Did Living Story writers play Nightfall?
For some reason, you’re afraid to answer a question you clearly should’ve ignored rather than be conflictual.
Afraid? Not at all, aside from saying exactly what I did earlier – in my opinion, Scarlet Briar did not cross over into “Villain Sue” territory. While I have reasons to believe this, I have come to accept over almost six months of having the discussion about it . . . there’s just no way my reasons would convince anyone I’m anything other than a White Knight trying to whitewash over it.
I mean, for the sake of discussion, where should we begin? With her first appearance at the Queen’s Jubilee, where she showed up and disrupted things to take the Watchknights (derived from something she had created herself, the steam creatures)? Where there is an NPC who tosses off one bit about her training, but didn’t expand on it?
. . . where later, we found she pretty much just studied what she thought would be useful to her own ends and decided “nope, I’m done”. And wound up in the grip of the Inquest to keep pursuing these studies until she went into “the machine” and contact within there changed her over into Scarlet Briar from Ceara. Really, all her studies and honors, and what not? They were even weak back when that line was dropped from Vorpp, which contained “if you believe the stories”.
I’m going to make that point clear here: They called it rumor and hearsay, beyond “studying at all three colleges, and excelling”. They did not say she was the prettiest, specialest snowflake on Tyria and everyone loved her, and she crapped rainbow ponies whenever she walked.
Do we talk about her alliances, where she pretty much got factions to work together and then once done she held over them “serve me or else”? The alliances weren’t perfect, and weren’t mindless until it was evident she could very well pull off the “or else” bit. Then it was fight and maybe win, or refuse and certainly get executed.
Do we talk about how she’s “succeeded” even though part of that is because she was doing the same thing as before – getting what information/pieces she needed and leaving the rest to have whatever happen to it so long as her project continued? It’s not like she was infallible, unbeatable, and untouchable. She failed constantly, it’s just the failure didn’t matter against the goal which we discovered later – affecting the ley line under Lion’s Arch.
It’s not like she couldn’t be beaten by us in a straight fight. After the first time we got to her directly, she seemed careful to never put herself in that position again except in the Breachmaker. Always her flunkies, and she never came close to actually fighting us directly, because we really seemed capable of killing her.
. . . which, well, we did. The heroes won, and unlike most “victories over a Villain Sue” it didn’t require someone sacrificing themselves, it didn’t require Deus ex Machina, and it didn’t require the writer throwing the book down and going “fine, you win, she’s dead you monster”. All it took was getting into range of her again and just beating her down.
Honestly, I don’t think she met nearly the full criteria of “Villain Sue” as much as half the tabletop games I’ve played/watched . . . and even one of the authors I admired most wrote a “Villain Sue” character into his books. At least he had the grace to let the guy die with some dignity though . . .
Seeking assistants for the Asuran Catapult Project. Applicants will be tested for aerodynamics.