “You’re all my meatshield from the hell I’m now convinced you’re all sentenced to!”
Y’mean like the version of her from War Crimes that went on some massive tantrum in the Forest when Vareesa “betrayed” her for her own kids; screaming about how “she’ll never let herself love again?” Also, the Sylvanas on Darkshore was anything but erratic now that we know her motives. She needed a catalyst to commit both sides to a full blown world war, and Delaryn’s words convinced her just killing Malf and Tyrande wouldn’t be enough. Every tactic she employed from then on does make sense if the priority was only keeping the conflict as escalated and prolonged as possible. Not to allow the Horde victory. She was gonna bail on them anyway eventually.
Honest question, than why did she wait until the horde splintered and were at the gates of Ogrimaar to bail out? She should’ve bailed after Teldrassil and hoped the Hawks on both sides were going to continue their best to deal a devastating blow to the other side.
Considering many people were telling me in Legion that Blizz killed off my favorite Horde character (and the last original WC3 Horde leader, thus symbolically killing off the WC3 Horde itself) just because Sylvanas was more popular … I’m not so sure “Authorial Statement” is needed.
But … if I were to create one. I would say that trauma and abuse can make monsters out of people. They’re broken, they’re hurting, and their looking for release … but they are still monsters. Just understandable ones. Unlike many of her Undead Sylvanas allowed her trauma and her fear of her afterlife consume her. But in the end, with the right clarity through all that nihilism and pain … she can do something truly good and selfless for the first time in ages.
My guess … Sylvanas will not survive this expansion, but she wont go out this villain we see now. She’ll play a pivotal role in the defeat of the jailor, promoted by the clarity and humility of being toyed with the way she did her Forsaken and the Horde. And will earn the reprieve and release she’s been so desperate for. She will “pass on” no longer “Being a Slave to her Torment”.
To keep the war going for as long as possible, to get as much of a death toll as she could.
What did you think her recruitment of the ARs was for? Cuz she liked them? They were meant to bring a whole mess of new souls to add to the sacrifice pool, and she knew the Horde doing so would force the Alliance to do the same in response. Why do you think she put the most antagonistic Horde races possible in the NE territories? ONLY them? Or started raising the NEs into undeath? To piss off the NEs and force them open up another mire of a front perhaps? And consider for a moment what would have happened had Saurfang not managed to pull a movie Durotan and get her mask she was maintaining to crack? She would have been the uncontested Warchief, and Orgrimmar would have been a Bloodbath on both sides.
At that point it didn’t really matter which side won … she wouldn’t be there at the end of the fight. She would have disappeared long before that slaughter concluded.
1 Like
Agreed, Blizzard is clearly capable of writing empty events. Vol’jin got done real dirty.
But I think after all the pomp and circumstance they’ve loaded into this Sylvanas masterstroke they’re so eager to hide and hype, they certainly are going to go to the music team and tell them ‘sell me X emotional resonance as she dies’, and what X is will be important in understanding the Legion-to-Shadowlands Sylvanas story as a text.
Does she die to major key, or minor? I’m interested to find out.
EDIT: Mind, I still haven’t ruled out other outcomes than death. Maybe she gets imprisoned. Maybe she gets to go to the afterlife properly. Substitute ‘gets her narrative conclusion’ for ‘die’ in that event.
2 Likes
I know this is the accepted reasoning for Sylvanas’s actions in BfA, but it still makes no logical sense. Azeroth is only one world of presumably many if not an infinite number. Not to mention the Shadowlands being infinite means the Maw is already getting every soul meant for anywhere in the Shadowlands. A little more death on Azeroth somehow makes that much of a difference?
Unless there is something super special about Azerothian souls. I hope there’s more to it than that.
I don’t care whether she gets a redemption or not, as long as she dies in the end. Because there is no afterlife, its all giant hoax invented for a purpose of mass control, stooping as low as promising earthly pleasures on the other side. There are no earthly pleasures there folks, once you die, you rot and that’s the end of it. My death knight can confirm this 100%. However if there was an afterlife, then Sylvanas getting redemption for pawning the Jailer’s agenda would be the ultimate hypocrisy, and the most iconic example of p**sy pass there is in the whole video game history, not just Warcraft universe. Allow me to remind you that Arthas did not get redemption for pawning the Ner’zhul’s agenda. Both Sylvanas and Arthas were just pawns for their masters, Jailer and Ner’zhul, obedient to the core and not acting out of their own free will. However if being female these days lets you get away with a war crime of genocide, and given that at a high level WoW is an echo of IRL, then there is a sign that something is deeply wrong with the society, and we should be at least concerned if not alarmed of what the real world is coming towards.
1 Like