#warcrack

[dandelionofthanatos]

I was feeling moody and morose, so I drew what Nate looks like to my mind’s eye, post-Helya-healz. (He’s more patchwork in appearance facially before then—although you have to get very close to see the stitches! Miraeille is good at her job.) This has made me feel a little better!

He sounds like Tom Waits plus Rob Zombie when he sings.

Those random wee curly strands in his hair are me BLATANTLY GIVING HIM A TRAIT I MYSELF HAVE BECAUSE I CAN. And because I’m going balls to the boards with it, MOST of those little rogue curly hair strands are silver like mine are. >:D

He’s got better cheekbones and eyebrows though. And a really glorious ‘stache.

And yes—this is his original physical form in all its LONG BASEMENT CAT marathon-runner glory! While this Nate does have a brother, his brother is ORITHOS THE SKY-DARKENER and thus also undead. (Though not a skeleton.) So no that weird plot point isn’t a thing and Nate and Orit would make SO MANY GLORIOUS INSULTING BROTHERJOKES about switching vessels.

“I’d just run you face first into a barn.”

“At least in my case BEFORE BARN and AFTER BARN would differ in appearance.”

“For the barn.”

“You’d scare off the barn. …No, seriously though, to be fair—we both would scare off the barn.”

“AHAHAHAHA! In the dead of night the barn screamed in mortal terror!”

“LOCAL BARN SEEN FLEEING NE’ER-DO-WELL MARRIS BROTHERS! BANSHEE QUEEN FIGURES THIS STUPIDITY WAS INEVITABLE!”

Ah, bros.

(Orithos is younger by two years but taller by five inches.)

[elfyourmother]

every time I hit my head and click to view a WoW post (cuz I have it blacklisted) and find out whatever tf is going on now with that story it makes me want to go back and finish Heart of the Phoenix but then I remember why I lost the heart to do it

it’s not just that I got tired of fighting upstream against the gushing tide of bullshit continuously pouring out of cdev, it’s also that their gross incompetence in writing has radicalized the fandom to the point that I don’t think there’s an audience anymore for my fan work, even if I could get back into the headspace to write Kael and Illidan and Vashj adventures again

It’s also that cdev being the way they are, with their biases, have fueled so much bitterness and resentment with the fandom. understandably, but it’s like an ouroboros of negativity and rancid vibes. I’ve never seen a fandom so starkly divided as WoW ppl, and yes the nature of the setting pretty much encourages it, but I don’t just mean Horde v Alliance shit here. not even bioware ppl fight and get up to the kind of heinously bad faith and stupid character disk horse I’ve seen w WoW players. it’s always grossly personal, it never stays about the characters, any time some boneheaded story decision gets made it’s always cdev “pandering to” fans of whichever character they can’t stand, whichever enemy faction of this fractious player base they personally hate. you could make madlibs of it at this point. looking at it from the outside is just...a lot, honestly.

I fell in love with all the characters in WC3 because they were nuanced and flawed and three dimensional, for all they were isometric polygons on the screen. In general there are very few characters in that setting I outright hate, and even the tiny handful I do, I find incredibly fascinating and want to explore with an even hand (eg. Maiev). They are all messy and flawed and painfully human (even the ones who aren’t). Arthas’ fall from grace remains one of my favorite storylines in anything ever just as one example, and in the current environment I can’t say shit like that without being derisively dismissed as “Arthas fangirl” and thus everything I say is suspect and I have nothing of value to add. I’m just one of “them”. And assuredly not the Sylvanas Stan I’ve always been because how could I love them both so much?

I’m not even angry anymore about anything I hear, just depressed. because in this environment who tf is interested in nuanced character portraits? who’s interested in anyone fleshing out motivations and exploring flaws and folk being, idk, adults? Christ I got enough harassment from that deranged little poodle who kept getting himself banhammered from every LJ WoW community back in the day and sent me daily hate mail about how I was an Illidan apologist. And that was years and years before Redemption Arc Discourse seized every fandom ever by the tits and refused to let go, much less this one

there’s just no place for me and my take on that world, is what it comes down to, and hasn’t been in years.

[dandelionofthanatos]

perhaps he needs a cup of ye-tea

For whatever random reason, when it’s snowing like heck, I keep thinking of TEH LICH KING and how bloody OP he was.

I mean--

https://www.wowhead.com/object=192651/damaged-apprentice-journal#comments

This is Ner’zhul alone, and his psionic presence is such that it fucks up local weather and causes dangerous cold fronts. What the actual fuckbiscuits.

https://www.wowhead.com/item=37540/the-diary-of-high-general-abbendis

And there’s this as well once Arthas gets in on the scary helmet antics, which is--ABBENDIS YOU NINNY, THAT’S NOT THE LIGHT THAT’S A YETI TROLLSOVEREIGN FROM HELL. (This whole plot arc is just....damn, it’s hilariously mean of Arthas to just apparently de-prioritize or even decide to abandon whatever he was doing and LET MAL’GANIS have the few survivors of the Onslaught for shits and giggles. But it makes sense--”What’s with these Crusaders, what are they--oh, OH. That’s HILARIOUS. Hey, Mal’Ganis, hi, fancy meeting you again! Ugly as ever, I see, and just as overconfident. No, I’m not going to try to stop you DIABOLICAL SCHEMES--it’s funnier if I don’t. Go on, train up those priests of yours, have fun--they’ll all be mine in the end, and then you will feed my blade. Have a nice night!” )

[dandelionofthanatos]

I still love this art of LK!Arthas from the DK comic. (It inspired Aurora’s description of him as having Yeti Hands and generally being a Yeti, because WoW guys are too huge to even be bears! Thus, YETI!)

He is just chilling out watching the Acherus hootenanny sparring (specifically Koltira and Thassarian) whilst he does This.

Y’know.

While he just does This Thing.

😆

[dandelionofthanatos]

“Evenbrooke, what in the world are you doing,” Koltira inquired.

Ishandarr paused mid-motion and said, “Footworking a crankless ice-cream maker full of White Ironforge Peaks ingredients around the yard in the snow to make a semifreddo kind of a thing, which I’m using my runic frost to make happen at all because otherwise two of three ingredients don’t freeze.”

“That’s absurd and it sounds delicious,” Koltira said, expression somber but eyes alight with mirth. “Do you have a second freezer? One might make Rocky Ironforge Peaks sorbet thus, and people who aren’t as fond of milk could enjoy that,”

“Koltira,” Ishandarr said, “that’s just brilliant. Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Have an inadequate amount of coffee liqueur dessert, that’s what.” Koltira strode over. “I’ll finish up this ice cream nonsense, you attend to the sorbet.”

“Aye, sir.”

“You’re one of few I trust to make adequate sorbet.”

“I shan’t let you down.”

[elfyourmother]

“Try the Light, not me, because I throw hands” is the official hymn of Patriarch Brightblade’s Blood Knights and no one can tell me otherwise

[dandelionofthanatos]

I am ALWAYS GOING TO ADORE how the long Wrath of the Lich King title track song segues from a lot of Northrend thematic tunes into the Sin’dorei leitmotifs (KAEL ❤️), and then to Illidan’s theme before bursting out into the game’s bombastic Warcrack Latin theme itself...and then receding into that frosty minor key all ominously.

Like. Frick. It’s GREAT. I know the intention is “the passage of time through game expacs” but my brain loves to conjure up images of forges and engineering during the anvil-heavy-percussion section and then glide over Eversong like raven-Medivh to meet up with everyone in Silvermoon and ffffffffff

Someday I’m going to write out a script thing with time stamps XDDD

[dandelionofthanatos]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX2EyHxfarA

The first melody of this video is one of my favourite pieces of music in the WHOLE DAMN WoW. First at the Tourney, then at Light’s Hope. It reminds me of Evey, of Ishan (listen to the flute and imagine him playing--he stands like Ian Anderson), of Tirion.