I thought pale orcs were caused by shamans-in-training accidentally touching the Void during their seeking and going insane.
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-every single orc shaman during Blackhand, Ogrim, and Ner’zhuls tenure as warchief
-Garry dabbing on regular shaman with his dark shamanism
There’s probably more, but I’ve forgotten it.
In warcraft 3 she hardly seem anymore powerful than an average arch mage.
Not a Mary Sue. Has many Mary Sue traits, but in general I think too many horrific things have happened to her over the years to really qualify. Jaina doesn’t just fix everyone’s problems (she’s absent quite consistently); she does fail regularly; she’s often just wrong about her opinions or at least her approach to following up those opinions; she isn’t beloved and immediately trusted by everyone of import; she has no beloved mentor figure that would die for her; things DO work against her successfully; etc…
Honestly Jaina just happens to be REALLY powerful; and her character development is a bit of a Yo-Yo (and honestly DOES make sense, even if the execution of it isn’t great). She sacrificed her Father and Nation for a goal she thought was worthwhile (Peace Jaina); that goal then bit her in the butt hard and destroyed what loved ones she thought she had left (and her city) … so she went off the deep end (Genocide Jaina); then … due to returning to Kul Tiras and her mother realizing SHE was wrong about her daughter … Jaina got SOME loved ones back (and her nation); resulting in the middle-ground Jaina we see now.
It also helped exactly HOW Kalec talked her down in Tides of War (comparing her actions, and conviction to that of Arthas’ own; where he believed he was SO right that it led him down a dark path that he could never recover from, and blinded him to other potential realities).
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Honestly part of the issue with her portrayal has been that whether one personally agrees with her or not, the story tends to use other characters’ treatment of her position as the barometer for whether she’s right or wrong. And in that context she’s usually framed as wrong.
Blizz wants the factions fighting? Then we get a warmongering Varian treating her like a naive child and the narrative through Garrosh insisting that “no, she’s wrong and there’s gotta be this war.” Blizz wants a cease-fire? Then we get unbalanced Jaina flipping out and becoming the new warmonger just in time for Varian to calm down and change his mind. Blizz wants MoP to be a yo-yo of on-again, off-again emphasis on faction war? Easy, just have Jaina pick the wrong side of the situation every single time the consensus swaps out. She’s become a walking, talking measuring stick for where they want faction conflict to go, and consequently got shelved for Legion, because she was switched into pro-war “mode” when it was inconvenient to the rest of that expansion’s narrative.
Some people claim she’s “always right,” but that’s not really the case. She only really turns out to be “right” just in time for the rest of the world’s position to change and make her wrong again, so throughout WoW the rest of the cast - especially in her own faction - gets to generally treat her like either an optimistic fool or an irrational headcase, depending upon the extreme to which the story is swinging at a given time.
I see potential with the Azshara stuff to balance her out, but…I don’t know. At this point it’s no surprise that it comes across as forced for her to cooperate with the Horde. She wouldn’t do it when the literal demonic apocalypse was raining down on the entire planet; she abandoned us all to go grind random demons somewhere when the most powerful guns Azeroth had were needed at the Broken Isles, so it feels artificial for her to suddenly adopt the big picture mindset again, when it’s against a frankly second-string threat like Azshara.
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I think what bothers players about Jaina and causes some to attach the Mary Sue title to her is that the plot seems to bend around her a lot, rather than following through with logical consequences. For example, she gets to be an absolute hero even though she did murder innocent people in the Purge of Dalaran (Aethas’ guards, at the very least!), she does bear responsibility for what the Silver Covenant did after she unleashed them, and she really did attempt to murder Orgrimmar twice, with only Thrall’s intervention stopping her from succeeding. She vanished from the Broken Shore, leaving Varian to die. Yet the story moves on as if none of this happened.
I’m actually reminded of Maieve’s arc. She is the secondary villain of Wolfheart, an outright murderer who kills innocent people because of her racism and xenophobia, and attempts to kill Tyrande and Malfurion. Yet that whole arc is reduced to a literal, “Forget about it,” in Legion. And now she’s one of the main Night Elf heroes, the Alliance faction leader in Darkshore.
For both characters, not having them face any of the logical consequences for their actions totally undermines their agency as characters. It makes it obvious to players that these characters are defined by a pre-ordained role in the story, not by what they actually do. Which, in turn, damages immersion and breeds cynicism about the story.
Jaina is a hero because Jaina is a hero, and it doesn’t matter what she actually does. That’s not the definition of a Mary Sue, exactly, but it is the definition of an unconvincing character. I don’t buy Jaina.
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TBH … I’m honestly OK with Jaina mellowing the hell out; and its not as if she’s even the MOST guilty when it comes to the Purge (she certainly shares immense guilt for that tragedy, but it was the Silver Covenant under Vareesa’s orders that were killing off the Sunreaver’s only method of escaping the city). I tend to notice no one really throws shade at the youngest Windrunner sister though (even though, arguably, her reasons for going off the rails are far less justified).
For goodness sake Vareesa leads the Silver Covenant in that slaughter because of Ronin’s death; Jaina becomes unhinged because the very people she sacrificed her father and nation for (and the very leader she begged to intervene, refused) destroyed the ONLY things and ONLY people she had left (save Kalec). The fact that she mellows out in large part because Kalec is there to intervene, and she is allowed to reclaim some semblance of family and home, does make sense.
I’m not trying to diminish Jaina’s guilt or the horrors of that tragedy, but when I see Sunreavers accosting Jaina because of the Purge (and completely looking the other way whenever it comes to Vareesa) … it sort of boggles the mind. Honestly, all I really care about is that Aethas doesn’t take a hit from this. I like his character, he’s criminally underused; and I like that he’s found an apprentice in the Nightborne population. I’d hate for Jaina’s or Sylvie’s stories to come at his expense.
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First thing I should note, she is a hero of the Alliance not the Horde. And the few deaths that did happen at the purge happened during a period of war with the Horde. From the Alliance perspective, this is not exactly a bad thing.
Second, there is a perspective issue here that the Horde has. Horde has done so many terrible things it is hard to have the Alliance do anything that does not feel justified. This is especially true when looking at Jaina specifically. When you weigh the damage the Horde has done to her against the what she has done to the Horde, it doesn’t even come close to balance.
Suffering a major trauma and not in her right mind she almost did something bad and ultimately had to be talked down. Doesn’t really move the needle towards the Horde.
You have to do some really creative mental gymnastics to blame Varian’s death on her. Sorry, that is a non-starter.
Ultimately, I can absolutely see why the Horde would not think of her as a hero. But that again, she is not presented as a hero to the Horde. So, that is really not an issue.
Legion: Hey, we need every soldier we can get. Enemy of my enemy and all. Both of them are more interested in stopping the Legion than their personal vendetta.
BfA: Horde burning Teldrassil is going to change all kinds of priorities for the Night Elves. Attempted coup kind of pails compared to genocide. Maiev wants to kill Horde, Tyrande wants to kill Horde, and most Night Elves want to kill Horde. Nothing like a massive external enemy to make friends of rivals.
Jaina’s has faced a lot of consequences. In fact most of her story in BfA was dealing with the consequences of her actions. That was her primary story this expac.
Jaina is a hero of the Alliance because she has done a lot for the Alliance (and the world). She has put her life at risk for the Alliance. She has fought for the Alliance. And she is an Alliance hero. As Horde, you don’t have to buy her. She is not presented as your hero.
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First, the Sunreaver guards she murdered were not members of the Horde, they were citizens of Dalaran, her own people. And she was not actually, at that time, a member of the Alliance. That came about after the Purge. There’s a whole cutscene about it.
Secondly, are you arguing that attempting to murder a city full of civilians is not morally wrong if you are at war? Because…that would completely let Sylvanas off the hook.
Is that how morality works? If someone does something bad, you are justified doing bad stuff back until the scales balance? That’s very Old Testament, but okay. Except that is not how Jaina is depicted. She is depicted as a virtuous hero most of the time. As someone who does the right thing, even at great personal cost, except for those few instances where she kind of loses it, and that is never held against her.
I really wish people would get this piece of lore straight, especially on the story forum.
Jaina did not “almost” do “something bad.” She straight up launched an extermination-level tidal wave against Orgrimmar, twice, and the only reason the city survived is that Thrall was able to stop the wave both times. So then she tried to kill Thrall, and when he was incapacitated, she tried to wipe out the city for a third time. And that is when she was talked down.
I think it is telling that so many players forget that Jaina really did attempt murder on a massive scale twice, and just remember the third attempt and her being talked down. I think the reason so many people misremember this event is precisely because of the cognitive dissonance that Blizzard creates around Jaina. Her attempting to murder a city, twice, is so out of character that many people simply forget that it happened.
Just like the game does,
Really? A non-starter? So she hasn’t repeatedly demonstrated her ability to teleport people out of desperate situations? Like in the Undercity…twice? Or in the upcoming patch?
If she hadn’t vanished from the scene, Varian would not have died. She didn’t kill him, but her unexplained absence required him to die.
So this makes sense to you? That someone who has been murdering Night Elves and attempted an assassination of their leaders is not just forgiven, but promoted, without any discussion of that whole series of events? How do they know she won’t do it again? Don’t you, as a reader/player have any curiosity about how we got from Maieve: sworn enemy of the state to Maieve: champion of the state?
I admire your ability to handwave and head canon the plot justifications, but readers shouldn’t have to do that for the story to make sense.
I was discussing her status as a hero. What moral consequences has she actually faced? Does the narrative ever ask us to consider whether or not Jaina is really a hero? Or does her heroic status trump everything else?
No, she is presented as a straight-up hero, to the extent that I am continually either asked to work with her (when it is time for the Horde’s face-turn) or fight her (when it is time for the Horde’s heel-turn). But her heroic status in the overall narrative of the game is rarely challenged.
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Nope, the Alliance version specially talks about that and the Sunreavers still maintain there Horde allegience. If anything that was Jaina’s failure not to ask both Alliance/Horde members living in her city to recind their loyalties.
She didnt try to murder them, at least those that didnt resist. And in the backdrop of a potentially devestating weapon getting into enemy hands seems fairly rational.
It is never held against her because she still manages to stay away from the edge. And as I keep saying, if Jaina is a monster is one of the Horde’s making and ultimately they are responsible.
If someone leveled my city and killed off all my friends and family you can bet i would probably do worse then Jaina if I was suddenly given a chance to wipe out all the perpatrators. Especially in the immediately aftermath of said crime. Again, the Horde just wiped her city. If their city got wiped in return it would probably retributive justice.
And Ashzara has shown her teleportation powers can be blocked. Hell, instead of teleporting the army to the other side of a chasm she had to create an ice bridge.
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I agree and disagree with this.
The Horde should absolutely bring this up any chance they get. They have friends and relatives who were unjustly imprisoned or -died- because of her actions. (Do we know whether those prisoners were released?) This should be a huge event for them, and be brought up as proof that the Alliance can and will horribly kill them on a pretext.
(Although for Jaina specifically, this might require clarification on that bug that was seen, acknowledged, and left in place - did they mean that Jaina herself killed more Sunreavers than the two guards, even on accident, or was the Silver Covenant wholly to blame?)
On the other hand, I think it makes sense for the Alliance to sweep the issue under the rug, and not to hold it against her status as a hero.
I doubt that the Silver Covenant would have described the event as a bloody purge of some unruly mages and fleeing noncombatants alike, and the Alliance probably wouldn’t spend too much effort verifying their methods. ‘Never can trust a Hordie’, after all. Besides, who’d want such awful rumors circulating about them sullying typical Alliance morals? Best for them to accept ‘blood elves did evil Horde stuff, we locked them up or kicked them out, some died in the process’ and leave it at that.
I do wish the narrative would reference these events more, though.
On Jaina’s Mary Sue-ishness, I think she’s no worse than many other characters. She’s just the one in the spotlight right now, which makes those writing flaws more glaring.
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It’s not that the Alliance does this. It’s that the game does this.
For a flipped example, consider, I dunno, [MU] Grom Hellscream. He’s a mixed but mostly heroic figure to the Horde and an almost unmixed villain to the Alliance. He’s not considered an overall hero of the World of Azeroth on the level that Jaina is. If Alliance players were ever asked to quest with him, they’d have a fit, and understandably so. Yet clearly the devs don’t expect Horde players to object to teaming up with Jaina for “the greater good,” because she is assumed to always be on the side of the greater good. The times when that hasn’t been true have been ignored.
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And yet we more or less did that (Draenor is free!).
And it is being reference, by that Sunreaver that iceblocks himself.
If you say so. I never finished those quests on my Alliance character. (I was mostly thinking of the MU version when I wrote my post anyway.)
How closely did you work with him?
I mean I’m talking about AU Grom, but I guess it applies to MU Grom as well. The finale of Grom story in Warcraft 3 has the Alliance/Horde working to capture him and free him from the taint. AU Grom has him helping us in the final raid of the Expansion.
Sure, but the RTS games don’t have the same kind of faction focus that WoW does; the player is expected to switch perspective multiple times during the game.
I’m curious–does he ever actually give a quest to Alliance players? As in, with a “!” over his head?
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No not really, but then again, until BfA he did not have a quest for the Horde either.
To a certain extent. But even then the faction conflict still had a major effect on the story to the point it the first cinematic of the game was about it and trying to overcome it.
It really doesn’t matter. Blizzard has retconned Jaina into a hero and they proclaim that a success.
Imprisoning the innocent (shop keepers, etc.) for things they had not part in is wrong. Killing those who resist is more wrong. Being angry doesn’t justify attempting mass murder of the innocent. That is why these are things in literature that villains do.
My biggest problem isn’t that she has done these things, but Blizzard just ignored them while making her a hero. If her redemption arc had included her realizing her past had been evil and vowing to make amends, then she could be a hero with checkered past. Instead, we have the Horde being made evil while Alliance characters just skip away.
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I’ve been reading and watching a lot video’s on the subject of the Mary Sue for the past few weeks which is why I’m trying to rewrite my fan fiction.
I’ve also heard it thrown at a lot of RP writers that have written about having some levels of interaction with major lore characters. The whole term seems to be as common and as devastating to created characters as Salem witch trials. People calling people “witches” and also something in common with the witch trials is that it is exclusive to women and to quote myself.
I didn’t actually call Jaina a Mary Sue which is why I put the question mark at the end. I just said some things I didn’t like about the character and that my bias might have come from playing exclusively Horde since I started, but I wanted the Alliance’s opinion as well. The people that don’t have that bias and I think for people playing Alliance that the game is extremely different. Horde see things that Alliance don’t see and vice versa.
I have about as much sympathy for Jaina Proudmoore as I would for someone raised by white supremacist trying to have black friends, but changes there opinions when things happen. The whole game has a bit of a funny feeling of racial superiority and racial wars that seem like they might have been taken from a WW2 documentary and I feel like that we could have had something really good.
The Zandalari seem to represent Aztecs and the Kul Tiras represent the Spanish Armada and with that we could have gotten something really good. As I read through the comments I realized Jaina isn’t a Mary Sue but watching her take center stage like this and do and say the things she says has been, well…
As a Latino it puts a really bad taste in my mouth.
Here’s how much the game assumes that Jaina is a hero for everyone: in the next patch after she leads the assault that kills a Horde faction leader along with a large number of Zandalari soldiers and civilians, and fights the Horde raid, Horde players are expected to team up with her because she’s clearly the good guy. The next patch! We will literally go from fighting her on Monday night to allying with her on Tuesday!
That’s what I mean about the story bending around Jaina. She twice attempted (as in, pulled the trigger but the shot was blocked) to wipe out Orgrimmar. She staged the Purge of Dalaran. She’s responsible for the raid on Dazar’Alor and the death of Rastakhan. But she is always presented to both factions as a good guy, who you should be working with, and when you aren’t, it’s because you are in the wrong.
Presenting her as an Alliance hero is fine. Presenting her as a de facto Horde hero is bizarre.
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