does that make a difference? it was a dream? the point is there is rape subtext between Arthas and Sylvanas. The fact that this is normalized is part of rape culture.
Her fear of him is real. Her experience as a survivor of him is valid.
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Right now. Blizzard doesn’t know what they are going to do with Sylvanas at this state so they pretty much went with the Raid Boss Bat and just maybe go with it. If that’s the case.
Shame because she use to be cool until she got way too much screentime in 3 expansions now. I say She has long been overdue.
I posted some snippets from the Arthas book but as my post got caught up in the wave of deletions that occurred earlier in the thread, I’m a little wary about the idea of reposting it since that’s against the forum rules. But it wasn’t just a one-off sentence or two about it, and it wasn’t taking place in a dream sequence or anything like that.
Which, yes, made me immensely frustrated that Cataclysm took the forsaken in the direction it did regarding raising the undead.
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I would suggest that that same subtext exists every time someone has another person at their mercy and uses the opportunity to violate them. In that sense, yes this is what happened to Sylvanas. It’s also what Sylvanas and her followers have been doing to countless others.
“Rape culture” also refers to the implicit assumption that women can never be the aggressors, or that men can never be victims. Ignoring Sylvanas’ actions on that basis is just as messed up.
And yes, Sylvanas was the victim once. Nobody disputed this ever. Nobody here would dream of saying “yes it’s good that thing happened to Sylvanas.” But that doesn’t excuse the fact that she herself has willingly created dozens more victims herself at minimum.
I’m pretty sure that dying and being turned into a soul-slave in the Maw just because of Sylvanas’ nihilistic beliefs is a pretty freaking huge violation too. In that regard she’s created literally billions more victims.
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Blizzard can recontextualize canon as they want.
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So yes you agree it’s rape. thank you.
I can understand that interpretation, but I also think that if that’s the interpretation you’re going to use then you need to be consistent about it, which would mean acknowledging that Sylvanas isn’t just a victim, but also an aggressor.
The violations by her hand of Derek Proudmoore, Delaryn Summermoon, Sira Moonwarden, Anduin Wrynn, Lorna and Darius Crowley, and many other unnamed individuals is just as legitimate as the ones inflicted on her.
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I have a feeling this thread is either gonna get locked or deleted.
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Truth be told, that might be for the best.
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wtf happened to this thread
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when passionate fans plus real world topics collide.
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Tbh, the allegory is pretty paper thin. Like it’s more on the nose about it than even that Maleficent movie from awhile back.
Thing is though, in addition to making the new plot line with Anduin even more bizarre, it’s also a pretty moot point. Most monsters have tragic origin stories. That doesn’t make their behavior suddenly okay.
Benedikt how am I supposed to recognize you when you’re so well dressed
this is what i’m waiting for
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Yeah, I get the feeling that part of why its so easy to overlook her victims is that Blizzard never really focuses on them. This is especially true with the Forsaken, of whom she was truly their manipulative abuser in many ways. The emotional focus and attention was always on their tragic abuser, so it was easy to invalidate what she was doing with and to them. Same goes for all her victims frankly. And its a trend that has continued into SLs. I mean … the Forsaken Racial Fantasy has been just obliterated … but apparently the land of the Dead is not the place to start repairing it. Instead, we get lots of Sad Red Vampire Lady eyes, as the tens of thousands she’s condemned to the hell she was so afraid of get ground into weapons.
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To be fair determining what the Forsaken Racial Fantasy even is is something nobody has yet been able to do
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Sigh … yeah. And sadly a not insignificant part of that is due to so much of their story being tied up in Sylvanas herself. Its amazing what happens to a PC race when their story literally is being made a tool for their manipulator, and all of the focus and attention was given to the two characters who used them. Then remove those characters from their ranks. Its … a weird situation.
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The Forsaken having to confront the fact that pretty much everything that they believed about the world for the past 13 or so years was a lie could be pretty interesting.
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B-but Sylvanas was not evil before!
I’d put it a little differently. The original stories of Sylvanas and the Forsaken were one and the same: get revenge on the person who did this to them—Arthas.
And then Arthas fell, and neither Sylvanas nor the Forsaken played a significant part in that (which could have been a building block for future story if they had). And then the writers had to scramble to figure out what to do with them. And that was around the time they started sliding more and more into tying the stories of various races to their racial leaders, a trend that has increased with every expansion since. So their story got folded into hers, but it didn’t have to be that way.
That’s also around the time Metzen started being less involved, and I think Reallyhappy may be on to something with the suggestion that the other writers didn’t actually enjoy writing the Forsaken very much (see this post).
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