Never Gonna Come Back Down

So I got round to doing the questing for Darkrider Arly and Olakin this evening, because that's how I roll (i.e. hooray for ADHD and my focus being all over the place wheeeee), and once again I got struck by how fucking fantastic a villain Arthas is.

( fangirly bollocks follows! )

Dear fanfic authors,

If you've acknowledged that XYZ Fantasy Race is coded in a way that is just Orientalist as balls, but you STILL opt to characterize them in fanfic as just this side of Ming the Merciless/Dragon Lady/Discount Jafar, you have only done half the blasted homework and need to go back to the editing desk right now before I bite you a lot.

Smooch smooch,

Someone who's really tired of people depicting WoW elves in ways that are at the root just racist (yes, it still counts if 'Elves' = 'Generic Pop-culture Stereotype Asian/Middle Eastern lololololol'), gross and issue-laden as fuck.

I mean--writing a compelling love-to-hate antagonist who's well thought out and whose portrayal is NOT steeped in grody old bigotry? Awesome. Feel free to have Fandral be as big a douche as you like, it gives your heroes a reason to fight. But there is 'douche' and then there's 'oh for fuck's sakes why did you do that'. If your villain up and starts sprouting all these Fu Manchu/Dragon Lady/Evil Vizier-esque traits that are indicated fuck-nowhere in canon, there's something going on that needs addressing. That is not interpretation anymore, that is Issues.

Srsly don't do that shit it's hacky and makes my ass twitch. :D

So if you've played through or read up on the revamped Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance dungeon quests, you'll know that Lilian has something to do with both. The events of the Scholo one made me blink a lot.

I'll spoiler-cut just in case, and also declare that I do not take this as part of my own AU brain-canon. AU Lilian has joined the Forsaken (who are not generically evil FFS) and is sort of unofficially apprenticed to Nathanos and Koltira, who consider her one of the precious few sensible people they've met.

Anyhow. Spoiler cut now!

( Ellipsis goes here! )

THIS IS WHAT I DO WHEN MY DEAREST BADASS PRINCESS KYLBEANS ISN’T THERE TO MAKE SURE I BEHAVE:


-go to tanaris

-enter caverns of time

-enter old strat

-say hi to chromie!

-hug hearthsinger forresten! and everybody in that inn! (pamela ;n;)

-locate crates for chromie!

-ride off into the mist as far as possible, laughing maniacally, until you hit the invisiwall!

-futz around doing this for a good twenty minutes, still laughing maniacally

-get bored with the eerie pink minty-fresh chronological mist o’ doom and head for strat proper…

-…while looking in every house…

-…and making up a song about eerie pink minty-fresh chronological aerosol pepto-bismol!

-jump into moat and swim to see if one can swim under the invisiwall (nope, denied)

-hug chromie and turn in quest and start RP event!

-hug jaina and uther

-click on jaina a lot and sigh when she has only two clicky lines and uther has none

-hug arthas, then follow arthas

-click on arthas, sigh over his VA not being as good as the WC3 fellow, click on arthas again anyway

-click on arthas repeatedly

-click on arthas repeatedly

-click on arthas repeatedly

-CLICK ON ARTHAS LIKE A MAD FIEND AND ANNOY THE TANKING-PLATE PANTS OFF HIM, LAUGHING MANIACALLY ALL THE WHILE

-realize arthas is a total leeroy intent on pulling everything under the sun ever, sigh, and allow self to be taken out by zombie scrummage

(WoW is not as much fun without my gorgeous girlfriend afoot XD I can still amuse myself (because I have ADHD and we’re like that), but…THEN I DO STUFF LIKE THIS XD Arthas is going to bink me to death with his smackin’ hammer.)

So I love the Tillers.

And the Klaxxi and the Order of the Cloud Serpent but right now I'm going to be all smug about my giant digital pumpkins (wow that sounds like a surreal innuendo). And kvetch about grindiness, because it IS grindy, even though it's mostly fun.

Mostly!

I find myself caring a lot more about the Tillers and the other people around Halfhill than I do about the overarching "important" plot. (Ditto the Klaxxi. I couldn't give one-sixth of a fart about Garrosh and Varian being colonialist dickweeds (which they won't be in the AU when I start writing...my versions of those two are decidedly different from canon because canon's boring and trite and I'd rather challenge myself) and no Blizzard "benevolent/non-aggressive" colonialism is not better but that's a rant for another time...I must say, though, the WC2 nostalgia trip in Krasarang has some rather pointed edges! Colour me mildly impressed.) Why? Well--because I've gotten to know them.

This is what I don't get. They're completely Ozzie's-boxers-on-my-head senselessly dense about legacy characters, they slack off on characterization or turn on dimes when it comes to newer ones, and...then there's this bunch of farmers. Who I love.

No, their characterization isn't especially überdeep, but they feel like people, and you do discover more little bits and pieces about everyone as you go along. Gina's comments when you ask where everyone lives, for example--she doesn't get along with her dad, she's compassionate (worrying about Ella being lonely, feeling bad for Chee-Chee because he's having bad luck getting started out, and so on), and she's a damn badass businesswoman. As you get closer to these people they open up to you more. You learn about their aspirations, you sympathise with them and you--well--still don't like the grind but for me it feels more like a favour for a friend than arbitrary questing even though it's the latter lol.

Ffff basically I just want to hang around on the farm all the time. XD Ishandarr's pretty domestic anyway and he has a very green thumb for a Death Knight. (Though, my gods, the number of times he's had to wrassle with the fronds of wild veggies...)

Of course, I can't just hang out on the farm all the time because the stupid Mogu will want to come step on it if I don't punch them in the asses and discourage them from stepping on it...and speaking of them.

Blizzard?

You cannot set up a severely-xenophobic bunch of might-makes-right domineering fascist bullyboy douches with a superiority complex the size of Kij'jaeden's fiery ass--a bunch of literally stone-faced wankers who see the world as them on top and everybody else as scrubs underfoot--and then expect me to believe they'd ally with anyone that isn't them. ESPECIALLY in the case of the ones you've decided were their allies in the past. I'm not even going to touch the bullshit face-heel turn you pulled with regard to the quote-unquote allies either. Suffice it to say that bullshit's not going in the AU, because it also makes no sense.

AAAANYWAAAAY!

I really love the Tillers, and I love my little garden. I love the completely-hammered SI:7 ops who sometimes show up in Halfhill, one of whom challenges me to a dance-off in the name of justice. I love the troll who wonders where the huge meat to go with the huge veggies is, and the jinyu Aqualytes. Halfhill is one of my favourite places. It feels like a home, honestly, and that's more and more the case as time goes on. (Hilariously, it's very similar to Ishandarr's childhood hangouts near his grandfather's house, back when Goldenmist Village was intact...Acamarr was an epic green thumb too...)

I'm enjoying other things too--the Klaxxi and their lore (and their nice gender ambiguity...I'm choosing to read the bigger ones as female because that's how mantid insects work IRL), the Order of the Cloud Serpent, the fact that one of the Golden Lotus ops is mute (and possibly deaf?) and nobody looks down on him at all--he kicks just as much ass as the rest of them and they respect him. That made me really happy, considering Blizzard's prior cack-handedness with issues related to disability (i.e. the Forsaken and the Blood Elves). I suspect they'll continue to be cack-handed sometimes depending on who handles what. Such is life when it comes to a game with a fucktillion writers XD

I have but one kvetch about the Tillers stuff aside the grindiness of it all: it makes me really damn hungry. XD

Even though Prince Taldaram is the lord of all that is LARGE HAM?

He is an intimidating mofo when he vanishes on you. Even when you're at level 90 and his using you as a slurpee doesn't do much at all (yes I went in solo tonight even though it gets me absolutely nothing, I was holding a grudge against the Spellflingers for glitching out last time i tried at 85 and magic-spamming me to death THROUGH A WALL), it's CREEPY. XD

Uh yeah brosephs tell me again that the elfpire who's got you pinned to the floor while he casually munches your hemoglobin is wussy? Go ahead. I'll wait. But don't expect me to clean up the pile of bro-soot off the floor once Tal gets done with his flame-assisted roflstomping.

(I wish they'd explained what he was doing in there besides being Gothtastic and having no shirt. XD)