WoW: okay so i really like the nerubians
May. 9th, 2012 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yukieThey are enormous, prim, articulate, intellectual Ancient-Egypt-y spiders and that rocks.
So this made me really happy to see. XD
I like that people remember that Anub'arak wasn't a sellout. (I'm guessing it's epic spider pride /\8/\ that makes the living Nerubians figure he is; after all, nothing could possibly outwit or outclobber Anub so he must've thrown in his lot with the bodiless oaf, right? Most improper!) And that the Nerubians are not exactly willing fandoobies like the Cult of the Damned. Nerubians are arachnid Vulcans. XD
Blizzard seems to forget this, but they've forgotten a lot of stuff when it's convenient orMetzen hit the beer bong too hardthey got lazy or they forgot and didn't bother to look things up or w/e. Which...that's going the right way to futz your way into a corner plotwise. Diamond-shattering side-eye goes here.
ANYHOW back to the Nerubians...I wish we'd seen more of them in WoW, and we had gotten to go to Azjol-Nerub. We may well in the future if they move its zone map somewhere that isn't under Northrend lol--portal it like Quel'Thalas maybe. There are still old gods kicking about after all. I DUNNO MAN LOL WISHFUL THINKING.
This is, incidentally, why Anub'arak and Co. ended up in Undercity with the (not-leaping-into-Nitezsche's-abyss-with-joyous-abandon) Forsaken when I started writing about what I thought should have happened to the Undercity hootenanny in Cataclysm; I wanted to explore the Nerubians' culture and give them a better ending than they got. And, well, this benefits the Forsaken--now they have SCIENCE!!111!, rockin' textiles, and everyone will stay the hell off their doorstep because OH GOD BIG SPIDERS OH GOD (even if the spiders are just talking philosophy or having a stroll). The Nerubians now have a nice underground place to hang out, with people who Get Their Issue, and Nerubian-brand zen will probably be a boon to the Forsaken, who are just coming out of a perpetual state of whack-them-before-they-whack-you and fear of being re-mindscrewed into soul-bound slavery.
(Aside: the fact that the Forsaken were CONSCIOUS OF THEIR ACTS IN THE SCOURGE BUT UNABLE TO ACT OF THEIR OWN WILL is terrifying as fuck to me. I was just kind of 'huh this is spooky, nice' at the Road to Damnation short story until I hit the part with the newly-undead woman attacking her husband and KT realizing she is aware of what she is doing, does not want to be doing it, and cannot stop. Then I rolled my chair back and went 'OH MY GOD D8')
I like redemption stories. I like recovery stories. I like rebuilding. I don't find the handling of the Forsaken in Cataclysm to be especially interesting, creative, appealing, logical (from a plot development standpoint--really, they are headed for one hell of a *cough* dead end), or fun to write about. If it had been executed well, I might have tolerated it, but as it is, I reject it because nearly everything about it was lazy, hamhanded, offensive and ill-thought-out. Frankly, I think they just made the choices they did to try to make Garrosh seem less the asshole. Alas they ran headlong into obnoxious-and illogical-doucheterrier land without pants in doing so.
I prefer not to enter said territory, so now the Forsaken have big zen spiders amid their population, Sylvanas has a snark/snark/zen advisor triad (Nathanos, Koltira and Anub'arak respectively), Lilian decides to live in Undercity and finds that she is treated like a person and a skilled ally here rather than the weapon the Scarlets saw her as, Sylvanas is not malevolently loopy and was ninja-ing around to keep an eye on Lilian, the Val'kyr can and do only res the restless dead (because come the fuck on, not even NER'ZHUL could yank a soul back from the afterlife, THE PLAGUE OF UNDEATH LOCKS THE SOUL WITHIN THE BODY AND FROSTMOURNE STORES THE SOULS OF THOSE SLAIN BY IT, like are we not THINKING) and those who just want to DIE PROPERLY and have a decent burial get both of those (which is why Brill's graveyard is fuckhuge), and...well, Andorhal meets a grim fate, being reduced to rubble when the Scourge decides to go O HAI and then Koltira and Thassarian deliver a joint wtfpwn. But that's about it. There is no stupid brainwshing for no reason. There is no pointless sludgy plague field that serves no purpose except to make tasteless problematic analogies; there is a research facility in Durnholde Keep where the Forsaken, Goblins and Nerubians faff around with SCIENCE!!1!11 and where the plague-immune seeds that're used to help initiate regrowth within the Dead Scar and EPL come to be.
At the end of the day...not every ending has to be happy, of course, but let's not get hung up on the erroneous idea that relentless crapsack grimdark somehow makes a story more ~*adult and realistic*~. I like redemption, but I don't make it easymode for those seeking redemption. Recovery is hard; I am a survivor of some fantabulous bullshit, and though it might pale in comparison to what others went through, it screwed me up and I am to this day rebuilding inside me what others broke on purpose 'for my own good', what others continue to think was perfectly justified. (This is why I Have A Fucking Big Problem with canon!Varian's frantically-stanning shallow apologist types who, much like Knaak, labour under the mistaken impression that any action by a 'hero' is 'heroic', and the people who think Aggra is in any way good for Thrall. People who act like this around me can expect to see exactly how that treatment fucks a person up.)
Rebuilding is hard as shit, and I will make that fact clear in my writing.
So this made me really happy to see. XD
I like that people remember that Anub'arak wasn't a sellout. (I'm guessing it's epic spider pride /\8/\ that makes the living Nerubians figure he is; after all, nothing could possibly outwit or outclobber Anub so he must've thrown in his lot with the bodiless oaf, right? Most improper!) And that the Nerubians are not exactly willing fandoobies like the Cult of the Damned. Nerubians are arachnid Vulcans. XD
Blizzard seems to forget this, but they've forgotten a lot of stuff when it's convenient or
ANYHOW back to the Nerubians...I wish we'd seen more of them in WoW, and we had gotten to go to Azjol-Nerub. We may well in the future if they move its zone map somewhere that isn't under Northrend lol--portal it like Quel'Thalas maybe. There are still old gods kicking about after all. I DUNNO MAN LOL WISHFUL THINKING.
This is, incidentally, why Anub'arak and Co. ended up in Undercity with the (not-leaping-into-Nitezsche's-abyss-with-joyous-abandon) Forsaken when I started writing about what I thought should have happened to the Undercity hootenanny in Cataclysm; I wanted to explore the Nerubians' culture and give them a better ending than they got. And, well, this benefits the Forsaken--now they have SCIENCE!!111!, rockin' textiles, and everyone will stay the hell off their doorstep because OH GOD BIG SPIDERS OH GOD (even if the spiders are just talking philosophy or having a stroll). The Nerubians now have a nice underground place to hang out, with people who Get Their Issue, and Nerubian-brand zen will probably be a boon to the Forsaken, who are just coming out of a perpetual state of whack-them-before-they-whack-you and fear of being re-mindscrewed into soul-bound slavery.
(Aside: the fact that the Forsaken were CONSCIOUS OF THEIR ACTS IN THE SCOURGE BUT UNABLE TO ACT OF THEIR OWN WILL is terrifying as fuck to me. I was just kind of 'huh this is spooky, nice' at the Road to Damnation short story until I hit the part with the newly-undead woman attacking her husband and KT realizing she is aware of what she is doing, does not want to be doing it, and cannot stop. Then I rolled my chair back and went 'OH MY GOD D8')
I like redemption stories. I like recovery stories. I like rebuilding. I don't find the handling of the Forsaken in Cataclysm to be especially interesting, creative, appealing, logical (from a plot development standpoint--really, they are headed for one hell of a *cough* dead end), or fun to write about. If it had been executed well, I might have tolerated it, but as it is, I reject it because nearly everything about it was lazy, hamhanded, offensive and ill-thought-out. Frankly, I think they just made the choices they did to try to make Garrosh seem less the asshole. Alas they ran headlong into obnoxious-and illogical-doucheterrier land without pants in doing so.
I prefer not to enter said territory, so now the Forsaken have big zen spiders amid their population, Sylvanas has a snark/snark/zen advisor triad (Nathanos, Koltira and Anub'arak respectively), Lilian decides to live in Undercity and finds that she is treated like a person and a skilled ally here rather than the weapon the Scarlets saw her as, Sylvanas is not malevolently loopy and was ninja-ing around to keep an eye on Lilian, the Val'kyr can and do only res the restless dead (because come the fuck on, not even NER'ZHUL could yank a soul back from the afterlife, THE PLAGUE OF UNDEATH LOCKS THE SOUL WITHIN THE BODY AND FROSTMOURNE STORES THE SOULS OF THOSE SLAIN BY IT, like are we not THINKING) and those who just want to DIE PROPERLY and have a decent burial get both of those (which is why Brill's graveyard is fuckhuge), and...well, Andorhal meets a grim fate, being reduced to rubble when the Scourge decides to go O HAI and then Koltira and Thassarian deliver a joint wtfpwn. But that's about it. There is no stupid brainwshing for no reason. There is no pointless sludgy plague field that serves no purpose except to make tasteless problematic analogies; there is a research facility in Durnholde Keep where the Forsaken, Goblins and Nerubians faff around with SCIENCE!!1!11 and where the plague-immune seeds that're used to help initiate regrowth within the Dead Scar and EPL come to be.
At the end of the day...not every ending has to be happy, of course, but let's not get hung up on the erroneous idea that relentless crapsack grimdark somehow makes a story more ~*adult and realistic*~. I like redemption, but I don't make it easymode for those seeking redemption. Recovery is hard; I am a survivor of some fantabulous bullshit, and though it might pale in comparison to what others went through, it screwed me up and I am to this day rebuilding inside me what others broke on purpose 'for my own good', what others continue to think was perfectly justified. (This is why I Have A Fucking Big Problem with canon!Varian's frantically-stanning shallow apologist types who, much like Knaak, labour under the mistaken impression that any action by a 'hero' is 'heroic', and the people who think Aggra is in any way good for Thrall. People who act like this around me can expect to see exactly how that treatment fucks a person up.)
Rebuilding is hard as shit, and I will make that fact clear in my writing.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-10 11:47 pm (UTC)leveling zoneculture was a huge loss and that no one ON Azeroth really seems to care because it won't help anybody murder anybody else.Also: Hello. My name's Fire. I don't have a personal journal on DW.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 04:20 am (UTC)Yeah, I can definitely see the Nerubians as Lawful Evil; they probably fall in among the range of true neutral-lawful neutral-lawful evil, with a sprinkling of blue-and-orange morality thrown in for good measure. They're a great deal of fun to write about and speculate about. Like--what we see of Azjol-Nerub is beautiful, so obviously they had a love of the arts and a sense of aesthetics. That leads me to wonder what their music was/is like, what kind of games they might have played (something like senet, or chess?), how the family/societal structure worked... I like some of the stuff in the RPG books even though they've been retconned unless otherwise stated. It's got some useful stuff to build on.
Overall I try to...when I'm writing WoW stuff I'm like, "Okay what is logical for two groups of people who seriously don't like each other much to do when a big bad is bearing down on their faces, and nobody is being used as a random plot lever?" or "Taking prior characterization into account and ignoring arbitrary decisions made by devs hitting the beer bong with enthusiasm, what is X person/Y group/Z faction liable to do?" My interpretations may diverge from others' but I will back them up at least. (For example, the Forsaken going science-happy is based on the architecture you see in Northrend and now Brill, and the prevalence of purple stuff on those rather Burtonesque quirky buildings. Purple is an expensive colour if you're using straight up plant or shellfish pigment; there are probably magically-augmented dyes but those might fade without application of magic to refresh them. So I looked at the purple and thought, 'what if somebody was trying to invent a better beaker-cleaner and discovered mauveine?' And then there were the goblins, and I remembered the Nerubians being on Sylvanas's team in The Frozen Throne...and so it went. XD)
no subject
Date: 2012-05-13 08:23 pm (UTC)...I'm actually also a little sad that they changed the Forsaken architecture away from the old Lordaearean models. It always made more sense to mean that dead humans would still build like they always did. The Dr. Frankenstein apothecary stuff is cool too but... All of my Lordaeron nostalgia. Let me show you it.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-17 12:24 am (UTC)Lordaeron nostalgia ftw XD It would have been cool if they put all the Gothlicious little frills on the existing Lordaeron houses...