What might happen to Sylvanas at the end of Shadowlands is that due to painfully bad writing she goes back to leading the Forsaken and takes her seat on the Horde council and that will be absurd on every level but still much better than Calia freaking Menethil
Considering you openly admit to not following the lore by not reading any of WoW’s accompaning material, this statement seems hypocritical.
You hate Sylvanas because she emasculates you. You precieve her as personally taking away your sense of strength and power displayed by your list of all the things she ‘took from you.’ I’m not gonna get more into this topic but this is so common with anti-sylvanas types. That’s your issue to deal with though, not anyone elses.
When I was a kid I was obsessed with She-Ra because it made me feel so empowered, imagine a 5 year old girl running through the woods with a toy sword yelling “For the honor of Greyskull!” My sister and I named our childhood dog, a black lab She-ra, the Princess of Power. I watched the documentary called The Toys that Made us and I watched the Masters of The Universe episode and was actually disgusted that the creators hated She-Ra because “it took ‘the power’ away from boys and gave it to girls” and that’s the first time that it hit me that misogyny claims masculinity is based on precieved power over women, and that female empowerment is seen as threatening to fragile mens egos. Imagine being told “the ‘power’ is not for you.” Because that’s how I felt, I doubt you could imagine that because you’ve always had the power, it belonged to you, you were freely given it over and over.
Girls/women just want to feel empowered too. Giving “power” to women doesn’t change your whole identity. But it is sad to me that men who grew up in the 80’s snd 90’s through media and gaming have essentially been told ‘the power’ only belongs to them. So when Sylvanas beat Bolvar and Saurfang… we have to deal with this. Why can’t it just be cool that she did that?
I thought it was cool. It made me feel like that kid again, the one who thought she had power too. This is the reason I have She-ra and Sylvanas Funko Pops side by side on my desk.
Out of curiosity, how can you say this when you yourself admit you haven’t read half of wows lore, which are in the novels?
Firstly I follow the lore and the things I said is 100% true, if it werent you would be telling me why its wrong by quoting the book.
Whats actually funny is that the game invalidates the books time and again. When Kaleaon points out to BTS that we can see Sylvanas inner monologue so it couln’t be true…
What do we see in the game?
Sylvanas and the game lore completely making that notion obsolete. How do the writers justify changing lore by making Sylvanas lie in her mind to the reader? They don’t because the books never mattered.
Blizzard can barely keep their writing consistent from one expansion to the next and the books are collateral damage. If just keep up with the latest lore that spews out of the game you are pretty much good and reading couple of wiki sites is enough to stay up to date.
And allow me to add that you all who claim to actually read the book… don’t actually read the book. I did a little experiment with Drahliana who claimed absolute nonsense… and only if I were to read that everything would become clear.
Well, I read that book and all of you… You, Drahliana, Ren and Curse were lying the entire time or simply didn’t understand what the book was saying. Curious that that thread died immediately when someone asked y’all to directly quote the book for all the fantastical claims. I am still waiting but I doubt anyone will.
Why would anyone put time and energy to source the book and her internal monologue for you, if you are just going to reject the books canon for limited in-game unrealiable narrators?
That seems like a giant waste of time and energy to me. If you want to know… you should read the books!
Oh spare me your projection of your own issues on me Ren. No one made Sylvanas the ambassador of all women where her actions being representative of them or their place in fantasy.
There are plently of other female characters with much less toxic behavior that you can identify with. Sylvanas is an evil abuser and yes she did abuse Tyrande. Nathanos, that slime was there to taunt her, mock her and abuse further until the anti-climactic end where end where it ended when HE wanted it to end.
Since you’re so keen on making parallels between this story and its characters to real life but yet somehow you champion these two absolute garbage human beings is astounding to me.
You want a real life analogy? Here is a girl that got abused, became an abuser and found herself a toxic boyfriend to match her own and now proceeds to make everyone around them as miserable as possible for their own selfish desires and enjoyment.
And like always in life sometimes it is the worst people that things somehow tend to work out for them and they get what they want or get away scott free because of luck… or you know family connections.
These are the characters you root for and try to label anyone misogynist if they disagree. I don’t see you or recall you defending Jaina or Tyrande from the Horde toxic fandom who called for their head on a daily basis. When BFA was out in full, there are much better female characters in this game to root for and Sylvanas sure as heck isn’t one of them.
So lets cut the BS and say it true. You like Sylvanas and she can destroy anything she wants as long it works out for her then too bad for everyone else. They can shove off.
They can literally quote the book and show me where I am wrong. I have it now and finished reading it (dear lord was it bad…) If they started to monologue it means they have nothing and are just making up a theory to push their unsubstantiated claims. The book said what I was saying the entire time but y’all knew that. It wasn’t about what was true, it was about moving the goal post.
Less threatening women? Women who don’t make you feel emasculated?
I like Sylvanas specifically because she’s who she is. I’m not going to settle for any less to appease your fragile male ego.
Deal with it. She’s here to stay.
Less threatening women? What? Jaina and Tyrande kick butt and are actually good people.
Talanji is a great character because she saw what Sylvanas for what she was and refused to submit to her power fantasy. Sylvanas is a toxic character and who makes everyone around her miserable.
A toxic abuser who makes everyone around her miserable, gets it her way and slides around consequences like they are rubber.
You have talked to me about this before. You know that I said I have no problem with her being around.
Why do you seek to make a caricature out of what I say? She is a horrible person with horrible toxic people like Nathanos around her.
She commits horrific acts with absolutely zero consequence. Her plot armor defends her against everything and makes for a horrible story.
Sylvanas isn’t representative of women, she is representative of toxic people and it makes sense to me that her more staunchest fans are like Accolonn.
That Sylvanas as a character is empowering makes complete sense, she’s powerful, she values her own individuality and is on an endless, tragic quest for freedom. Just as Nathanos embodies loyalty and unconditional love. The fact that their other traits are toxic ones and that they’re both arguably very bad persons overall is irrelevant in that regard, we can cherrypick one trait in a character and let it inspire us even if the rest of the character is depicted as negative, that’s why we get to root for villains in the first place
To me that’s what a good fictional character should be. If you look at Anduin, he’s the best person in Warcraft, he has all the qualities you can think of, that’s what his character is intended to be, a role model. And it doesn’t work. He sucks
However, you can totally feel inspired by Tyrande’s thirst for justice, or Genn’s boldness
So much for sharing Makani’s recent comic as an olive branch, if you can’t even use that to understand the nuance of why people like her why bother sharing it at all?
I thought you had resolved to build bridges with me? not continue to burn them.
If people unironically view Sylvanas as a role model I say we just give up on the Human race and pave the way to let the dolphins or chimps take over.
Because thats Makani’s nuance not Blizzards. I can appreciate her work but thats not what Blizzard has presented to me patch after patch. Expansion after expansion. I can recognize what Sylvanas could be or should have been and what she is today. And the problems that cause for her as well as everyone else in the story.
Resolving and building back bridges is conforming my opinion to yours? Really? I have said multiple times that Sylvanas should face consequences. I think I specifically said I wanted Tyrande to smack her around and make her suffer for all the suffering she has caused.
And you said you agreed.
When I said these things and you “liked” those comments why do you think I did? Some sick torture P involving Sylvanas and Tyrande? Or rather a victim getting her come uppance on the evil abuser?
On this thread I am saying what I said back then. But now apparently I am misogynist according to you.
I am not going to change my opinion or tell you what you want to hear so I can win some internet points with you.
I only said that your gripes with Sylvanas, specifically the list of things she “took from you” sound more like emasculation than anything else.
You can also be a victim of misogyny.
It’s just an observation.
Meanwhile you outright said you think I’m a toxic, abusive human being.
I said you identify with a toxic human being.
Idk, if you are a toxic human being but most Sylvanas fans I have talked to in my personal experience love the trolling that Sylvanas causes other fans of other characters or other races.
She is a character that is constantly taking agency away from other characters, doing evil things and committing horrible crimes. Everytime someone tries to stop her or bring her to justice they fail. Tyrande, another strong female character, being a prime example.
She couldn’t save anyone and everytime she confronted Sylvanas she failed to accomplish anything while Sylvanas smugly takes her leave while completing her intended objective.
Over and over and over again.
And now she smugly will jump into the maw to get her toxic boyfriend out.
She decides what crimes she will commit and she seems to decide her own “punishement” as well. It is surreal.
Then that is fair. Sylvanas has done a lot of terrible things, like in the new cinematic when she admits her crimes are un-forgive-able. That’s what I love about Sylvanas, she’s slways been about self refection. She’s been a mirror to examine toxic traits. As someone who likes psychology, Sylvanas is the perfect way to deep dive into it.
I’m currently reading a book titled The Science of Evil: on Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty by Simon Baron-Cohen.
I think people are drawn to redeemable villians in fiction because it’s a way to hone our ability for empathy in a safe way.
Liking the hero is one dimensional and boring. It’s why fans of both Jaina and Tyrande want them both to be free or moral constraints so they can be more like Sylvanas and be destruction incarnate.
Them being constantly held back by moral superiority and expectation to be peacekeepers is why I’m not into Jaina or Tyrande. Despite them both being strong female characters and good role models, like you said, and I don’t disagree. I don’t need good role models, I need to explore the very depths of the ugliness of human nature, so I can find the light on the other side, in some dark night if the soul archetype.
Are you familiar with Jung’s Warrior Archetype? There’s a shadow version of the same archetype, relating to unhealed trauma that I think fits Sylvanas to a T.
There’s nothing quite like the divine feminine urge to destroy everything. (You should watch the movie Mother! By Darren Aranofsky if this last line piques your interest in religious allegory, looking at you Thad! wink)
There’s only two things I think that could be a fitting end to Sylvanas’s story.
She actively commits to rebuilding what she took from the Night elves, and the world, or she stays in the Shadowlands forever, preferably in Revendreth, to be drained and to atone. Either way I want her out of the story.
I do think I’ll get my wish that she just stops being the protagonist for WoW for at least a while and will just stay in the Shadowlands, but not to repent. She’ll feel super sorry for what she did and people will be like “grrr Sylvanas you make me so mad but you real cute tho, we good”, and she’ll just stay behind in the Shadowlands and out of the story. Thank God, we’ll finally be rid of her. Mashallah.
Stop making WoW revolve around these few characters and their melodrama. Stop it. It doesn’t endear me to any of them.
Always? I missed that definitely. Until very recently she has been an extreme pessimist and a total sociopath who lacked the capability to empathize with others. Her recent change does little to address the many, many wrongs she has done.
In certain shows like Breaking Bad we can see Walter White descend into dark and darker paths. Circumstances beyond his control forced him to actions he would have never done but had to. Thats what made him compelling and a bad guy to root for. Eventually he went from Walter Heisenberg… he was the one that knocks now.
Episode 1 Walter and Episode 62 Walter are two completely different people, and in the end he finally admitted all he did was not for his family but for himself. Finally. Some honesty.
Sylvanas is different. World of warcraft writing is different. A good story has circumstances force characters to do evil because they had no other option… or thought they didn’t. I like to read a lot and I have to fanboy over Joe Abercrombie. You want to find strong female characters? Do yourself a favor and read his books. Sylvanas is a joke compared to characters like Savine Dan Glokta or Monza Murcatto.
I am sure there are a thousand female characters in a thousand books that make Sylvanas look like crayon scribblings of a 5 year old but I strongly recommend Joe and his work.
A good story has characters in a ship riding a storm and you watch as they tell a very human story of shades of grey while trying to make the best of it.
In WoW the characters are gigantic stars who’s gravitational pull entire ocean planets according to their will and make things work for them.
Some of these characters are Andiun… and yes Sylvanas. Sylvanas is just the biggest star we have seen so far.
Wow’s writing is bad. really really bad. I am not consuming Wow’s story because it is telling me a compelling story or even compelling characters. They have me hooked for nostalgia’s sake and there is a character called sylvanas who is destroying what I used to like as a kid. And each time in this popcorn flic I wait for the hammer to drop on her. But it doesnt and I keep waiting. We have gone from Hammer to her just stepping on a lego and still nothing yet. It has become a point of frustration that this character can enjoy so much blatant favoritism from the writers and her fans that try to justify it with weak arguments.
This isn’t ok.
/end rant
Again, to reiterate, it’s in her internal monologues, which are in the books. To not miss it you would need to read the books with a basic level of literacy.
Can you go more into detail about this? How could this one character be ruining everything you loved as a kid?
Unless what you loved as a kid was this male empowerment fantasy.
It seems to me like you have gotten way too comfortable with privilige and you have come to expect that your male power fantasies will always be rewarded by the media you consume. (Again this goes back to my Masters of the Universe story) I don’t blame you personally for this, but it’s the reason why male gamers throw tantrums when they don’t get what they want from a franchise.
It’s so tiring. It’s up to you, as an adult, to manage your own expectations and dissapointment. Not demanding Danuser be ousted because he wrote a story you don’t like.
I said all that and this is your take away? Alright then.
Why bother making a post this is your sole point and reply?
I called it. But here we are… like clockwork.
Imagine expecting and demanding a person that killed men, women and CHILDREN by burning them alive face justice and consequence for her actions is a symptom of male privilege.
Alright I no longer think you identify with a toxic person.
You are a toxic person.
That’s a strawman.