so I decided to be very silly

[yukie]

TITLE: HELLSCREAM'S LAMENT 1: Bloodthirsty Dustwallow Marsh
FANDOM: WoW
PEOPLE: Garrosh, and the advisors he's being sarcastic at.
PAIRING: None, really.
RATING: PG-ish.
WARNINGS: AU sorta-sarcasmo-Garrosh whose voice is kind of different from canon, because when I tried to suss out his voice from quests and stuff, THIS NONSENSE was the result... He also has some common sense. Mostly because Saurfang scared it into him.
NOTES: First-person semi-monologue orc shenanigans.

Presenting: Yukie's version of Garrosh, ranting about why he's never going to try for Theramore because Dustwallow Marsh wants to destroy his face like a Castlevania Bird.

There will probably be a series of these because I find this inexplicably hilarious and letting Garrosh kvetch about things is fun.

Takes place in a continuity based upon the AU what my girlfriend started. XD

Minor SPOILARS for the circumstances of the Theramore business in MoP.

--

Theramore? Yeah, I know. Tactical advantage, maybe, but it's not worth it.

Why?

Because no. It's in Dustwallow Marsh, the end. We're not going anywhere near Theramore, screw it.

...Yes, the location is extremely relevant, stupid; I wouldn't have said it if wasn't. ...What do you mean 'what do I mean'? Don't get me started.

...

...

Fine, but you asked for it, this'll take a while.

Dustwallow Marsh? Wants my blood. It does.

I'm not exaggerating, shut up.

The Marsh wants my blood and either way even if it'd be a tactical advantage if we got Theramore--and that's a HUGE 'if'--yes, 'if', what the hell, do you even think. 'If' because Proudmoore.

Yeah she's human. That's not really relevant here, and yeah I know how that sounds from ME, but, uh. Archmage, hello. She's kind of able to turn your ass into an ice cube from several hundred feet away and repeat the process as necessary with all your buddies until your army's just a bunch of ugly-as-hell ice sculptures.

And then the mosquitoes eat you.

...Yeah, through the ice, it's possible. You haven't ever seen one of these things, they're huge. it's not natural. Hell, none of the bugs there are natural! Mosquitoes the size of my thumbnail, little gnat things so small that bug netting's a joke, freaky pinching water beetles, and giant roach creatures. From the most freakish dregs of the Nether. That HISS. Try finding one of those in your boot in the morning and then tell me I'm being a coward.

They are six inches long, all right? And they hiss. I can deal with scorpions, I draw the line at roaches hissing in my damn boots in the morning. If you want to go rent out your footwear to giant insects, be my guest, but you're not getting any backup from me, and I'm just going to laugh when you run screaming out into the marsh and sink.

Oh, speaking of sinking. Siege engines in a marsh. ...Let me repeat that. Siege engines. In a marsh. Remember what a pain in the ass it was to get the tanks going on the sandy damn soil around Nasam? How the wheels just sank, and using the catapult made the damn things tilt like they were drunk? Imagine that and multiply it by about sixteen, then add hissing roach creatures and mosquitoes the size of your thumbnail. And little gnat things flying in your eyes all the time. What I'm trying to say is--if we try to approach from the land, the siege engines will sink into the swamp.

Unless Proudmoore sets them on fire first, in which case they'll burn down, fall over and THEN sink into the swamp. While the bugs eat us.

And they WILL.

...Yeah, 'options', whatever you say. The other two 'options' we have are about as good as land. Air? That's a joke. Zeppelin, ice on the wings, crash and die and explode. You haven't see how far Proudmoore can chuck a frostbolt. And hers are huge too. Or she could just go 'hey, archers, set your arrows on fire and shoot at these huge idiots in the big flammable blimp!' I'd deserve to blow up for being that stupid!

That leaves the water, and HA HA HA NO Proudmoore's basically part boat by heritage, she's from Kul Tiras originally, I know where that is, and anyway WE CAN'T SAIL.

So we'd get our ships cannoned all to hell and then be eaten by the seagulls.

The seagulls aren't natural either, they go right for your skull. And once again, you can call me a coward once you've also known the joy of having a giant gull swoop right down at your face.

Everything in Dustwallow Marsh WANTS MY BLOOD. The second I set foot in there, everything's going to go, "Oh hey it's Hellscream, LUNCH IS SERVED." The mosquitoes will just straight-up eat Gorehowl and then I'll be completely doomed. Someone will find my dehydrated bloodless corpse facedown in the road two weeks later, surrounded by fat-ass smug mosquitoes, and they'll wonder what stupid orc goes anywhere unarmed, and I'll be dead so I won't be able to tell them I didn't come unarmed, THE MOSQUITOES ATE MY AXE.

I'm not going into a losing battle. And besides, Thrall would pitch me into the Maelstrom even if it was possible for us to get anywhere with this 'invasion'. I may not be a genius, but I know suicidally-stupid plans when I see them.

Screw Theramore and screw Dustwallow Marsh. Everything in there wants to kill me. It wants my blood and it's not gonna get it.

--

End-of-fic notes: Garrosh calls Jaina by her surname only because she's the equivalent of the clan head and apparently that's what you do when you're talking to or about a clan head. Even if you don't like them and they hurt your head. XD

Comments

[silverr]

Hehe, I literally laughed out loud at the image of mosquitoes drilling through ice to bitestab orc-butt ... and also That leaves the water, and HA HA HA NO Proudmoore's basically part boat by heritage.

Also him calling her Proudmoore? Makes complete sense.

[yukie]

Garrosh is one of those characters who I looked at and thought 'wow, they wasted your potential'. I mean, when he spoke differently to my character who HAD done the hero-of Nagrand thing I was like, 'Oh, okay, OKAY, I ge it, the dick act is fronting, he's trying to prove he's not an emo kid now' but then he just went straight to jerksville and I flung up my arms in exasperation and went "THAT'S IT, MAKING YOU MAKE SENSE NOW, HELLSCREAM."

And then he went and did THIS.

So I end up with this punkass whose RAR RAR LOL HAHA KICK THEIR ASSES in Northrend was out of total 'oh shit oh shit are they looking at me and seeing the wimpy emo kid I HAVE TO DISPROVE THAT CRAP OR THEY'LL LOSE FAITH IN ME AND EVERYONE WILL PROBABLY DIE oh we're screwed again aren't we NO SHUT UP BRAIN YOU ARE NOT BEING DEPRESSED AGAIN COME ON.' And who has stupid angerpony frenemy punching matches with Varian sometimes. (Those two are still kind of stupid at each other, but not suicidally offensively so! So at Ulduar there wasn't so much a dumbass brawl as there were an increasingly-crude bunch of obscene gestures made back and forth when Thrall and Jaina weren't looking.)

tl;dr he turned out kind of different from canon (lol understatement) because I was determined not to use him as a plot button. So I started trying to write him, and he started doing this. LOUDLY XD

He does the surname thing with Varian too; Varian, who speaks orc pretty well (i.e. gets how the social customs work), isn't terribly offended. The snarky 'your highness' is right some annoying though. (...And yeah that happened too, Stormwind is apparently Canada's east coast... :B Westfall looks like a crispier New Brunswick it's not my fault aa. XD)

[silverr]

*laughs*

"RAR RAR LOL HAHA KICK THEIR ASSES in Northrend was out of total 'oh shit oh shit are they looking at me and seeing the wimpy emo kid I HAVE TO DISPROVE THAT CRAP OR THEY'LL LOSE FAITH IN ME AND EVERYONE WILL PROBABLY DIE oh we're screwed again aren't we NO SHUT UP BRAIN YOU ARE NOT BEING DEPRESSED AGAIN COME ON.' "

Yeah, actually I'll even give Bliz the BotD and posit that this might have been what they were trying to do in canon, too. Only they didn't get there.

(I do have to say that as much as I dislike canon!Garrosh, I will give him a few - FEW! - points for making Org look more .. like the capital city of the faction.)

[yukie]

Yeah, it looks like a dropped plot thread/character direction exploration. Much like the Chained Essence of Eranikus one was, and the Missing Diplomat. And Timolain's phylactery. XD (Can we tell I've been nomming on old podcast archives? I started to play at the very end of Wrath and didn't become a regular until Cata, but I stumbled on a whole slew of WCRadio archives and wow. The game has changed a hell of a lot. But some things are still the same--no one knows WTF the unique cave in Silithus is for.)

Word on Orgrimmar too. He shoulda been an architect! XD

I can't see canon!Garrosh and canon!Varian as characters any more, they're just sort of plot buttons with feet. :s I don't like either of them, I don't like that Sylvanas's character was fucked aorund to make Garrosh look better and an entire faction took a senseless heel-turn (no, the Forsaken aren't nice people much--but they're not STUPID ENOUGH TO DIG THEIR OWN GRAVES and I'd think they'd probably ditch Putress's work out of HATING him for almost getting their queen killed)--seriously anyone who finds that character "development" plausible needs to go play WC3 and TFT again, go play the Lady's Necklace quest and the B'elf starting zone, and THEN try to argue with me.

They WILL lose.

ANYHOW. Yeah. Cata just got the AU-engine going at hyperspeed. XD

[silverr]

the unique cave in Silithus is for

Both the one by Staghelm point and the one south of the druidy ruins place had quests - is there a third one somewhere I'm not remembering?

plot buttons with feet.

THIS. Great phrase.

Sylvanas's character was fucked around to make Garrosh look better

Really?

(Speaking only for myself - it didn't work.)

[yukie]

There's one at the very southern tip of Silithus if you fly over the mountains; there used to be a Tauren camp in front of it, but there's not any more because idk. XD;

in re: Sylvanas, that's my best guess as to why she suddenly went cray-cray, I can honestly see no other reason why they would do that whole 'amg zamg she done came back wrong'. (Unless that quest line was supposed to go somewhere else and they just kind of ~forgot~ about it like they did Abyssal Maw and Path of the Titans. I'm hoping that's the case, because if it's not they probably wrote Koltira out specifically because fanon sees he and Thass as queer. If that is indeed the case, I'm going to take a page out of my maternal grandma's book and whack Metzen with a flip-flop hard until he repents. ;p) There's that big scene where Garrosh calls her a bitch and we're supposed to be all OOOOHHHH or something. Like we're supposed to be impressed and go OH HE HAS MORALS HE'S A GOOD LEADER. (And then he doesn't do anything else.) See also the dirigible-pwning scene that's come to nothing as well.

I dunno, maybe I'm just being cynical and jumping to conclusions but it wouldn't be the first time they've taken someone very OOC to make another character look better (see Varian's pat-the-dog moment in re: Dranosh, there's zero reason why Muradin would get in Saurfang's way). So...thinking about it, it's either (a) trying to make Garrosh look better or (b) another questline they just kind of dropped.

MY BUT I'M CRABBY THIS MORNING ew XD;; Storm kept me up, I got like three hours of sleep...

[silverr]

they probably wrote Koltira out specifically because fanon sees he and Thass as queer.

Sadly, I agree. Corpsegrinder wins again.

I can honestly see no other reason why they would do that whole 'amg zamg she done came back wrong'.

What about ivorytower's cracky hypothesis - "What if the part of the Lich King previously known as Ner'zhul had jumped ship to Sylvanas?" I came across that idea when I was writing Distress and found it so intriguing that I wound up kinda-sorta putting in some very subtle hints along that line.

So...thinking about it, it's either (a) trying to make Garrosh look better or (b) another questline they just kind of dropped.

Who knows. Probably both. It's things like that that make question the degree of communication between the high-level long-term story architect(s) and the rank and file quest designers. I can understand not wanting to print out forty-leven copies of the WoW Bible ("Buy it Now, $1500 USD!") but it just doesn't feel like there's even a coherent vision in someone head.

[yukie]

I like IT's idea! It makes a hell of a lot of sense. it removes bullshit misogyny from the equation!

I just doubt many of the writers are smart enough to have made that the plot point.

oh snap

Elitist bitch, me? Always. *DK-Arthas grin*


*cough* But, yeah, a lot of the Silverpine-Hillsbrad-WPL stuff is very 'the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing'. We go from 'free will is sacrosanct' to 'wtf Andorhal?' with nothing in the middle. Maybe there was something in beta, I don't know. Maybe something got dropped or changed. But as it is, it's just - wert der ferk. I haven't seen that kind of whiplash since I dropped out of Buffy-watching in the last two seasons. "WHAT THE SHIT JUST HAPPENED WHAT IS THE CONTEXT FOR THIS EVEN oh I give up" etc.

I keep writing the whole fiasco as 'dreadlords are angry at sylvanas. a lot of dark rangers died in the battle for undercity. nathrezim necromancy is weak sauce; that which animates the DKs is not. we have a brewing problem here.' Just because I like big whodunnits and sneaky fucking Nathrezim. (And tormenting Balnazzar with his minions... "Stop calling me Dathrohan." "Yes sir, grand crusader!" "*swearing in eredun*")

Sylvanas has an actual reason to cosplay, too! (That is: finding Lilian without worrying that Lil might have been mentally programmed to murder/suicide on spotting Sylvanas.)

I am just so crabby, lol. It's like, I don't pretend Sylvanas and Co. are warm and fuzzy but the vilification of a bunch of people who are basically the closest thing in game to people with disabilities is...mmmyeah. I've gone on long rants about this before but I won't tl;dr any more XD

[silverr]

Heh, and here I was going to say it felt far more X-files/Pretender than Buffyverse (which for me still amazes at the sense of long-term planny cohesion... which might or might not be there, but it feels non-random and hangs together.

(aw, not a fan of S6 and S7? I just finished my umpteenth watch-through of the series, and S7 once again made me a puddle. But then I'm fond of Spike/Spike's character arc.)

And ... crab away, m'dear. ~ If nothing else you'll keep my sluggish and decaying WoW neurons active long enough for me to finish this areyougame prompt. :p

[yukie]

HAHAHA it does feel like X-Files! I wanted to say that it did but I was going, '...okay balls am I cross-WTFing things in my head again?'

And--yeah, idk, I sort of lost interest when what's-his-ass the jerkface third nerd became the big bad. I don't ecall what season exactly that was, but yeah. He felt like a square peg genre-wise (wtf robots, and how is his ass not grass yesterday, why are we tying plot knots to stop the inevitable beat down, stop that), and well...I started to feel somewhat embarrassed about watching it, like 'okaaaay this guy is a direct expy of somebody's douchebucket ex, only up to eleven...' Also, weakassedness of killing Tara.

That's a hugely personal thing, I know, and subjective as heck to boot! I won't judge anyone for liking stuff I don't like (I like pineapple on pizza, I have no room to talk about anything ehehehe), I just started going 'nnnggghhh' at some point in time...

(I could just be picky, I didn't like Reilly Finn much either... I think I -am- just picky! XD)

*encourages your neurons!*

...

Dangit now I really want to write something and I don't know what XD

[silverr]

yeah ... I almost didn't make it through S6 tbh, but it set the low end of the Vernier scale and thus made S7 just a million times more wunnerful.

Anyhow, if you want to nudge the muse, here are three places to look at prompts:

pinboard from fic_promptly:
http://pinboard.in/u:fic_promptly/t:worldofwarcraft/

Wowprompts from female_fest (but there are a LOT of interesting ones in other fandoms as well):
Warcraft/World of Warcraft, Jaina, the hidden source of her magic
Warcraft/World of Warcraft, Maiev and Naisha, before The War of the Ancients
Warcraft/World of Warcraft, Sylvanas, among the banshee
Warcraft/World of Warcraft, the Windrunner sisters, an idyllic childhood that still presaged all that was to come
Warcraft/World of Warcraft, Liadrin, leaving the priesthood behind
Warcraft/World of Warcraft, Uta the Beast, how she got her nickname
Warcraft/World of Warcraft, Greatmother Geyah, what she sees is not always what she tells


areyougame claiming post
http://areyougame.dreamwidth.org/107532.html

[yukie]

omg, squee, I love all of those.

The mental image of Alleria and Sylvanas being adorable kids and getting full of leaves and grass and mud aaaa. XD

And even if I don't like Maiev much (for the same reasons I don't like Javert much, ehehe), her and Naisha are cute as hell XD

*PLOTS*

[silverr]

*grins* Huzzah for plots!

(And I hear you on Maiev ... I think there's a lot of potential there, character-wise, for showing how a solid, decent, {passionate? devoted?], loving woman's world curdled and collapsed in on itself like a neutron star, and became this single, deadly, intense point of focus.)

[yukie]

Maiev is like--I know a bunch o' people in law enforcement and she reminds me a lot of the 'thin blue line' types I've been told about, the ones who become their job.

Heck--her *BOSS BOSS BOSS* at her little bro reminds me of cop/parole officer/jail guard/corrections-and-law-enforcement-type parents too XD; "Where are you going who are you going with when are you coming back who's this person do they have a criminal record where do they live who are their parents or guardians" etc. etc. every time one goes out the door.

So already we have MADAME SUPERCOP and...she's underground all the time. ALL THE TIME. Single focus. Presumably having no sense of day/night and thus no real logical circadian rhythm and sleep schedule can't have helped much. That is SUCH a recipe for disaster. "This is my job and it's a job I am proud of, I am doing important work here, I am protecting my people and I am important to the--DAMMIT TYRANDE WTF!? PEOPLE DON'T CHANGE COME BACK HERE WITH THAT HORNED JERKASS!"

And Tyrande's like "Bleh." Only more dignified.

ANYWAY Maiev really reminds me a LOT of Javert--except that when he couldn't reconcile 'legal' and 'moral' being not the same thing, he took himself out of the equation. Maiev on the other hand...she looked at the equation, then chucked the frickin' whiteboard out the window. And then tried to hit Illidan with it.

[silverr]

Yeah, I think you're spot on.

She's always struck me as a character that a lot of people find it easy to mock/hate ... it would be nice to see someone intelligently "reverse engineer" her and show her in a happier, more balanced time of her life.

[yukie]

Maiev's--I wouldn't really want her in my house, because I kind of had bad experiences with people of that mindset, but I think it's cool that she's handled as...well, in WC3 and TFT it's not just 'omg lol crazybitch'. She's BECOME HER JOB, she's obsessed with justice and then revenge, she's basically a batman/judge dredd-gone-wrong.

tl;dr the role she's in is usually one you see a GUY in and while people are trying to make her generic crazybitch NOW, she doesn't read that way to me at all.

I wouldn't want to be in the same room as her, she'd probably class me as 'illidan only tiny and without horns' and be a huge grouch, and I'd grouch back because I don't like being drill-sergeanted! But I can draw some conclusions about her based on how she acts. I don't think she's a fundamentally bad person, but I don't dig the choices she makes. I've got some sympathy because...well...having your world view detonate HURTS. But she handled things even worse than I did. XD;;

[silverr]

"the role she's in is usually one you see a GUY in and while people are trying to make her generic crazybitch NOW, she doesn't read that way to me at all."

this.

(You're firming my resolve to finally buckle down and play WC3 and TFT :p)

[wandererriha]

XDDDD

"What could go wrong?"

"The mind boggles..."

[yukie]

Garrosh says, "And I didn't even mention the creepy-as-hell tree roots that make the trees look like they're climbing out of the marsh to eat your soul. I know they look like that because the tree grew over a log and the log rotted away but...freaky grey spider-leg trees. That's just adding insult to injury."