Don’t write them off, explain; how are they weak examples? What about Thassarian? Sylvanas was not forced to kill a beloved family member by Arthas as Thassarian was.
What about Gunther Arcanus? What about the other Death Knights? Have you played the Death Knight starting quest chain?
Sure, they never had there soul torn asunder by Zovaal nor did Arthas twist and personally torture their souls.
Edit: Gunther looks like general population undead, while the DKs went through a different necromantic* process as well, far removed from what Sylvanas went through.
I just want to note that the DKs aren’t short of murdering innocent and transgressions after freed from Arthas, they have just committed their crimes in a smaller scale/golfclap
How do you know that? Why else did those undead serve Arthas? Sylvanas was made a banshee right as she was killed. Her torture was being forced to watch her undead self help Arthas, just like Thassarian was.
I’m not saying DKs are innocent, I’m pointing out that they and Sylvanas made different choices once free of the Lich King’s control.
Plus Sylvanas never had Arthas force her to personally kill someone close to her, unlike Thassarian (that’s one hardship he has that Sylvanas doesn’t).
How do I know Zovaal didn’t rip their souls apart and why Arthas didn’t personally twist and torture their souls?
Because that didn’t happen…
Edit: you seem to think I’m talking about what Arthas made them do while under his control, I am not but I will chime in on that.
I think what he made them do added to their trauma(another level of suck added to Sylvanas/Forsaken 9 layer suck cake) and is removed from the soul wrenching.
Arthas did the following to Sylvanas from her death to being free of the Lich King’s control;
Is this the torture you’re referring to? And all Zovaal did was take a piece of Sylvanas’ soul and put it in a crystal.
Where in any of that was Sylvanas’ self-awareness lost? And she’s clearly no longer under Arthas’ or Zovaal’s control as of most of the Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne expansion. From that last point onwards, she’s making every decision herself.
In Edge of Night, she threw herself off the top of Icecrown, and was in a horrifying void, then the Val’kyr offered her a way out with one taking her place while the other 8 remained with her as allies, and Sylvanas accepted their offer. That did not reduce her self-awareness or her free will in any way.
Your argument that Sylvanas is not responsible for her actions as an undead is hollow because she still has self-awareness and free-will as an undead. Arthas puppeting her went away before any of the events in WoW.
No one gets a happy ending in Warcraft. And last I noticed the folks at Bastion weren’t being that gentile with Uther either.
So far, they’re not positing Arthas being split like he was struck with a mourneblade.
I really think people need to consider the possibility I mentioned above:
I’m assuming currently, if this was a thought out story arc:
The Light did “save” his soul to get him to Bastion.
However it wasn’t really for him. It had to have known his soul was damaged. He became the vector for subverting Devos to help the Jailer.
The other view, which is easy to accept:
He’s just a plot device for: Yes, we’re bringing Sylvanas back. There are reasons that she wasn’t herself.
This isn’t exclusive with the other concept above. So I think it’s both at once.
She was forced to aid the attempted extermination of her people. That’s not minor.
The Lich King and Zovaal are different entities in the story. It’s simply a fact that they have made the story say Zovaal possessed a piece of her, and that returning it changed her.
As we’ve seen a change arc with Uther we can pretty safely guess where they’re taking Sylvanas.
It was something of worth to him, it was something of worth to the story, to spin a cutscene around it. Considering Bastion and Uther, souls in WoW not being whole is a big deal.
This wouldn’t be a story problem if Blizzard hadn’t used Sylvanas as a cat’s-paw over the years.
Thassarian was one of the soldiers who went with Arthas to Northrend. After Arthas acquired Frostmourne he was slain by Falric, and then Arthas used Frostmourne to raise him.
As a Death Knight, Thassarian was forced to retain consciousness and awareness of what he was doing, and was forced to participate in the massacre at Capital City, where Arthas personally forced him to slay his own mother.
If this isn’t a parallel to Sylvanas’ experience, nothing is.
As you can see above, so was Thassarian.
Incidentally, that manga about Alliance death knights was released in 2009 during WotLK, in case anyone still wants to try to claim that human identity wasn’t tied to Lordaeron in WoW.
Not slain by Frostmourne is a difference for where the story is now. I don’t recall a soul shard for him in the vault.
That’s called a hook. It’s what they’re hanging Domination on. The person is somewhere, just not in control. It’s why no one should think Anduin is dying right now. (I wish, I so wish.)
I don’t remember them being so blunt about the percent loss in Lordaeron, where they were in Silvermoon. But, really, if Lordaeron was 90% loss, and then occupied by Arthas himself, no, there’s no meaningful human remnant to connect to it.
They already fled to Stormwind, and most would not want to remember.
TBH, I’d hope this comic would further show people why the repeated treatment of women in this series is under people’s skin.
They’re constantly being cast aside as in the man’s way. (Sylvanas for instance.)
Or they’re being killed to prove one man to another. (This comic.)
Or they’re being made evil to show off a male character. (Sylvanas for Anduin and Saurfang. And likely soon, Alleria.)
This obsession with showing, or describing, the woman’s horror is really psychotic looking.
It would be best if the writing team wrote a blog post, and admitted mistakes were made across the franchise. They won’t.
When I stay tortured her soul I’m talking about:
“Agony shot through her, agony such as she had never known, and Sylvanas suddenly knew that no physical pain she had ever endured could hold a pale candle to this torment. This was agony of spirit, of her soul leaving her lifeless form and being trapped. Of a, ripping, tearing yanking back from the warm sanctuary of silence and stillness.” - Arthas Novel
The process is further described in the UVG:
The Dark Ritual - “The ritual that Arthas used to turn Sylvanas into a banshee involved tearing her soul out of her still-living body. It infintely prolinged her existence as a creature filled with hate toward all life”
AND
Sylvanas Windrunner drifts in a sea of comfort, physical sensations replaced by the purity of emotion. She can grasp bliss, see joy, hear peace. This is the afterlife, her destiny. The eternal sea in which she found herself after she fell defending Silvermoon. She belongs here. With each recollection, her memory of this place palls. The sound grows distant; the warmth, cooler. The vision takes on the pallor of a half-remembered dream. But with horrific clarity, the memory always ends the same: Sylvanas’s spirit is wrenched away. The pain is so intense it leaves her soul forever torn. The grinning face of Arthas Menethil, with his lopsided smile and dead eyes, leers at her as he pulls her back into the world. Violates her. His laughter—that hollow laugh—the memory of it makes her skin crawl! - Edge of Night
Couple that with the fact that Zovaal ripped a piece of her soul off and stored it in his personal soul shard collection. I don’t think the effects will be exactly the same as Uther’s as she has had a worse experience with having her soul mangled and twisted. Alas, here we are in Uther has a team of Dr. Phils restoring and mending his soul while Sylvanas continues to get owned by her abuser.
You and Ainhin seem to be thinking I’m talking about what Arthas made them do; I am not. I associate the things he forced them to do with trauma which is another hallmark of being Forsaken.
You seem to believe that Sylvanas was shot with blue eye color, and having a piece of soul ripped from them isn’t that bad, I do not. I think what he did to her had a baseline/fundamental influence over her this entire time.
Lets you and I talk about the above instead of the soul torture conversation. Otherwise you would have to play catch up in that conversation because I’m not talking about what he made them do.
I have never seen anyone say “human identity isn’t tied to Lordaeron,” the Kingdom of Lordaeron was a human Kingdom it would be silly to make that assertion.
Its like saying “human identity isn’t tied to Stormwind” when it clearly is.
That was a jab at what other people are saying in a different thread, I just thought it was worth noting while I was going through the Death Knight Manga, which is simultaneously super-duper tragic undead, super-duper Lordaeron, and super-duper Alliance.
I’m pretty sure that the sequences being depicted in the panels I posted are intended to be disturbing, because they are depicting disturbing events.
You should read the rest of the Manga if you can, it’s actually quite good.
After the State DFEH suit against California…
Yeah a lot of it took on a very disturbing aura. The focus of too many of these arcs became strange. And not excusable as dark literary.
If you want to post a link, I might get to it. After I find the time to comparison read California’s amended complaint.
I think the “the Light is working with the Jailer” theory is grasping at straws. What if the Light sent him there to help Bastion? Has that been considered?
Thassarian was also forced aid the attempted extermination of his people. I brought up the forced matricide as a difference between his plight and Sylvanas’.
But we’ve seen no hint of Zovaal taking away Sylvanas’ free will after she broke free of the Lich King’s control.
I agree that souls not being whole is a big deal… but so far Blizz has been giving us a lot of telling without showing.
Deathisfinal did a good job of laying out the difference. What Arthas did to Sylvanas’s soul was on a different level than almost everyone, even Uther.
The reason why Sylvanas is so utterly broken is because Arthas paid specific attention to Sylvanas and the torture of her soul.
Almost every creature Arthas raises was forced to do evil things. But Arthas himself states that she vexed him, and he would make her pay for her defiance. It isn’t so much the actions that the people he raised were forced to commit that makes them similar. It is the direct soul torture Arthas did to Sylvanas specifically that sets her apart.
Why not save all his soul though?
And, beyond plot-hole, I don’t get how the Arbiter missed the partial soul deal.
It might be long-game, that the Light knew Champions would restore him. But he’s so Compassion now that still pushes us towards him wanting to help Sylvanas.
They over use emotional appeal writing: This is exactly why you don’t do it. All you do is reduce EVERYTHING to slop on the floor with no meaningful comparison to draw.
Someone is going to always be able to grab an appeal for something else on another side of the coin.
We…saw no hints in BC of Illidan becoming Legion Illidan. Can’t say what they don’t tell us helps much anymore. We’re left responding to their subjective imagery, wondering what they had in mind this time…since they won’t just write it. (And they just don’t know that far ahead.)
They’ve given us a lot of handwaving, empty scenery that doesn’t communicate. We have all these pieces on the board without connections to really put them together solidly.
But Sylvanas is not under the effects of Domination, otherwise Zovaal wouldn’t have bothered persuading her or bargaining with her.
The percentage of population loss doesn’t change the fact that Thassarian was also forced to try and exterminate his own people.
I understand where you’re coming from. More and more I’m seeing the problems with female characters in this game. Before the latest expac so many - with one exception - either go crazy, are/become villains, get sidelined, are poorly written and/or get killed off;
The one exception is Alexstraza, as I think Talanji is up in the air.
The writing team has admitted to a few mistakes (forgetting the original Draenei lore in BC, the mess they made of Kael’thas’ storyline in BC), but that’s the tip of the iceberg. I wonder if they’re playing fast and loose with canon to avoid accountability.
The Light in WoW isn’t omnipotent (at least not anymore). Even with the writers lack of story consistency, that’s how it is.
I agree with you completely that emotional appeal writing is overused in this story.
The problem is that the writers are making up whatever appeals to them at the time and expect us to mindlessly accept it. They could turn around and say a naaru in a tutu is the ultimate evil and Sargeras is the Jailer’s father destined to die fighting to save the universe and expect us to swallow it.
The handwaving and unconnected pieces don’t work for the most part, especially since some of them are retcons.