Does Sylvanas finally make sense to you?

[Trassk]

Sylvanas has always been twisted in her methods, but in the past just about everyone, even the writers back then, probably had other ideas for her.
Currently the writers for wow are not the same writers as back in wc3 and vanilla wow days, so whatever concepts she represented back then are null and void now.

Anything you might have liked about her character isn't really part of that anymore, probably since wotlk era.

[Newname1234567890]

Her plan isn't complicated. Maximum casualties.

[NuLogic]

I always assumed sylvanas would end up in a became the monster she was hunting scenario. It always came off that she hated arthas more because he humiliated her than steamrolling her people. She just wants to be on top.

[Aucald]

Internal monologue is the farthest thing from extraneous, nor is it detached from action. What it does is inform action and spoken word and reveal what is shown behind it. By showing us the mind of the character it shows us what they actually think and feel, rather than what they put on. The notion that her entire thought process should be shown is a weak strawman - what needs to be shown is an accurate picture of what drives her and what occupies her thoughts. There is no situation where Sylvanas would spend more time thinking about how proud she is to be the first woman Warchief despite being surprised to be in the position or note how war could've been avoided when we know that she didn't give the least bit of a shit about being Warchief, that she can't have been surprised because she arranged her place as Warchief at Vol'jin's expense or that war was always going to happen because it was her goal to amp up her bodycount. It's not an absence of fleshing out that makes the story nonsense, it's that fleshing out already exists. It's not just that Sylvanas says she feels bad about Varian, it's that her reasons for doing so are expanded upon in unfalsifiable fashion in her own mind, without bearing mention to extremely important aspects we are now privy to that contradict this. Likewise with Eyir - if the immortality of the Forsaken is secondary to what is presumably getting Helya or Eyir or what have you on the Jailor's side as we'll learn later. We know that she was already an agent of the Legion at earliest in EoN - never before in evidence, or in Legion - outright contradicted by her musings on the position, Varian, Vol'jin and the war in BTS. Embellishment would not change this, only outright retcons would.

My claim wasn't that internal monologue is always extraneous, but that it can be - specially if it forms the bulk of a character's substance in a given context. Having a character internally monologue to themselves the entirety of a given plot (or stretching out beyond the plot of a given story) would just be odd, as well as strain credulity considerably. Factoring in characters and events that aren't relevant to the given story would be equally odd. Your use of the Strawman Argument is odd here, because I'm refuting your point directly and not presenting some altered version of it - "Strawman" isn't a term one gets to bandy about to justify flawed or fallacious reasoning. Preservation of plot requires a degree of suspension of disbelief, after all; and a character's internal monologue breaking down the plot of a narrative is both bizarre and breaks the notion of narrative flow entirely. I've already explained the seeming contradiction between Sylvanas' surprise at becoming Warchief and her later views on it. Internal monologue is also not exempt from being false, because people can lie to themselves as demonstrated by reality itself. People can even believe their own lies utterly, or can be so delusional that their mental landscape does not conform to the reality of things entirely. I don't know if Sylvanas is really that insane myself, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were so. Sylvanas is very pointedly not a trustworthy or reliable narrator, and her point of view would present a very obvious bias even in her internal monologue. We have no real idea if her deals with Helya and the subsequent attempted capture of Eyir was part of her dealings with the Jailer or not - you're making a series of assumptions here that may or may not pan out depending on what Shadowlands unveils. As I said previously, the details of her employment by the Jailer may or may not be salient to her actions in Legion, you're assuming the former without any kind of details on what her agreement with the Jailer pertained, or when exactly she began working with him directly (e.g. being empowered by him).

As Mehrunes points out, Deathknell alone consists of hundreds per day. Everywhere we go and to every settlement Sylvanas makes a point of raising people. To dismiss it out of hand when it and the perpetuation of the Forsaken consume huge parts of Cataclysm is dubious at best.

I would still call this a small part of the casualties of Alliance/Horde warring during Cata, MoP, Legion, and BfA. How many do you think died in the internecine conflict in the Barrens? There are no Val'kyr there raising the dead. There are no Val'kyr raising the dead in Krasarang during MoP, either. Simply put, Sylvanas' activities during the conflicts are rather low key for all that. She mostly sticks to raising the dead in her own backyard until Darkshore, and even then she only raises a few Dark Rangers in addition to Sira and Delaryn.

Could the story have been told with her experiencing a change in motive as a result of her exposure to azerite showing her that she was aiming her sights too low, or her desperation at the loss of Eyir driving her to deal with the Jailor or her being ignorant of Vol'jin's death and appointment of her and only later figuring out that it was the Jailor's machinations? Yes. But it wasn't. And for it to be told that way they don't just need to retcon BTS and EoN, they need to retcon BFA and adjust their Shadowlands hype statements because we already have positions and reasoning for all those things that aren't the above and don't gel with the Jailor story. Even A Good War, while alluding to a real goal, has things like Nathanos gushing about the Horde or Sylvanas being shocked that Malfurion isn't dead and having to have an epiphany to burn the tree.

You need to present evidence for your position as opposed to making the claim and then trying to justify it without some kind of support. What are these positions and reasoning you allude to from the Shadowlands preview? What retcon(s) do they need to make, and why? What does Nathanos' "gushing about the Horde" or Sylvanas' shock that Malfurion was not killed have to do with her mention of her "true plan?" Why is burning Teldrassil a seeming contradiction to you? You're trying to make an argument here without actually making any form of argument - implying without mentioning, construing without tangible elements to prove or disprove. You made the claim that it is inconsistent, show evidence of inconsistency in keeping with said claim.

[Grimalkin of Old]

Oh how I wish only her story to be BS nowadays

[Super Dickmann]

My claim wasn't that internal monologue is always extraneous, but that it can be - specially if it forms the bulk of a character's substance in a given context. Having a character internally monologue to themselves the entirety of a given plot (or stretching out beyond the plot of a given story) would just be odd, as well as strain credulity considerably. Factoring in characters and events that aren't relevant to the given story would be equally odd. Your use of the Strawman Argument is odd here, because I'm refuting your point directly and not presenting some altered version of it - "Strawman" isn't a term one gets to bandy about to justify flawed or fallacious reasoning. Preservation of plot requires a degree of suspension of disbelief, after all; and a character's internal monologue breaking down the plot of a narrative is both bizarre and breaks the notion of narrative flow entirely. I've already explained the seeming contradiction between Sylvanas' surprise at becoming Warchief and her later views on it. Internal monologue is also not exempt from being false, because people can lie to themselves as demonstrated by reality itself. People can even believe their own lies utterly, or can be so delusional that their mental landscape does not conform to the reality of things entirely. I don't know if Sylvanas is really that insane myself, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were so. Sylvanas is very pointedly not a trustworthy or reliable narrator, and her point of view would present a very obvious bias even in her internal monologue. We have no real idea if her deals with Helya and the subsequent attempted capture of Eyir was part of her dealings with the Jailer or not - you're making a series of assumptions here that may or may not pan out depending on what Shadowlands unveils. As I said previously, the details of her employment by the Jailer may or may not be salient to her actions in Legion, you're assuming the former without any kind of details on what her agreement with the Jailer pertained, or when exactly she began working with him directly (e.g. being empowered by him).

I'm glad you're dropping all pretense and transitioning to the final form of damage control early - "She was lying about everything in her mind because she's insane". It saves you the effort of having to pivot to this later in Shadowlands when your other excuses peter out in as much as they haven't already.

I'm accusing you of making a strawman argument because in response to me telling you that internal monologue provides us a view of the character's thought process and that it must respond to that thought process you claim at first that internal monologue is extraneous and then also that what I want is that she go over every aspect of her thoughts in complete detail, which I've never said and is in any case not needed. What is needed is for her internal monologue not to contradict what we're later told it is and to actually inform character decisions. There are obvious clear contradictions on every point I've so far mentioned, let's go over them piece by piece, these being just some examples:

1. BTS: Sylvanas is surprised she's Warchief, blames the loa, doesn't want to be vs. Shadowlands: She always planned to be Warchief, it was the Jailor's doing.
2. BTS: Sylvanas envied Vol'jin's management skills, was proud to be Warchief and wanted to distribute the lands of the Alliance to the Horde vs. Shadowlands: She didn't give a shit about any of this and always planned to ditch the Horde.
3. BTS: Sylvanas ditched Varian despite not wanting to because her Warchief told her and she felt obligated to do this to vs. Shadowlands: Sylvanas ditched Varian as part of her plan, she obviously didn't care for the weight of the Warchief's title.
4. BTS: Sylvanas wanted Eyir to make the Forsaken immortal vs. Shadowlands: Sylvanas wanted Eyir as part of the deal with the Jailor. Making the Forsaken immortal would be directly counter to filling the Maw with souls.
5. AGW: Sylvanas is surprised that Malfurion surprised and doesn't know what to do, deciding to burn the tree in a moment of inspiration. Nathanos thinks she's doing this to benefit the Horde vs. Shadowlands: Sylvanas always planned the largest killcount possible, Nathanos was her confidante.

The idea that Sylvanas has been the employ of the Jailor from at least the start of Legion and at earliest EoN per the Dev statements at Blizzcon, yet this at no point ever comes up to her in her thoughts or her talks with Nathanos is absolutely absurd. Even being insane would not do this, notwithstanding it being a pathetic copout, because that insanity would have to render her unaware of her own goals, despite us knowing that it preoccupies most of her planning, with Ion mentioning that she was deliberately doing these things to maximize bodycount. Are you genuinely telling me that, even assuming she's that delusional, which has never been suggested, the fact that she's a strong, independent undead womyn who's the first female Warchief preoccupies more of her thoughts when it comes to her receiving the Warchief's seat than the fact that she's been planning to seize it for years in order to bring about her apocalyptic plan? Because I don't think even you believe that, let alone that this was the intention of the writing staff.

How you can with a straight face claim that I'm not making an argument when I'm directly referencing the book and the dev interviews while your attempts at damage control run directly counter to what we're told in regards to Sylvanas having, as per current canon, always planned these things boggles the mind. Here's the interview in question confirming she planned to be Warchief and this was the jailor's doing, with whom she's been a partner for at least Legion:

https://www.wowhead.com/news=296023/...s-since-edge-o

And though I'm sure you've watched it and know that Ion stated that it was her goal to ramp up bodycount, ergo, implying at least the level of cognition to be able to plan accordingly which would contradict the bugfuck insanity required to do this without conscious intent, here's also the Shadowlands reveal panel with timestamp:

https://youtu.be/-Q67Upjq7H8?t=1298

I would still call this a small part of the casualties of Alliance/Horde warring during Cata, MoP, Legion, and BfA. How many do you think died in the internecine conflict in the Barrens? There are no Val'kyr there raising the dead. There are no Val'kyr raising the dead in Krasarang during MoP, either. Simply put, Sylvanas' activities during the conflicts are rather low key for all that. She mostly sticks to raising the dead in her own backyard until Darkshore, and even then she only raises a few Dark Rangers in addition to Sira and Delaryn.

Self-evidently Sylvanas did not raise all bodies everywhere, but every time she had access to bodies she raised them. For fuck's sake, her on-click line is "I will grow the ranks of the Forsaken. One way or another." Tirisfal, Silverpine, WPL, SoO every appearance of the Forsaken post-Cata involves necromancy as a core part of their objective, attempted or otherwise. The only instance where it doesn't is Hillsbrad and that's because the guy who secures Dun Garok purposefully allows their souls to rest in defiance of orders.

As for the Dark Rangers, don't even get me started on how she makes a big deal of breaking their spirit and raising Delaryn specifically only to yeet out of that plotline, and how sending Delaryn to super hell would surely be a more educational experience in terms of the futility of hope.

[czarek]

Totally nope. Goin to shadowlands and eding worlds done not came to me at all. Am I only one that still missing the clue ?

[Aucald]

I'm glad you're dropping all pretense and transitioning to the final form of damage control early - "She was lying about everything in her mind because she's insane". It saves you the effort of having to pivot to this later in Shadowlands when your other excuses peter out in as much as they haven't already.

See, that is actually what a Strawman Argument truly is, because it's not at all what I actually said - you've demonstrated an accurate example of that form of fallacious argument. I said that internal monologue can be falsified because of delusion, the character's thoughts not being consistent with their reality. I further said I was not sure if Sylvanas was that insane (the strong implication being I did not know if this was the case), but that it would not surprise me if it were the case. So no, I did not make the claim that her monologue was false on its face, because I very obviously said I don't know that to be the case, it *could* be, but it may not be.

I'm accusing you of making a strawman argument because in response to me telling you that internal monologue provides us a view of the character's thought process and that it must respond to that thought process you claim at first that internal monologue is extraneous and then also that what I want is that she go over every aspect of her thoughts in complete detail, which I've never said and is in any case not needed. What is needed is for her internal monologue not to contradict what we're later told it is. There are obvious clear contradictions on every point I've so far mentioned, let's go over them piece by piece, these being just some examples.

I said it "can be extraneous," and not that it was always extraneous - you either don't understand the nature of my rebuttal, or you're willfully misinterpreting it so to attempt to dismiss it out of hand. Again, a character's internal monologue should be germane to the context it is in, and not ring in entirely out of scope or irrelevant detail to the scene or scenes at hand. This is not a Strawman Argument by any stretch of the term, whether or not you agree with it. Internal monologue is a narrative device meant to serve the narrative in question, not the character in question, and especially not in an out of scope context.

1. BTS: Sylvanas is surprised she's Warchief, blames the loa, doesn't want to be vs. Shadowlands: She always planned to be Warchief, it was the Jailor's doing.

Present evidence from Shadowlands that she always planned to be the Warchief and that she was both aware of and complicit in the Jailer's scheme in this regard.

2. BTS: Sylvanas envied Vol'jin's management skills, was proud to be Warchief and wanted to distribute the lands of the Alliance to the Horde vs. Shadowlands: She didn't give a shit about any of this and always planned to ditch the Horde.

I've already covered this with the hypothesis that her rationale changed during BfA, and her later claims are simply a post-hoc justification of her actions during her Mak'gora with Saurfang. Sylvanas is fully capable of and his a history of justifying her actions with outlandish pretzel-logic already, this would simply be more of the same and fully consistent with past behavior.

3. BTS: Sylvanas ditched Varian despite not wanting to because her Warchief told her and she felt obligated to do this to vs. Shadowlands: Sylvanas ditched Varian as part of her plan, she obviously didn't care for the weight of the Warchief's title.

Present evidence from Shadowlands that this was Sylvanas' plan - where are you getting this info?

4. BTS: Sylvanas wanted Eyir to make the Forsaken immortal vs. Shadowlands: Sylvanas wanted Eyir as part of the deal with the Jailor. Making the Forsaken immortal would be directly counter to filling the Maw with souls.

That's not entirely inconsistent on its face, although I'm unsure where you've gleaned the notion that Sylvanas wanted Eyir "as part of the deal with the Jailer." The Forsaken already exist as souls apart from the Maw, so making them immortal or strengthening their forms changes nothing of her current goals. She can still keep the Forsaken as her personal retinue and consign the rest of life in Azeroth to the Maw to feed her patron. Both goals are met with no inconsistencies.

5. AGW: Sylvanas is surprised that Malfurion surprised and doesn't know what to do, deciding to burn the tree in a moment of inspiration. Nathanos thinks she's doing this to benefit the Horde vs. Shadowlands: Sylvanas always planned the largest killcount possible, Nathanos was her confidante.

Also not inconsistent on its face. Death would've been served by both her original tactic and her new, improvised one - the latter just moves the kill-count forward considerably. Her goals still had Stormwind and presumably the rest of the Alliance in her sights, and she wouldn't have stopped at Teldrassil under the auspices of the original plan anyways. Finding her path blocked by Saurfang's insubordination (or Elune's interference), she opted for the immediate power boost instead of the long con.

How you can with a straight face claim that I'm not making an argument when I'm directly referencing the book and the dev interviews while you're doing spin that those statements contradict boggles the mind. Here's the interview in question confirming she planned to be Warchief and this was the jailor's doing, with whom she's been a partner for at least Legion.

The stated portion is thus: "We'll find out more of her motivations in Shadowlands and that her relationship with the Jailer dates back a bit. Edge of Night story involves this relationship. Working with Varian was a long term strategy in order to get war chief - had to make allies but now we're seeing the fruition of that."

Personally, I'm not quite sure what "in order to get war chief" even means here? In order to become Warchief? To kill the current Warchief? To get the current Warchief on her side as an ally? It also doesn't imply, as I've explained above, that Sylvanas has any kind of buy-in on that plan or at that time. Perhaps the Jailer later explains it to her and she agrees (an event occurring after "Before the Storm", during BfA itself). I don't know and you don't know, and the snippet tells us we'll learn the details in Shadowlands.

And though I'm sure you've watched it and know that Ion stated that it was her goal to ramp up bodycount, ergo, implying at least the level of cognition to be able to plan accordingly which would contradict the bugfuck insanity required to do this without conscious intent, here's also the Shadowlands reveal panel with timestamp.

Also not inconsistent as explained above. Death would be served with either version of her plan.

Self-evidently Sylvanas did not raise all bodies everywhere, but every time she had access to bodies she raised them. For fuck's sake, her on click line is "I will grow the ranks of the Forsaken one way or another". Tirisfal, Silverpine, WPL, SoO every appearance of the Forsaken post-Cata involves necromancy as a core part of their objective, attempted or otherwise. The only instance where it doesn't is Hillsbrad and that's because the guy who secures Dun Garok purposefully allows their souls to rest in defiance of orders.

I don't disagree, but still maintain that her actual results are minimal compared to the deaths possible in the conflict itself. There's nothing inconsistent about Sylvanas vouchsafing a relative handful of souls for her own purposes while consigning the rest of them to the Maw.

As for the Dark Rangers, don't even get me started on how she makes a big deal of breaking their spirit and raising Delaryn specifically only to yeet out of that plotline, and how sending Delaryn to super hell would surely be a more educational experience in terms of the futility of hope.

That is inconsistent, I agree. But it also requires that Sylvanas be aware of such a fate for the newly dead, and that she agrees with both of our positions on the matter. Perhaps she considers undeath a torment above and beyond just having your anima drained and used to serve the Jailer. I mean I would think eternity in the Maw is the worse of the two as well, but that's a subjective argument on all our parts. Who really knows what is the worst outcome of the two.

[Xykotic]

The games story losing me in WoD when they revealed that there was only one legion in all the different dimensions, which for me just shattered my suspension of disbelief. I didn't accept the reasoning for making her Warchief and felt that the other leaders should've complained but fine. Legion was simple, but even then it was clear she didn't care about anyone but herself and her mad quest for immortality. After that point I lost interest in every character that interacted with her, because peoples willingness to just accept her madness as reasonable without complaint for so many patches was just frustrating, to where I felt like Blizzard had stopped caring, and were simply making "cool moments" with the thinnest of threads tying them together. I don't feel like Shadowlands is breaking from this norm, so I'm already checked out lore-wise.

Now sorry about the rant here, but I used to really care about this lore, and I'm still annoyed that they ruined what I felt made it special and just completely gave up on maintaining internal logic.

[Aucald]

The games story losing me in WoD when they revealed that there was only one legion in all the different dimensions, which for me just shattered my suspension of disbelief. I didn't accept the reasoning for making her Warchief and felt that the other leaders should've complained but fine. Legion was simple, but even then it was clear she didn't care about anyone but herself and her mad quest for immortality. After that point I lost interest in every character that interacted with her, because peoples willingness to just accept her madness as reasonable without complaint for so many patches was just frustrating, to where I felt like Blizzard had stopped caring, and were simply making "cool moments" with the thinnest of threads tying them together. I don't feel like Shadowlands is breaking from this norm, so I'm already checked out lore-wise.

Now sorry about the rant here, but I used to really care about this lore, and I'm still annoyed that they ruined what I felt made it special and just completely gave up on maintaining internal logic.

"Chronicle Vol. 3" actually retcons the cosmic plothole that WoD introduced by reconciling the AU timeline of WoD as a temporary one, just like all the other timelines shown in "Twilight of the Aspects." The Legion got access to AU Draenor through the same means we did, and manipulated it to bring Gul'dan to Azeroth and kickstart Legion. It's still a pretty broken aspect of the narrative, if you ask me, but not quite as broken was it was when it was originally justified during WoD.

[Combatbutler]

Of course not, if anything it has become more of a jumbled mess, because the writers have literally no idea what the other writers are doing and all try to push a character, doesn't even need to be sylvanas blizz does this shit all the time, in ten different directions, until out of that mess a single strand is chosen and then pursued in a extremely shallow and illogical manner and after that is done rinse and repeat, until they flip a coin and decide to go yet a different direction.

[Xaviaton]

There are obvious clear contradictions on every point I've so far mentioned, let's go over them piece by piece, these being just some examples:

1. BTS: Sylvanas is surprised she's Warchief, blames the loa, doesn't want to be vs. Shadowlands: She always planned to be Warchief, it was the Jailor's doing.
2. BTS: Sylvanas envied Vol'jin's management skills, was proud to be Warchief and wanted to distribute the lands of the Alliance to the Horde vs. Shadowlands: She didn't give a shit about any of this and always planned to ditch the Horde.
3. BTS: Sylvanas ditched Varian despite not wanting to because her Warchief told her and she felt obligated to do this to vs. Shadowlands: Sylvanas ditched Varian as part of her plan, she obviously didn't care for the weight of the Warchief's title.
4. BTS: Sylvanas wanted Eyir to make the Forsaken immortal vs. Shadowlands: Sylvanas wanted Eyir as part of the deal with the Jailor. Making the Forsaken immortal would be directly counter to filling the Maw with souls.
5. AGW: Sylvanas is surprised that Malfurion surprised and doesn't know what to do, deciding to burn the tree in a moment of inspiration. Nathanos thinks she's doing this to benefit the Horde vs. Shadowlands: Sylvanas always planned the largest killcount possible, Nathanos was her confidante.

The idea that Sylvanas has been the employ of the Jailor from at least the start of Legion and at earliest EoN per the Dev statements at Blizzcon, yet this at no point ever comes up to her in her thoughts or her talks with Nathanos is absolutely absurd. Even being insane would not do this, because that insanity would have to render her unaware of her own goals, despite us knowing that it preoccupies most of her planning, with Ion mentioning that she was deliberately doing these things to maximize bodycount.

The most frustrating thing about these contradictions and problems is that it would take SUCH LITTLE EFFORT to straighten a lot of them out but the story team went in the straight opposite direction:

What they said: Sylvanas has been in leagues with the Jailer since EoN.
What I would prefer: Sylvanas' soul was stolen by the Jailer which made her terrified of eternal death. In subsequent expansions she has been doing what the Jailer wanted her to do but without knowing that she did it for him. In Legion she could have come into direct contact with the Jailer via Helya and learn of his plan (though not necessarily join up with him).

What they said: Since Cataclysm it has been Sylvanas' goal to get the highest body count possible.
What I would prefer: All undead souls are connected to the Jailer and the Maw (after the death of Arthas as the Lich King). The Jailer did not care whether Sylvanas was raising a forsaken army or just killed everyone as both these actions would serve his purpose. After Sylvanas actually discovered this (during the WoT(?)) she decided to opt for the body count route as she does care about the Forsaken and the Horde (just less about them than herself) and therefore would prefer to not let them all disappear once the Jailer does his thing. The body count route gives her more power over deciding exactly who will fuel the Maw.

What they said: She was buddies with the Jailer all along and played 5D chess.
What I would prefer: She was reluctant to go along with the Jailer's plan due to a sense of loyalty to the Horde/Forsaken up until the Burning of Teldrassil where she saw no way to other way to achieve her immortality goal other than doing what the Jailer wants her to. She still wanted Alliance souls to fuel the Maw rather than Horde/Forsaken souls.

What they said: Sylvanas revealed that she never actually cared about any of us anyways because of a cut on her face.
What I would prefer: Sylvanas realized that she had to decide once and for all between immortality and her loyalties to the Horde in this cinematic and decided to do a monologue on how she has tried to not kill us all but she's fed up with it and now she's gonna kill us all.

These changes even make sense with the current book and game information we have, it would just require us to get a short story with elaborations and for an official tweet saying "ignore what we said at Blizzcon".

What I found interesting about Sylvanas (and the Forsaken) was that she seemingly tried to fight her natural undead tendency towards genocide and uphold her old life morals. Her story post-WotLK could have been her fighting a losing battle against the undead genocidal tendencies (it could even be revealed that the Jailer is the source of these tendencies to begin with). Instead the story team seems to have chosen a path of the one-dimensional sexy shounen anime super-villain which is an incredibly disappointing take in my opinion.

[Maljinwo]

1. BTS: Sylvanas is surprised she's Warchief, blames the loa, doesn't want to be vs. Shadowlands: She always planned to be Warchief, it was the Jailor's doing.
2. BTS: Sylvanas envied Vol'jin's management skills, was proud to be Warchief and wanted to distribute the lands of the Alliance to the Horde vs. Shadowlands: She didn't give a shit about any of this and always planned to ditch the Horde.
3. BTS: Sylvanas ditched Varian despite not wanting to because her Warchief told her and she felt obligated to do this to vs. Shadowlands: Sylvanas ditched Varian as part of her plan, she obviously didn't care for the weight of the Warchief's title.
4. BTS: Sylvanas wanted Eyir to make the Forsaken immortal vs. Shadowlands: Sylvanas wanted Eyir as part of the deal with the Jailor. Making the Forsaken immortal would be directly counter to filling the Maw with souls.
5. AGW: Sylvanas is surprised that Malfurion surprised and doesn't know what to do, deciding to burn the tree in a moment of inspiration. Nathanos thinks she's doing this to benefit the Horde vs. Shadowlands: Sylvanas always planned the largest killcount possible, Nathanos was her confidante.

I just want to thank you for compiling a lot of the BS retcons we had to deal with these last years in this thread

I salute you

[Mehrunes]

Sylvanas will make no sense if you try to assume she only has had one goal all the time. Which is a nonsense assumption. Sylvanas is not Xanatos. Her goals could develop and evolve in response to specific events. She walked in and out of the maw in Edge of Night and came to the attention of the Jailer but nothing tells us that she started working for the Jailer back then. Perhaps she only entertained working with him AFTER her Eyir plot failed.

Except Blizzard flat out said they made their pact already in Edge of Night. Even that aside, as already noted in the thread, she was still moping around immortal Forsaken in BtS, way after her Eyir plot failed. Despite the fact that after Blizzcon it was revealed she was plotting to become Warchief and put her master plan of world extinction at least since around Broken Shore which kinda happens before BtS. The same BtS that also said she never wanted to be Warchief to boot.

And moving away from the specific example of Eyir to larger scale, there are no specific events for Sylvanas' plans to evolve in response to the way you'd like between her getting high on Azerite at start of BtS and the War of Thorns and later. And yet, as has also already been noted in this thread, including @Super Dickmann going about it in deep detail, her plans during BtS and her plans after BtS are still wildly different and contain contradictory goals.

So perhaps you're grasping at straws in regard to something that is quite obviously Blizzard paying no attention to their own established lore like always.

[Yarathir]

She always made sense. She's just a self-pitying crybully with a short temper who plays at being a tactician but REEEEeees the moment she gets a slight cut.

Some people just don't want to accept what she is and want desperately to believe that she's just playing the role of boogeyman because it's part of her 8D interdimensional underwater backgammon.

[Mehrunes]

I've already explained the seeming contradiction between Sylvanas' surprise at becoming Warchief and her later views on it.

You've done no such thing because as has been pointed out to you numerous times Sylvanas actually wanted the position of Warchief and did things with the goal of obtaining it in mind. Which is the stark opposite of what she thought about it in BtS, surprise or no surprise. Unless you want to delve into "Sylvanas kind of forgot what he wanted" level of excuses, there's no explaining the contradiction here.

Internal monologue is also not exempt from being false, because people can lie to themselves as demonstrated by reality itself. People can even believe their own lies utterly, or can be so delusional that their mental landscape does not conform to the reality of things entirely. I don't know if Sylvanas is really that insane myself, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were so. Sylvanas is very pointedly not a trustworthy or reliable narrator, and her point of view would present a very obvious bias even in her internal monologue.

Yes, because when people lie to themselves it's totally about what their goals are. Not that BtS makes even the slightest indication that is the case.

We have no real idea if her deals with Helya and the subsequent attempted capture of Eyir was part of her dealings with the Jailer or not - you're making a series of assumptions here that may or may not pan out depending on what Shadowlands unveils. As I said previously, the details of her employment by the Jailer may or may not be salient to her actions in Legion, you're assuming the former without any kind of details on what her agreement with the Jailer pertained, or when exactly she began working with him directly (e.g. being empowered by him).

Except we do know that they started their partnership before Cata as Blizzard outright said it.

I would still call this a small part of the casualties of Alliance/Horde warring during Cata, MoP, Legion, and BfA. How many do you think died in the internecine conflict in the Barrens? There are no Val'kyr there raising the dead. There are no Val'kyr raising the dead in Krasarang during MoP, either. Simply put, Sylvanas' activities during the conflicts are rather low key for all that. She mostly sticks to raising the dead in her own backyard until Darkshore, and even then she only raises a few Dark Rangers in addition to Sira and Delaryn.

How many do you think died there? We have no solid numbers whatsoever so whatever you're trying to invoke here doesn't exist. And since things on the EK front escalated to the point of the Alliance sending a part of the 7th Legion there (while not doing that in Kalimdor, with the main Alliance force on that front being Northatch forces) trying to downplay EK casualties doesn't really work. On top of that Sylvanas was also merrily raising the humans that fell at SoO.

[Arikara]

She hasn't made a smidgen of sense since WotLK

[Mehrunes]

The most frustrating thing about these contradictions and problems is that it would take SUCH LITTLE EFFORT to straighten a lot of them out but the story team went in the straight opposite direction:

There is no such thing as little effort in the vocabulary of people "working" in Blizzard's writing department. There is only effort. Which they are allergic to.

I just want to thank you for compiling a lot of the BS retcons we had to deal with these last years in this thread

I salute you

Not really a lot. That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Forsaken and their portrayal in BtS (vs portrayal after or before it) alone.

She always made sense. She's just a self-pitying crybully with a short temper who plays at being a tactician but REEEEeees the moment she gets a slight cut.

Except for that time when Genn first smacked her in the face and then fucked over her main motivation for the expansion. Where instead of reacting the way you say she reacts she simply stood in place just because Genn needed to somehow survive. It's almost as if her story wasn't as consistent as you claimed and that plot convenience takes precedence.

[TheFirstOnes]

I mean, she always made sense. My problem, as well as the communities problem however, is whether or not Blizzard's going to pull a Kerrigan on her. However, judging by what they did to Illidan, I highly doubt they're going to make Sylvanas a "good guy" in the end.

[ravenmoon]

@Aucald , @Mehrunes @Super Dickmann - at the end of the day this is quite common in wow - new things happen that you can tell was not in the original plan but added later ... my thoughts are that they try to do it in such a way that doesn't necesssarily contradict the past, and they do so by adding informaation to the past. A TV show or film sequel will do this by giving you a flashback to an earlier time where they insert the infromation that will provide the clarity or justification.

It then allows you to re-interprete what went on previously or provide extra insight not previously available that justifies the current position.

At the end of the day we, the audience are left with the task of figuring out how this works when they do things like this in WoW which doesn't provide the luxury of flashback scenes (except if the character is lucky enough to be in a novel that the author can then provide said flashback). The thing is blizzard tend to often have a way things like this could actually work - but you have to use your imagination or figure it out to come to terms with it.

To be honest the way I do wow lore is take the facts theat they give us and try to find a way that it works. Only when I can find no way that it works, do I conclude that this can't be. Most of these changes actually work without being retcons when new information is provided, the problem is they don't fill in the gaps for a lot of it, so we are left with our imagination and opinions, which are only guess work.

In this case I ssupect Sylvanas could have been working towards this much longer than mid BFA. And at first was trying to mitigate horde losses holding back only to help her faction, but when they start turning against her, she has already reached a point where she's got the power she needs to go to her next stage, and then ditches the horde because they rise up against her.

Why assume Sylvanas is being completely honest anyway, she could be answering back because the ones she tried to protect are now coming back at her, and she finds their so called honour rubbish and useless.. death is death, no matter how you deal it to a person like her who has an end goal, all this honour thing is something she was willing to put up with to a point, but perhaps hoped the others would see her rational and logic.


Perhaps blizzards problem is that people don't understand the characters they write when they do things like that. They need a book to go into the mind of the character and show what is going, what they are actually thinking, how they view things, they need to spell it out, because people aren't very good at reading other people or understanding them. Without this we can only play guess work.