Guild Wars 2

The comparisons between Scarlet and the Joker deflate as soon as you look past the laughter.

The only trait they share is the characteristic detached mania: the heightened emotional state leading to frequent cackling murder. Whereas this is all we see of Scarlet, the Joker is bi-polar, regularly flipping into depressions as low as his manias are high.

Mr. J has a limited personal skillset, refined through practice into expertise in leadership and strategic planning. While he does fiddle with simple toys, he leaves the real engineering to others. He uses his capacity for strategy like a military general, applying immense pressure on a single, small goal.

All of his resources – from personnel to money and materials – are acquired with some believable difficulty and tenacity. Everybody throws everything they have into fighting him. Yet his thugs have genuine reasons to believe that the rewards of joining and staying on his side are worth the risks.

He is a character of obsession. Most of his jokes arise from a compulsion for the ritual of the gag. Everything he does is expressly for the attention of the person whose visage consumes his mind.

Scarlet is an attention-deficient, antisocial sadist whose entire franchise of influence is handed to her on golden platters of deus ex machina.

Her skillset is simultaneously diverse and deep. She somehow attains mastery of every subject she touches, even though she gets bored right after starting them. Tinkerer, chemist, mystic, fighter, leader: Scarlet does it all herself, and supposedly better than anyone else. Then she goes on and does something else.

For Ms. Briar, resources jump out the air like sparkles ‘round a unicorn. Most of her minions have little if any reason to follow her, but by now it feels like a quarter of Tyria’s population has happily fallen in line to suffer under her pigtails. Troves of materials that would make a nation blush get tossed around the continent like confetti, and we have no idea how she got them. Or where she keeps them. Her incessant raids around the world expend much, but acquire nothing. Although her enterprises bleed assets at a horrific rate, they miraculously keep getting bigger.

The opposition is hardly stacked against her, though. She took over half of Kessex, and the only forces that responded were a handful of outsiders. Not a single fart against her from the Queen, centaurs, or bandits affected by the incursion. This is the red carpet Scarlet can expect everywhere she goes.

She has a goal, but it is expansive and seems more reactive than active. Her designs result from a destructive defense mechanism against the unpleasantness of existing in the world as it is, with the people that are in it. Her grand plan is to push everyone and everything away, to break every system and bone and rock that offends her. It’s a sort of reverse suicide of the present life by destroying all that is outside instead of inside.

The Joker is almost all focus and cathexis, embracing his life and the world around him as tools for his obsession with playing the game against his chosen opponent. Scarlet has none of this, and that void is just another thing she has in spades.

K. Your sig is right btw.

She does seem to somehow have access to a ton of stuff, without anyone noticing.

I mean, irl you can’t become a half-decent hacker without ending up on a bunch of intelligence lists. Or develop WMDs without someone blowing you up. That’s the equivalent of what Scarlet is doing.

Gulesave.5073:

For Ms. Briar, resources jump out the air like sparkles ‘round a unicorn. Most of her minions have little if any reason to follow her, but by now it feels like a quarter of Tyria’s population has happily fallen in line to suffer under her pigtails. Troves of materials that would make a nation blush get tossed around the continent like confetti, and we have no idea how she got them. Or where she keeps them. Her incessant raids around the world expend much, but acquire nothing. Although her enterprises bleed assets at a horrific rate, they miraculously keep getting bigger.

There are some other good points that you mention, but this is by far my biggest gripe with Scarlet. I know that this is a PG13 game, but this effortless acquisition of unlimited resources that are just as easily squandered reminds me of any generic cartoon villain meant for comic relief, incapable of progressing (or processing) a meaningful storyline.

And I completely agree that she doesn’t have much in common with Joker. The way some people compare the two always irked me.

I really hate this Scarlet cartoon vegetable plant thing, seem such an empty lazy consent and story. I really hope something bigger is behind her endless annoying assaults. I don’t know about you but it seems all mayor epic events a Sylvari is taking the spot light. I use to like them as an original concept but now I’m just tired of them. Unless the real identity of Sylvari are good/bad dragon minions or there is a God or other more interesting Monster NOT a Sylvari behind stuff going on I’m just ignoring all the living content just play other mmos until it gets interesting again. Like when Abaddon appeard in GW1 now that was epic. Wish we could go to Dragon/God Slaying again instead of all this stupid vegetable people mix mach stuff.

Gulesave.5073:

…
Scarlet is an attention-deficient, antisocial sadist whose entire franchise of influence is handed to her on golden platters of deus ex machina…

Resources were a fantastic point, but THIS^ is what annoys me the most.

i’ve always thought that the only similarities between scarlet and the joker were the corny jokes the colorful gravity defying hair-dos and the occupation of super-villain. to me she always seemed like more of a mash-up of lex luthor and carmen san diego.
like carmen she constantly flits around the map leaving bread crumbs and taunting us as we follow them. always several steps ahead of the heros never revealing her true motivs. the lex luther super genius megalomaniac thing is probably the most “tacked on” feeling part of her and probably the only trait that puts her in conflict with the heros.

she just had to know and comprehend all of existence as though the only thing keeping her from being free was not knowing. and when she could finally see everything she wanted to know, she was confronted with the knowledge that free will was sort of an illusion, that her destiny was a mundane one laid out by forces much bigger than her. this revelation + the weight of her own potential + the side effects from that procedure that some how gave her the perspective of gods = a warped mortal mind. thus she comes to the very juvenile conclusion that if she cant get what she wants then everyone has to pay. she will assert her free will on the fabric of reality it’s self in an attempt to skirt her destiny.

in the short story where this takes place scarlet proceeds to commit her first real act of evil. before she was mostly neutral (that thing with Teyo wasn’t an alignment shifter to me) until killing her mentor with red briar vine things that she can apparently manifest and control. is this the secret to her power is this how she coerces entire armies to do her bidding? or is she just so strapped with over powered tech like her ultra-convenient teleporter that allowed her access to one of the most militarized cities on the planet, DR. she just seems to show up somewhere and commandeer the assets of what ever evil enterprises she can get her hands on. the twisted watchworks and the steam creature are the most mysterious addition to her horde.

a comment on the schematics for one of the watchknights found in her lab in the tower of nightmares, seemed to imply that the creation of the watchknights interfered with her overall plans, that attacking divinity’s reach and confiscating them was an adaptation of her plan.
all this to serve as a means to a well thought out and destructive end. or so we are meant to believe this overarching agenda that scarlet is supposed to have is the hardest part of the story to buy. if i had not read that short story i would absolutely hate scarlet rather than just being frustrated with her.

when asking: who, what, where, when, why and, how. its easy to understand why people dont like scarlet.

who: scarlet briar
what: super villain sylvari
where: everywhere anywhere whenever no consequences
when: a couple years before gw2 til present
why: to remake reality. but into what? something bad i guess.
how: who knows! all these so called “threats to tyria” just seemed to be abandoned experiments by scarlet populated with confused minions left holding the bad on what they thought was their new criminal enterprise. the recurring theme is taking a little bit of everything tyria has to offer and combining it into a new power. but that is so vague. nothing seems to be connected directly and its very frustrating. right now we have the mysterious probes which seem to be everywhere from QD to EB to CS. what do they do? what do they have to do with anything we have seen or dealt with before? we dont know.

it all seemed to me like scarlet is supposed to be like scarlet wasn’t supposed to be liked. and thats when it hit me. her role is that of the bad guy pro wrestler who cheates when the ref tuns his back and uses barred holds and taunts the crowd. gets the crowd so kitten ed of that they dont realize the are watching sweaty 300lb performance artists straddle each other. once i stopped looking to scarlet for the depth and complexity i would want from my ideal antagonist i realized that scarlet is a distraction the we are meant to love to hate while the people at Anet figure out how to deliver epic content with the living world strategy.

i honestly hope we don’t kill scarlet, well in the story sense at least. gameplay wise i want to kill scarlet 100 times over. but in terms of story i hope they clip scarlets wings. take away her overwhelming superiority. having her fall from on high like icarus would give her more depth. i would love to see a defeated scarlet broken physically as well as mentally with mechanical implants keeping her alive, as she skulks and plots to rise again. it would be cool to move on to another villain like caudecus or someone new. then when their plot is foiled out of the shadows comes a humbled and bitter scarlet with a proposition. things like main baddies teaming up are only possible once you’ve built a rogues gallery for your heroes.

AntiGw.9367:

She does seem to somehow have access to a ton of stuff, without anyone noticing.

I mean, irl you can’t become a half-decent hacker without ending up on a bunch of intelligence lists. Or develop WMDs without someone blowing you up. That’s the equivalent of what Scarlet is doing.

The same kind of conveniences are happening for the protagonists as well. Kiel has the magical solution to the contracts issue (a self piloting ship she blows up, how convenient no-one was sailing it), Kasmeer is revealed to be a formidable mesmer the moment a giant illusionary veil needs to be torn down and her partner is conveniently a master of toxic poisons that can create an anti-toxin to deal with what was being hidden by the veil.

It’s a symptom of the writing and it’s not exclusive to Scarlet. The world warps to fit the character’s into the story. Hopefully the final four releases are better and phase two of the Living Story isn’t burdened by these problems.

I was under the impression that Kasmeer was always supposed to be a skilled mesmer, but that said, I always thought the tower reveal would have been so much cooler if it had been Queen Jennah that discovered it.

I opened this topic expecting another terrible NU GUISE LEAVE SCARLET ALONE post from one of saladhead’s incoherent defenders, but instead I get the best written topic I’ve seen on this forum in as long as I can remember. I had to log in just to +1 the OP.

Not only do your points perfectly sum up all of my issues with Scarlet as a character, but you also wrote a really well thought out and interesting character analysis of Joker as a special bonus. So yeah. I agree on all counts.

Personally, I think of Scarlet as a flat cardboard caricature of Harley Quinn more than The Joker. Clearly whoever wrote Scarlet was a big fan of Harley but did not understand the fundamentals of her characterization. (Mainly, the fact that her rabid devotion to “Mr. J” is a huge defining aspect of who she is. She’s not just some crazy wacko with pigtails, and I don’t think she would work as well without being a supporting character of The Joker or else having some alternate/additional depth.) Then they also decided to make her an all-powerful Mary Sue fan-fiction author self-insert.

Anyone who can’t see that The Joker is a decently well made insane villain & Scarlet is a too-hip-for-u fanfic character isn’t going to be worth explaining it to.

DaMunky.6302:

I had to log in just to +1 the OP.

Thanks! I’m glad that people are enjoying my ranting.

Time to destroy your fun boys

Yes Scarlet and Mr. J has very little in common But.
a few things people are too agitated to see is:
1# Scarlet resources are not unknown.
2# The people who work for Scarlet are not exactly the most clever, and the world is filled with people that won’t see the world needs to unite- even three orders first recently united to stop Zhaitan.
3# 80% of your so-called hate is because she is a Sylvari that my dear Scarlet haters is a part of it, if you read her lore, you would see that slowly a pretty neat story is forming.
3# As I mentioned before Scarlet does not posses unlimited supplies, she gain her supplies through back ground trades, and the alliances she trick different sides to form.
4# Scarlet has pretty much ran out of actual soldiers, but hey she stole the watch knights, which is how she keeps putting pressure.
5# If people would read the story they would see how Scarlet has experimented on mixing different magics- and technologies. Dredge and Flame, Nightmare and Krait.
6# The Reason why Scarlet is not dead, is because she is not that stupid, she did the fighting herself during the Jubilee, where she had her kitten kicked and almost died a few times. No way she would risk it again.
7# As for the Nightmare tower, the cut scene where she appears and leaves through her usual portal is very logical: One when ever we like it or not Scarlet is actually kitten Dangerous, of course our character’s wouldn’t simply jump at her- secondly we are messed up the toxic, so we don’t know if Scarlet really did appear in front of us or not.

I for one am yes starting to get a bit tired of scarlet being there all the time, But I do like a Villain that stays alive and has some influence.

I mean we have already killed off a lot of big bad guys just alone during our leveling.

As for all the people who keeps saying: Bad written- terrible written.
Try make a Villain yourself then? I can promise you- before you know it- you have created a Villain yourself, which is ten times more annoying and overpowered than Scarlet. The people who wrote Scarlet’s story are paid for it, In other words they know their stuff.

yes now I had my fun destroying your fun

No… Scarlet Briar isn’t the Joker… she is actually this girl

And apparently she is also Harlee Quinn… I didn’t know that….

warllockmaster.1379:

Time to destroy your fun boys

Yes Scarlet and Mr. J has very little in common But.
a few things people are too agitated to see is:
1# Scarlet resources are not unknown.
2# The people who work for Scarlet are not exactly the most clever, and the world is filled with people that won’t see the world needs to unite- even three orders first recently united to stop Zhaitan.
3# 80% of your so-called hate is because she is a Sylvari that my dear Scarlet haters is a part of it, if you read her lore, you would see that slowly a pretty neat story is forming.
3# As I mentioned before Scarlet does not posses unlimited supplies, she gain her supplies through back ground trades, and the alliances she trick different sides to form.
4# Scarlet has pretty much ran out of actual soldiers, but hey she stole the watch knights, which is how she keeps putting pressure.
5# If people would read the story they would see how Scarlet has experimented on mixing different magics- and technologies. Dredge and Flame, Nightmare and Krait.
6# The Reason why Scarlet is not dead, is because she is not that stupid, she did the fighting herself during the Jubilee, where she had her kitten kicked and almost died a few times. No way she would risk it again.
7# As for the Nightmare tower, the cut scene where she appears and leaves through her usual portal is very logical: One when ever we like it or not Scarlet is actually kitten Dangerous, of course our character’s wouldn’t simply jump at her- secondly we are messed up the toxic, so we don’t know if Scarlet really did appear in front of us or not.

I for one am yes starting to get a bit tired of scarlet being there all the time, But I do like a Villain that stays alive and has some influence.

I mean we have already killed off a lot of big bad guys just alone during our leveling.

yes now I had my fun destroying your fun

#1: They aren’t ? Isn’t her running gag that she appears with a new alliance ever few patches ? In fact I think there’s a thread somewhere on forums with people coming up with all sorts of ideas on what alliance pops up next.
#2: Exactly. It took a Dragon that would destroy everyone to get orders sworn to protect Tyria together in a reluctant alliance, but here we have a criminal syndicate, a totalitarian regime, a race of fanatical xenophobic slavers and a bunch of rebels without a cause marching hand in hand because reasons…
#3: My main and my favorite alt are Sylvari. While I do agree that some people hate her because she’s a cabbage, your arbitrary number is a gross over exaggeration.
#3.5: Trades she pulls out of her kitten , or so it seems. I would love to hope I am wrong, and that eventually ANet will give us a masterfully written logical explanation for her ability to attract every baddy in the universe, but that’d be same as hoping that Indoctrination Theory was somehow the real ending to Mass Effect 3.
#4: Yes, and after Watchnights came Nightmare Court and Krait.. So no, she still had new chumps to throw at us after Jubilee.
#5: She did indeed. I’m missing a point here.
#6: I don’t want her dead, I just want her to behave less like a cartoon villain.
#7: IMHO, this “issue” was just nitpicking on the part of players who took the cutscene too literal. If a dev set her to running speed instead of walking speed, or if he pulled the camera so it doesn’t show us nobody would mention anything.

I fail to see how you destroyed anything.. Unless your statement was a kind of a comic relief in itself ?

Gulesave.5073:

Scarlet is an attention-deficient, antisocial sadist whose entire franchise of influence is handed to her on golden platters of deus ex machina.

Oh… so she is a Time Lady? I didn’t know that either.

Really, if your going to talk about things being handed to people on golden platters of Deus Ex Machina, please at least get the people for whom it is actually done for correct. The only group of people for whom Deus Ex Machina is one of the five basic food groups are the people of Gallifrey.

EDIT: Well…. the people of Gallifrey and a certain walking fixed point in time known as Captain Jack “Face of Boe” Harkness I suppose….