[Another Bad Writing Thread]: Anduin is being written as a mary-sue

[Schattenlied]

Sylvie a mary-sue? Kek. She has plot armor but she’s far from a mary sue. Her fucking main flaw is getting people killed in any situation she’s involved in.

She wants those people dead 99% of the time.

But go ahead, just ignore the rest of the post, because it shoots down 90% of what you complained about.

[Arrashi]

I admit it is kind of unnecessary and perhaps a touch cringy - it takes the well-deserved credit from the PC's and support troops and sort of gives it to Anduin, which I almost always find to be odd. But I think, like much of the Battle of Lordaeron scenario, it is meant to show that Anduin is evolving from a more reflective priestly figure into something more in keeping with a warrior mold.

The problem is that this doesn't show evolution. Only "mary sueness". This is a manuver i would expect only elite elven warrior/maybe elite blademaster to be able to pull off. Meanwhile anduin does that effortlessly while never being shown as any combatant. In a full plate. That he should, by all means of logic, be barely able to move in. Thats precisely the problem with his character.

[SoulSoBreezy]

And it's absolutely sickening. A 19 year old kid is leading a global superpower. The kid was given full military, economic, and global political power simply due to his father's death. No one cared or questioned this. You have several immortal Draenei with countless experience, once immortal elves with countless experience, a council of Dwarves, an intelligent battle-strategist and intelligent inventor, the most experienced and powerful sorceress on Azeroth and also one of the most favorite characters in the game, a panda with the personality of a melon and Genn but you still choose the 19 year old kid to lead you. Okay makes sense. A kid no one gave a shit about or batted an eye to until his father's death is then suddenly seen as the savior of the world and a great leader. A 19 year old can resurrect and mass-heal an entire army, gets his chin struck by a heavy ass axe and manages to not have it shattered and suffer from an extreme concussion from the fall, suddenly can't fight against an experienced Troll Shaman but luckily manages to kill him, 10 minutes later, knows how to fight, kills dozens of Undead, jumps 20 ft into the air and takes out a highly advanced and deadly war-machine fueled by the lifeblood of the planet. Now someone tell me how this guy isn't a mary-sue?

Let's also not forget he was crushed by a bell with all his bones broken, pretty sure his organs punctured as well but he still lived via just some ol'bandages and topical creams from Wrathion.

Stormwind is arguably (?) the backbone of the Alliance standing army, and it's run by the Wrynn Dynasty. That's really all there is to it.
As for the rest, I'll give a few passes for the sake of a cool looking cinematic.

[Orby]

Anduin is written pretty flawed actually, just because he is being put in the spotlight doesn't make him a Mary-Sue, he cannot fight and is a bit of a wimp to be honest. He still is struggling with the leadership role and is seen constantly questioning himself and his ability to lead. There's really nothing to say he is a Mary Sue, if anything he's just a boring, bland character, Mary-Sue's try to at least have something outrageous about them to try and make him appealing. Anduin is just a goody good guy. Which is not the best thing to want to see written.

If anything Anduin is too flawed.

Anduin has never been an interesting character either, I cannot name a single book or comic where he was remotely interesting to me. He isnt a Mary-Sue, just boring.

There is a big hole or gap right now that I am waiting for the book Before the Storm to fill in, and find out how Anduin changes as a person when war is give to him. I didn't read the spoilers or the preview so no spoiling me please

[Aucald]

The problem is that this doesn't show evolution. Only "mary sueness". This is a manuver i would expect only elite elven warrior/maybe elite blademaster to be able to pull off. Meanwhile anduin does that effortlessly while never being shown as any combatant. In a full plate. That he should, by all means of logic, be barely able to move in. Thats precisely the problem with his character.

I agree it doesn't show evolution very well - that's what it is meant to do, but it's not wholly successful in its execution. As for being able to pull off the move in full plate, well, this is WoW and Paladins, Warriors, and Death Knights pull off dexterous moves like this all the time even though they're wearing a hundred pounds of heavy metal. Perhaps you can chalk it up to the Light giving him a temporary boost in strength - or that the metal alloys used in WoW just don't weigh the same as real-life steel does. WoW just isn't meant to be realistic, so all of these things should be taken with multiple grains of salt.

As for "Mary Sue-ness," this term has been stretched and warped so much it is almost has no intrinsic meaning left to it. Even a bad character, if you want to call Anduin such, isn't necessarily a "Mary Sue" just because it is badly written. Being a "Mary Sue" is an entirely different charge altogether.

[Tiwack]

So why be a mary-sue about it? You're trying to make way too much sense of fantasy in a videogame. Blizz writing has never made sense on your level of standards and requirements. It's an old medieval fantasy setting and none of your modern terms will ever fit or make sense to any of the characters. Of course the main characters are going to wear plot-armor. This is just weak drama over nothing.

[Blizzard Moneybot]

I didn't bring up Alexander to discuss the differences in philosophy between the two, only to underscore that youth doesn't invalidate one from assuming the role of head of state - there are much younger leaders and heads of state in history than even Alexander the Great, including teenage pharaohs. Anduin also doesn't rule in a proverbial vacuum, he has two experienced and elder statesmen in the form of Genn and Velen to assist him, not too mention Tyrande and Malfurion being essentially on-call.

He's perfectly fine as a head of state for Stormwind his youth and more importantly naivete are what invalidate him from being the leader of the Alliance. Tyrande, Genn, Velen and Jaina should not be his counsel, they should be the ones running the war. They are the ones who know the true nature of the Horde and won't make concessions for foolish idealism. Or shouldn't; too much of that has already gone away. The fact Tyrande let's Saurfang live is weakness embodied. Varian vowed to end the Horde should they pull their crap again. Here they are pulling their crap again. I don't see Anduin having the guts to end the Horde. Anduin is not experienced to lead battles, believes in foolish idealism in the face of bloody warfare and his naivete is a direct consequence of his youth.

The point was that youth doesn't disqualify him for some strange reason, especially not in a setting where it seems expected that teenagers don the mantle of maturity much earlier than their modern-day equivalents do.

But Anduin isn't mature. He still clings to idealism without an ounce of temper from reality.

As for him being naive, I actually agree - it's really the central character fault he possesses that everyone seems to trip over in the rush to plaster "Mary Sue" over his oddly-proportioned face. Anduin is the consummate peacenik, taking the throne from even Jaina in his unwillingness to recognize that sometimes people are just malevolent and have no higher calling other than to move or extend hardship and conflict.

Not just people, but the Horde specifically. The Horde is an existential threat to the Alliance and he fails to realise this, his entire motivation seems to be to try and 'prove to the Horde' that the Alliance isn't a threat to their survival, and he doesn't seem to care how many night elves, worgen, draenei, dwarves and kul tirans have to die for his idealism. And I'm fine with him being written as such without idiots like Shandris Feathermoon saying the lives of her people aren't any more relevant to her people's survival as a human. That is where I get salty about how awful the story is going. The rest of the Alliance leaders just bow their empty heads and say 'yes my king, my life for your ideals'. If Tyrande, Genn and Jaina tell him the Horde needs to be ground into the dirt, he will tell them all about how wrong they are and why. A lecture from a teenager is the dumbest crap, we already saw enough of that idiocy in the real world. Why write it into here?

He reminds me of a passage I once read about another fantasy human king: "the man couldn't recognize evil if it were dressed in all black, jumping up and down on his bed while clutching a bloodied knife and screaming 'I am Darkness personified.' A significant character flaw, even for a human." Personally, I think neither the Horde nor the Alliance are monoliths - you can find evil and good among them, they don't have moral uniformity of any kind. I grow more and more convinced that Sylvanas, for example, is pretty much evil in her orientation - perhaps not irredeemably so, but nearing the threshold of "redemption = death." I don't think the same thing of Baine, Lor'themar, or Rokhan however.

I'm still waiting for the Alliance to round up and massacre families of civilians in a horde village, plague bomb an entire town reducing the inhabitants to sludge, kidnap and torture refugees for the hell of it, burying horde up to their necks in the dirt then caving their skulls in for the hell of it, raid a Horde town and leave the corpses strung up, or nuke a city out of existence. I keep hearing how the Alliance has it's 'evil' the most you can see is 'Jaina was mean to some blood elves' and 'REMEMBER TAURAJO'. Well Garrosh was mean to some night elves and REMEMBER SILVERWIND REFUGE.
The Alliance has never done anything outside of some standard combat with military targets and it's pathetic that we keep hearing 'good and evil on both sides'. When a bunch of night elves decide to leave the corpses of Orc civilians impaled on the roadway to Azshara as 'new trees in Ashenvale' or dwarves get ahold of the Forsaken non-combatants and play a game of how much molten iron can the creaking corpse take before it conflagrates, then maybe you can start having 'both sides are good and evil' conversation.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

He is naive, short-sighted, prone to think in the short term, and has proven highly susceptible to manipulation. He was also nearly killed by Garrosh, and spent a goodly amount of time convalescing from his injuries (which continue to plague even into the present day). I've found little of this "everyone fawns over him" mentality people keep repeating - unless you conflate the respect of his peers and/or concern for his well-being as "fawning." He has, to my knowledge, never been declared as the foremost champion of the Light or the most powerful Light-wielder on Azeroth (e.g. not the same as Thrall at the height of his power as the World Shaman). He ages, and unless he is Lightforged at some future point will likely die of age and infirmity in his time.

If you want more measured criticism then from an external standpoint Anduin is a bland character with little of interest in his characterization - he's predictable, both his merits and flaws are shallow and uninteresting, and I agree he occupies a position of implicit power he doesn't deserve and truly isn't prepared for. I can't see Anduin doing the things or having the complex personality that make some of WoW's other characters interesting - from Sylvanas' perverted emulation of "care," to Genn's careful dance between rage and reflection. Even Velen, pretty much a character cut from the same bland "Lawful Good" cloth as Anduin, has succeeded in being more interesting as of Legion as his views on the Light and its agents, the Naaru, have become somewhat more nuanced.

Jaina, Moira, Velen, Bolvar, Baine, Genn, and many B-list and minor characters fawn over him. It’s through the entire game and his lore. They treat him like the coming messiah or savior of all that is good.

- - - Updated - - -

So why be a mary-sue about it? You're trying to make way too much sense of fantasy in a videogame. Blizz writing has never made sense on your level of standards and requirements. It's an old medieval fantasy setting and none of your modern terms will ever fit or make sense to any of the characters. Of course the main characters are going to wear plot-armor. This is just weak drama over nothing.

Legion? Wotlk? MoP? Those expansions had A & B Tier writing. Things were realistic, the plot armor was low and the plot was most imortantly: unpredictable.

[qwertyui]

And it's absolutely sickening. A 19 year old kid is leading a global superpower. The kid was given full military, economic, and global political power simply due to his father's death. No one cared or questioned this. You have several immortal Draenei with countless experience, once immortal elves with countless experience, a council of Dwarves, an intelligent battle-strategist and intelligent inventor, the most experienced and powerful sorceress on Azeroth and also one of the most favorite characters in the game, a panda with the personality of a melon and Genn but you still choose the 19 year old kid to lead you. Okay makes sense. A kid no one gave a shit about or batted an eye to until his father's death is then suddenly seen as the savior of the world and a great leader. A 19 year old

Well yeah the truth is that he is a 19 year old kid and is a wimp. Up until MOTP he was a complete wimp and he is still a wimp in legion. Honestly his accomplishments are nothing compared to other older characters who actually destroys unworldly demon kings and void lords, saving the entire planet.

He only got his crown due to his lineage and that's what happens in medieval fantasy world anyways.

[Cathululock]

better than Sylvanas "there is no joy in this curse" Windrunner killing undead who wish to be with their families.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

She wants those people dead 99% of the time.

But go ahead, just ignore the rest of the post, because it shoots down 90% of what you complained about.

Oh really? I’m pretty sure she never intended for Varian to die after saving his life -three- times in less than an hour and also wishing him good luck after being thanked by him. She even mourned his death as she sailed off and prepared for the blame of his death.

- - - Updated - - -

Well yeah the truth is that he is a 19 year old kid and is a wimp. Up until MOTP he was a complete wimp and he is still a wimp in legion. Honestly his accomplishments are nothing compared to other older characters who actually destroys unworldly demon kings and void lords, saving the entire planet.

He only got his crown due to his lineage and that's what happens in medieval fantasy world anyways.

High King wasn’t anything established until Mists of Pandaria: Landfall. It should NEVER be a hereditary title. If anything Genn, Jaina, or Velen should’ve been left in control of the Alliance or better yet: Be an actual ALLIANCE.

[Cathululock]

People overestimate Anduin. He would be food for Nathanos' troops by now if it hadn't been for Alleria Windrunner's clutch intervention.

stronk imapenent wahmanz!

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

better than Sylvanas "there is no joy in this curse" Windrunner killing undead who wish to be with their families.

BfA Sylvanas is Golden’s fault. She was perfectly fine before this dogshit book and (as of now) dog shit expansion.

[Deleted]

Its not just Anduin, the entire alliance is getting white washed.

Greymane was a ruthless seclusionist until recently he become a heart warming uncle figure for Anduin. Jaina is getting a comic to describe how her poor Theramore's (which was pretty much a military outpost used to launch assaults against the horde in their own territory) destruction is such a sad thing, which makes her actions understandable. No more will she watch from the sides, or be naive about peace, she will righteously cleanse the evil horde of the earth.

But is the horde evil? Of course it is! Forget the broken shore and warchief cinematics where Sylvanas looked like the mantle of warchief was a new beginning and growth of her character, being restless she begins to burn down entire world trees, launch chemical warfare on her own troops, and personally see that the new magic gold is used in creating a conflict that throws the entire world into war.

Ohh we forgot the main point. Anduin. The boy that literally cannot do anything wrong, at an age of 19 he have only a little lack of sleep to burden him while governing an entire empire, and is respected by peers many times his age for his diplomatic wisdom. Anything he does is sanctioned by the wickedness of his enemies, and never is he thrown into a dilemma where he have to choose between lesser evils. Also apparently have the superpower to know if an action is objectively evil as the first and only person in the whole world.

Truly excellent writing, not even i could have imagined this level of lingual expression.

[Schattenlied]

Oh really? I’m pretty sure she never intended for Varian to die after saving his life -three- times in less than an hour and also wishing him good luck after being thanked by him. She even mourned his death as she sailed off and prepared for the blame of his death.

Yes, so Varian is in the 1%.

[Niwes]

I don't remember alexander ressurecting anyone. Or being "the chosen one".

Anduin on the other hand...lets count together !:
- Is a chosen one - check
- Has prophecy granting him plot armor - check
- Is favored by one of big cosmic forces - check
- Has ability to turn people into his friends - check
- Respected even by enemies - check
- Fucking invincible - check
- Capable of pulling miracles - checl
- Teenage boy - check
- Good looking - check
- Has some weird power (aka bone of human potential) - check
- People older than him learn from him - check

you forgot the ABSOLUTELLY MOST IMPORTANT point:

- Is not Sylvanas - check

[Deleted]

You've just described Anduin, quite literally.

He's loved by everyone in his faction, everyone looks up to him and unquestionably follows him, even people who're WAY older and supposedly more experience than him. In BtS we also find out that he has "spidey sense" that allows him to avoid doing bad things, thanks to Garrosh and the divine bell thingy, now his bones start hurting when he's about to do something bad either willingly or unwillingly.

Don't you think that this kind of writing is problematic? I do. But it seems that there's enough people who really like this kind of writing.

Wait really? So there is a power that can actually decide which thoughts are universally a "good" and "evil" thing. I did not know evil could be an objective thing. I did not know he got such power from that bell. Also i can read that without the mallet the bell is actually the opposite, anger and hate. Ohh well.

So he doesnt just have plot armor, he also have moral armor?

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

Yes, so Varian is in the 1%.

Liam Greymane. Did she intend to kill him? Answer that one.

[Niwes]

i invite all of you, that makin pew pew about mary sanduin, to join horde for 1 day.

i will tell you about our great lore and our great leaders, while we sitting at a camp fire:

- about an idiotic cow, watching his fathers death while doing nothing.
- about a small fat greedy ashole, with no real role in game.
- about a cool troll, sitting on a throne for one expac, doing nothing, then died.
- about an one eyed cool bro stereotype, that have 2 lines of text every 2 xpacs.
- about a fucked up titts bitch, that half the ppl dont like, while you have to do her stinky jobs.

and you whine about anduin ? muhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

[Deleted]

So what? We're not here for the Shakespeare. As long as it's passable it does the job of storytelling, in a video game - no less. If you want more, well, pick up a book.

I honestly don't understand why we have threads like these. What do you expect? WoW is not a storytelling medium, gameplay is always over lore - and they've SAID this outright - so what's the big deal?

Are you saying games cannot be a great storytelling medium?
Can great stories only exist in published literature?