Also, as a Forsaken main, I like my Sylvanas practical and ruthless. As cold in death as in life, like when the val’kyr first sized her up.
The more Golden writes her with this quivering lower lip the less my interest.
My dude, did you miss Uther’s entire arc?
At least one person involved had some level of regret/forgiveness towards him.
Well, she was also only committing to those fights because she had to. She wasn’t nice in how she fought, but if Garrosh hadn’t been forcing her hand would she be doing much more than what she did in Vanilla? IE: just not give a crap what the Forsaken do regionally as long as UC isn’t threatened?
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Garrosh did force the invasion against Sylvanas’ counsel, but she did revel in using the Plague “as planned” despite his orders.
As for “not giving a crap what the Forsaken do regionally” that’s an interesting way to phrase “putting a dreadlord in charge of virtually every arm of the military.” Killing farmers, collecting skulls, reviving a necromancer, gassing stripped captives, poisoning a happy friendly dog - these were the prerogatives of the Forsaken war machine while Garrosh lived in Garadar.
We’re also told the first New Plague initiatives were her idea iirc.
Exactly. For me, Arthas is a “love to hate” villain. His story was high quality AND he has presence. But I knew he was the villain, from when he became a Death Knight and then Lich King. I knew that he had to go down for the sake of the world in-universe.
While the Culling of Stratholme was debatable as to whether there was another way, it was treated as the start of a dark path. And the first clearly evil choice Arthas made was after he destroyed his ships so the men couldn’t retreat… when he lied to his soldiers and betrayed the mercenaries by claiming they destroyed the ships on their own against his wishes.
Given the fanboying and fangirling I’ve seen over Illidan, the irony of those people condemning or mocking Xe’ra as fangirling over Illidan is thick enough to choke on (Not saying you were, and I like your whole comment, just had to point out the irony I’ve seen).
Interesting that Sylvanas’ calling Arthas that was kept in Warcraft 3: Reforged, but Garrosh calling Sylvanas that in Cata was cut.
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but never pay full price for a late pizza."
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I’ve said it before. One of the problems with morality in WoW is that it’s selectively applied based on the character’s popularity. I actually made a thread about this phenomenon.
And another about something similar.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/is-the-world-of-warcraft-story-anti-justice/1020524/490
A bit of derailment occurred, but the original points remain valid.
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If you’d done serious reflection about being a bad person you wouldn’t be doing this “wow, this Christie is a misogynist, do you actually hate women?” routine and pretending it’s a valid contribution to a discussion of this character’s fictional history.
Robert Brooks and his thoughts on masculinity don’t have anything to do with the morality of Sylvanas. And if Golden writing an evil, drunken predator as someone who made his way to power and the main villain is misogynist, feminist writing is just the Hays Code reskinned.
He beheads Taretha and we miss her. We cheer Thrall to crush him alive. Later Thrall says Blackmoore deserved worse than death. If Golden’s a misogynist just because she wrote about his evil while he lived, when is it possible to depict without endorsing? Does your ideology even believe in that?
Are Roux and Golden more misogynist than Metzen for stretching Arthas’ creep streak so far?
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You need to examine your own biases and prejudice against women Ruthus. I am not the problem here, you are.
Yeah, whatever. My bias and post-judice against you is that you’re a vibe terrorist that can’t talk about this character without projecting. You can decide what the problem there is.
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a vibe terrorist That’s at least a new anti-feminist term I have not heard before. I guess when the vibe is misogynistic it’s a vibe that deserves to be challenged.
"She always calls people misoginists!’ I call actual misogynists what they are. sorry for killing the misogynistic vibe.
Keep up the self-congratulatory derailment and maybe I’ll decide I’ll like your ideas about what kinds of evil things people should be allowed to depict in fiction. Your track record’s stellar.
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I do not think any of us are “the problem,” as we are not the writers or Devs, and these discussions have been going on since WC 3.
It is clear people have different opinions, and gravitate to different PoVs in a story, or form their own interpretations based on their frame of mind.
If the three of us never logged into the forums again, the same issues and problems would be discussed by others. So I doubt any of us as individuals are “the problem.”
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Thought you said this wasn’t about feminism, and I was “making this something it’s not.”
See, when I use the air quotes, it’s for things that were actually said in this thread - unlike in your post just now. If you’re known for pulling this kind of thing, who do you think is the problem there?
If you were sorry for killing the vibe you’d go back to your books about how men should have sex better. You wouldn’t keep trying to pretend people not liking your favorite necromancing sadist (or writing a villain who assaults women) means they’re “anti-feminist.”
I have to say, that phrase was new to me, too. When I read it right now, I was like:
“Hey! Never heard that before! That is kind of funny and appropriate for the context!”
Kind of like when Smallioz called Ren/Mith a “crybully.” I never heard crybully before that, I was laughing so hard when I read that.
“vibe-terrorist” “crybully” lol
If Ren is good for one thing, it is she inspires all sorts of funny insults I have never seen before.
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Yeah, it seems like misogynists actually can’t logically explain or defend their hatred of women, so they resort to petty name-calling.
so funny! …but not funny ha ha, funny weird.
Either love her or hate her. As long as it’s reasonable and makes sense I don’t see what the issue is.
Are there people who hate her just because she’s a popular female character? Of course, but those people are in the minority. We all seen some questionable takes about what fate she deserves, but again, those people are largely not around anymore
I think when it comes to “their” hatred of the woman in question - Sylvanas - people have used all sorts of lore and canon to explain why they hate her. Sylvanas is absolutely loathed by many characters and regular folks in the story, after all.
And she has been used as a grim puppet by Blizzard to stomp all over various fanbases, from Nelves to Orcs to Worgo to… the Horde is nothing… the list goes on.
I root for the gal, she raises the stakes and makes things fun. But I also understand why so many Players have negative feelings about her.
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I mean, I’m a big proponent of the idea that WoW has a bad problem with making morality tied to how subjectively “pretty” or human your race is but I don’t think that that applies here.
Arthas’ downfall was a path he led himself down. This doesn’t mean you cant sympathize with him or acknowledge that Mal’Ganis was intentionally goading him to go further and further in a downward spiral.
Sylvanas’ downfall was due to Arthas killing her, reviving her in a hellish state and performing torture on her until she was broken. This does not mean everything or anything she’s done is justified!
Honestly I’d say the big difference to me is that pretty much all of Sylvanas’ charicterization outside of Gilneas or post-Legion is about how damn tortured and broken she is. She just wanted to end it all after Arthas died, and the only times she’s been shown to be even remotely happy is when Nathanos got his new body and when reconciliation with her sister looked like it was happening. Arthas “killed” Mal’ganis and didn’t miss a step.
There are definitely parallels between the two but Arthas is definitely the less sympathetic of the pair.
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This isn’t just about Sylvanas. The dislike of Sylvanas as a character is fine. It’s Ruthus’s blame of feminist writing. It’s his posturing of feminism as a negative impact on the story. His reluctance to say he believes in equality and not providing any logical explanation on why he ferls that way.
So when we say “some of the Sylvanas hate is not about her character” what we mean is both fans of Sylvanas and anti-Sylvanas fans recognize she’s a stand-in for feminist ideology, and some people have anti-feminist and anti-woman stances that factor into their bias against this character.
Misogyny is the prejudice and veiled hatred of women. Anti-feminisim is a form of misogyny. Yeah, that’s just how it is. This hatred of he character didn’t start at Teldrassil. It started when she became the first female Warchief of the Horde in Legion - or before that when she challenged Garrosh, who was the poster boy of established patriarchy and patriarchal masculinity
The overwhelming hate for Anduin because he, too, challenges patriarchal masculinity, is also anti-feminst.
And I can challenge him on that opinion with an opinion of my own - as I did. Without calling him a misogynist.
In my opinion, WC 3 had an allegorical framing of SA with actions performed by Arthas on Sylvanas. As a youngin playing that game - before WoW, before I knew about Forum arguments or even the names of the Devs - just from playing through WC 3, I got the feeling the Video game was saying something about SA couched in fantasy video gameplay.
I take that impression with me. So, I disagree with him that there was some Blizzard style new wave feminism that made Arthas contemptible. I do not need to call him a misogynist to point out I have a different opinion.
I am glad you added that part about Garrosh, because I was gonna say, the Sylvanas hate started way before she became Warchief.
I do not think that is fair. Alot of the Anduin hate comes from various reasons. Like how he lead the whole Alliance. And he was a stand in for Human Hegemony and Supremacy among the Alliance fanbase - fans of the other races chaffed at Humans dominating everything, and he was the face of Humanity.
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