WoW: Emo kids in Garadar

[yukie1013]

So I'm semi-low-level questing again; finishing up the Hero of the Mag'har questline on my DK, even though it's chronologically not possible for Ishandarr to have done this. (He was busy being fascinated by his toes wiggling after being newly-rezzed by Arthas, at this point in time.)

...Okay, I love Greatmother Geyah to pieces.

AND I REALLY WANT TO HUG GARROSH OKAY.

His characterization here as compared to Cata...christmuffins, it's like night and day. Whoever they had writing this questline, they need to get them back, because they're GOOD. Garrosh's apathy and crankiness and pessimism are very, very familiar to me as someone who's got sporadic lurking depression. His paralyzing fear of his anger, and the idea that he might go off hardcore and severely harm or even kill people dear to him...yeah. This is a fear I understand very much.

Garrosh is a likable character here. He's believable. And his 'you annoy grandma and I'mma kick your face in' is cute as fuck. XD

I'm helping this guy recover from depression, here, and I'm sitting here all wibbly-faced because goddamn if I haven't been in that very same headspace. It's like sitting at the bottom of a hole looking up at the sky, knowing you can MAYBE climb out using the cracks and bumps on the side but fearing the whole shebang coming down on your head and burying you alive.

And yeah, I am hella disappointed in Blizzard for using this kid as a plot lever, and doing the same with Varian. Garrosh wasn't always an asshole sry2say, naysayers. He was a brat out in Nagrand, and morose as fuck, but not an asshole. From what I hear of Varian, he wasn't an asshole either in the comic.

And people wonder why I fling up my arms and write what the fuck I want. Stuff like this is why. Lazy writing is why. The writing in WoW was not always so fucking lazy. It wasn't always a free-for-all of characters used as plot-buttons in a Chuck-E-Cheese party room full of Idiot Balls and Villain Balls.

It really is a shame; the playerbase may not have the greatest of smarts but this lowest-common-denominator bullshit assumption that it's ALL the players who cannot handle grey-and-grey morality and flawed well-rounded characters has GOT to stop. The 1% of the playerbase represented by the mouth-farting knuckle-dragger crew who refer to everything as gay? That's not all of us. Stop spoiling those slap-needing little shits, Blizzard, you do yourselves a disservice.

So--yeah. I like this Garrosh. This--how he is in this quest chain? This is how I write him, and I'm snickering a little nervously here because I was writing him like this even before I played this all the way through, based on what I heard I.T. and Kyl say about him. i'm doin it rite :D *happy lolcat*

Anyhow. tl;dr I like Nagrand!Garrosh and I plan to write him as he's depicted there. Hell, it even persists in Wrath to some extent--if you've done this questline before you go see him in Borean Tundra, he REMEMBERS you and says 'dude, I owe you one so take my advice GO HOME before you go die'. That makes his remarks if he DOESN'T know you very obviously with-ulterior-motive. He's trying to egostomp you into leaving. Why he doesn't try to SCARE the player into leaving is probably an Orcish-Culture Thing; saying OH SHIT DUDE IT'S MADNESS OUT THERE is something he himself would see as a BETCHA CAN'T KICK THEY ASS, so that's not the approach he uses. So he tries to lolpwn your confidence instead by going "lol u scared bro?"

Man XD I really love this questline. And it's making me even more determined to write Garrosh as a character and not a plot lever.

(ETA: Note that I'm calling him an emo kid in a tongue-in-cheek way. XD; A lot of people overuse the term 'emo' to describe any character who is even remotely morose, and become annoying. Me, I'm just teasing Garrosh about his more over-the-top "WOE AND ALSO PESSIMISM, DAMMIT }:F" moments. *pokes him a few times* And I will forever think that his threatening to falcon pawnch you if you piss off Geyah is adorable.)

Comments

[magnus-samma.livejournal.com]

Agreeing with you 100% on this. The questline in Nagrand was SO well done and the characterization was SO much better than in Cata that I'm honestly a little sad when I go back and do the Nagrand quests again on my alts because it makes me feel responsible for Garrosh turning into a massive dickweed. If we hadn't introduced him to Thrall he might never have come to Azeroth and become a colossal asshole. He'd still be sitting in Nagrand being a whiner, but I honestly think that might have been better for everyone involved.

That being said, there are still glimmers of his old self in the new content. If you ever make a fresh hordie make sure to do the questline in Stonetalon. It will make you hate the Horde for a few minutes but Garrosh of all orcs shows up and makes you proud to be a part of it again. It actually feels kind of out of character for him because he's almost universally a jerk in the rest of the expansion, but for this one quest he seems to be kind of a nice guy, so I'm hoping we see more of this side of him in the future. He can be made to be an interesting character, the writers just have to get their heads out of their asses first. :(

[yukie1013.livejournal.com]

I heard about the Stonetalon one! I will probably run it on my Orc hunter chica or my goblin ceven though--yeah XD; Last I had someone at that level many things were bugging out and since I ATTRACT ALL THE GLITCHES--

I can't blame anyone but the writers and their beer bong for Garrosh going all Jerkamondo; I mean yeah according to plot we did it but his 180 from disliking his dad to not is really whiplashy and if they'd played his sudden hero worship as defensive or had him conflicted still it would've made more sense. but they needed a plot button...

The writers really need to get back on the trike. I mean, for fuck's SAKES, they had Varian DECLARING THAT HE WANTS TO COMMIT GENOCIDE AGAINST THE HORDE in Undercity. How do you not notice that. How do you write that and then not know why the faction wants nothing to do with him ever. And that's not even the most egregious bullshit--what they've gone and done to Tyrande, Jaina and Sylvanas (fuck you so hard for your Andorhal questline homophobia and bullshit 'mentally ill people are dangerous' dance, you douche spankers) is a lot shittier.

Bleh. This is why I largely ignore the plotline proper and write my own shite--usually within my girlfriend's AU because it's spiffy XD

[nagaina-ryuuoh.livejournal.com]

Having recently revisited those quests, as the mate is leveling a new character through Outland, part of me thinks they're angling to do something with Garrosh that they could not, legtimately, do with Thrall without completely annihilating every trace of Thrall's original characterization: pulling out an actual backslide down into the dark old days arc only to have Garrosh suffer/enjoy/experience a massive Heel Realization at some point in Mists of Pandaria, possibly complete with the whole MY ANCESTORS WHAT HAVE I DONE?! howl at the sky, and anchor the redemption theme of the Horde more deeply into current mythology of the game. WCIII came out a long time ago as far as most gamers are concerned, and I'm willing to bet that most of the people playing WoW never played it, or any of the other RTS games. Their concept of who the Horde and the Alliance should be and how they should behave is purely shaped by their experience of the Lore in-game and, to be perfectly honest, the Horde-seeking-redemption Lore-bearing quests were fairly thin on the ground from the start and even less so post-Cataclysm, where the Horde is ramping itself into a conquering war machine. Actually seeing this theme addressed and realized in-game would be wonderful -- but I don't think it's something that could happen while Thrall was still Warchief.

[yukie1013.livejournal.com]

That--makes a lot of sense with regard to what they're doing and I hope that's the case. It seems kind of bizarre to do, and a bit rehashy, and I'm at a loss as to how come the Tauren and the Blood Elves are going along with this--lorewise the B'elves only recently had a 'careful of this smashy-conquery stuff!' and a big epiphany so...yeah XD;; and the Tauren are hippies. They'll CERTAINLY defend their turf (see: bigass wall) but they're not aggressors unless they really need to be.

Bleh, I dunno XD; I had a point here somewhere but it seems to have gotten lost amidst my socks.

I do hope that the cluebat falls sometime in the future.

If the writers had been clever they'd have worked way way more on the fact that GARROSH AND VARIAN ARE HELLA SIMILAR YO (allcaps to represent how loud they both are lol) and I think it would be cool if they started to realize that. XD;; I am actually writing this because i can and it's fun. Varian kind of feeling bad for Garrosh because his dad is both the coolest and worst kind of dude an Orc can be, and how do you deal with a legacy like that--you're either expected to be a greater hero than dad or the hugest goat. And Garrosh, doofus though he can be, would GET Varian's twitchiness even at the same time as he thinks the guy is kind of a wanker, because it's gotta suck talking to a big green dude whom you know rationally is a big ol' hippie but your kid-brain is flailing over the loss of your dad.

Neither of them are especially SWIFT at times but they're not totally stupid guys and the idea of sort of grudging respect appeals to me a ton. XD;; Now I have to write them doing the stupid HAVE AT ME BRO thing in a fight.

[the--ivorytower.livejournal.com]

For you, my darling, I will finally finish my Garrosh meta. I think you'll like it.

[yukie1013.livejournal.com]

Hee XD Awesome.

I need to finish mine, it's been sitting half done for ages and he's loitering in my brain going "Hey when you gonna finish that thing you're writing about me?" even though some of it is embarrassing XD