"Mary Sues"

[Stanton Biston]

Alright then
But he's the mary sue of all the mary sues.

www.leasticoulddo.com

The most important part about being a (M/G)ary S(t)ue is Author Insertion. I can not think of a better example than the main character of this web comic.

Except perhaps the character's brother who looks EXACTLY like the comic rendidtion of the writer and is somehow MORE AWESOME than the already overly awesome main character. A Double Sue?

Don't forget- Sometimes a Mary Sue is just Bad Writing.

Also- For some extra Heresy Points: Jesus is the original Mary Sue.

[Renagade Raven]

Malfurion is now more powerful than frickin' Ysera is just simply not true.

Fixed that for you.

Think about it, the time of the dragons is over. Their race has been in decline since the War of the Ancients, we the players (with the help of the reds) killed a fucking aspect for christ's sake.

The time of the Dragons is over? Really?
Of course it isn't.
Killing off Malygos, (almost as an afterthought) was the most stupid thing that could have happened to the game, and I expect it to be fixed somehow. It was an illusion.

[Kaosadvokit]

Anyone else notice that the OP hasn't posted in this thread since the OP?

[Stanton Biston]

I suppose you're right. We no longer need Dragon Aspects, Titans, Gods, or the Guardian of Tiris.... oh wait.

Doesn't change the fact that it's till lame. One of Metzen's sues gets to be more powerful than Ysera, and it looks like the other one gets to be the new Aspect of Earth, even if only temporarily. Not only that, but it's real nice seeing Ms. Tyrande "Only the Goddess forbids me anything" Whisperwind get reduced to being nothing more than Malfurion's personal trophy wife. Anyone still hoping she might actually do something worthwhile might as well forget it, but now I'm just ranting.

Literary analysis without the tools and their products is like trying to bake a cake with a bag full of hammers. Only a Mary Sue can pull it off, and you're not it.

---------- Post added 2010-10-29 at 08:40 AM ----------

The time of the Dragons is over? Really?
Of course it isn't.
Killing off Malygos, (almost as an afterthought) was the most stupid thing that could have happened to the game, and I expect it to be fixed somehow. It was an illusion.

I think part of the problem with the Dragon Aspects is that they have cool sounding titles that make us think they are really awesome, but then they're only slightly better than being a full on Dragon. We've deified them, and at times so have the writers, despite not really explaining the limits of what an aspect is.

[Renagade Raven]

the problem with the Dragon Aspects is that they have cool sounding titles that make us think they are really awesome, but then they're only slightly better than being a full on Dragon.

Completely wrong. They were given immense power by the Titans, chosen to lead their flights. They are directly linked to the World.
Alexstrasza is the binder of life, just think about that. If it didn't go against what she was made to do, she could let all life go. Deathwing, being the Aspect of Earth, can cause Islands to sink / raise, plates to shift, and volcanoes to erupt with just a thought. Ysera is ... doing her thing. Nozdormu controls the flow of time, and Malygos rules over all magic, kind of. (He's not dead, and even if he was, Alex is standing in for him for the time being, controlling both life and magic, which shows how powerful she is.)
They are immortal, and the most powerful things on Azeroth by a long, long way, barring the Old Gods.

[Deleted]

Killing off Malygos, (almost as an afterthought) was the most stupid thing that could have happened to the game, and I expect it to be fixed somehow. It was an illusion.

We didn't kill Malygos.

Red dragons did.

Red dragons are far more powerful than the humanoid playable races, which is why I'd say that the kill still makes some sense.

Add in that Malygos might've been negatively affected by his apparent insanity. In terms of his powers, that is.

[Stanton Biston]

Completely wrong. They were given immense power by the Titans, chosen to lead their flights. They are directly linked to the World.
Alexstrasza is the binder of life, just think about that. If it didn't go against what she was made to do, she could let all life go. Deathwing, being the Aspect of Earth, can cause Islands to sink / raise, plates to shift, and volcanoes to erupt with just a thought. Ysera is ... doing her thing. Nozdormu controls the flow of time, and Malygos rules over all magic, kind of. (He's not dead, and even if he was, Alex is standing in for him for the time being, controlling both life and magic, which shows how powerful she is.)
They are immortal, and the most powerful things on Azeroth by a long, long way, barring the Old Gods.

The Old gods, Titans, their Avatars, the Lich King, The Council of Tirisfal and anyone empowered by the aforementioned.

Magic didn't end when Malygos died.

The Dragon Aspects are Azerothian constructs- Their powers do not (so far as shown) extend beyond the confines of Azeroth (not including Norzdormu). Freya, the TITAN of Life is more powerful than Alex (a given) but even she has limits. The titans have limits.

Conflation.

[esmifra]

off topic I know...

But really? You think Cloud Strife did everything perfect in FFVII?

Cloud and Naruto are not Mary Sues they have important lore flaws in their personality and also they are not perfect in everything they do.

Actually Naruto is the opposite of a Mary Sue, he has many flaws that he tries to compensate with hard work, while other characters of that universe are great because they were are just good at what they do (like a Mary Sue).

Batman in not a Mary Sue, Superman is.

Thrall in WoW is a Mary Sue although he has poor character judgement, Rhonin is also a Mary Sue such as Malfurion.
Thrall in Wc3 wasn't so much of a mary sue but he started to became one in WoW...

We characters are not Mary Sues while questing we did allot of bad crap...

[Deleted]

Do WoW players dislike these so-called Mary Sues because they have inferiority complexes agains't NPCs?

[Renagade Raven]

We didn't kill Malygos.

Red dragons did.

Red dragons are far more powerful than the humanoid playable races, which is why I'd say that the kill still makes some sense.

Add in that Malygos might've been negatively affected by his apparent insanity. In terms of his powers, that is.

He wasn't insane when we fought him. And he could have killed us as soon as looked at us.

The Old gods, Titans, their Avatars, the Lich King, The Council of Tirisfal and anyone empowered by the aforementioned.

Magic didn't end when Malygos died.

The Dragon Aspects are Azerothian constructs- Their powers do not (so far as shown) extend beyond the confines of Azeroth (not including Norzdormu). Freya, the TITAN of Life is more powerful than Alex (a given) but even she has limits. The titans have limits.

The Old Gods I mentioned, the Titans aren't on Azeroth, The Lich King... I don't know where it says he is as powerful as a Dragon Aspect, but I very much doubt it.
The Council of Tirisfal are powerful mages, who choose to make another mage powerful, that doesn't make them as powerful as the Aspects.
Magic didn't end because Alex is standing in for Malygos. I mean, he protects himself with magic illusions and shouldn't be able to be tanked, as he knows what a threat magic is, the encounter and even the fact that we survived for long against him at all destroys the lore and shouldn't be taken as a sign that the Aspects are weak, at all.
Titan watchers like Freya look after machines of the Titans, the Aspects look after the world. Aspects are far more important.
Titan's powers are limited... maybe... but they are the most powerful things in the Universe, by a long shot, and gave a significant portion of power to each Aspect.

[Pull My Finger]

Who cares about Mary Sue, Mary Jane, Jada Pinkett, Yolanda-Nicoletta or Cho'Gall. Call it what you want, fact is, Thrall is clearly a WE WANT YOU TO LIKE HIM kind of character. Screw him.

[Adwyn]

To a certain extent player characters do tend to have Mary-Sue-like qualities. More so in single-player games. But then, when you stop and think about it, it gets kind of silly and annoying. "Thank goodness you've finally come to save us! You are the only hope for the world! No, I'm going to have to charge you for the weapons and armor you need to save the world."

In some situations, your "quote" really fits our characters.
But when you think about it, our characters are nothing more that mercenaries. We do everything for money and items.
Here's an example: In Nagrand, we help Hemet Nesingwary and his bros kill countless of animals. Then, in Borean Tundra we help some tree-hugging druids fight and kill off some of his bros. After that, we go to Sholazar Basin and help Hemet kill A LOT of animals again. And we do it just for the money and gear (and xp, ofc).
This is why I don't consider our characters Mary Sues. When there is a mention in lore about the death of some Vanilla boss, it's not said that he was killed by *insert name of the guild that first downed him* but it is the "nameless adventurers" who've done it.

[kerwyn]

He wasn't insane when we fought him. And he could have killed us as soon as looked at us.

There's no way to prove that and you know it.

[Renagade Raven]

There's no way to prove that and you know it.

The insane part? Look it up.
The killing us as soon as looking at us? Maybe not, but then he did create magic, and has, I quote, "Powers of a Demi-God."
Being the creator of Magic, and being personally infused with power by the Titans themselves, I would consider it a safe bet that yes, he could kill us in an instant. I mean, he can make people unable to cast at all just by looking at them...

The thing we thought in game looked nothing like him, acted nothing like him, didn't fight like he should, and paled in comparison to what he should have been. It wasn't even necessary to kill him to progress.
Just think about that. They had us kill off a Dragon Aspect, and just as an aside.
The only excuse I can think of for this, is that we fought an illusion, and the reason others, like Alex, pretend it is real, is that Malygos needs to be protected from DeathWing.

[Deleted]

snip

Honestly, if you start to overthink everything too much, you're going to find plotholes in the kill of every single raid boss in this game.

But let's play a little with ideas;

How do you know that our characters, during the first two phases of the fight, weren't protected by Alexstrasza, or empowered by her? We didn't get the kill, per se, so we didn't have anything to do with the kill itself - we only delayed Malygos until the red dragons showed up. Perhaps we were all protected by Alexstraszas own magic during that time.

I daresay Life triumphs over magic, it's a classic theme (Love triumphs evil in the Harry Potter books, as an example).

[mercutiouk]

He isn't a sue. Only Garrosh fanboys would say he is cause they don't want to think anything bad about there beloved garrosh being just a tool, which has now been stated, he is.

Look, regardless of other content in this thread "I want to be Thralls sausage warmer" comes over loud and clear in every post you make. From name to avatar to the blinkered way you approach everything to clutching at ANY straw given for you're personal errotic mascote to not get picked on by the masses ("yeah, you're right, we are all mary-sue's" - purlease). You want your green hunk of perfectness to get less grief? Leave the thread alone.

[Fojos]

There's no way to prove that and you know it.

Except for the fact that the quests and other lore-information told us he had regained his sanity? And Metzen correcting someone who said Malygos was insane this BlizzCon?

He was trying to eradicate magic-users because he was sane again, and afraid of the Burning Legion.



@ People who think Thrall is a mary sue. Would you say the same about a character like Dumbledore? (If so, I'd really love to hear you explain that) They're very similar characters, in a way.

[Deleted]

Look, regardless of other content in this thread "I want to be Thralls sausage warmer" comes over loud and clear in every post you make. From name to avatar to the blinkered way you approach everything to clutching at ANY straw given for you're personal errotic mascote to not get picked on by the masses ("yeah, you're right, we are all mary-sue's" - purlease). You want your green hunk of perfectness to get less grief? Leave the thread alone.

While your target might come across as a Thrall fanboy, you're coming across as a Thrall hater here.

"Thrall sucks trolololol" doesn't really make a good point either.

[Annesh]

I would just like to mention that in the Thrall/Hellscream vs Mannoroth cinematic, Thrall does some sick shaman moves with the Doomhammer and gets totally humiliated. Then Hellscream solos Mannoroth with his unstoppable Chuck Norris powers while Thrall takes a nap in the dirt.

With that said, people really do over/misuse the term Mary Sue. You have to realize that by the very nature of art, every single character in every single book/story/movie/game/painting/sculpture is in some way self-inserted. Art is at its heart a way for humans to express themselves in metaphorical or abstract ways to allow other human beings to easily connect.

Take Tim Burton. Every single main character he's ever made was absurdly self inserted. Remember Edward Scissorhands, a dark tortured artistic soul, tries to fit in with normal people. Remember Beetlejuice, a weirdo in a world of weirdos, connects with a weirdo young woman and spends his time freaking out the normals. Goddamn Jack the Pumpkin king is unconditionally loved, respected, and/or feared by every single other character including the one he kidnaps, puts in mortal danger, and whose entire livelihood he nearly ruins.

Writing an obvious self-insertion isn't inherently bad. Characters that can't make mistakes or are better than everyone else aren't inherently bad. Bad writing makes it bad. If it's a pure, straight up self-indulgent fantasy you're writing where your idealized forbidden self kicks some ass and takes some names and gets all the recognition you wish you could get IRL, and you spend no time thinking about how to get others to relate to the story, identify with the character, and enjoy his or her journey along with you, then it's bad. If readers feel what they're doing is the literary equivalent of watching you masturbate, it's bad.

In my own writing I have a character I feel could definitely be seen as Mary-Sueish (since he for sure is a self-inserted idealized version of myself), so I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to minimize the possible badness of his story by doing things such as having him fail miserably, putting important, intelligent characters around him who don't approve of or like him, or even respect him, having him totally screw things up despite his best efforts, etc.

Anyway, I don't really think of Thrall or any other character in the WoW canon as badly written in their Mary-Sueness (except possibly Rhonin). I actually like most of what I've seen of the Warcraft storyline, but that might be because I haven't read any of the books. I'm told they're really bad.

[Renagade Raven]

Honestly, if you start to overthink everything too much, you're going to find plotholes in the kill of every single raid boss in this game.

But let's play a little with ideas;

How do you know that our characters, during the first two phases of the fight, weren't protected by Alexstrasza, or empowered by her? We didn't get the kill, per se, so we didn't have anything to do with the kill itself - we only delayed Malygos until the red dragons showed up. Perhaps we were all protected by Alexstraszas own magic during that time.

I daresay Life triumphs over magic, it's a classic theme (Love triumphs evil in the Harry Potter books, as an example).

Alexstrasza wasn't with us the entire time. If she could protect us from that far it wouldn't make sense that she doesn't do that while we are fighting in, say, ICC or Ulduar.
I'm not overthinking it really, the fact is Malygos is infinitely more powerful than us, and especially considering his traits, the fight should have at least been different if he wasn't to kill us instantly. Which, he could ;]