#tyrande and malfurion forget about illidan ALL the time

[fandomdancer]

Conflict of Purpose

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Tanistra Bladesinger is a demon hunter in the service of Illidan Stormrage. But over time, her feelings and focus on eliminating the Burning Legion have been distracted with other desires... specifically for the Lord of Outland himself. In a moment of weakness, she confesses her emotions.

A/N: The first thing that came to me was the first line of Illidan's response, and I scribbled this on a whim. I don't know if I am going to do more, or rewrite.... I'm just excited that I wrote something for the first time in months. Comments appreciated. Maybe you can help me decide to keep going or not.

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"It's quite simple, my Lord...Illidan. I love you."

The ever-increasing winds heralding the fel storm tore the words from Tanistra's lips, and whisked them past Illidan's ears into the roiling green clouds above Shadowmoon Valley. But she could tell he had heard them. She clasped her hands behind her back, trying to hide her trembling as he drew himself up tall and turned to her. There was a darkness in the pit of her stomach, a warning that she had gone too far. And yet she felt lighter, freer, with the source of her faltering concentration now out in the open.

Illidan regarded her, his thin lips pressed together, the wind fiercely pulling his black hair away from his face. She thought his fingers twitched, as though he was about to raise his hands to her, but they remained at his side. His tattooed chest swelled as he breathed in to respond.

"I did not create you to love me."

Tanistra's heart sank. But truly...had she expected anything other than this?

"I created you," Illidan continued in his deep, rich voice, "to aid me in destroying the Burning Legion. If you cannot do that, then I have no use for you, and you must reconsider your purpose as a member of the Illidari."

Tanistra's eyes stung with unshed, mortified tears. How strange it was that she could still have tears when everything around where they came from was charred and cauterized? How agonizing it was that she could feel anything other than rage and vengeance...that her heart still yearned for tender words and burning passion?

How foolish it was that she had dared to reveal this! She should have known Illidan approved of her only as a weapon...not as a woman. The demon hunters were dedicated to destroying the Burning Legion. There was no time for anything else, and she was a fool to have even considered otherwise.

She drew up, fixing her shoulders, forcing a defiant look onto her face. "M-My Lord," she said. "My purpose is as it ever was. The destruction of the Burning Legion."

Illidan said nothing, and she turned and walked towards the stairs, forcing her mind to think of her next sparring match. She descended towards the Illidari training grounds, towards her proud, precise, and passionate comrades practicing their deadly arts. And with each step she silently reminded herself that this was, after all, what she had been created for.

*~*

Illidan sat for a long moment following Tanistra's departure. He wondered, briefly, if he had been too hard on her. Perhaps exploiting her love to make her stronger was an asset he hadn't considered. He had, after all, seen the devotion Kael'thas's supporters showed. And of course...Azshara. There was little chance of him forgetting the utterly blind devotion her Highborne had shown. Devotion that had welcomed the Burning Legion into this world. Devotion that had led to the destruction of the Well of Eternity. The destruction of...of him...and Tyrande...and even Malfurion.

No, it was better to have rejected Tanistra. "Demons do not love," he murmured. "Why should we?"

He moved inside, away from the balcony and its revelations, and began considering the upcoming battle. But even as his well-honed mind constructed strategies, Tanistra kept flitting across his thoughts. He decided he would have her in the flanking group, the secret assault. She would be safer catching someone off guard.

He shook his head at the thought. Her safety need not concern him. She could take care of herself. She had proven that, time and time again.

But now she had a weakness. The softness, the desire, the vulnerability as she spoke of her heart. Then, after his firm response...the agony. And the defiance.

It was that look of defiance that lingered longest. At first he could not understand why her expression seemed so familiar to him. He had seen defiance before...but not with love as its cause...

The realization almost buckled his legs. He had not seen the look before, but he had worn it before. The moment he realized Tyrande was lost to him. The moment he had begged her to be his, had offered her power and strength and support for her wishes. She had looked back into his eyes, her expression filled with grief and hesitation...and he had known. That pain, that vulnerability, and then the anger, the realization that he had been wounded beyond measure and the cause of his wounding could witness it. He had drawn that defiance onto his face and left her.

Just as Tanistra had left him.

"It is better," he said again softly, and chose to ignore the hesitation in his voice.

[makanidotdot]

I would like to share the story of “Hush, Tyrande”.

It occurs in one of the Caverns of Time dungeons, Well of Eternity, where you go back to the first demon invasion and fight with Illidan and later Tyrande to right the past or whatever.  Tyrande helps you on the final boss, then Malfurion, who’s done dick all, shows up at the end and replies to Tyrande saying “Malfurion-!” with “HUSH Tyrande.  Where is Illidan?”

 It’s a single line in the game at the end of a dungeon, why does it matter?  Well, there were articles written about it, Blizzard had to change a boat name because of it, at least one guild is named after it. It’s solidly achieved meme status in the community.  Collapsed-vacuum skulled dudebros HUEHUEHEU about it because a woman (and significant other) is getting told to shut up. Everyone else is like wow, I guess Malfurion is an asshole, or, he’s not supposed to be an asshole, and Blizz is just stupid or sexist and doesn’t realize how bad it sounds.  

Welp, now that I am cursed with the knowledge of the awful but endearing WOTA books from which this scene is taken word for word from, I feel like I should shed some light on what must have actually occurred to make that dungeon performance the way it is.  Especially because, in all my googling, I see people making jokes about the line, I see people complain about it and how horrible Malfurion is, there’s people complaining that people would complain about it....but I could not find anyone point out the fact that IT’S ACTUALLY COMPLETELY WRONG AND NOT WHAT HAPPENS IN THE BOOK.  

I'm reminded of this old gem:

So, here’s the scene:  The Sundering had just begun, the Well is starting to go apeshit.  The following scene is Azshara making her deal with N’zoth, so yeah.  Tyrande and Ilidan are trying to make their way out of the city, as they are very close to the well.  Malfurion shows up on Ysera to get them out.  Malfurion has not seen either of them in person since the previous book, when Tyrande was captured and he got all guilty and depressed.  Anyway, here you go, slightly edited to remove exposition Knaak is inexplicably putting in at the end of the book.  I have provided some visuals.

So.  Just in case someone wants to argue that it’s still him telling her to shut up, let me also say that, this author uses “Hush” a lot.  He never uses “Shh”, or you know.. describes what doesn’t need to be voiced (lol).  I don’t want to subject yall to more Knaakwardness than I need too, but it’s clear this is meant to be comforting and kind based on the rest of his writing.  In fact, an example is when the reverse situation occurs in the previous book, after Malf gets punched in the brain by Archimonde:

Like, she’s actually being sweet to him in this scene. She is not telling him to STFU.  

But as you might imagine...... with no context, and if you’d never read any of the books and JUST read what was in quotation marks.... you could easily think uh I guess he’s telling her to be quiet.  So, this was a case of whatever game “”“”writer”””” was directing the recording session definitely had not read the books, didn’t know or care what the context was, and must have just thought it was a given Malfurion would talk to Tyrande like that.

And you MIGHT also think that all the stuff Illidan is saying in this dungeon is just supposed to just be cool and edgy, and NOT being said by a lil whiny shit who’s been being a total tool to Tyrande throughout this escape and blaming all their problems on Malfurion.  As a nice little bit of final irony, a lot of responses to Well of Eternity Malfurion is “See!  Shoulda picked Illidan!”, while, at one point in the book, Illidan is LITERALLY silences Tyrande with magic because he gets annoyed with her.    

What I’m trying to say is.... the Well of Eternity dungeon was ghost directed by Illidan.

But I am also saying the dungeon is one hilarious, blatant example of someone just writing down out of context lines and devs not knowing lore and characters or giving a shit.

THank you for coming to my tebtalk

[thewritingof-therose]

Hi! Last week, with the publishing of the 20th chapter of Hasard, I reached the 100 kudos on the fic, so to celebrate it, here’s some kind of bonus chapter where I talk a little about the conception of the story, along with comments about each chapters. 

Enjoy!

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So… 20 chapters and 100 kudos already. To be honest, by the time I started imagining this story, I wasn’t really expecting to be able to celebrate that milestone of kudo on a single fic and even if I already celebrated the 2000 kudos in general this year, if we make a quick calcul based on the numbers of kudos and all the fics I’ve published, at the time I’m writing those words, it’s the same that if each one of my fic had only 20 kudos… So yeah, finally reaching the hundred on a single one makes me so happy \o/

Anyway, here’s some trivia and fun facts about Hasard and the first twenty chapters of the story.

First of all, some history:

I had the idea for Hasard in May 2018 as I was watching the tv show Lucifer (I am not up to date with it, please don’t try to spoil me this show ^^’) and I imagined one scene that just… shaped the entire story and it took me less than a few hours to know that I would write it. Even if I wasn’t sure how long it would be and that there had been some changes. And no, I won’t tell what scene kickstarted it all because she still has to come and it could be quite a huge spoiler. 

Following it, my brain quickly went into developing the full story and a few things changed. On the top of my head, I can say that Maiev was meant to be more on her own, almost a complete independent Hunter that would have also been resented by the other Hunters, along with a way more black and white view of the demons. She was meant to be more aggressive against all demons and really thinking that they all deserved to die, but I softened that side of her as I shifted the world building with the presence of hybrids. 

At first, the hybrids were meant to be a really rare kind and I wanted to keep that status for a few select characters because it could have brought some really good story for them. Then, as I kept working on the worldbuilding, I came to the idea that actually, hybrids were extremely common, but at the same time, the demon’s presence was still a secret from most of the world because most hybrids started centuries ago and their blood and physical attributions were weakening the more they were reproducing. So, about 80% of the world is made of hybrids of all kinds of generation (who is my way of scaling the demonic influence on their life) and the 20% left is shared with the full demons and full humans. 

Full demons are simply people who don't have a single drop of human blood in them. Usually, they are born from two other full demon parents or they just appeared like that (that’s the mytho). They are extremely powerful and good magic users, but now, they are rare. It was easier to be a full demon millenia ago when they ruled over the world and the few that are left in the current world of Hasard, survived either by hiding really well, manipulating their way to stay alive, or simply because they accepted to work with the humans and they went on. 

My best example of a full demon is Velen. 

The full humans, are the humans who either had never gotten a single drop of demon’s blood in their bloodlines, either they purged the bloodline after making sure that there had been at least 10 generations since the last time a hybrid was born (technically, every child following it would be considered as an hybrid, but the other parent would be a full human to weaken the demon’s blood which each new generation). Full humans are rarer than full demons and they tend to be bad news as almost all of them are associated with the Priesthood (who’ll get some more explanation later.)

I haven’t presented yet one of them to give an example, but one is ready to show up in the Second arc of the story. Won’t say who to not spoil the surprise x)

As for hybrids, there are two kinds. The one born from a demon and a human, and or hybrids (two hybrids will keep creating hybrids and technically, as long as one of the parents has human blood, the bloodline will stay a hybrid one). And the second one hadn’t been introduced yet. We have characters that are that kind, but it’s some worldbuilding elements that will show up later and so, I'll keep it to myself for now. Feel free to theorize though! And usually, most hybrids will simply call themselves demons instead of showing signs of weaknesses by not being a full one.

For the title of the story, it had been extremely hard for me to find one. Ever since I started preparing everything, it had a codename and it was “Modern AU” and it stayed like that until the very minute of the publishing of the first chapter. I was already going towards “Le Hasard Fait Bien Les Choses” but I was bothered because it was French, and no matter what, I couldn’t find a good English idiom that would have all the nuances of the French one. The only thing that comes close to it would be “Fate is a funny thing” and yet, I’m not entirely satisfied with it. So, after a long debate with myself and help from other people, I came to the conclusion that I had to keep the French title if I wanted to be happy with it. 

It might not help much to get people interested, and I’m considering adding “Fate is a Funny Thing” after it but I’m debating it.

I think that's already a lot, so let's move to the trivia per chapters:

A Muffled Shout In The Night

Oh boy, first chapter! I was so excited to finally start the story but I was also really stressed. I tried to give away a quick summary of how the universe was working, along with my two main characters + showing up the first supportive characters towards Maiev. Trying to present all the cast (so adding Illidari and more about Illidan) right in that chapter wouldn't have really worked so, instead, I went to show that a more "Legion-y" timeline could be expected thanks to Khadgar and Velen's presence in the chapter. 

I kinda hope that I succeeded to already show Maiev's obsession towards the Betrayer through her first lines.

Though I will be one hundred percent honest with you. The end of the chapter with Illidan running away, don't expect much from that interaction. I kind of always forget about it unless I'm reading back the chapter… I only needed a reason for them to stop fighting and the chapter to carry on.

But who knows, maybe I'll tie it to something one day.

Two Black Coffees And A Meeting, Please

When writing it, I always knew that Drelanim was on the other side of the call (or at least another Hunter) but as I read the moment a few times, I realized that I could have gone for a completely different way. One that would have probably surprised everyone.

But yeah, in another universe, it's Illidan who calls Maiev because he's in front of her place as they decided to meet for breakfast there. It would have been quite nice and unexpected for the story, especially that Illidan would have gotten right away the reveal that Maiev was actually the Warden as she would have complained about the wounds of the night. 

In the end, I went on with my first idea and made them meet for good in the chapter.

And, like with the first chapter… the "current problem" that he talks about to Kor'vas went nowhere… I'll more than probably get him to acknowledge some uninteresting side story for it at some point.

Memories Of A Rainy Day That Will Never Be Forgotten

For that one, one word: Ouch.

By the time I started to write this chapter, I was also preparing the Advent Calendar of 2019 and I had decided on telling Naisha's story, and I had to realize that I still had to foreshadow some elements from it to make it work. Of course, the title is fully referencing the day she died and the demon that Maiev killed right at the beginning of the chapter was similar to Naisha, putting Maiev in a stabbing mood. And it led us to another necessary addition for the Calendar's chapter: Malfurion.

(I'm also wondering how many people guessed right away that Malfurion was the one Illidan was calling…)

Brother, My Brother, Tell Me What We're Fighting For? 

Even if Malfurion had more of a cameo than anything in the Calendar's story, I felt the need to introduce him to put the bases of the twins' relationship. I always knew that he was a doctor and that he was mostly helping Illidan when he was getting in trouble, and as their backstory is different from WoW and that they are both demons, I didn't want to go on the canon path for them. 

I cannot tell much about it because we'll get fast to their backstory (Second arc) but here, Illidan and Malfurion mostly grew up in a world where it was them against the rest of the world. They were born during the glorious days when demons ruled the world and they saw it change through the millennia that followed. After everything, they would be devastated to lose the other and suddenly be the only one left. This is why they are way closer than they could ever be in canon (and also Tyrande isn't part of their backstory so it helped them keep a good relationship). Sometimes, they part ways for a few decades. Malfurion goes back to medical school somewhere and makes sure that he's up to date for it, or Illidan just moves with his clan to experience new things. But they stay in contact and always come back in proximity of one another.

The end of the chapter was my obligatory "shock reveal/cliffhangers" before a break. But well, I wanted to keep the Legion's existence in my sleeve for a little longer, but I realized that it would allow me to make them into a concrete threat as the story will progress + allowing Illidan and, mostly, the Illidari to be a little more presents into the story.

Actually, the chapter's name comes from a song from the occidental version of the first Pokemon movie. It's a line from the song that plays when the Pokemon and their clone fights, and i used it mostly for the brother's mentions and because it would totally be a thing said by one of the twins in their past…

A Flower Arrangement Made With Your Face In Mind

At that time, I wanted to make a chapter to develop a little more the supporting characters of the cast, and as I was taking back the writing of the fic after a four or five months break, I thought it would be nice. 

So, we got a little side dish of Illidari for it and that’s pretty much the only chapter (until now) where Illidan or Maiev barely appears in it. Yet, I threw some worldbuilding and foreshadowing in it and I still like it, so it isn’t really a filler.

I’ll probably do more chapters like that in the future, but I’ll see with the pacing of the story.

Willingly Accepting Your Death Isn't As Easy As I Thought

I don’t have much to say about this chapter. I still really like it and especially Maiev and Velen’s interaction. 

Along with showing that we were far from a potential romantic relationship, at least on Maiev’s side x)

A Laugh That Will Echo Through The Ages

Oh my God, that chapter! I could probably talk about it for hours but we would quickly reach the spoiler territory so I’ll see what I can tell without shooting myself in the foot.

I loved giving Khadgar some more identity and I like his relationship with Maiev. In the story, they are around 10 years apart, with Khadgar being the youngest. He’s like an honorary younger brother to every Hunter and even if Maiev won’t admit it, she’s kinda thinking the same. 

If he had been in the spotlight for this chapter, it was actually because I was thinking of writing his backstory for the Calendar of 2020 but in the end, I scrapped the idea and wrote something else. But It’ll happen at some point.

You Were In My Dream Last Night, And I Found You That Morning

A simple and nice chapter to calm down from the action heavy that was the precedent. I do throw some crumbs of foreshadowing and backstory, mostly for Maiev, but we will have to wait quite some time for the full one. Even if to be honest, before I release it fully, there will probably be some people that will stitch everything from my crumbs.

Illidan’s dreams are meant to be a plot point all through the story, and I decided to start them with this chapter. And of course, we can see that it’s the first chapter where Illidan, even if he isn’t conscious of it, starts to like Maiev more than he should have at that point.

A Red Dress And Heels To Hide The Knife In Plainsight

I loved writing that one. Showing that Maiev had more hobbies than hunting demons, along with showing how you had to act to get her to do things that she would refuse to do otherwise. Most of the time, if Sira gently asks if she wants to go do some shopping, Maiev always has something else to do. Not that she hates shopping, just that she thinks there’s better things to do. 

I could probably go more about Worgens and their existence, but it would spoil some part of the story :/ 

And honestly, I had an alternate version of this chapter where Illidan saw Maiev and Sira hurrying in the streets, followed them and he would have eavesdropped on the conversation about him. It was obviously bad because it was confirming that Maiev was at least a Hunter (which he won’t know until a while by that time) and it would have been totally an excuse for smut x)

A Warning Falling In Deaf Ears

With this chapter, I’ve been working on mixing the idea of chapters 5 (to concentrate on rest of the cast) with more of the main story. Like that, I show that there’s more than Illidan and Maiev in this universe, but at the same time, I’m still progressing their story by sharing the chapter between the two. I really liked writing Kayn like that and I think that one of my favorite things to write in this story, it’s Illidan and Malfurion interacting.

A Touch So Familiar, Yet So Strangely Threatening

I remember writing that chapter and suddenly realizing that it was going to be longer than the precedent, and i thought for a moment that I had to cut it in half, but I couldn’t find a satisfying way to do it, and it would have fucked up my outline, so I just carried on with it until I had told everything that I had to. 

With that chapter, I’m trying to show that Maiev can be really crazy when it comes to the Betrayer and his followers, but I can assure that she wouldn’t wound any of the Hunters, even if they cannot really be sure about it. And the little dialogue with the B-word made me laugh and yes, Maiev already called the Betrayer a bitch to his face. In 13 years, it would have been weird that she didn’t think of it at least once.

For the rest of the chapter, I just wanted to show that Maiev and Illidan were becoming comfortable with each other + setting up a reason for her to be worried about Illidan to show him her good side.

Screaming Under The Full Moon Won't Change Your Fate

The one thing I keep from this chapter, is that I can’t wait to dive more into Velen and Maiev's relationship.

Otherwise, yeah, if Illidan were to go into a fight only wanting to use magic, he could kill Maiev without breaking a sweat. But he likes the challenge and feels like it wouldn’t be satisfying to annihilate her with just a spell, so he’s fighting blade against blades, unless Maiev is really close to kill him.

A Fateful Call That Only You Can Be Blamed For

I have nothing much to say about it. It was one chapter that I really wanted to write and publish, because it’s the one where Illidan just let his guard down around Maiev for good, and now that he won’t try to trap her into admitting that she is the Warden, it allows him to see Maiev in another light.

That anyone can guess what it is.

Oh yeah, just that I threw some good crumbs of the fact that Illidan is a self-loathing addict in my fics and that it’s one of the reasons he falls so hard for Maiev after this chapter. But it’ll be a good talk for either another chapter, or later.

Going Separate Ways For A Night But Not The Life

Nothing to say, it was a transitional chapter to show that Illidan really believes that Maiev isn’t the Warden, and that there’s more than the fight to them.

Stab Me Once, Shame On You. Stab Me More Than Twice...

A fun little chapter. Velen is more modern than most people can believe and once again, I like writing about the interactions between Illidan and Malfurion. Of course, if you go back to read this one after chapter 20, you might see that I already knew how it was going to happen from this chapter, as the 20th got his title in this one.

I just hope that people read the story from the Advent Calendar 2020 to know what happened in the middle of it.

And From There, Fate Laughed At Them

I could talk for hours about Cordana in my AU. I just love what I’m going to do with her characters and I hope that my readers will like it too. 

But to give some crumbs, Maiev and Cordana have been best friends since high school and she’s the first long-time friend that Maiev had made in her life and thanks to Cordana, she met with Sira and the group, but most importantly Velen. Cordana is a hybrid of sixth generation, so her demonic attributes are almost non-existent, but she kept some supernatural ability from her legacy. She knew from a very young age that she wanted to hunt demons and protect people, and met with Velen early to prepare her future job. Once she discovered that Maiev had some natural abilities to hunt demons, she saw them as the future “Best Best Friend and Hunters” and convinced Maiev to give a go to the hunt. She was forced to move out in another city but she kept contact with Maiev and the rest of the group. In terms of strength, abilities and hunting score, she is right behind Maiev.

Otherwise, I will add that I had a lot of fun writing the conversation between them about Illidan and how he would be better than the Betrayer *winkwink*.

I didn’t make it clear in that chapter and it won’t be important, but Khadgar has a crush on Cordana.

Cordana meant well with the message, and even if in real life, I would condone such action, here, I needed it to move things around because yes, neither Illidan nor Maiev would make the first step if it wasn’t for Cordana.

During the fight, at the beginning of the scene, Illidan totally complimented the Warden on her abilities but don’t try to make him admit it.

Last thing: my nickname is Fate. I’m the one laughing.

Games, Games, All Is Games

I don’t really have anything to say about this chapter.

Sometimes, Cowardice Allows The Survival Of The Smartest

To be perfectly honest, I regret how I handled Cordana’s week in the story because I’ve barely done anything with her but I can explain where the problem is. I knew that I wanted Illidan to discover the warden’s identity on chapter 20, and I planned all my updates around that one fact, but when it came to the outline, I wasn’t sure what to tell between the chapter 13 and 20 to reach that point and thanks to the Calendar, I moved things around that one and I ended up having the idea of making Cordana appears (She should have come in person in the story much, much later). And as I needed chapters 18 and 19 to build up to the reveal, I ended up completely stuck and making her appearance too fast and if it wasn’t for the message, she would have been useless to the story. But I realized it too late and I couldn’t rework my outline in time.

But well, i’ll give her a better mini-arc in the second arc of the story to atone for it.

Otherwise, I hope that the feel of the countdown to the reveal starting by the end of the chapter had been caught by some people x) It’s obvious to me, but well, i’m the writer.

Step By Step, Tick Tock Said The Clock

Just a build up chapter for the 20th. Even if I really like it and that I’m preparing the ground for future plotlines but I’ll let you guess which one it could be x) 

I know I haven’t make it clear in the chapter, but Malfurion knew that Illidan was lying when he pretended that his problem was the Warden “may-be-may-be-not-a-hybrid/demon” but as he also know that his brother is a “stubborn motherfucker” he let it slid. 

And yes, somewhere in my mind, there’s an alternate universe where Maiev accepted Illidan’s invitation and that they would spend the evening at her place. Without a reveal first.

Any Last Wish?

I don’t really have something to add to this chapter. I succeeded to write it just as I wanted.

I just had a long debate with myself as to how I wanted it to end, as I had the choice between cutting it right as Illidan is saved by the Warden (maybe not revealing her identity before the next chapter, or it would have been the last line) or just as I did, by them reaching her place first. I chose the latter because I want Chapter 21 to start with a really specific scene and I thought that it was better than a cheap cliffhanger. 

The last thing I'll add, is that for the story to go well, I had to make Illidan be the first to be aware of the identity of the other, mostly because he can be the one to change his mind more easily about wanting to kill the Warden. If it had been Maiev discovering that Illidan was the Betrayer at this moment of the story, he would have died.

And now, because I'm not done yet, here’s some info about the bonus chapters that were published independently from the main story!

AC Day 8: A Morning

First calendar, in 2018, and I already knew that I was going to write Hasard. It had no name by this time, but I had written that small scene to try out a few things and see how it’ll work.

There’s a really high chance that I end up rewriting it for the main story, but I think that a few elements will change. We’ll see.

AC19 Day 24: Hasard: Naisha

Probably the worst (in terms of feels) chapter of the story yet.

Naisha is probably the character who had a story and fate the closest to canon and I wanted to keep it like that, as it allowed to shape even more the hate between the Warden and the Betrayer. Honestly, she wasn’t deserving of a death like that, especially that if the Betrayer hadn’t intervened that day by trying to kill Maiev, Naisha would have survived.

Actually, in any other universes/storylines possible, she would have survived. Unfortunately for her, she fell right into the feud and became a victim of it.

At this point of the story, Illidan isn’t even completely aware of what happened that day, and he has no idea who Naisha was. All that he knows is that he thought to have killed the Warden, only to find her, even more angry in the following week. He just knows that he had killed the wrong person, but he had no idea who. Maiev herself doesn’t know for sure that it was the Betrayer the culprit, as she couldn’t see clearly in the rain.

Of course, it’ll end up being brought up in the story :)

AC20 Day 8: Hasard: Malfurion’s Hellish Day

It should have been Khadgar's backstory actually for that Calendar. But even if I have a good idea about it, I realized that I wasn’t completely inspired and that I was missing a few details to be able to write it. So, in the end, I went desperately after another idea and thanks to Melowen, I think, she got me on the idea of writing about Malfurion.

In the end, this chapter, meant to be a funny one with Illidan and Maiev forced to be in the same place for the same job, with Malfurion, aware that it would be a catastrophe to let them discover the truth, ended up shaping the last chapters currently published.

And if you are wondering, no, Illidan wasn’t trying to trick his brother in giving him the secret identity of Maiev. He was just trying to get his brother approbation about the woman he was starting to crush on.

The line: ‘“Yeah, everyone tells me that I look like a famous actor,” Malfurion faked a chuckle, glancing at the woman.’ is a reference to my Bodyguard AU where Illidan is an actor. 

Alright, that’s all for the trivia! Thanks for reading this bonus chapter, and the main story until now, and I hope you’ll keep enjoying reading Hasard!

Rose

[tanadrin]

hey *whispers* hey. hey. i saw your post in the wow tag. i would read THE SHIT out of your interpretation of wow lore. i have homework right now but i think i might just read through your blog a bit. the characters have always been such a high point for me (listen. i know knaak did a lot of shit. but you can pry Krasus from my cold dead hands he was EVERYTHING to middle school me) and i feel so conflicted over what theyve done to the characters - sylvanas, anduin, everyone. would love ur take

You might be a little disappointed, most of my blog isn’t about WoW (it postdates my WotLK raiding/RP guild phase, and I’ve only just recently got back into it with Classic). Lots of opinions on WoW characters below the cut.

I actually don’t hate Krasus as a character. He’s fine, he’s not a Designated Idiot Ball Carrier like some of the others are. In re: the dragons generally, I don’t like the simplistic thing WoW lore does a lot where one faction leader going bonkers turns the whole faction into baddies for no apparent reason, because all political entities are monoliths except when they’re not. I’m also not a huge fan of how crowded the, erm, metahuman bureaucracy on Azeroth has become in the lore–like, the Keepers and the Dragon Aspects serve similar roles, and the lore could have done fine with one or the other, and the dragons were here first (and Ysera and Alexstrasza are BAMFs), and so should get to stay.

Sylvanas is bae, obviously, and Sylvanas as Warchief was a terrific move plotwise. I think it’s a pity they had to kill Vol’jin to do it (because I am also very here for Warchief Vol’jin), but she is obviously the more interesting choice. Speaking of Warchiefs:

Thrall doesn’t have the Green Jesus Marty Stu quite as bad as some people think, but he does kinda have it, and I don’t see them grappling quite with the fact that he done fucked up. Like, not only did he install a Warchief who should have had all smart members of the Horde tugging at their collars nervously when he started his rule, Garrosh turned into a Sha-summoning Old God-corrupted, casual-atrocity-perpetrating maniac, not to mention all the bullshit on Old Draenor I do my best to forget about lest my blood pressure spike. We don’t really get a satisfying mea culpa from Thrall for that, and then his response is to fuck off to fiddle around with the Earthen Ring for a bit, before retiring to a farm in Nagrand. Keep in mind, one of the whole reasons the Horde came together in its current shape in the first place is because of the charismatic, hopeful figure of Thrall. It ran the very real risk of splintering under Garrosh for good (ESPECIALLY after the murder of Cairne, RIP Cairne Bloodhoof, you were too good for this world), and even the most unifying successor (which I think Vol’jin was) didn’t have Thrall’s inclusive, unifying vision. Sylvanas doesn’t, either, and even more, is sort of low-key hated by everybody else, so while I don’t think she’s a maniac like Garrosh who would recklessly divide the Horde, she’s also not, I am forced to admit, necessarily the ideal Warchief from a political standpoint.

Even if he didn’t return to the post of Warchief, Thrall had a moral obligation after the Garrosh debacle to try to help hold the Horde together and heal the divisions his negligence caused. At least to throw his support behind Garrosh’s successors, and not to pretend that Deathwing’s death meant everything was OK forever, job done. And if he wasn’t going to do that (and he has excellent motivations for not wanting to do that!), I think the consequences of that have to be explored. I think some people would blame him, and be justified in doing so. I think somebody like Varok Saurfang, who has had decades of experience with the damage bad leaders could do, would rightly be a little pissed, even as he sought Thrall out for help, that Thrall had let the Horde he built languish under subpar leadership. Thrall has been selfish–and that’s great, because he desperately needed some character flaws more significant than “cares too much” and “believes in people a lot.”

Anduin: better than Varian, still a little bland? Varian was a Professional Idiot Ball Handler, who seemed to do stuff not out of a coherent conception of his character, but just because the plot required a Generic Human King to do it. Plus there was all that stuff with the cloning and the kidnapping that never really made any sense. I like Anduin’s optimism; I like that he feels like a thoughtful, reasonable guy, who’s doing his best in often-impossible circumstances. I feel like they could show him being a little more frustrated sometimes, though, and a little pissed at people like Jaina who obstinately refuse to do the strategically correct thing even if it means setting aside their resentments for a bit. Disclaimer: I play almost exclusively Horde toons, they may address this better in the Alliance quests in WoW.

But oh man, besides the Draenei, I hate most what they did to Jaina. Jaina was that rare jewel, an optimist in a world whose setting demands perpetual chaos. Yes, yes, Theramore and the mana bomb, I’m not suggesting she should be made of stone, but it breaks her character to have her suddenly go from someone trying to forge a lasting peace between the Horde and Alliance in WC3–to the point where she would see her own father dead–to someone who now blames the whole Horde as one no exceptions for what happened at Theramore. Should she struggle with grief and pain and anger? Absolutely. But she should deal with them in more complex ways than “now I am become the mirror image of Daelin.” Nevermind that even if she did that she should at least regret not listening to him back in WC3. (Do they address that in BFA with the introduction of Kul Tiras? Idk, I haven’t played BFA at all yet.) It seems like Jaina���s role now is to be the Person Who Hates The Horde, and honestly, that’s a tired trope. It’s just not interesting, it has no nuance, it has no interesting outcomes. You could maybe get away with it with the generation of leaders from the Second War like Daelin and Genn who knew the Orcs only as the fel-corrupted servants of the Burning Legion, but it’s obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together than the current Horde is a very different animal politically and strategically, so even if you hate the Orcs with a burning passion, that is not going to transfer to the Tauren, nevermind onetime allies like the Blood Elves.

Gul’dan: oh my god the time travel plot was so stupid. Did the whole universe get duplicated in the alternate timeline? Since travel between the universes is cheap and easy that means there’s a whole nother Burning Legion with a whole nother Sargeras out there that’s still a huge fricking threat! Not to mention a whole nother Azeroth! Did just Draenor get duplicated? That doesn’t seem to match up with the fact a lot of the Burning Legion characters in WoD seem to be parallel universe versions of Burning Legion villains we already know, but it’s not directly confirmed or disconfirmed. Is it some sort of weird Bronze Dragonflight timey-wimey thing that doesn’t have its own independent reality? Ok, fine, but obviously this alternate Draenor has enough of an independent existence for us to visit it again and see what it’s like decades later, not to mention bring some of the people there back. Gul’dan was a fine, if one-dimensional villain but bringing him back from the dead was dumb, dumb, dumb, in a setting where death often feels meaningless and seems to be reversible at random. And the general incoherence of magic in the setting combined with the perennial incoherence of time travel plots (Gollum voice: *we hates them!*) really just reduced WoD to a quivering mess of plot holes, like febrile fan speculation made manifest.

Tirion Fordring: good example of a purely heroic character done well, which WoW has few of. I think because he actually has challenges to overcome, and he doesn’t feel like an idiot.

Bolvar Fordragon: Literally did not know or care who this guy was until the Wrathgate cinematic, but what they did after that with his character was terrific, 10/10.

Malfurion, Tyrande, Illidan: These characters all bore me to tears. My WotLK main was a druid, and I’m a big fan of the druid lore, so I wanna like Malfurion, I really do, but he’s just so dull. Partly because it doesn’t feel like he has any real limitations on his power, just whatever the plot demands he be able to do or not do at any given moment, partly because he just feels like a stiff-necked scold. Tyrande is even more one-dimensional. Illidan is pure 3edgy5me, and the demon hunters in general feel like they get to be too cool to actually traffic in any of the pathos of what should be their emotional equivalents like the Death Knights and the Forsaken. It’s like, “oh man, my life is so tormented, I have these bitchin’ horns and tattoos, and I’m, like, totally immortal, here, hold my rad sword thingies for a second.” At least with the Death Knights you get the feeling that being a Death Knight is a genuinely miserable experience, so there’s some genuine conflict at the heart of the class: sure, you play as a hero, but not the kind of hero you’d necessarily want to be. Demon hunters are just pissed they don’t get to sit at the cool kids’ lunch table, and Illidan genuinely acts like a giant asshole and then gets self-righteous and whiny when his friends and family are like “Dude! Stop being such an asshole!” There’s room for a prickly character, who’s a dick, but who’s our dick, and maybe that’s what they were going for, but Illidan is just the worst.

Azshara, Lady Vashj: The Naga were a giant fucking mistake. A symptom of the inability to let backstory stay backstory, to have to resurrect and retread the same events over and over again that plagues serials when lesser writers without original ideas get let loose on them. Settings like WoW (like Star Wars, like Star Trek, like Dune) are whole universes. You should be expanding the borders, making them feel bigger, more fine-grained, more alive, not beating the same major characters to death over and over again. The ancient Kaldorei are way more interesting as a lost past and a lesson in hubris than fish-snake-people who live under the sea.

Also, water levels are dumb and I hate them. This applies to coral-and-shellfish themed zones regardless of whether swimming is involved.

Cho’gall: I loved the “insane nihilist death cult” reincarnation of the Twilight’s Hammer Clan in World of Warcraft, and Cho’gall as the many-eyed crazed ogre mage with two heads was great. Would much rather have more Cho’gall than Guldan 2.0.

While I’m on Cataclysm: one thing you don’t often feel in worlds like WoW is the possibility of real defeat, because for extradiegetic reasons, it’s impossible to truly lose in any long-lasting way (or, in quests like Battle for the Undercity in WotLK, they just… don’t let you, which feels dumb as heck). I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of a post-apocalyptic fantasy world, a world where the bad guys won, and all the worst things the good guys feared came to pass. I think this is one reason I loved the original interpretation of the Draenei so much, because we saw in Draenor what that really looked like. It was bleak, and it was poignant, and even though it was set within a silly melodrama, it actually moved me. Cataclysm did something similar with the postapocalyptic time-travel instance (time travel being used well for once in WoW!), where you saw that Deathwing’s victory wasn’t just an abstract possibility, but a thing that could actually happen. It made the possibility of defeat feel more real, and it gave you a taste of that same bleak, poignant feeling: this, it said (just for a moment!) is what failure looks like, an Azeroth without life, without hope, in which everything you ever struggled for was utterly in vain. And that motivated you to work even harder to prevent it.

Alleria, Turalyon: “You last saw us in WC2, and since then we’ve been fighting a thousand years (subjective) of endless war against the Burning Legion and been irrevocably changed by the experience” is actually pretty great! But if I were going to rewrite WoW lore, I would make that a thousand objective years and set the final victory over the Burning Legion in the future, at a time when the Alliance and Horde have made a durable peace, and Azeroth has moved on from decades of endless war. I think there’s a real problem with trying to make the player one of the heroes that brings down Sargeras for good because it’s *such* an epic battle, but it’s a massively multiplayer game. Making every player the grand master of their class order was bad enough, but when you are obviously playing out entirely different diegesis from everyone around you, even if you didn’t have problems like sharding and a glut of phasing and cross-server activities and instant teleportation to dungeons, it really feels like a single-player RPG with a chat function. I mean, conflicting diegeses is always going to be a problem with questing-based MMOs, but suspension of disbelief worked when you were plainly one person embedded in a larger effort, like in vanilla, BC, and WotLK. But “you are one of thousands of people who is the Best Warrior Ever and sole Leader of the Warriors, and who has the Only Artifact Weapon that somehow also has thousands of copies”… yeah, that just doesn’t work for me. I feel like I’m being pandered to, and not in a fun way, like with the Pandaren.

Sargeras: I like that they retconned Sargeras to have a better motivation than “demons made me nihilistic.” The idea of a void-corrupted titan being something so terrible a member of the Pantheon would shatter worlds to prevent it is interesting. But the Void gods still feel… kinda non-threatening? We don’t see them actively working to threaten anything we really care about, the Void is mostly a pretty passive abstract force like the Light, and in general I feel like the setting isn’t really dualistic, but er… trialistic? Is that a word? In that there’s a three-way opposition between the Void, the Light, and the Nether/Arcane, from the perspective of which each is the opponent of both of the others, but that’s never laid out explicitly anywhere.

[queenraikichi94]

Illidarya the Dreamer, aka Illigosa from the Blue Dragonflight. Daughter of Eneyra, High Priestess of Elune and Naragaos, Great General of Malygos the Spellweaver Here is her story.

More than 10000 years ago, a high priestess of Elune started to suspect that their ruler, Queen Azshara, was plotting against her own people. She shared her worries with Naragos. He was a dragon from the Blue Dragonflight, the flight that watched over the magic and promoved the correct use of it. Naragos was also worried cause he noticed that the Highborn were using the magic of the Well of Eternity in excess. After sharing their worries, both decided to speak with their superiors. Then, the War of the Ancestors started. Eneyra, together with Illidan, Malfurion and Tyrande, lead the resistance against Azshara and the Burning Legion. Naragos, for his side, fought together with his own flight and the others, but when Malygos ordered them to retire after Neltharion’s betrayal and the death of many blue dragons, Naragos decided to stay at the resistance’s side. He made a promise to his secret lover, Eneyra, and he wasn’t going to break it. Malygos was furious. How could his first general be in love with a simple mortal? A mortal whose kind gave a bad use to magic, but Naragos was decided. The blue dragon stayed at his mate’s side and together, they fought and defeated the Burning Legion, but when the Great Sundering was coming to destroy everything, they had to separated; Enerya needed to help her people to escape to a safe place, and Naragos had to do the same with his kind, and then, survive to Malygos’s wrath.

Malygos was furious, and he didn’t doubt when he had to punish Naragos. The punishment was cruel, and Malygos didn’t stop until he saw that the life of his general was in danger. It was when a young Kalecgos and a young Arygos found Naragos at the edge of death, blind, starving...Malygos ordered the young dragons to bring the general to him. The Spellweaver decided to forgive him, but with the punishment of not coming back to the Blue Dragonflight home never again. He was going to watch over the mortals and the correct use of magic...He was going to keep his title...But he would be exiled from the Nexus. He didn’t mind. For Naragos, the Azurewing Repose was his true home. He accepted his fate and he was left in the cold landscape of Northrend. With effort, he adopted his true form and flew back to his homeland, but due his condition, his strenght failed him and he landed badly in Val’sharah. There he was found by the Elune Sisterhood who brought him to Lorlathil. There, Eneyra hurried to help her lover. She couldn’t help him to heal his blind eyes, but thanks to her, he survived. After his recovering, they decided to marry, becoming mates for all their lives.

Many years later, during the Second War, they decided to try to have children. It would be impossible due the fact that she was a night elf and he was a dragon, but thanks to the own magic of Naragos, the power of the Blue Dragonflight and the power of Elune, they concived a child. The leaders of the other Dragonflights gave them their bleesing in order to give them more chances to have a child. The Dragon Aspects were very interested in that child, half kaldorei and hald dragon, and then, in the middle of the Second War, the child was born. In honor of their good friend Illidan, they named their daughter Illigosa, and Senegos gave her the title of Azure Princess. Stellagosa, Illigosa’s grandmother, presented the baby to the Azurewing and the news of that birth were listened but all the flights...And by people who didn’st see with good eyes that one of their priestess had mated a dragon of the flight that was againts mortals who used magic.

When Illigosa was a child, she was attacked but night elves who seeked her death, calling her an abomination, but the quick actions of her parents saved her live. They decided to move to Azsuna, cause in Val’sharah their daughter wasn’t safe, but when Illigosa was a young teenager, her parents decided to move to Kalimdor. They heard about Nordrassil and maybe that could be a good place for them, specially for their daughter, who had started to ehar the Call of the Nature, the sign that indicates that someone is ready to became a druid.

But not the things are good, cause a terrible storm made their ship end in Northrend. There they were attacked by the Scourge and the demons of the Burning Legion. Eneyra died first trying to protect Illigosa, and Naragos got terrible wounded when he tried to avoid his daughter’s kidnap. The servants of the Legion decided to corrupt Illigosa after knowing about her mixbreed in order to get a fel dragon, but her father, with his last strenght, took his daughter away, landing far away of the cultists. In that moment, Illidan, who was checking the land and investigating about the actions of the Legion and the Scourge, arrived and killed the cultists. Before dying, Naragos told Illidan that his daughter lost all of her memories due the ritual, and when he said that they made her forget her own name, he told him to put her a new name and giving her true one when she was ready. Naragos died when Illidan decided to burn Illigosa’s eyes to stop the visions that were going to drive her madness and after taking her on his arms, he brought his friends’ bodies to Azsuna for their burial before taking their daughter with him, calling her Illidarya. 

Years of training made Illidarya be one of the best demon hunters of the Illidari. Together with Wisperdeath, the felsaber given to her by Akama, lead the Illidari in multiple fights againts the demons until Illidan decided to give her the leadership of the Illidari in one last task: recovering the Sargerite Keystone while he confront the fools of the Alliance and Horde who thought that the attacks of the Burning Legion were made by Illidan. They recover the stone, but they got trapped but Maiev Shadowsong when they knew that their master had fallen.

More than 10 years they passed trapped on those crystals until the Burning Legion attacked a third time. Taking the leadership of the Illidari, Illidarya lead her people against the Burning Legion, meeting the leaders of the Alliance and befriended the only one who trated them as equals and not as monsters at they first meeting, KIng Varian Wrynn. She cried his death in the first assault to the Broken Shore and she wouldn’t forget his good friend and his sacrifice. 

During the campaing against the Burning Legion, Illidarya met Folken Stormwrath, a former pirate that was now fighting for the Alliance. They became friends and then, they became mates. Some people would said that an Illidari can’t bring life to the world, but that wasn’t the case of Illidarya, because she got pregnant thanks to the arcane magic inherited from the Blue Dragonflight and Elune’s grace. The child was concived near the end of the campaing, and after the defeat of the Burning Legion and the recovering of her true name thanks to Illidan, they moved to Mount Hyjal in order to do a ritual that would avoid the child to be born with fel. In that same place, with Elune showing her birghtest face, Illidarya gave birth to a baby boy, who was part kaldorei, part human and part dragon. In honor of the former High King of the Alliance, she named him Varian, and gave him also his dragon name, Varegos. But weeks after the birth, servants of the Legion that got trapped in Azeroth attacked Hyjal. Folken, seeing that they were after his mate and child, told Illidarya to take their son and run to a safe place. She didn’t want to leave him, but after sharing a kiss, he promised her that they would be reunited again. With her heart aching with fear, Illidarya took her child and left the place mounted on Whisperdeath. 

She went to the south, meeting Baine Bloodhoof when she arrived to Mulgore. Afraid of being attacked, she showed very protective with her son, ready to give her life in order to protect him, but Baine, seeing that she was starving, decided not to attack her and keeping her under his protection in Thunder Bluff until her recover. The Tauren didn’t show aggresive with her; they were kind and friendly, something that Illidarya wouldn’t forget and would use to teach her son that not all people are like the ones that lead them.

After recovering, she went to the north, avoiding Durotar and the lands controlled by the Horde. She finally arrived to the Darkshore and after taking a ship in Lor’danel, she ended in Darnassus, where she found her relatives from her maternal family. There, Malfurion and Tyrande greeted her, and Malfurion became interested on little Varian. Illidarya wanted to make Darnassus the perfect home for her son, but she couldn’t feel comfortable. Strange gazes and multiple rumors made her to take the choice to travel to the east, maybe Stormwind was the home that she was searching.

After a long trip, she finally arrived to the city and she was guided to the castle to have an audience with King Anduin Wrynn, who allowed her to stay in the big house near the Stormwing Embassy. 

The War of Thorns started and Illidarya took part after leaving her son in Stormwind. When Sylvanas order the Horde to burn Teldrassil, Illidarya couldn’t allow that and she adopted her alternative form, the dragon one (the humanoid form is her true form due her mother was a night elf and not a dragon) and flew to Teldrassil in order to help with the evacuation, but she had to return to her humanoid form cause it was hard for her to keep in the dragon form due her mixbreed and the fel that was inside her.

After the destruction of Teldrassil, she decided not to stay neutral. She ordered her commanders Kayn and Korvas to keep the neutrality in the Illidari ranks, but she would be sided with the Alliance. 

During the war campaing and after many adventures in both Kul Tiras and Zandalar, she finally reunited with her mate. Folken was a prisoner of the Horde and seeing him at the edge of death made her to fly using her demon wings and transforming into a dragon in the air. She destroyed some Horde airships before taking Folken and putting him on the healer’s hands. But the happiness was short, cause he was put on jail. Lady Ashvane had put a bounty on him due his past as a pirate (she was angry because he was always confronting her due her greedy actions) but then, he was released and the bounty was retired when lady katherine Proudmoore saw that there weren’t any reasons to keep that bounty. After one year separated, Illidarya and Folken were reunited. One year that was like an eternity for both of them, and the joy was bigger when Varian called him “daddy”. Illidarya told him stories of his father all the nights in order to make him to remember his father, and for the child, Folken was like a hero.

Now, two years after the defeat of the Burning Legion, Illidarya has to face another danger: Azshara and her horrible nagas, and the Azure Princess will do everything to keep her family safe.

---

OK, here there are some things that we can call “extra”, I guess xD:

-Whisperdeath is under the care of the SI:7 due the wounds that she got when Illidarya and her felsaber were in the middle of the implosion of many azerite bombs. Due her long recovery, Illidarya tamed the rare Lucid Nightmare in order to have a terrenal mount.

-She uses an azure drake as flying mount 

-In Nazjatar, Hunter Akana rewarded her with a female Deepcoral Snapdragon that she names Tideseeker after befriended the snapdragon

-Her son, Varian/varegos, has a snapdragon pet name Kayla. He found her lost on the shores of Stormsong Valley and she couldn’t survive in the wild cause she had one eye blind and she was very little for her age, sho thanks to a friendly Tortolian, he became friend of that little snapdragon

-Naragos was one of Stellagosa’s children; that makes Illidarya be the great-great granddaughter of Senegos. And remember, the Azurewing can still have children, with less results, but they can.

---

I know, I know that it’s impossible the origins of Illidarya but hey A MAGE DID IT. Remember that Garona is the daughter of a draenei and an orc, two different species from different planets who had her thanks to the fel magic that Gul’dan used, so it could be very little possible that two species from the same planet could have a child. Thing with that.

[exjade]

Well done Bliz, removing the only two cities that had female leaders all in one go

(And without even having Calia Menethil be the one to retake Lordaeron - the kingdom to which she is the rightful queen. No, she’s “Just Calia now,” funny how that works out).

Mark my words: Sylvanas will be thrown out of power and Saurfang will be the next warchief, with Vol’jin being some kind of spiritual counselor to him or something. I know I’ve said this countless times, but from the moment Bliz made Sylvanas warchief they intended to have her kicked out of power eventually. The only time Bliz ever puts females in major positions of power they intend it to be a temporary thing, and they do it so that players can’t say that they never put females in major positions of power. 

Whenever they put a female in power they have her act in a way that shows they “don’t really know how to handle the power responsibly”-- behaviorally their females are either docile doormats (ie, “good”-- ex, Jaina up until Cataclysm, Alexstrasza, Calia Menethil, Maiev in Legion (everyone just loooved seeing her captured, powerless and stripped of her armor, didn’t they - how dare she try to dominate Illidan! Put her in her place!)) -- or if they have power then they’re emotionally unstable and irresponsible (Jaina more recently, Sylvanas, I’d give more examples but Bliz doesn’t put females in power often enough for that). 

Or what I also love is that in their clear attempt at trying to put more females in power, Bliz can’t even get their minds around this idea so they only do it if the female is really just an heir to a powerful male-- ex., Highmountain tauren storyline in Legion, Zandalari troll storyline in BfA... 

Ooh! Let’s not forget females who are in power basically because what Bliz really wanted to talk about was the sons these females would give birth to, and these boys would get the real good story! (Moira Thaurissan, Aegwynn), and how in most cases Bliz makes sure to tell you “and she was the only female ever to achieve this!” like it’s the special olympics. Right: make a fantasy world with magic, gnomes, talking pandas and space goats, but keep real-world gender inequality where presumably few females make it to positions of power-- despite the fact that loads of champions in the game are female, due to horny male players making female characters to fap to. 

Now in the awful, awful, terrible campaign leading up to BfA they’re making a point where “Sylvanas is out to get Malfurion,” which leaves a really bad taste in my mouth-- because I know that the only reason they’d have her do this is because Bliz is getting ready to get rid of some important female (Sylvanas or Jaina or both, both of which are clearly going to be snuffed out sometime soon)-- so they’re also getting rid of a powerful male at the same time, so that players can’t say that “they only get rid of powerful females.” Yeah Bliz, it would have been equal if the number of females you had in powerful positions was even remotely close to the number of males you have in powerful positions... I don’t think they’ll really get rid of Malfurion (because then they’d be left with Tyrande as the only leader of the NEs and they can’t have that-- nah, even if they got rid of Malfurion they’d probably pull some new male out of their ass to lead the NEs so that Tyrande isn’t the only one doing it-- but I digress. more than likely they’ll just get rid of Tyrande as a leader altogether because Darnassus had been gone-- you know, as if the NEs hadn’t lived in Ashenvale for millennia before Teldrassil was created). But they might have Malfurion suffer some heavy fate, which they will use in an attempt to “soften the blow” when they inevitably get rid of one or more female leader. 

But yeah, well done getting rid of both Undercity and Darnassus in one fell swoop, I mean how annoying are female leaders anyway amirite, they’re just shrill and hysterical but make sure to put them in extremely revealing, tight outfits as to “soften the blow” that male players must endure in having to watch a female be in power in the first place. 

[goddessfavored]

“tyrande manipulated illidan’s feelings for her and used him to fight the legion”

oh boy this is going to be long

she never ever never gave him any hopes of reciprocating his feelings. in fact, in the novel the moment she breaks him free, she’s actually really cold towards him. 

His speech was rusty after decades of disuse. “Tyrande . . . it is you! After all these ages spent in darkness, your voice is like the pure light of the moon upon my mind.” 

He cursed himself for his weakness. These were not the words he had imagined saying in his dreams of freedom and escape. Yet they rose unbidden to his lips, hope welling in his chest. Perhaps she had seen the error of what she had done. Perhaps she had come to free him, to forgive him.

“The Legion has returned, Illidan. Your people have need of you once more.” 

His fists clenched around his weapons. “My people need me? My people left me to rot!”

illidan clearly cares for her even after being imprisoned for ten thousand years (something that tyrande is as guilty for as malfurion). even so, when he talks to her and there’s enough indication that his feelings remained unchanged, tyrande doesn’t even acknowledge them. she simply states what happened and why she’s there, and she doesn’t say anything like I need you. she claims to be there because the kaldorei need help, and that is precisely her reason to free him.

( I personally headcanon that part of her motivation to seek to free him was both because illidan was very important to her before and part of her cares more than she’d admit and because she’d have doubts about their decision of keeping him imprisoned for so long and the way they did. that, on top of the kaldorei actually needing help, of course. but this bit is, as I said, headcanon only. )

[...] She must have seen his rage, for she turned away, unable to meet his gaze. That hurt more than anything, to see her cringe after all the long years since last they’d met. 

“Because I once cared for you, Tyrande, I will hunt down the demons and topple the Legion.” He bared his teeth in a snarl. “But I will never owe our people anything!” 

She met his gaze this time. Emotions flickered over her face. Hope. Fear. Was that pity or regret? He was not sure and he despised himself for placing so much value on what she thought. What she felt meant nothing to him! Nothing! 

Tyrande said, “Then let us hurry back to the surface! The demons’ corruption spreads with every second we waste.” 

And that was it. All the greeting he was going to get after the long, wasted millennia. No apologies. No remorse. She had helped cast him into this dreadful place, and now she needed his aid. And the worst of it was that he would give it.

she may not argue over his reasoning to help, but there isn’t a moment where tyrande does anything to manipulate his feelings. she asks help for her people, illidan says he’ll help because of her, to which she replies only that they should be going. In that last paragraph, you can see he’s actually really bitter about it, because after everything she showed up there to ask him to help the very people that put him in that horrible situation. 

“Why did you really set me free?” he asked, still hoping that she might show some shred of remorse about what she had done.

“As I said, the Burning Legion has returned. No one knows more about them than you. No one has slain more demons.”

illidan is the one insisting on her feelings towards him. he wants her to show regret, maybe to say she saw he was right all along, maybe to say she cared about him after all. tyrande doesn’t. he insists, and she repeats her previous reasoning. the legion has returned and he’s their best chance at fighting it.

“You do not fear my treachery, then? Remember, I am called ‘the Betrayer.’” 

“Betrayer you were, but in the end you chose the right side.” 

He gestured at his surroundings with one tattooed hand. “And look what it got me.” 

“You could be dead. Like so many others of our people.” 

“Our people. You keep harping on about our people. They are not our people. They are your people.” 

“Do you hate us so?” 

“Yes,” he said. His lip twisted into a sneer. “But fortunately for you, I hate the demons more.” 

She nodded as if he had confirmed something she wanted to hear. A suspicion flickered through his mind. He had been imprisoned not from any false act of mercy, but because she had known that one day he would again be needed. He had been stored here like a weapon hung in an armory.  

this is here simply because I wanted to address that when she neither shows remorse for her past choices, nor acknowledges to have wronged him in any way, illidan turns instead to think that they didn’t kill him just to use him as a weapon when they needed it --- but this is illidan’s reasoning after he didn’t hear what he wanted to hear, and he doesn’t really know anything about her feelings. 

“What is it you want to say, Master Malfurion?” urged Jarod. 

“There is some truth in what my brother says about the Burning Legion, Jarod. They may come again.” 

“And you want us therefore to forget his crimes and his danger?” 

The druid shook his antlered head. “No.” He glanced at his twin, the other half of him, then briefly at Tyrande, who stood at the edge of the circle with Maiev and Shandris. She had stayed with him all the while he had suffered through what should be done. The high priestess supported his decision, not that it eased his ache. 

“No, Jarod,” Malfurion repeated, steeling himself. “No. I want you to imprison him[...]”

to be very honest, neither do we know of tyrande’s feelings on all of this --- looking back at the war of the ancients trilogy, one could think that illidan isn’t all wrong about this being their purpose, or more specifically, malfurion’s. although malfurion says tyrande supported his decision, we can’t know how she felt. when you stop to think about tyrande as she was in her youth and how she was portrayed in the wota trilogy, she would have supported imprisonment over death just so illidan could live, a fate she would think more merciful than death, even if that wasn’t true.

but coming back to the main point:

She focused the full force of her attention on Malfurion. “My love, with Illidan’s help, we will drive the demons back once again and save what is left of our beloved land!”

this is happening with illidan present. tyrande literally went to malfurion saying my love and once again stating that her purpose for freeing him was that she believed illidan could prove vital to fight the demons. how is she using his feelings, then, when she makes it clear she loves his brother?

there are many things you can argue that tyrande was wrong in doing, the way illidan was imprisoned and her support towards malfurion’s decision of doing so being possible points of discussion (she didn’t support malfurion without a reason, though), or you could talk of how she and malfurion exiled him for becoming part demon, even though he did what he had to do to save their lands. claiming she manipulated his feelings for her to use him to fight the legion is just so inaccurate. tyrande does a lot of things wrong, but playing with people’s feelings definitely isn’t one of them.

[youngster-monster]

The first chapter + beginning of the second chapter of an abandonned project because it got waaaat too long and I lost motivation after the first 4k words I guess

“Come on, brother!”

Illidan is not whining. It may look and sound like it but, as far as he’s concerned, it’s only rational, mature arguing with his sibling, and any other opinion on the subject doesn’t matter much to him.

Malfurion, of course, appears to greatly disagree, as he so often does. It’s the kind of look he wears so often it could be said that he never appears anything but disapproving of his twin, or maybe frustrated, depending on how much time they have spent together on that night. Illidan doesn’t pay much attention to it, only taking a second of his precious time to find if infuriating, and maybe another to regret the day when Malfurion still smiled at him with joy rather than pity, days when they were so close they were less than two persons, barely more than one, really, never leaving the other’s side for long.

He could dwell on their childhood for the whole night and never get to anything remotely interesting. He could, but he has other plans for tonight, and they include Malfurion, as surprising as it is to them both.

“It’s been months since the last time we did something together, you and I,” He says, with something like guilt or bitterness in his words. “The third day is when the fun really begins! I know Tyrande can’t come, but it will be fun, I swear.”

She’s always there, as if she’s the only reason they ever see each other anymore. And he loves Tyrande, he painfully does, but it’s too painful to be with Malfurion when she’s around, and he just wants one night — one — without her to distract Malfurion. They only have eyes for each other, and he’s left to disappear in the background or suffer their annoyed glares when he dares to remind them of his presence. It’s like a rift appeared between them and he’s not sure whose fault it is, his or theirs for or no one’s in particular, or if it’s only the way life works, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t hold on to his twin until the very end.

Still, it’s kind of a low blow, to guilt-trip him like that, but it works: his shoulders drop, and he sighs deeply, like all the time he did something unpleasant as a favor to Illidan, and the golden-eyed elf knows he’s won this fight. It’s not a satisfying victory, not when he had to work so hard to spend a few hours with his better half, but it’s a victory nonetheless. He stubbornly refuses to say thanks, although it feels like he should, and the smirk he settles for absolutely fails to appear grateful.

“Oh, don’t look so smug,” Malfurion mutters, but he’s smiling too.

-

Although the tournament stretches on six of the seven days of the Festival of Elune, only the real fans of the event or the relatives and friends of fighters usually bother to come to the first two days, and Illidan is neither of those.

Entering the tournament might be hard, and reserved to the best of the best, there still are sixty-four places up for the taking, and none is ever left empty: the prize is too enticing, the glory too sweet. Even being chosen is an honor, nevermind winning. It’s also one of the few important events of the kingdom that is open to all, citizen or not, and some would do anything for a taste of privilege. Because of that, most spend these two terrible, uninteresting days placing their bets. Any kind of bets, from the potential winner to the Queen’s colors on the final day: people never seem to run out of ways to be boring.

( Illidan had experienced a brief but passionate love for bets around his first century. It was all connected to his newfound financial independence and a short-lived friendship with a self-proclaimed seer. He betted and lost a lot of money trying to prove a point — that is, that the future is impossible to divine — and would probably have continued to the point of bankruptcy, had his friend not gotten themselves beaten half to death for predicting the wrong thing to the wrong person. After that one incident, which involved a cheating girlfriend and a frankly uncomfortable amount of knowledge of her naked body from the seer, they had swore off divination for good, and by doing that lost what little interest they had to Illidan, ending both their friendship and his obsession with gambling.)

Illidan does not understand why anyone would bet on the winner. Then again, he doesn’t even understand why anyone would wish to join the tournament to begin with: he was born a kaldorei and only knows struggle — the real kind, the one that keeps you awake at night — as something that happens to other people, in books and faraway places.

( He had, in his youth, thought to join himself. He had thought that was his fate: to be covered in glory by such a victory. But he would only be one amongst dozens other winners, forgotten as soon as he steps out of the arena. )

Understandable motives or not, Elune’s tournament is still a hell of a show once you get to the interesting part, when the only ones left want to win more than they want to participate.

On the flip side, fights stretch on and on once the fighters are more evenly matched, but there are still only so many of them per day, and even less he actually sees — it would take a miracle to see him awake as early as moonrise. To him, the added length only makes it worth the effort to come watch them.

They reach the Arena as the moon is high in the sky, painstakingly wading through stands of steaming-hot food and brightly-colored apparels, each of them too tall to easily slip between elves and orcs and trolls and whatever other races make up the crowd that always congregate to Zin-Azshari for the week-long festival of Elune. By that time, the Arena is quieter while competitors catch a quick midnight meal between the fourth and fifth duel of the day. It might make it easier for them once they actually get to the Arena, but it’s the ‘getting there’ part that is the problem: the streets are packed full with so many different people the white stone underneath their feet is invisible.

So many people come to the festival each year, and yet he never is used to the sheer alienness of seeing so many different races milling around like the city is theirs: as a child, he waited eagerly for this one week of seeing people so different from his own kind. It was also one of the few time he was able to see one of the sin’dorei, despite living in the same city as them. They were, and still are, a reclusive kind, either their own race nor kaldorei citizens, and he and Malfurion used to dare each other to stare them down, basking in the odd feeling of superiority granted by their race when they inevitably looked down first.

Now he has traveled far away from his home and has seen sights that challenge Zin-Azshari itself, and still the sight of tall, masked trolls and small, brightly-colored gnomes walking the same streets he follows every day leaves him with the same sense of breathless wonder and uneasiness as when he was a child. It might be slightly tainted with subtle contempt, but that’s just how things go. People grow and change — and, in his case, developpe a serious complexe of superiority. It happens.

This doesn’t mean Illidan has any problem with crowds — on some occasions, he loves them. Malfurion, though, he is a druid through and through, and anything else than the forest’s deep quiet troubles him. And because nothing of this is about Illidan, in the end, he stays in front and keeps a hand on his brother’s forearm, falsely demanding. His confident steps parts the sea of people like the bow of a ship through the waves. He keeps his face firmly locked into his usual smug-yet-bored look, with just enough condescention twisting his features that more than one bystander jumps out of his way with a touch of fear in their eyes.

(Not being able to name ‘crowd control through insufferable superiority’ as one of his strong points is and always will be a great disappointment.)

Finally, they stumble out of the main streets and directly into the entry hall of the Arena. It is far from silent, what with the echos that come with large places and the few spectators lingering inside, but compared to the chaos that are the streets outside it is as silent as an abbey.

Not that Illidan has ever been into one, mind you. They just have such a reputation of implacable quiet it’s hard not to compare things to them.

He gives Malfurion a moment to gather himself under the pretense of looking around. He comes here often, but his brother doesn’t know how familiar he really is with the blindingly-white arches that frame the stairs to the upper seats — and, to a lesser extent, with the blood-splattered stones paving the way to the fighters’ quarters. It’s better this way.

When the druid appears to feel better, which takes some time, he puts a bored half-snarl on his face and takes his arm again.

“Let’s go and find a good place before we both do Cenarius proud by taking roots here.”

“Hilarious.”

“You know I am.”

Although a little stilled, their banter lasts easily all the way up the stairs and past the two soldiers guarding the best seats, reserved to the most important of visitors. Illidan breezes past them with barely a tilt of his head in salute that lets his golden eyes catch the moonlight. They are used to seeing him, and he never forgets to reserve his place : it’s been years since they bothered to ask him if he is supposed to be there. Malfurion doesn’t seem to even notice them.

Illidan makes a beeline for their seats and doesn’t wait for his brother to join him before he falls into his own and proceeds to sprawl into it in the most comfortable and indecent way he can find. Lady Velenor, two rows up, lets out a disgusted noise at his attitude that makes it worth the stone poking into his left calf. The things he does for his image.

Next to him, slightly elevated by cushions and his haughty attitude, sits Lord Xavius.

Again.

He is, at best, a slimy bastard, but his might in magic and his influence on the queen are nothing to sneeze at, and Illidan could hardly throw pebbles at him until he leaves. He settles on a curt, barely-polite nod. This here is one of the many advantages of his reputation as a superficial, snobbish jerk: it lets him get away with showing the barest amount of respect for such an important political figure, among other things. His own well-known magical talent is also a great help: the amount of things people will let slide as long as you’re talented never ceases to amaze him.

Sadly, Xavius is also in charge of the magical institutions of Zin-Azshari, meaning Illidan cannot hope to mysteriously disappear from a room every time Xavius walks into it for the rest of his life. He could, maybe, disappear from Xavius’ space as a whole, but it would take half a continent and a lot of efforts to be at what he might consider a comfortable distance of the archmage, and it would also mean he’d have to settle for a magical school inferior to the Academy. Illidan is not one to settle for second best.

The only alternatives would be to get rid of Xavius — a wonderful, albeit highly illegal, idea — or to replace him. He has been working on the later since knowing the archmage, but it will take some time to reach the same level of knowledge as the one-eyed elf did in so many decades of life, even for a mage as brilliant as he is. Plus, he’s not sure he wants so much responsabilities: it sounds like an awful lot of work.

Just as he thinks about it — he likes to linger on the mental picture of Xavius being impaled on the very sharp lines of his own stupidly pointy home more than he’d care to admit—, the older elf turns in his direction and asks, honey-sweet,

“Have you seen the previous fights, Illidan?”

The casual use of his name doesn’t escape to him. The bastard knows damn well he hates it when people assume they can talk to him with such familiarity, but there’s nothing he can do about it without making a social faux-pas that would send the wrong message, and too many of his plans requires Xavius to not hate him outright. So he sighs inwardly and plasters a pleasant smile on his face.

“I did not. I had, I fear, better things to do.” It is not the most subtle insult he’s ever said, but it will have to do. The twitch in Xavius’ remaining eye proves that, no matter how obvious, it worked. His smile twists slightly, an echo of his usual cocky grin. “Did I miss anything good?”

“Some of the fighters seem very promising. I daresay I even have an idea of the one most likely to win this year.”

“Really?” Could he makes this question more doubtful? He honestly doubts it.

“Yes. A young moon guard. A great mage, and an even better swordsman.” He leans back in his seat and smiles slowly, full of teeth and calculated aggression. “Were you to fight him in a fair duel, I have to admit I am unsure of who would be victorious.”

The spike does not try to be subtle, but it hits true all the same. Illidan is a prideful creature, and fighting is one of those few things he is better at than Malfurion. In one single phrase, Xavius not only doubts his capacity as a warrior and a mage, he also implies Illidan does not win fairly. Which he does, or he’d win faster than is already the case. He has honor, however well hidden, and the implication that he could cheat in a duel is a direct attack against it.

But the comment also targets something he feels even more strongly about: his failure at joining the moon guards. Officially, it isn’t a failure as much as a lack of trying, which is much of the same. Like the tournament, Illidan never bothered to try because he is not fully sure he will win and he is, once again, full of pride. Losing any of those two would be more than just losing, it would be a public show of his incompetence as a warrior, a mage and a strategist, everything he’s built his personna around.

Without his talent, he is nothing to the crowd.

“Let’s be honest here: I would probably win.”

Xavius’ chuckle sounds false to his ears. Mocking, too, but that’s to be expected. He’s slipping, taken unaware by a lack of reaction where he expected it. He doesn’t realize it yet, but he has bitten more than he can chew — and it will bite back.

“Of course you’d think that,” He says, patronizing. “There is also a young man — well, you know how it is, at an age such as mine, everyone under five centuries is a child, he might be your age now that I think about it — who appears quite promising. He is unlikely to go further than today’s, maybe tomorrow’s round, but he has a quick mind for explosive spells.”

Illidan’s shoulders drop not at the poorly-hidden insult on his age, which he expected and takes some sense of pride in, but at what he knows will come next.

“He would make a bright apprentice,” Xavius adds pointingly.

Here it is.

“I’m sure he would.”

“And his fighting style strangely resembles yours — a fan, maybe?”

Appealing to his pride? That’s low, even for Xavius.

“He might be. How would I know? There are so many of them.”

It’s an argument that Illidan has been suffering through since the people of the Academy realized his golden eyes are not only for show, which makes it years of self-entitled nobles and mages throwing their children at him, bragging about their magical talent and how great they could become under Illidan’s tutelage.

(Were they less prideful, some might even ask his guidance for themselves; fortunately, no mage yet has shown the necessary humility. They are a vain lot, mages. It’s one of the reason he fits so well with them.)

Try all he might, neither his terrible personality (his brother’s words, not his) nor his increasingly rude rebuttals manage to keep them at bay. Maybe it’s making it worse: the one to be brilliant enough to be worth his teaching would, without doubt, be promised a future of glory on that point alone, no matter their actual talent. Maybe he should take the worse student he can, a commoner with little to no magic, just to see the mayhem that his choice would cause.

It’s once again nice thought, but he doesn’t have half the patience required for teaching, and really doesn’t wish to take an apprentice. Especially not if he can bother Xavius by refusing.

“Ah, I guess you are still too young to teach. I was like you at your age, focused entirely on my study…” Xavius sighs like an old man reminiscing of his youth, and Illidan realizes he has no idea how old the elf really is. “You’ll see, later in your life, that passing on what knowledge you have soon becomes more important than gaining more.”

As if.

There are dragons less possessive than Illidan is with his knowledge.

Illidan shrugs noncommittally, unwilling to drag the conversation any further. He expects his ears to start bleeding any second now: each second spent listening to Xavius is a danger to his health, mental or otherwise.

He sees Malfurion’s shoulders shaking with repressed laughter in the corner of his eyes but elects to ignore it. It’s been awhile since he’s made his twin laugh and doesn’t feel like ruining it, and even briefly consider continuing the conversation with the Right Hand of the Queen in a desperate attempt to make Malfurion outwardly laugh.

But he doesn’t have the patience for that, either. He turns his attention back to the arena down below instead, keen eyes tracking the figures of fighters. If he’s lucky, his disdain will bore Xavius enough that he will get up and leave. It’s unlikely: his elder do so love listening to his own voice, after all, and probably sees right through Illidan’s masks. Some of them, at least.

There are days when even Illidan isn’t sure what’s a veneer and what isn’t.

Some of the morning’s challenger stayed behind, getting patched up by healers or warming up for a fight that has yet to come. None appears especially banged up. Illidan is not disappointed by that, per say, but he expected a little more blood with a moon guard in the rowster. They have quite the reputation of being merciless in a fight: Xavius’ favorite must not have fought yet, he suspects, or one of the fighters would be sporting a lot more cuts and bruises. And maybe fewer limbs.

To be perfectly honest — and he seldom is — he, too, expects the moon guard to win. They are a powerful, brutal bunch, and only the best and most sure of themselves — or delusional — join the tournament.

Movement in the corner of his eye chases the thought from his head. He looks the opposite from the remaining fighters, to a new challenger stepping out of their quarters. He has a male’s figure and a swordsman’s as well, all lean muscles and light footing. His head is bent low over his hand as he covers it in bandage with an ease and quickness that speak of a long-lived habit, all while he blindly walks forward in slow, even steps that leave barely any trace at all in the sand. His golden hair spills like liquid fire over his shoulders, set alight by the flickering fire of the torches set around the arena, and hides his face to the onlookers.

It is an unusual sight, but one he recognizes easily. There are only so many things — so many sentient races, he corrects himself inwardly — with such colors and figure, so close to his own and yet so alien.

And yet, Illidan is still unsure of what he’s actually seeing, think it is an illusion, a clever glamour or a mistake on his part, as improbable this is, until the stranger lifts his head. He reaches for his hair with bandaged hands and, while twisting it into a loose ponytail, lets his eyes wander over the anonymous crowd with apparent disinterest.

Bright, vibrant green eyes, burning like felfire.

-

The sight inspires an instinctive, instantaneous reaction of repulsion in Illidan. There’s something inherently wrong about blood elves in their sickly-pale skin and magic-tainted eyes, in the many ways they are so similar to kaldorei and yet so different, and it makes his skin crawls. It’s nothing like looking at a troll, or an orc: it reminds him more of watching a fellow mage animating a golem for the first time, the impression of life it had until you stared into its lifeless eyes.

But Illidan is a curious creature at heart, and he has set it as his goal in life to go against everything that could make him another face in the great, nameless crowd. Whereas Malfurion winces once he notices there’s a blood elf in the arena, touching the amulet on his chest like a protective charm, he crushes the bothersome feeling under his metaphorical boot and shrugs at the soft “unnatural” his brother sadly whispers.

Fel-touched things — people, he corrects himself again — are only worth the price of their funerals to too many, and there is only those with an interest in the darker forms of magic to find them useful — and then again, only as study case or experiments. Illidan tries his hardest to be better than they are.

“There’s nothing more natural than magic,” He says, as if he’s not itching to put a sheet on the stranger’s head and pretend there’s nothing unusual there.

“This is not the same, Illidan.”

“You’re wrong, but I’m not here to argue with you about the nature of fel-magic.” Then, as a distraction, he gestures at another part of the arena, sprawling even more in his seat as he does so. “Hey, look, there’s a Tauren too. Aren’t they really good druids?”

It’s a good distraction. Malfurion is never as passionate about anything as he is about druidism, and he immediately forgets everything about the blood elf in favor of giving his twin a crash-course in Druidism 101. Illidan already knows his arguments by heart from the many times he heard this same speech before, but he’s not doing this to learn anything new anyway.

By the time his brother is finally done, the fighters have disappeared back into the barracks, bringing the mysterious challenger and his disturbing appearance with them.

Behind are left only two first fighters, a kaldorei woman and an orc. She is a warrior, hair cropped short and skin covered with scars, and holds her shield and sword like she was born with them in hand. Her opponent is large, even for his kind, and he keeps his torso bare, revealing a wall of muscle under his green skin. You could hardly make a more blatantly orcish orc, and the result is more than a little intimidating. Yet she doesn’t appear bothered by it in the slightest: they both stare into each other’s eyes with the same calm, assessing weaknesses that would be invisible to anyone else.

These are two predators, Illidan thinks, and leans back in his seat to watch the show.

The banging of the drums starts to echoes in the Arena, played by unseen musicians, making the ground rumble with music and anticipation both.

[sigurdjarlson]

I rarely talk about Alaluria in detail. Which is a shame. She’s my broken, angry baby.

let’s see..she’s always been the most headstrong. Had a lot of her mother’s temper in her. The world hasn’t been kind to any of them but her sisters have perhaps taken that with more grace than she has. She got angry.

A traumatized, angry child finds someone who’s bent on taking the fight to those who took her family from her. Is it any wonder she fell for him?

Ah and she just wants to take the fight to the Legion. She wants war and she wants to make them hurt like she does. 

Not to say Diily and Ladelia don’t have their own anger bottled up because oh, they do. It’s just Alaluria is not..as capable of controlling it? 

eventually the three of them became sentinels serving under Tyrande. Nobody important really but the more Alaluria traveled alongside Tyrande (and Malfurion and Illidan as well) the more she began to agree with Illidan.

She was tired of waiting. Tired of sitting there and doing nothing. And she agreed with Illidan’s more extremist ideas because…well, this was a time for extreme measures in her opinion. 

Diily did not. She’s…gentler. She’s more concerned with keeping them safe then taking the war directly to the Legion. She wants to certainly but her number 1 priority is them and also her people in general. 

It’s not that Alaluria didn’t care about the lives that would be lost but like Illidan she felt it would be worth it. It was an honor to give your life for such a thing. Sacrifices need to be made and she would gladly give her life if it meant stopping them 

but yes Illidan is jailed and centuries pass with the three of them serving Tyrande and making their way through the ranks. 

And then he’s released when the legion returns once more and that’s where shit hits the fan.

It’s where big disagreements start between the three girls. Getting progressively nastier because god damn it why don’t they understand? Why don’t they get it? Diily and her in particular were at odds. They had very different ideas on how this war should go. Perhaps I’ll go into more detail about that another time. But to summarize she felt misunderstood, controlled almost and she rebelled. She ran and ultimately followed Illidan to Outland.

it’s only fitting she found herself amongst misfits and monsters.

But there’s more to her than that. She’s kind underneath all that anger. It shines through with children and animals the most. It’s easy to forget the reason she joined Illidan was to SAVE their world (and everyone in it) was a large part of it a desire for revenge? Certainly. A desire for justice where there was none.

she’s sharp tongued but her heart is golden. She loves deeply and that’s where such wild emotions come from.

she can be cold and calculating definitely but that’s not who she truly is.

and ah Why couldn’t anyone see they were trying to save them? How dare anyone suggest she would ally herself with the same monsters that destroyed her life.

no sacrifice is too great. Sometimes that means doing things no one else is willing to do. Sometimes it means living with the guilt and agony of what you have done and still getting up to do it again tomorrow. It’s for the greater good right? No one else was willing to act so they had to do it. It’s worth it. It’ll be worth it. She has to believe it will be worth it.

and sometimes she stares up at he moon and wonders if Elune will take her when her time comes. Did she forfeit that right when she became..what she is? Will it be the Twisting Nether for her? Doomed to live out her afterlife alone. It terrifies her.

Being alone terrifies her. Being without her sisters terrifies her. Even when she was with the Illidari they were still out there. As angry as she was at them (and them at her) she found comfort in knowing they were still alive somewhere out there. But she fears In death she might never be able to reach them or anyone ever again.

Now..her love for Illidan

It’s genuine. It’s not just hero worship because he’s not a hero. He’s flawed, cruel and egotistical and she knows that. And she loves him.

whether he loves her back I go back and forth on. The last thing I want is for illidan to be OOC. But I believe him capable of love. He does in his way even if he still loves Tyrande. (One can love more than one person at once. Also his obsession with Tyrande is a whole other post I have saved in my drafts. I don’t believe it’s really..love? as much as obsession with something “he can’t have”)

but Alaluria, he does feel /something/ for her. He trained her, he made her. She fights with the same ferocity he does. She’s brave, intelligent, and strong. And she’s..too good for a monster like him. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t pursue her despite that. He’s a selfish creature by nature. If he wants her and she wants him. He will take her.

And she believes in him. Truly. He’s no hero. He’s not the chosen one. He’s a monster and she believes in him. She doesn’t flinch away from his scars (both physical and otherwise) because she has them too. Not exactly the same perhaps but there’s a connection there because of it.

And she chooses him. Again and again. Something no one has ever done. It baffles him.

And truly, she probably shouldn’t love him. On some level she knows that but we don’t choose who we love.

And she loves her sisters more than anything in this life. Even him. But loving does not always equal understanding and getting along. She feels more whole than she has in a very long time now that they’ve been reunited. It’s how it should be. But things have changed. There’s still a lot for them all to work through, to learn but that could never make her stop loving them.

Thinking about the battle at the black temple is gut-wrenching because here come these adventurers attacking them for trying to SAVE them. And among them are her sisters. They’re on separate sides of the battlefield and she knows what she’s supposed to do but…Alaluria is capable of many things but fratricide is not one of them

Her and Diily fought. She lost. (Another mark on her pride) and Diily knocked her ass out instead of killing her. Diily never could. I don’t think any of them are capable of such a thing. When she woke she was being dragged to the tomb and the man she loves was dead, killed by her sisters. And they locked her away. Why didn’t they just kill her? It would be kinder. And that feeling of betrayal was more painful than any blade or arrow ever could be. 

she woke up to Maiev was shoving glaives in her hands and telling her to fight. When she found her sisters again she was in half a mind to attack them then and there but Diily did something she did not expect. She apologized. She swallowed her own pride and admitted she was wrong. (She’s a sweetheart but her pride/stubbornness can get her into trouble)

She admitted she’d been wrong. And Alaluria broke because deep down she’s still that scared little girl who just wants to curl up in her big sister’s arms. And for a moment It was just three broken girls clinging to each other.

 is there still work to be done? Certainly. But are they together again? Yes. And is there acceptance now? Yes. No horror at the green fire in her eyes or vicious accusations. Just sadness that she’s suffered so. Not pity but sympathy because they’ve all suffered. She’s a little..pointier and fel infused now but she’s still their sister. And hey those wings are actually pretty awesome. They all butt heads sometimes. They’re sisters but they love each other and that’s all that matters.

“I never stopped loving you, not even when I hated you.” - can’t remember where that quote is from.

she’s surly, even cruel sometimes but her intentions are good. Her heart is in the right place even if it’s fel tainted blood that pumps through her veins now. She lashes out when upset and yet loves with the same ferocity.