That was a really interesting story with serious world building implications.
It helped develop Nathanos as a character. But more importantly it made it clear that Sylvanas isn’t actually emotionless like she pretends to be, and in part, it makes some suggestions as to why, because only after the ritual, when Nathanos receives his new, magically enhanced body, does he start to feel “regret”.
Sylvanas has always had a magically enhanced body… But IIRC she REALLY DID break that body at ICC. So did she start to have more feeling after the first Valkyr sacrifice to bring her back? Nathanos even immediately after the ritual, suggests he has no interest in a romance with Sylvanas, but by BFA he’s very obviously done an about face on that. It seems that Dark Mirror makes cannon, the RPG concept that forsaken only feel heightened negative emotion and very little positive emotion.
For Sylvanas, sometimes attachment is a negative emotion. Her attachment style is toxic AF and makes her do toxic things. It was that way when she was alive so in undeath it’s even worse. Is the improved undead body MORE of that? Or does it include positive emotion. Idk, but it’s very interesting story telling.
At the end of BFA I was still on the edge of my seat to see how that story played out. The breaking of the helm and shattering of the sky box was big hype. when she said “I will free us all” I was very encouraged. Like Yes! I knew this story had to make some sense!. Then it didn’t.
Honestly, if she didn’t even go to SL… If she JUST broke the veil and then disappeared, and we went to the Shadowlands to fix it and learned how messed up the afterlife is, while the writers figured out what to do with Sylvanas… That would have been so much better.
Pity those people, because Calia happens to actually be a mother, and has completely dropped all worry and care of that child to instead develop a relationship with Jaina’s undead brother who has yet to do anything of note except suddenly exist again in a physical form out of plot contrivance.
So yeah, people who call Calia “mommy” have a strange desire for parental abandonment.
As I said before, everything boils down to mommy and daddy issues.
Well now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I’m on the fence, really. I’m with you on those points, I got excited for the whole thing and eventually disappointed. It will depend on what happens in Midnight for me to cast a veredict.
Can’t put a rotter on the promotional posters or in artwork. Just tint a dead woman’s skin grey or blue and call it a day. Xal’atath is a corpse too, and you don’t see her decaying.
The only reason Voss is noted as “The Leader” of the Forsaken in jest in the Anniversary Event is because she’s the only member of the Desolate Council given more voiced speaking lines than Calia. But you won’t see Voss on a single bit of promotional art.
Don’t get me wrong the art of sylvanas being a stitched together abomination elf is cool as hell, but i ain’t going to exclude people from the forsaken story when they were there since the start just cause they don’t have rot.
It’s not because they have a sexier model. It’s because the only people who even vaguely suggested forsaking Calia were the Forsaken.
She hasn’t been Forsaken by anyone. She doesn’t have the same cultural experience. Zellings was Forsaken by his family. Voss was Forsaken by her family. Calia and Derek were not. Is that touching? Sure. But it’s like Coming to America and Eddie Murphy’s character not really having anything in common with the American characters. Just because you have the same skin colors and hair styles doesn’t make you the same.
Exactly, there are plenty of reasons to dislike her that aren’t “she isn’t as rotten as me”, By claiming that characters who aren’t rotten aren’t forsaken, you are excluding every character they had from WC3, you are excluding dark rangers being there literal only lore class, you exclude the ghosts and banshees, They are all forsaken cause they were all forsaken and all built up the forsaken. Shut up about characters not being rotten enough and focus on actual story content
yeah i mean i think that’s a really optimistic panning-for-gold read on the writing. i really don’t think whoever wrote the story was contemplating, like, a hylomorphic reflection on the ship of theseus paradox or whatever suitably literary concept we could tack onto it; sylvanas has been edgy because she’s just an anime goth chick, and that’s sort of the extent of her vibe. like, the characters from warcraft are b- to c-shelf, but when they’re not the focus of the writers’ efforts then that’s perfectly fine. just having characters with problems isn’t good writing tho. and these writers are so incompetent at doing those characters that the entirety of shadowlands has become a farce for the ages.
Here’s some nuggets. Danuser isn’t subtle. It’s literally spelled out.
"Nor did he. Whatever emotion his mortal heart might have held, now it had room only for rage and contempt. He was Nathanos Blightcaller, Champion of the Banshee Queen. He almost smiled at the thought of the chaos he would unleash upon her foes.
He resumed walking, Anya following in admonished silence."
"For the briefest of moments, he felt the touch of something foreign, unsettling. A sensation absent since the day he died. A weakness of mortality that had imperceptibly stalked him and had, at long last, found his throat.
Nathanos felt regret."
I don’t know if you can be optimistic for paydirt already mined.