Sylvanas is a Mary Sue

[Nobleshield]

By definition a canon character can't be a Mary Sue, it has to be a fan-created character.

That said I agree with everything said.

[Azerate]

Mary Sue is a term used by incels to insult badly written characters who are female. For decades of badly-written and overpowered male characters in fiction there was no problem somehow, only when it started happening to women is when it suddenly became an issue. If you use the term "Mary Sue" unironically, you should stop and think why you think you need that term.

Apologists will say that there is a similar term for male overpowered characters (Gary Stu) but we all know that's BS and no one ever called anyone that before Mary Sue was invented. Gary Stu only exists for mysognists to excuse their shitty behavior

[MrLachyG]

She dominated Saurfang and Bolvar in each fight. She one shot Saurfang with her shadow magic and she utterly dominated Bolvar. The guy couldn't do anything against her.

Now some people will claim that she is not a Mary Sue, because her new powers are explained to originate from the Jailer, since when he grows in power, so does Sylvanas.

But that only proves that she is a Mary Sue. Mary Sue's always have justifications for their powers. It's just something the writers pull out of their ass.

definition of Mary Sue: (originally in fan fiction) a type of female character who is depicted as unrealistically lacking in flaws or weaknesses.

pretty sure she does have flaws and weaknesses. arrogance is definitely one of them.

[Sneaksies]

She dominated Saurfang and Bolvar in each fight. She one shot Saurfang with her shadow magic and she utterly dominated Bolvar. The guy couldn't do anything against her.

Now some people will claim that she is not a Mary Sue, because her new powers are explained to originate from the Jailer, since when he grows in power, so does Sylvanas.

But that only proves that she is a Mary Sue. Mary Sue's always have justifications for their powers. It's just something the writers pull out of their ass.

shit dude, eonar is a titan and can beat almost any character, fuck it shes a "mary sue"

just because a female is powerful doesnt make her a "mary sue" she is literally backed by the jailer who for all we know could be a titan

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definition of Mary Sue: (originally in fan fiction) a type of female character who is depicted as unrealistically lacking in flaws or weaknesses.

pretty sure she does have flaws and weaknesses. arrogance is definitely one of them.

rage is one too, saurfang pissed her off

[Oakshana]

Fixed that for you.

You're so woke.

[trapmaster]

She has a weakness though: Overconfidence.

All she had to do was to keep her big mouth shut & zap Saurfang without a word and boom! You still have the Horde!


(Mary Sue / Marty Stu is attributed to a completely perfect & flawless character)

Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer

[MatadorMedia]

Sylvanas followed the Hero's Journey. She did become overpowered recently which was distracting to the balanced roleplay of racial leaders, however; this is why she moved into a greater-than role just like Thrall and Jaina (both too OP to be racial leaders). Sylvanas raised herself into a villainous opposite of a powerful faction-neutral mortal like Khadgar or Tirion. I'm not particularly a fan of her current story arc but she is not a Mary Sue by any means.

[Daedius]

Fixed that for you.

Yeeeeeeeeeeah no. People find flawless characters boring, hence the term to describe them as such. Nothing to do being "misogynistic". The gender of the character is irrelevant...

[Shakana]

She's a Mary Sue because she beat up an old Orc with a deathwish and a Lich King that existed just for the sake of existing and has never done anything?

That's the thing, people are not just mad cause sylvanas is overpowered but because bolvar didn't do anything ever and when he had the chance to do something he just got defeated too.

And Saurfang: He never really had a deathwish just because, he couldn't stand the lies the horde made a secret anymore. He wanted the horde to be true and make everyone see who and what sylvanas is.

All in all, blizzard's fault of bad writing, yet again. After this, to me i can only see Sylvanas being a boss in the end of the expansion or something, because i want to fight her as if i'm fighting blizzard's writing.

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I just hope she dies soon. I'm sick of her. I would love for her and Jaina to have a fight to the death like Thrall and Garrosh did. Jaina could freeze her in an ice block and then shatter it or something. I would be SO happy.

Then she would be like:

Arthas my love... Even after dead, you bring us unfortunate disasters! I hate you... Love, Jaina.

[ohwell]

overpowered character because “reasons”. Mary sue actually is a common thing for alotta chars. Remember Rey from Star Wars?

Except Rey being powerful was canonically possible before her character existed. Anakin was imbued with force to stop both the Jedi and the Sith. The Force wants balance and if one side gets too powerful it empowers a child to do so. It's been stated in the currently canon comics.

[Black Goat]

She just manhandled the Lich King in that cinematic. She's stupid because the writing is stupid. She's able to dominate powerful lore figures because she is a Mary Sue.

Lol, you're not too bright, are you?

If Sylvanas is a Mary Sue, so is Bolvar. Just because he put the Helm on doesn't make him Arthas, or even a fraction as powerful. I guess you missed the distinct absence of Frostmourne, too. "BuT sHe MaN-hAnDleD da LiCh KiNg"

Sylvanas was FAR more justified in her power-up compared to Bolvar. But according to you, anyone with justifiable power is a Mary Sue.

So a Mary Sue beat up a Mary Sue. End of story.

[Nenavn]

Sylvanas has endured far too much character development over the last 15+ years for her to be just a Mary Sue.

[yamix]

That's the thing, people are not just mad cause sylvanas is overpowered but because bolvar didn't do anything ever and when he had the chance to do something he just got defeated too.

And Saurfang: He never really had a deathwish just because, he couldn't stand the lies the horde made a secret anymore. He wanted the horde to be true and make everyone see who and what sylvanas is.

All in all, blizzard's fault of bad writing, yet again. After this, to me i can only see Sylvanas being a boss in the end of the expansion or something, because i want to fight her as if i'm fighting blizzard's writing.

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Then she would be like:

Arthas my love... Even after dead, you bring us unfortunate disasters! I hate you... Love, Jaina.

They do the 'character has major moment, does nothing, then dies' a lot. They screwed Vol'jin as Warchief.

Jaina is no better than Sylvanas - there don't seem to be any rules to those characters at all.

[Piamonte]

She dominated Saurfang and Bolvar in each fight. She one shot Saurfang with her shadow magic and she utterly dominated Bolvar. The guy couldn't do anything against her.

Now some people will claim that she is not a Mary Sue, because her new powers are explained to originate from the Jailer, since when he grows in power, so does Sylvanas.

But that only proves that she is a Mary Sue. Mary Sue's always have justifications for their powers. It's just something the writers pull out of their ass.

She is not a Mary Sue, you dont even know what you are talking about.

[therealstegblob]

Um WTF is a Mary Sue?

Something the OP doesn't understand, and I'm going to assume most people in this thread don't understand.

Mostly when someone sees a character they don't like, they label it a "mary sue", because they see it as a generic insult to be applied to any character they think is stupid or something. People can rarely formulate an actual definition for it when asked.

Mary Sues are a lot of different things, which leads to confusion when people try arguing about them. I was once talking about Mary Sues in the Warcraft canon (Anduin in particular, who is an actual Mary Sue) and some guy kept arguing with me, insisting he wasn't a Mary Sue because he wasn't an author self-insert, and that (according to him) was what a Mary Sue was, no more or less. I asked him if it'd be a Mary Sue to insert yourself into your own story, but make your character a background character/even a total loser who is just kind of 'there'. He decided to completely ignore that question; I can only imagine why.

Self-inserts can be Mary Sues, but Mary Sues are not exclusively self-inserts. The same goes for every single Mary Sue symptom (powerful, loved by all, always right, etc). In this case, our OP thinks because Sylvanas is powerful, she's a Mary Sue. The OP is no more correct than the guy who said Anduin isn't a Mary Sue by virtue of not being a self-insert.

Mary Sues, ultimately, are wish fulfillment characters who get what the author wants them to get even when there's no good justification (or often times, outright conflicting evidence against) for them to get it. There's a level of nuance to this definition, though. You wouldn't call Superman a Mary Sue just because he's strong, even when Golden Age Superman was always asspulling new powers and abilities.

Take Anduin (who is a great example of a Mary Sue). In the novel Before the Storm, Anduin and Greymane have an argument over Anduin's position as a bachelor. Greymane argues he needs to marry for political reasons in order to cement the strength of the Alliance (HE'S FUCKING RIGHT LOL), but Anduin argues he needs to marry for love (like a Disney princess). Now, alright, both sides have some valid points; but the story treats Anduin like he's totally right. Even though Greymane had a totally valid, good argument, Christie Golden doesn't want Anduin to be like that so she has him assert 'marriage for love', and then writes her story as if Anduin was right even though his stance is morally grey at best. Christie Golden wants Anduin's decision to be right, and she can only really do that by ignoring that it's not absolutely right. Ergo, it's baseless wish fulfillment. Anduin is therefore Mary Sue. He doesn't have to be ultra powerful or Golden's self-insert. That's not, by themselves, what a Mary Sue is.

Sylvanas gets a bunch of asspull power from some new monster guy we've never seen before. Stupid? Yes. Mary Sue? No.

[Volardelis]

Mary Sue is a term derived from an old Star Trek character fan fiction. It's a character who is perfect in everything they do and everyone they meet likes them. But now it's a term people toss around just to have some kind of label to use to bitch about stuff.

HelloGreedo did a video about how people called Ahsoka Tano a mary sue because of how she acted in the first season of the Clone Wars (2008) series. And yet she is now regarded as one of the best characters ever. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siVys4vMxPs)

It is kinda funny when you think about it.

[therealstegblob]

By definition a canon character can't be a Mary Sue, it has to be a fan-created character.

I'm not going to go through this whole thread to pick out every single person who says something wrong, but I'm going to bring this up because I want to assert that when it comes to being wrong, this is one of the most wrong things concerning what a Mary Sue is.

[strangerdanger]

Characters with flaws are boring. That just makes them average.

[Halyon]

overpowered character because “reasons”. Mary sue actually is a common thing for alotta chars. Remember Rey from Star Wars?

No. Don't have to be overpowered to be a Mary Sue. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue

In short, it's a character who can do no wrong, is loved almost universally, etc. The male equivalent is a Gary/Marty Stu.

[MiiiMiii]

I rather have Mary Sue than their "let's do like Game of Thrones and kill all our established characters for no other reason than a wow factor".

Garrosh should have still been alive.

Vol'jin should have still been alive.

Tirion Fordring should have still been alive.

Cairne Bloodhoof should have still been alive.