WoW: Trollfase dot JPEG
Aug. 28th, 2012 03:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yukieHOKAY. SO.
This is going to start out tongue-in-cheek and become more serious. I make fun of annoying douchebro "rhetoric" and closet-case dumbassery beyond this point as well as digging my elbow into the side of the sexist and homophobic antilogic such people employ.
For what it's worth, I really do like the pairing I'm on about up in here. XD And I do wish that the related in-game flipout inquestion had led to some actual character development instead of stupid plot hamfisting.
Oh well, what are you gonna do?
(In my case; write more m/m fic, because Blizzard handed this pairing to me on a platter. You can't stop the flamin' rainbows, guys. Fabulosity will reign no matter how hard you try to avoid it. XD)
Now, on with the BLUH BLUH. XD Note that I AU the hell out of Varian in my own writing because canon pisses me off, but I am discussing circa-Wrath canon Varian here.
Warning for discussion of emotional/verbal abuse within, in the context of 'this is what happened when I tried to repress things because people demanded that I do that'.
Also contains a Gurren Lagann ep7 spoiler. XD;
So it's a constant amazement to me that a particular subset of WoW-playing stupids goes all CRAICRAI WAHWAH QQ BAWW over stuff like Thassarian and Koltira, or Martek having teh hawtz for the Blood Elf twink guy (yes, he knows the guy is a guy, he refers to said b'elf as 'strapping', give your dead-meme-flogging up you whining kids), or Tholo and Anren, or Asric and Jadaar...
And they cry and they cry and they cry and they CRYYYYYYYY and they never shut up ever...
...But they're completely oblivious to the fact that, because Blizzard chose to construct Varian's backstory as they did, and they are hilariously oblivious to some things...
...Prince Anduin Wrynn basically has two dads.
He has Varian and he has Bolvar, who stepped in when the queen was killed by a flying plot device and then became the full-time dad after Varian got thief'd by a dagron.
Oh, and let's not forget Varian's grief-rabies/roaring rampage of revenge/LEEEEEROYYYYYYYY JENNNNNNKINNNNNNNNZZZZZ all over Undercity when he finds out Bolvar was killed in action--something usually only seen in media like WoW when a male character's wife or girlfriend is killed. He runs into hostile territory he has no idea what the fuck about and declares war. And his entire pissy-ass face at the Horde from that point on was basically being fuelled by this same grief-rabies (until Blizzard released the next expansion). He blames himself for Bolvar's death, too--he says as much when you bring Bolvar's shield to him, and not only that, but HE CRIES AT THIS POINT.
This is not a stock, typical-of-WoW-characters response to loss-of-bro. This is a wholly devastated guy who's lost his other half. The other person who weeps over a loss in WoW is Saurfang, with his son, and even then...his reaction is much different. It's the same depth of grief, but it's not a comic-bookish avenge-my-partner freakout.
Maybe it flew over the douchebro contingent's heads because Varian and Bolvar are butch/butch rather than butch/femme, and their homophobic little noggins cannot conceive of gay relationships that aren't butch/femme but...seriously.
SERIOUSLY.
Yeah yeah bluh bluh it's supposed to be a fraternal sort of love, Bolvar is Varian's bro, whatever. The kind of flipout Varian is depicted as having does not really HAPPEN so much in media like WoW (anime's another matter but WoW isn't anime XD). Usually if a guy loses his bro he's all I SHALL TAKE UP YOUR BLADE AND AVENGE YOOOUUUUU STOIC FACE EPIC POSE. Not INEVITABLY, not in every case...but usually. It's often a wife or a girlfriend dying that sparks the kind of RAMPAGING FLIPOUT Varian has--a perfectly fucking idiotic, completely suicidal charge into the very jaws of bitey stabby etc. etc in territory he is unfamiliar with (Blizzard's stupid mistakes aside, Varian would not know at ALL how to navigate Undercity, since Undercity is not Lordaeron's capital proper and never was synonymous or congruent--what Varian knows is the OVERCITY) because OMG MUST AVENGE OR NOTHING MATTERS, WOE RAEG, POSSIBLY ALSO WANTING TO DIE.
tl;dr men in most media of WoW's like are not allowed to express that level of emotion about other men for the most part. All kidding around aside, I'm still actually very stunned by that plot development simply BECAUSE Varian's reaction is very much the typical action-movie MY WIFE OR MY GIRLFRIEND HAS FUCKING SNUFFED IT one. (Of course it does go to duhh with his total fail at interpreting Alexstrasza, which...come on, dude, you're not that stupid.) For him to react that way over another man? Is mostly unheard-of in mainstream Western stuff. If Varian were an anime character, he'd very much be permitted to flip out or grieve over a close friend (see: TTGL, Simon being devastated by the loss of Kamina and basically wandering in stunned depressed auto-pilot mode for several days). But...that doesn't really happen so often in Western mainstream stuff.
Varian's response to Bolvar's apparent demise is not a REASONABLE response in the most dictionary sense of the word--that is, there is no intellectual reasoning going on. I've seen whiny kids try to play like it totally is, but--let's be realistic here, kiddies, and stop making excuses. VARIAN LOST HIS CRAP. HE FLIPPED HIS TACQUITO AND DID AN ACROBATIC PIROUETTE OFF THE HANDLE. That may not be a "reasonable" response but it is a realistic one. Yes, my precious kiddly-doos, men have emotions--and the harder one stomps down on those and represses them and tries to be a rock, the worse it is when they all come kerblamming out all over the floor.
Trust me on this one, this kind if effort-to-stomp-down was the root of a lot of my explodio emotional issues. Because of certain family members, I ended up labouring under the 'any emotion you show that is negative is problematic and wrong, and your positive emotions are suspect, and it is okay if people jump down your throat and make you feel like shit and verbally abuse you and take unrelated bullshit they are too cowardly to confront out on you, if they arbitrarily do not approve of your emotional reactions to any given thing'. So I tried to stomp down on almost everything, and because my emotional reactions were already amped up from the ADHD...we can imagine how well this went. To the layperson it didn't look like I was trying at all, but the layperson is a numpty and didn't realize that I was trying to slam a lid back on a pressure cooker after the lid had been blown off and embedded itself in the ceiling...
...I think my metaphor fell over...
ANYHOW. While I don't know that Varian has ADHD or whatever--if he grew up with the GUY AM STOIC ALLWUZ model he probably does the repress/BOOOOM dance. (Or he would it he was written consistently and as a person and not just --whatever he's supposed to even be any more. Knaak, go suck a rock. Suck many.)
At the end of the day, I come to this conclusion: Varian really loved Bolvar and losing him was shattering enough that running into Undercity like a Leeroy seemed like a brilliant idea. While I'm not sure how much sense the Battle for Undercity MAKES, given that Varian did at some point respect Jaina a LOT (or heartmarked at her, depends how you interpret the comeeks) and would likely eventually listen if she talked him down...it's a very shockingly irrational, unreasonable, emotionally-driven response for a male character to display. Particularly for VARIAN to display, given the toxic machismo bullshit that's been dictating how he's written.
Varian reacted in a way that is, in most Western media, typical of a guy who's lost his spouse.
Yep. Anduin has two dads, and no amount of crybaby baww or frantic backpedalling changes that. XD
This is going to start out tongue-in-cheek and become more serious. I make fun of annoying douchebro "rhetoric" and closet-case dumbassery beyond this point as well as digging my elbow into the side of the sexist and homophobic antilogic such people employ.
For what it's worth, I really do like the pairing I'm on about up in here. XD And I do wish that the related in-game flipout inquestion had led to some actual character development instead of stupid plot hamfisting.
Oh well, what are you gonna do?
(In my case; write more m/m fic, because Blizzard handed this pairing to me on a platter. You can't stop the flamin' rainbows, guys. Fabulosity will reign no matter how hard you try to avoid it. XD)
Now, on with the BLUH BLUH. XD Note that I AU the hell out of Varian in my own writing because canon pisses me off, but I am discussing circa-Wrath canon Varian here.
Warning for discussion of emotional/verbal abuse within, in the context of 'this is what happened when I tried to repress things because people demanded that I do that'.
Also contains a Gurren Lagann ep7 spoiler. XD;
So it's a constant amazement to me that a particular subset of WoW-playing stupids goes all CRAICRAI WAHWAH QQ BAWW over stuff like Thassarian and Koltira, or Martek having teh hawtz for the Blood Elf twink guy (yes, he knows the guy is a guy, he refers to said b'elf as 'strapping', give your dead-meme-flogging up you whining kids), or Tholo and Anren, or Asric and Jadaar...
And they cry and they cry and they cry and they CRYYYYYYYY and they never shut up ever...
...But they're completely oblivious to the fact that, because Blizzard chose to construct Varian's backstory as they did, and they are hilariously oblivious to some things...
...Prince Anduin Wrynn basically has two dads.
He has Varian and he has Bolvar, who stepped in when the queen was killed by a flying plot device and then became the full-time dad after Varian got thief'd by a dagron.
Oh, and let's not forget Varian's grief-rabies/roaring rampage of revenge/LEEEEEROYYYYYYYY JENNNNNNKINNNNNNNNZZZZZ all over Undercity when he finds out Bolvar was killed in action--something usually only seen in media like WoW when a male character's wife or girlfriend is killed. He runs into hostile territory he has no idea what the fuck about and declares war. And his entire pissy-ass face at the Horde from that point on was basically being fuelled by this same grief-rabies (until Blizzard released the next expansion). He blames himself for Bolvar's death, too--he says as much when you bring Bolvar's shield to him, and not only that, but HE CRIES AT THIS POINT.
This is not a stock, typical-of-WoW-characters response to loss-of-bro. This is a wholly devastated guy who's lost his other half. The other person who weeps over a loss in WoW is Saurfang, with his son, and even then...his reaction is much different. It's the same depth of grief, but it's not a comic-bookish avenge-my-partner freakout.
Maybe it flew over the douchebro contingent's heads because Varian and Bolvar are butch/butch rather than butch/femme, and their homophobic little noggins cannot conceive of gay relationships that aren't butch/femme but...seriously.
SERIOUSLY.
Yeah yeah bluh bluh it's supposed to be a fraternal sort of love, Bolvar is Varian's bro, whatever. The kind of flipout Varian is depicted as having does not really HAPPEN so much in media like WoW (anime's another matter but WoW isn't anime XD). Usually if a guy loses his bro he's all I SHALL TAKE UP YOUR BLADE AND AVENGE YOOOUUUUU STOIC FACE EPIC POSE. Not INEVITABLY, not in every case...but usually. It's often a wife or a girlfriend dying that sparks the kind of RAMPAGING FLIPOUT Varian has--a perfectly fucking idiotic, completely suicidal charge into the very jaws of bitey stabby etc. etc in territory he is unfamiliar with (Blizzard's stupid mistakes aside, Varian would not know at ALL how to navigate Undercity, since Undercity is not Lordaeron's capital proper and never was synonymous or congruent--what Varian knows is the OVERCITY) because OMG MUST AVENGE OR NOTHING MATTERS, WOE RAEG, POSSIBLY ALSO WANTING TO DIE.
tl;dr men in most media of WoW's like are not allowed to express that level of emotion about other men for the most part. All kidding around aside, I'm still actually very stunned by that plot development simply BECAUSE Varian's reaction is very much the typical action-movie MY WIFE OR MY GIRLFRIEND HAS FUCKING SNUFFED IT one. (Of course it does go to duhh with his total fail at interpreting Alexstrasza, which...come on, dude, you're not that stupid.) For him to react that way over another man? Is mostly unheard-of in mainstream Western stuff. If Varian were an anime character, he'd very much be permitted to flip out or grieve over a close friend (see: TTGL, Simon being devastated by the loss of Kamina and basically wandering in stunned depressed auto-pilot mode for several days). But...that doesn't really happen so often in Western mainstream stuff.
Varian's response to Bolvar's apparent demise is not a REASONABLE response in the most dictionary sense of the word--that is, there is no intellectual reasoning going on. I've seen whiny kids try to play like it totally is, but--let's be realistic here, kiddies, and stop making excuses. VARIAN LOST HIS CRAP. HE FLIPPED HIS TACQUITO AND DID AN ACROBATIC PIROUETTE OFF THE HANDLE. That may not be a "reasonable" response but it is a realistic one. Yes, my precious kiddly-doos, men have emotions--and the harder one stomps down on those and represses them and tries to be a rock, the worse it is when they all come kerblamming out all over the floor.
Trust me on this one, this kind if effort-to-stomp-down was the root of a lot of my explodio emotional issues. Because of certain family members, I ended up labouring under the 'any emotion you show that is negative is problematic and wrong, and your positive emotions are suspect, and it is okay if people jump down your throat and make you feel like shit and verbally abuse you and take unrelated bullshit they are too cowardly to confront out on you, if they arbitrarily do not approve of your emotional reactions to any given thing'. So I tried to stomp down on almost everything, and because my emotional reactions were already amped up from the ADHD...we can imagine how well this went. To the layperson it didn't look like I was trying at all, but the layperson is a numpty and didn't realize that I was trying to slam a lid back on a pressure cooker after the lid had been blown off and embedded itself in the ceiling...
...I think my metaphor fell over...
ANYHOW. While I don't know that Varian has ADHD or whatever--if he grew up with the GUY AM STOIC ALLWUZ model he probably does the repress/BOOOOM dance. (Or he would it he was written consistently and as a person and not just --whatever he's supposed to even be any more. Knaak, go suck a rock. Suck many.)
At the end of the day, I come to this conclusion: Varian really loved Bolvar and losing him was shattering enough that running into Undercity like a Leeroy seemed like a brilliant idea. While I'm not sure how much sense the Battle for Undercity MAKES, given that Varian did at some point respect Jaina a LOT (or heartmarked at her, depends how you interpret the comeeks) and would likely eventually listen if she talked him down...it's a very shockingly irrational, unreasonable, emotionally-driven response for a male character to display. Particularly for VARIAN to display, given the toxic machismo bullshit that's been dictating how he's written.
Varian reacted in a way that is, in most Western media, typical of a guy who's lost his spouse.
Yep. Anduin has two dads, and no amount of crybaby baww or frantic backpedalling changes that. XD
no subject
Date: 2012-08-28 07:47 am (UTC)I think some of Varian's rage behind Bolvar's death was due to guilt over that. Arthas was his fault, and thus Bolvar was his fault, and by extension his son has to suffer yet again on account of his failure.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-28 01:48 pm (UTC)With the guilt--in the case of my guy, JESUS HELL YES. (Canon can kiss my fab arse XD) Varian straight up blames himself for Arthas going wooooo (because shouldn't he have seen something going wrong and stopped him, omfg what kind of lousy friend is he etc.) and by extension a LOT of other stuff (the fact that the Forsaken are the Forsaken (and therefore Putress going WOOBWOOBWOOB is his fault too because if the guy wasn't undead he wouldn't have gone cuckoo which means everything Putress did is Varian's fault by extension, by Varian-logic), the fact that Sylvanas is a banshee and had to watch her city get rolled over by a yeti-shaped tank, the fact that Anasterian died as well in this attack and thus Kael had to go through exactly what Varian himself did and lose his family and kingdom in one go, etc.). He basically thinks he failed everybody including Arthas in not hitting Arthas with the clue-bat ASAP, and--tl;dr yes. Bolvar died because of him and now Anduin's got to deal with more stuff no kid should ever have to and now is the time on Sprockets when Varian headdesks.
My Varian's tendency to boot himself with vigour is sort of one of the cornerstones of his awkward-as-fux interaction with the East-side Horde in Northrend (to wit: mutter, grumble, awkward shuffling), as well as his perpetual o_O; expression in re: the Defias, which has gotten even bigger now that Vanessa's OHAI'd. (and again: "dammit someone else lost their dad because I was being stupid *desk*.") It's also a huge driving force in his life--he is determined to make right/fix/mend what he can, and be a worthy king and a good dad. In some cases the guilt-trip he puts himself on gets transmuted into pure rolling-boulder "NOT SCREWING UP LIKE THIS AGAIN FIXING WHAT I BROKE HEADS UP *yeti tank*" rather than paralyzing him. If he faceplants in doing so, he'll pick himself up and try again.
And now he wants to hug Anduin and possibly also take him down to the beach for ice cream.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-28 09:40 am (UTC)Tirion should just tell him so he can go up and visit lavadude in his sparkly ice chair.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-28 01:49 pm (UTC)Varian's like O_O and Bolvar's going 'no really, not your fault, stop hating your own guts.'
no subject
Date: 2012-08-28 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-28 06:09 pm (UTC)Varian would be this amazing conglomerate of relief and uberwibble and WTF and *table flip*.