Does Sylvanas finally make sense to you?

[Artelia]

No matter if she ends like Villian or like Hero. She is Horde no more.... We will find another conqueor and agressor that will kick Alliance butts. That was actually true reason to follower her and Garrosh. People are just sick of Alliance. True question is when THIS finally make sense to you.

[Yarathir]

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.




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.




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.

Are you talking about the time Genn stopped her from enslaving a Titan Watcher to be her personal resurrection pet?

[Super Dickmann]

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.

It would be a strawman if it weren't your direct statement. You state, in plain text, that a reason for all these things would be that Sylvanas is delusional and is ergo, an unreliable narrator. It's true that you don't commit to this angle, but you do offer it as a possible explanation should others be lacking. By comparison, I have never once implied that we should have all of Sylvanas's thought process from beginning to end available to us or otherwise it's a retcon, as you also say directly, but that there must exist internal consistency between her mental processes as presented and what we are later told they are. This is setting aside the fact that there's never even the barest implication made that Sylvanas was delusional, indeed, the writers would have us believe she's some 400 IQ mastermind who can stage coups against herself, discard a world-conquering army or deliberately sabotage her own goals and this is all somehow what she always intended. This extends to your point re: the internal monologue - not only was it not written to be as casting Sylvanas as insane and not a reliable source on her views at the time of writing, but even afterwards, the writers, who, lest we forget, are the ones to bring these changes in in the first place, have also never made such an implication. They are instead making concrete, direct alterations to the prior narrative. To be more specific:

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.

I gave you the link where it states directly that her camaraderie with Varian and approach to Vol'jin were part of a long-term plan to get (the) Warchief (post).

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.

That would be nice if any such instance were ever in evidence, but there isn't. She was pursuing her 'true objective' as of AGW, which we can presume was this business with the Jailor, and she's writing to Nathanos in 8.2. There is nothing fully consistent about simultaneously being proud to be Warchief, surprised to be it, planning Horde world conquest and a post-war divison of land in your own mind and also at the same time implementing a policy based around your apathy towards all these things.

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

See above.

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.

We are told that the explanation for the Eyir deal would be given in Shadowlands and that it connects with the Jailor plot. We can infer then that this was part of her plan with the Jailor. I could of course be wrong - but I won't be, and indeed any alteration would constitute a contradiction because her reasoning in BTS was already given as securing Forsaken immortality, a state that would prevent them from going to the Maw. Not to mention that, as ever, no mention is made in her own mind as regards the existence of her arrangement with the Jailor, but that all goes without saying. No one could read BTS and infer it as holding any foreshadowing for her eventual character direction, because it's a completely separate villain-batting exercise which takes her down a different, hackneyed route than the one they ultimately went with. The goal of BTS Sylvanas is world conquest for the Horde as her proxy and the destruction of Stormwind because she doesn't trust Anduin not to fuck her over. The goal of BFA Sylvanas is to kill the maximum amount of people to gain the powers needed to go into the Shadowlands and presumably kill everyone else.

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.

Whereas in BTS Stormwind is her goal, AGW does not have this - she only posits the business about Stormwind as part of her vocal pitch to Saurfang, in her mind she talks about how she needs a wound that doesn't heal, but she doesn't consider genocide until the last moment. You can contrive some bullshit like for example, purely off the top of my head, about how killing Malfurion was a big deal because, being a powerful soul, he's worth more anima and with him being alive she can't get that power up and must instead get it elsewhere, but that's not the reasoning given in the story. A Sylvanas that always intended the maximum number of casualties would have the killing of Malfurion and the Burning of Teldrassil as preexisting objectives, not overfocus on the former and then have to get a eureka moment for the latter.

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.

It means to become Warchief. It's blindingly obvious. The statement made is that she planned out her interactions with Vol'jin and Varian ahead of time to receive the post and thus set up the killing of people. They could give up on this like they gave up on showing the Wrathgate crap in-game or how they introduced the loyalist story as damage control, but until that point that's the official dev statement on the topic.

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.

Sylvanas raised as many people as she could within her field of power. She didn't expand conflict at all from that point. Indeed, after securing Lordaeron Sylvanas was content to do fuck all and again, in her own mind, she mentions how she's against further conflict with the Alliance before Theramore, not exactly the word of someone who wants to expand conflict.

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.

I'm going to go out on a limb and presume that whatever Sylvanas-Delaryn story existed got tossed in the bin and the dessicated remains of that are what we see with Calia in that abysmal 8.3 interlude in Tirisfal. As for Sylvanas's stance on undeath, I'll give you that, because I have no bloody clue, but we know she considers life to be a very bad state and existence to be a prison, so who knows.

@ravenmoon

As downright comical as it is for you to claim that the issue is that players just don't understand the characters Blizzard write when it's Blizzard themselves who provide the sources where they take positions that are completely the opposite of the ones they take prior, that's not the problem. It's not on the players to produce a better product or to weld together the garbled nonsense that's been made into something resembling sense. It'd be nice if @Xaviation for example or I or Aucald or what have you could go back and hastily change things to make it fit, but in doing so we'd be ignoring the fact that they don't fit. That we'd have to make alterations to bring them to a point where they make somewaht coherent sense. I too can produce fanfiction about how Sylvanas' change of mind coincided with the events in Arathi combined with her placing her trust in a representation of the Horde in Saurfang, only for it to let her down, which brought her to the point where she discarded her previous intent to preserve the Horde in some fashion and instead maximize Alliance losses while she went to do her business in hell, but that'd be just me filling in existing failings in the plot.

[slime]

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.

Good guys don't genocide civilians. If Blizz plans to make her a good guy - I guess burning the tree was a dream sequence.

[Raetary]

She made sense before she became warchief and BfA.

Now she is just a mess of a character.
playing 15D chess with reality itself, contradicting her own goals and internal thoughts every 15 minutes as if everything we had up until now never actually happened in the first place.

[Yamuri]

She made sense since she went berserk attacking the tree. It was Garrosh the whole time, using the transmorpher to change into Sylvanas.

[Sondrelk]

While thinking about Sylvanas' actions I suddenly figured q much more sensible plotline for her character.

Have her come across as slightly benevolent, even with still ordering seemingly meaningless attacks, then when N'zoth shows up have her ally with Anduin, making everyone else think she is alright, then in the Shadowlands prepatch have her kill all the soldiers assembled for the inevitable peace conference.

That would make her come across as slightly more intelligent and also not go against her stated plans for very long.

[Aucald]

It would be a strawman if it weren't your direct statement. You state, in plain text, that a reason for all these things would be that Sylvanas is delusional and is ergo, an unreliable narrator. It's true that you don't commit to this angle, but you do offer it as a possible explanation should others be lacking. By comparison, I have never once implied that we should have all of Sylvanas's thought process from beginning to end available to us or otherwise it's a retcon, as you also say directly, but that there must exist internal consistency between her mental processes as presented and what we are later told they are. This is setting aside the fact that there's never even the barest implication made that Sylvanas was delusional, indeed, the writers would have us believe she's some 400 IQ mastermind who can stage coups against herself, discard a world-conquering army or deliberately sabotage her own goals and this is all somehow what she always intended. This extends to your point re: the internal monologue - not only was it not written to be as casting Sylvanas as insane and not a reliable source on her views at the time of writing, but even afterwards, the writers, who, lest we forget, are the ones to bring these changes in in the first place, have also never made such an implication. They are instead making concrete, direct alterations to the prior narrative.

It wasn't a direct statement, hence your incidence of using a Strawman. I said it's possible she's an unreliable narrator, but it's not a given - whether or not you like it or not doesn't change the substance of the argument. It remains a possibility that reconciles what seems like an apparent inconsistency at the moment. The other is that Sylvanas' internal monologue during "Before the Storm" didn't touch on the Jailer or the events of "Edge of Night" because, not to put too fine a point on it, she wasn't thinking of that at that time because she simply wasn't. It wasn't connected to her thoughts at the moment we're given a window. The seeming inconsistency about her wanting or not wanting to be Warchief I explained by stating her views on the matter changed after the events of "Before the Storm," either due to further influence from or conversations with the Jailer, or simply because she changed her mind on the matter organically after seeing what the benefits of being Warchief were, etc. etc. Not liking the way a particular change or scenario is handled is not tantamount to it being internally inconsistent, is my point. I don't personally like what was done with Sylvanas' character either, but the movement of her from point A to B to C seems more or less consistent to me, following her general arc of descent in full-on villainy.

I also disagree with this weird notion people have about her being a galaxy-brain "400 IQ" ur-mastermind - Sylvanas is very smart and has a tactical mind, but her history is full of mistakes both personal and strategic, as well as any number of fumbled and failed plots (e.g. Eyir). What Sylvanas really is a wreck of her former self, mired in both self-doubt and arrogant delusion, afraid to persist in her current state while also terrified of what awaits her in death. She makes grand plans and then throws them away at the first sign of opposition (by her erstwhile allies or the vagaries of fate), just as she did when she wasted her position as Warchief because Saurfang challenged and wounded her. She's not a genius, nor is she any kind of divine being - she's just a broken ranger-general given a power she doesn't fully understand by a being whose nature she also doesn't seem to understand, and who she probably seeks to use as a stepping stone to bigger and better things (just as she did with N'Zoth and Azshara earlier). Perhaps your feelings of inconsistency actually arise from a fundamental misreading of the material you're judging and aren't objective at all.

I gave you the link where it states directly that her camaraderie with Varian and approach to Vol'jin were part of a long-term plan to get (the) Warchief (post).

Which I covered and disagreed with your take-away of. I think you've come to a conclusion that may well not be the end-result of what was said, and I also explained a way to reconcile it even if it were the case.

That would be nice if any such instance were ever in evidence, but there isn't. She was pursuing her 'true objective' as of AGW, which we can presume was this business with the Jailor, and she's writing to Nathanos in 8.2. There is nothing fully consistent about simultaneously being proud to be Warchief, surprised to be it, planning Horde world conquest and a post-war divison of land in your own mind and also at the same time implementing a policy based around your apathy towards all these things.

"We can presume" being the key phrase here, and much turns on whether or not you presume correctly - my thrust being that perhaps you don't. I already outline the Warchief thing several times, but I will do so again for the sake of completeness. She was initially surprised to have been chosen, indicating she didn't expect it and therefore didn't plan it. But she was proud to have been chosen, and despite her misgivings resolved to make the best of it (in terms of enriching and empowering herself). Then further communion with the Jailer keys her in on the best use for her new standing, and she sets the Horde war-machine on a path to maximum bloodshed and death by decimating the Alliance to a man. After she blows this up in her own face, she rationalizes her defeat to herself in a "this was my plan all along" type manner to save face and deny her own culpability. All of this is pretty much trademark Sylvanas.

We are told that the explanation for the Eyir deal would be given in Shadowlands and that it connects with the Jailor plot. We can infer then that this was part of her plan with the Jailor. I could of course be wrong - but I won't be, and indeed any alteration would constitute a contradiction because her reasoning in BTS was already given as securing Forsaken immortality, a state that would prevent them from going to the Maw. Not to mention that, as ever, no mention is made in her own mind as regards the existence of her arrangement with the Jailor, but that all goes without saying. No one could read BTS and infer it as holding any foreshadowing for her eventual character direction, because it's a completely separate villain-batting exercise which takes her down a different, hackneyed route than the one they ultimately went with. The goal of BTS Sylvanas is world conquest for the Horde as her proxy and the destruction of Stormwind because she doesn't trust Anduin not to fuck her over. The goal of BFA Sylvanas is to kill the maximum amount of people to gain the powers needed to go into the Shadowlands and presumably kill everyone else.

"I could of course be wrong - but I won't be" being where you and I typically part ways in these regards. We don't know the substance of how Eyir factored in to the Jailer's plans, or Sylvanas' as concerns her role in Shadowlands, so here you're basically hypothesizing. Which is fine, hypothesize away, but don't try to crouch it as inarguable or objective fact. I also don't think "Before the Storm" foreshadows her eventually turn in any way either, but I'm saying that it doesn't have to, and for it to be consistent it actually can't (which is also why it doesn't). "A Good War," however, does have a bit of foreshadowing in it as previously discussed - and it's not as if there's a huge time span between those two references. Perhaps something changed between "Before the Storm" and "A Good War" that altered Sylvanas' trajectory - perhaps the substance of that change will be revealed in Shadowlands as the devs suggested. Ultimately the answer for both of us here is "wait and see."

Whereas in BTS Stormwind is her goal, AGW does not have this - she only posits the business about Stormwind as part of her vocal pitch to Saurfang, in her mind she talks about how she needs a wound that doesn't heal, but she doesn't consider genocide until the last moment. You can contrive some bullshit like for example, purely off the top of my head, about how killing Malfurion was a big deal because, being a powerful soul, he's worth more anima and with him being alive she can't get that power up and must instead get it elsewhere, but that's not the reasoning given in the story. A Sylvanas that always intended the maximum number of casualties would have the killing of Malfurion and the Burning of Teldrassil as preexisting objectives, not overfocus on the former and then have to get a eureka moment for the latter.

Except genocide was always the goal, but she didn't want Saurfang to be privy to that. And I'm not talking about what she actually did at Teldrassil, as that was obviously more off the cuff, but she always planned to turn the Horde toward that end in the finale (e.g. turning Stormwind into a graveyard). Saurfang's insubordination only shifted her timetable, which she alludes to herself in the denouement of a "A Good War," it didn't change her entire path of her vision of the war. No idea on whether Malfurion is worth more anima or not, as I've no idea how that actually works - hopefully we'll learn more in the next expansion's story-arc.

It means to become Warchief. It's blindingly obvious. The statement made is that she planned out her interactions with Vol'jin and Varian ahead of time to receive the post and thus set up the killing of people. They could give up on this like they gave up on showing the Wrathgate crap in-game or how they introduced the loyalist story as damage control, but until that point that's the official dev statement on the topic.

I don't think it's as blindingly obvious as you seem to think, it's badly worded and not crouched in any kind of absolute terms - I actually doubt its veracity entirely, but we'll see. Even if you take it as-is, my point stands that it may be more out-of-context post-hoc justification, and not actually outlining the nature of any plan she had at the time. I could well be the Jailer's plan, sure; one that Sylvanas wasn't privy to at that time. You've reached a conclusion that supports your argument without any real analysis I would argue. Doubly buttressed by the fact that when we explore the substance of these events in 8.1.5, we don't see any evidence of Sylvanas' involvement at all - just the mysterious Shades who ostensibly serve the Jailer.

Sylvanas raised as many people as she could within her field of power. She didn't expand conflict at all from that point. Indeed, after securing Lordaeron Sylvanas was content to do fuck all and again, in her own mind, she mentions how she's against further conflict with the Alliance before Theramore, not exactly the word of someone who wants to expand conflict.

This seems to be against your original argument and is more in line with mine i.e. minimizing the number of souls she kept from being sent directly to the Maw in the conflicts to come.

I'm going to go out on a limb and presume that whatever Sylvanas-Delaryn story existed got tossed in the bin and the dessicated remains of that are what we see with Calia in that abysmal 8.3 interlude in Tirisfal. As for Sylvanas's stance on undeath, I'll give you that, because I have no bloody clue, but we know she considers life to be a very bad state and existence to be a prison, so who knows.

"Existence" as a term of choice may not just be "life" in Sylvanas' usage - the undead "exist" but aren't alive, after all. I also think the Sylvanas-Delaryn story is completed, as Sylvanas' entire point in raising Delaryn was to torment her and make her a mockery of what she was in further insult to injury for her defiance in a "A Good War." Not sure there was really any greater purpose to that but for Sylvanas to pervert Delaryn's faith fully and completely, whether or not she did a heel-face turn in the end. Sira was herself just a lucky bonus, as Delaryn was the one she was originally after to begin with.

[Varodoc]

While thinking about Sylvanas' actions I suddenly figured q much more sensible plotline for her character.

Have her come across as slightly benevolent, even with still ordering seemingly meaningless attacks, then when N'zoth shows up have her ally with Anduin, making everyone else think she is alright, then in the Shadowlands prepatch have her kill all the soldiers assembled for the inevitable peace conference.

That would make her come across as slightly more intelligent and also not go against her stated plans for very long.

That still wouldn't work, because nobody would fall for that. Even Vol'jin did not trust her. She has made countless enemies on both sides throughout the years, so much so that even in Legion basically nobody in the Alliance trusted her except for Varian, whom the Alliance believed was betrayed and killed by Sylvanas.

[Varitok]

She hasn't made sense since the end of Wrath

[Vakir]

Yowsa bo-bowsa, are people still justifying the BTS text contradiction as anything other than a retcon? A storyteller can have the power to SAY whatever they want in retrospect, sure, but the amount of required mental gymnastics here are staggering. They just didnt know what they were doing when they wrote it, and the damage control confuses me since the people saying otherwise have no PR obligation towards the writers. Hell, it's not even necessarily one particular writing party's fault! But it IS contradictory and that's unavoidable.

I have never been a "fan" of Sylvanas WOTLK onward, but I have to side with the usual defense here and also say the mistreatment here saddens me. I'll consider putting her down the same way I would a rabid dog, with the rabies here being a story that deserved better. What a damn shame.

[david0925]

I don't think the character has really ever made sense as soon as they try to make her somewhat relevant.

In WC3, she was a clever ranger general that lost to Arthas and turned into a banshee. In TFT she and a bunch of banshees, and probably some other undeads, broke free thanks to LK's power being drained, and formed the Forsaken after using Garithos to take Lordaeron, before killing Garithos. At this point she's already "kind of evil". Then comes WoW, did she even do anything important in vanilla and TBC? In Wrath she seems kind of passive too, seemingly losing to Varimathras in the coup and needed outside assistance to retake Undercity.

It was after the supposed "thrown herself off the cliff after Arthas died and saw a fate worse than death" that her character turns entirely, but very inconsistently across different media.

[ravenmoon]

.

@ravenmoon

As downright comical as it is for you to claim that the issue is that players just don't understand the characters Blizzard write when it's Blizzard themselves who provide the sources where they take positions that are completely the opposite of the ones they take prior, that's not the problem. It's not on the players to produce a better product or to weld together the garbled nonsense that's been made into something resembling sense. It'd be nice if @Xaviation for example or I or Aucald or what have you could go back and hastily change things to make it fit, but in doing so we'd be ignoring the fact that they don't fit. That we'd have to make alterations to bring them to a point where they make somewaht coherent sense. I too can produce fanfiction about how Sylvanas' change of mind coincided with the events in Arathi combined with her placing her trust in a representation of the Horde in Saurfang, only for it to let her down, which brought her to the point where she discarded her previous intent to preserve the Horde in some fashion and instead maximize Alliance losses while she went to do her business in hell, but that'd be just me filling in existing failings in the plot.

You're not getting what I am saying. We have no choice in the matter, the lroe they give IS the LORE. It's what has happened in the universe. No matter how many unsatisfactory and unapproved twists it has taken to get here. We can demand a better product, I do that all the time, and as long as I play or post here I will probably continuet o do that.

However we have no choice but to accept what is in game and given as the facts about the situation. So, calm down a little will ya, I'm not saying players don't understand what blizzard has written, some do, many don't (not because they are incapable, but often enough they've concluded it's not worth their time for myriads or reasons) - that's not relevant to what i'm saying. We have to take the lore and figure out ways it works because we have what they've given us, good or bad.

I like many a discussion as they can point out flaws, offer better suggestions, but many a times they also present ways of looking at the situation that can make some sort of sense of it.

It is what it is, we are not given a choice on choosing what to accept or not, they determine everything that goes there, we can at least also figure out ways it works instead of only criticise how bad it is, is all I'm saying. Who knows, it could turn out some of the things we thought totally ridiculous weren't so far fetched and outlandish, regardless of whether we like it or not

[ro9ue]

Sylvanas burning Teldrassil was the equivalent of Dany in season 8 burning King's Landing. Sure, we could've got there if you delivered the character development properly, but instead you had an end goal and just rushed us to it, leaving most people feeling like 'WTF'.

I find it to be a bit worse in Sylvanas's case, because it seems like they didn't know what to do for her for YEARS and depending on what short stories you read, or what quests you did, or whatever, you could have a completely different view of who Sylvanas was. This is what happens when you have too many writers writing the same character without any major consistency for that long.

They may have found some consistency NOW, but all of the people who have been following Sylvanas for years in their medium of choice (game or outside stories) have different expectations. So those who read things like Dark Mirror might not be as surprised with her actions as someone who just followed her in-game story.

[Vakir]

They may have found some consistency NOW

Hell, the jury ain't looking great for that either.

But yeah, Season 8 Dany is a decent comparison, only now it's like if we were stuck with her for 2 more seasons AND if there were flashbacks to prior episodes that play out very differently than what we already saw with our own eyes.

Don't forget, guys - burning slavers is the same as doing some war crimes, and being attacked by formless shadows is the same as directly speaking to the leader of Mega-Hell.

[Super Dickmann]

It wasn't a direct statement, hence your incidence of using a Strawman. I said it's possible she's an unreliable narrator, but it's not a given - whether or not you like it or not doesn't change the substance of the argument. It remains a possibility that reconciles what seems like an apparent inconsistency at the moment. The other is that Sylvanas' internal monologue during "Before the Storm" didn't touch on the Jailer or the events of "Edge of Night" because, not to put too fine a point on it, she wasn't thinking of that at that time because she simply wasn't. It wasn't connected to her thoughts at the moment we're given a window. The seeming inconsistency about her wanting or not wanting to be Warchief I explained by stating her views on the matter changed after the events of "Before the Storm," either due to further influence from or conversations with the Jailer, or simply because she changed her mind on the matter organically after seeing what the benefits of being Warchief were, etc. etc. Not liking the way a particular change or scenario is handled is not tantamount to it being internally inconsistent, is my point. I don't personally like what was done with Sylvanas' character either, but the movement of her from point A to B to C seems more or less consistent to me, following her general arc of descent in full-on villainy.

You directly stated that you would not be surprised if Sylvanas was delusional to the point where her mental processes did not fit what was really going on:

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.

Nevermind that though. The idea that at no point in her time as Warchief, including when she was pondering the position that we now know she planned to get, or the war that she always planned to start for the purposes of bodycount she never thought about her goal at all but instead her heart's desire is explicitly stated to be Stormwind goes to show this. I ask again, do you seriously believe that it's logical or hell, intended, that more of Sylvanas' time is preoccupied thinking about how she's the first woman Warchief over the details of maximizing deaths for her apocalyptic plan that Ion himself says was her main drive at the time? I don't think you do. I don't think anyone does. I think you're trying to wedge all this together. The points I have brought up and listed are not subjective nor what they are because of dislike, it's that they're nakedly in contradiction with each other. It's not about blank actions later being recontextualized, it's about action + stated intent + mental intent not matching what we are later told.

I also disagree with this weird notion people have about her being a galaxy-brain "400 IQ" ur-mastermind - Sylvanas is very smart and has a tactical mind, but her history is full of mistakes both personal and strategic, as well as any number of fumbled and failed plots (e.g. Eyir). What Sylvanas really is a wreck of her former self, mired in both self-doubt and arrogant delusion, afraid to persist in her current state while also terrified of what awaits her in death. She makes grand plans and then throws them away at the first sign of opposition (by her erstwhile allies or the vagaries of fate), just as she did when she wasted her position as Warchief because Saurfang challenged and wounded her. She's not a genius, nor is she any kind of divine being - she's just a broken ranger-general given a power she doesn't fully understand by a being whose nature she also doesn't seem to understand, and who she probably seeks to use as a stepping stone to bigger and better things (just as she did with N'Zoth and Azshara earlier). Perhaps your feelings of inconsistency actually arise from a fundamental misreading of the material you're judging and aren't objective at all.

I said not one page ago that Sylvanas was not a character who played 6d chess and that the writers attempt to portray her as such was bound to fail. But the notion that is not what they're going for when they produce things like the post-Wrathgate coup, her temper tantrum in front of the Horde or the Derek plot as being complex and intelligent when in fact they're all blunders is simply wrong. They're telling us she's intelligent, driven and most of all that she's been pursuing this secretly for a very long time. All things not in evidence and that do not align with either her actions, which as we both agree are volatile, or her mentality. She is not written as an unreliable narrator, nor as someone who doesn't know what they're doing - when they have Bob say that this means she doesn't need the Horde or gush about how she's been planning this since before the writers had an inkling of this, they mean it.

"We can presume" being the key phrase here, and much turns on whether or not you presume correctly - my thrust being that perhaps you don't. I already outline the Warchief thing several times, but I will do so again for the sake of completeness. She was initially surprised to have been chosen, indicating she didn't expect it and therefore didn't plan it. But she was proud to have been chosen, and despite her misgivings resolved to make the best of it (in terms of enriching and empowering herself). Then further communion with the Jailer keys her in on the best use for her new standing, and she sets the Horde war-machine on a path to maximum bloodshed and death by decimating the Alliance to a man. After she blows this up in her own face, she rationalizes her defeat to herself in a "this was my plan all along" type manner to save face and deny her own culpability. All of this is pretty much trademark Sylvanas.

Your reading is wrong in the face of what we see in BTS. There is no possible reconciliation between "The loa appointed me, I don't want this job." and "I want this job, I planned for it. The Jailor appointed me". It simply does not carry. Either she planned it or she didn't. Either she wanted to be Warchief and valued the position - as she does in BTS, since she considers Vol'jin's command, that being from her Warchief, as being a very big deal that she had to obey, or she didn't care about the post and wanted it for self-enrichment alone. Either she envied his organisational skill (that we never see but nevermind) and her genocidal plan against Stormwind specifically was meant to raise the population as Forsaken, as she states there, specifically not to send them to the Maw, and that afterwards the Horde would split the lands, or she just wanted an overall genocidal campaign where as few as possible were raised to ensure maximum saturation of the Maw. You're trying very hard, but it just doesn't gel. The mere notion that Stormwind was meant to be raised means that what is her most desired goal in the book would be completely useless to her plan as regards the Maw.

"I could of course be wrong - but I won't be" being where you and I typically part ways in these regards. We don't know the substance of how Eyir factored in to the Jailer's plans, or Sylvanas' as concerns her role in Shadowlands, so here you're basically hypothesizing. Which is fine, hypothesize away, but don't try to crouch it as inarguable or objective fact. I also don't think "Before the Storm" foreshadows her eventually turn in any way either, but I'm saying that it doesn't have to, and for it to be consistent it actually can't (which is also why it doesn't). "A Good War," however, does have a bit of foreshadowing in it as previously discussed - and it's not as if there's a huge time span between those two references. Perhaps something changed between "Before the Storm" and "A Good War" that altered Sylvanas' trajectory - perhaps the substance of that change will be revealed in Shadowlands as the devs suggested. Ultimately the answer for both of us here is "wait and see."

I readily admit whenever I'm wrong. I was wrong about Sylvanas being an old god puppet for instance. I was not wrong about either the trajectory, conclusion or core story beats of BFA. If I am wrong and her motivation from BTS holds and ends up not contradicted in the final product I'd be the first to admit it. BTS, given that it sets up the conflict for BFA and provides us a window of Sylvanas's mentality at a time where she was already an agent of the Jailor should align with the latter or at least not outright contradict it. BTS goes beyond simply not providing evidence to providing contrary evidence. I too can attempt to do damage control, but I'd have to retcon a lot of shit and pretend I didn't read other elements for it to work.

Except genocide was always the goal, but she didn't want Saurfang to be privy to that. And I'm not talking about what she actually did at Teldrassil, as that was obviously more off the cuff, but she always planned to turn the Horde toward that end in the finale (e.g. turning Stormwind into a graveyard). Saurfang's insubordination only shifted her timetable, which she alludes to herself in the denouement of a "A Good War," it didn't change her entire path of her vision of the war. No idea on whether Malfurion is worth more anima or not, as I've no idea how that actually works - hopefully we'll learn more in the next expansion's story-arc.

That is right in the broad strokes but wrong specifically. Sylvanas wants to kill Stormwind specifically in BTS to raise its population as undead. She wants to kill any kind of people in BFA to fill the Maw.

I don't think it's as blindingly obvious as you seem to think, it's badly worded and not crouched in any kind of absolute terms - I actually doubt its veracity entirely, but we'll see. Even if you take it as-is, my point stands that it may be more out-of-context post-hoc justification, and not actually outlining the nature of any plan she had at the time. I could well be the Jailer's plan, sure; one that Sylvanas wasn't privy to at that time. You've reached a conclusion that supports your argument without any real analysis I would argue. Doubly buttressed by the fact that when we explore the substance of these events in 8.1.5, we don't see any evidence of Sylvanas' involvement at all - just the mysterious Shades who ostensibly serve the Jailer.

It's stated to be her long form plan and working with Varian was a part of that. They could change their mind on this before release as a result of bitching, that's certainly happened before and shelving Sylvanas's prior goals to go for a different approach has happened twice in the past two years with BTS, then BFA. But for the time being, that's the newest and thus canonical stance on the issue. I would be glad if they ditch it, but so far they haven't.

This seems to be against your original argument and is more in line with mine i.e. minimizing the number of souls she kept from being sent directly to the Maw in the conflicts to come.

No, because Sylvanas was happy with what she had in the areas she raised and was urging against further conflict. Less conflict means fewer people died, ergo, contrary to her goals.

"Existence" as a term of choice may not just be "life" in Sylvanas' usage - the undead "exist" but aren't alive, after all. I also think the Sylvanas-Delaryn story is completed, as Sylvanas' entire point in raising Delaryn was to torment her and make her a mockery of what she was in further insult to injury for her defiance in a "A Good War." Not sure there was really any greater purpose to that but for Sylvanas to pervert Delaryn's faith fully and completely, whether or not she did a heel-face turn in the end. Sira was herself just a lucky bonus, as Delaryn was the one she was originally after to begin with.

Yeah, I'll freely admit when it comes to Delaryn it's more wishful thinking than anything solid. To build up this character who parallels Sylvanas, who Sylvanas purposefully singles out to break down mentally and then raises for that purpose, only for the two to never interact further and for Delaryn to instead embrace a human holy undead with whom she has absolutely zero in common, rather than serve as a rebuttal to what we at the time thought was Sylvanas's despair-focused mentality is full wasted potential.

[Isilrien]

No, she doesn't. She is probably the least interesting character to me, although most of them are like cardboard in that they lack depth and nuance.

[Aucald]

You directly stated that you would not be surprised if Sylvanas was delusional to the point where her mental processes did not fit what was really going on.

That is true, I did indeed say that - and at no point does that mean I implied it was objectively true, 100% the case, or the author's guaranteed intent. Merely that it was possible and given Sylvanas' general mental state, I would not be surprised by it. You then tried to push this into something I was claiming was entirely the case, when I was not.

Nevermind that though. The idea that at no point in her time as Warchief, including when she was pondering the position that we now know she planned to get, or the war that she always planned to start for the purposes of bodycount she never thought about her goal at all but instead her heart's desire is explicitly stated to be Stormwind goes to show this. I ask again, do you seriously believe that it's logical or hell, intended, that more of Sylvanas' time is preoccupied thinking about how she's the first woman Warchief over the details of maximizing deaths for her apocalyptic plan that Ion himself says was her main drive at the time? I don't think you do. I don't think anyone does. I think you're trying to wedge all this together. The points I have brought up and listed are not subjective nor what they are because of dislike, it's that they're nakedly in contradiction with each other. It's not about blank actions later being recontextualized, it's about action + stated intent + mental intent not matching what we are later told.

To a degree, I am trying to "wedge it all together" as you put it, as in I'm presenting a case and sequence of a events where inconsistency is minimized. The major flaw in your argumentation, as I see it, is in your ironclad belief that Sylvanas' thoughts on becoming Warchief were retconned by BfA, as opposed to a more gradual change in view and a development of circumstances as a result of as-yet unseen developments (to be explored more in depth in Shadowlands). As I've tried to explain a few times now, I don't believe Sylvanas set out to become Warchief - the Jailer set up these events on her behalf, with her none the wiser, until she was clued in later on in BfA and set out to make the most of the position now that she had it. You are taking a few things entirely at face-value without due analysis, just claiming "this is totally inconsistent" without trying to connect it logically. Most things do seem inconsistent when they go entirely unexplored - stripped of nuance and context, or framed into a very specific narrative for ulterior purposes. If the causal links between these changes do indeed go completely unexplored by the next expansion, you would be right that they're inconsistent, but since we have yet to see the material where these links have been said they'll be explored, I think you're putting the cart several miles in front of the proverbial horse.

I said not one page ago that Sylvanas was not a character who played 6d chess and that the writers attempt to portray her as such was bound to fail. But the notion that is not what they're going for when they produce things like the post-Wrathgate coup, her temper tantrum in front of the Horde or the Derek plot as being complex and intelligent when in fact they're all blunders is simply wrong. They're telling us she's intelligent, driven and most of all that she's been pursuing this secretly for a very long time. All things not in evidence and that do not align with either her actions, which as we both agree are volatile, or her mentality. She is not written as an unreliable narrator, nor as someone who doesn't know what they're doing - when they have Bob say that this means she doesn't need the Horde or gush about how she's been planning this since before the writers had an inkling of this, they mean it.

The difference between you and I here is that I don't think the writers ever tried to portray her this way, it's just a meme being shoehorned into the narrative because it's amusing. At no point is her blunder with Saurfang and the outburst leading to her ouster ever presented as complex or intelligent - it's an emotional reaction entirely down to her seething and unchecked rage. It was an obvious mistake, and her rationalizing of it isn't hyper-brilliant, it's pathetic (in a very obvious manner). She knows what she's doing, but she has a history of upending her plans due to her own emotional instability. She does it at Orgrimmar, she did at Darkshore, she'll likely do it again in Shadowlands. Again, she's quite consistent in this regard, regardless of her current agenda. Hell, you could even say she did it at Icecrown with her suicide - the mistake that started this particular narrative snowball rolling downhill.

Your reading is wrong in the face of what we see in BTS. There is no possible reconciliation between "The loa appointed me, I don't want this job." and "I want this job, I planned for it. The Jailor appointed me". It simply does not carry. Either she planned it or she didn't. Either she wanted to be Warchief and valued the position - as she does in BTS, since she considers Vol'jin's command, that being from her Warchief, as being a very big deal that she had to obey, or she didn't care about the post and wanted it for self-enrichment alone. Either she envied his organisational skill (that we never see but nevermind) and her genocidal plan against Stormwind specifically was meant to raise the population as Forsaken, as she states there, specifically not to send them to the Maw, and that afterwards the Horde would split the lands, or she just wanted an overall genocidal campaign where as few as possible were raised to ensure maximum saturation of the Maw. You're trying very hard, but it just doesn't gel. The mere notion that Stormwind was meant to be raised means that what is her most desired goal in the book would be completely useless to her plan as regards the Maw.

Change "I want this, I planned for it, the Jailer appointed me" to "I want this job now, it was arranged for me, the Jailer appointed me" and you'll be closer to my take on events. Again, not inconsistent with what we see in "Before the Storm" and later on in BfA's closing act. A very minor but fundamental difference in both causation and timing. As for Stormwind, I never disagreed that her plan was the one stated in "Before the Storm," but ask the next question: what do you think she planned to do with the increased ranks of the Forsaken from Stormwind's dead? Stormwind is the Human capitol, but it no means is the Alliance's only population-center. Would she not also go to war with Ironforge, the Exodar, Telogrus Rift, and anywhere else the Alliance gathered? Do you think the Alliance would see Stormwind destroyed and stand down entirely with no hint of retaliation? No, she'd lead the Forsaken and the rest of the Horde against the remaining Alliance because she would've ignited a total war that couldn't end until one side or the other was annihilated - feeding death as veritable smorgasbord. Thus, not inconsistent with both goals: strengthening herself via the Forsaken, and feeding the Jailer in the Maw.

I readily admit whenever I'm wrong. I was wrong about Sylvanas being an old god puppet for instance. I was not wrong about either the trajectory, conclusion or core story beats of BFA. If I am wrong and her motivation from BTS holds and ends up not contradicted in the final product I'd be the first to admit it. BTS, given that it sets up the conflict for BFA and provides us a window of Sylvanas's mentality at a time where she was already an agent of the Jailor should align with the latter or at least not outright contradict it. BTS goes beyond simply not providing evidence to providing contrary evidence. I too can attempt to do damage control, but I'd have to retcon a lot of shit and pretend I didn't read other elements for it to work.

"Already an agent of the Jailer" tells us next to nothing about the specifics of her agency or employment. She first encountered and entered into some kind of compact with the Jailer back in Cata, yes; but we know nothing of the details of that nor do we know that it was the later plan to consign all souls to the Maw. Perhaps the Jailer simply allowed Sylvanas to return to her unlife with a future promise of service (not unlike her deal with Helya, which we also know little to nothing about). She's still be his agent, but up until that service being called in her goals would be her own. Again, you're doing a very narrow read for the express purpose of forcing inconsistency where none may be present, but the unaccounted for details provide far too much narrative room for thing to be properly explained. And since I can myself provide an adequate justification, it won't be hard for the writers to do so (as they obviously know more of the backstory than I do). Maybe they don't and ultimately it does go without explanation - then I'd be forced to agree it's entirely inconsistent and badly written. Wouldn't the first time for me, either. But the current round of grousing seems like much ado about nothing at the moment.

It's stated to be her long form plan and working with Varian was a part of that. They could change their mind on this before release as a result of bitching, that's certainly happened before and shelving Sylvanas's prior goals to go for a different approach has happened twice in the past two years with BTS, then BFA. But for the time being, that's the newest and thus canonical stance on the issue. I would be glad if they ditch it, but so far they haven't.

I don't see any evidence of that from what you linked.

No, because Sylvanas was happy with what she had in the areas she raised and was urging against further conflict. Less conflict means fewer people died, ergo, contrary to her goals.

Again, depending entirely on what those "goals" were at the time period - you assume full cognizance of the Jailer's long-term plans where none may have been known. We don't even know when these two came up with that plan, so perhaps Sylvanas here was just biding her time and building up her forces without arousing too much suspicion or concern.

Yeah, I'll freely admit when it comes to Delaryn it's more wishful thinking than anything solid. To build up this character who parallels Sylvanas, who Sylvanas purposefully singles out to break down mentally and then raises for that purpose, only for the two to never interact further and for Delaryn to instead embrace a human holy undead with whom she has absolutely zero in common, rather than serve as a rebuttal to what we at the time thought was Sylvanas's despair-focused mentality is full wasted potential.

I won't disagree that Delayrn is somewhat wasted here - seems like a squalid coda for what could have been a very interesting character and a sort of inverted mirror onto Sylvanas' character. Of course, it's still possible there's more to see in this vein, though I admit a high degree of doubt it'll come to pass.

[Kithelle]

She is selfish and in pursuit of power/immortality she has been like this for a long time...only some players fooled themselves into thinking she did what she did for her people...that she was a decent person, a good girl in a world that wanted to keep her down. But now even they can't deny her motives and I notice things have been getting quieter and quieter on that front.

[gutnbrg]

Its crazy that shes been working with this jailor guy for all this time and no1 even had a hint of a clue...