[Spoilers] Gradius's LoTV Thoughts

[ragnarok]

Trying to fight a war of attrition against Terrans as Zerg is by far the least logical strategy, you will ALWAYS overpower them with numbers, all she has to do is built up her forces on Phaeton and strike when ready, Mengsk isn't going anywhere.

Stratos, you knew all along Kerrigan suspected Mengsk would have tricks up his sleeve. The Psi Destroyer was proof of just that. She expected Mengsk to know he can't be dumb enough to think the Dominion could beat the Zerg in a battle of numbers, so he has to have some unconventional weaponry out there. This is another reason to raid the industrial worlds, in the event of just that.

Again, this all goes back to a simple concept of war: you're not supposed to underestimate your enemy

[Turalyon]

I mean, I want to say that's true, but fans are clearly willing to go a certain distance to justify the actions of their characters. If you'll allow me to combine some of your post in the same reply, in the Overmind bit we're discussing lower down the explanation makes sense, but it's entirely fan-made. The story didn't give the proper illusion that it was the only reasoned choice, but we're still willing to find an explanation for it.

I don't need to justify or fanon a reason for the Overmind's actions. It's plain to see that it did what it did because it was over-confident and not despairing anymore.

No problem. Basically, when Mengsk attacked the Umojan labs to get Kerrigan, Mengsk was in control of the full military might of an interstellar empire (Except for all the fleets he gave to Moebis Corps apparently, but that's not part of Heart of the Swarm, so I hope you'll do me the favour of ignoring that silliness when considering the narrative of the game) and Kerrigan had nothing. Throughout the game, Kerrigan is preparing for the final confrontation by in one part making herself stronger (Gathering the Zerg from Char and Kaldir, getting reinfested on Zerus) and making her enemy weaker (destroying his military production in the evolution missions and cutscenes, destroying his Hybrid on Skygeirr). If those troops had not been destroyed previously, she would have had to fight them on Korhal anyway, and whatever further aseets they managed to produce.

That's a summary for HotS not a reason why Kerrigan is compelled to kill so many other people/aliens when all she wants to do is kill one man only. Because she's a human now, it's not unreasonable to think she would consider relying on her natural skills as a superlative assassin to pursue Mengsk rather before going back to the Zerg (which she seems to actually dislike and show remorse for given she feels some responsibility for her actions as the Queen of Blades), hope they don't kill her and take her back as leader. It's never quite clear why she goes back the Zerg specifically and directly after hearing Mengsk's propaganda about Raynor's execution. There seemed to be more behind that decision but it's left too far open that it just seems contrived that way because this is supposed to be the Zerg expansion and that it "won't do" if Kerrigan didn't control Zerg again.

I think they were just afraid that portraying it adequately would make it difficult for the audience to sympathise with her, so they still half-arsed.

I think it's partly because they were more or less "forced" to half-arse it because they made themselves an impossible task to accomplish. How can you make a story that has to equally focus both on a character that is sympathisable and a race of bloodthirsty, killing machines with no moral compunctions (especially with such a character using this race) without it being incongruous/messing up one or the other or even both?

It's similar to how they shoehorned the Prophecy arc into Wings of Liberty because they didn't trust the audience to understand Raynor's journey. And instead, it just helps those people, since now they think he only did it because a prophecy told him to.

I shudder at all this. There's nothing worse than having your immersion broken when you can see the cogwheels of the plot grinding so loudly in that instance you just described.

Not at all. His argument was that Kerrigan is evil and morally bankrupt. Since philosophers have been debating on morality for ages, establishing his standard for it through other examples is completely valid.

But the standards of morality and the hypocrisy of moral stances being prone to inconsistency are not what his arguement is about. He's saying that unnecessary killing is evil and since Kerrigan does it, she's evil. You're saying that Fenix/Raynor/Tassadar do that too, therefore, they are evil such that if Grad doesn't think they're evil than Kerrigan is not evil either. You're accusing him of moral relativity and not addresing the fundamental argument that's being made, irrespective of whomever makes that argument. I can agree that Fenix, Raynor and Tassadar are evil because they permit, assist or perform unnecessary killing and therefore, so is Kerrigan because she does the same. What do you say to that?

I'm not assuming that the notion I suggested is correct. I'm just giving an example of something else it could be. I mean, if police or even military (and apparently the Magistrate has military authority?) were sent to prevent a riot from escalating further, you wouldn't necessarily believe that their first concern is the welfare of the rioters. Like I said, I've been wondering about the Magistrate. This guy gets an entire Confederate planet, and apparently still has pretty much no influence with the Confederacy?

You shouldn't need to give examples of what it could be or wonder about what the role Magistrate specifically is to understand Mengsk's approach toward one. I didn't feel compelled to know this exact detail since I had all I needed to know in that magistrates have some responsibility involving taking people under their wing and Mengsk confirms that by approaching one and invoking that responsibility as a call to action.

No, and I don't think I've got anything to argue against that beyond throwing away the anti-Protoss strike force.

If one were inclined to think this way, it was probably always intended to be a utilitarian throwaway strike force/sacrifice. Even if it failed to stop the Protoss, the Zerg may have had enough time to destroy the Confeds on Tarsonis due to the strike force serving as a delaying tactic.

My point was that the Overmind went to the Terran worlds out of a desperate need for something that would counter the Protoss' psionics and ability to bend space and warp reality. The Aiur Protoss still have this, Dark Templar entirely inconsequential. Kerrigan was supposed to be the solution, but isn't used. And yet this is never brought up in any way.

Protoss are Protoss, Dark Templar or not. There were Protoss on their designated base of operations which proved even more deadly than previously thought because of the newly-discovered Dark Templar, which necessitated some one like Kerrigan to fight both the Protoss' psionic ability to bend space and warp reality (their frickin supreme general of the Protoss army was also present to boot) and their discovered ability to kill Zerg leaders permanently right then and there. There's nothing that implies she isn't being used because she is being used. There's nothing that implies that Kerrigan must accompany the Overminds' invasion of Char at that specific moment and there's also nothing that implies she couldn't come later to help. That she actually didn't arrive later in Episode 3 can hardly be the fault of the writer in addressing that "problem" since the focus is now on Protoss, not the Zerg, so we have to make assumptions that circumstances changed but we weren't privy to them.

[FanaticTemplar]

I don't need to justify or fanon a reason for the Overmind's actions. It's plain to see that it did what it did because it was over-confident and not despairing anymore.

So you're saying a character's expressed motivation is discarded without ever being addressed or mentioned because its circumstances have clearly changed? If only you knew how often I have argued as you are now.

That's a summary for HotS not a reason why Kerrigan is compelled to kill so many other people/aliens when all she wants to do is kill one man only. Because she's a human now, it's not unreasonable to think she would consider relying on her natural skills as a superlative assassin to pursue Mengsk rather before going back to the Zerg (which she seems to actually dislike and show remorse for given she feels some responsibility for her actions as the Queen of Blades), hope they don't kill her and take her back as leader. It's never quite clear why she goes back the Zerg specifically and directly after hearing Mengsk's propaganda about Raynor's execution. There seemed to be more behind that decision but it's left too far open that it just seems contrived that way because this is supposed to be the Zerg expansion and that it "won't do" if Kerrigan didn't control Zerg again.

You mean her superlative skills as a Ghost? When Mengsk has an entire program full of those defending him? It's not unreasonable to think such an attempt is doomed to fail. She went to the Zerg because the Umojan missions showed that she could still control them and she needed an army capable of combating the Dominion, something Raynor's Raiders and the Umojans blatantly could not.

I think it's partly because they were more or less "forced" to half-arse it because they made themselves an impossible task to accomplish. How can you make a story that has to equally focus both on a character that is sympathisable and a race of bloodthirsty, killing machines with no moral compunctions (especially with such a character using this race) without it being incongruous/messing up one or the other or even both?

The Zerg are weapons. All weapons are killing machines with no moral compunctions. I think it could have been feasible, but then again, we'll never know.

I shudder at all this. There's nothing worse than having your immersion broken when you can see the cogwheels of the plot grinding so loudly in that instance you just described.

Agreed.

But the standards of morality and the hypocrisy of moral stances being prone to inconsistency are not what his arguement is about. He's saying that unnecessary killing is evil and since Kerrigan does it, she's evil. You're saying that Fenix/Raynor/Tassadar do that too, therefore, they are evil such that if Grad doesn't think they're evil than Kerrigan is not evil either. You're accusing him of moral relativity and not addresing the fundamental argument that's being made, irrespective of whomever makes that argument. I can agree that Fenix, Raynor and Tassadar are evil because they permit, assist or perform unnecessary killing and therefore, so is Kerrigan because she does the same. What do you say to that?

I'm not sure what you're expecting. I've said earlier that:

I hated Heart of the Swarm. I think Kerrigan does absolutely nothing to earn her stupid angelic ascension and "redemption".

And more recently:

I believe and state that Kerrigan is a mass-murdering psychopath.

That one's not perfectly accurate since I didn't choose the wording, but it's close enough that I was willing to write it. And if you were inclined to search through my post history, I don't believe you would ever find me claiming that Kerrigan is some kind of moral paragon in Heart of the Swarm.

And incidentally, that was not what the argument was about either. I asked if Kerrigan had targeted anything other than military assets in her war with the Dominion. Pretending that the argument was somehow about me believing Kerrigan has done nothing wrong, that would be a straw man.

You shouldn't need to give examples of what it could be or wonder about what the role Magistrate specifically is to understand Mengsk's approach toward one. I didn't feel compelled to know this exact detail since I had all I needed to know in that magistrates have some responsibility involving taking people under their wing and Mengsk confirms that by approaching one and invoking that responsibility as a call to action.

There are a lot of things you don't need to know, and if you're going to start acting like this is a forum about not asking questions about StarCraft, I'm going to be extremely disappointed. Incidentally, your argument hinges on confirmation via Mengsk accurately reading someone, which is the position you're arguing against.

If one were inclined to think this way, it was probably always intended to be a utilitarian throwaway strike force/sacrifice. Even if it failed to stop the Protoss, the Zerg may have had enough time to destroy the Confeds on Tarsonis due to the strike force serving as a delaying tactic.

You think he was always intending to throw away a force powerful enough to stop the Fleet of the Executor?

Protoss are Protoss, Dark Templar or not. There were Protoss on their designated base of operations which proved even more deadly than previously thought because of the newly-discovered Dark Templar, which necessitated some one like Kerrigan to fight both the Protoss' psionic ability to bend space and warp reality (their frickin supreme general of the Protoss army was also present to boot) and their discovered ability to kill Zerg leaders permanently right then and there. There's nothing that implies she isn't being used because she is being used. There's nothing that implies that Kerrigan must accompany the Overminds' invasion of Char at that specific moment and there's also nothing that implies she couldn't come later to help. That she actually didn't arrive later in Episode 3 can hardly be the fault of the writer in addressing that "problem" since the focus is now on Protoss, not the Zerg, so we have to make assumptions that circumstances changed but we weren't privy to them.

You still don't understand. Allow me to reformulate this in a way that will hopefully clarify the issue.

The Overmind despaired at the Protoss' psionic might and ability to bend time and warp space, he could find no way to deal with this. We'll call this "Problem A".

Then he found Humanity, and their psionic potential, and he decided that they would allow him to resolve Problem A. But when he does obtain Kerrigan, Problem A is never mentioned or addressed.

You tell me that Kerrigan was attempting to solve Problem B - that would be Zeratul's band - but that's no relevant, because I'm not saying Kerrigan did nothing, I'm saying that Problem A, which motivated the entire first act of the game, gets straight up forgotten. There is no explanation in the game. The fan-theory that you've provided, that after facing the Protoss he decided that Problem A wasn't actually a problem at all and that he didn't need Kerrigan is fine. But it's not in the game. I hope this was clearer.

[Turalyon]

So you're saying a character's expressed motivation is discarded without ever being addressed or mentioned because its circumstances have clearly changed? If only you knew how often I have argued as you are now.

I never said discarded. You're the one intrepreting it that way.

You mean her superlative skills as a Ghost? When Mengsk has an entire program full of those defending him? It's not unreasonable to think such an attempt is doomed to fail.

Not really. She's the hero. I expected Raynor's attempts at whatever he was doing in WoL to fail given his circumstances, yet he did not and went beyond. If Raynor can do all those things with convenient plot devices and circumstances, I can't see why Kerrigan as a Ghost can't be afforded the same thing. Besides, Kerrigan is trained in knowing how such a program would be used in defense, so she could easily find exploits around them. That's not unreasonable, right?

The Zerg are weapons. All weapons are killing machines with no moral compunctions. I think it could have been feasible, but then again, we'll never know.

The Zerg are indeed weapons whose only function is to kill on a mass-scale (they are not just merely a gun or sword) but with minds of their own and capable of self-direction. And yet we are asked to sympathise with someone who would so willingly use such living weapons (and become one like them) to only kill one man with the huge potential of killing many more due to collateral. It's a tough ask. The only way to do something like this and make it agreeable is to focus on the sympathisable angle and downplay the atrociousness of their whole reason for being (Brad Bird's animated film The Iron Giant for example) or vice versa (like Kerrigan in BW). Given what the Zerg really are (the Primals not being that different/better morally either), they're certainly not the best choice of "lens" to observe how sympathisable a character Kerrigan is. It's impossible to get an equal balance (which is what HotS went for) of those two things because any attempt can only seem half-arsed/wishy-washy since neither aspect is served fully.

I'm not sure what you're expecting.

That one's not perfectly accurate since I didn't choose the wording, but it's close enough that I was willing to write it. And if you were inclined to search through my post history, I don't believe you would ever find me claiming that Kerrigan is some kind of moral paragon in Heart of the Swarm.

And incidentally, that was not what the argument was about either. I asked if Kerrigan had targeted anything other than military assets in her war with the Dominion. Pretending that the argument was somehow about me believing Kerrigan has done nothing wrong, that would be a straw man.

Then I honestly don't know what point you were trying to make by rebutting Grad then in the first place. Your saying Kerrigan is evil, which is what the initial position, in and of itself, that Grad put forward was. That should've been it - done and dusted. It seemed to me that you're the one that shifted it to something else without properly stating your position and why, leaving most to think you were actually refuting that Kerrigan is evil.

There are a lot of things you don't need to know, and if you're going to start acting like this is a forum about not asking questions about StarCraft, I'm going to be extremely disappointed. Incidentally, your argument hinges on confirmation via Mengsk accurately reading someone, which is the position you're arguing against.

Your first sentence seems incomplete so I don't understand what beef you're starting to have against me there. I think I've made my position clear enough though. Mengsk is reading the situation, not the person and that they're not the same thing. If you disagree, fine, I'm just putting down another interpretation.

You think he was always intending to throw away a force powerful enough to stop the Fleet of the Executor?

Mind you, I did say "if one was inclined to think this way...". But if you must insist, let's try and adopt this stance for a minute. There is no way to think that the strikeforce would survive being sandwiched between two alien powers that have both shown some skill in slaughtering Terrans, so I wouldn't necessarily think that Mengsk would think that this strikeforce is "super-powerful" otherwise he wouldn't have left them down there seeing their utility. Afterall, Mengsk only expresses confidence (even then, I just took that as him trying to openly rationalise/assuage what on paper is a suicide mission and as a way to gee-up the strike force because if Mengsk is willing to send his second to oversee the mission, it must be important and that he won't abandon us if things go pear shaped) in Kerrigan's ability to hold-off the Protoss, not obliterate them.

Also, you're statement/question hinges on the assumption that the strike forces main importance lies in it being especially powerful and potentially invincible, right? It would have to be in order to fight the Protoss, right? That would be a strange assumption to make in-universe if not for the fact that the gameplay itself has the unusual win condition of obliterating all Protoss presence on the map. I admit that it only works if we segregate gameplay-story (yeah, yeah, I know it's not ideal cos we're heading into fanon territory and floating away from the main position). It'd make more sense if the mission objective was more about survival and being timed to indicate the Zerg reaching critical mass and killing the Confeds (and your strikeforce) whilst having to destroy a set number of Protoss assets to ward them off (not completely annihilate them).

All in all, I'm reaching. I'm just adopting the stance and reading into it way more than I should. Still, the interpretation is an interesting one to take without too glaring a hole in it.

The Overmind despaired at the Protoss' psionic might and ability to bend time and warp space, he could find no way to deal with this. We'll call this "Problem A".

Then he found Humanity, and their psionic potential, and he decided that they would allow him to resolve Problem A. But when he does obtain Kerrigan, Problem A is never mentioned or addressed.

It is addressed! Kerrigan is fighting Protoss! You cannot say she is not. Sure, it's not on Aiur but it doesn't specifically stipulate that her entire purpose/reason for creation was to go to Aiur at that immediate point of time! That you feel it is, is an assumption on your part.

You tell me that Kerrigan was attempting to solve Problem B - that would be Zeratul's band - but that's no relevant, because I'm not saying Kerrigan did nothing, I'm saying that Problem A, which motivated the entire first act of the game, gets straight up forgotten. There is no explanation in the game. The fan-theory that you've provided, that after facing the Protoss he decided that Problem A wasn't actually a problem at all and that he didn't need Kerrigan is fine. But it's not in the game. I hope this was clearer.

I am understanding your position better than you think because my position does not actually deny your position in its totality. I've had to use fanon to give a potential reason for how Problem A is addressed (specifically a supposed change in priority), but I never actually denied that Problem A is still not a concern. What you call Problem B, to me, is still Problem A.

[FanaticTemplar]

I never said discarded. You're the one intrepreting it that way.

That is correct, I am.

Not really. She's the hero. I expected Raynor's attempts at whatever he was doing in WoL to fail given his circumstances, yet he did not and went beyond. If Raynor can do all those things with convenient plot devices and circumstances, I can't see why Kerrigan as a Ghost can't be afforded the same thing. Besides, Kerrigan is trained in knowing how such a program would be used in defense, so she could easily find exploits around them. That's not unreasonable, right?

Yes, it is unreasonable. Kerrigan may be trained in knowing how such a program would be used, but Mengsk will be preparing for her attack. Specifically her attack, because he's been the one using her for most of her latter career as a Ghost. Furthermore, if you look at the precedents for Ghost-based assassination you'll see that Nova, who I understand to be fairly comparable to human Kerrigan, couldn't even get to Gabriel Tosh in Ghost of a Chance (Wings of Liberty) without the help of Raynor's Raiders - and Arcturus Mengsk has an army of Toshes. Go earlier than that to Kerrigan herself, and in Revolution (Rebel Yell) while she did assassinate Duke's officers on Antiga, she needed the help or Raynor and the Sons of Korhal to get there. And Mengsk on Korhal will be far better defended than those occupying officers ever were. Even going back to Arcturus' father, Angus Mengsk, there were three Ghosts sent after him, and he didn't have anywhere near the means Arcturus does (notably, he didn't have an army of Ghosts). This is not an assassination that has ever been presented as feasible in the series (Maybe in some expanded lore, but I don't really care about those).

And if you're going to go with "she's the protagonist so of course she'll succeed", that's not an in-story justification, and if we're using out-of-story explanations, I believe that "it's an RTS wargame so of course it'll use large scale warfare" trumps that argument.

The Zerg are indeed weapons whose only function is to kill on a mass-scale (they are not just merely a gun or sword) but with minds of their own and capable of self-direction. And yet we are asked to sympathise with someone who would so willingly use such living weapons (and become one like them) to only kill one man with the huge potential of killing many more due to collateral. It's a tough ask. The only way to do something like this and make it agreeable is to focus on the sympathisable angle and downplay the atrociousness of their whole reason for being (Brad Bird's animated film The Iron Giant for example) or vice versa (like Kerrigan in BW). Given what the Zerg really are (the Primals not being that different/better morally either), they're certainly not the best choice of "lens" to observe how sympathisable a character Kerrigan is. It's impossible to get an equal balance (which is what HotS went for) of those two things because any attempt can only seem half-arsed/wishy-washy since neither aspect is served fully.

Yes, the story would have to focus on Kerrigan at the detriment of the Zerg, and that would bring us back to the ongoing problem with the Zerg since the Overmind's death, that the Zerg have no character to them and are merely tools to be used by others for their own goals.

Then I honestly don't know what point you were trying to make by rebutting Grad then in the first place. Your saying Kerrigan is evil, which is what the initial position, in and of itself, that Grad put forward was. That should've been it - done and dusted. It seemed to me that you're the one that shifted it to something else without properly stating your position and why, leaving most to think you were actually refuting that Kerrigan is evil.

Why do you focus on Gradius' initial position? He linked his rant to me because I asked if Kerrigan had ever targeted anything other than military targets in her campaign against the Dominion. Also, within the context of the series, I wouldn't say Kerrigan is evil, just as I wouldn't say Tassadar or Fenix or Raynor is evil, I simply acknowledge that she's a mass murdering psychopath. Besides which, you can object to terrible arguments on their own merits. If I said that the sun is hot because it's so small, having a problem with that doesn't mean you think that the sun is cold.

Your first sentence seems incomplete so I don't understand what beef you're starting to have against me there.

Well, part of that is because I was using the general 'you' rather than the specific, so it would have been better for me to write "There are a lot of things we don't need to know". But yes, I do feel that your argument is condescending. Why shouldn't I wonder about the role of the Magistrate, just because you don't feel that it is necessary? Wondering about the details of the series is the entire reason I come to this forum.

Also, looking back at it I completely messed up the formatting in that post when I quoted myself and forgot to go back to quoting you. Whoops .

I think I've made my position clear enough though. Mengsk is reading the situation, not the person and that they're not the same thing. If you disagree, fine, I'm just putting down another interpretation.

No, the problem here is not that I disagree, I'm fine with that. The problem is that your argument is circular. You started out asserting that Mengsk wasn't reading the Magistrate because he made the entire judgement based on what the Magistrate's role is, and then you said you didn't need to know what the Magistrate's role is, because Mengsk judgement confirms your interpretation of the role.

Mind you, I did say "if one was inclined to think this way...". But if you must insist, let's try and adopt this stance for a minute. There is no way to think that the strikeforce would survive being sandwiched between two alien powers that have both shown some skill in slaughtering Terrans, so I wouldn't necessarily think that Mengsk would think that this strikeforce is "super-powerful" otherwise he wouldn't have left them down there seeing their utility. Afterall, Mengsk only expresses confidence (even then, I just took that as him trying to openly rationalise/assuage what on paper is a suicide mission and as a way to gee-up the strike force because if Mengsk is willing to send his second to oversee the mission, it must be important and that he won't abandon us if things go pear shaped) in Kerrigan's ability to hold-off the Protoss, not obliterate them.

Also, you're statement/question hinges on the assumption that the strike forces main importance lies in it being especially powerful and potentially invincible, right? It would have to be in order to fight the Protoss, right? That would be a strange assumption to make in-universe if not for the fact that the gameplay itself has the unusual win condition of obliterating all Protoss presence on the map. I admit that it only works if we segregate gameplay-story (yeah, yeah, I know it's not ideal cos we're heading into fanon territory and floating away from the main position). It'd make more sense if the mission objective was more about survival and being timed to indicate the Zerg reaching critical mass and killing the Confeds (and your strikeforce) whilst having to destroy a set number of Protoss assets to ward them off (not completely annihilate them).

That sounds fair, but it's also worth noting that the mission ends not with the Zerg overrunning the planet but Kerrigan saying that they've neutralised the Protoss, so it's not just a gameplay/story segregation thing, it's actually in the canon that Kerrigan and her forces neutralised the Fleet of the Executor. And in Egression, we see the remnants of the Fleet still lingering in orbit.

All in all, I'm reaching. I'm just adopting the stance and reading into it way more than I should. Still, the interpretation is an interesting one to take without too glaring a hole in it.

I'm always interested in alternative theories, I'm just giving you a hard time to see how well it holds together .

It is addressed! Kerrigan is fighting Protoss!

Are you asserting that fighting Zeratul and his band will neutralise the Protoss' psionics, their ability to bend time and their ability to warp space? Because if you're not, it isn't addressed.

I am understanding your position better than you think because my position does not actually deny your position in its totality. I've had to use fanon to give a potential reason for how Problem A is addressed (specifically a supposed change in priority), but I never actually denied that Problem A is still not a concern. What you call Problem B, to me, is still Problem A.

The problem with trying to pretend that dealing with Problem B is dealing with Problem A is that, for one thing, it's still not addressed in the story itself. Did you not say earlier that "The point I was making that if a character's motivation isn't given the proper illusion that this was their only reasoned choice, then an audience can only surmise that it must be contrived."?

For another, it's actually not possible for the Dark Templar to be the thing that the Overmind feared and wanted to get Kerrigan for, because he got his knowledge of the Protoss from the memories of the Xel'naga, and the Dark Templar did not exist at the time the Xel'naga left.

As I keep saying, your argument that the Overmind's priorities changed is perfectly acceptable, but it's still not in the story.

[Turalyon]

Yes, it is unreasonable. Kerrigan may be trained in knowing how such a program would be used, but Mengsk will be preparing for her attack. Specifically her attack, because he's been the one using her for most of her latter career as a Ghost.

Who's the better Ghost here, Kerrigan or Mengsk?

I doubt anyone can truly prepare for an attack of this nature no matter how expected and secure one thinks they are since it is unconventional and would require Mengsk to be insanely paranoid at all times. He'd have to hole up in a bunker and not make any public appearances to be truly considered safe. The presence of such agencies whose sole purpose is to prevent assasination/terrorism don't necessarily nullify the potential threats or prevent belligerents from trying and finding ways around it. Indeed, were it not a RTS (yeah, I know the effective counter to what follows is "well, it is an RTS so you'd just have to put up with it" but just let me indulge) I think this would make for a more effective/credible enemy for Kerrigan to fight than the expected (we're using the Zerg afterall) easy-peasy steamrolling of the Dominion military that we got.

Furthermore, if you look at the precedents for Ghost-based assassination you'll see that Nova, who I understand to be fairly comparable to human Kerrigan, couldn't even get to Gabriel Tosh in Ghost of a Chance (Wings of Liberty) without the help of Raynor's Raiders - and Arcturus Mengsk has an army of Toshes. Go earlier than that to Kerrigan herself, and in Revolution (Rebel Yell) while she did assassinate Duke's officers on Antiga, she needed the help or Raynor and the Sons of Korhal to get there. And Mengsk on Korhal will be far better defended than those occupying officers ever were. Even going back to Arcturus' father, Angus Mengsk, there were three Ghosts sent after him, and he didn't have anywhere near the means Arcturus does (notably, he didn't have an army of Ghosts). This is not an assassination that has ever been presented as feasible in the series (Maybe in some expanded lore, but I don't really care about those).

Good point. In response, all I can say is that if Kerrigan needed support in her endeavours as a Ghost, is to then avail herself of the assistance that Valerian (Mengsk Snr didn't seem to have any compunction potentially killing his son, I'm sure Valerian can be contried to begin thinking the same way about his father) and Raynor's Raiders can provide. I'm sure they'd be more than willing to help out. Course, that won't do because it's supposed to be a Zerg campaign, isn't it?

And if you're going to go with "she's the protagonist so of course she'll succeed", that's not an in-story justification, and if we're using out-of-story explanations, I believe that "it's an RTS wargame so of course it'll use large scale warfare" trumps that argument.

For the former, the in-story justification that Raynor gets as far as he could whilst being supposedly inebriated and severely depressed is largely because he's "just that good". I can't see why we can't attribute that to Kerrigan.

As to the latter, it's curious that even despite HotS being supposedly about large scale warfare and the use of Zerg, the focus which Blizz intended was specifically on the "hero" character of Kerrigan and her being a linch-pin to every mission/ to give more an RPG feel than it being RTS. Given that the focus was on her pretty much soloing the whole campaign anyway (and most of it plays that way, too), why not just make the missions about her being the Ghost anyway? Oh, that's right, it's supposed to be about the Zerg. How could I forget?

Yes, the story would have to focus on Kerrigan at the detriment of the Zerg, and that would bring us back to the ongoing problem with the Zerg since the Overmind's death, that the Zerg have no character to them and are merely tools to be used by others for their own goals.

Now you're getting it. Focusing on a sympathisable and more human Kerrigan is at cross purpose to focusing on Zerg. Because the story is about Kerrigan and Blizz ultimately intended to focus on her, the Zerg as a racial identity really got the short shrift in their own campaign. Although I've liked Kerrigan as a character, my lore interest lies in the Zerg and boy, what a crushing disappointment it was to have them the way they were in HotS what with the Swarm Zerg characters being nothing more than facile representations and that further development of this race being epitomised in the form of the troglodyte that was Dehaka. As you can see, I'm still smarting from it all.

Why do you focus on Gradius' initial position?

To get it back on point because others were getting confused about your position.

Also, within the context of the series, I wouldn't say Kerrigan is evil, just as I wouldn't say Tassadar or Fenix or Raynor is evil, I simply acknowledge that she's a mass murdering psychopath. Besides which, you can object to terrible arguments on their own merits.

Curious. And yet you would call the Overmind out as being evil in its actions (in one of our past discussions). Or was that position not within the context of the series?

Well, part of that is because I was using the general 'you' rather than the specific, so it would have been better for me to write "There are a lot of things we don't need to know". But yes, I do feel that your argument is condescending. Why shouldn't I wonder about the role of the Magistrate, just because you don't feel that it is necessary? Wondering about the details of the series is the entire reason I come to this forum.

Seems like all it took was two words for it make me sound like I was condescending. Those words were "you shouldn't" when it was proabably more appropriate to say "one doesn't have to". I can be condescending sometimes but usually for the intent of humour (it's a very typical Aussie thing to do - "taking the piss" - which others find difficult to parse understandable) more than being an outright arsehole. My intent was neither of those so "my bad" if it came across that way. Feel free to wonder away, all I was saying that it's not entirely necessary to get what the title 'Magistrate' exactly means or entails since we already have a cursory but sufficient indication of it already.

The problem is that your argument is circular. You started out asserting that Mengsk wasn't reading the Magistrate because he made the entire judgement based on what the Magistrate's role is, and then you said you didn't need to know what the Magistrate's role is, because Mengsk judgement confirms your interpretation of the role.

There's the source of your misunderstanding. The bolded is meant that we don't need to know the entire and exact meaning of the title and specific roles a "magistrate" to understand it because we are given the description in the prologue: "Acting as Magistrate, you are to safeguard the colonists and keep their panic from escalating any further" which tell us in broadstrokes all we really need to know. It's easy to infer that Magistrates "look after people" at the basic level in-universe and out-of-universe. In-universe, this is what Mengsk is counting on. Simple (I hope).

That sounds fair, but it's also worth noting that the mission ends not with the Zerg overrunning the planet but Kerrigan saying that they've neutralised the Protoss, so it's not just a gameplay/story segregation thing, it's actually in the canon that Kerrigan and her forces neutralised the Fleet of the Executor. And in Egression, we see the remnants of the Fleet still lingering in orbit.

You know, I had considered that exact specific quote from Kerrigan before I made that reply you just responded to but I decided to see if you would pick that up for me.

Going along with the re-written scenario I proposed, the quote still works if say the aim was to destroy Protoss pylons/Nexus or destroyed a set number of Protoss units/buildings and they retreated. Sure, the term "neutralised" may sound sound odd to use in those scenarios and in retrospect of what we actually got in that mission, but it has leeway since it can indicate the stopping of a threat in general not just the specific total obilteration of that said threat. Furthermore, there's proof that the strike force didn't succeed in completely wiping out the Protoss since the Adjutant's opening monologue in the mission after (The Hammer Falls) specifically says "Protoss and Zerg forces continue to battle across the core continent of Tarsonis".

Are you asserting that fighting Zeratul and his band will neutralise the Protoss' psionics, their ability to bend time and their ability to warp space? Because if you're not, it isn't addressed.

I'm struggling mighty hard not to be snide here... but, with that above statement/question you made in mind, how can you then imply that Kerrigan will "neutralise Protoss psionics, their ability to bend time and their ability to warp space" by going to Aiur?

The problem with trying to pretend that dealing with Problem B is dealing with Problem A is that, for one thing, it's still not addressed in the story itself. Did you not say earlier that "The point I was making that if a character's motivation isn't given the proper illusion that this was their only reasoned choice, then an audience can only surmise that it must be contrived."?

Thing is, I'm not actually pretending that Problem B is Problem A because in actuality, it's still all Problem A and there's no distinction. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be an arse even though the following may sound like it, but you're the one making the distinction that going to Aiur is so important for Kerrigan to go to and yet you don't have proof beyond supposition.

For another, it's actually not possible for the Dark Templar to be the thing that the Overmind feared and wanted to get Kerrigan for, because he got his knowledge of the Protoss from the memories of the Xel'naga, and the Dark Templar did not exist at the time the Xel'naga left.

Keep in mind that Tassadar, the Executor and supreme general of the Protoss military arm that is the Templar who had been stifling the Overminds earlier efforts, is also on Char and that Kerrigan knows about him and subsequently fought him throughout the campaign. Naturally, the Overmind would've known about this, too. Even were it not for the fact that Tassadar was the ultimate cause of it's demise, the Overmind was not stupid for leaving Kerrigan to wipe out a Protoss who commands the military force that wields such powers that it's apparently afraid of. Kerrigan is certainly being used and double time too what with the emergence of this new threat in the Dark Templar.

[FanaticTemplar]

Who's the better Ghost here, Kerrigan or Mengsk?

I doubt anyone can truly prepare for an attack of this nature no matter how expected and secure one thinks they are since it is unconventional and would require Mengsk to be insanely paranoid at all times. He'd have to hole up in a bunker and not make any public appearances to be truly considered safe. The presence of such agencies whose sole purpose is to prevent assasination/terrorism don't necessarily nullify the potential threats or prevent belligerents from trying and finding ways around it. Indeed, were it not a RTS (yeah, I know the effective counter to what follows is "well, it is an RTS so you'd just have to put up with it" but just let me indulge) I think this would make for a more effective/credible enemy for Kerrigan to fight than the expected (we're using the Zerg afterall) easy-peasy steamrolling of the Dominion military that we got.

Good point. In response, all I can say is that if Kerrigan needed support in her endeavours as a Ghost, is to then avail herself of the assistance that Valerian (Mengsk Snr didn't seem to have any compunction potentially killing his son, I'm sure Valerian can be contried to begin thinking the same way about his father) and Raynor's Raiders can provide. I'm sure they'd be more than willing to help out. Course, that won't do because it's supposed to be a Zerg campaign, isn't it?

The issue isn't that it's impossible for Kerrigan to assassinate Mengsk, the issue is that it's unreasonable. As we've agreed, Mengsk is incredibly well defended against such an attack, and the odds of failure go up immensely if this tactic were used instead.

For the former, the in-story justification that Raynor gets as far as he could whilst being supposedly inebriated and severely depressed is largely because he's "just that good". I can't see why we can't attribute that to Kerrigan.

We could, but I don't think Raynor's ever made a decision on the basis that he's the protagonist and therefore will succeed . The way these things usually work is that they're put in impossible situations and the fact that they come out on top against all odds is what makes them "just that good".

As to the latter, it's curious that even despite HotS being supposedly about large scale warfare and the use of Zerg, the focus which Blizz intended was specifically on the "hero" character of Kerrigan and her being a linch-pin to every mission/ to give more an RPG feel than it being RTS. Given that the focus was on her pretty much soloing the whole campaign anyway (and most of it plays that way, too), why not just make the missions about her being the Ghost anyway? Oh, that's right, it's supposed to be about the Zerg. How could I forget?

Hey, we wouldn't have gotten Abathur is we did that, so count your blessings!

Oh, unless we were going with Kerrigan as James Bond and Abathur as Q!

Now you're getting it. Focusing on a sympathisable and more human Kerrigan is at cross purpose to focusing on Zerg. Because the story is about Kerrigan and Blizz ultimately intended to focus on her, the Zerg as a racial identity really got the short shrift in their own campaign. Although I've liked Kerrigan as a character, my lore interest lies in the Zerg and boy, what a crushing disappointment it was to have them the way they were in HotS what with the Swarm Zerg characters being nothing more than facile representations and that further development of this race being epitomised in the form of the troglodyte that was Dehaka. As you can see, I'm still smarting from it all.

I always considered Heart of the Swarm to be an improvement on the portrayal of the Zerg after Brood War, which had no Zerg characters in it at all, but yes, I completely agree with your disappointment here. And while there's still minimal characterisation for the Zerg, in exchange we get a plot about Kerrigan spinning in circles. Ugh.

To get it back on point because others were getting confused about your position.

No, I mean, why Gradius' initial position and not mine?

Curious. And yet you would call the Overmind out as being evil in its actions (in one of our past discussions). Or was that position not within the context of the series?

No, it's just from looking at it from its narrative perspective. I mean, Raynor and Fenix are not in the same situation as Tassadar and Kerrigan, because the things they do in The Jacobs Installation and The Kel-Morian Combine are completely out of character and inexplicable, so I usually just pretend they never happened when considering those characters. Kerrigan and Tassadar, however, definitely do commit those atrocities. From the narrative perspective, it's a story of rehabilitation, they start off doing evil things, but they are conflicted over them. Over the course of the story, they turn their backs on those ways and become better people. So it's a journey out of darkness for those characters, and in the end they're not the evil people they once were. It doesn't fit ideally into my view of morality and justice because there are no reparations made to the victims, but I believe in the ability of people to change. Of course, with StarCraft's cosmic scale, those mistakes in their history are planetary genocides, and the scale of it all kinda interferes with the narrative, but I'm usually willing to give a story some allowances in good faith. I don't know if that answers your question?

Seems like all it took was two words for it make me sound like I was condescending. Those words were "you shouldn't" when it was proabably more appropriate to say "one doesn't have to". I can be condescending sometimes but usually for the intent of humour (it's a very typical Aussie thing to do - "taking the piss" - which others find difficult to parse understandable) more than being an outright arsehole. My intent was neither of those so "my bad" if it came across that way. Feel free to wonder away, all I was saying that it's not entirely necessary to get what the title 'Magistrate' exactly means or entails since we already have a cursory but sufficient indication of it already.

I apologise for ascribing such intent to you then. It seems it was just a misunderstanding.

There's the source of your misunderstanding. The bolded is meant that we don't need to know the entire and exact meaning of the title and specific roles a "magistrate" to understand it because we are given the description in the prologue: "Acting as Magistrate, you are to safeguard the colonists and keep their panic from escalating any further" which tell us in broadstrokes all we really need to know. It's easy to infer that Magistrates "look after people" at the basic level in-universe and out-of-universe. In-universe, this is what Mengsk is counting on. Simple (I hope).

One could, but I never inferred that. The Confederates are the ones who were watching the Zerg on Mar Sara and arresting everyone who tried to fight them, so I don't really picture them sending someone out of concern for the colonists' welfare .

You know, I had considered that exact specific quote from Kerrigan before I made that reply you just responded to but I decided to see if you would pick that up for me.

Going along with the re-written scenario I proposed, the quote still works if say the aim was to destroy Protoss pylons/Nexus or destroyed a set number of Protoss units/buildings and they retreated. Sure, the term "neutralised" may sound sound odd to use in those scenarios and in retrospect of what we actually got in that mission, but it has leeway since it can indicate the stopping of a threat in general not just the specific total obilteration of that said threat. Furthermore, there's proof that the strike force didn't succeed in completely wiping out the Protoss since the Adjutant's opening monologue in the mission after (The Hammer Falls) specifically says "Protoss and Zerg forces continue to battle across the core continent of Tarsonis".

At this point, I really need to be reminded what your opinion on Wings of Liberty's Safe Haven is.

I'm struggling mighty hard not to be snide here... but, with that above statement/question you made in mind, how can you then imply that Kerrigan will "neutralise Protoss psionics, their ability to bend time and their ability to warp space" by going to Aiur?

Fair enough, then not 'neutralise' but 'match'. Kerrigan was intended to fight the Protoss' psionics on their own terms by having her psionic potential assimilates into the Swarm.

Thing is, I'm not actually pretending that Problem B is Problem A because in actuality, it's still all Problem A and there's no distinction. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be an arse even though the following may sound like it, but you're the one making the distinction that going to Aiur is so important for Kerrigan to go to and yet you don't have proof beyond supposition.

Problem A was the Overmind's entire motivation for the first act, and Problem B was only discovered midway through the second. Even if you want to claim that problem A and Problem B are somehow the same problem, then that still needs to be addressed.

Keep in mind that Tassadar, the Executor and supreme general of the Protoss military arm that is the Templar who had been stifling the Overminds earlier efforts, is also on Char and that Kerrigan knows about him and subsequently fought him throughout the campaign. Naturally, the Overmind would've known about this, too. Even were it not for the fact that Tassadar was the ultimate cause of it's demise, the Overmind was not stupid for leaving Kerrigan to wipe out a Protoss who commands the military force that wields such powers that it's apparently afraid of. Kerrigan is certainly being used and double time too what with the emergence of this new threat in the Dark Templar.

Fair enough, but there's no reason to imagine that the Fleet of the Executor was comprised of the majority of the Templar Caste, nor that Tassadar is the only Protoss commander (in fact, I don't think the Overmind has any reason to believe he'd be their highest commander) and it certainly didn't have the defensive advantage of the Protoss fighting on the own home. As much as Tassadar stymied the Overmind in the Terran worlds, there is every reason to believe that things are only going to get harder from here.

[Turalyon]

The issue isn't that it's impossible for Kerrigan to assassinate Mengsk, the issue is that it's unreasonable. As we've agreed, Mengsk is incredibly well defended against such an attack, and the odds of failure go up immensely if this tactic were used instead.

Mengsk is also incredibly well-defended against Zerg attack since he has the artifact in his control, the Psi Destroyer which only the power of Primal Zerg can get around and potentially the Hybrids through Duran/Narud. Kerrigan would've known of two of those possibilities (the artifact and the Hybrids/Duran/Narud link) before she even went on avengin' and all. Sure you can put the defense up of: "well, we don't know about these specific defenses against Zerg that Mengsk had until we met them going through HotS story, so we can't retrospectively say Kerrigan going back to the Zerg was unreasonable", but I can use the same defense to justify why going down Ghost route is similarly not unreasonable - we don't know of the specific anti-Ghost threats until we meet them, right?

Seems like both options are unreasonable at various degrees. The real question I suppose then is, is it more unreasonable for her to go down her Ghost route than it is for to go back to the Zerg? I've mentioned that her human skills lie in assasination and now that she's human, it's not unreasonable for her to go along that path again. Also, given that her Zerg capabilities as the QoB were due to a different persona, that she feels shame for and presumably wants to distance herself from after being turned back into a human, her sudden jumping back to the Zerg doesn't seem earned or reasonable on her part. There's also the matter of somehow expecting the Zerg to just suddenly accept her again and not just kill her seeing her as a threat.

We could, but I don't think Raynor's ever made a decision on the basis that he's the protagonist and therefore will succeed .

Oh, I don't know, it often seems like it even if it wasn't actually intended. Most of WoL has Raynor jumping into these situations being the do-gooder rather than finding himself in them.

Hey, we wouldn't have gotten Abathur if we did that, so count your blessings!

If HotS had turned out instead to be "Kerrrigan as a Ghost campaign", I wouldn't miss Abathur at all since I wouldn't have known he'd existed.

I always considered Heart of the Swarm to be an improvement on the portrayal of the Zerg after Brood War, which had no Zerg characters in it at all

True, but I'd consider that damning with faint praise.

No, I mean, why Gradius' initial position and not mine?

If I'm not mistaken, he made the point first and then you refuted.

No, it's just from looking at it from its narrative perspective. I mean, Raynor and Fenix are not in the same situation as Tassadar and Kerrigan, because the things they do in The Jacobs Installation and The Kel-Morian Combine are completely out of character and inexplicable, so I usually just pretend they never happened when considering those characters. Kerrigan and Tassadar, however, definitely do commit those atrocities. From the narrative perspective, it's a story of rehabilitation, they start off doing evil things, but they are conflicted over them. Over the course of the story, they turn their backs on those ways and become better people. So it's a journey out of darkness for those characters, and in the end they're not the evil people they once were. It doesn't fit ideally into my view of morality and justice because there are no reparations made to the victims, but I believe in the ability of people to change. Of course, with StarCraft's cosmic scale, those mistakes in their history are planetary genocides, and the scale of it all kinda interferes with the narrative, but I'm usually willing to give a story some allowances in good faith. I don't know if that answers your question?

It does answer my question. However, I still think that there's quite a bit of differentiation between Tassadar and what Kerrigan does in HotS though. Kerrigan should still be considered somewhat "dark" since her whole motive is entirely and remains selfish all the way to the end and yet the narrative seems desperate in trying to give her a free pass what with Raynor's easily getting over kerrigan being infested again and her flying away like an angel after ruining the major stabilising force of the Terrans and leaving them to pick up the pieces. You can have as much good faith as you want but with Kerrigan in HotS, it has to come with a lot of cognitive dissonance.

One could, but I never inferred that. The Confederates are the ones who were watching the Zerg on Mar Sara and arresting everyone who tried to fight them, so I don't really picture them sending someone out of concern for the colonists' welfare .

That's quite an odd stance, if you don't mind me saying, for you to have considering the "reveal" that the Confeds are seemingly in cahoots with the Zerg (or that they think they are) only after the magistrate is introduced and is given the responsibility of helping colonist relocate in the first Terran mission, Backwater. If the Confeds weren't concerned about the welfare of the colonists (or even pretending to be for that matter), a magistrate wouldn't have been assigned at all.

At this point, I really need to be reminded what your opinion on Wings of Liberty's Safe Haven is.

My problems with Safe Haven is more to do with why Selendis would waste precious Protoss lives on what is nothing more than a pointless pissing contest with a supposed friend of the Protoss but I see where you're going with this. Safe Haven has a similar mission objective to New Gettysburg where you must destroy all the Protoss presence but then hints that the Protoss weren't all completely destroyed (despite the gameplay showing otherwise) and that all that happened was that they just lost enough Protoss to finally acquiesce to Raynor (as shown in the in-game cinematic). I guess that's where New Gettysburg fails because it's solely from the Terran POV and there's no cinematic, so the end result of destroying all the Protoss things on the map looks like the entire Protoss fleet was destroyed. This backed up by the comment of being "neutralised", but then again, the exact meaning of the word "neutralised" is dependent on the context since in the alternate New Gettysburg scenario I proposed, the term can still be used even when the Protoss weren't all destroyed to the last. That and the adjutant still mentions Protoss are still on Tarsonis fighting Zerg across the core continent in the opening monologue of the next mission.

Fair enough, then not 'neutralise' but 'match'. Kerrigan was intended to fight the Protoss' psionics on their own terms by having her psionic potential assimilates into the Swarm.

And is she not "matching" her powers against Protoss?

Problem A was the Overmind's entire motivation for the first act, and Problem B was only discovered midway through the second. Even if you want to claim that problem A and Problem B are somehow the same problem, then that still needs to be addressed.

You're insisting that there's a Problem A and a Problem B. I'm saying there's only Problem A but that it has multiple facets.

Fair enough, but there's no reason to imagine that the Fleet of the Executor was comprised of the majority of the Templar Caste, nor that Tassadar is the only Protoss commander (in fact, I don't think the Overmind has any reason to believe he'd be their highest commander) and it certainly didn't have the defensive advantage of the Protoss fighting on the own home. As much as Tassadar stymied the Overmind in the Terran worlds, there is every reason to believe that things are only going to get harder from here.

I can counter your "there's no reason to imagine that..." with my own suppositions in favour of the Zerg and the Overmind. Afterall, the Overmind does state that when it touched minds with Zeratul, "all his secrets were made known to me", which could imply just about anything really.

I'm not really sure what you're trying to defend here. Are you saying that Tassadar is not good enough a target for Kerrigan? I mean sure, I could understand that position if it were only Zeratul and the Dark Templar, but it seems you're stretching a tad in order to justify your intent that "Kerrigan must go to Aiur!". Kerrigan is but one entity in the Swarm, who is left to fight possibly the most dangerous Protoss enemy the Overmind has encountered in Tassadar, plus Zeratul and his band, and yet that is still not enough to convince you that she's fulfilling the role that she was intended for. I honestly don't know what else to say to that...

[FanaticTemplar]

Mengsk is also incredibly well-defended against Zerg attack since he has the artifact in his control, the Psi Destroyer which only the power of Primal Zerg can get around and potentially the Hybrids through Duran/Narud. Kerrigan would've known of two of those possibilities (the artifact and the Hybrids/Duran/Narud link) before she even went on avengin' and all. Sure you can put the defense up of: "well, we don't know about these specific defenses against Zerg that Mengsk had until we met them going through HotS story, so we can't retrospectively say Kerrigan going back to the Zerg was unreasonable", but I can use the same defense to justify why going down Ghost route is similarly not unreasonable - we don't know of the specific anti-Ghost threats until we meet them, right?

Seems like both options are unreasonable at various degrees. The real question I suppose then is, is it more unreasonable for her to go down her Ghost route than it is for to go back to the Zerg? I've mentioned that her human skills lie in assasination and now that she's human, it's not unreasonable for her to go along that path again. Also, given that her Zerg capabilities as the QoB were due to a different persona, that she feels shame for and presumably wants to distance herself from after being turned back into a human, her sudden jumping back to the Zerg doesn't seem earned or reasonable on her part. There's also the matter of somehow expecting the Zerg to just suddenly accept her again and not just kill her seeing her as a threat.

Yes, I do think it's far more unreasonable to expect her to go the Ghost route. For one thing, everything since Brood War has been quite clear that the Zerg are infinitely powerful, so there's absolutely no reason to expect Mengsk to be able to stop them, arse-pulled deus ex machinas aside. When I say that Mengsk will be protected from Ghosts, I don't mean that he'll have some magic Ghost-destroying device, I mean that his conventional and established defenses are more than sufficient to the task. Not wanting to go back to the Zerg is one thing, but doing so out of desperation and desire for revenge is the main point of the narrative. And the Umojan missions are all about establishing that Kerrigan still has control over the Zerg. Naktul was super happy to have her back, so that too is perfectly reasonable.

Oh, I don't know, it often seems like it even if it wasn't actually intended. Most of WoL has Raynor jumping into these situations being the do-gooder rather than finding himself in them.

That's the same thing for these purposes.

If I'm not mistaken, he made the point first and then you refuted.

He presented that article as a response to me, so one would think that the thing he was responding to was relevant.

It does answer my question. However, I still think that there's quite a bit of differentiation between Tassadar and what Kerrigan does in HotS though. Kerrigan should still be considered somewhat "dark" since her whole motive is entirely and remains selfish all the way to the end and yet the narrative seems desperate in trying to give her a free pass what with Raynor's easily getting over kerrigan being infested again and her flying away like an angel after ruining the major stabilising force of the Terrans and leaving them to pick up the pieces. You can have as much good faith as you want but with Kerrigan in HotS, it has to come with a lot of cognitive dissonance.

Presenting Kerrigan's motives as entirely selfish is somewhat missing the point. Mengsk has actually been targeting civilians. Forget Tarsonis, remember those Mar Saran colonists in Liberation Day? How about Mengsk's gulag in a volcano? Ignoring how important it is for Mengsk to be removed because Kerrigan is one of his victims doesn't make for a good argument.

That's quite an odd stance, if you don't mind me saying, for you to have considering the "reveal" that the Confeds are seemingly in cahoots with the Zerg (or that they think they are) only after the magistrate is introduced and is given the responsibility of helping colonist relocate in the first Terran mission, Backwater. If the Confeds weren't concerned about the welfare of the colonists (or even pretending to be for that matter), a magistrate wouldn't have been assigned at all.

I'm not sure what you're saying. You don't think the Confederates knew about the Zerg until after the Magistrate was appointed?

My problems with Safe Haven is more to do with why Selendis would waste precious Protoss lives on what is nothing more than a pointless pissing contest with a supposed friend of the Protoss but I see where you're going with this. Safe Haven has a similar mission objective to New Gettysburg where you must destroy all the Protoss presence but then hints that the Protoss weren't all completely destroyed (despite the gameplay showing otherwise) and that all that happened was that they just lost enough Protoss to finally acquiesce to Raynor (as shown in the in-game cinematic). I guess that's where New Gettysburg fails because it's solely from the Terran POV and there's no cinematic, so the end result of destroying all the Protoss things on the map looks like the entire Protoss fleet was destroyed. This backed up by the comment of being "neutralised", but then again, the exact meaning of the word "neutralised" is dependent on the context since in the alternate New Gettysburg scenario I proposed, the term can still be used even when the Protoss weren't all destroyed to the last. That and the adjutant still mentions Protoss are still on Tarsonis fighting Zerg across the core continent in the opening monologue of the next mission.

Agreed on Selendis, and I have nothing further to add about Mengsk's action in New Gettysburg. It could have happened as you say, though that is not my interpretation.

And is she not "matching" her powers against Protoss?

She's matching her powers to some Protoss, but she's not matching the Protoss' powers with her own.

You're insisting that there's a Problem A and a Problem B. I'm saying there's only Problem A but that it has multiple facets.

I'm saying the entire first act of the story revolves around Problem A, before Problem B was ever introduced. You can't say that the Overmind was acting on motivation he wouldn't receive yet, unless you claim that the Overmind is omniscient.

I can counter your "there's no reason to imagine that..." with my own suppositions in favour of the Zerg and the Overmind. Afterall, the Overmind does state that when it touched minds with Zeratul, "all his secrets were made known to me", which could imply just about anything really.

I'm not really sure what you're trying to defend here. Are you saying that Tassadar is not good enough a target for Kerrigan? I mean sure, I could understand that position if it were only Zeratul and the Dark Templar, but it seems you're stretching a tad in order to justify your intent that "Kerrigan must go to Aiur!". Kerrigan is but one entity in the Swarm, who is left to fight possibly the most dangerous Protoss enemy the Overmind has encountered in Tassadar, plus Zeratul and his band, and yet that is still not enough to convince you that she's fulfilling the role that she was intended for. I honestly don't know what else to say to that...

No, I'm saying that I want the Overmind's motivation for invading the Terran worlds to be coherent. Even if, as you assert, he merely changed his priorities due to a change in the circumstances he could observe, then that should still have been mentioned in the story.

[Turalyon]

For one thing, everything since Brood War has been quite clear that the Zerg are infinitely powerful, so there's absolutely no reason to expect Mengsk to be able to stop them, arse-pulled deus ex machinas aside.

Unfortunately, we can't consider deus ex machinas as an aside since it was also BW that established that such things can exist to stop the OP Zerg and are within the capability of Terrans to develop (ie: Psi Disruptor). Win some, lose some.

Kerrigan also knows that Mengsk has the artifact (the EU novel Flashpoint reveals this) and that there's no assurance the Zerg will accept her back, so there's the possibility of Kerrigan herself thinking it may be unreasonable going down the Zerg path. Then again, she's got a screw loose up there so she probably won't know what's unreasonable anymore anyway.

When I say that Mengsk will be protected from Ghosts, I don't mean that he'll have some magic Ghost-destroying device, I mean that his conventional and established defenses are more than sufficient to the task.

Great, that means Mengsk would be assured to give some worthwhile resistance and tension to the story when Kerrigan the Ghost engages him. Compared to the foregone conclusion that HotS was by going the Zerg route...

Anyways, Mengsk's established defences are not that crash-hot since a non-Ghost army like Raynor's Raiders can infiltrate Korhal without being noticed until they cause a ruckus and then still escape scot-free. Given the upheaval that Media Blitz should've caused/implied to have caused (it's hard to say what effect it really had...), Mengsk's Dominion could've easily been written to have been weakened sufficiently enough for Kerrigan's infiltration as a Ghost to succeed.

Not wanting to go back to the Zerg is one thing, but doing so out of desperation and desire for revenge is the main point of the narrative. And the Umojan missions are all about establishing that Kerrigan still has control over the Zerg. Naktul was super happy to have her back, so that too is perfectly reasonable.

I never really felt the desperation you speak of. If there was something that evoked desperation and the Zerg feeling like her only recourse, I would gladly accept it but there's none to be had. All we have is the revenge angle and that's too weak on it's own to support her decision to go to the Zerg. If there was a choice, I would've preferred it if she felt compelled to willingly chose the Zerg rather than due to desperation since that'd give room for a different and new exploration of the character (my fanon HotS had Kerrigan re-join the Zerg because she ultimately realises she's a monster and deserves to be part of the Zerg because of that).

That's the same thing for these purposes.

Seems to me that "jumping in being a do-gooder" whilst being supposedly drunk and depressed yet still things turning out really swell qualifies as "protagonist succeeding because he's the protagonist".

He presented that article as a response to me, so one would think that the thing he was responding to was relevant.

I thought your questioning about whether Kerrigan attacked non-military targets was in response to the general idea that Kerrigan was not evil. I don't even know anymore. Let's just drop it - I can't be arsed looking back to confirm it.

Presenting Kerrigan's motives as entirely selfish is somewhat missing the point. Mengsk has actually been targeting civilians. Forget Tarsonis, remember those Mar Saran colonists in Liberation Day? How about Mengsk's gulag in a volcano? Ignoring how important it is for Mengsk to be removed because Kerrigan is one of his victims doesn't make for a good argument.

Don't know why you're comparing with Mengsk - I was comparing Kerrigan's "evil" with Tassadar's "evil" and saying the former's worse. Kerrigan's selfishness makes her irresponsible. She should know better that her actions would cause collateral damage but she continues to do it because she feels she has to, damned be the consequences. It's that or she doesn't care about the consequences. Either way, it's a form of chaotic evil.

You don't think the Confederates knew about the Zerg until after the Magistrate was appointed?

No but the jury's out on Duke though. It's hard to know whether he truly knows what's going on with the Zerg and the Confeds but I get the impression that he's kept in the dark. Since Duke is the one that assigns the Magistrate, I'm interpreting that he is somewhat civic minded even if it's just him following rules by the book.

Duke also only stops Raynor when he destroys Confed property not when killing the numerous Zerg creatures and Creep colonies lying about. One could interpret that as Duke just using that as a cover excuse to arrest people who attack Zerg cos he secretly knows about the Zerg and doesn't want them harmed because of orders or that he's just that by-the-book and officious when he sees Raynor destroying Government property. It's hard to tell.

It could have happened as you say, though that is not my interpretation.

Validation of alternate interpretations is enough.

She's matching her powers to some Protoss, but she's not matching the Protoss' powers with her own.

Huh? So what you're saying is that she's not fighting enough Protoss? She is still fighting a formidable amount of Protoss, plus some unexpected Protoss with different powers.

I'm saying the entire first act of the story revolves around Problem A, before Problem B was ever introduced. You can't say that the Overmind was acting on motivation he wouldn't receive yet, unless you claim that the Overmind is omniscient.

Like I said, the motivation/problem hasn't changed or not changed in a significant manner.

No, I'm saying that I want the Overmind's motivation for invading the Terran worlds to be coherent.

But you seem to conflate "coherent" with your opinion that "Kerrigan must go to Aiur when the Overmind does". The Overmind invaded Terran worlds to get psionic abilities to fight Protoss in the hope of beating them - there's nothing about the motivation that specifically states Kerrigan has to go to Aiur with the Overmind when it does.

Even if, as you assert, he merely changed his priorities due to a change in the circumstances he could observe, then that should still have been mentioned in the story.

Keep in mind that the "change in priorities" and "change in circumstances" still revolve around Kerrigan engaging Protoss. As Kerrigan is still engaging Protoss and fulfilling her mandate, having to mention that she is not engaging some other Protoss elsewhere is not necessary.