No character that has been being built up for 17 years is a Mary Sue…
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I was recalling my perception of Jaina from Warcraft 3 until now and I never considered her a perfect character. She’s only become more morally gray over time.
The younger Jaina was probably more of what is typically labeled a Mary Sue — a term which I don’t enjoy and more often than not I see used as an I-don’t-like-this-character descriptor — with how similar she was to our current Anduin that seeks to pursue peace at all costs and whose missteps are part of his perfect personality, not having any truly personal or negative consequences for himself, just creating more opportunities to show his quality all over our face and hair.
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???
No, she’s not a Mary Sue, and her power is explained. I believe she got a big power boost off the Thunder King Lei Shen’s staff in MoP, plus her decades of training as a mage in Dalaran, under Archmage Antonidas and otherwise.
As to her personality, this is the point where my question marks came in—how can you believe a character is a Mary Sue if she’s constantly going back and forth between wanting to genocide the Horde and fighting for peace? I’m going to have to assume you didn’t play through her story on Alliance, but she’s been carrying a load of guilt since WC3 for standing by the Horde and not her father, and that shows in BfA. Her arc in BfA was honestly really good, as opposed to most characters in this expansion.
And going back to her power level, do you want to be an almighty killer god-hobo that murders everyone in her path? Or do you want antagonistic forces that actually pose a challenge to you? I ask these questions because Jaina was very clearly raised to the spotlight to stand in the way of the Horde, this expansion. Look at the intro scenario with Zul and Talanji—she’s basically the Lich King chasing you back in Halls of Reflection. She’s meant to be an obstacle for you as a Horde PC, and if not her, then who? Genn is just a good boi, he’s not as strong as she is. Tyrande only cares about Darkshore. Anduin is an idiot. Malfurion took an axe to the back…
She’s not a Mary Sue. She’s your antagonist, at least up until Dazar’alor, that’s why she’s so strong, and she’s fine as a character. You shouldn’t just be able to step on her, just as we Alliance shouldn’t just be able to step on Sylvanas.
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But, she’s somehow both of those (god and antagonist), depending on when you encounter her. And, even when we do actually fight her legitimately (as in not with her having an insta-kill mechanic), she escapes with absolutely no significant harm or injuries. Mekletoruque, by comparison, is currently incapacitated until Bliz decides to release Mecha-Gnomes as an alt race. How does that make sense again?
And, now in 8.2, we’re just forced into working with her with no actual way of protesting this. No dialogue options to throw shade at her (as the Alliance got with Vol’Jin); no way to opt out of the Baine scenario; nope, you have absolutely no choice but to tolerate her presence all throughout 8.2. IIRC, she even gets to snipe your Azshara kill.
I don’t really know what to call her, but she’s not an obstacle if she can’t be worked around, and she’s not really an antagonist if she’s always somehow in the right. In a way, she’s almost BfA’s protagonist. I don’t know what she actually is, but I do know she’s not fine as a character.
How is she even the face of the Alliance this expansion when we kick it off by burning the Nelf tree? I keep having to remind myself that all of BfA somehow traces back to WoT.
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The term Mary Sue has been watered down over the years as it has entered the common vernacular, wherein it is now applied to any character that is considered too powerful or one that never loses. In the actual sense of the word, Jaina is not a Mary Sue.
A Mary Sue is a character that is naturally talented or powerful, that much is true. But they also tend to come from a very impoverished background, one where they’ve had very little chance to hone their natural talent, but because they’re ‘special’ they immediately surge to the top of their class once given that chance.
A Mary Sue is also pretty much universally liked by the surrounding characters. They only display negative emotions or doubt when they are confronted with complete and total evil, one note villains. And often even some of their antagonists end up respecting them enough to either want to come over to their side, or bring them over to the other side. But said Sue never does because that would be wrong.
A Mary Sue is rarely cynical, despite their impoverished upbringing and tragic backstory, and indeed when they do act in overt violence the narrative itself frames it as being justified regardless of the situation. An example would be in a novel I read in a fairly well regarded fantasy series, in which the main character, who is a naturally powerful magic user and has had no training, operating by ‘instinct’, goes after a villainous group who has kidnapped his wife. 2000 horsemen charge him, and he obliterates them all in a single blast, not even blinking as he kills them, nor showing regret. The narrative glosses over it.
So, going by all this, per her backstory, Jaina is not a Mary Sue. She isn’t liked by everyone, the narrative doesn’t frame all her actions as justified, and her power and talent comes from some level of natural skill honed over the course of years along with training from multiple potent lore characters. She was called the most powerful sorceress alive back in Vanilla, and has since had several instances to increase that power. Is she too powerful? In another setting, yes, but in Warcraft power levels yield to rule of cool, as we’ve seen many times.
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Many of the times I see people pull out the ‘Mary Sue’ label is them just looking for an excuse to say the character should not be around. Often it is jealousy for one of their favorite characters. Maybe the character is stronger/more powerful than their favorite. Maybe the character wins a fight vs their favorite. Or maybe it is just that it gets more screen time than their favorite.
Another reason people invoke the Mary Sue label is they just don’t like the ideology of the character and want an excuse to dislike them and demand them out of the story.
Or people take thinks out of context or without full consideration and jump on a bandwagon until things are blown way out. People tend to lose sight of the truth. Lets look at an example:
I know it has become a thing to say this. But the facts do not support it. When the Alliance returns to Boralus they get to see her actually talk about it. And she specifically says she is still recovering. She says she will be all right, so she is not yet there. And this is in a world where people have magical healing ability, and as a faction leader she would have access to the best. This means she was actually hurt pretty bad. ‘Oh, but the model didn’t show it,’ right? Well, it is a game. Do you think they needed to make a new model to show how she was hurt? They just used her standard model and told us she was hurt.
So, taking inaccurate information as a base to make her seem Mary Sue-ish.
You know that was not the first time we had to work with him? Also, last I checked Jaina (or her team) does not threaten to kill you. And she is there on a joint mission that she is arguably helping you as much as you are her, as opposed to being ordered to run errands. And if you really followed what happened in 5.3, you would know what was going to happen before Blizzard realized there were kicking the Alliance more than enough. So, yah apples and watermelons here.
This. Warcraft is a universe with lots of powerful characters in it. Jaina is really strong, but there are lots that are stronger than she is. She has had ups and downs. Not everyone in-universe likes her. She has had losses. She is not even remotely in the category of Mary Sue.
Thanks for the laugh!
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Well she:
Grew up a pretty talented mage.
Dated Arthas
Arthas happened so she was sad.
Helps the horde out at the cost of her own father
Establishes a place in kalimdor for humangs
Garry nukes her city thing
Her hair gets white and she gets even more sad
Asks thrall to help her out because she helped the horde put so much.
Thrall goes “lol no” even though garry was his fault.
Jaina goes off the deepend and icicle lobotomies a couple no name elves
Wants to collapse horde
Doesnt
Realizes daddy was right
Gets sad again
Theres plenty of cause to feel sympathy for her. But im sure as you are perfectia the quintisential blood elf poster you probably cant get past her dusting a couple elves so i get it. Does she feel a little overexposed right now? Yeah im a bit tired of her. But shes by no means a mary sue.
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As Horde, you are not told anything about her condition after BoD. The only information you receive about her condition is encountering her in 8.2 to find that she’s made a full recovery and ultimately you did not harm her in any capacity that’s meaningful in a narrative sense. It’s a bit silly to have a faction character as a raid boss and have them ultimately suffer no lasting consequences as a result.
It’s just not enough for her to say she was hurt to a single faction.
Vol’Jin worked with Alliance in Cata once of his own initiative (and I think Veressa handled his appearances in the refurbished ZA). Jaina has been antagonistic to the Horde PC pretty much since MoP and has tried to actually kill the PC on multiple occasions (something Vol’Jin never did. Now we’re working with her, but she’s also leaving the door open to going back to attacking the Horde PC when it suits her interests. So, yeah, I would appreciate some in-game way to tell her to piss off.
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Yeah Mary Sue has been used to frequently, and has lost any specific meaning. Basically it just is used whenever someone dislikes a character.
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I think it can still have meaning, if people know to use it correctly. And even when its incorrectly applied, there may still be flaws with the writing of the character.
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TVTropes terms can communicate all kinds of nuanced ideas.
Mary Sue: character I don’t like.
MacGuffin: plot device I don’t like.
Rule of Cool: World building I don’t like.
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TVTropes: website I don’t like.
Finally, the advent of the Internet allowed the term to migrate out of the Star Trek community to most fandoms, losing pretty much any real meaning in the process. There are dozens upon dozens of essays that offer interpretations of what the term means, generally basing it off of some usages of it, but none of them are truly comprehensive or accepted. Using the term in most contexts isn’t too far off from Flame Bait, generally provoking the defendant into rants. Much Internet Backdraft has resulted, especially if the term is applied to a canon character on a popular show.
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Is Jaina Proudmoore a mary sue?
I’d say so, though the same can be said for every Warcraft character of prominence. They are flawless masters who know no equal that come from backgrounds where they didn’t really face any trials that made sense for them to improve (or came from such unique, special snowflake backgrounds that can provoke some extreme eyerolling), cannot fail and always find the correct answer to a problem, no matter how far flung the theory is.
Their failures are never really their fault either, always brought about by the lessers they confided in. Jaina didn’t fail to capture the Horde in Stormwind, the city was incapable of fighting its own fires and needed her help, for example.
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Mary Sue has become a bit of a meaningless term.
Jaina is definitely written inconsistently, and she often gains or loses powers as the plot requires. She’s more of a walking deus ex machina, these days.
I like her in small doses, and when when we aren’t being hit with the MEGA-OP JAINA FLEE BEFORE ME version that Blizzard uses as an all-too frequent plot device. I thought her Kul Tiras storyline was pretty good. I don’t think she should be the main Alliance character for this upcoming patch, since she is the end boss of the current raid.
But mostly I’m tired of the story being mostly told through the NPCs, which makes me tired of the NPCs, and especially the ones we see all the time. Which definitely includes Jaina.
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Jaina is too flawed and conflicted to be sue. And her bipolar disorder (or writers disorder?).
She’s just too powerful and it takes away from her character complexity.
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More specifically, its used as a “A female character is being treated as being important and that makes me mad” descriptor.
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That is so far from the truth.
My qualms with her as a character isn’t because she’s a woman, it’s because she’s this oddly superpowered deity given flesh that can do no wrong (besides what she interprets as wrong, even if in the grand scheme of things her failings were not entirely her fault.).
I liked her as a character pre-BFA. She’s just suffering from Thrall-syndrome where she went from sufficiently talented to unstoppable god-character and without much explanation as to why she’s so good that she’s essentially a one woman army. It’s entering ‘Wickerbasket: the character’ territory, where she’s occasionally socially clumsy but flawless in everything else she does.
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To me, this indicates a lack of real knowledge about her character and history. She has always been powerful. When we first met her in WC3 multiple undead charged after her. Arthas was so confident in her abilities that he stopped his men from even aiding her. She was talented and powerful enough to catch the eye of the head of the Kirin Tor, who then trained her. Later she got his staff, which one would expect was already a powerful artifact in its own right. And then she had it empowered by what were the energies of a Titan keeper. So, there is absolutely explanation for her power level.
That said, she is not even the strongest character out there. Warcraft is a universe of insanely powerful characters. She is one of many.
No, she is actually one of the few prominent NPCs that have actually paid a price for mistakes. She has had other characters turn her down and ignore her advice. Even to the point of losing her place as leader of the Kirin Tor. She has lost a ton. She has struggled with anger and depression (which is fitting for what she has gone through). She has dealt with fear and regret. I would argue she is actually one of the most complex characters in WoW. We see her flaws and pains like few others. In the end, she would still fall on the side of being a good person. So, yes the net of failings and gifts leans towards good. But that is just how all good people work. But she does have the failing, which means she cannot be a ‘Mary Sue.’
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you qualm is that she doesn’t like the Horde. That seems a common trend, if the character does not like the Horde it is automatically treated as bad. Maybe it is because she is shown as more powerful than a character you like. Maybe it is just that you do not like the ideology she espouses. Maybe it just boils down to an Alliance character getting any spotlight. etc, etc. I don’t think we can confidently assign a reason that you are choosing to see her a way that is not consistent with the story. And you are welcome to dislike her for whatever reason you do. But, that does not make her a ‘Mary Sue.’
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I say this respectfully, but if that is what you believe, then you clearly do not know much about the history of the term “Mary Sue,” the history of fanfiction, or the history of the internet. This video should give you a good introduction to the background on it:
There is a male equivalent to Mary Sue (it’s variously called Gary Stu, Marty Stu, or Marty Sam). And there are some real doozies of examples in fanfiction–mostly from the 1990s, when most of the people online were young geeky men. And they are gloriously over the top. Just remembering DJ Croft–the son of Fox Mulder and Lara Croft, who takes Shinji Ikari’s place in piloting EVA-01 and of course does much better at it–puts a smile on my face to this day.
If we’re not seeing many male canon characters being called Marty Stus, I submit that this is at least partly because the fashion these days for male characters has moved away from the perfect hero-type that would invite the term. Superman could have been one, but the folks at WB decided to make him all dark and brooding instead. And Captain America could have been one, but he was written by some actually competent writers.
PS: To answer the original question, no, I don’t think Jaina is a Mary Sue. She’s had some problems in her presentation for sure, but not that exact problem.
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I dont think she is she makes mistakes and misjudges people when hurt badly she lashes out. She cares plenty of self doubt and loathing and cant solve everything oerfectly by herself. Really she is about as much a mary sue as anyone else. She is powerful but that is explained in game and out as to why. Really sometumes i think the mary sue is from people who are mad the horde dosent have the best of everything.