Digital Alterity

I don’t think I could say it any better than Rogue already did in “Quicksilver”:

I’m taking back my love, taking back my pride,
taking back my dreams and my life.
This is the ground I will defend.
A rage of angels bears the end.

I’m taking back my hope, taking back my goals,
taking back my memories and my soul.
This brand is forged to my crusade —
Quicksilver, the future belongs to the brave.

Things are going to get better. I’m going to make them better with nothing more than rage-filled determination, if that’s what it takes. Life is too short. Life is too precious. I’m not going to live someone else’s idea of a comfortable life. I’m not going to numb myself with food and apathy. I’m not going to just sit down and cry about what I can’t have or can’t be.

The future begins right now.

Dear Ganking Wannabe Wankstas,

While I’m working on my Loremaster achievement, the lowbie zones are under my protection. I will not stand by idly while you kill quest givers that my lower-level friends and I need. I understand that killing low-level NPCs and any lowbies who flag makes you feel like a big, bad PVP star, but I will make you feel like the sad wanker you truly are.

I don’t care about your stuns. I can outlast them. I don’t care about your burst damage. I’m a PVE tank with enough health to laugh at you. Frankly, you’re not even all that good at PVP. That’s why you’re out in Brill or Crossroads in the first place.

These lowbies are under my protection. I will think nothing of corpse camping you. When you try to run away, I will mount up and follow you. I will hit you with everything I’ve got. I will stun you at 1000 HP just so that you can take a moment to look your coming death in the eyes, you coward.

I am a soldier of Orgrimmar. We eat our meat raw, and we don’t run from a fight. For the Horde!

Love and kisses,
Mugwort

1. My orc shaman Rokhar is now the troll Zulkhar.
2. Yes, I know I change my characters a lot.
3. No, it’s really not a problem.
4. For RP purposes, this is a different person, a troll that Rokhar rescued and served as a mentor for. This explains why their names are so similar.
5. Mugwort is currently my main.

Yet another back story for one of my World of Warcraft characters. Bargor is the sort of character that would be really conducive to playing in a D&D group. He’s team-oriented and has a lot of history without being disruptive.

“Mugwort” is actually the nickname of Bargor Corpsehammer, a soldier of Orgrimmar and single-father. Bargor and his wife Chok’la joined with the orcish forces to help repel the Scourge after the orcs fled to Kalimdor (i.e. during the events of Warcraft 3). Chok’la was killed in the fighting, leaving their young son Guksal with only Mugwort to care for him.

During the time of relative peace that followed, Bargor earned an extremely meager living as a day laborer gathering herbs. Upon realizing that he didn’t have enough money for Guksal to be educated, Bargor joined the military and used his stipend to put Guksal into boarding school at the Orgrimmar Orphanage.

During his first tour of duty as a guard in Ashenvale, he earned his botanical nickname by picking flowers and herbs to sell when he returned to Orgrimmar for leave. Using his son’s old schoolbooks, Mugwort taught himself to read and write well enough to earn some extra money as a scribe during his off hours. Mastering the written word has given Mugwort a love for writing long letters home to his son, a past-time he frequently indulges in while other soldiers go out drinking.

Mugwort looks forward to the day when he can retire from active duty and return home to open his own business and take care of his son.

1. Roll up an Alliance alt of a new character class that I haven’t really tried before so that I can “see the Alliance quests”.
2. Play the character up to level 20-30 and really start enjoying the class.
3. Think to myself, “I miss being with my guild. I wish I had an alt of this class on the Horde side.”
4. Wistfully roll an alt of said character class — usually an orc — on a dumping ground RP server.
5. Play said alt up to level 5 or so.
6. Wonder why I didn’t start the alt as an orc in the first place.
7. Delete a character to make an orcish version of said character class “just to hang with my guildmates”.
8. Forget about the Alliance version until it gets deleted to make room for yet another orcish alt.

If I’m to be a narrative, I shall be the kind of narrative that I enjoy — largely pointless with little deliberate attempt at theme, with clear continuity, yes, but a continuity so largely irrelevant that you’re left questioning how the obvious character development ever actually happens.

I’m often possessed by an urge to go dancing. There. Now, I’ve outed myself. I can’t listen to anything by Crüxshadows, Moby, or The Smiths without wishing for a club where they played nothing but such music all night long. I dream of dancing by myself out there on the darkened dance floor like some kind of drunken, gleeful fool with all of the glee and none of the drunkenness.

I want to connect with the music in a physical way. I love listening to music with my eyes closed, so that I can focus every bit of my attention on each of the layers in the sound. I love pondering the lyrics in a way that leaves my mind’s eye free to conjure up images that synthesize into a pure and wonderful gestalt. The only way I can imagine making this any better is to allow my body to move with that imagination, to elevate the sublime experience into an even higher and more vital experience.

I never picture myself dancing with anyone else. I want to dance with the music itself. Catholics have Communion. Muslims have their daily prayers. This would be my communion with something larger than myself, my own private altar call, my chance to be completely surrounded and enveloped by the music that connects with me with a larger humanity, a kinetic koan pointing toward a higher, more vital truth than language could ever express.

I wouldn’t care that I’m fat. I wouldn’t care about the gender constraints that say that straight men aren’t allowed to enjoy dancing. I wouldn’t care whether I looked silly because I have no idea how I’m supposed to dance. I would dance my heart out and not care who knew it.

And on that day, I would revolutionize the fucking world.

“Don’t you fucking understand, Fordring?! We’ve failed!”

Hemlock felt the rage, the bestial wrath, welling up inside him, and he felt no urge to stop it. His heart began beating faster, a tribal drum summoning the darkest violence in his heart. He took the tiny ring the dying crusader had given him and threw it directly at the paladin with enough force to make Tirion Fordring wince as it hit him in the face.

“Bridenbrad is dead, paladin. All your precious Light could do was offer was a light show. He died all the same.”

The rage was no comfort. Nothing could shake the paladin in front of him. Those damned calm and accepting eyes…That look of understanding concern on his pale human face…Hemlock wanted to punch him squarely in the face if that’s what it took to get a reaction from the aging paladin. Did he care so little for his comrade that he could face his death with such a lack of passion?

Hemlock fought shoulder-to-shoulder with Crusader Bridenbrad in the fight at Crusaders’ Pinnacle as the Scourge attacked in countless waves. The still forms of the beaten undead fell at their feet in numbers sufficient for Hemlock use them as cover as he burned down the ghouls with a frenzy of rifle shots. When the vyrkul came, Bridenbrad didn’t even hesitate. He leapt after them with his giant warhammer held high, drawing the beasts’ attention and shielding the other defenders with his very body.

Was that when disease first took hold? Did some ghoul bite him in that struggle, infecting his blood with the ichor of undeath? Or did the infection take place later during his honorable actions during the siege at the Broken Front, when Bridenbrad singlehandedly drug a dozen of his unconscious fellows back into territory held by the Crusade? If he had fallen in either of those battles, it would have been an honorable death – a warrior’s death! Warriors didn’t have to turn frail. Warriors didn’t have to cough their very life fluids out onto the frozen snow. Warriors didn’t have to have their very strength eaten from the inside.

Damn Arthas! And damn the humans that spawned him!

Hemlock sank into a crouch in the cold snow, and his wolf Fenrir licked at his green fingers sympathetically.
When Fordring calmly picked up the fallen signet ring, Hemlock wanted to strangle him. When the aging paladin calmly walked over to him, he could feel himself quivering with a mixture of rage and grief. When he felt the human’s hand come to rest on his broad shoulders, he wanted nothing more than to pull away from the touch, but something kept him quietly there, feeling the heat build in his face and seeing the blurriness of his own eyes as he gazed intently at absolutely nothing.

“He should have died a warrior’s death, Fordring. He should have died on his feet, dragging his foes with him to the afterlife.”

Fordring said absolutely nothing, and he made no motion to take his mailed hand off of the orc’s shoulder. The hustle and bustle of the camp seemed miles away. For one endless moment, there was only the orc, the paladin, and memory of a soldier who they had both fought so hard to save.

“You will take this ring, Hemlock. You’ll take it, and you’ll honor Crusdader Bridenbrad’s memory. You will strike down the unliving things precisely because he can’t anymore.”

Hemlock felt his fingers reach up and grab the ring. He felt the cold metal of the ring slide down over his finger, but none of those actions felt like things he actually did. Everything felt dead and cold and pointless.
“If you stick with me, I swear to the Light – I swear on the graves of the fallen – I will point you in the direction of every cult enclave, every servant of Arthas wearing the bodies of our dead.”

Hemlock wrapped his hands around the cold steel barrel of his hunting rifle, felt the cold trigger under his index finger, and blinked away the blurry moisture in his eyes.

“And then, my orcish friend, I will stand with you as we cut down each and every one of them, so that brave men can stop fighting and dying out here in the cold. And maybe one day, soldiers like you and me will be merely the legacy of a hell that our children will never have to live through.”

They stared out over the frozen wastes, two soldiers in a war that seemed like it went on forever. The biting cold felt good. It felt numb.

After about an hour of genocide, I finally got Ashwin the gnomish warrior rogue her Red Defias Mask.

Isn’t she the cutest spy/assassin, you’ve ever seen?

I want to take a moment to thank each and every one of you who contacted me after yesterday’s post. Every single person that contacted me was positive and affirming. Some of you said that I inspired you. Some of you said simply that you loved me just the way I am and that you’re with me every step of the way. I’m saving every response as a pick-me-up on days when it seems like I can’t possibly tank what’s in front of me.

Today was the first full day confronting my problems head-on. I started my day by playing WoW for a bit and then taking a nice relaxing pre-work bath. Having successfully woken up and relaxed a bit, I started two lists that were going to serve as the focus for my day:

• Shit I’m Nervous About. These are the things that make me start feeling the stirrings of nervousness, panic, and general ickiness. These are exactly the sort of things that I would be tempted to ignore until they turn into full-blown crises. These items are officially marked with a skull. They come first in the kill order. I have to face them, and I have to make some progress on getting them out of my way. I’m allowed to delegate these tasks to someone else if I think they can help, but I absolutely cannot ignore them until they become someone else’s problem by default. Some things on this list might not even be proper tasks that can be done or things that can go away in any tangible sense. In these cases, I look deeply at them, try to figure out why they make me so nervous, and think of one tiny thing I can do to make them less scary or life-breaking.
• Shit I’d Like To Do. These are things that are either fun or that genuinely sound like an unscary but productive task. This is the easy stuff. When I feel my resolve slipping, I hop over to one of these items to build my confidence back up. I’m not scared of these tasks, so I don’t feel an obligation to confront them. Some of them might even be safely ignored.

These lists are only for me. They’re not preserved for posterity. At the end of the day, I’m going to throw the damn things away. Tomorrow is going to be a completely new day with completely new lists. The quest doesn’t seem nearly as big that way.

The lists worked out great today. I had six items on my “Nervous” list, and I dealt with four them before lunch. On a less tangible but still important level, I felt far more in-control today. I was actually tanking my problems on my terms instead of letting them run around my head all willy-nilly. That feeling of control goes a long way toward keeping my calm and collected.

Today, I had a lot of victories. They’re small — hell, they’re even microscopic — but they’re the trash mobs that tell me that, yes, I can complete this instance if I perform to the best of my ability.