#like these people i wouldve given the world for and its like they just threw it away so quickly

[doebt]

i hate getting on insta gram or what ever and seeing posts from these people who have done such heinous things, acting like they are normal, and just like everyone else, or even better than everyone else. you hurt people! you hurt me! 

[ingloriousbi]

i dont care that sylvanas is a villain. i care that her newfound explicit villainhood has come at the cost of other aspects of her character, which were interesting and nuanced and very anti-hero from the get go. like jaina, sylvanas has been flanderized into a character that is barely worthwhile - and like jaina her initial nuances and character traits have been removed and her characterization has been inconsistent since cataclysm. i care that her villainhood has come at the cost of the horde, where the narrative is consistently placing the explicit blame on the horde while ignoring alliance wrongdoings, while the alliance is “soldier” or “si7 battle mage” and the horde is “brutish grunt” and “bloodthirsty headhunter.” i care that another woman in warcrafts lore - one of four or five relevant women, and one of the four longstanding wc3 women - has had her characterization stripped, her trauma ignored, her complexities overwritten, and made to serve a narrative as a tool. the warcraft writers need politicians to do action X, and it doesnt matter which character does it, and i think its fair to point that that sylvanas has been unfairly shit on and ruined because she is a woman. im not angry shes a villain, im angry at the treatment of her character; a nuanced complex take on sylvanas could still have made her a villain (and probably would; or at the least an anti-hero; fuck its not like i havent been paying attention) without furthering the already problematic tropes and habits in the warcraft writing and narrative re: the horde, re: warchiefs, re: women. this is especially true for sylvanas, and became more true the moment blizzard published that god forsaken comic where sylvanas’ transformation into a banshee was portrayed with art. sylvanas can be a villain while maintaining prior complexities and would be a better villain for it.

garrosh was a villain too, and his character was inconsistent and weirdly written; his villainhood wouldve been more believeable if a larger emphasis had been placed on the alliance’s politics *leading* to his decisions, and if the story had either given more time or at least more gradual change to his ultimate character. that doesnt mean i hate that he was a villain; he could have been a good villain and a good character but all prior characterizations and world-building context were removed to make orc hitler. this lack of nuance is the problem; not the villainhood itself, and the same is true for sylvanas

sylvanas’s characterizations have been stripped and world-building (and history) context were removed to make her woman hitler. the horde’s villainous warchiefs are over-the-top all the time, constantly outdoing each other in war crimes, and im allowed to be bitter that a character i loved since my 8 year old ass played frozen throne has been shoe-horned into a bad, one-dimensional portrayal of an Evil Villain Witch Woman where prior existing complexties have been removed, which is especially frustrating when we know warcraft has like 5 women and they have few complexities to their characters *already*. contextually speaking there should be more complexity but its never touched upon - this is consistent with warcraft lore and narrative in general since the writing room is 1) bad at their jobs and 2) if they werent, they’re writng for an mmo so Complex Deep Narrative isnt an achievable goal anyway, but its fair that people think sylvanas shouldn’t be shoe horned into villain status in such an egregious, grotesque display of misogyny. 

just because sylvanas’ characterization problems started in cata and now finally rears its head in bfa doesn’t legitimize the issues with this inconsistency. i get that i have a weak argument when “new” sylvanas has been around for 9 years (when cata came out in 2010) and “old” sylvanas was “only” around for 7 but considering warcrafts inconsistent bullshit and the way the novels have been going back and forth on this stupid shit, i dont feel like my frustration isnt fair

people who are saying sylvanas is some sort of Morally Good Character have little to no lore or character knowledge and we’re free to critique their naivete, which i think i def see in a lot of the new sylvanas fic and is like 99% the reason i cant stand most jaina/sylvanas fic. but to pretend as if “hardcore” wow players always knew that this is where sylvanas was headed and that there’s no way that the current lore and sylvanas’s current characterization is shit and not in line with other information we’ve received over the years is bullshit. like i havent been paying attention since 2003. fuck off.

people saying sylvanas was “always evil” - based on what? item descriptions and some quest shit? people saying sylvanas actually did care for the forsaken can also quote quest shit and novel paragraphs. blizzards writing is inconsistent at the best of times, so if we cant trust canon (since canons constantly subject to change) and we cant trust symbolism or theming (since blizzard threw those mostly out the window with cata and entirely in bfa) then all of our readings and opinions on sylvanas’ characters are all equally based on the same inconsistent canon on both ends. its almost as if we’re allowed different perspectives on her character and there is no right answer! so we either admit people are allowed to be frustrated at the blatant fucking misogyny and the entire underlying problem in all of warcraft lore, which just so happens to primarily rear its ugly head in the form of sylvanas in bfa, or we all shut the fuck up, because masturbating over Sayge’s Fortune #19 item description is pretty fucking ridiculous (especially when similar fun items say obviously non-canon silly things like “never eat beef with a tauren” or, if we look at similar items beyond the darkmoon faire, straight up ridicule jaina’s character for being “crazy” now)

i dont *care* sylvanas is a villain. i care that her villainy has stripped away complexities that she could have maintained as a villain, i care that her villainy escalated in almost cartoonish degrees (which is a critique i have leveled at warcraft writing before), i care that her character has been inconsistent similar to garrosh re: will she be a soomewhat redeemable anti-hero asshole or will she be another Hitler Warchief, and i care that an entire expansions focus is a woman’s villainy when warcraft has a longstanding history of misogyny and bad story telling, and yall can say “sylvanas was always evil!!” all you want, but now we’ll start seeing tyrande deal with similar issues extradiegetic, and yall wont recognize that sylvanas was the start. if she’d been a villain that was less over the top and maintained prior context for her character, then this wouldn’t have set a precedent, but it did and it will. i know its all a stupid video game but i do care about this because im a loser.