Never Gonna Come Back Down

BEFORE I START: yes, I know this has a lot of extrapolation in it, but this is Megaman X so extrapolation is kinda necessary.

SO! I know Word of Inafune has it that Zero is--well--patient zero for the lolwtgomgdairyqueenbbq virus, and Sigma was the first it got passed on to, but it seems to have had an interesting incubation period. Most computer viruses hit hard, hit fast, and smoke your junk before you can say PEBKAC, but what jumped from Zero to Sigma seems to behave more like something biological.

Computer and biological viruses both whack when the system's defenses are down; the maverick/irregular/Zero-gots-cooties virus is data in essence but it behaves like biology as you would expect because repl(ir)oids==replicant androids et cetera and I'm sorta rambling here so I'll try to get to my point--

The virus seems to lie dormant in Sigma for a while. This isn't unusual when it comes to shit like the flu. It'll chunk around doing nothing until conditions are right--like the host being tired out or weakened. Can reploids have that happen? Yes, probably. We know they can get physically damaged, and while the getting-punched-by-Vile kind of damage is a no-brainer, what about fatigue?

Specifically, what about mental and emotional fatigue?

This puts the same strain on OUR systems as does physical fatigue because the mind/body dichotomy is fucking bunkum. Fear, joy, sadness, anger--all of these emotive states have an impact on our body. Thus it would be the case with reploids.

So in essence, my theory's that the virus was dormant until Sigma got won out, and then it clobbered him, and he did his damnedest to pretend nothing was wrong until that was no longer possible. Which should sound familiar to some people!

It's not anvilled but it IS implied that humans are kind of asshatty in how reploids are treated (the ever-badass Red McDracoensis Canadensis pointed this out not too long ago so I have to give her mad props for her superskills and give her credit for my expanding on this idea at all). This isn't too surprising, since--look how we treat EACH OTHER. There's a massive lack of mental health resources available to the average person, and the lack of these resources is NOTORIOUSLY EPIC when it comes to the military and EMS (fire/ambulance/cops). And with the reploids--well, look at Iris and Colonel and how come they even exist.

This isn't painting a pretty picture about what active duty might have been like for ol' Sigma.

My guess is that Sigma got sent out on mission after mission after mission after mission without much downtime (because, said the humies, he's a reploid--better faster stronger et cetera, he shouldn't NEED downtime), and thus he ended up coping with toxic levels of stress without much support, ultimately developed PTSD, and all the while the virus is sort of nibbling away and he knows something's wrong but keeps a lid on it because wat happens when he becomes useless and obsolete--and then when he was completely blue-screening it clotheslined him hardcore.

(I have a similar theory about why Sephiroth went so far around the bend so fast. Legendary soldiers shouldn't neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed mental heath resources et cetera let's just keep ignoring his prescribed leave and send him out over and over again barf barf barf, fuk u prez shinra. I hope Hojo used up all your profits on frivolous crap.)

And Sigma's able to pass the virus on because he reaches out to people who are as worn down and beaten up as him, and--yeah. I've seen people make OFFENSIVE AND INACCURATE AND NONSENSICAL ANALOGIES with this but I will not address this beyond "those people need to be eaten by eternal murdercrickets". Sigma believes he is freeing his kin. In a way, he is. It's hard for me to see him as a straight-up bad guy at this point. Why yes, he IS a rampaging asshat, but in his eyes he's doing everything necessary to save his kin from ending up facedown in the dumpster, and he's not entirely wrong in thinking so. Hell, look what happens to Repliforce, and yeah I know Sigma was trollfasing all up in there but come on now...how hard did he actually have to try? How much or how little does it take to get some poor schmuck branded maverick? I can see EASILY how life for reploids could get McCarthylicious every which way but loose, and do so at great speed.

Yeah. Sigma's a doucheyacht. But I can't say he's totally in the wrong inexcusable rebel without a clue no excuse for zomg zomg zomg, because WOW humans are assholes, and they probably had a massive hand in making him what he is. (And I'm not just talking Dr. Wily here.)

tl;dr i like sympathetic villains, even occasionally badly translated ones. XD

Okay I’m not going to scold people for liking tragic romance type storylines—whatever floats your boat, seriously.

But I’m really not interested in pursuing such plotlines with regard to the queer couples/trios/catpiles I write.

I’m not averse to putting them through some hella gloominous doominous shit—I like hard-won happy endings, the trial-by-fire makes the s’mores at the end taste that much better and so on…

But I’m not in it for the downer ending with regard to the queer romances I write.

So while I will tell tales of Sylvanas and Lana’thel, or Koltira and Thassarian, going through all kinds of difficult and nightmarish malarkey…I’m not going to rob them of their happy endings.

And yeah, i think it is possible for these couples to have such. Seriously, if people in fandom are going to speak of undeath as synonymous to disability--and then turn around and say that no one undead can ever have a happy ending? That’s treading perilously close to the same kind of ‘logic’ that says disability is God’s punishment for a sin, that disabled folks are somehow b0rken and cannot be happy.

People who have been dealt a shitty hand by fate are allowed to be angry; they are also capable of finding happiness and being joyful, and are allowed to do both! Sorry, but I'm not obliged to suffer nobly for anybody's Hallmark moments! Nor is anyone else who's marginalized in any way, shape or form. This narrative bollocks about bearing up oh-so-nobly under great sorrow and strife needs to go away because it serves mostly to perpetuate the suffering.

I’m sorry, I did not come here to dance at that party.

And yeah I know not everyone who likes tragic stuff runs on that rationale! I just resent the stuff that does! A LOT! Tragedy is something that all of us contend with, and I am not saying that nobody marginalized must ever suffer in writing because pfffttt. But when things wander into the territory of 'X is suffering BECAUSE she is Y and oh the TRAGEDY of FORBIDDEN LOVE THAT CAN NEVER BE' I start to bang my head on the desk and seek beer.

For people in positions of privilege, that's just story fodder, but for marginalized people, sometimes that's our lives, so - no thanks. None of those walnuts are going into my brownies.

So yeah. Koltira and Thassarian have a right to be crabby about perpetually cold feet, no heartbeat, and all the WTF that goes along with being undead. They also have a right to sleep in and like pancakes. And Sylvanas and Lana'thel have a right to be annoyed as fuck with Arthas and frustrated with their circumstances (Lana with wing cramps = crabby forever), but also have a right to snuggle and hold hands and enjoy lichboom tea with lots of honey and lemon.

Because, seriously, so fucking many queer folks (and PWD, and PoC, and people who are any and all combos of the aforementioned, because INTERSECTIONALITY IS A THING AND IT MATTERS) IRL -are- denied a happy ending. And if you add in the cultural coding of elves, and the insistence some people have on treating undeath as analogous to disability—yeah, it gets even more facepalmy.

Guys, a lot of my friends have been denied a happy ending through shitty happenstance and terrible circumstances, and I’m writing in the end for myself and my girlfriend—and in the memory of those people who had to stop too fucking soon.

A desire for a happy ending is not childish. The world is often crapsack, and if some people get a kick out of crapsack world fiction, they’re free to get it, but don’t go scolding me for not caring for such stories. I don’t care for bleu cheese either. it’s not because my palate is immature; I just don’t like the taste of friggin’ bleu cheese.

idk where i was going here i had a point lololololol

tl;dr other people are free to write what they want but since I do not like bleu cheese I will continue to write my hard-won happy endings. Fighting for a happy ending doesn’t always work IRL, especially for marginalized people…so I figure I can give myself and others such satisfying endings in my head instead. XD

When I was growing up my dad was a gigantimous Gordon Lightfoot fan, and to this day 'Triangle' has a habit of being stuck in my head. (If you happen to go looking for an MP3 of this, go for an older recording--the one from Shadows is the one I've got. Gord sounds a bit funky nowadays.)

And then one day while I was listening to it Eveynna decided to give me alternative lyrics.

Braincanon-wise this is (probably) one of those older folksongs; the locations change depending on where the sailors happen to be GOING. The bracketed locales are the originals; the ones outside brackets are the ones Evey tends to sing.

Stormwinders have a very deep reverence for the sea, obviously. ^^

( I don't know if this counts as filk XD )

I keep wishing we’d got more information about the San’layn.

I mean, I love what we do get about Valanar and Keleseth. Just from their quest text alone, you learn:

-They’re brothers

-They care about each other a great deal

-They’re quite high-up on the chain of command (Kel is in charge of the whole of Howling Fjord—from Utgarde, as we learn later)

-They respect you and enjoy working with you (Kel greets you with ‘hail’, entrusts you with what appears to be his very favourite set of sharp pointy things, and is generally very amiable; Val PRACTICALLY SQUEES after you cannonpwn the Scarlets, gets all excited about the prospect pf Arthas being happy about this, and says he’ll make damn sure that the boss knows who was responsible for the explosions and chaos)

For a pair of guys on the evil side of the fence, they’re certainly a lot nicer to deal with than some of the player’s alleged allies!

( more things! )

So I was taking Aerionn the b'elfy holy/protadin punklet through the beginning Pandaria quests last night, and the following occurred to me:

As much as I love the Hozen and I seriously want to hug all of them, I kind of wish they were more developed. I also kind of wish they were more like the original Monkey King. Like Sun Wukong. Not with the UBERHAXX necessarily, but the general attitude and cleverness and most of all identity. The Hozen have some solid foundations, but their cultural identity and their culture fullstop isn't fleshed out as much as it could be.

The little bits and pieces that we get about their culture are neat--how and when and why you get a double name, their hilarious poetry, their linguistic quirks...yeah there's some deeply, DEEPLY facepalm-worthy gaffes and stereotypes to be found, but homework WAS done. It doesn't quite make up for the *GROAN* moments completely, but it's there?

And that just makes me want MORE dammit. XD I'm not sure how much development the Jinyu got, as I am FAR AND AWAY NOWHERE NEAR PANDARIA with my Allyside characters (the highest-level one is Eveynna, Stormwinder-Theramoran pally extraordinaire and queen of the epic !Newfie accent, at 30), but yeah. I do wish we'd gotten more. Compared to the amount of work done with the Pandaren, it's like an Ensure pudding cup next to creme brulee.

I know that not everything can be put into a game, and that Pandaria is light-years better than Cata with regard to the completeness of questlines (even if a lot of the storytelling is still execrable...the stuff dealing with the Pandaren and Jinyu and Hozen and Mogu and Co. alone is fantastic but the second practically any named mainstream NPC besides Anduin gets into things, everything spirals rapidly down the flush-hole), but...yeah. When you put one up against the other you get wistful. (Well...you do if you're me. :B)

I'm probably going to end up fiddling around and expanding upon a lot when I get to writing about Pandaria. Because well that is what I do. If something feels too spare and I'm still hungry I make more snack food.

And also it will feature AU!Garrosh not being made of fail, and a distinct lack of stupidness with legacy characters. :D

Subtitle: Look, Mommy, Yukie is a Paladin

Blizzard is still being stupid as hell and this latest bout of hackish amateur-tastic lols hasn't impressed me at all SO YOU GET MY THOUGHTS ON WRITAN

My usual disclaimer applies: I'm explaining my rationale here. People who do stuff differently than me are neither nimrods nor stanky (unless they are Blizzard's usual flock of writers, in which case they are nimrods, stanky, and deserving of defenestration). Everyone has their own reasons for writing the stuff they do; I'm just running through my reasons for doing what I do here, as well as debunking what I feel are common fallacious argument type things.

Hokay. So.

( things! THINGS! and more things! )