#if you think Blizzard loves Sylvanas I don’t know what to tell you

[poisonheart]

Listen, I don’t do “Pain Olympics” ~ I’ve always hated these debates about who is more pitiful and deserving of love and compassion. That I had to read with my own two eyes that people truly believe Anduin had it worse than Sylvanas just because she had a family in her childhood and had “more years of happiness” and he didn’t actually disgust me.

But hey, I’ll humor the Pain Olympics and participate in the race with that same flawed and gross logic. We can justify anything through the lens we want to look through, after all.

Let’s get this out of the way: we are talking about two very privileged characters. People treat Anduin like he’s some homeless orphan who had it rough. As if he’s had to raise himself. Even his servants loved him and were nurturing to him. You can absolutely be very rich and miserable, but let’s not pretend like Anduin was a Thrall level orphan.

(You see why Pain Olympics is stupid? There will always be people who had it worse. It’s a constant invalidating loop. You can’t measure pain. One year of suffering for Person A can feel like the 20 years of suffering from Person B. It’s insulting and invalidating to say Person B is more worthy of compassion just because they “suffered longer.”)

The other wild take I’ve seen in the Pain Olympic race is that Sylvanas has family that loves her now. LOL, bitch where? They specifically chose to make Sylvanas that “survivor who lost everything and everyone, repudiated/shunned/outcast” because it was fun to Blizz. Very fitting for a Horde-aligned character. Need to have lots of misery to later turn into a villain because of Horde things.

Her only surviving sister at that time was Vereesa and not once was she written to care for Sylvanas after undeath. When they finally remembered she existed they chose to use her to drive a dagger of “you’re unworthy and unlovable” through Sylvanas in that awful book “War Crimes” where Anduin was also written to be more than willing to listen and be super compassionate toward this other genocidal orc who actually tried to kill him.

In “Three Sisters” Vereesa and Alleria leave the awful meeting together because obviously, Sylvanas is a terrible monster now who can’t sit with them. There we have Alleria, corrupted by the void up the ass, but Vereesa is totally okay keeping her around because she’s aligned with her precious Alliance.

(And the narrative later proves they were right to think of Sylvanas as a monster because that’s what they wrote her to become.)

Finally, in “Shadows Rising” Alleria is written to be practically salivating to hunt Sylvanas down while employing the same questionable methods the self-righteous Alliance has always condemned the Horde for and no one gave a fuck about it, not even Anduin—the guy who was written to denounce all the atrocities Sylvanas was capable and willing to commit to justify the ends. Guess it’s only reprehensible when the enemy does it, no? Whatever.

Her sisters have been written to be awful. Whatever retcon they pull now about them caring for her doesn’t change the years where that wasn’t the case in canon. You can’t expect the fandom to just embrace such retcon now when they’ve been shit for years, building resentment in the audience.

Sylvanas’ story in Warcraft has always been about isolation, abandonment, and darkness, yet finding the strength to go on in spite of it—even when all she knew and loved was taken from her. To rebuild and forge ahead. Of course, Blizzard is retcon central, so who the fuck knows what’s canon anymore.

Now, let’s shift to Anduin while still participating in the Pain Olympics race. You know what he’s had? A support system. He has people who love him, who went to literal hell for him, and who will be there to help him overcome this new trauma. When he has flashbacks and nightmares about all he did while subjugated, he can reach out to literally anyone and find some comfort. He won’t be an outcast or shunned or deemed a total monster for the things he did or what’s happened to him. He will never get to experience that isolation. He got the good end. And we can’t pretend like that’s solely his merit. He’s even given his father and surrogate orc dad to help him beat the domination magic in the end.

You know who didn’t have that when it happened to her? Sylvanas. You know who won’t ever have that because now she’s done “mass murder” and lost all rights to compassion because of it? Sylvanas. And it is the consistent Blizzard narrative. Unless you’re like Anduin or Calia, processing trauma like a doormat, Blizzard writes characters as unworthy. Their intention works when you have so many people saying Anduin is more pitiful than Sylvanas because his 19-20 years of life have all been awful compared to her who at least knew happiness and family in her childhood and simply threw it all away for revenge. Yes, that’s a genuine take I’ve seen thrown out there. Not even joking.

When Anduin comes back home to his castle/city/people after being dominated, he will be surrounded by people who love and support him. Because that’s the kind of character Blizzard writes as worthy of all that ending.

This has been painful. Participating in Pain Olympics to write all the above sickens me. Trying to quantify misery made me want to puke. In the end, both are characters who suffered. Both have gone through pain and loss and I don’t think it’s fair to try and measure it and use the results to weigh who deserves compassion. But that’s what Blizzard wants. That’s why they made Anduin the listener of Sylvanas’ life story.

This is the reaction they live for and thrive on. They want to further vilify her under the guise of “look, we’re giving you her back story to explain what we couldn’t put in the game for five years” while uplifting yet another precious Alliance NPC because they’re the only ones worthy of squishy feelings and sympathy in this franchise. It doesn’t matter how the book ends or what he ultimately thinks of her. If you are agreeing with “Anduin is more pitiful” you’re playing precisely into the kind of thing Blizzard/Golden wants you to think. Congrats.

#sylvanas windrunner #man when I look at this pile of shit and think of how FF14 handled villains and compassion #seriously Blizzard needs to fire their entire narrative team #even Anduin has been butchered #so many characters have been ruined #even villains #queued post #if you think Blizzard loves Sylvanas I don’t know what to tell you #if you think they favor her after all the shit they’ve done to her character I don’t know what to tell you either #edited because I wrote this angry and sleepy

[esperanta-dragon]

Post-Legion lore did not happen

Please reblog if you agree that lore post Legion should be scrapped and start over again. I am done with WoW lore post Legion. And I would like to know how many of you agree with what I am going to write. I know comic is on hiatus now, I am doing all my best to break the art block and come back to it. I know why I started focusing on death knights. And no regrets I spent so much time creating headcanon, filling out gaps Blizzard never even noticed. Because after Shadowlands, I know I can go nuts. They will never work with them ever again. The potential in Shadowlands was incredible. They did not use them. So... I can go nuts. Create something better.

Please don’t get me wrong. I am the type of writer who never compromised canon, I was only filing out gaps, I was never bending anything or retconning. I always managed to fix everything that didn’t make sense and still not doing retcon. 

But now? How I am supposed to be faithful to lore made by people who are retconning what worked fine and not even knowing their lore? Throwing away lore we loved? Details we liked? And throwing into lore an ultimate bad guy they made up 2 years ago despite telling us he was here all along? Nothing works. Everything is broken. I don’t want to work with this piece of crap. There is zero chance to fix it and fill out gaps, it’s like trying to fill out a cavern with soil. 

It does not even feel like Warcraft anymore

It’s like a crossover with a game we never heard about

The lame rip-off of Thanos? No thanks

Sylvanas being “please feel sorry for me, I didn’t want to do this, I was manipulated, I didn’t know he was bad!”

Working with 5 characters all the time like they have no other characters fitting better for important tasks

Putting characters or disposing of them for no reason and in the end not working with them (Taelia, Calia, Baine, Genn, the list is super long)

The concept of Shadowlands does not work! When you kill the body, you kill a soul in it? Shadowlands as the last stop before oblivion? BS! Despite Maldraxxus is build around building constructs for souls so they can have a body!

We already had concept of Shadowlands since WotLK. And even longer I think. It was cooler. It fitted perfectly to the lore and the world we knew. Shadowlands were supposed to be the copy of Azeroth, something like Emerald Dream. Why we couldn’t get this?

Why did we had to get a cosmic war with 98% characters we don’t even know? Why we couldn’t go for afterlives of Azeroth and Draenor? They would do a fan service and everybody would be happy! But this is too much work, isn’t it Blizzard, it involves BASIC KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR STORY

Characters we know and which supposed to know each other don’t talk to each other! 

Where is Arthas?!

Where is everybody? Where is Tirion? Tiffin? Elena Mograine? Durotan? Lothar? Where the hell is everybody who died and we wanted to see meet their loved ones?

We are talking about dominance magic yet we ask character with 0 knowledge about it when we have order of elite undead who are specialized in it?

Giant plot holes everywhere you look!

Characters do stupid things and behave like idiots (and forcing player to behave like idiot too) so the Jailer can win

MACGUFFINS EVERYWHERE

Maldraxxus was supposed to be about the Scourge, yet it doesn’t feel connected at all?

This stupid concept broke the whole afterlife that was in lore all along until this stupid expansion. Why the souls stayed at Light’s Hope and not coming to Shadowlands? How does the raising undead works? Can necromancy rip the soul from Shadowlands? Were death knights judged by the Arbiter before raising to undeath or they didn’t even managed? Deathchargers are from Shadowlands, so what realm they are from?!

More I analyze Shadowlands, more I refuse to accept it as canon...

Guys, please... how many of you would be happy if Shadowlands (and for sure many things from BfA) did not happen at all? Just to analyze what worked, take the small amount of nice things from it and create Shadowlands how they were supposed to be? Maybe even throw away The Jailer? And the stupid cosmos war?

Please, tell me I am not the only one...

Edit: Yo guys, just to be clear about BfA. It looks like a masterpiece from Neil Gaiman next to Shadowlands. The thing why I said I would restart it too is, it was rushed, there were too many themes put together, it didn’t hold well together and it was like prequel for Shadowlands. Many things would have to go and it would have to be heavily edited and put on right place if Shadowlands never happened. But BfA still can be worked on. It can be fixed. It would have to be changed, it would have to be still retcon but it can be fixed. A lot of things were good here, just badly executed. They just rushed to give us underwhelming crap full of retcons because the guys realized it won’t work without changing the whole history of the world.Shadowlands on the other hand? Beyond repair.

#Shadowlands are not canon #I hate it #look how they massacred my boy #World of Warcraft #wowlore

[w1ndrunn3rblog]

RANT - Just Cut the Damn Apron Ties Already, Blizzard!

Full disclosure, this is not a carefully planned out post with plenty of references and thought given to its structure. This is just an improvised off-the-cuff rant based off the latest quest chains dropped today in 9.1

Blizzard absolutely infuriates me with their constant romanticising of Arthas and absolving him of all blame rather than just reflecting on the actual countless acts of unfathomable EVIL that he committed and will always be remembered for.

It utterly sickens and annoys me when I think back to when Danuser said “We don’t invoke Arthas’s name lightly. When we do we want to do him justice” to realise that this is what they meant all along. Uther takes all the blame on himself for what Arthas became and ever did. Then we have Jaina reminiscing once again about how "I loved him". Collectively, it’s so blatantly a ploy for the wilfully ignorant among the player base to conjure up happy memories and focus his story on how 'Good' he used to be before he turned (and he wasn’t even close to being ‘Good’ when he was alive anyway). Yet in all the dialogue revolving around Arthas so far in Shadowlands, not once does Jaina or Uther ever call him “evil”, or a “bastard” (those derogatory words are only allowed for female characters), or “irredeemable”, or a “monster”…even though his entire story in the novel, and in game, focused on driving home exactly these aspects of his downfall and what he become. Every time Arthas’s name has been “invoked” it's been done in a sympathetic light by looking at who he used to be but never once addressing the most almighty of all elephants in the room - that he became the Lich King because of who he used to be. It was his arrogance, his bloodlust, his entitlement, his weak will, and his lack of judgment that lead him down this path. None of that had fuck all to do with Uther, Arthas was like that all on his own no matter how hard Blizzard try to retcon this now and pin it on him. None of this is ever brought up, none of the unspeakable evil he ever did is brought up and made the focus of the discussion or dialogue between these characters who knew him best. You have 200 pages and a whole two years of expansion content documenting every incomprehensibly evil thing he did…and yet none of it is ever brought up to sully his name and remember him for who he truly was. What we’ve got in Shadowlands is quite literally a blatant case of denial where, through Uther and Jaina, they are determined to view Arthas through their own rose-tinted glasses. It shows that once again, Blizzard cannot bare to bring themselves to frame Arthas as he truly was - an iredeemable monster who made every last choice to become what he was of his own free will. And all of this sympathy and reminiscing on Arthas happens in exactly the same patch here his greatest victim, and arguably his single greatest crime ever, in Sylvanas…willingly accepts she is just like him without pause. I’d say in typical cliche fashion ‘You can’t make this shit up’…but Blizzard actually have.

So Steve and co., is this what you meant by “doing Arthas justice”? Well, let me tell you - you failed you misogynist hypocrites. You will happily absolve the games worst dudebro villain ever of his crimes and worship the ground he still walks on 12 years later, but you will never stop reminding us of a single act committed by his most traumatised female victim while refusing to extend her even an ounce the same sympathy. Let me remind you of your own damn lore just in case you retconning hacks forgot - Arthas chose what he become, Sylvanas was forced to be what she now is. Yet who are you extending the olive branch to? Who is getting all the sympathy even after they’re long dead? The monster who did it to her. Grow the hell up and cut the apron ties to your precious mass murdering, r*pist, entitled manchild once and for all. It’s goddamn pathetic and not only is pathetic, it once again shows in crystal clear detail just how tone deaf, offensive, and unashamedly ignorantly misogynist your entire writing team is. I’d give you a pair of glasses to read the fucking room but you still wouldn’t know what to do with them.

I hate this story.

/rant

#sylvanas deserved so much better #fuck Danuser #fuck Ion #fuck this story

[unpopularly-opinionated]

I don’t play WoW but I used to play Overwatch and Diablo and this touches on just the general issues that are inside of Activision Blizzard right now regarding the major decline of World of Warcraft and how they’re losing to Final Fantasy XIV, how if the latest WoW expansion or Overwatch 2 flop as they’re projected to do then Blizzard’s most definitely going to pivot almost entirely to mobile games, and how the differences in age demographics are actually dividing the company into multiple camps.

It’s important to note two things: 1) this could be fake but also 2) the link came from Grummz, a former team lead on WoW and producer on Diablo II and Starcraft. It still could be fake despite this, but if he’s sharing it then I feel like there’s at least some measure of truth in this.

Transcription below in case this gets deleted and/or you don’t wanna click the link. Warning, it’s fairly long.

“I’m dropping this here after getting chewed out for three hours over shit the chewee did at work so fuck it. Assume larp and let me vent.”

>Shadowlands is a shitshow. Critical response, Player drop off and just about every engagement metric outside of cash shop have been catastrophic. No higher up expected this because of their “we are too big to fail, if we built it they will come” mentality. They refuse to accept their focus on the world being a begrudged mechanic to funnel players to raiding is not appealing to the player base at large because it appeals to them. They have spent the last 4 months trying to course correct but there is no solid direction and the response to 9.1 has only made things worse.

>Sylvanas is planned to replace the Arbiter despite so many people in the company and god knows how many online saying this would be a total replication of Kerrigans storyline in Starcraft 2 that killed none competitive interest in the brand entirely and you can only go “no, no they WILL like it eventually” for so many real world years before its time to change course. Thus far that has not happened.

>The elephant in the room is FFXIV. To the people in charge they are acting like this came out of nowhere and don’t even seem to understand why its drawing players away in their tens of thousands. We have all tried to highlight things it is doing that are clearly appealing to an mmo audience and not, in my opinion, focussing more on mobile game style retention traps to keep MAU users and habit forming personalities logging in. Its not that they don’t care. They just seem so pig headed and digging their heels in with their fingers in their ears thinking all the problems will go away because WoW is “too big to fail”, there will never be real competition and “they will keep coming back”. But they aren’t coming back anymore. Not in the numbers they used to.

>The people making the spending choices know this. The new model for WoW is market the hell out of a expansion pack for a huge quarter then use 6 month lock ins to pad numbers for the quarters after that. Even if corona had not happened 9.1 still would have been dropping after the initial 6 month subs expired to “keep the chain holding”.

>The mood in the company is tense but also very much “its just a rough transition period”. Activision has been pushing hard for Blizzard to release more regular product and to generate more income per user. As far as i know this is going to be a transition over the next 5 years to a much larger mobile/tablet gaming focus. By all accounts not just WoW but Overwatch was intended to be the moneymaker in the interim but once again someone had the bright idea to kill a game casual players loved on the alter of e-sports hoping for another Brood War. From what i hear the “told you so’s” were loud and a lot of people walked beyond Kaplan.

>The sentiment that was shared quietly in private but being spoken more often is simply that the leadership at Blizzard are not bad people, nor incompetent people but people who had to fill seats left when the old guard jumped ship wether they were suited for it or not. Brack is a genuinely good man out of his depth, Ion is a fantastic raid designer put in charge of designing a virtual world he has no interest or real ideas for and so on. They have been taking form the roles they excel at to be put in positions where they get to do far less of that purely because there is nobody left with the experience to do so and the trickle down is a lack of concrete direction, ambition and focus.

>2021 has seen the playerbase, media and gaming at large “turn” on WoW to a degree i don’t think the leads in their “positivity dojo” bubble considered possible. Its gone from people going “This is how Blizz needs to fix WoW!” to “WoW is no longer salvageable, time for greener pastures” and i think on some level this was never considered as a possibility so there have never been any major plans beyond the usual “try and minimise player drop off by arranging releases around competitors launching updates/products”. The official forums being filled with talk of FFXIV and worse “why do we actually pay a sub?” hasn’t helped.

>There have been some testing the waters lately from certain higher ups if we can remove the line “No King Rules Forever”. Read into that what you will.

>There are still arguments going on about the Kael’thas Voice actor shitshow. I don’t know much about it but i know its heated, wouldn’t be the first time a knee jerk reaction only seemed to generate bad press. We lost a noticeable amount of pvp engagement after the Swifty thing.

>The Preach interview was treated as a disaster and there was talk of more strongly vetting interviewers for “bad actors” and only engaging with a list of questions Blizzard provides. Some pointed out that could just be used to create some form of Fireside Chat akin to the FFXIV “Live letters” but that fell on deaf ears.

>The two sentiments right now among the team are either “we really need a win” or “theres a dedicated cabal of internet trolls out to kill WoW”. Right now we are crunching hard to get 9.2 ready to wrap up the jailors storyline so we can get an expansion out early 2022. If that doesn’t happen there are talks of major shakeups coming down from Activision that have been threatened for a few  years now. Its an all hands on deck feeling thats been around to some degree since the “Is this an out of season April Fools Joke” Blizzcon. A make or break deadline is coming closer and things like Diablo 4 were not planned before then. Blizzard needs a significant win not just in initial profit but consumer goodwill. Nobody likes working at what the public now seems to see as “the bad guy” of the mmo industry.

>This has also made new hires decline. Not significantly but the “you WANT Blizzard on your resume” line doesn’t seem to have the appeal it used to. This has lead to more hiring via friend of a friend, to some rumblings about nepotism, and people severely lacking in experience “because they get great twitter optics”.

>On the topic of Twitter we are not being told to “disengage” from it. Multiple employees like Nervig and Holisky publicly attacking paying customers because they got too heated and couldn’t keep quiet is bad press that could have been avoided. A email reminder has gone around more than once lately stating “if you are not customer relations you should not be representing the company to customers, especially if you cannot remain professional”.

>Lastly the biggest elephant in the room is “yo’ boy” Asmongold. The newer hires cannot stand him. They have used terms like “toxic masculinity” and “dogwhistles to dangerous males” while some of the oldest crowd still remaining have called him “based” or “telling it like it is” which has lead to friction to put it mildly. People are told not to talk about him and the recent FFXIV stuff only made it all worse. The idea that an outside element can have such an effect on the product genuinely upsets people. Like Zach is engaging in some malicious act of cyberwarfare. Many of us have point out the now famous quotes by Naoki Yoshida about understanding that players will drift and we need to make something worth coming back to because they want to but some people for lack of a better word see out customers -or “consumers” as they refer to them nowadays- as some kind of antagonistic relationship where the goal is not being an entertainer putting on a show for a crowd but some kind of game hunter trying to trap a large, profitable kill. I wish i could blame Activision but this is a sentiment from more of the younger crowd than the “tech boomers”. Which personal opinion is probably why so many folks like Metzen and Morheim left.

>Before you ask, yes the topic of “wokeness” has shown up in group talks. Its not all some grand sjw conspiracy, people really do want to feel welcome and represented. However the “we need everything veto’ed by people not working on it to see if its inoffensive and bland enough” rubs some of us the wrong way. Like anything in life you can take something too far and lose sight of the core ideals and with everything gone on since Blitzchung it feels like people are forming little factions to pull people in different directions to decide “What Blizzards identity is now” and how to appeal to new players. There has been some drop offs with “go woke go broke” as the only answer in the survey when unsubbing but honestly we are losing subs in unforseen numbers anyway and still making more money than ever through cash shop “heavy users” so it honestly doesn’t make an impact.

>All in all things are rough right now. Blizzard doesn’t have the love of the customers anymore, is no longer treated as an industry giant and while D4,D2R and Immortal aren’t going to kill Diablo even if they fail the sentiment for World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2 are a lot more tense and stressful. The phrase “it might be good to brush up on your mobile development portfolio if we get another underperformer” has been doing the rounds a lot. If Shadowlands continues its stark decline and Overwatch 2 is looking to underperform like its current projections suggest i think the Blizzard of a few years from now will be imitating King a lot more than trying to learn any lessons from Square Enix’s mmo division.

#random #video games #Blizzard #Activision #WoW #World of Warcraft #Diablo #Overwatch #Starcraft #Activision Blizzard

[katieskarlette]

I got the Folk and Fairy Tales of Azeroth book today and have read over half of it, through the one about the Forsaken soldiers.

It’s an entertaining read, but aside from the Tuskarr one (and maybe the Earth Mother one) the stories have been kind of depressing.  Maybe it’s just me.

I don’t like creepy ghost stories, so the Vulpera and Goblin stories, while well-written, just weren’t my cup of tea.  The Forsaken one had an amusing ending but was pretty damn dark otherwise--which is fitting, of course, but didn’t change the overall tone of gloominess.

Both the Vereesa and Uther ones were so full of symbolism and veiled allusions that I feel like I need to read them at least twice more before I can begin to wrap my mind around them.  I had read spoilers so I knew what they were about in broad strokes, but I was still left confused about what I should take away from them.

More spoilery (and not particularly positive) comments below.

Is it weird that the most interesting conversation Zovaal has had so far was with Vereesa Windrunner in a story that’s basically a fever dream of dubious canonicity, in a book that costs over $30 and thus will be read by a fraction of the playerbase?  And by “weird” I mean “a shame.”  He’s genuinely wounded by what he sees as his siblings’ betrayal, and is a textbook case of “I got burned once so I’m never ever ever letting anyone close enough to hurt me again.”  Which isn’t groundbreaking, but it’s more characterization than he’s gotten in-game so far.  He even had the tiniest glimmer of a sense of humor when he commented that everyone has a hole in their heart, but they’re usually not visible like his.  I want him to be a good villain, damn it, but there’s so little to work with, so I’ll take what I can get.

The Sisters story definitely gives credence to the theory that Sylvanas’ soul was split like Uther’s upon her death to Frostmourne.  We still don’t know exactly what that means, or if it’s fixable, but it’s definitely something Blizzard is teasing.  I’ve said it before, but I don’t like the possible implications about culpability (or lack thereof) for deeds performed after one’s soul is split.  I don’t want a convenient “oh, this character’s soul was broken, so nothing they did is really their fault” kind of end to the stories of characters like Sylvanas, Arthas, and Uther.  But neither do I think they should be condemned with the same severity as someone like Kil’jaeden, Gul’dan, or Adelas Blackmoore.  I wrote a piece about that back in November so I’ll just link to it and move on.

If Vereesa was so broken up about her sister’s death to the point where she had a mental breakdown and wandered the wilderness on some kind of near-suicidal vision quest, maaaaaaaaaaaybe we should have heard about it before, like, you know, in the game?  Because now either Vereesa is not going to be part of Sylvanas’ destiny in 9.1 (and beyond?), which won’t feel right, or she is going to have a significant role, in which case the majority of the playerbase will be in the dark because once again a lore development happened in supplementary media.  

I’m generally supportive of the idea of retroactively fleshing out lore, but something about this didn’t quite sit right with me for some reason.  I might be too nitpicky, though.  I am glad they chose to focus on the love between sisters, as that’s a topic that almost never gets addressed in WoW lore.  I just wish it hadn’t been in the context of, “Oh, you want to know more about the fate of Sylvanas’ soul?  The thing we’ve been teasing you about back and forth, over and over for years?  The thing we’ve been deliberately obtuse about in order to rile up the fandom?  Okay, read this surreal story that may or may not even have happened in canon and be even more confused!”

Sigh.  Moving on.

The Uther story was weird.  Really weird.  Uther is a father figure to Arthas, so having him be attracted to the AU!fem!Arthas was uncomfortable.  (And stumbling upon maidens bathing in the forest?  Could that be more of a cliché?)  Was the minstrel supposed to be genderbent Jaina?  He was described more like Kel’thuzzad, but that doesn’t really make sense, either. I know, it’s a fairy tale AU, it’s not supposed to be a perfect one-for-one parallel, but I felt like the story could have gotten the same message across without some of the extraneous details cluttering the scenes.  Was the young man in green and gold supposed to be Nathanos?  The warrior woman with red hair was...who, exactly?  Every time Uther met a character my brain came to a screeching halt trying to figure out if it was supposed to be a familiar character from the main universe, and if so what (if anything) that meant.

And, I mean, the message is okay, I guess.  I’m a huge fan of empathy.  But it seems like there could have been a better way to express that moral than a slightly-creepy Rule 63 AU full of distracting maybe-cameos.

Maybe I’ll like it better upon re-reading, but as I said I’d already been spoiled about the basic plot and the name anagrams, so I knew what I was getting into when I started reading.

Maybe there’s an appendix telling how both Vereesa and Uther stumbled upon some funny mushrooms.  That would explain a lot.

#folk and fairy tales of azeroth #rambling about wow

[diaryofomellas]

Why don't you do a pros/cons of Lily's Horde Champion series? I'd like to read your thoughts on her work.

First of all, it’s Lily and Mikaila’s Horde Champion series.

I don't usually critique fics publicly in such an in-depth way because, at the end of the day, every single point on this list is subjective. My pros could be someone else's cons because it all comes down to a matter of opinion and personal reading preferences. I don’t think it’s my place to judge or tell other people how they should write their stories.

We are all writing fanfiction out of love for a character or a piece of media and we share with the world very personal novel-length texts for free and as a hobby. Seeing our work displayed like this can be both empowering and discouraging, and only one of those is a desirable outcome of writing fanfiction.

Having said that, and because Mikaila did ask me not to hold back, here are my thoughts on Horde Champion. Yes, some of these things are on both lists. No, I will not apologize for that.

Pros

They have some brilliant word usage at times, gorgeous metaphors that make me question my validity as a writer because I know I could never come up with something that good. Mikaila doesn't get enough credit for this fic but I know at least some of those breathtaking moments are hers and she deserves the recognition, damn it!

Nathanos is a buddy. There's no nonsensical Nathanos hate here, only love for our best grumpy man. He can still be a bit of a jerk — as he should — but he is definitely portrayed in a very positive light.

Sylvanas is portrayed as a caring and loving character, which is a nice change from the cold and evil asshat presented by Blizzard’s canon.

Anevay is a great character that shows us you can still be a nice, generous, loving person even if your life sucks and you're carrying the heavy weight of trauma.

Instead of a long multi-chaptered fic, Horde Champion is a series of short pieces, each with a central theme. Can be easier to follow, especially when it's an on-going thing.

The divergence from canon presents very interesting solutions to problems that blizzard solved with character-assassination and that is never a bad thing. 

Cons

Anevay plays the victim card too often. Sometimes it feels like the authors are banking on her status as a trauma survivor to make her likable, and there's no need for that. Anevay is a gem, and she is a lot more than the trauma she suffered.

They seem to have written Anduin to be a total r*pist creep out of spite for the way he is portrayed in other fics. While writing out of spite is one of my favourite things to do, they’ve taken this character so far in the opposite direction that it breaks my immersion in the story because his behaviour is not believable anymore.

Sylvanas is way too soft. Her behaviour borders on "cuteness-overload" at times, which, again, breaks immersion for being out of character.

There's a lot of inherent man-hate. Apart from Nathanos, I can't think of a single male character that is portrayed in a positive light. Either they don't exist or they're not memorable enough to be remembered. 

There is a lot of weight and focus given to the romantic relationship between the main characters. It's not a surprise because the authors themselves have described this series as "self-indulgent fluff", but it can become dull at times when there's nothing else going on in the plot and everyone is just commenting on the same things over and over again — on both factions, for some reason.

The fact that this is a series of themed short pieces means there is no foreshadowing and there are no long plots here — what you see is what you get. That lack of depth can be disappointing if you're the kind of reader who enjoys theorising about the plot or if you're looking for a deeper meaning to their words. 

[iceafterdeath]

I have some ideas about the No More Lies cinematic. And I need to write them down before I lose them.

Many, many people, including Anduin, thought and still think that Sylvanas wants to destroy everything, the world, because if she suffers, let them all suffer. Anduin: “Everyone suffers, Sylvanas, but destroying everything will not take away the pain” (what a goody two-shoes character thing to say!) And I’m so glad that we have the answer to that right from Sylvanas’s mouth: “Oh, you misunderstand. We’re breaking a system that has always been flawed. And remaking it into one that is just.” And then Anduin has the same reaction as all the Sylvanas antis everywhere: “Do you expect me to believe that all this time you’ve been fighting for justice??”

“How can I convince you?” asks Sylvanas and then explains to him how all our life and death we have no free will and every decision is made for us by other powers, and she wants to change that. I know that from a writer’s perspective you can’t reveal everything at the beginning of your story. And this cinematic was made for us to start doubting that Sylvanas is just an evil bitch (not my words) and asking ourselves questions about her true motivations. I’m absolutely sure that her haters won’t do that though. Even so, it’s funny to imply that she tries to convince Anduin, the nice and good Light boy, that she wants justice by keeping him locked and telling him generic things. Life and death are not fair, I want a just system. So what? People still will think that you have a shitty way to try to accomplish that, my queen.

Her words about life made me think more. “That momentary flicker. Every cruel second spent delaying the inevitable in an endless war...” Far from me to want to justify Teldrassil or other crimes. But consider this. We're bound to this life, it’s the only reality we know, it’s everything we’re fighting for, to be happy here. And for people on Azeroth, it’s the same, all they’re fighting for is peace and happiness for them and their loved ones. Sylvanas was like that too in life. She had a narrow perspective after she freed herself from the lich king too. Stripped of everything good and positive, left only with the pain, the rage and the hate, she wanted revenge. But after her suicide in Icecrown, she gains a much larger perspective. Imagine that you die and learn that life was just a drop in the ocean of eternity. And all your struggles and fights in life were such small things compared with the higher forces and fights in the universe. Imagine you were just a pawn on a chessboard, moved by others. That explains “You are all nothing”.

She wants to change that. How, we don’t know. Into what exactly, we don’t know. But there are two things that I want to highlight: she’s not “just a weapon to achieve the Jailer’s ends”, even though she’s not explaining what makes her believe she’s not. She’s talking about “we” like they’re partners and “through” the Jailer, not with him or for him, like she’s working with him because she’s not having a better option. She doesn’t give me “slave” vibes. But she threatens Anduin with being made into an unwilling servant. Because we still need to question her motivations and honestly everything, in order to keep playing.

Now for the real interesting part: “From our first breath to our last, every decision is made for us. Then the afterlife decides what eternity we must endure. We can't even choose who we... We couldn't control anything.” That sudden stop and think thing! What did she want to say but decided not to?

Through this entire cinematic, there’s a strong “achieve the goal through any means” vibe that many won’t like anyway. But I’m interested.

“We've never had free will, Little Lion. But that...is about to change.”

The negative parts:

- We will not have victory for Sylvanas, or her returning to Azeroth. On the contrary, the possibility of her final death or her irreversible change into something else is higher than we thought. Because Sylvanas’ purpose is to break the actual system and remake it. I very much doubt that Blizzard would change their story fundamentally after Shadowlands. It’s a risk they won’t take, and making Sylvanas right all this time would upset all the dudebros and cut their money flow.

- Having Sylvanas fight to empower herself and the Jailer all that time after the Icecrown suicide makes everything a lie: her regret for the horde’s retreat at Broken Shore, her surprise at being named warchief, her iconic “for the Horde” battle cry. And while this new perspective explains some illogical actions, it erases the good moments too.

#wow spoilers #shadowland spoilers #spoilers #my thoughts #sylvanas windrunner #sylvanas

[wolfandwild]

My Shadowlands Wish List

Now that we’re getting closer and closer to pre-patch and the inevitable launch of the expansion, I thought I’d rattle off a wish list of things I hope we get to see in Shadowlands, largely from a lore/story perspective. (Or rather, my stupid foot was hurting so badly I couldn’t concentrate on writing my fic properly, so I decided to ramble off some not-so-hot takes, honestly they’re pretty mild in the grand scheme of things). I was in the first alpha wave, so I’ve had a pretty good opportunity to play the game as it is thus far, and I did want to make it clear up front that I’m fully aboard the hype train. Shadowlands is looking like a great expansion for a number of different reasons, and while I do have a few areas of concern, on the whole I am currently feeling very positive. Please also note these are just my random, late-night personal musings - your mileage may vary, and that’s a-okay.  Mild Shadowlands spoilers below the cut.

You Get A Customisation! You Get A Customisation! Everybody Gets A Customisation! This one is pretty much a no-brainer. I don’t necessarily think Blizzard need to have absolutely every possible character customisation ready to go before launch, but I’d like them to continue adding further options over time. I move in a couple of different circles in Warcraft - I’m obviously involved in the writing/lore/character aspect of the game, but I’m also GM of a raiding guild and closely follow the gameplay/competitive side of things too - and customisation is one of those few things that gets everyone excited, regardless of their reason for playing the game. I’m looking forward to seeing a much more vibrant, unique and diverse Azeroth come Shadowlands pre-patch. (Mostly irrelevant side story - when Wrathion returned in the Patch 8.3 cinematics, my Twitter and lore Discords were basically going berserk with excitement, meanwhile there’s a hundred very confused dudes in my raiding guild who don’t read quest text being all, “What the hell is a ‘Wrathion’?”. I live in two different worlds, honestly). Another reason I’m excited about customisation (and I’m probably in a very small minority on this one) is because I actually really dislike allied races, and I think it gives Blizzard an option to add more flavour to character creation in the game without always having to cobble together a new race. I honestly think they should have simply gone for sub-race customisation from the beginning, to avoid having to ass-pull allied races out of nowhere. Using customisation over allied races also makes it far simpler to give something to both factions (e.g. high elves), or to add something for one faction without necessarily having to always add something to the other faction to keep things in balance. Giving an extra hairstyle to humans but not orcs generally isn’t going to cause that much of a fuss, but if one faction were given an allied race and the other wasn’t because there wasn’t a logical racial option, there would be a shitstorm of epic proportions. So you end up in a situation where one faction* gets saddled with a really random, sucky allied race just to be ‘fair’. *The Alliance. It’s the Alliance. Leave Britney Arthas Alone Arthas has never been a personal favourite of mine, but I respect that he has a fantastic story, and that he’s a cornerstone of Warcraft lore. His story is both satisfying and complete, and that’s exactly why they should leave him the hell alone. I don’t mind if he’s visited in flashbacks (like the Bastion cinematic), or if we explore how he affected still living characters (e.g. Jaina, Sylvanas, Bolvar), but I think it would be a mistake to try to make him a central character in the expansion. In contrast, someone like Kael’thas is an excellent choice for an additional arc, because his original story was a bit all over the place and there is still plenty of room for his character development. Arthas doesn’t need it, and I don’t think the minute potential gain is worth the risk of retroactively making the rest of his story worse. On a similar note... Warcraft III Was Released Nearly 20 Years Ago, It’s Time to Move On The Warcraft RTS was a landmark series of games, and was obviously without them we wouldn’t have the World of Warcraft. However, I think the future health of Warcraft’s lore depends on the ability of the writers to grow the story outwards and upwards, not to always default back to the same handful of characters for nostalgia’s sake. While characters like Jaina, and Thrall, and Sylvanas are great, they can’t carry the narrative forever. Shadowlands represents a unique opportunity to build up the next generation of characters and to blow the cosmology of the universe wide open. From what I’ve seen on the alpha/beta, Blizzard are definitely taking a step in this direction, and I’m hoping that’s what we get instead of Patch 9.2 - Oh Look, It’s Thrall Again. On an additionally similar note... Sylvanas Is Crazy, And She Needs To Go Down (I don’t actually think she’s crazy, but one should never miss the opportunity for an Avatar reference). One of my complaints about the recent lore developments in Warcraft its that it’s starting to feel a lot less like the World of Warcraft, and more like the Sylvanas of Warcraft. She’s playing 469D chess; she’s behind everything; she’s the sole driving force of the narrative. I don’t think that works in an MMO that’s meant to tell the story of an entire expanded universe. It makes things feel small. And before I get eaten alive, I want to be clear that I don’t dislike Sylvanas as a character - in fact, I think she’s very compelling and on a night when my foot wasn’t killing me so much I’d be happy to get into an argument as to why she’s actually one of the most consistent and well-written characters in the World of Warcraft. I don’t necessarily think she needs to die, either, but I think it’s time for her narrative to come to a close to make room for other characters in the story, and I don’t think Blizzard are going to get a much better opportunity to give her a satisfying ending than in a death-themed expansion. Justice for Tyrande (Or Vengeance, Whatever Uther Wants to Call It) Tyrande got done dirty in Battle for Azeroth, probably more than any other character. I’m not a massive night elf fangirl by any means, but their entire race was basically used as grist for the mill in Sad Orc Dad’s story, with no next to no narrative follow-up besides a cool cinematic that went absolutely nowhere in game. Outside the game, her character then got subjected to the cacophonous misogynistic crowing of the fanbase that occurs whenever a female character dares to be angry in the World of Warcraft. Much like Jaina, she’s decried for being ‘crazy’ or ‘irrational’ for, you know, being pissed that her people and her homeland were wiped out in an act of wildly disproportional aggression. I don’t know about you guys, but that would tend to make me a wee bit testy, but maybe I’m crazy and irrational too. In any case, I want to see her go off in Shadowlands. Fuck ‘em up, girlfriend. You Get One Villain. If You Drop It, I’m Not Buying You Another One I think most people will agree with me that the two weakest expansions (at least from a narrative perspective) were Warlords of Draenor and Battle for Azeroth. There are a few reasons for this, but for me one of the biggest issues was that they were chop-and-change expansions. Both were advertised and started off with narratives and themes that were wildly different from where they finished up. Warlords was part Iron Horde expansion, part Legion expansion; BFA was part faction war expansion, part Old God expansion... and that’s exactly the problem. Both times, I felt like we got two half-done expansions, instead of one single, cohesive narrative experience.  If you look at expansions like Wrath of the Lich King and Legion, both of which were very well received, a lot of their success hinges on their presentation of a consistent narrative with a clear goal for players within the story. The Lich King, for example, was a consistent and very present villain. He menaced you throughout your entire journey, and so his eventual defeat on top of Icecrown Citadel was meaningful and impactful. Defeating N’Zoth, by contrast, felt pretty hollow, as we hadn’t had enough narrative build up to really care about taking him down. Part of the reason I’m excited for Shadowlands is it looks like we’re getting a nice, focused story development that builds up to a logical and satisfying villain in the Jailer. Why Can’t We Be Friends? Look, I bleed blue. I love the Alliance... but the faction war should not continue to be a driving narrative element in the World of Warcraft. I don’t want the factions to be removed, I think they’re a core part of the Warcraft experience and I’d be pretty sad to have to let them go entirely, but the cycle of hating one another then teaming up in an uneasy alliance in order to defeat a bigger bad, only to go back to being at one another’s throats the next day is... tiresome.

Ideally, the war would have ended after Legion - it was the most logical place to do so, and I think it was a big missed opportunity that they ran with Battle for Azeroth immediately afterwards. Unfortunately, I think this means the Alliance is going to just have to forgive and forget, which doesn’t really make a lot sense at this point given everything that happened in BFA, but for the sake of the overall story, it might be a necessary sacrifice. That said... I Am Once Again Asking for Alliance Narrative Agency I know there are a lot of (valid) complaints to be had about the Horde storyline, but the one thing the Horde has always had over the Alliance is that they actually get to drive the narrative forward. The Alliance are pretty much exclusively reactionary, and in a lot of ways are side characters to the main Horde storyline. I’ve made this argument elsewhere, but it honestly wouldn’t be too hard to remove Anduin’s part in Saurfang’s storyline in Battle for Azeroth and have it turn out more or less exactly the same way... which says a lot about the importance of the Alliance in the overall storyline. In short, the Alliance are secondary players at best, and downright irrelevant at worst. One of my biggest hopes for Shadowlands is that we’ll actually get to see some Alliance narrative agency. To be clear, however, this does not mean a simple rehashing of Horde conflicts with a blue coat of paint. Alliance stories are not Horde stories, and nor should they be. Having an Alliance leader turn into a genocidal despot is not the only way to create conflict or agency in the story - there are plenty of opportunities for character growth, development and conflict on the Alliance side without having to have one of our leaders do a heel turn (e.g. Tyrande as the Night Warrior, Anduin dealing with his experience in the Maw, Jaina confronting the fates of people like Kael’thas and Arthas, Taelia meeting her father, etc.), and I really hope we get to see some of those narrative threads come to fruition. I Want to Mount Everything Add a hundred new mounts. Two hundred. A pot plant with googly eyes, the four hundredth Alliance horse, your mum. I’ll ride anything; I don’t even care. (Please note this is the most important opinion I have).

#world of warcraft #shadowlands #shadowlands spoilers #battle for azeroth #lore #turns out i had a few more opinions than i originally realised #anyway shadowlands looks cool guys y'all should check it out #but i would always rather have some warcraft than no warcraft #so take that how you will

[swampgallows]

i guess what bothers me about the sylvanas ‘stans’ or w/e is that like... look, i get that this new development is painful. i know you dont want it to be this way. i know you feel betrayed. but that’s... that’s not “bad writing". that’s good writing. the writers have intended sylvanas to betray us from the very beginning. you are SUPPOSED to feel betrayed.

i said the same thing back when sylvanas burned the tree, too. it’s good that you were angry and upset. that’s the point. what she did was horrible and left everybody confused. blizzard can only tell so much of the story at once, but had said the cinematic would show that sylvanas was morally gray. we thought they meant warbringers, but clearly they mean reckoning. she isn’t morally gray as in ‘neutral’; she’s morally gray as in we don’t know what her morals are. but now they are clear. she has always been self-serving, but now she is no longer serving the horde OR the forsaken.  

that’s the whole point of flag girl/banner bae/tink-tink in the cinematic. when sylvanas says, “the horde is nothing,” her voice echoes. you know everyone there heard her. (i also cried.) but they dont show the shocked and enraged faces of saurfang and thrall (iconic horde characters), or even anduin. they show her stalwart flagbearer’s look of disbelief. a forsaken everyman. one of her own. someone who serves her, someone who she swore she would protect. her people, the forsaken. she betrayed her people.

from the moment you make a forsaken, you know that “subterfuge and deceit” are the modus operandi for your branch of the horde. you know that sylvanas has her own “dark plans”, and that she has enlisted these free-willed forsaken like yourself to be part of it. 

Erik Le Blanc Pleym (10 months ago) “This is how we were introduced to the Undead and people still believe Sylvanas is acting out of character.”

when putress and the wrathgate happened, sylvanas claimed it was mutiny, and that pacified us. when she was raising more forsaken, we thought, “This is to protect our homeland, to make sure it is ours. At least she is giving the new ones a choice.” When she sought to enslave Eyir, we thought, “This is for our benefit. She is just trying to help us.” But when she killed her own people on the steps of Lordaeron and blighted our home, that was when we knew we were refugees again. Some did have faith and stayed loyal, and they too were discarded and further betrayed. these npcs are her stans in-universe!!! it is in character and canon that they were betrayed! 

the subterfuge and deceit turned on its own. we are no longer part of her plan. many forsaken predicted this (both player characters and NPCs as far back as vanilla), but no matter what they thought the reality is that there is now nowhere for us to go. we can only hope that the horde will still accept us.

if you are looking into reasons why sylvanas “changed”, you are looking at it not from the eyes of her people, but from her own selfish actions. you were tricked, too, into thinking that any of her actions were for the benefit of the forsaken.

“but she cares about her sisters!” great! but they aren’t forsaken. “but she raised nathanos and seems to care about or be in love with him!” great! but he was one of the rangers she knew from life. he’s not an everyday forsaken/lordaeron citizen. “but she said a nice thing to an orc orphan!” scraping the bottom of the barrel, are we? still not forsaken.

sylvanas does not care at all for the forsaken people. she used us, be it as arrows or a bulwark. for people who think that this is some kind of sudden character shift for sylvanas, all i can really say is that you’re either new to the game or you just haven’t been paying attention. forsaken have known for a long time that this was coming.

#bfa spoilers #bofa spoilers #battle for azeroth spoilers #battle for azeroth #world of warcraft #8.2.5 spoilers #metacraft #wow critical /

[embercrested]

@windrunnerrs I enjoyed the book while reading it, yet the more I stopped to think about it the more I found it to be flawed. I don't agree with everything makani criticized, but for the most part I think it's right. Sira is whatever, Maiev is ooc, the second scene with Tyrande is pretty bad. Jaina's personality reverted, but Idk how fair it is to blame Roux for that when she seems to be doing that for a while.

Anduin wasn’t a problem for me tho bc I feel what’s going on makes sense with what he’s been through, the suggestion of external influence but also just the pressure he’s under with everything (and that things still weigh heavily on him even when he complies, like the Turalyon Alleria stuff). For Turalyon and Alleria, I didn’t feel like it was reverting their characters to BtDP at all tho

at the same time, I took a lot of issue with Nathanos and Sylv because even in BFA material they had been portrayed differently. I liked Talanji’s part a lot, but Zekhan Idc at all. I think my main problem was the plot not progressing and a lot being kinda abandoned halfway through the book.

As for Fairshaw, I could see it coming from that one mission they’re both in, but at the same time, I think the book does a poor job of developing it from there. I didn’t like lorthaly either, and I hate lor’themar’s character as written by roux, but specially in relation to Thaly I hate it.

ANYWAYS SORRY FOR THE RANT I JUST LIKE DISCUSSING THIS STUFF AKSJDNFKASNDF

NO WORRIES LMAO your insight is always appreciated and i love your opinions on that. (mostly bc we agree :’) but also bc it’s rooted in facts and you know your stuff!)

yeah like??? i have a similar impression reading the critiques, while first reaction was glowing and positive, in comparison to the other books people are ... a lot more negative? it’s like the second kingsman film for me, when i watched it at the cinema i LOVED it, but as time passed i came to realise that i don’t really like it. it’s a bit like your weird uncle: you love him, but you don’t like him. 

it’s super hard to say but i just don’t care about the undead night elves bc they’re all so... bland. although i really had to laugh at her comparison of sira diving in a 1v4 teamfight bc it felt exactly like that in general. the few passages i’ve read with maiev made me ??????? bc that’s not the maiev we know. 

I really don’t know what her problem with Anduin was, tho. Jaina’s arc has been disappointing since after the battle of dazar’alor with no real development - not saying she has to stay the mad warrior queen, but switching from “BEWARE, BEWARE OF ME” to “you know it’s just sylvanas, the horde isn’t that bad uwu we must let them mourn uwu~” in an instant (nobody @ me, because that’s the hill i’m willing to die on and i’m tired of discussing it) - but that’s the thing, just like you said - you can’t fault roux for that, because they’ve did that before her and already in the game 

zekhan slowly feels like rhonin, at least that’s what quite a few people say. he started as a meme and now he’s this prominent character who’s just too good and perfect and- urgh. never got the obsession with him either.

all in all it’s also super hard to judge, because we don’t know how much blizzard tells her to do; if she just gets an overall plot and she had to fill in the blanks herself, if she gets an extensive briefing about who the characters are, what direction they’re supposed to go and what their personalities are supposed to be. 

#windrunnerrs #{ DRUST DO IT. // ooc. }

[esperanta-dragon]

I feel like there is a need to write down why so many people hate Sylvanas so much, me included. Maybe you can’t stand her too OR you love her and you don’t understand why the hell people can hate such an amazing character. Here is why. And I will try to write this down logically as possible. No “hur dur I hate her because she is a bitch!”. No, I will put down all things so you can understand. And one sad disclaimer... it’s not the character’s fault.

WHY WE STARTED TO LOVE HER

Sylvanas showed up in Warcraft III as a Ranger General of Quel’thalas. She was protecting her country for quite some time when Arthas attacked Eversong Woods in order to get to Sunwell and resurrect Kel’Thuzad as a lich. Sylvanas paid with her life and her soul to protect her people and her country. She was made banshee and was forced to do things against her will and serve the Scourge she hated. But she was still plotting her revenge, didn’t give up until the moment came and she took the chance. She reclaimed her body back and almost killed Arthas, and took over Lordaeron City. Then she took over the undead slowly freeing from the Lich King’s grasp and gave them a place where to stay, becoming their Queen. And since then, she was planning to kill the Lich King for good.

That’s why we loved her (I never did, I will explain that later why). She really kicked his ass. She slapped the Scourge in the face. She never gave up and was doing everything to achieve her goals, her revenge. There are not so many such strong female characters, so resolute. She was not good but also not evil, she was shady, she was not the boring good guy. So why the hell people hate her? She is perfect! Let’s go to what happened during and after WotLK... Because here it starts.

WRATH OF THE LICH KING

As I said, many people adore Sylvanas since Warcraft III. But they don’t understand the character is not the same. She was never good, she was an anti-hero, that’s the fact (the Ebon Blade are also anti-heroes and they are not bad, they just do necessary things to keep the Scourge in check). She was doing everything to take revenge on Arthas. And everything means that she had no problems walking over corpses of her allies. Causalities because of my fault? Pfft! No matter as long as the piece of trash sitting on the Frozen Throne will get what he deserves!

This was pretty much visible after Wrathgate when Varimathras and Putress tried to take over Undercity and Alliance and the Horde saw what she is doing inside the city. Still fine, it was in character, she was doing EVERYTHING to take revenge on Arthas. Everything. That’s why she existed, why she kept going. Even back then, I didn’t hate her. She was still a very well-written character. This is what a character in her position would do. 

But once everything was done, the Lich King was taken care of, she realized there is no point in her existence. She saw the Lich King was not destroyed. They only replaced him. So she threw herself from the Icecrown Citadel and fell on saronite spikes, the only thing that could definitely kill her.

And she ended up in a dark place. And the pain she felt was not like anything she felt before. It was the most horrible, the most inconsolable place. But val’kyras came down to her and sacrificed for her to get her back. Now we know what happened as we progress in the Shadowlands but... let’s say this was the beginning of the end for a good character Sylvanas once was. This was a start of cliché, inconsistency, and a great example that good characters should be allowed to go and leave so they can be remembered as a good characters.

WHAT CHANGED

Look, I came to WoW really late. I was playing on WotLK free servers as I could not afford to pay for official servers. But I knew the story in WotLK and I was still pretty ok with Sylvanas. I don’t remember hating her this much. She was well written.

It was Cataclysm Firelands patch when I finally could come to official servers. And Sylvanas was already doing pretty shady and disgusting stuff. I played Forsaken starting quest line so I know. Raising undead like the Lich King did? No problem for her. She even said she is like Arthas but she is working for the Horde (she never cared for them anyway, it was just more beneficial for her). What happened in Gilneas was not alright. Who gases the whole zone and making it inhabitable? Alright, let’s say Horde was expanding and Gilneas was next to Lordaeron. Alright. But back then, I finally dove deep into lore and I’ve noticed many people are really devoted to Sylvanas. It seemed almost like a cult. And every time I asked people, why they love this psyhopathic banshee, they were like: “She is my Queen! I love her, I would die for her! She is cool, she is taking care of us, she has a good heart!”

Something was amiss here... I couldn’t understand this. I couldn’t see what they saw. I saw a shady, ruthless and careless psychopath who is using her loyal subjects to save herself from something. And many people believed it even in BfA. Me and my friend had to show them excerpts from short stories where she say that “once they were arrows in her quiver, now they are bulwark against the darkness”. They couldn’t believe they loved Queen would not love them back!

But hey, still, I wanted to understand why people love her. I would understand if it would be still Warcraft III or WotLK, that’s fine. But Cata? Legion? BfA? Shadowlands? 

So I started reading all books, short stories where she was. Articles about her. I tried to catch the glimpse of why people loved her: the majority told me she is still good and has a good heart and she is an amazing person. But I didn’t see it. Maybe I am stupid and I don’t understand, I am missing something... So I kept studying, trying to see anything good in her, I was failing. I saw a character falling more down into a pit full of anger and hate. Her loyalists said she was an amazing creature, loving, caring.

And the more I was told by people that she is caring and she has a good heart, the more I was getting disgusted and angry because the more I was reading about her and the more her loyalists told me, the more I saw what Sylvanas is: inconsistent character.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH SYLVANAS

In one book she was written like this. In another book, she was written like that. In one quest it was like this, then it was like that. In one expansion she behaved this way, in the next expansion, it was that way. She was doing more and more twisted things and her loyalists kept telling me she has a good heart. My frustration was growing to the point I could not stand her. It felt like I’ve met the person I knew was torturing her friends but when I met them, they told me with bruises on their faces and definitely mentally abused that she is amazing and it’s not her fault, she is just misunderstood and I should love her too.

When she killed Liam Greymane, loyalists were like: “I have no clue why Genn hates her so much! That stupid dog should die!” Yeah right, somebody kills your son and destroys your home, you have no reason to be angry, it’s ok.

She burns down Teldrassil and they said: “Why Tyrande wants to kill her? I hope Sylvanas kills her first!” Sure, somebody burns down a city with thousands of innocent people, it’s fine, let them go, no hard feelings. And sometimes these people are able to justify her actions with: “But this is fantasy! There is different morale than in real world!” Please, guys, never ever write a story. Never touch it. You will end up like Steve Danuser making characters to behave like idiots and without emotions. Stay away. Please. Do world the favor.

I was trying really hard. Trying to figure out what kind of character she is. Find a pattern. Because you can write a chaotic character and still find a pattern and it can be still a consistent character. But Sylvanas? I felt more and more that not even Blizzard knows what to do with her, how to write her... she felt more and more inconsistent and out of place with every expansion. And you know what? That happens to characters which are kept in the story longer than they should. If character losts a meaning of their existence, there are only two options: you either let them go or you have to find them a new meaning. And in case of Sylvanas, the second option led to a narrative disaster.

We were told by Blizzard: “Don’t worry! Everything falls in place! It makes sense what she does!” But after the Sanctum of Domination finale? It was a big fat lie...

Before I come to the cinematic, let me tell you what made me hate her beyond every possible measure: her fandom.

HITLER HAD A GOOD HEART!

In Legion, she was doing shady stuff. But in BfA? She became a Hitler. She burned down Teldrassil because... IDK she snapped and wanted to show one elven archer that you can kill hope? And what kind of catapults she had has reach 20 km? What kind of catapults can burn down incredibly big tree SOAKED in water with thick bark. Was that azerite or... no, I am not gonna get angry. And I won’t even start with the b*shit Blizzard pulled: “Look, just because Sylvanas is right in front of Teldrassil doesn’t mean it was her who burned it down!” They had to lie to us to look that they can create a better story than what it actually is.

She destroyed Undercity so Forsaken lost their home. Is this how you take care of your subjects if you are loving and caring? I think not.

And with her actions, millions of souls from the whole cosmos are going right into the Maw for eternal suffering. And why? Because she was scared. Because instead of thinking about herself and trying to change, she rather schemed with the god of death... who was responsible for her misery. And even teamed with Kel’Thuzad, who was reason of her fate in the first place! And yet, after all this, after mass genocide, destroying souls, millions, maybe billions of souls are suffering because of her... and you can still tell me there is still good in her and she deserves redemption arch... And with love say: “She got us into this, she will get us out of this <3 ^_^” So somebody is making everybody suffer and some people are like “Ooooh it’s fine, I support her! I bet she will realize what she is doing and she will save us!” Would you say the same about Hitler? That he was misunderstood, he was trying to fix something that’s why he murdered millions of people? I am just asking what kind of people her loyalists are in real life.

I have a question... would you still love her if she was a man? Or decomposing undead? Or if she wouldn’t be sexy elf at all? If she would be ugly? I think we all know the answer (disclaimer, beautiful people are not always kind and nice, what a surprise). I bet she would be already killed or hated by majority of the community at least two expansions back. Why Garrosh had to stand trial for war crimes and Sylvanas doesn’t? To be honest, I never liked Garrosh, I hated him, but I never hated him as much I hate Sylvanas. He was at least consistent to his very last moment. But I am fed up by the fact that everybody keeps excusing what she does just because she is a sexy elf. This is not character I can respect. How can you say about such character that she is cool when you know she is commiting genocide? Let’s replace her with ugly elf and let’s see how many of you will still love her.

If you love her because she is a crazy homicidal maniac and you want her to do evil stuff, go ahead, nothing wrong with you, it’s fine. You love her because you think that she has a good heart and she is sending millions of souls into hell because she wants to help us? Take your pills and think twice before going on date with a manipulative person who will use you, beat you but will tell you they love you so much while cheating on you. Thanks.

If you are lying to yourself that she is good and has a good heart because you are afraid you wouldn’t like her anymore as a bad guy, then you love illusion you made around her, not the character itself. And you should seriously think if you really love the character if you need to change it that much in your mind to keep loving her.

GRAND FINALE

“If they are gonna give her redemption arch, I am gonna puke.” Many people told me, they would not. They are not gonna do it. She is beyond redemption, she is antagonist, period. Guess what, they did. The cheapest way possible.

Blizzard kept telling us everything will make sense in the end, why she did all these things. But it did not. And it only confirmed my greatest fear: Sylvanas is an inconsistent character since Cataclysm.

Sylvanas was afraid to go to the Maw. So she got an amazing idea. Let’s free the god of death, the malevolent creature trapped there because for sure he is suffering just like me, and injustice was done to him. He is the reason of my suffering because he made Helm of Domination and Frostmourne, that’s why I was killed and I am like this? I am sure he is a good guy, in the end, let’s remake reality so there is no life and death! That guy must be pretty ok. Oh wait his job is to torture souls? No, I don’t believe he is bad.

So when Jailer gets all he wanted, ofc he say that he will remake all reality and everybody will serve. And Sylvanas realizes: “Oh my, he is just like the Lich King! I didn’t want this! I will never serve!” Even she served him for the past few expansions. And suddenly she sees he is a bad guy. Suddenly.

And then, Jailer gives her half of her soul back... So... this is the explanation? She was doing all this because she was not whole? Is this an excuse for genocide? Now we will all feel sorry for her? Tell her it’s ok, you were not yourself?

I am saying this all the years and I will say it again: the Ebon Blade are order full of those with a fate like Sylvanas. The whole order. Multiple characters suffered under the Lich King like her, lost themselves, were made to kill their friends, their families. And they, too, took revenge on him. But instead of going crazy and trying to hurt everybody because they were hurt, they tried to help and protect people. Maybe they are missing part of their souls too. But are they running around, burning innocents, committing genocide? No. So please, the is no excuse, she was aware of what she was doing. I am not buying this and for sure this won’t make me feel sorry for her. It was her choice. You can be depressed and hurt into the very core and still decide not to be homicidal maniac.

Another annoying thing is, Blizzard kept telling us she is a master strategist and she is highly inteligent. Would a highly inteligent person try to help somebody responsible for her suffering? Being ok with them? There was not shown how come she is ok with the Jailer! Look I thought she is smart but after the cinematic, she does not look like that.

What was her plan anyway? Did she believe such creature won’t betray her, he won’t dump her? I was hoping he will dump her and kill her. That would be the only ending fitting for the character. I didn’t want another Kerrigan, I didn’t want redemption arch for her... I was hoping I will finally like her as a villain. Now I can’t... there is no way I will like her ever again because Blizzard probably can’t do just evil characters. There always must be something behind, some explanation why they are like this. “I was good this whole time!” And I am tired of this... Suddenly I like Garrosh because he was an asshole but he was consistent. He had a good ending. He “died” like a boss.

THEY SHOULD HAVE LET HER DIE

And I mean it. If they would let her go after WotLK, it would be a good ending for her. Tragic end for the tragic character. She fulfilled her purpose and she would be remembered as a good consistent character. But she is making a lot of money, many people love her (not anymore, even people who liked her hate her now and her fanbase is getting smaller) so Blizzard decided they have to milk her as much as possible.

I think everything good should come to an end. “You would either die as a hero or live long enough to become a villain.” In this case “You would either die as a good character or live long enough to become inconsistent and annoying character.” And it happened.

Remember how people were angry how Thrall is getting a lot of attention in Cata? Haha, good old times. How about Sylvanas in 3 expansion cinematics (and some side cinematics like Reckoning, etc) and 2 expansions fully focusing on her (and some other expansions where she is a lot too). How about the 15th figure in a row. And 4th Blizzcon art. And I can keep going.

Metzen had favorite characters... but they were never overused as much as Sylvanas. Vol’jin was warchief for 1 expansion where he did nothing and then he died so she could take lead in story. So many characters are forgotten, pushed down so she can be on the spotlight. And I am sick of it. This is not single player, this is MMORPG. The world feels ridiculously small thanks to this, we have more characters than Sylvanas + 5 characters they keep using and recycling all the time.

And keep using Sylvanas and putting her into the spotlight all the time did not help. You can start hating character you liked before just because you have enough of them and you want to see other characters. This world has a big potential. So many characters are unused because of Sylvanas. Because the lead narrative designer loves her so much that he had to make her the main character of WoW and doesn’t care there is a whole world to take care of. And he does the worst job possible. Because he tried to make her complicated and complex and in the end he was just trying to make it look like that but it didn’t work out. It was just inconsistent. It didn’t fall in place.

Her plot armor is so laughable and it’s the most annoying thing about Sylvanas. How characters around her are so stupid and dumb so they can let her do such stuff (hello Horde in BfA). The whole universe and Blizzard especially is protecting Sylvanas of any harm. How can you like such character when it behaves like Mary Sue? I didn’t want to see cinematic how she comes and beat up really powerful guy without any issues. You know how interesting would be if Four Horsemen managed to arrive earlier and they wouldn’t know if to fight the Lich King or Sylvanas? No, Blizzard wanted to show lady Sylvanas Plotarmor.

And the worst thing is, I feel like Shadowlands are my last expansion in WoW. This is where the story ends for me. And I know that many characters won’t get resolution, many story arcs will never close because they’ve put too much effort to work on Sylvanas and ignore other characters. So many characters could have met. Lore in Shadowlands could have been expanded about The Scourge, death knights, rune magic, etc... it did not. 

So no, Sylvanas is not one of the best characters created. If this is the best WoW can muster then there is nothing to be proud of. We would have good or better characters if Blizzard tried to work with more characters and give them space and a chance to develop. But we will never have them because Sylvanas took the spotlight.

Sylvanas for me is the character who will be put on guidelines on how to not use a character. This character will be perfect for DO NOT character development guidelines. And the whole story of WoW at least in BfA and Shadowlands is a great example of how to destroy the world with an amazing setting and characters. 

I hope I’ve made this clear why many people hate her. Because it’s much more complex problem. This character was misused, written horribly, overused, was given a poor and cheap story arch, made look stupid and it no longer makes sense. And on top of that, many characters will never get a resolution, many storylines won’t be finished because all story was focused on her and not on the world. World which was supposed to be “everybody’s story” was made story about Sylvanas. Just because she sells.

Good job Danuser, I hope you are happy.

Tl;Dr: Sylvanas is inconsistent since Cataclysm because Blizzard tried to make her complex character artificially and failed horribly. She should have died after WotLK and never made Warchief. They should have let her go so we can remember her as a good consistent character

P.S.: I am not native speaker, sorry for grammar errors.

#Sylvanas Windrunner #World of Warcraft #wowlore #wotlk #wrath of the lich king #shadowlands #battle for azeroth #Legion #the Jailer #lich king #lore

[w1ndrunn3rblog]

Why Is Nobody Questioning Sylvanas’s Motives?

I believe the direct answer to this is simple – it’s because Blizzard are not questioning them. More specifically, no character that has ever known her is questioning them. I think it’s best we take a quick recap of recent events from these characters (her former allies) perspective – from the start of BFA, none of them have a clue what Sylvanas is doing or why. They start a rebellion, still with no clue as to what she is doing, lead it to Orgrimmar, then watch her disappear as Saurfang bites it, and they are still just as clueless as ever. Then out of nowhere, they are captured by winged monsters they have never seen before, taken to a barren wasteland hell in the afterlife which they have never seen before, find out Sylvanas is behind their capture, who then takes them to Torghast to be endlessly tortured, and find out she’s in league with this uber-Titan dude of Death called ‘The Jailer’ who they have never heard of before or even knew existed. They are then gradually rescued one by one by the ‘Champion’, and in all this time…nobody asks “Why is Sylvanas doing this and why is she working with this Titan we have never even heard of”?

To date, we have got precisely one line from Thrall that barely touches this question with “I never thought Sylvanas would be a part of something like this”…and that’s it. This line is practically begging to be followed up with “Maybe we should try to find out, there must be a reason” But after this one brief enquiry, not one character even questions. And the opportunities do not end there, of course. After they have all been rescued, they all sit in Oribos doing literally absolutely nothing. Despite somehow surmising that the Jailer is basically the Satan of afterlife hell, they have no idea why he was so interested in them and, therefore by extension, why Sylvanas would go to the effort of capturing them for him. Not one of them thinks to ask the question. Moreover, not one of them thinks to explore any of the other realms to find out more about what could be driving her allegiance with the Jailer. Like maybe why the Forsworn are also allied with him, why they are fighting to keep their free will with regards to their memories, and quite literally break free of the system they are brainwashed into believing is right. Or maybe that the Jailer captured the leader of the Necrolords, the military defense faction of the Shadowlands, and has brought several Houses onto his side. Or maybe that the drought is weakening the Heart of the Forest in Ardenweald which is the very force keeping the Jailer bound. Or maybe that the leader of Revendreth is in fact an ally of the Jailer, and therefore a de-facto ally of Sylvanas. That sure sounds like a lot of information out there that could give them all some insight into her plans. But no, for an entire patch cycle they sit on their asses…and do nothing.

Then there the fact that Sylvanas tells Bolvar in the intro cinematic about “This world is a prison” and that she will “Set us all free” But does he tell anybody this very rare piece of insight into Sylvanas’s plans and motivations? Of course, he keeps this piece of information entirely to himself. Does he tell anybody “Sylvanas believes she is helping Azeroth” or “Sylvanas believes she is working towards a greater good” or “Sylvanas believes she is freeing us all from a cosmological force”? Does he even bother following up on this himself? Of course not. After all, why should anybody be told this? I mean, we all know Sylvanas is constantly showing up every five minutes to drop another truth bomb monologue about what she’s trying to do, so this little tidbit doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, we’ll just find out more whenever she next drops by. Oh, wait…

Then there’s yet another opportunity for them all to ask questions, and maybe just maybe give her the benefit of the doubt, thorough Bolvar’s vision. Bolvar and the rest all see Sylvanas telling Anduin her (admittedly vague goals) but they never question why she thinks this. She talks of “a system that has always been flawed”, of replacing it “with one that is just”, of “we never had free will” and that “we couldn’t control anything” Yet what is everybody’s response? “Oh no we must save Anduin!” and “She must be stopped”…and once again, that is it. Let us remember again that nobody here has a single clue how the Shadowlands works. They are quite literally total aliens to this realm and do not know the first thing about it. By comparison, it sure sounds like Sylvanas knows a lot about the Shadowlands and how it functions, so much so that she has sought to bring about a cosmos-sized change to it all. Faced with such revelatory information, one would like to imagine the would ask questions – “What system is she talking about?”, “Why does she believe it is broken?”, “Why does she believe free will is an illusion?”, “Is she saying our lives are predetermined?”, “Does she feel she is trying to liberate all souls in the Shadowlands?” Once again though, nobody thinks to ask the most common sense questions. Questions that would occur to practically anybody faced with such an insightful vision. Alas though, none of the major characters care. The extent of their thought process in this completely alien realm they know zero about is simply “We don’t care or understand what Sylvanas is doing. It must be bad”

With all of these major insights into Sylvanas’s motivations completely overlooked, and the entire Shadowlands at their disposal containing a metric shit ton of valuable information they are just sitting on their asses ignoring, let us remind ourselves that all of these characters, with the exception of Bolvar, have known Sylvanas for many years and, in most cases, are former allies – many from the days of Warcraft III. Assuming that Azeroth years are the same as our own, that is about 18 years of this character they have worked alongside. They may have not ever wholeheartedly trusted her, but they nonetheless know her motivations and they know her character regardless. As such, for the sake of realism and continuity, in the context of all that they know about her, we should all be expecting them to think that her alliance with the Jailer is highly unusual and makes absolutely no sense, ultimately leading to a million and one questions. But they do not. Sylvanas is somebody who they have seen defend and fight for the Horde and bolster its strength by welcoming in other allied races, over the course of many years. They know that she has saved them personally, and the Horde as a whole, at the Broken Shore. They know who she is, they have known for many years that the preservation of her Forsaken people is her greatest priority, and that their role in the Horde is integral to that. As it turns out, Blizzard is telling us through these characters complete disinterest and total radio silence – all of that history counts for nothing, not even a single question.

The characters in World of Warcraft are simply a reflection, or personification, of Blizzard’s personal views they want the rest of the playerbase to have. By having the characters we follow and interact not show any care or devote any time into carefully considering Sylvanas’s plans or motivations or even try to understand them, they are telling us we as players therefore should not care about Sylvanas’s reasons either. Blizzard have set Sylvanas up to be villain-batted so badly that whatever she does now everybody just accepts what she does without questions. This happened all through BFA and now continues in Shadowlands, and when you think back to when this villain-batting started all the way back to ‘Before the Storm’ and then carried all the way through BFA, it becomes so sickeningly crystal clear that this was part of their endgame state with Sylvanas’s character.

If nobody in-game questions her, then nobody playing does either. We as players follow the leads of the in-game characters as to how we should view and feel about others. So if none of the in-game characters are questioning Sylvanas’s motives, what anything she has said might mean, or what events might have led to her current beliefs and allegiances, then Blizzard are telling us that we should not be questioning it either. Blizzard are telling us that we should just accept that whatever she is doing is bad, evil, incomprehensibly monstrous, and that she has to be stopped. It does not matter if we actually understand why she is doing this or not, or if we don’t even understand the first thing about the realm we are in – all we need to know is that what she is doing is bad and we have to stop her, end of discussion. It’s as bland and as predictable as that. There is no nuance. There is no attempt to have some seeds of doubt or alternative perspectives offered or questions asked by anybody, to make us consider that maybe not everything is as it seems, or that maybe just maybe has a valid reason. Blizzard cannot have this because that would introduce a narrative space for people to sympathise with their most-loved character, a character they have worked tirelessly over the past three years to systematically and relentless hammer with the villain-bat beyond all recognition. They cannot introduce complexity to her motivations, or have the characters – and by extension, us the players – asking legitimate questions, because they risk her being seen as ‘right’ or as a ‘sympathetic anti-hero’ rather than the simple 2D villain they have worked so hard to mold her into, and therefore have the entire plot backfire on them (just like it did in BFA with the laughably biased Saurfang quest chain which they were forced to change). To introduce such freedom of thought would be to plant a seed of doubt, a seed that could grow into a significant portion of the playerbase relating to Sylvanas and understanding what she thinks she is trying to do (even if they do not agree with her actual methods). And that would be a disaster from Blizzard’s point of view. You can almost imagine Ion raging “What’s this? We’ve given character’s dialogue that explores why Sylvanas is doing what she’s doing and now people are starting to get on her side?! This is not what’s supposed to happen, Steve!”

Besides Blizzard having the balls to pull the most blatantly transparently deceptive long-term plan to shaft every devoted fan of Sylvanas over the past 18 years, what frustrates me just as much is the amount of people who fall for it and believe everything Blizzard is telling them at face value. And we all know, that is exactly where they want everybody – because then they do not have to ever accept or apologise for screwing over their single-biggest most popular character and writing themselves into a corner they cannot get out of.

#sylvanas deserved better

[katieskarlette]

Shadows Rising: A Reaction Post

Short, mostly non-spoilery version:  I liked it overall.  I give it a solid B, maybe a B+.

I was disappointed in how little Nathanos and/or Sylvanas content there was, but I think proclamations of the ship’s doom are premature.  

I’m intrigued by the first rumblings of new character development for certain characters, especially Anduin, Alleria and Turalyon.

I was rooting for Talanji so much.  She’s great. Zekhan is a cinnamon roll too pure for this world.  Sira was kind of boring. Fairshaw is so darn heartwarming I can’t stand it. I like Bwonsamdi more now. The lack of Wrathion is unsurprising but unfortunate. Nothing new with Tyrande but she’s already poised for major development in Shadowlands.

Much longer, spoilery version below.

This ended up being more of a ramble than an essay, but there’s a lot of disjointed thoughts pinging around in my head, so let’s dive in.

Overall, I enjoyed Shadows Rising.  Was it the best book ever?  No.  Not even the best Warcraft book ever.  But it was an enjoyable read.  It’s always a treat to get into the heads of characters we mostly know in passing from in-game events.  There are internal, emotional beats that cannot easily be explored in the game, and the books are a way to build the world and the characters in a more introspective, slow-paced manner.  I like that.  (That’s not to say there are no action scenes, because there definitely are.)

Talanji, Jaina, Zekhan, and Anduin were all written well and sympathetically.  Maiev’s only in a couple scenes, but she felt off to me.  Nathanos was very in-character, in all his snide, sour glory.   Flynn and Mathias are great together.

The pacing was fine.  The descriptions were good, and it all felt grounded in the game world (i.e. landmarks, ambiance, the ridiculous amount of stairs in Daz’alor...)  Each of the Horde leaders got a moment or two in the spotlight.  Despite a fair amount of chapters about Anduin, Alleria, Turalyon, and Jaina, it still felt like a Horde-centric book to me.  Not that that’s a bad thing.

Prologue:  Gayness detected on page 8!  And it’s even something I kind of inadvertently predicted.  In my reaction post for Before the Storm I wrote, “ In this book alone, it would have been so easy to have that blacksmith bringing a helmet as a gift to his long-lost Forsaken husband instead of friend.”  That’s basically what we have here.  I don’t know if they were married, and neither were blacksmiths, but the Westfall moonshiner describes one of the Forsaken slain in Arathi as “the best man I ever knew and loved.”  Tada!  See how easy it was?  Add Jago x Wilmer to the growing list of LGBT rep in Azeroth.  (Even if they’re super minor characters in the long run, it’s still great to see.)

There might be some kind of parallel to be drawn between Alleria failing Anduin (by not finding/killing Sylvanas) and Nathanos failing Sylvanas (by not killing Bwonsamdi) but my brain is too overloaded from binge-reading to articulate it right now.  Both failed their king or queen, but both were also given nearly impossible tasks. 

Alleria and Turalyon are definitely being set up as antagonists.  We are clearly supposed to side with Jaina on this, and be uncomfortable (if not outright horrified) at their torture methods.  It’s especially disturbing how they use their respective void and light powers to accomplish their goals.  I mean, on one hand it’s great that both sides of the great cosmic divide can work together, and their marriage seems stronger than it was for awhile there, but yeesh...can you not torture people?  I know, ends justify the means, slippery slope, greater evil, blah blah, but still...that’s not okay.  It’s yet another sign that the Light is not necessarily good (or the void necessarily evil).

I welcome conflict within the Alliance, though.  That’s been the Horde’s thing for long enough.  Time to see how the blue side deals with its rifts.

In chapter 2 Nathanos is annoyed when a dreadtick flies by his head.  What, was it too similar to a bird for his liking?  Heh. 

All that time in Nazmir, and we didn’t get to see a single crawg!  Harumph.

It took three chapters and 39 pages to finally get something from Nathanos' perspective, and he was much more scarce going forward than I had hoped.  The bits we did get from his perspective were great and in-character, but I wanted to get into his head more.  Most of his scenes were from the POV of Sira or the troll villain instead, and while Apari was a good character I find Sira to be pretty one-dimensional. 

I kind of got paternal vibes from Nathanos toward Sira, though.  He was like, “I’ve been undead a lot longer than you; I know how to handle the bloodlust and such.  Get it out of your system at appropriate times but learn to control yourself.  There’s more to (un)life than slaughtering people.”  She herself, though, was just “Rawr, I hate everything and want to kill anything that moves.”  I mean, I get that she’s been through some traumatic stuff, but I didn’t find myself invested in her at all.

Page 42, as a bunch of trolls are about to be slaughtered:  "Hungry birds circled, expectant of a big meal, and Nathanos so hated to disappoint."  WHAT?  Nathanos wanted to do something nice for BIRDS?  I know, the phrasing fits with his dry, sarcastic sense of humor, but considering the running joke about him hating birds, it still made me go, “Huh?”

Chapter 5 (and later on, as it turns out):  Zekhan having a soft spot for kids is too precious for this world.

Page 51:  Thalyssra's eyes were "sparkling as she gazed across the room at Lor'themar."  Awwwwwww.   There was a surprising amount of ship fodder in this book overall, with Lor’themar x Thalyssra, Turalyon x Alleria, Fairshaw, and Zehkhan x Talanji all getting a moment or two (or more.) 

Chapter 6:  Anduin says, "Turalyon, take Alleria Windrunner and investigate these deaths."  You know, Alleria...YOUR WIFE?  I don't think you need to say her last name there, genius. 

While I’m being snarky about the editing, there were at least two times where the word “grieves” was used instead of “greaves.”  I spotted a couple other little things that a better editor (or one with more time, maybe it was rushed, I don’t know) would have caught.

Chapter 7:  More matter-of-fact LGBT inclusion for minor characters, this time a lesbian troll couple who want to marry.  Yes, thank you Blizzard, keep it up.

Chapter 8:  If you’re going to make the “Zappy Boy” nickname for Zekhan canon, having Bwonsamdi be the one to wink at the camera and use it was a great decision.  I can totally imagine him saying it.

We learn the name of Varok’s wife/Dranosh’s mother:  Remda.  Although I read elsewhere that the vision Zekhan saw of the Saurfang family in the afterlife was just Bwonsamdi’s B.S., it was still cool.

Chapter 13:  Nathanos wearing cologne?  Love it.  And it’s not even to cover up the rotting smell, because apparently his new body doesn’t stink like some undead; it just doesn’t smell like a living person, either, and some find it unnerving.  So he wears cologne.  That’s such a delightful little detail, and surprisingly considerate of him.

Sira complaining about bugs:  "We'll be eaten alive."  Uh no, you'd have to BE ALIVE for that to happen. Tsk.

Nathanos being called "the pale rider" makes me think of old cowboy movies.  Like, “You greenhorns better clear out; the Pale Rider is comin’ to town and there’s gonna be trouble.  Go wake up the sheriff.”  

Sira says that while on the voyage to Zandalar the dark rangers liked to tell the tale of how Nathanos was promoted to Ranger Lord by Sylvanas.  I'm surprised he lets them gossip like that!  His quests in vanilla made it seem he wanted to keep those parts of his past on the down-low, at least from the player.

Chapter 14:  Thrall's second kid is Rehze.  *blink*  Reh-zee?  Rez?  Ruh-zay?  I guess she’s not named after anyone.  After he named his son Durak (sort of after Durotan) I assumed he’d continue the pattern with kid #2.  Maybe she’s named after one of Aggra’s relatives.  (Later I read on Wowpedia that the author actually said she dislikes the “fan service” trend of naming children after other characters so she just picked a random orcish name.  I don’t think it’s fan service, because lots of real-life people do it, but okay.  Fair enough.)

Speaking of orcish names, there’s an orc page helping out the council named Gunk.  Like, what you clean out from under your fingernails after gardening.  Gunk.  LOL

Aww, that’s no fun...Maiev's wearing a cape trimmed in white fur, not daggers.  What happened to her impeccable/deadly fashion sense?

Chapter 16:  Zekhan starting to clap at Talanji's speech and then stopping and shrinking back when he realized no one else was applauding was so freaking adorable.

Chapter 17:  Fairshaw, full steam ahead!!!  Their chemistry is everything I hoped it would be.  Learning a little about Flynn’s tragic past was both fascinating and heartbreaking.  (We learned his mom’s name: Lyra Fairwind.  R.I.P.)

Chapter 18:  Proodmoore keep has a gallery with floor to ceiling oil paintings of the Proudmoore family, extended family, and beloved friends.  It now includes Anduin.  I can’t help thinking that, in a different timeline, Arthas’ portrait would have been there.

Will wonders never case?  Ji Firepaw actually gets to do stuff!!!  GASP!

"Thrall understood that to other humans Wrynn was said to be pleasing-looking, but to the orc, Anduin simply looked like a small, pink boy swallowed by clunky armor."  So it’s canon that Anduin is good-looking in-universe.  But LMAO at Thrall’s description.

Chapter 22:  From Shaw’s POV, "These odds ranked pretty low...  Maybe just above the time he had relied completely on a shoddy network of spies embedded in a cheese business."  OMG leave Elling Trias alone!  He did his best!  LOL

Shaw wanting to hang out in a mountain meadow and whittle bird calls (perhaps even with a special someone) was so touchingly normal.  That’s the kind of characterization that the books are so much better at than the game.

I actually like Bwonsamdi more after reading this.  Not that I disliked him before, but I didn’t have a strong sense of him due to not playing Horde as much in BFA.  He’s a well-done gray character:  not good, not evil, insightful but a smartass, part of the great cycle, out for himself but also taking his duties seriously (saving troll souls from the Maw.) 

I’m not entirely sure that we needed as much from Thrall’s POV as we got.  I mean, sure, he’s a familiar character with ties to a lot of others, so it was easy to drop him into situations, and his ties to Jaina made cross-faction communication easier, but he didn’t seem as relevant to the lore of Zandalar and the Shadowlands as some other characters.

Maiev seemed OOC, especially in the Stockades scene.  I know one of the themes of the book was “people change,” and I suppose I should be happy that she has a more moderate viewpoint nowadays, dialing back the Lust For Vengeance Meter from eleven to maybe a five or a six, but it didn’t feel like Maiev.  Especially because her message of “maybe don’t go overboard with this vengeance thing” was aimed at Tyrande, of all people, someone who Maiev has had quite legitimate reasons to dislike for a very, very long time.  I could see her maybe mellowing out a little in front of fellow Wardens, but Tyrande?  Eh, it didn’t feel right to me.

No surprises from Tyrande in this.  She’s still steely cold, vengeance-obsessed, consumed by anger.  Not that I blame her, but it’s not healthy.  I know we’ll be exploring her situation more in Shadowlands, so this was more of a reminder/reinforcement of where she is right now.  It was kind of funny how Thrall, Baine and Calia tried to talk to her and she just gave them the stink eye and the silent treatment, though.

I’m fine with Anduin exploring his dark side a bit more, as long as they don’t go overboard with it.  I like him as an earnest, good-hearted character.  It’s only natural to test your limits, though, especially in times of crisis.  Power corrupts, and he’s got plenty of it, both politically and magically, so I can understand Jaina and Mathias being a bit uneasy.  Add to that the increasing themes about the Light not being as benevolent as we originally assumed, and there’s potential for interesting plot there.  In the end I want Anduin to stay firmly on the side of good, empathy, compassion, etc., but a deviation into the shadows along the way isn’t a bad thing for the story.

I imagine every single person who read about Anduin sneaking off to the Lion’s Pride Inn in Goldshire smirked about that place’s reputation on certain RP realms.  I was surprised he didn’t find scantily-clad elves and draenei dancing on the furniture.  And then it turns out Jaina was there, too.  Awkward!

Why, oh why couldn’t we have had a scene with Anduin and Wrathion hanging out (incognito, of course) in a tavern?  That was their thing in MoP, and now with Anduin desperately wanting to get away from his duties for awhile and soak up some tavern ambiance it would have been perfect.  Let Anduin show off the best taverns Stormwind has to offer.  Even though Wrathion was as much a guest at the Tavern in the Mists as Anduin was, he acted like he owned the place and Anduin was his guest, so let them turn the tables and have Anduin play host.  There could be jokes about how he better not punch Wrathion again or they’ll get kicked out for starting a bar fight.  They could have still seen the young recruits, ran into Jaina, etc.  But Anduin really needs a buddy to hang out with right now.  

And you can’t tell me after Nya’lotha fell Wrathion just disappeared again and never at least visited Stormwind to tell grandiose tales about how he stabbed an Old God, it was so heroic, and he wasn’t scared at all, and those mean adventurers were so quick to believe he’d been corrupted, but he hadn’t, and did you know Azshara was there?  And then N’Zoth almost won but KERPOW LAZERS and oh Anduin you should have seen it, etc. etc. etc.

I should be used to being disappointed about Wrathion’s absence by now, but there are SO MANY MISSED OPPORTUNITIES!

Sigh.  Moving on.

Being exposed to spoilers meant I wasn’t fooled by it, but it was still a deft bit of writing to have the dark rangers drink poison when cornered by Horde soldiers, then mention Nathanos having a vial in his coat, which he drinks when defeated--making the unspoiled reader assume he’s killing himself--only for it to be a kind of liquid hearthstone attuned to Sylvanas.  Had I not known that he survived the book I would have freaked out there.

So, like, was Bolvar just sitting there on the ground awkwardly eavesdropping while Sylvanas and Nathanos talked/argued?  Or did he use that time to sneak away unnoticed?  LOL

Which brings us to the epilogue that’s caused so much hand wringing and wailing from my fellow Blightrunner shippers.  It wasn’t the openly sentimental interaction between them that I had hoped for, but I honestly didn’t read it as the doom of the ship.  A bump, at worst.

[If you’re not interested in the relationship between Nathanos and Sylvanas, or if you’re one of those people who simply hate his character, you can skip the rest of this post.]

First of all, Sylvanas had just broken the Helm of Domination.  That was a hugely significant thing to do, both for her personally and in the cosmic scheme of things.  Her state of mind at that moment had to have been in a turmoil.  So if she was a little distracted and tense, I think that’s quite understandable.

Second, I saw other fans being upset that she threatened/wanted to strike him.  That’s not how I read it at all.  “Sylvanas could strike him, scream and hollow out his soul, but it would not correct the failing.”  She’s not saying she wants to do that, just that she could.  The instinct to lash out in violence is ingrained in all the undead; death knights have to do it or they go mad.  So for her mind to go there in a moment of high emotion seems natural to me.  She doesn’t actually attack him or verbally/physically threaten him.  People say things like “I could have killed my brother for eating the last slice of cake” or “I could’ve strangled my co-worker when she spoiled the ending of the movie” and it’s not literal.

Third, she doesn’t say “go away, I never want to see you again.”  She says “Go where you will, Nathanos, but do not be idle” and “I expect you will return to me with means to prevent [Bwonsamdi’s] meddling.”  So essentially she’s saying, “Fine, go home, regroup, come up with Plan B, and if it’s not possible to destroy Bwonsamdi at least concentrate on countering him.”  Also note that she still considers the operation to be theirs, not just hers:  “This was a blow, but one she felt sure they could overcome.”  That tells me she expects to work with him in the future.

Fourth, and granted this is before she learns of his failure, but she’s clearly happy to have him there when he first arrives.  “’My champion,’ Sylvanas purred.  ‘Your timing could not be better.  Tell me of your victory as we take these first steps together.’”  She wanted to cross into the Shadowlands with him at her side.  Hell, that’s bridal imagery...crossing the threshold together, and all that.  The only reason she tells him to go is because his work isn’t done and she still needs him on Azeroth.  But she explicitly says “I expect you will return to me.” 

Fifth, in the line from her POV about how “the unjust ladder of their lives must be dismantled,” the “they” she’s referring to is all of the denizens of Azeroth, true, but I think there’s also a tinge of bitterness there as she looks back on her own life, and her life with Nathanos.  Destiny has not been kind to either of them.

Sixth, she says “My path lies ahead” as she prepares to cross into the Shadowlands.  It’s a reminder of the scale of the forces she is trying to manipulate.  When faced with the potential fates of all the souls in the universe, her own regrets are insignificant.  She can’t stay on Azeroth any longer, even if some part of her does want to just chill out on a beach somewhere with Nathanos and watch his blighthounds chase seagulls.  She thinks “It would not be easy, but then, her mission required great sacrifice.”  Like leaving him behind.

Even this part can be interpreted different ways:  “She heard the note of hope in his voice, fragile as a fledgling dropped from the next.”  Putting aside the humor of comparing bird-hating Nathanos to a fledgling, we don’t get a value judgment about the comparison.  Sylvanas doesn’t think about him sympathetically, wanting to protect him in a vulnerable moment, but she also doesn’t think, “Geez, what a pathetic weakling.”  It goes back to that bit in Warbringers about how she can’t kill hope.  And she can’t.  Here, again, no matter how bleak things are, no matter how displeased she is at his failure, he still has hope.  And she needs that, whether she believes it or not.

When she “flicked her fingers, as if ridding herself of a speck of muck” that can be interpreted as her thinking of him in a derogatory way, but she was also talking about Bwonsamdi in the same breath so I can choose to believe that’s who she was being dismissive of.

I don’t know.  I get that some of the language is discouraging.  She describes him as having “blubbering lips” and she’s definitely not happy with him.  But these two have been through a lot, and their bond has remained strong.  I’m sure this isn’t their first fight, or the first time he’s disappointed her.  This isn’t the end for them.  Just another bump on a very long highway they’ve traveled together.

...

OMG this has turned into a monster of a post, rambling all over the place.  I hope it’s coherent enough to follow.  I’m just in lore overload at the moment (and enjoying every second.)  I know I’m forgetting things I wanted to talk about, too, but I’m going to go ahead and post it as it is.

#shadows rising #shadows rising spoilers #bff princes #sylvanas x nathanos #rambling about wow

[kottkrig]

Question, what do you think of the future of the undead in Warcraft?

Oh, boy. Nerdy rant incoming.

I don’t know.

Blizzard has a knack for dangling little hints in front of our faces that could make major impacts in several directions, and when it comes to the undead they’re mostly unfavorable outcomes in my opinion. The Forsaken’s current writing disappoints me, and a major part of it is because us players are forced into one perspective of the story. The other side is likely something we just have to wait and see, I know, but it gets frustrating when we wait and wait and wait, and when we finally get to experience something from Sylvanas’ side it’s always so small and so vague.

Before anyone points out, I’m aware that she and most of the Forsaken are and have always been overwhelmingly evil. I wouldn’t play them if I didn’t enjoy playing as villains - even those at a cartoonish level of wicked - but the Forsaken came to be from some of the most horrible events in Azeroth’s history and are capable of so, so much more depth. We rarely get to see that in major storylines. Sylvanas plays such an important role to them and this expansion, but her people are usually narrowed down to an army of soulless puppets fanatically following her without question, and we don’t really get to see anything else from them than this zealous, angry soldier type. Nathanos included.

The exceptions are just comedic side characters, get killed off (Zelling), head back to the Alliance (Derek), or sit in the background and don’t get to say anything anymore (Lilian). I would love to hear more about what the Kaldorei dark rangers are going through and what’s in store for them…

Don’t even get me started on how insulting the concept of Lightforged undead are to what first made the Forsaken appealing and how unique they were for a playable option. I don’t know what they’ll do with Calia at the moment and I’m cautiously watching her.

As for the Ebon Blade? I don’t follow them much atm, so I can’t tell you anything there. Do they even get any writing these days? The Lich King’s probably doing something in that ice castle of his.

I don’t know what the future holds for the undead. They obviously can’t remove them from the story for game mechanic reasons, and because undead are an interesting and popular concept, but they’re not doing a lot to show us why all of Azeroth shouldn’t want to band together and just wipe them out.

Basically, what I hope for is that sooner than later, we get to know more. 

#I am passionate about these pixel corpses #sorry lol #ask #anonymous #forsaken #bfa spoilers

[gascon-en-exil]

WoW really is losing steam now, with blizzard focusing on Overwatch now as their big IP. Overwatch is a MOBA fitting in with what I said.

I don’t know for sure what “you” said because all of this is on anon and I can’t distinguish them. In any case, Overwatch has been around for four years or so and hasn’t killed WoW yet. There’s also a new Diablo coming out I think, and WoW Classic which is technically its own thing as well as a remake of Warcarft III which is releasing very soon. Companies can focus on multiple IPs

How would you add actual moral grey?

See what I mean? Is this you? I don’t care, really; I don’t even know if it’s about WoW or FE since I’ve gotten asks about both today. I think there’s a great two-sided story to be had in the tension over the rightful control of Silvermoon and Quel’Thalas. The ren’dorei can argue that their experiments into the Void are of a piece with their people’s earlier work with the Fel and the holy energies of a Naaru, while the sin’dorei can retort that the very presence of Void energy threatens the stability of the Sunwell they still rely on for their magic. The blood elves could be themselves divided over genuine dedication to the Light as embodied by the Sunwell and an opportunistic pragmatism that sees M’uru’s sacrifice as just another means of ensuring their survival and that they (the blood elves) should be no more beholden to the Light or to the draenei who “redeemed” them than they were before. Meanwhile the void elves are now left to cope with no means to sustain their magical addiction but Void energy, which has got to have some kind of negative effect on them aside from some silly tentacle jokes. How will the Alliance cope with that? Hell, how will the Lightforged specifically cope with that, as they exist in direct opposition to the Void? Something needs to be done with that, even if it’s just two comedic relief NPC quest givers with gay subtext...Blizzard seems to enjoy them.

But I guess you referring to all the big names. Um...Anduin and Wrathion finally have sex and it’s amazing, but Wrathion is obviously manipulating him to some end so now the leader of the Alliance is torn between his ideals of justice and the needs of his dick. Also Tyrande is growing more murderous and Genn is kind of on her side but doesn’t want to be too open about it. Over in the Horde the council idea doesn’t work too well especially once Gallywix buys all the votes, but the elves don’t care because they’re off in Suramar swapping magic secrets and having wild drunken orgies and it’s all very lovely.

You should know BlizzardBearLove is a radical Alliance Stan who calls Horde players, "Nazis" for not liking the story, & is infamous on tumblr for coming in announced whenever a tumblr user expresses dissatisfaction with WoW's story. Heck just now they posted a rant saying people who like Sylvanas as feminists.

Oh look, I didn’t think I’d ever get one of those kinds of messages telling me about all the allegedly horrible things someone who’s interacted with one of my posts has done. I don’t make a habit of reading through other people’s blogs, because unless you’re one of the ten or so mutuals with whom I regularly interact I don’t care enough to do so.

#World of Warcraft #WoW

[sandwyrm]

All righty, then. Opinions: Genn Greymane, Tyrande, Jaina.

Sweet sweet vengeance, eh? I’ll steal your keycard idea.

How I feel about this character

All the people I ship romantically with this character

My non-romantic OTP for this character

My unpopular opinion about this character

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

Genn Greymane:

1. I’ve liked him ever since I ran my first worgen through the zone back in Cata. I wouldn’t say he’s in my top favorites but that’s simply because he’s not a type of character I would generally be interested in, no fault of his own. He’s one of the better and more consistently written characters of Warcraft far as I’m concerned.2. His wife, I guess?3. The surrogate father/son relationship he has with Anduin is pretty good BUT but and this is my interpretation, it is not and can never truly be an objective, independent relationship because Genn has never properly grieved or accepted the death of his son (as is evidenced by him still ignoring his daughter), so it feels more like he took Anduin under his wing while being an incomplete person himself - and sometimes the advice he gives Anduin comes from a place of anger or vengeance rather than logic and experience as Anduin hopes. It’s... something, for sure. I have enjoyed following their exchanges. I also love the idea of him and Tyrande bonding over the events in Darkshore.4. He’s an asshole for treating his daughter so indifferently and putting even Anduin over her in his hierarchy of relationships. The only reason I remember he has a daughter at all is because everyone keeps asking where the fuck she is and why he doesn’t speak with/about her. That’s abusive parenting.5. I really hope he will not be written as the bad guy for not trusting the Horde and still wanting vengeance on Sylvanas. That would be a very shitty message to send alongside all your other shitty messages, blizzard :) 

I’m just gonna.... V

Tyrande Whisperwind:

oh boy1. oh boy.[editor’s note: we have redacted around 371 pages out of this, too]I really really loved her and she was probably one of my top favorite characters from WC3 up to recently. Her hypocrisy in Legion left me a bit ??? I do mean both her apparent racism towards the Nightborne for no reason and the fact that while you help her free Malfurion in Val’sharah as a Horde, in front of Suramar she’s like “oh.... you again. I’ll only let you live because you helped me.” which was also a bit ????? As someone who loves elves I do love her but what the fuck is up with the jarring writing for Horde players.Then comes the moment I truly disliked her beyond belief, which is during goddamn War Crimes. She hates orcs and she hates Garrosh, okay, but why the hell is she here.... pinning the crimes of the entire orcish race on him for some reason... Doing her best to try and get witnesses that had NOTHING to do with Garrosh to testify against him and the orcs (which was accepted??) ... She is visibly written as being very very kind towards any Alliance witnesses while ripping so hard into the Horde ones it’s surreal but the most jarring one was Saurfang whom she kept hounding into a full PTSD flashback and lockdown because she didn’t like the fact he had nothing incriminatory to say about Garrosh... Half the narrative describes her as an angel/goddess of justice and that one just gave me “bad preteen fanfic” whiplash.... Honestly it was really really awful. But since then I’ve sort of distanced myself from it and simply decided that was 100% Christie Golden and Chris Metzen and 0% the actual character.Then I restarted loving the fuck out of her during BFA and the... literal goddess of vengeance and justice fanfic tier twist. But at least she’s out here calling things as they are and doing something against Sylvanas while everyone else is twiddling their fucking thumbs going all “golly gee, do y’all think Sylvanas really doesn’t like us?”So... It’s Complicated. I have Feelings over Tyrande, and half the time I’m not even sure what they are.

2. Ironically I think she and Illidan would’ve worked better and this is absolutely because of the thing I mentioned in passing before - Blizzard writers cannot write romance. Malfurion and Tyrande was an end goal all along and like... “a fact” in their mind, so there’s basically no lovey dovey stuff. They kick ass together occasionally and they have each other’s back but there’s no real chemistry? But I would very much rather take this over their usual romance of “let’s argue for the sake of arguments because relationships need arguments”.I know Illidan’s feelings were added in as a bullshit love triangle thing seeing how Malfurion and Tyrande were never a “maybe they won’t be, eh?” thing. Poor Illidan then ends up sounding like a whiny, demanding teenager but at least his FEELINGS are described for her, which is more than we ever get for Malfurion who just .... is. That’s the best I can describe his relationship to her. He is. 

3. Her and Genn killing Sylvanas. But this one almost sounds perverse.

4. I don’t get why she hates orcs this much. No. I really do not. It’s stubbornness, it’s writer bias, it’s something no longer supported by the characterization alone. Yes the orcs chopped down trees. Yes the orcs killed Cenarius (who wasn’t even really dead but let’s not talk about that). But eventually, you gotta forgive and forget. And seeing how she forgives and forgets others for WAY WORSE [editor’s note: a 512 bullet point list including Maiev Shadowsong redacted out], there’s really no basis here other than racism? Which.... again, says bad things about the writers rather than the character.

5. I really wish they’d write her more consistently, that’s about it. I know she’s meant to be the Bad Cop of the Alliance but she’s all over the place. She works with us as Hordies and then tells us to piss off within the same expansion. She hates all orcs but she likes thrall (thanks Metzen.....). Like I said, I can’t even hate the character for this one, this is so obviously the writers being bad it’s just .... sigh. Let’s move on.

Jaina Proudmoore:

1. I love her too. Definitely one of my favorite Warcraft characters, ever since WC3.

2. Arthas. That was an OKAY thing, started really really sweet and we’re gonna ignore the whole rapey vibes of “don’t deny me, Jaina”. Only because I was blessed with seeing the worse version of Kalec’s “why do you have FEELINGS over Theramore still, Jaina? It’s been 3 months why aren’t you OVER seeing ALL your friends die? Don’t you care about MY feelings? SMH, women”. Both romances written by the same writer. Fun, innit?

3. I love what she has with Anduin whenever we’re blessed with them interacting, he always seems to be an anchor point for her even though he’s like half her age. 

4. //takes a deep breath// The high body count at Theramore was because of her, not Garrosh. Supported by Tides of War, not pulled out of my ass. She made the wrong call of not alerting the civilians to evacuate, and of bringing in more people into Theramore, because she was too overconfident in winning that battle. She was the one to tell her apprentice to stay, and so on and so forth. She put up a good fight, but considering the fact that she had a head warning, she could have avoided all that. Garrosh wanted the humans out of immediate Horde land vicinity - it would’ve been the same to him if Jaina took everyone and left Theramore. Although yes, he was hoping Jaina would bring in more Alliance officers so that he could cripple the Alliance army in one blow.I’m not going to cockily blame Jaina that she’s dumb or anything, absolutely not. She made a wrong call. It’s human to make wrong calls. It’s brilliant writing. What further irks me is that this was brushed under the carpet and suddenly the narrative again became a one-sided “Garrosh just came nuke us out of the blue I guess, poor us” as time went on. This is again 110% on the writers and not the characters. But I would’ve loved it to be part of her arc as time went on and she needs to get over the guilt of making a wrong call there too, as she has dealt with the guilt of “allowing” her father to die (it was not her fault that he wanted to fight the orcs, it doesn’t sit right with me when people are blaming her for it, but that’s an entirely different essay and our editors are pointing at the clock).

5. There is.... way too much “blame Jaina” going on in her arc. Which makes me blaming her for the body count at Theramore both a hypocrite and a jackass, but at least that one is supported by the narrative.No, what I mean is, again... blame her for her father’s choice. Blame her for her mother’s choice in the BFA arc (I heard that one too...). Blame her for poor poor Kalec being a manchild and not being able to cope with the concept of ‘woman has feelings and thoughts I disapprove of’. Blame her for Arthas’ descent into insanity.Poor girl has got the lion’s share of bad events in the narrative and I can see how her arc has gone all over the place. The problem is... yeah, I will say it. It’s once again, written badly. Great ideas, written terribly in many places. And in such weird ways, too. She is absolved of blame of things she does do (eg her people invading Southern Barrens and razing the tauren settlements - which is what prompted Garrosh to retaliate and raze Theramore but the writers and the fanbase claim was just a sudden, random thing). And then she is blamed for things she doesn’t do and would never logically be responsible for at all, like the choices of her father or her lovers? It’s just ........ it’s.......it’s Something for fucking sure.....What’s that saying? There’s so much to unpack here, let’s just burn the suitcase and call it a day?