what were your thoughts on the dreadlord jaina meme
@fitzefitcher is certainly able to tell you more, and touched upon this in their entry for @puzzleboxzine . I also vaguely touch upon this in another question about Garrosh’s leveling of Theramore:
Anything Jaina does from now on [post-Theramore] is going to be seen as irrational because of her own people standing against her and players trying to justify reasons for why Garrosh did what he did and how he, technically, was blah blah blah. Jaina is put through a meatgrinder and made to feel some of the worst pain anyone can ever feel. Jaina has already been through an entire shitshow. She has lost her father, her fiancé, her people, her home, and anyone she could have ever trusted. She has lost everything she has sacrificed these things for: peace. It’s gone. In the blink of an eye. Jaina built Theramore.
Everyone jokes about death knights giving the Illidari a side-eye when they ask “I’ve sacrificed everything—what have you given?” How does it feel to be the woman who, maybe, she’ll never know, might have been able to prevent the rise of the Lich King? Was she wrong to reject Arthas at Stratholme? To reject Kael’thas in Dalaran? To reject her father Daelin and stand with Thrall? People take pity on Illidan, who even gets a redemptive arc in Legion and is literally a demon, yet accuse Jaina of being a dreadlord because of the justified anger she feels and pain she has endured. Theramore is now a scapegoat for all of her sorrow as people conveniently forget the rest of her history.
Dreadlord Jaina as a meme is a fun testament to how much the fanbase like to hypothesize and predict lore twists before Blizzard can churn them out, or tie up loose ends for them. But beneath that (and I’m talking barely beneath, zero depth, like “haha funney meme” is just a post-it note on top of this) Dreadlord Jaina is HMMM MISOGYNY!!! For all of the suffering Jaina has endured, persistently, from such a young age up until now (and even more to be revealed in BFA, a la Warbringers), she is justifiably angry. The game and its fanbase make excuses for other characters’ anger, but it’s really only for the small moment in Tides of War where Thrall calms Jaina down that her anger is taken with even a hint of validity:
“Garrosh may have done this—but I blame you for giving him the power to do it!”
Thrall stopped dead in his tracks, shocked by her words.
“Then—blame me, Jaina. Ancestors know, I blame myself. But do not seek to buy vengeance for the fallen of Theramore by killing my people!”
“People?” Jaina echoed. “I can’t even call them that anymore. They’re not people. They’re monsters. And so are you! My father was right—it took an entire city of people slaughtered before I could see it. I was blind to what the orcs were, because of you. You tricked me into believing that there could be peace, that the orcs weren’t bloodthirsty animals. But you lied. This is war, Thrall, and war hurts. War is ugly. Your Horde obliterated Theramore and is now blockading the Alliance cities in Kalimdor. Whole populations are being held hostage, are being attacked. Well, as we stand here, Varian is leading the fight to break that blockade. And when I’ve completed my task, I’ll help him. And then we’ll see who holds whom hostage! But first—I destroy the city named for Orgrim Doomhammer, in the land named for your father!”
“I see that you are broken and grieving. Don’t let what Garrosh did to Theramore claim you as a victim too. I can help you!”
[…] “You can’t understand. You didn’t see it. You don’t know what it did—to Theramore, to me…”
Her torment was harder for Thrall to witness than her rage. She was an open wound, and she wanted to hurt everyone who had ever given her hope. Deep sympathy filled him but did not shake his resolve for an instant.
“You are right,” he said, causing her to look at him with a surprised expression. “I wasn’t there. But I can see what it has done to you. What Garrosh did to you. Fight Garrosh. I will not stop you. But do not make innocents—children, Jaina!—pay his blood price! You won’t just kill them; you will kill the future!”
“There is no future for those who died in agony at Theramore,” Jaina shot back. “Why should the orcs have one when they don’t?”
Meanwhile, her shithead ex? boyfriend Kalec, a BAJILLION YEARS OLD DRAGON, sang her a LULLABY (???) while she is mourning her apprentice in the nuked ruins of the city she built. I guess this was supposed to come across as delicate and nurturing but it was read by me as being incredibly infantilizing. And then what he brings to the table in this scenario is him citing his own shitty mainpain, attempting to one-up her because he’s so damn old and blah blah blah:
“You don’t know anything about what I feel!”
“Are you so very sure?” Kalec had halted but not retreated. “Tell me if this sounds familiar: [Kalec listens to the sound of his own voice for a long, verbose, condescending paragraph.] …None of them will come back. […] If you loose this wave upon Orgrimmar, you will be as dead as the ones you claim to mourn.”
“I do mourn them!” Jaina shrieked. “I do! I can hardly breathe, Kalec. I can’t sleep. I just see their faces, just as I remember them, and then their bodies. The Horde must pay!”
“But not by your hand, Jaina, and not this way.” The voice came not from Kalecgos but from Thrall.
Only THRALL continues to treat her still as a friend instead of an adversary.
“Garrosh is a thief and a coward and a butcher,” Thrall said calmly. “And you are doing precisely what he did—right down to using the same artifact that obliterated Theramore. Is that what you wish? Truly? To be remembered as that even by your own people?”
BEWARE, BEWARE, THE DAUGHTER OF THE SEA…
Kalec attempts this too but is a snotty asshole while doing it:
“I am doing what I know to be right!” she shouted.
“As did Arthas, when he slaughtered everyone in Stratholme,” Kalec said. […] “And at least he didn’t act with hate in his heart toward those he killed. Is this what your legacy is to be, Jaina Proudmoore? To be another Garrosh, another Arthas?”
This is the statement that breaks her fever, but Thrall remains appealing to her reason and her character without citing her trauma:
“You have a right to wage war upon the Horde, Jaina,” Thrall said. “But the blood on your hands will not be those of warriors, not children. In time, your heart will be glad of your choice.”
“You do not know my heart anymore, Thrall,” she said. “I am no butcher—but I will no longer call for peace at any cost. The Horde you do not lead is dangerous and must be challenged at any turn—and defeated. Then, perhaps, there can be peace. But not before.”
This is Jaina’s WORST moment. And I bring it up because there are SEVERAL PAGES OF back-and-forth between Jaina and Thrall and Jaina and Kalec where she is being resisted but is still willing to listen. Garrosh had zero second-thoughts setting the events of Theramore into motion. Garrosh had zero empathy toward anyone that would stand in his way. Jaina does, and the reason that these people stand in her way is not just to save Orgrimmar but to save someone that they love.
There are several chapters of Tides of War that are dedicated to Jaina’s internal conflict and emotions regarding the events of Theramore that make it extremely transparent her feelings toward the tragedy. She wrestles with her rage and her pain and her sorrow, and for ANYBODY to ignore this in favor of “duhhh actually what if she’s a DEMON and that’s how come uhh she didn’t stop Arthas at Stratholme so he could become lich king and serve the burning legion and uhhh that’s why she’s such a BITCH now for NO REASON!!!!!!!111″
Neither Thrall or Kalec are human, LITERALLY, and they still are capable of understanding the depth and intensity of Jaina’s feelings and the well from which they spring. Those who are prejudiced, and particularly in the case of sexism, are less capable of empathizing with those they are prejudiced against, resulting in women being stereotyped as hysterical (a word that literally means “suffering in the uterus”) and capable of both tolerating more AND less pain than men, with race as a major factor affecting the perceived fragility of women.
The result is that many in the WoW community will write thinkpieces on the tragedy of Arthas, Neltharion/Deathwing, Garrosh (yes I will call myself out here), Grommash, Kael’thas, Illidan, even Sargeras, yet look at Jaina’s situation (this is an actual good one, I won’t link to vitriol) and say she’s a stupid bitch that just, like, went crazy one day, or find her actions SO imperceptible that they accuse her of being possessed by demons or secretly a demon in disguise. They literally demonize Jaina’s entirely-understandable anger. I annotated above where Kalec makes a DIRECT comparison to Arthas in Tides of War, and people still forgive and/or justify Stratholme, but when it comes to Jaina people hit a wall (of misogyny!). And it’s not because people didn’t read the book; the destruction of Theramore was a playable scenario while it was relevant, and other scenarios referencing this event are echoed throughout Mists of Pandaria, Legion, and now in Battle for Azeroth. I could be wrong, but I think you can revisit this scenario for yourself through the Lorewalkers.
But the event itself is not the issue: people don’t want to acknowledge Jaina’s feelings. They don’t—or can’t, due to their prejudice—perceive Jaina’s feelings as being as valid or equal as their own. Bigotry filters their ability to allow women to be angry with purpose and give credence to women’s feelings. Jaina DIDN’T do what Garrosh did. She COULD have; she had the POWER to. Yes, she forced the Sunreavers out of Dalaran, but they were developing a weapon of mass destruction. This is NOT comparable to Garrosh forcibly moving the Darkspear out of Orgrimmar to uphold his own fascism. Jaina IS NOT “as bad” as Garrosh, especially when Garrosh went on to do EVEN MORE destruction after Theramore. Jaina knew her cause was lost, made mistakes, and ollied out.
Women are allowed to be angry. Women are allowed to be justifiably angry. Women are allowed to be angry at their trauma, and to feel angry as a result of that trauma.
I commend Blizzard for adding her Dreadlord skin to HotS as a way of nodding to these “theories” while taking it in stride, as well as putting the nail in the coffin of this stupid “theory”. I’ve yet to play any of BFA Alliance-side, but I am looking forward to her further developments in WoW, and I’m glad she’s still in the story instead of just being traumatized and then fading away.
jacobvanloon
gummygunk
baratheonpilled
jbbartram-illu
janainaart
titsay
stormborns
izzy806
turnnoffyourmind
