Rhys once said, if my memory serves me right, that containing your power can drive you mad... Like, not using it and suppressing it... Okay, fine... But then why didn't Tamlin go mad? So, I'm not 100% sure, but from what Tamlin said, he hid the fact that he was the heir, so we can assume he did everything to contain that power and keep it a secret... why didn't he go crazy or die in his youth? Did he train in secret? Did the fact that he became a warrior help? I want to understand if this is a plot hole or the truth... Because it doesn't make sense for Tamlin to stop Feyre from training knowing she could go crazy, unless EVEN HE didn't know. (If that's the case, it only reinforces the fact that Tamlin had to learn to be a ruler and deal with his own people on his own, getting screwed over along the way while learning.)
By burning Teldrasil, Sylvanas not only pushed the Alliance and Horde into full-scale war — she launched a furious debate in the community as to why she did it. Was Sylvanas to be turned into another one-dimensional Horde villain? As the Banshee Queen, Sylvanas was never good, but she wasn’t entirely evil, either. But burning...
Uh so either this is potentially one of the biggest retcons in Warcraft history OR Afrasiabi is talking out of his ass. Even though the Battle for Undercity questline/scenario isn’t available anymore, it’s pretty fucking clear that Varimathras and Putress were Legion collaborators trying to deflect blame onto the Forsaken/Horde. Varimathras literally starts talking about ‘The Master’ during the climactic battle where he’s holding open portals to the Twisting Nether for demons to come through. There’s no grey area in this.
If Sylvanas was actively involved, it was only in setting things up (moving Blight production to Northrend), then allowing Putress and Varimathras to do what she expected them to. That’s still far from ‘ordering’ the attack itself. Afrasiabi is full of shit. We were there, we played the questline, we saw what was going on. Blizzard, please stop trying to support your awful writing retroactively.
EDIT:
I read the article that THIS article was quoting, and something really struck me, a quote from Afrasiabi.
"Any time we get a player base that's divided in their support for a character, I feel like we're doing our jobs. Any time it's one-sided to the point of 'this is clearly the right direction', it's not as interesting.”
I’ve bolded the important part, because it potentially says a lot about Blizzard’s story choices and philosophy, the philosophy of keeping things ‘interesting.’
I literally took a class on this, and it can be summed up in one phrase:
A leg wound is interesting.
In that class, we learned to differentiate between interest and entertainment - they’re both close to each other, but there’s some distinct differences, differences to be aware of when writing and designing games/stories/etc. There’s only one requirement for something to be interesting, and that’s this: it has to hold your attention. For entertainment, there’s more complex requirements: it has to provoke a response that the viewer wants to revisit, see more of, and/or continue experiencing. Obviously, all entertaining things are interesting, but not all interesting things are entertaining.
When I’m talking about ‘wanting’ to experience something, that’s not just referring to positive experiences. Schindler’s List isn’t a movie that most people ‘want’ to see in the basic ‘looking for a good time’ definition, and yet people intentionally choose to sit down and watch it. They want to have that experience, even if that experience entails grief and horror. The bottom line is that the brain is craving a certain experience, whether naturally or because it was surprised by novelty and desired more input. That’s what I mean when I’m talking about want and entertainment.
Interest, on the other hand, is completely devoid of any emotional charge. It can produce an emotional charge, but it is itself a neutral word. Someone in a hockey mask hunting you through your house is interesting. So is a pair of socks you’ve never seen before. An interesting thing holds your attention by virtue of its difference from everyday existence, not because of any content.
This leads me back to Afrasiabi talking about things being not as interesting when everyone’s agreeing. This sort of thought process is pretty dangerous, in my opinion, because it only attaches value to interest, not entertainment. This design philosophy doesn’t care how the game makes you feel, only that it makes you play; every event, no matter how triumphant or horrendous, has the same transactional value - it keeps you in the seat, so they’ll keep doing it. There’s no care for the emotional arc, character fidelity, or narrative weight - just ‘push button, receive attention.’
In my opinion, this is a terrible - and furthermore lazy - way to write a story. If you view your players as just reserves of attention to endlessly mine, then all narrative accountability goes out the window. You’re writing a narrative with the mindset that setting the house on fire is as valid a choice as cooking a surprise dinner - and, more insulting, you’re expecting that players should want to be interested instead of entertained; you’re expecting that they’ll put up with any nonsense you vomit out because they want their attention to be held, not because they actually give a shit about anything or anyone in the game world. And if you’re designing/writing a game with that mindset knowing that your players are wanting to be entertained, it’s even more irresponsible, because you’re taking characters and places and worlds that people have serious attachments to and you’re disregarding any narrative context as you bang these elements together to produce loud noises.
This faction war is interesting. Sylvanas being retconned into a genocidal monster 10 years ago is interesting. But so is a fucking leg wound, and who in their right fucking mind would want a leg wound?
I love the Maximoff Twins I really do but when writing I tend to favor the sister brother bond between Pietro and Lorna because its so unexplored. Pietro knows everything Wanda knows since they were together all their lives until they split onto different teams when they were adults. Marvel never showed enough between Pietro and Lorna or Wanda until ANXF and then that was canceled.
As a reminder, this image is large enough for you to zoom in and read the text clearly if you download it. However, due to its size, it may take some time for the image to load on some computers or mobile devices, so be patient with it. :)
New content:
Fadáite Sólas is now marked on the map, along with the appropriate updates to the travel distances and times.
The Airceann Bridge is now marked on the map, since (unlike the other bridges) I’ve explicitly mentioned that some settlements have been growing up around the bridge due to the amount of traffic it gets from Watchers, the Iolla Sanitariums, and the route between Fionport and Noefrach.
Two Major Corrections regarding the distances and travel times along the road connecting the Pa’Gille Caverns, Torthulacht, and Fort Stiofán. The incorrect version listed these distances as nearly double the correct numbers, so please make sure you reference this one!
Misc other quality of life adjustments. Scooting a few labels for easier reading, that sort of thing. Minor stuff, not all that important.
So that happened. Cora couldn’t take Emma’s heart because of the Savior and or True Love stuff. But it’s not a problem for anyone else? Including Regina who can take her heart to split it...because....Why?
I suppose they can spin it to say her taking the Dark One curse changed things in her but I need an explanation. Anyone? Am I forgetting something? Or am I just supposed to fanwank huge changes?
