Game of Thrones meme explains BfA perfectly (spoilers)

[Wildberry]

So by yourn own admission you consider her books that ends up placing fairly high on new pubications list, who went through writing school and got hired to a writing staff based on her ability to write novels a bad writer?

Yes. Do you actually have an argument, or are you just going to pretend that placing well on lists of new publications is reflective of writing skill?

Not everyone is going to be Shakespeare or Tolkien, but you are really not fooling anyone but yourself if you think she got to where she is now solely on blind luck.

Blind luck? No. But she's a bad writer who had a few "successful" books that were, in large part, done entirely by other people ("Lord of the Clans," & "Arthas: Rise of the Lich King"). Now that she can't rely on other people for scaffolding, her novels are a wreck. Her position doesn't really change that.

[cparle87]

He's the grandpapa of human potential on top of what @matrix123mko and @Aucald have already said. He took the formative storyline of the night elves, the thing that defines their entire empire and suborned it to his time-traveling self-insert character who taught Illidan how to use magic. Other standouts include Rhonin's raptor army and that guy who could go in and out of the emerald dream at will despite being human.

And what does he being human have to do with anything? The Dream was made the Titans, and so were the ancestors of humans. Only the fact that elves came into existence first and were patronized by the wild gods who were also created the titans to become druids is why they're most connected to the Dream.

[Wildberry]

I think she did good with Lord of the Clans and Rise of the Horde at the very least, though those were a long time ago now.

The thing about both of those (Though, far more with "Lord of the Clans"), is that the majority of it was done for her. LotC was something Metzen had been kicking around for ages before she published it. RotH, again, takes much from Metzen, and benefitted a great deal from being written as BC was being developed.

Similarly, with "Arthas: Rise of the Lich King," between the Warcraft III manual, and the campaign, the book was practically written for her.

[Mehrunes]

How did Euron afford it if there was barely any food on the island? If ships were so easy to build why didn't other nations just pump out ships like he did? And where did all the lumber come from on an island?

I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing, but if it's the latter, I did say that the fleet even existing in the first place is an issue with it.

[Super Dickmann]

Sylvanas has a character, a wildly moronic one who the writers give way too much leeway in interviews, but a character nonetheless. She also has an arc, most peoples problem with her seems to be that they don't like the arc that much.
Which thinking about it is the same argument i have been using for complainers of BfA this entire expansion, just because you don't like something doesnt mean the substance isnt there.

It's not just that it's not a popular narrative, it's that it's not a narrative at all. Sylvanas has no arc because her character changes are completely inexplicable. I'll disregard the dog's breakfast the writers have made of the Forsaken in the past year for the sake of this moralizing piffle, focus instead on how just in the BFA materials she doesn't hold together in the slightest.

What is her motive? Fuck knows. If we go by BTS she wants to take over Stormwind and divide the Alliance's lands with the Horde. She says so in her internal monologue and calls it her heart's desire. Except wait, she actually has a secret motive the gods would take issue with in A Good War that she lies to herself about. Except wait, turns out she was actually an Old God puppet. Except wait, she lied (to herself) about how she wanted to take over Stormwind and divide it with the Horde, it was actually just a means to an end to serve her Old God Puppetry.
Since we don't know what she wants or what drives her, her actions become arbitrary unless she has some kind of personality, speaking of which...

What is her personality? Fuck knows there too. She's a smarmy bitch in BTS who constantly thinks about how everyone around her is a dumbass, yet nevertheless has sense enough to pander to them. She cares about the Forsaken in an obsessive, projection sort of way and thinks that reconciliation is impossible. Except wait, she's actually cold and calculating and impossible to read in A Good War and reflects upon the deaths of Horde soldiers. Except wait, she doesn't actually think reconciliation is impossible because her whole plan with Derek is based around sending him in and him being accepted by his family. She wants to execute Baine, except she doesn't want to execute Baine, except she wants people to think she wanted to execute Baine?

Failing all that, is she at least a threatening and successful antagonist? God no. The last time she was remotely effective was Lordaeron, wherein her opponent had to be retarded and then get saved by a deus ex machina. Everything since then has been an endless cavalcade of failure in which she barely even appears, with every thing she orders done biting her in the ass and her opponents only not defeating her because they feel so bad about how the citizens of her allied kingdom would be sad if they pressed their advantage. She has no interaction or parallels with any of her opposition, she doesn't mean anything to them nor does she have a personal conflict with them.

She's an abysmal antagonist. By comparison the Night King has an extremely clear goal - he wants to kill everyone, he has no personality so he can't be out of character or inconsistent, barring that time he smirked at Dany and he effectively succeeds until being killed by an asspull, fulfilling the element of being threatening up until then. Sylvanas is both an inferior character and an inferior antagonist and he's terrible.

[Mehrunes]

WAIT WHAT? the guys from got are writing something for star wars?

An entire goddamn trilogy. The good part is that there are two new trilogies planned after the Rey one. So, if they are going to be released at roughly the same time, no matter who makes the other one it will be miles better than what GoT's producers will be able to create. And then the illusion of them being good at their job that was created when they were simply repeating Martin's story will finally burst and those two most overrated guys in Hollywood will go back to where they belong, which is obscurity.

The bad news is that one of them may be set in the Old Republic and its unknown which one it would be if that's the case. If D&D get to make the Old Republic one, and fuck it up as much as they fucked up GoT when they ran out of Martin's material, we will never see another Old Republic movie ever again.

[Sondrelk]

Yes. Do you actually have an argument, or are you just going to pretend that placing well on lists of new publications is reflective of writing skill?


Blind luck? No. But she's a bad writer who had a few "successful" books that were, in large part, done entirely by other people ("Lord of the Clans," & "Arthas: Rise of the Lich King"). Now that she can't rely on other people for scaffolding, her novels are a wreck. Her position doesn't really change that.

Before the storm has a consistent plot that managed to properly explore an issue present in the Warcraft story that has rarely, if ever been explored in WoW, that of Forsaken wishing to reconcile with the people that they presume hate them. It has a well structured plot that sets up conflict early on and lets tension build until the finale.
It has several passages that deal with the story of WoW as seen from the perspective of the common citizens (For instance the Lion's pride innkeeper) that manages to give a realized impression of them as well-rounded characters with an active life.
Dialogue is written with proper respect to the characters and move the story ahead in a satisfactory way.
The ending is well written and manages to give the impression of tragedy despite us not knowing who most of the characters who die are.

There is a small list of the things in favor of the book i could remember off the top of my head. Much of the problems with Golden is just that she is not good when it comes to detailing story when the characters written have a lot of power, political or physical, but that hardly makes her a bad writer, just someone who is not good at every facet of the story.
Let's not forget that as much as Steven King is praised for his stories, he still is pretty shit at writing twists, that does not make him a bad writer, just someone who cannot do everything.

[Mehrunes]

So what's the Warcraft equivalent of Quasimodo ending the threat of the Others?

Sylvanas appearing out of nowhere at the end of N'zoth's fight and sealing him in Xala'tath's blade.

Evelyn Fredricksen was probably their best one. She wrote both "Road to Damnation," and "Glory." In the former, she managed to actually humanize Kel'thuzad, who might have otherwise been a fairly one-dimensional character if handled by another author. "Glory" is probably one of the strongest short stories in Warcraft, simply because it fleshes out political, generational (and to a lesser degree, even economic) conflict within the Horde.

Yeah, Road to Damnation is pretty much my favorite piece of Warcraft lore.

Third post already mentions bad writing. Imagine if posters from this forum would write for WoW. It would then be great writing, since people here are writers themselves.

This defense of Blizzard is, has always been and will forever be nothing more than a pile of desperate and fallacious deflection.

Knaak's really bad at keeping "power levels" toned down. His version of BfA, even if he were forbidden from writing OC characters, would be just as bad as what we have now. A different kind of bad, but still bad.

I can already imagine Calia being able to shift into the Shadowlands AND the realm of the Light at will.

Blizzard kind of forgot writing a good story.

But... they said that when BfA ends everyone will be in awe about how amazing the story is. And Blizzard never misleads people in regards to their story. So obviously BfA is amaze.

[Sondrelk]

It's not just that it's not a popular narrative, it's that it's not a narrative at all. Sylvanas has no arc because her character changes are completely inexplicable. I'll disregard the dog's breakfast the writers have made of the Forsaken in the past year for the sake of this moralizing piffle, focus instead on how just in the BFA materials she doesn't hold together in the slightest.

What is her motive? Fuck knows. If we go by BTS she wants to take over Stormwind and divide the Alliance's lands with the Horde. She says so in her internal monologue and calls it her heart's desire. Except wait, she actually has a secret motive the gods would take issue with in A Good War that she lies to herself about. Except wait, turns out she was actually an Old God puppet. Except wait, she lied (to herself) about how she wanted to take over Stormwind and divide it with the Horde, it was actually just a means to an end to serve her Old God Puppetry.
Since we don't know what she wants or what drives her, her actions become arbitrary unless she has some kind of personality, speaking of which...

What is her personality? Fuck knows there too. She's a smarmy bitch in BTS who constantly thinks about how everyone around her is a dumbass, yet nevertheless has sense enough to pander to them. She cares about the Forsaken in an obsessive, projection sort of way and thinks that reconciliation is impossible. Except wait, she's actually cold and calculating and impossible to read in A Good War and reflects upon the deaths of Horde soldiers. Except wait, she doesn't actually think reconciliation is impossible because her whole plan with Derek is based around sending him in and him being accepted by his family. She wants to execute Baine, except she doesn't want to execute Baine, except she wants people to think she wanted to execute Baine?

Failing all that, is she at least a threatening and successful antagonist? God no. The last time she was remotely effective was Lordaeron, wherein her opponent had to be retarded and then get saved by a deus ex machina. Everything since then has been an endless cavalcade of failure in which she barely even appears, with every thing she orders done biting her in the ass and her opponents only not defeating her because they feel so bad about how the citizens of her allied kingdom would be sad if they pressed their advantage. She has no interaction or parallels with any of her opposition, she doesn't mean anything to them nor does she have a personal conflict with them.

She's an abysmal antagonist. By comparison the Night King has an extremely clear goal - he wants to kill everyone, he has no personality so he can't be out of character or inconsistent, barring that time he smirked at Dany and he effectively succeeds until being killed by an asspull, fulfilling the element of being threatening up until then. Sylvanas is both an inferior character and an inferior antagonist and he's terrible.

When i say Sylvanas has an arc, i mean as a whole, specifically starting with her as the defender of Silvermoon. She starts out as the commander with a hint of idealism in her that is over time removed completely by the passage of time and her obsession with Arthas, leading into Cata where she decides she needs a new goal in life, which coincides with a small, but significant personality shift where she no longer seems to care for Forsaken beyond them being "her" people.

This aspect of Sylvanas slowly grows until Legion where she gains ultimate power over the horde, leading to BfA where she finally uses that power to pursue her agenda unhindered.
When she burns down Teldrassil and ressurects Delaryn she has finally come full circle, becoming the thing she once dedicated her life to destroy, her sanity being too far gone to consider the ramifications of what will happen should she fail in her quest.

And to defend her choices in BfA and Before the storm. We have no idea what her endgame actually is. It could be total annihilation of the Alliance, in which the destruction of SW would be an important step. It could be to slowly pervert the core of the horde into her own image, in which the destruction of SW would be a nice benchmark of how far along the horde will have come. She could be wanting to destroy SW because N'zoth wants her to. Or she could have simply gone completely insane and is rationalizing her wanton bloodlust by declaring her victims important strategic targets.

Once we know what Sylvanas is actually planning we will be able to pinpoint the flaws in her plan, complaining about specific parts of her plan now is like complaining about the weird dialogue and conflicting motivations in Shutter island.
Writers tend to get a job for a reason, and regardless of how shitty you think the narrative is now, complaining about plot points is kinda meaningless when there is obviously going to be some sort of twist that will attempt to explain it all.

tl;dr: Wait until Sylvanas' goal is revealed before you start complaining about disparate plot elements, especially when there are perfectly valid targets, like all the characters around her acting out of character to enable her dastardly plans.


And just to quickly bring this back to GoT, The night king had an extremely straightforward motivation in the same way that a virus has. The night king created conflict in the same way that a hurricane or tsunami does, a unthinking, unfeeling catastrophe with no motivations, that just shows up one day and people have to deal with it.
I am not being hyperbolic when i say The night king is the most hollow and pointless villain ever put to television. I would have given the writers more credit if they had a plot point saying the wildlife of the north attacks beyond the wall during harsh winters, at least then the story would have one less pointless villain.



Scatterbrain i am i forgot to briefly adress Sylvanas' personality. In short she seems to be written as a sociopath with a hint of Narcissism, eerily similar ot Cersei from GoT, actually. Both consider ordinary folk beneath them, but this does not preclude outwardly caring for them, an important step in a sociopath's plan to get what they want is for people to trust them, and preferably like them, which is easy once oyu know what they like in return.

Narcissism is also a fairly obvious contender for explanation on how she thinks her weirder plans will work, obviously Jaina will trust Derek when Sylvanas' sends him, she is too good at mind games to fail. She also clearly does not believe the Forsaken cannot reconcile with humans, that was the entire point of her killing the forsaken at the gathering, they were living proof that other Forsaken had the chance she does not want them to believe they have.

[Soulwind]

I agree up to a certain point. I think this meme about GoT is more accurate to what happens with WoW:



The writers are so focused on subverting expectations and creating plot twists, that they don't care about the story leading up to them. And once they've released their cool moment, they're immediately rushing towards the next cool idea, dropping any repercussions from the previous stories in the process.

A side effect is that characters become inconsistent, as they become mere tools that the writers use ambivalently as needed.

[TheCookieGod]

DB: Daenarys' army is too strong, we need to write in another nerf before she takes on Cersei.

DW: If only we had an apocalyptic force of nature that could just casually take out another one of her dragons. Or both!

DB: Yeah...oh well. Guess we'll have to use Euron again.

*subverted expectations highfive*

Meanwhile at Blizzard...

D: The Horde army is too strong, we need to write in another nerf before we conclude the faction conflict.

A: If only we had a superior aircraft capable of bombarding the Horde with impunity.

D: Yeah...oh well. Guess we'll have to send the Alliance to Lordaeron without gas masks.

A: Yeah...wait what?

[Super Dickmann]

When i say Sylvanas has an arc, i mean as a whole, specifically starting with her as the defender of Silvermoon

Believe me, you really don't want to bring up the entirety of her storyline before this shambles when trying to argue this lost cause.

She starts out as the commander with a hint of idealism in her that is over time removed completely by the passage of time and her obsession with Arthas, leading into Cata where she decides she needs a new goal in life, which coincides with a small, but significant personality shift where she no longer seems to care for Forsaken beyond them being "her" people.

No, this is the exact oppposite. Sylvanas is apathetic and contemptuous towards the Forsaken except as a means to an end prior to Cataclysm. It's in Cataclysm that she begins to value them as a precious thing that is tied to her own existence. By BTS this has expanded further and she states in her own internal monologue that the reason she went after Eyir was to make them immortal and her grievances with the Gathering was because she didn't want them to be harmed the way she was. She has only cared more for the Forsaken over time, not less.

This aspect of Sylvanas slowly grows until Legion where she gains ultimate power over the horde, leading to BfA where she finally uses that power to pursue her agenda unhindered.
When she burns down Teldrassil and ressurects Delaryn she has finally come full circle, becoming the thing she once dedicated her life to destroy, her sanity being too far gone to consider the ramifications of what will happen should she fail in her quest.

This is likewise nonsense, because Teldrassil has fuck all to do with the only 'quest' she's actually considered, namely the destruction of Stormwind and she didn't even set out to burn the tree, it was a last minute decision to achieve an aim that she'd earlier failed. She was perfectly fine with winning it Saurfang's way, hell, she even encouraged it. The only motive we're privy to isn't congruent with what you're saying and given that said motive is literally her internal narration where she also states that after her victory the Horde will still exist and she'll divide Alliance lands among them, you're wrong.

We have no idea what her endgame actually is. It could be total annihilation of the Alliance, in which the destruction of SW would be an important step. It could be to slowly pervert the core of the horde into her own image, in which the destruction of SW would be a nice benchmark of how far along the horde will have come. She could be wanting to destroy SW because N'zoth wants her to. Or she could have simply gone completely insane and is rationalizing her wanton bloodlust by declaring her victims important strategic targets.

Fanfiction. She states outright in BTS that her end goal is Stormwind and that the Horde will continue to exist afterwards. She doesn't care about perverting the Horde or any such, given that she panders to Horde cultural institutions and even reflects on both her respect for Vol'jin and Varian and how war wouldn't have been necessary if Varian were still in charge and Stormheim didn't happen. She even states that she had no choice but to obey her Warchief, implying if anything a regard for the Horde at its most base level that she previously lacked in Cataclysm.

Once we know what Sylvanas is actually planning we will be able to pinpoint the flaws in her plan, complaining about specific parts of her plan now is like complaining about the weird dialogue and conflicting motivations in Shutter island.
Writers tend to get a job for a reason, and regardless of how shitty you think the narrative is now, complaining about plot points is kinda meaningless when there is obviously going to be some sort of twist that will attempt to explain it all.

"Wait and see" is a meme for a reason. There's no reason to wait until the curtain is revealed to show nothing to complain that the path to get there was nonsense and doesn't hold together as is already the case. We are shown Sylvanas's inner most thoughts and how she considers the world, wherein N'zoth crops up all of zero times and she's even appalled that her sister used the void and would willingly become what she was unwillingly turned to. There is no secret or great reveal, save that she is an Old God puppet who wants to destroy the world. The incongruities with her internal narration, characterization and actions will not come up.

[Sondrelk]

Believe me, you really don't want to bring up the entirety of her storyline before this shambles when trying to argue this lost cause.


No, this is the exact oppposite. Sylvanas is apathetic and contemptuous towards the Forsaken except as a means to an end prior to Cataclysm. It's in Cataclysm that she begins to value them as a precious thing that is tied to her own existence. By BTS this has expanded further and she states in her own internal monologue that the reason she went after Eyir was to make them immortal and her grievances with the Gathering was because she didn't want them to be harmed the way she was. She has only cared more for the Forsaken over time, not less.


This is likewise nonsense, because Teldrassil has fuck all to do with the only 'quest' she's actually considered, namely the destruction of Stormwind and she didn't even set out to burn the tree, it was a last minute decision to achieve an aim that she'd earlier failed. She was perfectly fine with winning it Saurfang's way, hell, she even encouraged it. The only motive we're privy to isn't congruent with what you're saying and given that said motive is literally her internal narration where she also states that after her victory the Horde will still exist and she'll divide Alliance lands among them, you're wrong.



Fanfiction. She states outright in BTS that her end goal is Stormwind and that the Horde will continue to exist afterwards. She doesn't care about perverting the Horde or any such, given that she panders to Horde cultural institutions and even reflects on both her respect for Vol'jin and Varian and how war wouldn't have been necessary if Varian were still in charge and Stormheim didn't happen. She even states that she had no choice but to obey her Warchief, implying if anything a regard for the Horde at its most base level that she previously lacked in Cataclysm.



"Wait and see" is a meme for a reason. There's no reason to wait until the curtain is revealed to show nothing to complain that the path to get there was nonsense and doesn't hold together as is already the case. We are shown Sylvanas's inner most thoughts and how she considers the world, wherein N'zoth crops up all of zero times and she's even appalled that her sister used the void and would willingly become what she was unwillingly turned to. There is no secret or great reveal, save that she is an Old God puppet who wants to destroy the world. The incongruities with her internal narration, characterization and actions will not come up.

Why should i not bring up her entire story, it is internally consistent as long as you do not look too closely. (i.e. pick excercepts from her entire bibliography)

In Cata she outwardly views Forsaken as someone she cares about, but this could be because she genuinely cares, or because she is a sociopathic narcissist that considers the Forsaken an extension of herself. They also worship her, making it easy for her to pamper them.
She also acts pleased when Forsaken are heartbroken after being rejected, which seems at odds with her supposed goal of not wanting them to be hurt, and far more in line with her expecting them to be heartbroken and rejected because she was.

Her burning down Teldrassil was not the plan she or Saurfang sold us on, no. But it is still what she did, making it part of her characterization, and an important narrative mirror to what Arthas did to her. My point was not that she burns down Teldrassil because her plan hinged on it, but she burned down Teldrassil because from her perspective it makes sense. It also fits in nicely with her arc, making her one of the few in Warcraft that gets to have one.

You stated yourself we have no idea what her plans are, we just know that she:
1. Wants to conquer SW
2. Wants the Horde to continue to exist
3. Considers the horde warlike and simple
All my proposed plans git with these 3 reasons, even if she is working for N'zoth and is planning on making a deal whereby the horde continues to exist to serve her after N'zoth wins.
I might have accidentally forgotten a line in BtS where she internally considers the Horde a sacred enough institution that she is "only" willing to take advantage of what she seems to consider bloodthirsty savages. But until then i can only remember her professing a want for the Hordes well being to Saurfang when she is trying to sell him on acting exactly like she expects from all the other orcs.

Wait and see is aggravating, but it is also a completely legitimate narrative crutch. If you don't want to believe the twist will be good and you consider the writing shit, then more power to you. But until we know what her plans actually are we cannot really declare specific actions of hers out of character.

[Super Dickmann]

Why should i not bring up her entire story, it is internally consistent as long as you do not look too closely. (i.e. pick excercepts from her entire bibliography)

No, it's inconsistent even with the most recent sources, unless you're seriously going to claim that Sylvanas can simultaneously both want and not want to execute Baine or more relevantly, both believe that reconciliation between living and dead is impossible and base an entire plan around one of the dead being accepted by his family. Not to mention the whole malarky about her plan.

Put into the context of her entire character's runtime, these problems become much, much broader. For instance, the fact that she's never before so much as alluded to any distaste for Stormwind in particular since the entire incident with her envoys was only introduced in Chronicle to be written out to service Anduin as a Messianic figure who can fix all problems and is incapable of doing wrong. Or how her regard for Vol'jin runs counter to her prior disregard for him when he occupied the post and so forth.

In Cata she outwardly views Forsaken as someone she cares about, but this could be because she genuinely cares, or because she is a sociopathic narcissist that considers the Forsaken an extension of herself. They also worship her, making it easy for her to pamper them.
She also acts pleased when Forsaken are heartbroken after being rejected, which seems at odds with her supposed goal of not wanting them to be hurt, and far more in line with her expecting them to be heartbroken and rejected because she was.

BTS states outright that she cares within her internal monologue and that she wants to save them from death whereas in Cataclysm we know she considers them a precious resources she can't spend and has begun to actually engage with them as people. Hence, contrary to the nonsense in BTS that's never brought up again even within BFA, Sylvanas didn't forbid any mention of Lordaeron or their past lives but actively encouraged it, framing their campaign in Cataclysm as defending their claims from those who wanted to wipe them out. She was also provably correct as prior to BTS, the church policy for Forsaken was to kill them on sight and burn their hearts, reasonably so, given the history involved and the incompatibility between the dead and the living.

Solely within the context of BTS, it's projection. She cares for them and assumes that any reunion with their families will end in tragedy the way hers did. She is pleased to be proven right and at the same time mourns with them, per her internal narration in the novel.

Her burning down Teldrassil was not the plan she or Saurfang sold us on, no. But it is still what she did, making it part of her characterization, and an important narrative mirror to what Arthas did to her. My point was not that she burns down Teldrassil because her plan hinged on it, but she burned down Teldrassil because from her perspective it makes sense. It also fits in nicely with her arc, making her one of the few in Warcraft that gets to have one.

I don't actually take issue with the burning of Teldrassil as a character beat in A Good War, rather than how it's shown in Warbringers, only what stems from it on a character level. For Sylvanas herself, the whole malarky about killing an abstract concept never occurs to her in A Good War, she burns it for tactical considerations in an action that only someone thoroughly amoral would view in such terms. Everyone else either doesn't react to it at all, undermining the moment. The one thing I will say about Golden is that she can do melodrama fairly well and Delaryn's death is something I was genuinely surprised with how bleak and affecting it was. This is largely because Delaryn is a character wholly independent from the broader story situations where her personal issues destroy characters, Jaina, Anduin, Baine and the entire Forsaken race being prominent examples.

You stated yourself we have no idea what her plans are, we just know that she:
1. Wants to conquer SW
2. Wants the Horde to continue to exist
3. Considers the horde warlike and simple

These are her stated plans per her internal narration. If a character obscures info from the reader that he was otherwise thinking of that's bad writing and contradictory. Her being an N'zoth puppet is not once alluded to, nor is the war as a means to achieve some other goal. If we go by BTS, then she really is what she states at face value even in her internal narration, if anything, she's actually more moderate as regards the Alliance because her urge to go to war is caused by their actions and would have been avoided where someone she could count on - Varian, still be in charge.

Wait and see is aggravating, but it is also a completely legitimate narrative crutch. If you don't want to believe the twist will be good and you consider the writing shit, then more power to you. But until we know what her plans actually are we cannot really declare specific actions of hers out of character.

Of course we can, because things contradictory to what we've seen of how she's written both in the past year and throughout her entire existence as a character take place. I've already pointed some of them out. This goes without mentioning of the demolition of the Forsaken.

[Sondrelk]

No, it's inconsistent even with the most recent sources, unless you're seriously going to claim that Sylvanas can simultaneously both want and not want to execute Baine or more relevantly, both believe that reconciliation between living and dead is impossible and base an entire plan around one of the dead being accepted by his family. Not to mention the whole malarky about her plan.

Put into the context of her entire character's runtime, these problems become much, much broader. For instance, the fact that she's never before so much as alluded to any distaste for Stormwind in particular since the entire incident with her envoys was only introduced in Chronicle to be written out to service Anduin as a Messianic figure who can fix all problems and is incapable of doing wrong. Or how her regard for Vol'jin runs counter to her prior disregard for him when he occupied the post and so forth.



BTS states outright that she cares within her internal monologue and that she wants to save them from death whereas in Cataclysm we know she considers them a precious resources she can't spend and has begun to actually engage with them as people. Hence, contrary to the nonsense in BTS that's never brought up again even within BFA, Sylvanas didn't forbid any mention of Lordaeron or their past lives but actively encouraged it, framing their campaign in Cataclysm as defending their claims from those who wanted to wipe them out. She was also provably correct as prior to BTS, the church policy for Forsaken was to kill them on sight and burn their hearts, reasonably so, given the history involved and the incompatibility between the dead and the living.

Solely within the context of BTS, it's projection. She cares for them and assumes that any reunion with their families will end in tragedy the way hers did. She is pleased to be proven right and at the same time mourns with them, per her internal narration in the novel.


I don't actually take issue with the burning of Teldrassil as a character beat in A Good War, rather than how it's shown in Warbringers, only what stems from it on a character level. For Sylvanas herself, the whole malarky about killing an abstract concept never occurs to her in A Good War, she burns it for tactical considerations in an action that only someone thoroughly amoral would view in such terms. Everyone else either doesn't react to it at all, undermining the moment. The one thing I will say about Golden is that she can do melodrama fairly well and Delaryn's death is something I was genuinely surprised with how bleak and affecting it was. This is largely because Delaryn is a character wholly independent from the broader story situations where her personal issues destroy characters, Jaina, Anduin, Baine and the entire Forsaken race being prominent examples.


These are her stated plans per her internal narration. If a character obscures info from the reader that he was otherwise thinking of that's bad writing and contradictory. Her being an N'zoth puppet is not once alluded to, nor is the war as a means to achieve some other goal. If we go by BTS, then she really is what she states at face value even in her internal narration, if anything, she's actually more moderate as regards the Alliance because her urge to go to war is caused by their actions and would have been avoided where someone she could count on - Varian, still be in charge.



Of course we can, because things contradictory to what we've seen of how she's written both in the past year and throughout her entire existence as a character take place. I've already pointed some of them out. This goes without mentioning of the demolition of the Forsaken.

She can absolutely both want to kill Baine and want the rescue to succeed, despite them outwardly seeming like contradictory wants. The mere fact that she did not have him killed immediately means she has some plans for him, even if they are just to execute him "properly"

Sylvanas also very clearly does not believe Forsaken/human reconciliation is impossible, fully possible she thought so before the gathering, but her internal monologue of only accepting back those "truly forsaken" means that even if she does not admit it, she at some level knows that there is a Forsaken future where they have reunited with their Human family. After all, why have the defecting Forsaken killed if she didnt believe they would actually defect, because they cut her off in traffic once?
This leads nicely into her wanting Derek to reunite with Jaina for her plans, either she does not want to admit that Forsaken and humans can reconcile because she is insane, which is its own justification for conflicting thoughts, or she knows reconciliation is possible because of the sheer amount of proof she saw at the gathering.


Her caring and wanting to save them from death, and callous use of them is not exactly a good argument for her acting irrationally considering this is a often considered a virtue in generals that want to win wars.
Her seemingly vaccilating on how she deals with Forsaken wanting ot reconcile their past lives with their current can be explained a myriad ways, most easily that she simply stopped caring. Another way is her accepting their forays into their previous lives because she did not beleive anyone would actually get anything from it.
Similarly, her wanting to save the Forsaken from humans is obviously correct in Cataclysm, after all, she had just attacked a neutral human kingdom who now hates her, and previously in the Northrend campaign, her unethical experiments in Undercity is what sparked Varian to declare war on the horde to begin with.

There is in fact an extremely simple answer to why this changed over time, and that is that it has been several years since the Forsaken split off and become a staple of the horde. Alliance would therefore if not accept them, at least come to see them as sentient beings, which is an important first step in communicating. So when Anduin decides that he wants to give reconciliation with the Forsaken a shot because it is one of the harshest and most contentious topics in Horde/Ally relations, it is not completely out of the question that some humans would be willing to give it a shot.
Going back to BtS, the Lion's pride innkeeper gave a fairly decent view on how this works:

He is told that his brother is "alive", that he has acted with honorable ideals similar to what he did in life, and that meeting him is a possibility for a day if he is willing ot give it a shot. Now i cannot remember if he actually accepted or if he was one of the ones that rejected the person he met, but we know of other who did accept them. So clearly some amount of change has happened in the Human kingdoms to allow reconciliation of any kind.

So going back to the gathering, based on what we see, we can assume Sylvanas' thought process to be:
Forsaken is rejected>Sylvanas considers this correct because she wants to believe it
Some Forsaken are not rejected>Existential crisis for Sylvanas, if Forsaken can be accepted then their entire basis of life is false
Accepted Forsaken start defecting>If they leave and get accepted then that will start a snowball effect rendering her hold over Forsaken moot

So Sylvanas kills all Forsaken not immediately rejected, meaning that the only ones left to talk about what happend there are her loyal guards and Forsaken who are unlikely to pursue reconciliation again, Sylvanas gets exactly what she wants.


Why Sylvanas burns down Teldrassil isnt really important, i would say, the important part is that it burns, which is an important milestone in her development as a character, being a clear marker of where she became what she once considered the ultimate evil.


Again, we don't know her endgame, so trying to explain her actions without the anchor of intent is meaningless. Is she is most likely a N'zoth cultist,no, but my point is that if she was it wouldnt be going against her stated intent, it would just be shoddily told.

Personally i theorize her plan is to make peace with Alliance possible, giving her a continued justification for going to war against the Alliance with Horde backing, after all, if peace with Alliance is possible, then the Horde might rebel. Therefore, gaining the acceptance of the populace, then rooting out and killing rebellious elements is a good choice, as it means less dissent meaning she can do whatever, specifically get as many Forsaken candidates as she wants.
This would make her actions make sense in context, even letting Baine be released, as it would make the rebellion a more real construct, making it possible to demonize them.

Would this be a perfect explanation? No. It would make her a moron that does not think things through, whose downfall came from her own hubris, but it would explain most everything. And that is the point i am making with the Wait and See narrative crutch, sure, we can harp on it as dumb now, but until we know what her plans are, ew cannot actually deem them contradictory, or even necessarily dumb, Baine for instance could be a sleeper agent for all we know, making his release all according to plan, and we would not know.


Characters change over time, and sometimes more drastically than others, is she necessarily a good example of a gradual change, no. But her changes is to some degree internally consistent, she used to want to save Silvermoon because she did not want to lose hope, now she burned down Teldrassil because she considered destroying hope the way to a better future. These two actions are clearly inconsistent, but Sylvanas changed over time, and therefore her burning down Teldrassil makes sense, despite her characterization in Warcraft being more similar to Delaryn as pointed out every time Delaryn shows up.

And if all else fails, she is clearly to some degree insane, she is showing clear signs of Narcissism, and her willingness to twist the truth to Saurfang to serve her plans is hinting quite heavily at some degree of Sociopathy. Not to mention her delusions of grandeur she experiences in BtS, which could have been a one time thing, or it could be something she still believes, impossible to tell without proper context of the entire story.



On a sidenote, i am going to keep this conversation as a shining example of how quickly a discussion can devolve completely into a discussion on the morality of Sylvanas.

[Eggroll]

@OP The Alliance apparently also forgot that they have a friggin' SPACESHIP!!! They could just anihilate the Horde from space and there's nothing the Horde could do about it.

Our "honorable" king, instead of using the weapons at his disposal, rather sends the common soldier to die... what a fucking bastard.

[Zandalariprelate]

For real, I actually want Keanu Reeves to play Revan lol, just look at this

Oohhh boy that would be sweet and I think Keanu will fit nice with the stoic face and personality of Revan. Now we have to put Trinity actress as Bastila

An entire goddamn trilogy. The good part is that there are two new trilogies planned after the Rey one. So, if they are going to be released at roughly the same time, no matter who makes the other one it will be miles better than what GoT's producers will be able to create. And then the illusion of them being good at their job that was created when they were simply repeating Martin's story will finally burst and those two most overrated guys in Hollywood will go back to where they belong, which is obscurity.

The bad news is that one of them may be set in the Old Republic and its unknown which one it would be if that's the case. If D&D get to make the Old Republic one, and fuck it up as much as they fucked up GoT when they ran out of Martin's material, we will never see another Old Republic movie ever again.

Jeez pal, you actually managed to get me feel sad with that possibility but maybe for our fortune, the mouse will still try to milk a bit more the prequel/original trilogy eras. Some new clone war movie about women trying to enlist in the army c and Imperial occupation into an amazonian world is a hard pass for the current political agenda of Hollywood.

ToR has a lot of potential and probably will be milked into some tv show first as tease if there is some public for the movies

[Super Dickmann]

On a sidenote, i am going to keep this conversation as a shining example of how quickly a discussion can devolve completely into a discussion on the morality of Sylvanas.

More characterization, I think we can both agree that Sylvanas isn't a particularly nice person.

Sylvanas also very clearly does not believe Forsaken/human reconciliation is impossible, fully possible she thought so before the gathering, but her internal monologue of only accepting back those "truly forsaken" means that even if she does not admit it, she at some level knows that there is a Forsaken future where they have reunited with their Human family. After all, why have the defecting Forsaken killed if she didnt believe they would actually defect, because they cut her off in traffic once?

Pretty clearly because they were defecting to an opposing monarch. It wasn't reconciliation that had her open fire by itself, she only gives the order to shoot once she's told that Calia is on the field. In any case though, this goes into a broader problem with this abhorrent novel and that's that it frames the separation between undead and living as being a minor misunderstanding that flawless paragons of light and morality like Calia and Anduin can easily resolve provided that the bad guy causing it, Sylvanas, is done away with.

There is in fact an extremely simple answer to why this changed over time, and that is that it has been several years since the Forsaken split off and become a staple of the horde. Alliance would therefore if not accept them, at least come to see them as sentient beings, which is an important first step in communicating. So when Anduin decides that he wants to give reconciliation with the Forsaken a shot because it is one of the harshest and most contentious topics in Horde/Ally relations, it is not completely out of the question that some humans would be willing to give it a shot.
Going back to BtS, the Lion's pride innkeeper gave a fairly decent view on how this works:

This is emphatically not the case throughout the entire rest of the lore prior to the book. The Forsaken were not rejected because of Sylvanas, but firstly because they were undead, meaning they were abominations against their prevailing religion, secondly because their positive emotions and so forth were suppressed, making them hostile to one another and incapable of coexisting and finally due to the historical considerations that the undead had just destroyed tons of human kingdoms. It was a mutually hostile affair.

The Forsaken were not sadsacks that were yearning for a hug from a living human else they'd wither away into irrelevance, with Sylvanas abusing this. They were themselves a cruel, hardened people, who accepted some aspects of their prior lives - Lordaeron, natch, which Sylvanas never dismissed nor had any motive to as it was patriotic fervor that drove the Forsaken throughout the entirety of Cataclysm and that even gets brought up by the refugees in Orgrimmar now, but dismissed others, such as reconciliation with the living. This is because the living wanted to kill them and had a kill policy long before Sylvanas attacked Gilneas.

They were not wrong to do so, they were well-motivated in this, as the Forsaken were well-motivated to not want to be killed. But what it wasn't was a black and white affair where Anduin and humanity were paragons of goodness who could easily overcome their problems, Sylvanas was pure evil and the Forsaken were irredeemable sheep who just wanted to be buddies. It's an infantile story that ignores all prior history of the races, where if anything their membership of the Horde and constant atrocities would be grounds to hate the Forsaken more, not less, done solely to beef up one character at the expense of another, the overarching identity of the Forsaken be damned.

Personally i theorize her plan is to make peace with Alliance possible, giving her a continued justification for going to war against the Alliance with Horde backing, after all, if peace with Alliance is possible, then the Horde might rebel. Therefore, gaining the acceptance of the populace, then rooting out and killing rebellious elements is a good choice, as it means less dissent meaning she can do whatever, specifically get as many Forsaken candidates as she wants.
This would make her actions make sense in context, even letting Baine be released, as it would make the rebellion a more real construct, making it possible to demonize them.

Her goal, spoiler alert, is to kill everyone in her capacity as an Old God puppet. Beyond running in contradiction to years of portrayal, it's that it runs counter to her current portrayal and the internal monologue which has zero mentions of this whatseover, has the Horde keep existing in her victory scenario and doesn't even show her as particularly enthusiastic about starting a war. She doesn't spare Baine or let him release Derek because it's part of some cunning plan, but because the loyalist route was a last minute addition to tide over players who recognized the same thing I'm talking about at the moment. It's not an intended element of the story. Sylvanas doesn't release Baine because there's some plan, the story is clearly that she planned to kill him, itself if successful the greatest favour she could do the Horde long-term and easily making her among the top three Warchiefs, but is foiled by the rebels and the Alliance working together to stop her.

Because of these alterations out of fan outcry, these elements of her behaviour make no sense, as they were never intended. Concurrently, the whole Derek plan needs to be gone through extensive mental gymnastics to make work and itself opens chasms worth of plot holes, such as why she doesn't just make him a mindslave if she has no issues with this, why all other undead have free will and go on to betray her and so forth. It is done because it's not really a character scene for Sylvanas, as she's irrelevant in her own villain-batting expansion, it's meant to set up the nu-Forsaken and to give Baine something to rebel over because they didn't fully realize what they'd done with Teldrassil until much later and how it looked for literally zero people in the Horde save Saurfang to give the least bit of a fuck.

[Florena]

One thing I'm a bit confused about.

Why did Saurfang and Sylvanas think killing Malfurion would break the night elves? Maybe if they got him AND Tyrande? But I always got the feeling it would have backfired and made a martyr instead. Especially if Tyrande was still alive. Ask Doomhammer how well killing Lothar worked out for him.

[Keny]

I laughed and cried at the same time while reading your post OP.
RIP Wow lore.
#cantwaitforvanilla