Ahh, got it. Because she suffered essentially the same fate as 90 percent of all undead, she’s exempt from all her actions since then. She gets a free pass for being a garbage person ever since.
EDIT: And as a side note, I’m not really a proponent for punishment. Rehabilitation tends to be a better route, but you actually need someone who wants to be rehabilitated. Which, there is no indication that Sylvie would be included there. She’s so convinced her twisted image of reality is right, that she’s convinced herself that everything is justified due to that.
We are going into a world with busted up morality. The Fairy queen is canibalising wild gods and anything else that moves. Whatever you think of Sylvanas she will ultimately be judged by a shadow lands moral code rather than an Azerothian one within blizzards story.
I don’t really see how any of this addresses what you’re responding to. Are you attempting to imply that I am letting my dislike of Sylvanas color my perceptions? Because if so that isn’t what my initial post was about.
I am talking about the story as written and the story elements Blizzard has chosen to use up to this point and why it handcuffs them as far as attempting a Sylvanas redemption.
Again, they still can try to redeem her. But with how they’ve written her so far it won’t work. Like how so many lesser writers have attempted to use George Martin’s brand of subverting expectations but failed to do so in a satisfying way that resonates well with the audience.
The tools to pull off a redemption that works narratively aren’t there. They’ve written themselves into a corner by making Sylvanas’ genocide so incredibly visible and such a huge plot point that the attempt to redeem her will ruin the story for everyone who isn’t hoping for said redemption because they like the character.
Personally? I think it’d be incredibly funny if a redeemed Arthas killed her. Not that I think that would be good storytelling. It’d be awful, in fact. But picturing the forum explosion already makes me feel warm. I never liked Sylvanas, not in WC3, not in WoW.
Realistically? She’ll become the new Jailer or some other sort of Kerrigan-equivalent.
You clearly don’t see my point, because you keep saying things like:
Again… a person does not have to like a Character to see multiple paths for their story to go. You seem stuck on “liking Sylvanas” as a motivation. I don’t have to like Arthas or Garrosh or Sylvanas to see paths for their redemption as Shadowlands unfolds.
Quite simply, as a matter of opinion, I just disagree with the statements you made. Such as:
That does not seem objective at all. Or true. If you refuse to accept any outcome other than what you desire, I think that says more about you than it says about what is there for Blizzard to work with.
I think you’re not fully understanding what my point is.
There are an infinite ways any story can go. A writer can, if they so choose, write absolute nonsense on the paper and that nonsense will occur in the story.
That nonsense will not necessarily make for a good story, though. Stories have structure and rules. Writing quality can be objectively acknowledged even if the entertainment one derives from a story is subjective.
I say there is no way to write Sylvanas’ redemption well because the story that has been written thus far has not set up a redemption story at all. There’s no groundwork for it. Blizzard made a bunch of key choices that actively make the redemption harder to pull off in even a half-assed way.
I again point to Illidan. While his redemption wasn’t done especially well it was functional because his victims were primarily off-screen.
When you’re writing a villain that you want to turn into a good guy later you do not heap tons and tons of pathos on top of their victims. At least not when the crime is as severe as genocide. This will turn the audience against them and you’ll have a Hell of a time getting most of that audience to root for the character ever again.
Of course some people will still like it. Some people genuinely liked GoT season 8. But the vast majority who are even a little critical of the story aren’t going to because it’d just be a bad plot point.
I think the question should be ‘will they write it’, not ‘will it be good writing’, because as much as I try not to be cynical I can’t see the latter mattering when it comes to Sylvie. And this is as someone who’s a fan (not of how they’ve used her, obviously).
So completely par for the course for Blizzard’s writing room, glad you agree!
Anything is possible with the current writing because nothing is impossible because nothing matters, canon is only canon as long as it is convenient to the story Blizzard wants to tell. If Blizzard said tomorrow “90% of Night Elves survived Teldrassil” there’s nothing we could do and it would be completely up Blizzard’s alley.
The answer to “could they” is always yes, and Blizzard has shown an alarming disregard for effective story telling so far. So it is definitely possible.
The only way to do this in a way that doesn’t further undermine the story that I can see is to have her be destroyed. By that I mean to shatter her entire world view, lay bare the consequences of her actions, and let her realize that she is wrong and has always been wrong.
That wouldn’t be a redemption in itself, but it’d be an effective way to begin a redemption for later. You need to lay the ground work for things like this or it won’t hit your audience the way you want it to.
That said, right now if Blizzard tries to pull a “redemption” for her I feel like they’ll go down the “Sylvanas was right” path, which would be a tragedy of story telling blunders given all she has done so far.
Unless Blizzard really is trying to write a story about the merits of genocide, which I don’t think is the case.
Which is why the introduction of an inherently inequitable and flawed/broken afterlife where souls are abused and used as currency and stripped of their self-identity, and if the “die” they are forever lost is so interesting. It throws real-world morality out the window. It shows that there is more afoot than what temporal beings can understand.
This is why all of the angst and gnashing of teeth about Sylvanas is so flawed. We have only gotten 1/10th of the story so far.
Some of the afterlives are flawed, but not nearly as flawed as it is now that Sylvanas broke the system and condemned trillions (One Shadowlands for all worlds and timelines) of souls to Super Hell.
Even if we learn of some super big plot twist about the Shadowlands later it is going to feel like a crap plot twist that validates all of Sylvanas’ evil up to this point. It will feel incredibly forced because it will be forced.
And that is to say nothing of the absolute rejection of emotional satisfaction for anyone who is invested in Sylvanas’ victims, as she’d be getting proven right to have murdered them.
Well there is currently no reason to assume Sylvanas had anything to do with breaking the system as it currently stands. Sylvanas is barely even in Shadowlands at this point (which is ironic considering how much her detractors complain about her).
Everything about Blizzard’s writings is forced. Everything about BfA is forced. Genn sending all of the remaining Alliance ships to chase the Horde’s navy to Azshara’s trap isn’t forced? Everything about WoW’s writing is forced. For some reason it’s only when it comes to Sylvanas specifically that it’s a problem for some folks.
And there is no emotional satisfaction for Sylvanas’s victims, because all of Sylvanas’s victims are fictional NPCs.
There is the possibility that she isn’t in control of herself. We will avenge the real enemy and she doesn’t need any redemption because she haven’t done anything wrong.
The people who RP themselves as genocide victims (who sadly make up an uncomfortable percentage of the story forum posters) will not be satisfied with Sylvanas’s death and removal from the story.
Teldrassil is not something they will ever, ever let go. A million Night Elven themed armors, Sylvanas being decapitated, Thrall being decapitated, Orgrimmar being destroyed. Nothing will ever make up for “muh Teldrassil.”
Kneecapping the story Blizzard wants to tell to appease the unappeasable Night Elf posters is folly and thankfully not something the actual writers will be wasting their time on in all likelihood.
I am again not talking about the super aggressive angry night elf fans that plague this forum. You’re right, nothing will appease them specifically.
But they aren’t the only people who were invested in the night elves as a race. Nor are the night elves the only victims of Sylvanas.
Blizzard wrote the Burning of Teldrassil in a very deliberate way. Their goal was to generate as much pathos for the night elves as possible and get as many members of the Alliance to sympathize with them and in turn hate their killer as possible, and it largely worked.
Then Blizzard “revealed” that Sylvanas was a traitor to the Horde. That her boss was responsible for Vol’jin’s death and that she took over the Horde to kill as many Horde as possible to fuel said boss and her new evil powers. They had her murder Saurfang, a much beloved character by the playerbase (though admittedly that love was lessened unintentially by Blizzard’s cheap writing), before abandoning the Horde and flying off.
Night elf fans, troll fans, orc fans, tauren fans, etc. etc. Blizzard gave everyone strong, emotional reasons to want to see Sylvanas brought to justice.
THAT is what I mean when I say “the people invested in Sylvanas’ victims”. A massive chunk of the playerbase that cares about the story and characters inside.
If she goes unpunished all those players will be denied any kind of emotional payoff for the downs they experienced during BfA.
