#Revive14kThiefBackstabs
Phnglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu Rl’yeh wga’nagl fhtagn.
Phnglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu Rl’yeh wga’nagl fhtagn.
Please tell me you aren't doing what I think.
It being a “fake” doesn’t necesarily men they will “waste” all the things they have already done. He being “real” doesn’t make sure the story is going to be good, fitting or even make sense.
So, instead of being concerned about Lazarus “authenticy”, I think is better to ask for a good narrative.
TLDR: As long as they make a great story, I don’t care if Lazarus is fake or not.
“Only problem with the Engineer is
that it makes every other class in the game boring to play.”
Hawks
that it makes every other class in the game boring to play.”
Hawks
The creature calling itself Lazurus is still 3/4 “real”. Even if one the aspects used to ressurect him wasn’t his, (and we don’t know what was in that last aspect piece), he was still able to come back as mostly himself.
I look forward to the story explaining what that last aspect piece was and what effects it has had on the current Lazurus. What was that final piece? Was it someone else’s aspect? Was it an artifact? How did it power/affect his ressurection? Are his abilities more limited without his last aspect? Is he looking for his final piece? Does he have a new/different purpose from his old life? There are a lot of possibilities going forward.
“generally a bad narrative move if Lazarus turns out to be a fake.”
On the opposite, it allows for plot twists, and a redemption of Lazarus. In case you hadn’t noticed, the current Lazarus is a mockery of the original one. A bad joke, if you will. So if he turns out incomplete, or fake, then suddenly everything will make sense. For him to be genuine and complete in his current state is what I would consider to be terrible writing giving his recent personality
“generally a bad narrative move if Lazarus turns out to be a fake.”
On the opposite, it allows for plot twists, and a redemption of Lazarus. In case you hadn’t noticed, the current Lazarus is a mockery of the original one. A bad joke, if you will. So if he turns out incomplete, or fake, then suddenly everything will make sense. For him to be genuine and complete in his current state is what I would consider to be terrible writing giving his recent personality
I agree.
(Amaimon did a better job of conveying my reaction to the OP better than I could my first few drafts; glad I waited to respond.)
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Just as long as it’s not Scarlet coming back from the dead, I’m okay with it. lol
Yeah tbh i agry with what ppl here say. You should be asking for good narative and storytelling and for the most part they kept it on a high bar i hope they can take it even higher with where this story will conclude.
Just as long as it’s not Scarlet coming back from the dead, I’m okay with it. lol
That Mary Jane weed should be burned from the history books.
SBI
Just as long as it’s not Scarlet coming back from the dead, I’m okay with it. lol
That Mary Jane weed should be burned from the history books.
Don’t you think that people would approve of Mary Jane weed being in the game? (It might explain some of Scarlet’s behavior, too.)
I think you might be referring to the so-called Mary Sue Litmus Test. (And I don’t think it applies to Scarlet — she is still among my favorite characters, even though I agree she shouldn’t ever return to the game.)
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
No, Scarlet is not a Mary Sue. The only reason some people call her that is because they read about the term on TVtrope and sites about fan fiction and feel smart and smug using it. However, blindly calling a character a Mary Sue remains the lowest form of criticism, and often says more about the critic than the character. The justification for Scarlet’s Mary Sue is that she’s a genius that graduated from all the Asuran schools. However, the only real difference from her and any other GW villain is that Anet actually gave an explanation and backstory for her abilities/powers that makes her a threatening villain. The Mary Sue critique of Scarlet is ignorant and absurd. A more valid critique is that her character is a Harley Quinn clone in personality, which makes her unoriginal (again not the first villain in this game to be that way) and, depending on your preferences, annoying. Then there’s the fact that she’s an intelligent, confident woman, which rubs some sad people the wrong way. Anyway, she may not be a popular character or an original one, but she was a an interesting and fairly well-written one, which gives her a unique status in GW lore.
Lazarus, on the other hand, is a trainwreck. He’s been given far more Mary Sue traits, including coming back from the kittening dead. But he’s basically fan service. An unnecessary character shoe-horned into the plot to trigger feelings of nostalgia from GW1 players. His greatest sin, however, is that he is just terribly written. The other characters are helpless around him, not because he’s so powerful, but because he’s so important to the writer that all other characters must drop their personalities in service of the Lazarus “plot.” Poor Marjorie went from one the most popular characters to being lumped with Braham and requested to be killed off because she was forced by plot to join him. Even the PC lost all agency to Lazarus. It didn’t matter if the PC agreed or disagreed with Lazarus, he was going to get his way. In fact, they even had the PC weakly disagree to try to show some semblance of agency, but all it did was reveal the seams of the plot. I’m sure all this made sense in the writer’s head, but that didn’t translate in the actual story and turned a lot of players, including myself, off. Then there’s Lazarus himself. He’s simply uninteresting as character. He’s only interesting as a unique race. He’s fan service, and poorly written fan service at that. I’m sure they’ll try to find some post hoc way to make his presence relevant to the main story, but…bleh.
Anyway, he’s not even the closest to a Mary Sue in GW. Because, let’s be honest, that role is solely reserved for the PC. Look up the traits that people associate with Mary Sues and you’ll find that the PC meet most, if not all, of them. So before you go casting aspersions on characters that are actually given clear backgrounds and motivations for their actions, take a close look at how well your own character is written in the game. And maybe you’ll understand why I die a little every time the PC opens its mouth.
This critique may seem a little harsh. In honesty, for an MMO, GW doesn’t do too bad in the story department. The lore is interesting. There are many other interesting characters that I’m not highlighting here. Yes, much of the writing is objectively bad, especially since HOT for some reason, but overall GW story is enjoyable and has enough truly inspired moments to make it worth going through.
(edited by DaShi.1368)
Err what?
She’s seen as a Mary Sue because she somehow managed to be a supergenius being trained under asurans, managed to organize different syndicates that somehow want to follow her for no explained, believable reason, and managed to do all those plot stuff out of the blue, not because “she’s a woman and people hate to see smart women”. Even if Scarlet was a male he’d still be under scrutiny. And to top it all off, the payoff was pretty anticlimactic.
It’s like saying a character is ugly but everyone around the person treats them well, is a paragon of virtues, is never wrong, and all who goes against them is always evil. “That person isn’t a mary sue because she has flaws!”
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m getting at. Having a few traits associated with being a Mary Sue doesn’t immediately make that character a Mary Sue. In fact, many traits of a Mary Sue are those that make a character interesting. If you exclude all Mary Sue traits, you end up with a rather dull and ineffective character. Queen Jenna has more Mary Sue traits than Scarlet, but you don’t see such widespread criticism of her. She’s an uber powerful mesmer beyond the scale of any other we’ve seen in the game. She’s able to predict the actions of every one of her opponents and defeat them easily. Her bad actions are immediately justified. And, of all things, she’s given a cute affectation (no shoes). But I’d be reluctant to call her a Mary Sue as well. But Scarlet is not a Mary Sue, by definition, she just doesn’t have enough traits, or any of the truly critical ones. Being really, really clever does not make a Mary Sue. However, a lot of players simply don’t like her and have latched on to the Mary Sue argument. That argument is wrong, but it is not wrong to dislike Scarlet. There are plenty of reasons to not like her. Some valid, some personal, some ridiculous.
It’s interesting that you got hung up on the one sentence discussing the woman aspect of my argument. As I said, it is a problem for some people, but obviously not for everyone. There’s a good argument for it, but it’s really not that important to this discussion. However, this does demonstrate how some people are so quick to point to one small thing and draw a single conclusion from it. In Scarlet’s case it was one throw away line of dialogue. Some read that and immediately went, “Ha! Mary Sue!” This is noncritical thinking. It’s obvious that they were just unhappy because they didn’t get the villain they wanted, remembered something they read on TVtropes, and made a poor judgement. But I’d rather read about why they really don’t like Scarlet than poorly made arguments about why she is a Mary Sue.
This brings up an important weakness in Scarlet’s story and a writing trap that Anet falls into to often. Scarlet’s backstory is actually interesting. She had a promising intellect destroyed by the unfortunate combination of factors she both could and couldn’t control: her hubris and her race. Told correctly, this would have been an amazing story. Anet could have introduced the character earlier. Or at least introduced a more detailed backstory between one of her other storylines. One throw away line of dialogue was not enough. Had we seen this young, promising sylvari as she was before Omad’s device, we could have developed empathy for her. But they waited too long to tell that story. And by then the damage was irreversible. We should have known much more about who we were fighting before the final battle with her. But they did it this way because they wanted “mystery.” They drowned us in mystery at the expense of good storytelling. They could have told that backstory without revealing Mordy or sylvari minions. Instead we got a character we didn’t understand and didn’t really care to, while Anet writers giggled to themselves about how clever they thought they were for keeping so much story a secret.
I dont think Scarlet was a Mary Sue, but then I also dont think she was an interesting character.
It is important, in my opinion, to realize, as mentioned above, that its an excess of classic Mary Sue traits, and how they are used, that can make a character a Mary Sue.
Most fun characters (or at least main characters) in heroic, or action, fiction will have at least some Mary Sue traits. Some of the most beloved published haracters in the genre have such traits.
Since the conversation has drifted to the topic of Mary Sues, I’m going to weigh in on that. What is the definition of a Mary Sue? No one is going to be able to come to a consensus, since it is a fan term applied to what people consider to be a lousy character, usually applied to fanfiction. Now, it should be argued that characters written into an original setting cannot be a Mary Sue, because it is not an inserted character. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say it’s possible.
The primary reason I feel Scarlet isn’t a Mary Sue is because she’s a villain. The prototypical Mary Sue is a character with mostly informed traits or background, who nearly everyone loves, and is the “special snowflake” everyone is making fun of these days. Scarlet is the one who causes the problem, not the star. A lot of villains are incredibly intelligent. In fact, that’s usually an aspect of what makes them a villain. Typically, they become evil because they take science too far or they feel they are so smart, they want to take over the world. Scarlet, who had learned at all 3 major asura colleges, does prove she is intelligent, not just through this but also by managing to unite different villainous groups and her various machinations, like manipulating the watchwork knights or creating the marionette. Before the Molten Alliance, the dredge and the Flame Legion never really communicated before Scarlet got them together; the krait hated everything with two legs, but agree to work with the Nightmare Court to form the Toxic Alliance. She had to be smart enough to convince these two groups to work together. Thus, no informed traits. Also, aside from Taimi (who had decent enough reason to respect her), she was a pretty unpopular character in game.
As for Lazarus, that is a conflicting mess at the moment. Him becoming an ally is not a Mary Sue move. He’s powerful in a way, but no so much that he can handle the enemies single-handedly. Now with the revelation that he might not be who we thought he is, this gives a chance to give him some much needed development, as we learn about his true motivations. Maybe he’s got a more sinister plot, or maybe he is a friend who chose the wrong way to get close to the Commander, but let’s give him a chance to develop a bit before we call him such a bad character or “not what he was like in GW1”.
That’s what I’m getting at though. A character becomes a “Sue” because of how they are executed rather than how they are “given”, so to say. Yeah I agree she had a potential to be a really good character but they squandered her writing.
I hated Scarlet, after the reveal that she was a puppet of Mordremoth this lessened a bunch as that gave more context to her actions. But I still think she was presented poorly. She was too competent at quickly raising an army every few months with every new release of the living story.. oh look scarlet is behind this one too! Surprise surprise!
Scarlet wasn’t a bad concept but the pacing of her rise to power left a sour taste in my mouth.
With Lazarus though they aren’t making the same mistakes. They have a powerful (villain? Ally?) being but he isn’t front and center 24/7 reminding us that he is so tough.