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

In game-canon these either made me bored (Theradras and Zaetar) or were obvious to me but kept being read as actually ZOMGvillainy regardless of how obviously bad one party is at lying, and the innuendo dropped by the ladies said party is talking to (Gerard and Theresa). Anyway. I don't really care what game-canon is anymore. This is how things work in Kyl's and my headcanon.

( THINGS! )

So I got round to doing the questing for Darkrider Arly and Olakin this evening, because that's how I roll (i.e. hooray for ADHD and my focus being all over the place wheeeee), and once again I got struck by how fucking fantastic a villain Arthas is.

( fangirly bollocks follows! )

Dear fanfic authors,

If you've acknowledged that XYZ Fantasy Race is coded in a way that is just Orientalist as balls, but you STILL opt to characterize them in fanfic as just this side of Ming the Merciless/Dragon Lady/Discount Jafar, you have only done half the blasted homework and need to go back to the editing desk right now before I bite you a lot.

Smooch smooch,

Someone who's really tired of people depicting WoW elves in ways that are at the root just racist (yes, it still counts if 'Elves' = 'Generic Pop-culture Stereotype Asian/Middle Eastern lololololol'), gross and issue-laden as fuck.

I mean--writing a compelling love-to-hate antagonist who's well thought out and whose portrayal is NOT steeped in grody old bigotry? Awesome. Feel free to have Fandral be as big a douche as you like, it gives your heroes a reason to fight. But there is 'douche' and then there's 'oh for fuck's sakes why did you do that'. If your villain up and starts sprouting all these Fu Manchu/Dragon Lady/Evil Vizier-esque traits that are indicated fuck-nowhere in canon, there's something going on that needs addressing. That is not interpretation anymore, that is Issues.

Srsly don't do that shit it's hacky and makes my ass twitch. :D

Okay, just to clarify...

If an author pulls any of the following shit over and over and fucking over again, I am highly unlikely to like them or any of their work.

1) Gross dumbass gender bullshit--be it taming-the-ice-queen or lady-is-a-prize or vomitworthy essentialist crud or fucky double standards or punishing someone for ~not knowing their place~ etc.
2) Normalization of abusive behaviour/victim blaming--be it that 'boys will be boys' fuckery that basically insults everybody male ever, that 'oh but they're just STRESSED' backhand crap, passing off emotional manipulation as normal etc.
3) Dunderfuck anti-LGBTQ etc. bullshit, no matter what the fuck it is.
4) More-equal-than-others shit where it's okay for the hero to be a dickyacht just because s/he's the hero and therefore any sketchy shit s/he pulls is handwaved or excused.
5) Unexamined clueless shitbrained attempted parallels to real-life situations, without any examination of the hangups that can make this go horrifically wrong and/or make this get ragingly offensive.
6) Stereotypical fuckery relating to ethnicity and culture. This encompasses the 'this one person represents their entire culture teeheez' shit, model-minority issues, and often crosses over with the humans-are-white crap that is so very very tiresome.
7) Ableist shit. This encompasses just about anything you can think of lol--the PWD naturally being evil, evil albinos amg zamg, the idea that illness or disability is a just punishment for something (see also: the idea of ~generational curses~) or that a disability is an outward manifestation of inner badness, and the usual cackhanded treatment of mental illness and of issues relating to addiction.

No, I cannot ~*just look past this*~. The older I get, the more and more it leaps out at me. And? I was taught to hunt this kind of thing down in my own work (my advertising prof was very big on not repeating past grossness) and burninate it with vigour--repeatedly if necessary. I can't help but see it now. And to see it so often in the work of quote-unquote professionals, and see it go unexamined, and see it perpetuated by people...well, that gives me rabies XD

And now you know why I skim most WoW novels and refuse to use certain authors' characters and make up my own instead, and why a lot of mainstream popular media makes me want to bite things. ;p Whee!

And! Yes! I know everyone has ingrained issues and such, because Society Is Deeply Hosey And Issueladen and we all pick up nonsense without realizing it much like socks picking up lint. The key here is whether or not you're onto yourself and examining why you did XYZ Thing. I screw up a lot, I am no paragon, but I do take the time to consider what the heck I am doing and why. The authors I get annoyed with very obviously skip this step and think everything is just hunky-dory wall-to-wall and it's ~just~ a book or a comic or something.

Well. I do not agree with that assessment. Intent isn't magical, if you elbow someone by accident it still hurts etc. Summing up--I'm gonna quote my prof here: it's rare that a piece of media is 'just' a piece of media. Everything comes from somewhere.

This came out of (a) me contemplating how different tea cultures of Azeroth would have developed (i'm going to write about that too eventually) and (b) someone asking me if the tiling patterns/geometric screeny things in Dalaran looked Ottoman to me too.

My answer: yes it does--and incidentally, this is one reason why the High Elves and Blood Elves are not universally as pallid as--well--ME when I'm drawing or writing them. (Again, the credit for my getting into thinking of this at ALL goes to my amazing girlfriend and her patience and insight and badassitude XD)

Seriously, none of their architecture is fully European in origin. Silvermoon City is not ttly zomg Euro-looking in the least, and neither is Dalaran.

(Hold on tight, guys--I'm about to hardcore art nerd all over the place.)

The primary influences seem to be Byzantine and Mughal architecture (and the somewhat-wacky Victorian British take on these), as well as the Art Nouveau movement which was itself inspired in part by Japanese and Mughal and Arabic architecture and art.

( yukie: getting nerd all over journals since 2001~ )

Anyway. All this is what informs a lot of my depiction of Blood Elven and High Elven culture. It's also why not all of my Blood Elven or High Elven OCs are especially pallid. XD Kristios and Kleidion are the palest, about the same hue as me; Ishandarr is medium-olive-complected with freckles, Aerionn, Serhan and Isythalar are medium brown, and Lytaea is a darker copper. And Mireillie is bluish, but she's kind of also undead circa the Zerging of Lordaeron so there's that XD

SO

YEAH

there is my rationale, nerding, jargon, and DAFUQ WAS DAT XD

(ETA 2: Just to clarify - I don't think Wesley is a kitten-chasing jerk and I tend to see him the way Wheaton does - as a character who was heinously annoying to some because of bad writing, but who had potential to not be. These characters are never MEANT to be jerks or look bad, but because of reader perspective having the potential to differ VASTLY from writer intent, they do. Wesley in the show was a punk kid; Wesley-types IRL are quite another story.

What I am trying to say is: passive aggressive pot-shots at me implying that I'm some kind of bandwagon hater can go fall down a hole. XD I didn't even know there were entire fanboy hate parades; I was never active in or part of online TNG fandom. My perspective on the guy is informed by my experience as a minigeek on the sofa asking my dad what Warp 5 meant since I got into the show in medias res.)

Okay so - I've determined through my own meandering experience and the commentary and snark of friends that one of the hallmarks of a Sue/Stu/Wesley is the fact that they get to have their cake and eat it too.

It's like this: they are wish fulfillment and they often have everything the writer doesn't/didn't/wants. As such, they rarely have to follow the rules that govern other characters - there's a sliding moral scale and it usually tips in their favour. They do not have to face the consequences of their actions, and if they are punished we are 'asposedta' not like the disciplinarian. They rarely face criticism or critique and when they do we're supposed to believe that the critic is a baby-eater. Everyone else will rise against the critic and run them out of the room, at best. Usually this is the author's desire for vindication against their perceived opponents saying yo 'sup.

This is all well and good and awesome for Wesley and Wesley's author, but - it's not so much fun for the reader. It can feel voyeuristic, or exclusionary.

The bottom line is that Wesley writers don't seem to stop to think what life is like for the people who aren't Wesley.

( dah, dah, dah~ )