Yet another Sylvanas rant

Lore Story Forum
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I’m not happy about the potential Edge of Night retcons and I get what you are saying. But in Edge of Night if we are supposed to believe that is when she met the Jailer, she pretty much says that “In the grand scale of things, the Lich King is insignificant.” so she got to see beyond the veil at what is truly the Big Bad threat of the Universe and it’s up in the air if all of these strange path choices she made which seem like diversions to her original path will be worth it from a story telling point of view.

I can suspend my disbelief that she needed to go off the rails to get to this point if the outcome is a good story. If it’s not a good story, Blizzard would be shooting themselves in the foot.

110

Which is true.

Which is all entirely irrelevant. The player character exists in a sense, they do things, these things canonically happen. This quasi-status doesn’t negate that, yet nobody cares, showing the actual actions don’t matter

That’s the same as being disingenuous, lol.

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111

Except it’s not irrelevant whatsoever. Players have no agency in what the game forces us to do. We cannot choose to not mow down a bunch of drowning Horde members in the Alliance MoP intro. We cannot choose to not betray the Alliance in the Horde Icecrown storyline.

We are forced to do it or the game literally cannot proceed. You HAVE TO DO THEM. The fact that you pretend you cannot tell the difference is just…disingenuous. Sorry if you’re upset that people are calling you the thing you’re being.

I’m glad that you’ve just admitted you’re being disingenuous at this point so I can stop responding to your nonsense driving the thread off topic.

Thanks for that.

112

I don’t know if I can agree with this. I think that if a character has to go off the rails at all to make a story work, then by default it cannot be a good story because you needed stupid writing to get there in the first place. And because the main plot of Shadowlands ties back to the writing in BFA that brought the plot here, it can never really be a better story than BFA was.

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113

This is all true of Sylvanas. The player and Sylvanas are both subject to what is written. That doesn’t mean you can’t complain about both.

I can’t tell if you don’t actually know the difference between doing something and complaining about having to do it.

I didn’t, I was pointing out how nonsensical your comment was.
‘At best it is disingenuous, at worst it is disingenuous.’ lol
You realize how meaningless that is?

I don’t like Sylvanas, she’s a bad character. But that doesn’t make all criticism valid anymore than all criticism of Calia isn’t.

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114

i don’t know "stupid’ is not a valid argument.

A character regressing is still a good story. A character being a villian and having a major revelation or change of heart isn’t a bad story. There’s entire tropes that deal with these kinds of stories. Stupid is a very subjective argument.

“That’s just dumb” isn’t good criticism.

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Then why did you need to say you have to suspend your disbelief for the sake of the story’s outcome?

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116

A character having an arc and changing for the better (or worse) is not inherently bad, obviously, but it can be bad when it happens within the span of less than a single expansion. It makes it feel rushed and clearly just done to make the story go in a way they couldn’t have cleverly written on their own.

And that’s what’s going on with Sylvanas’ ‘redemption’ or ‘hesitation’ with Anduin.

In the last expansion she was laughing at victims of her actions, calling her own followers pathetic, murdering and resurrecting her own people as cannon fodder and abandoning them after she murdered a bunch of innocent civilians in a mass inferno genocide.

And then smash cut to a single character being forcibly mind controlled (Something Sylvanas also did with no remorse) and now she’s metamorphically wringing her hands and clearly about to betray the Jailer because of it.

It’s unearned. It doesn’t feel like something she’d do based on the almost 2 decades of characterization we have of her. She’s not betraying the Jailer because she thinks she can get one over on him and put herself into a better position (Which would be in line with her characterization), she suddenly feels bad for a victim of her own machinations, which we’ve never had happen before.

You can’t even explain it away with this being some major revelation that Blue Screens Sylvanas and makes her change her mind. What’s been done to Anduin is something she’s done before, and something she exactly wanted and was going to do in BfA with Derek in the LAST EXPANSION.

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117

Remember that time that Sylvanas kidnapped Crowley’s daughter, and made him surrender to the invasion she carried out by threatening to turn his daughter into her personal undead slave if he didn’t do what she wanted?

Pepperidge Farm remembers

What was it we were treating being raised into undeath as an analogue for again?

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118

Garithos. Garithos exists as a character because of the decisions of Sylvanas and the other elves. So while she doesn’t hold all the blame, she was a part of it.

Emphasis mine. AFTER. Let me tell you the Story of Garithos, and how he was created from the actions of a living Sylvanas Windrunner and her people.

Garithos and his family lived in town near the borders of the elven kingdom. In the Second War when the Horde raged that far north, the elves all broke their oaths to help the humans(promises they made after getting the human’s help with the troll wars), and shut themselves behind their walls and said “not our problem”. The only elves to speak against this were Alleria and her loyal followers. Sylvanas even tried to talk her sister out of leaving.

Because of this Garithos’ entire town and family were slaughtered while the elves stood by and did nothing. The civilians literally ran to the elves and got shut out of the forest through the gates, refused entry. And there they were slaughtered, while the Rangers, Sylvanas included, stood by and watched.(Literally close enough to see it happening) Then when the orcs entered their lands and attacked the elves, they then cried to the Alliance for backup, which the Humans then gave.

This is the reason Garithos grew to hate the elves so much he became a racist. He blamed them for breaking their oaths and watching his family and his people get slaughtered on their doorsteps while they did nothing to help. The thought was this was a Human problem, and the elves did not care unless it affected them. Sylvanas did not speak out against this way of thought, not until after the Second War was over, not until after she already tried to stop Alleria from leaving to help the Humans.

Then during the 3rd war, she did speak up, but her and her peoples’ actions had already led to the creation of Garithos. The Scourge comes through and he is one of the last high ranking individuals left in the Alliance and is able to rally enough men and succeed enough that he was actually pushing the Scourge back. That’s right; slowly but surely Garithos was winning. Then the Blood Elves came down and said hey we wanna help, and despite his hatred for them he accepts their help. He then sends them on a tough mission, some say suicide mission, but one that was absolutely needed to win the war.(This is the same as Anduin’s suicide group sent to enable the Dazar’alor attack btw, but no one seems to make that connection), and the Blood Elves get angry and side with demon snake ladies, which Garithos is not cool with so he locks them up in fear that these elves he hates are just gonna make things worse.

He then later allies with Sylvanas and her forsaken, despite his hatred for elves, to help finish the war and re-take Lordaeron, with promises that they would not fight one another after. And that Sylvanas’ people would be free to make their own way, free of attack from the Alliance. Then as soon as he wins the war for her; Sylvanas slaughters him.

That’s Garithos’ actual story. He might have been a racist, and he is 100% wrong for it, but he was made that way by Sylvanas and the elves’ own actions and choices, and they also share in that blame.

A living Sylvanas helped to create the monster that was Garithos through her own actions, and then later betrayed and murdered the man, even after he was putting aside his own hatreds(some say justified) for the greater good.

And yet Sylvanas is still viewed as heroic in her life, and even un-life to some, while Garithos is reviled as one of the worst villains of Warcraft history.

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119

No they didn’t. The elves did help.
Just not reluctantly.

This is literally fan fiction.
The people died when he eas fighting in Quel’thalas and there none of this pounding on the gates nonsense.

The devs would say, yes.

Naga aren’t demons.

And plans to execute them.

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120

Why there’s always this sturm and drang about whether Sylvanas is a gOOd PeRSoN (gag) will always baffle me.

It doesn’t %%###ing matter. The question is whether she was / is compelling, and there’s a pretty strong consensus on that among her ex-stans.

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121

I heavily disagree with this. “That’s just Dumb” is incredibly valid criticism, unless it’s purposely dumb, which i don’t think the story is trying to be. Stupidity can ruin the suspension of disbelief, and if a character is to dumb the audience will lose interest in them.

There is a principle in writing called the Eight Deadly Words, “I don’t care what happens to these characters”, and if you get this reaction, you have failed as a writer. For a lot of people i think will agree, they don’t care what happens to anyone in the shadowlands. Sylvanas isn’t an interesting villain, even ignoring how she (and her boytoy) was the only forsaken of any relevance before bfa gave us several characters forsaken fans dislike, she didn’t have any actual in game motivation for her actions, no real plan for the war itself, and just seemed to be doing schemes that brought her no closer to victory (Like try to kill Thrall’s family, when his family was on another planet and posed no threat to her rule whatsoever). The only people who care about if she lives or dies are people who are sick of the Horde constantly losing racial leaders/hate calia (lives) or people who always wanted her dead/are still angry about teldrassil (dies).

She’s a trash villain in BfA and a Trash villain in shadowlands, and the people opposing her are all extremely controversial characters, so many people aren’t concerned for their safety.

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122

She force fed a poor farmer girl blight and watched her melt just to see its effects.

And lmao at ‘‘Guys she was planning to murder her family and raise them into undeath but she didnt do it! Guys!! See how not evil she is?’’

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123

Christ I forgot about that Thrall cinematic. I recall very earnestly speculating that clearly she was trying to lure Thrall to her. Otherwise why disturb this sleeping giant who’s a retired farmer on a different planet? And why send just two normal Rogues to do it? She had to be luring him out.

But uh, no. There was no grander strategy. She just sent two remarkably unprepared deathstalkers to take out a guy who’s first job as a teenager was champion gladiator. Because the writers wanted Thrall back in the narrative and I guess that’s what they landed on.

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124

From the scene.

One was a human, woman who was apparently not so lost in fear and despair as not to start weeping silently when keever dragged her from her cage. the forsaken male, however, was utterly impassive and stood quietly. Sylvanas eyed him. "Criminal?’ “Of course, my lady.” She wondered if it were true, but in the end, it didn’t matter. he would serve the forsaken, even so. the human girl was on her knees. Keever stooped down, yanked her head up by the hair, and when she opened her mouth to cry out in pain, he poured a cup of something down her throat. covered her mouth, forcing her to swallow.

Watching them suffer and die made her smile.

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125

Are you going to like this with 10 alts too? Or will you make up gross things again that never happened in the story again.

126

Because sometimes you do have to suspend disbelief to enjoy fiction…(?)
Do you not have literary comprehension?

Suspension of disbelief , sometimes called willing suspension of disbelief , is the intentional avoidance of critical thinking or logic in examining something surreal, such as a work of speculative fiction, in order to believe it for the sake of enjoyment.

just because a piece of speculative fiction requires you to suspend disbelief so that you can enjoy it doesn’t mean that it’s bad writing.

128

Maybe I read more into your post than what you meant. The impression I got out of it was that you were saying you had to make an extra effort to ignore how Sylvanas’s arc played out in BFA in order to enjoy what came after it, beyond the usual story immersion.

129

You very well do since I’m the one that calls you out on your gross comments that got half of this thread deleted, and the fact that you’re so sad that you have to like your own posts multiple times LOL