shadow rising spoilers matthias shaw

[Feanoro]

@AlmightyGurken

It is the Old Horde's fault. But I don't know why you're playing damage control for Shaw - Orgrimmar was flooded with spies and they were the vessels for fake intel that enabled the WoT, while his organisation got taken over by a dreadlord and ended up with Varian dead a while back.

The sum of Shaw's success as spymaster is extremely limited.

You know as well as I do that there's plenty of people who will unironically fully absolve the Old Horde because they were tricked, the poor wee babes, and then turn around and damn Shaw for being tricked.

Shaw only started failing when Danuser and pals started writing him. Since the only way Alliance characters can be portrayed now is as blithering idiots...

[Verdugo]

Since the only way Alliance characters can be portrayed now is as blithering idiots...

Just be glad their oposition is even dumber.

[Super Dickmann]

You know as well as I do that there's plenty of people who will unironically fully absolve the Old Horde because they were tricked, the poor wee babes, and then turn around and damn Shaw for being tricked.

Shaw only started failing when Danuser and pals started writing him. Since the only way Alliance characters can be portrayed now is as blithering idiots...

Shaw's record is fairly spotty at best, at least in his last two major outings. And having a several year long plot of subversion and deprivation along with abusing your ancestor worship to get you to do X makes you both culpable and required a great deal of forethought. A spymaster allowing his spies to be used to spread false intel is just incompetence. It's an incomparable genre of failure. If it's close to something that happened with the Old Horde it's Orgrim's situation with Gul'dan.

[Aucald]

It is the Old Horde's fault. But I don't know why you're playing damage control for Shaw - Orgrimmar was flooded with spies and they were the vessels for fake intel that enabled the WoT, while his organisation got taken over by a dreadlord and ended up with Varian dead a while back.

The sum of Shaw's success as spymaster is extremely limited.

I still think it's a bit victim-blamey to make Shaw the responsible party for what happened to him at the Broken Shore. He was kidnapped and impersonated by a millennia-old demon for whom spycraft is their specialty after successfully discovering what the Legion was actually up to. He was also able to eventually expose said demon and resume control of his organization with a little help from the Uncrowned, and also brought back valuable Legion intel from his time in imprisonment.

While the Horde successfully gulled SI:7 and Shaw by tricking the spy-network in Orgrimmar, Shaw still played in hand in securing Ashenvale by routing adventurers there to cover for the main Alliance forces who had been misdirected. He also wasn't wrong about what the Horde was actually planning, they'd only managed to obscure the target from his spies through a well-played gambit.

[Feanoro]

Shaw's record is fairly spotty at best, at least in his last two major outings.

Thank you for agreeing he only started being an idiot when Danuser started writing.

And having a several year long plot of subversion and deprivation along with abusing your ancestor worship to get you to do X makes you both culpable and required a great deal of forethought. A spymaster allowing his spies to be used to spread false intel is just incompetence. It's an incomparable genre of failure. If it's close to something that happened with the Old Horde it's Orgrim's situation with Gul'dan.

I guess the last Legion invasion was just a bit of whimsy on KJ's part then, not something planned for since he was flushed down the Sunwell.

[Aresk]

It's not homophobic or heteronormative to assume that the default sexuality of a virtual character to be heterosexual.

By definition, viewing heterosexuality as the default sexual orientation is heteronormative. I agree that it's not homophobic.

[WaltherLeopold]

By definition, viewing heterosexuality as the default sexual orientation is heteronormative. I agree that it's not homophobic.

Weakest definition of the word, it's like saying racism only means believing in racial supremacy.

Obviously, that is PART of the word, however it doesn't end there:

adjective
adjective: heteronormative; adjective: hetero-normative

denoting or relating to a world view that promotes heterosexuality as the normal or preferred sexual orientation.

There's a clear context here that you are missing by using that word.

[Super Dickmann]

I still think it's a bit victim-blamey to make Shaw the responsible party for what happened to him at the Broken Shore. He was kidnapped and impersonated by a millennia-old demon for whom spycraft is their specialty after successfully discovering what the Legion was actually up to. He was also able to eventually expose said demon and resume control of his organization with a little help from the Uncrowned, and also brought back valuable Legion intel from his time in imprisonment.

While the Horde successfully gulled SI:7 and Shaw by tricking the spy-network in Orgrimmar, Shaw still played in hand in securing Ashenvale by routing adventurers there to cover for the main Alliance forces who had been misdirected. He also wasn't wrong about what the Horde was actually planning, they'd only managed to obscure the target from his spies through a well-played gambit.

Victim-blaming doesn't apply when it comes to assessing someone's job performance. We aren't blaming Shaw for being kidnapped so much as for how he generally underperforms in the position he's meant to excel in. I will give you and @Feanoro though that he was nabbed in the process of successfully doing his job and being taken out by a dreadlord isn't that sad. Might be I'm just salty because we had to fix Stormwind for him and free from his doppleganger Horde-side.

The WoT by contrast, is generally just a failure no matter how you slice it. Saurfang and Sylvanas played SI:7 while the plan to flood the city with spies while making them obvious only aggravated the Horde further without actually preparing for what the Horde was going to do. The most effective subversion carried out during that time period came from Anduin in releasing Saurfang, not Shaw, and Shaw allegedly goes around handing bags of money to sentries to shepherd Saurfang's release, which funny visual as it is, doesn't do him any favours.

[Aucald]

Victim-blaming doesn't apply when it comes to assessing someone's job performance. We aren't blaming Shaw for being kidnapped so much as for how he generally underperforms in the position he's meant to excel in. I will give you and @Feanoro though that he was nabbed in the process of successfully doing his job and being taken out by a dreadlord isn't that sad. Might be I'm just salty because we had to fix Stormwind for him and free from his doppleganger Horde-side.

The general thrust seemed to be "he's terrible at his job because he got kidnapped," which is where the "victim blaming" element kind of came in. He was doing his job and doing it will until a powerful demon intervened, as you yourself relate. That's not really a blemish on his record. I also wouldn't say that the Uncrowned's actions in this were essentially partisan, either; whether or not the PC Shadow was Horde or Alliance. All of the Order Halls basically acted as non-partisan NGO's during Legion.

The WoT by contrast, is generally just a failure no matter how you slice it. Saurfang and Sylvanas played SI:7 while the plan to flood the city with spies while making them obvious only aggravated the Horde further without actually preparing for what the Horde was going to do. The most effective subversion carried out during that time period came from Anduin in releasing Saurfang, not Shaw, and Shaw allegedly goes around handing bags of money to sentries to shepherd Saurfang's release, which funny visual as it is, doesn't do him any favours.

He's a spymaster, not a general - he reports the intel his network gathers to his superiors, who then act on it. The apparatus is only as good as its intel, after all; which was the critical juncture where the Horde got the drop on the Alliance in the WoT. I'd say it was a failure, sure; but the expectation shouldn't be 100% either. As for his actions i.e. Saurfang, he and Anduin basically got exactly what they wanted from that as Saurfang's momentum and subsequent actions at Orgrimmar decisively ended the Horde/Alliance conflict in a (relatively) bloodless fashion in the final engagement, led to Sylvanas' ouster, an armistice between the Horde and Alliance, and a restructuring of the Horde government that was more conducive to a longer-lasting peace. That's pretty much a win no matter how you slice it.

[Jastall]

Victim-blaming doesn't apply when it comes to assessing someone's job performance. We aren't blaming Shaw for being kidnapped so much as for how he generally underperforms in the position he's meant to excel in. I will give you and @Feanoro though that he was nabbed in the process of successfully doing his job and being taken out by a dreadlord isn't that sad. Might be I'm just salty because we had to fix Stormwind for him and free from his doppleganger Horde-side.

The WoT by contrast, is generally just a failure no matter how you slice it. Saurfang and Sylvanas played SI:7 while the plan to flood the city with spies while making them obvious only aggravated the Horde further without actually preparing for what the Horde was going to do. The most effective subversion carried out during that time period came from Anduin in releasing Saurfang, not Shaw, and Shaw allegedly goes around handing bags of money to sentries to shepherd Saurfang's release, which funny visual as it is, doesn't do him any favours.

Being fair to him, the War of the Thorns was successful because the writers wanted it to be successful, and that's a force no spymaster in the world can oppose. Exactly how the Horde war machine managed to evade detection when it's a massive army kicking dust riding alongside ponderous Kodo beasts and needing resupply posts all along the Barrens is a mystery, especially when they somehow sneak up on people that have perfect vision in forests (let alone open plains) and can turn into birds. Smelly Undead rogues beating Night Elves at their own game on their home turf was also funny in a Captain Picard facepalming way.

Same for the Alliance leadership somehow not even considering that the Horde would move to attack them in distant Silithus with a ground-based army, but not in Ashenvale which is 1) literally right next door and 2) an area they've shown interest in conquering since vanilla if not before. That one's not on Shaw alone, but still.

[Orby]

Quite a lot actually.

Well, go on...

I am struggling to see what about that exert and her looks have to mean? I am literally confused.

[Aresk]

Weakest definition of the word, it's like saying racism only means believing in racial supremacy.

Obviously, that is PART of the word, however it doesn't end there:

adjective
adjective: heteronormative; adjective: hetero-normative

denoting or relating to a world view that promotes heterosexuality as the normal or preferred sexual orientation.

There's a clear context here that you are missing by using that word.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that setting heterosexuality as the default orientation for fictional characters is promoting heterosexuality as the normal orientation. I don't really understand what you're suggesting with the racism analogue and the weakest definition of the word, since I was operating off the same definition you are. Regardless, we agree on the definition, and apparently disagree on this application of it.

[Aucald]

Stick to the excerpt itself and let's not get into gender or sexuality issues, any further derailment on this score will lead to thread closure.

[LemonDemonGirl]

“Tides be kind, I hope they’re quick enough.” Fairwind slid to the railing beside him, his lately acquired parrot pet struggling to flap to his shoulder, tossed hither and yon by the oncoming storm. “Honestly, this is very, very bad. If the storm sail isn’t up soon then we’re all well and truly f—”

Oh, they almost got a swear word in a WoW novel? That's interesting. I've seen a few used ingame, but in a novel? Nope

A wave knocked the words out of Fairwind’s mouth, and both men found themselves shocked across the ship, Fairwind landing against the opposite railing with a pained grunt while Mathias had far less luck, his fingernails scratching along boards as slick as ice before he bypassed the railing and slid right off the edge of the ship, nothing but churning water beneath him. He watched a gnome holding a sail line soar overhead, mouth open in a scream, the sound of it drowned out by the thunder of twenty-foot waves.

That poor Gnome lol

[Vakir]

Can't everyone just agree that pretty much every character took lots of stupid pills in reference to major losses in the last few years?

When you have writing that's weak almost all the time it means you're predisposed to have to make lots of absurd concessions about character competence to allow them to happen. From a Watsonian POV we pretty much need to concede Shaw sucked at his job, but I can't think of a character that didn't look like an absolute bellend in the last 2 expansions (even Sylvanas did with her sudden public confession by way of absurd overreaction). ...Nathanos? Maybe?

[Chonar]

Well, if the author says it's canon, and Blizzard actually gave her the thumbs up, then alright. Though the excerpt still feels like a poor choice to go "OMG YES LOOK!" about.
As long as things feel like natural, well-written progression, I'm all in favor.

Flynn always felt like he'd be bi. Or pan. Or just chaotic-neutral in every sense of the word including sexuality.
And Shaw? Well, mystery-man gonna mystery, I guess.

- - - Updated - - -

What are you even on about...?

I was agreeing with you? And making a snippy comment about the quality of MMO-champ threads in general.

[Super Dickmann]

Being fair to him, the War of the Thorns was successful because the writers wanted it to be successful, and that's a force no spymaster in the world can oppose. Exactly how the Horde war machine managed to evade detection when it's a massive army kicking dust riding alongside ponderous Kodo beasts and needing resupply posts all along the Barrens is a mystery, especially when they somehow sneak up on people that have perfect vision in forests (let alone open plains) and can turn into birds. Smelly Undead rogues beating Night Elves at their own game on their home turf was also funny in a Captain Picard facepalming way.

Same for the Alliance leadership somehow not even considering that the Horde would move to attack them in distant Silithus with a ground-based army, but not in Ashenvale which is 1) literally right next door and 2) an area they've shown interest in conquering since vanilla if not before. That one's not on Shaw alone, but still.

The blood elves and undead sneaking up on night elves that can become invisible in their natural habitat is both stupid and unecessary for the commission of the plot, since going scorched earth would both fit the people doing this and eliminate that advantage, on top of serving as another brick to suggest that the Horde are just being used since it'd be a denial of resources to exploit after conquest.

The moving of troops itself I don't think is implausible out of story, which is why I'm bringing it up in a Watsonian sense, since they would still need to move en masse to head to Silithus and azerite is a big deal so worth a heavy troop commitment.

@Vakir

Nathanos is one, Talanji also generally only falls for things that she'd reasonably buy into. Sylvanas doesn't bear description, ree-ing out at the Gates is one thing, but there are other highlights like not just shooting Malfurion herself despite it ostensibly being a big part of her plan or every aspect of the Derek plan from start to finish, where even if we're extremely charitable and say it was meant to fail to piss Jaina off and thus keep the war going, the serendipity of finding this one dude, torturing him and trafficking him home beggar belief.

Some of these can be argued in-setting. It's nothing new to the setting. The entire plot of WC3 for instance happens because Medivh is a socially inept momma's boy who can't just deliver the information he knows without raving like a lunatic and despite being able to infiltrate Dalaran without issue he doesn't have the wherewithal to destroy his book and thus scuttle the Legion's plan.

[Halyon]

I was agreeing with you? And making a snippy comment about the quality of MMO-champ threads in general.

Aaah, ok. I sometimes have difficulty reading sarcasm and such, tone dpesn't always convey on text so my brain understands. :_D

[WaltherLeopold]

It is the very definition of heteronormative to assume people are straight.

No, because it also means that heterosexuality is, not only the default position of characters but also that it's the desired state, it's fundamentally a homophobic position.

Like, whatever the point I made about tokenism stands, I don't care to argue this any further, just because you can't look or understand something farther than a dictionary.

[Aresk]

I think what strikes me most about this excerpt is the way in which Shaw views Flynn. He seems to want nothing to do with the man, given that he labels Flynn's speech as "blathering" and attempts to ignore him "like a basilisk desperate for a glance." When Flynn asks about his dossier, we get that it's "significantly less glamorous" than "Devilishly handsome? Irresistible in every conceivable way? Crack sailor? Deadly with a blunderbuss?" From this excerpt, We don't really get much more of a glimpse into Shaw's thoughts on Flynn or what was written about him.

Flynn obviously is an ally of Shaw's, with the two working together on whatever the current mission is and their earlier collaboration during the Treasury Heist and worldvein intelligence gathering. Despite these efforts, Shaw apparently gathered a "significantly less glamorous" dossier on Flynn. Meanwhile, if we look at how Shaw described Edwin, his language is flattering, despite the fact that events had put them on opposing sides of the Defias conflict, calling VanCleef and his stonemasons "peerless builders" and saying of VanCleef specifically that "facing him as a foe is quite a daunting task." While it would be hard for anyone to match the glamour with which Flynn describes himself, the fact that it was "significantly less" while he's willing to describe a friend-turned-foe as "peerless" and "daunting" suggests that Shaw holds Flynn in less respect than he did Edwin.

I'm curious to see if and how Shaw's views of Flynn change throughout the novel, but I definitely get the sense that, despite their continued work alongside one another, Shaw finds some aspects of Flynn's personality to be difficult to endure.