Concept for a few Glass of Water videos: Shipping Workshop. Taking a single character and analyzing how that character’s design factors into their relationships with other people and deconstructing how fandoms typically approach that character.
I dunno sounds like a good thought experiment.
For that Shipping Workshop, do you mean something like explaining why people ship Katara with Zuko (which I used to be all for buy feel a bit more mixed on these days) or use Rey as a reader insert?
Not necessarily, more of examining the character as they are rather than how fandom often likes to imagine them and extrapolating how they approach relationships.
It is, at it’s core, an “Actual Character vs Fandom Interpreation” comparision.
For the Shipping Workshop are you gonna analyze one character the whole video or are you gonna analyze multiple characters in different segments?
no-utopia-yet
Don’t nag, guys. This is all just an idea, I haven’t decided anything and grilling me about it is just going to make me not want to do it.
We are your fans you fucking cunt, if you raise an idea and we want it, you do it. That’s your job. You don’t have to slave for a boss like the rest of us, you fucking sit in front of a mic and say shit. Stop fucking complaining.
Anonymous
Wow you’re really mad.
no-utopia-yet
Hey anonymous creep, don’t use me as an excuse to attack lily. I was insensitive and she has a right to be frustrated. She doesn’t have to do anything for anyone so do everyone a favor and throw yourself off a pier.
I’m curious, what would your thoughts on Sylvanas be in this experimental idea?
Anonymous
One thing I find interesting about Sylvanas is that her most ardent fans often have zero understanding of her as a character. Oftentimes you’ll see people write her as either a broken bird in need of fixing, or as a stock fandom Ice Queen archetype. And both of those are pretty off the mark.
Sylvanas as a character has a lot of screws loose. Suffered torture, mind control, repeated betrayal and scapegoating all without any help whatsoever. That all creates a character with a lot of issues. The big one being Sylvanas craves control. She doesn’t like unknown elements, she doesn’t like things outside her control, she can’t handle randomness.
Which is why I find it personally hilarious that her most popular LI is Jaina fucking Proudmoore. Yeah they have shared experiences, but Jaina is so strong-willed and powerful that Sylvanas would rather her not be a factor. Sylvanas by default is pretty anathema to the idea of an LI, she would likely prefer someone she could exert total control over.
More logical options would be Sira Moonwarden, Dark Ranger Anya, Dark Ranger Lenara, Nathanos Blightcaller, and the Champion depending on how you interpret the character. These are all people she can exert control over in one way or another.
If you’ve noticed that Sylvanas would have relationships that are not healthy and skewed in her favor, that’s the idea. It’s not that Sylvanas is incapable of having normal relationships (regardless of their nature) with other people, but she is often resistant to the idea because trying in the past has only ever ended in her being played, most notably in War Crimes. She she prefers “relationships” where she holds all the cards and will often exploit the reverence and adoration of others for her own gain.
Since her undeath, there are only two canon characters who at any point treat Sylvanas like an actual fucking person at any point in time: Vereesa and Nathanos. And the former is only during a very recent comic. Sylvanas has learned the hard way that trusting people she can’t control isn’t worth it, it only ends badly for her.
This kind of thing is the reason Sylvanas is the only Windrunner Sister to NOT have a love interest. Even in life she didn’t have one, there were only ever rumors about it. Rumors that existed entirely because Sylvanas accepted a talented ranger into the Farstriders and the rest of Quel’Thalas was too bigoted to understand why. It’s only ever been other characters to assert there is something between Sylvanas and Nathanos, even though all the “proof” ends up being things that Sylvanas stands to benefit from regardless. The dialogue in “Most Loyal” is once again something Sylvanas can exploit for her own gain.
It doesn’t matter which character I mentioned above you’re using, you will be watching someone be manipulated, exploited and controlled by a person who has learned the hard way that there is no reason to do anything else.