Why do some abuse victims/survivors identify with Sylvanas?

Lore Story Forum
1

Not trying to troll or trigger, this is a serious question. I’ve heard Sylvanas comes off as a rape/abuse survivor to many people. I ask this question for two reasons;

  1. There is only one character that’s a confirmed rape victim in the Warcraft franchise and it’s not Sylvanas, it’s the red dragon Keristrasza in Coldarra who was forced to become Malygos’ replacement consort and got branded with runes of control.
    (ADDENDUM: Confirmed characters who are rape victims/survivors in the franchise are Keristrasza, Leran - Garona’s mother and Taretha to name a few. Other examples include unnamed Orc, human and Draenei women subjected to it). The point remains that Sylvanas is not a rape victim.

  2. As the expansions go on, people’s opposition to Sylvanas isn’t based on what she is or what happened to her, but her choices (eg; Burning Teldrassil, what she did to Derek and Delaryn, killing Saurfang). And responding to abuse by becoming an abuser themselves is one of the worst choices an abuse victim/survivor can make.

While people may not identify with Keristraza or Leran because they died, remember Sylvanas died too.

Moderator: Discussion of sexual assault is inappropriate in the forums.

2

You don’t know what happened to the Draenei do you?

9 Likes
3

Thank you, I’ll amend that.

2 Likes
4

https://themindsjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/05/a-the-abused.jpg

5

Because the early Sylv story was about how Arthas killed and controlled her, which fits in with the same type of trauma that those things can leave on a person. I think a lot of people were reading her story for a while as a survivor coming to grips with what happened to her, and then that story was thrown away to just have made her a over the top evil doer.

I’d also note I think many times when this comes up it can be in response to people suggesting a redemption arc for Arthas, especially one where he steps back into that role with her, and that would be a really horrid turn in the story.

19 Likes
6

Sylvanas isn’t unique to being a victim.
She is among a list of many female characters who have been victimized.

Worst one is probably Jaina, they turned this accepting optimist into a hate fueled jerk until they changed their minds and had her change back for no discernible reason.
Which just makes her more deranged.

1 Like
7

You’re right.

I made this thread because Sylvanas is the one shilled the most by Blizzard, the one whose fanbase includes key writers and the one who gets identified with by abuse survivors the most (or at least the most outspoken ones).

8

I don’t subscribe to this particular interpretation of the character, but let’s keep something in mind:

Sylvanas did the same thing to Delaryn Summermoon. She’s forcibly raised the dead in the past, attempted to torture and control Koltira, and then helped the Jailer enslave Anduin. She’s killed countless innocents, and then had a very self-satisfied session of gloating when finally facing down Tyrande, and showed absolutely no remorse over her actions.

If Sylvanas is an example of an abuse survivor, then it’s in the same way that a movie’s serial killer underwent some kind of childhood trauma and uses it as an excuse to brutally torture and murder a dozen people. Inflicting the same sort of horrible things you went through on other people doesn’t make you a symbol. There might be an element of tragedy to it, but there was an element of tragedy in the fact that Arthas unwittingly condemned himself, all with the intention of “saving his people.”

24 Likes
9

I’m not going to spend too much time on this topic because I’m not sure if you are asking in good faith and it is well established in Warcraft lore history with Sylvanas’s entire character arc.

But up until BfA Sylvanas’s story was about overcoming and achieving and finding herself in a position to never let what happened to her happen again. The devs threw that out in BfA when they made her turn mustach-twirler. But this last cinematic was a return to form to that Sylvanas which is a good thing.

The BfA Sylvanas was the anomaly.

I refuse to let a good character be drowned out because of bad writing in BfA. Shadowlands is attempting to correct the bad narrative decisions in BfA. That’s it.

EDIT: The other characters you mentioned were not OG Warcraft 3 hero characters, they were not racial leaders for 2 decades, they were not former Warchiefs. Sylvanas is all of those things. Not comparable.

15 Likes
10

While I can see where you’re coming from, I do have one objection.

You said Sylvanas wanted to stop what happened to her ever happening again pre-BfA. Except she was raising people into undeath without their permission as early as Cata (as seen in her “what difference is there between you and the Lich King now?” conversation with Garrosh).

1 Like
11

As is covered in the Forsaken intro experience, and as Blizzard has reiterated on many occasions, the Val’kyr risen undead are not mind controlled. Only Domination magic and the Lich King’s helm can do that. That is the canon lore. The gameplay was not always able to present it well, especially in Cata where everything was rushed.

As far as I’m concerned that is completely debunked. The only character Sylvanas attempted to control was Jaina’s brother and she failed. We don’t have all the details about what happened to Anduin which I’m sure the compass cinematic and the book will explain.

I know it hurts to admit, but Delaryn and Sira chose to serve willingly. That is what the quests say, that is what the flavor text says, that is what the wisps that attack the Horde players implies. There is 0 evidence that Delaryn was being controlled like Anduin or the Scourge.

8 Likes
12

Because they’re dullards?

Sylvanas has been a manipulative, abusive villain since WC3:TFT, lest we forget her betrayal and murder of the Alliance forces at Lordaeron, and the mind-slaves she made of the nearby mercenaries and ogre tribe.

2 Likes
13

My argument is that they were forced to be undead against their will, and that Sylvanas was doing this as early as Cata.

Like it or not, Sylvanas’ villainy is canon; the Burning of Teldrassil and what she did to Derek and Delaryn is canon. How I feel about the devs villain-batting Yrel and the Light (not to mention how they did Xe’ra dirty) is how you’re feeling now about Sylvanas.

14

I don’t think so. It’s hard to explain and I think only other Sylvanas fans who are still Sylvanas fans even now can really understand. How I’m feeling about Sylvanas is thrilled. Despite it being illogical, Sylvanas saying “I will never serve” is the most Sylvanas thing Sylvanas has done in 3 years.

But yes Yrel is a good example, maybe even Turalyon. Blizzard will choose characters to be the center of the drama, and they may even villain bat them in the future. But few of these characters have 20 years of baggage and fan connection the way Sylvanas does.

But when you see large swaths of the fanbase demanding your favorite character die a brutal, humiliating death day after day for years for actions that you consider out of character because the writer’s thought it was dramatic…then you’ll understand.

12 Likes
15

Because when I was raped it was easier to view my assaulter (the other word is banned apparently, insane) as a monster lacking a soul, and it was tempting to center my existence on despising them.

Because while many people commit suicide for many reasons, the reason why I tried to kill myself was because I felt my life had no purpose and I had no one close to me even though I was a ~leader~ in high school. I felt alone and empty.

Because growing up Afroindigenous, I was taught the violent past my family has endured. Not just the colonial heritage, understanding we were on this land for centuries and thousands of years and the violence of chattel slavery, but also the 20th century massacres my grandpa’s tribe endured because the land had something They™ wanted.

So I look at Sylvanas.

Arthas genocides the Blood Elves because they had a source of power to resurrect Kel’Thuzad. Because their land had something he wanted.

Arthas looks at Sylvanas as a defiant woman, and pierces her stomach* with his sword, twisting her soul into a Banshee (a real life myth being tied to women of suffering and pain and vengeance, whose precursors and derivations are tied to motherhood or family) and (we now know) permanently taking a part of her soul such that she was permanently broken, unable to have any agency.

So Sylvanas decides to hunt down this monster; this is her purpose. And yet, she was unable to confront the monster who permanently broke her. Not because she wasn’t in the area, not because she was unable to narratively, but it was a choice of Blizzard. She was robbed of closure in Wrath.

So she killed herself, her purpose gone, having not been given closure. Suicide from depression.

And WoW sent her to Hell. Suicides being damned to Hell is a misconception popularized because of Dante and his Forest of Suicides in Inferno; it is not, in fact, Doctrine of any of the Apostolic Churches of the West.

Because the reality is a lot of survivors do, in fact, become abusers. Whether to the same extent or to a lesser extent. We engage with the world with the tools we are given by the circumstances of our formative years. This story could’ve recognized that, and had her overcome the cycle of abuse and violence she’s been inserted in and endured.

And yet here we are.

None of the characters you mentioned compare to the narrative weight of Sylvanas, and her centrality to the franchise, and the complexity and layers of her suffering.

*In spanish where Sylvanas was stabbed is “vientro”, which is how “womb” is described in prayer in Spanish, e.g. in Hail Mary

24 Likes
16

Taretha Foxton, but she is long dead.

2 Likes
17

Coz people like to project. It’s why we can’t have nice things.

18

Thank you for reminding me of her. And that’s a thing. There’s a lot of other victimized characters - in fact, the Ebon Blade have all gone through almost exactly the same thing as Sylvanas (for example, Thassarian was forced to kill his own mother by Kel’Thuzad - even Arthas didn’t force Sylvanas to kill a beloved family member)… but the Ebon Blade didn’t go down the path Sylvanas did.

And again - Sylvanas died too, the difference is she’s undead.

2 Likes
19

Well said.

I’m not sure if Blizzard sees all of these parallels the way we do (the parts of the community that can empathize with a character like Sylvanas). The way they have handled the character is very tacky with all of this in mind in my opinion, especially in BfA. The way Blizzard handled Teldrassil was egregious, and using Sylvanas to do it was just…so, so dumb in so many ways. I think they regret it, I hope they do. I hope they use all the cheesy timey-wimey magician did it tropes to undo it.

Ay yi yi.

5 Likes
20

They don’t.

Which is why it’s vile.

It’s the same issue with putting the Trans Chromie story in a Fairy Tale book they preemptively frame as non-canon/schrondiger’s canon.

And it took him one full week of transphobes using their framing to undermine LGBT players, harassing folks in the forums and across social media, countless people @'ing him and responding to his tweets begging him to confirm it, until he did so.

Without apologizing in the first place, recognizing the problem that caused his clarification.

They’re violently culturally irresponsible.

5 Likes