Heroes of the Storm Update Thoughts!

So with the huge patch that was applied to Heroes of the Storm this morning, everybody rushed to take a look at all the new features. For the record, and should anybody be wondering, here are my thoughts on the new implementations and some existing features I happened to discover recently also:

Battlefield of Eternity: this is a fun map. I can only imagine it’s a giant shitstorm when playing in Quick Match or Hero League, since I tend to usually play vs. AI because of firstly shyness and secondly the nature of a great deal of players. I like the secret middle gate into the bases and trying to level Gazlowe I derived probably an inappropriate amount of satisfaction from sneaking into their base to disable their forts while everyone else was busy elsewhere.

The visuals are also, obviously, amazing, and it’s probably the most visually-striking map so far. I would like to hope that Blizzard could apply this same amount of dedication and art design to future maps and ensure that they’re all this phenomenally enticing. A Starcraft map crafted with this amount of care would be a wonderful thing to see. The new music, which appears when playing this map as well as in the menu screens, is also wonderful and atmospheric, and was a really pleasant surprise for me when I booted up the game, being something of a musician myself.

The Butcher: yeah, no? No. Nope.

What, that’s not enough for you? Allow me to elaborate: visually unappealing, overhyped, completely lacking in any kind of charisma or appeal from a characterisation perspective, and ridiculously overpowered in certain key areas.

The character trailers Heroes of the Storm put out used to include footage of actual gameplay, for an example, see those for Kerrigan and Zagara, just off the top of my head… gradually, as they went along, they drifted away from that. Jaina’s trailer features her freeze-bombing more than 5 people at once, and Johanna’s trailer is about her flinging people away over treetops. While these are obviously exaggerated, and probably do a great job of hyping the character for people, they’re unrealistic – but they’re nothing compared to the trailers for Thrall and The Butcher.

Thrall, the darling of World of Warcraft who can only accurately be described with extreme contempt as “green Jesus,” has a trailer which features him saving various peoples just by appearing and looking stoic, and declares that the HotS characters can be “a family,” which is delightfully ironic seeing as he follows that comment up with a warcry of “for the Horde!” despite some of the people he is calling his family being Alliance. The Butcher, on the other hand, has a trailer that goes even further than to declare he unites all of the characters together despite race and universe of origin, boldly stating that The Butcher has killed literally every character from the rest of the game. And attempting to portray him as a horror movie villain. Not just freezing or flinging away the other characters as in the case of the exaggerated Jaina and Johanna trailers, but killing them and chopping them up for meat.

I can’t tell whether this is overcompensating, that the developers noticed the complete lack of excitement for The Butcher and decided to use the “spinosaurus from Jurassic Park 3” tactic of assuming that if they have the new character kill all the characters people actually like, people will somehow like the completely uninteresting character more; or if the developers just really like The Butcher a lot more than anyone else.

However, and this is the main thing that annoys me, it’s entirely possible that he probably could slaughter all the other characters. I haven’t tested him against any actual players, partly because of my aforementioned avoidance of playing with people and partly because there’s no way in hell I’m shelling out the Australian-dollar-equivalent of US$15 for this bastard, but in trying him out in the shop, I discovered something that troubles me greatly. If you take the talent that allows a larger maximum amount of meat, and Nexus Blades at level 20, The Butcher ends up sporting a 650+ damage on his basic attack.

Six hundred and fucking fifty. Uh, yeah, that’s a big fat fucking nope. That would be overpowered if he had literally nothing else to offer, and that’s really not the case. I can only hope people murder him quickly to avoid him building up that meat count or else everybody had better kiss their healthbars goodbye.

I’m a sucker for basic attack builds, and taking the ultimate basic attack builds for other assassins like Kerrigan and Thrall leaves you capped at about 400-500 maximum (within reason, since you could get more if you ground minion kills forever, and hey maybe I just finish games too quickly to advance further, I’m not sure), and The Butcher doesn’t even have Seasoned Marksman. Level 20 Butcher vs. someone really squishy like Kael’thas is going to be… not pretty.

Which, I guess, suits The Butcher well, because he’s ugly as sin. I will probably never cease to be annoyed about him.

750 gold gain at level 9 for characters: hooray!

Role display of damage taken by tanks in the stats screen: I am very much behind this. I’m super-glad it’s been implemented. It does make me wonder what it’ll do for warrior characters like ETC and Tyrael who can do heals, though. Ignore the healing, I suppose.

Block list limit: now this is an old thing, since it first hit me a couple of days before this patch and I’ve just been waiting for an excuse to rant about it. Because seriously, Blizzard? Seriously?

How is it that the culpability for the bad behaviour of people in chat has somehow been placed on the people who don’t wish to put up with it? It might have been helpful if Blizzard had informed me that I had a limited number of reports of inappropriate behaviour I could make, so that I could have carefully considered whether to report for completely inappropriate comments either the guy talking about his genitalia at length or the guy who says “I rape newbs” and proceeds to describe said events.

But yeah, no. Totally my fault for reporting too many of those arseholes. Obviously there needs to be a limit to the number of blocks I can make, because if online interactivity has taught us anything, it’s that there is totally a very small, finite number of people who behave stupidly. OBVIOUSLY.

When it’s reached the stage where me reporting somebody for calling people derogatory names and blasting them with hate messages in general chat doesn’t block them, there’s a problem with your goddamn blocking system, Blizzard.

And… I’ll leave it there for now. I’m very happy with the list of free characters this week and I have a hankering to get back to levelling Gazlowe. God I hope Blizzard fixes its shit, though.

Writing About Pain

So, today I went to the dentist. I’m currently in the middle of having my teeth straightened with braces – fairly unusual, for me being 24, I know, but there was no spare $7,000 lying around when I was younger – and a lot of it hurt. A lot more of it was seriously uncomfortable, and it’s not the pain that bothers me so much as the sensation of my teeth being pressed on forcefully. Not to brag or anything, but, I can handle pain.

My liver, again, not to brag or anything, is to normal livers what Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson is to normal people. It metabolises things so fast that caffeine and nicotine have no effect on me whatsoever, I could sober up from however many drinks I’d had (back when I used to drink) in about ten minutes, and, more unfortunately, local anaesthetic basically doesn’t work on me at all. Not only does this make me terrified about how possibly ineffective general anaesthetic might be if I ever need emergency surgery, but it also means that the two surgeries I have had done recently were pretty much un-anaesthetised.

The first of these was getting my wisdom teeth removed (which, yes, can be done under just local if you can’t afford an operating theatre and an anaesthetist for the general), and the second was some excess teeth to create room for the braces because my jaws were crowded. It was highly unpleasant both times, but it has rather put most other unpleasant things in my life into perspective. Everyday orthodontic visits like this one are a piece of cake compared to having people digging around in my gums with needles and scalpels.

What occurs to me, however, is this: pain is a very personal thing. When we see a character in a movie or read a character in a book experiencing pain, we imagine our own pain, the pain that we know, because we can’t ever really know how someone else’s brain or nerves reacts to certain things. We can feel phantom pains in limbs that no longer exist, or feel sympathetic pain when someone we know describes something they’ve been through.

My current story being a fantasy book that involves fighting things, people are inevitably (spoilers, I guess) going to get hurt at certain points. And I find myself wondering if my perception of pain is so different from normal people’s as to create some kind of divide between what everyone else will think is an appropriate amount of pain for someone to be able to push through, and what I do. I have it on good authority from literally everybody I’ve told about my surgeries that a lot of people can’t even stand to imagine going through them the way I did, without any really numbing, though of course I am not one to presume there aren’t a lot of people with a pain tolerance as high as mine.

But that makes it even more interesting, in my opinion.

Does everyone who writes anything inextricably describe their own experiences of pain in their writing, or can some people find a more generic way to express it? Can we ever accurately convey that description of our own sensations, or does every reader invariably imagine their own experiences of pain, unable to extract such a primal feeling from our own visceral knowledge of it?

I feel like I should go back and re-read something where a character experiences pain, and analyse my reactions to find out whether I rationalise what happens into my own knowledge of pain, or accept the description however it may differ from what I experience.

Like love, there are many ways to interpret pain, but unlike love, pain can never really be shared with anyone else. Perhaps that is why I’ve never particularly thought about it like this before. It’s disconcerting to realise that, in one aspect at least, all of my characters may be clones of myself, exhibiting something personal to me.

But then I wonder whether anyone even notices…

The Multiplayer Jungle

When playing online multiplayer games one, inherently, by the nature of the game, exposes oneself to other people playing the same game. In some cases this can be a good thing, particularly for people the opposite of myself who are extroverted and good at making friends, but in some particular scenarios it opens everyone up to coming across the sort of people we’d all rather avoid, in the unpleasant context of being forced to work together with them.

I first encountered this when I began healing in the multiplayer dungeons in World of Warcraft, across various characters and in yes, both factions, because I’m not a fan of either the Alliance or the Horde, before anybody claims that Horde/Alliance players are better than what I’m about to describe. However many dozens of dungeon runs I made without incident, it’s always the ones that go badly that stick in my memory, even now more than a year after I have ceased to play WoW.

I still remember with clarity that one Scarlet Monastery run I did where a Dwarf Retribution-specialisation Paladin rolled for every piece of INT Leather gear that I (as a Restoration Shaman) needed, just to be a dick, and frustratingly won all of them. I still remember the Scholomance run I did as a Balance Druid where I ended up healing because our actual healer refused to, and then was left there on my own while everyone else exited the instance. I still remember the unbelievable Stockades dungeon instance I did on my Feral Druid character where I realised to my disbelief that all four of the other characters in the dungeon were controlled by one person, all with the same name ending in various numbers and set to auto-follow each other.

But sometimes, through some stroke of what is either incredibly bad or incredibly good luck, you come across players that are so goddamn awful that it becomes a bonding experience for everybody else forced to put up with them.

In honour of experiencing one of these yesterday while playing Heroes of the Storm (which I will probably talk about soon as well), I hereby present the story of my most remarkable dungeon in WoW ever, which occurred in Blackfathom Deeps as I tried to level my Dwarf Restoration Shaman.

The rest of the party was comprised of mainly Human characters, a Hunter who had a boar as a pet, a Destruction Warlock who started off with an imp summoned, and a Rogue. Our fifth, who was ostensibly supposed to be the tank, was a giant arse of a Night Elf Feral Druid who had queued as a tank presumably to cheat their way into the dungeon quicker (tanks and healers are always in higher demanded than DPS because there are 3 of the latter and only one each of the first two required).

Things started off all right, although we were all already somewhat bitter about our “tank” maintaining cat form, and it wasn’t until the first boss that our Rogue and Warlock started putting out messages saying “can you take bear form and tank please” because between the two pet classes there were enough extra bodies that we hadn’t suffered particularly much from the lack of tanking, and, to be frank, I was quite a good healer in those days. In response to their pleas, our Druid began switching to Bear form (which is designed to draw enemy fire from squishier characters like the Warlock and the Rogue) while running between enemies, and then switching straight back into Cat form to attack them – which could only have been a deliberate move to annoy them because it enhanced nothing.

Needless to say, this dickery did not sit well with the rest of us. We did our best as we continued through the dungeon, gritting our teeth and determining just to finish the thing, but our Rogue died a few times despite our efforts and my attempts to heal and the messages directed at the Druid began to become angrier as the dead Rogue started swearing at them, pointing out that if they had been in Bear form he wouldn’t have died. After the second boss, our Warlock summoned her Voidwalker (which has very mild tanking abilities) because we were desperate for anything to draw aggro, and our Druid indignantly demanded to know what the hell she thought she was doing switching to something that did less DPS.

All three of the DPS players were quick to point out that we needed a tank because the Druid refused to do their job, and it was at this point that the dungeon descended full-on into batshit insanity.

I was private-messaged by the Druid, who said “don’t listen to the Warlock, she’s trying to turn you against me, you should just heal me and ignore the others,” which I obviously ignored, because that’s not how dungeons work. Shortly afterwards it became clear they had been messaging the Hunter as well, because he stated in party chat that the Druid had told him that we should all run away from the fight and let the Warlock die, though quite why they felt that she was more at fault for anything than the other two DPS characters was beyond me. The Hunter furthermore insisted that the Druid should shut the hell up and do their job.

The Druid countered by saying that we had all been brainwashed by the Warlock’s lies about them (she not having said a single thing about him other than “can you actually tank please”).

By this point we were blitzing through enemies as fast as we could because we were desperate to get away from this person (unlike with the other three, I never knew their gender) and at a point where you can optionally choose to go underwater and fight a relatively secret boss called Old Serra’kis, we naturally were making no effort to prolong anything and breezed past the diversion, much to the annoyance of the Druid.

They began spamming the chat with [Old Serra’kis] [Old Serra’kis] [Old Serra’kis] over and over, probably at least a hundred times, standing by the entrance as we determinedly ignored them, mostly too busy fighting to actually type any messages in response since we were now fully down a man. I began receiving more private messages from the Druid, cycling through attitudes along the lines of “you’re going to leave me after we finish this dungeon aren’t you? You’re so heartless, how can you be so mean” to “you suck, I’m a better healer than you, you should just drop dead” to “what has the Warlock been saying about me? Don’t listen to her, she’s evil you know,” none of which I responded to and all of which were equally maddening. The first of these was especially confusing because I can’t believe that this player might ever have encountered a party who chose to stay together after a dungeon with them, and yes we were all obviously going to go our separate ways afterwards.

Our very irritated Rogue died once more and demanded in chat that the Druid stop messaging him with their “creepy-ass shit” (sic.) and the Druid, in between spamming [Old Serra’kis] a few more times, insisted that they would only stop if we would help them kill Old Serra’kis instead of going onwards. They then said, in what was a blatant and unbelievable lie, that they had been trying this dungeon for weeks and could find nobody kind enough to help them with Old Serra’kis, and couldn’t we please find it in our hearts to be good people for just a second and not ruin their whole day. This, despite being at level 15 still, the bare minimum for entering the dungeon, which they would have levelled past if they had done the dungeon even once before.

We took a short break, waiting for my healing to fully restore our Hunter, and I managed to type “maybe we would help with Old Serra’kis if you would actually TANK” and my comment received the universal online message of approval in the form of three sets of “^” and our Warlock saying “Preach!”

It was at that point that the Druid finally gave up on trying to convince us to kill Old Serra’kis and instead returned to outright insults, telling us all that we sucked in various imaginative ways and saying that we were evil and we were deliberately trying to ruin the game for them. None of us could be bothered responding to them anymore, and we quite miraculously managed to four-man the penultimate boss, with the Hunter’s boar doing a decent job of drawing the aggro for us this time. The Druid had caught up with us by now, but refused to fight, so the Rogue pointed out that the boar was more useful than the Druid had ever been, and we all in a fit of somewhat impish delight began crying “all hail the pig-tank!” and someone put a star symbol over the boar’s head, and there was much bowing, mostly because it was cathartic.

The Druid then flipped out, saying that we would see just how much they had been helping us if they went off and got themselves killed, and we would then be doomed without them, and beg them to help us with the final boss, and ran off to presumably throw themselves at some enemies and watch in triumph as we failed without them.

However, unfortunately for the Druid, our Hunter had just pulled the last boss, and what with the Druid pulling absolutely no aggro, the boss ignored them, thwarting their efforts to martyr themselves and show us the error of our ways. They then cried “you’ll never win without me!” and threw themselves at a bunch of minion enemies, not realising that the pile of tiny crabs they were standing in the middle of were all neutral enemies that wouldn’t attack unless provoked (unlike most of the other enemies in dungeons).

Undeterred by this latest failure, they finally took Bear form and attacked the last boss, drawing enough aggro to pull it away from us, and we let them take it, because by this point we were all quite happy for them to get themselves killed. And yet, even now, I had put out a healing totem that kept gradually keeping the Druid alive, and their constant cries of “what will you do now, huh?” were followed by them continually living and having to make a theatrical gesture again.

At length, the Hunter told me to let the Druid die, and I informed him that I wasn’t trying to help them at all, but that the spell I had used before (in order to help us) was inadvertently thwarting their schemes. The Warlock summed up all of our thoughts on the entire dungeon by saying “figures he can’t even kill himself properly.”

And then, at last, the Druid died, and over the top of their cries of how doomed we were, we defeated the final boss, congratulated each other, the Warlock and the Hunter sent me friend requests, and we went on our separate ways.

And I will probably never forget it while my memories hold, because it was so absolutely, ludicrously terrible that it reached a stage where it was actually kind of wonderful.

The Butcher(ing) of Heroes of the Storm

So I discovered today via my Battle.net launched news that it had been announced a while ago that Heroes of the Storm will be receiving a new map (which people seem legitimately excited about) and a new character (who has been met with kind of the opposite reaction), a demonic villain from the first Diablo game who was re-vamped for the third called The Butcher.

And in browsing through the comments on the release notice, it seems like a lot of other players have the same basic reaction as I did, which was “ugh.”

Obviously as someone who never played Diablo I’m sitting at a disadvantage to those who have, in that I don’t even know this character that I don’t find particularly enticing, but from what I’ve been able to gather from people who do, there’s a lot of muttering about leaving characters from the second Diablo game (which many of said people consider to be the best of the trilogy) out of Heroes of the Storm, seemingly as a marketing move, to directly promote Diablo 3 and the current versions of the Blizzard games that can be downloaded right now, if you would like, they’re right there in your launcher!

The forum comments have thrown around names like Baal and Mephisto (who, I will add, are references to actual demons I’ve actually heard of outside of Diablo and are much less nebulous than simply ‘The Butcher,’ which would probably be more appealing to other people who haven’t played the Diablo games), and even jokingly Deckard Cain, who even I know is a frail old man who talks a lot, as Diablo characters they’d prefer to see over The Butcher.

Which brings me to the major problem I have with The Butcher, which is that it’s frankly undeniable that he looks a lot like Stitches, a WoW character who is basically an abomination made of stitched together parts of corpses. Hell – The Butcher even has stitches on his chest like Stitches. Despite being red-skinned, The Butcher bears a very close resemblance to another character in a game that’s specifically designed to allow you through levelling to unlock different skin colours, and which – up until this point – has done a brilliant job of keeping all of its characters visually distinct.

There’s a clear visual divide even between skins designed to alternate-universe-switch characters into each other’s plotlines, like Malfurion and Illidan, one of whom betrayed his race and took up with demons, and the other of whom stayed behind and became a leader and a genuine tree-hugger. Both of these characters are visually distinct because a lot of focus was put on their GIGANTIC weapons, a staff on one hand and two giant daggers as tall as the character on the other, and this allows players even in the thick of a clump of players to be able to tell who they’re facing so they can react accordingly.

In what pictures I’ve seen of The Butcher, he has literally the same style of weapon – a giant cleaver in one hand and a hook-type implement in the other – as Stitches uses. Oh, but, the hook and cleaver have marginally different designs! You know, kind of like they probably would have if Blizzard had just made a cosmetic “Butcher” skin of Stitches!

Which is another complaint I’ve seen often on the forums. Not only does their similar visual style make them confusing to tell apart on the battlefield, a lot of people are convinced they could have released a product re-skinning Stitches to look like The Butcher for roughly the same amount of effectiveness.

The logic goes: players who liked The Butcher will buy the “Butcher” skin of Stitches. What’s that you say? Nobody liked The Butcher? Then why the fuck are we being asked to play him?

The amount of “awwww yis get hyped for The Butcher!!!!!” PR I’ve been seeing from Blizzard is an amazingly clear proof to me that they actually don’t listen to a thing their audiences say. There could almost not be less hype for The Butcher. The kindest thing I’ve seen said is that The Butcher character model has been tied to Heroes of the Storm since alpha development and that they badly-timed their release of him. Yeah, that’s the kindest one.

The overwhelming cry of “for the love of god release a Starcraft Warrior” has apparently gone largely ignored, which I find sad, because I seriously want to see Dehaka, the primal Zerg from Starcraft 2, make an appearance, and he would fit that character build perfectly.

I would also love to see Blizzard try and come up with a ranged Warrior character. I believe it would work most effectively with probably one of the dragon aspects from WoW, in dragon form, with a ranged basic attack of fire breath or similar depending on dragon breed, and some kind of trait that pulls aggro (or absorbs damage done to other characters) in order to be an effective tank from a distance. And I would probably give them my money/gold for that.

For The Butcher? No.

Even though his play-style is distinctly different to Stitches, there is nothing about The Butcher that entices me.

Where’s Vol’jin? Where’s Crowley? Where’s Dehaka? Where’s Stukov? Where’s Baine? Where’s… that one evil Forsaken guy with the cool voice who shouted “death to the living!” at the Wrath Gate? Where are the dragons? Where’s Aggra? Where are the Draenei? Where’s Tosh? Where’s any character anyone has asked for? Hell, I would be at least vaguely interested in Mephisto and Baal or one of the other angels from Diablo!

Really? The Butcher? Really?

Well at least our expectations are suitably lowered for the next new character reveal.

Fantasy Cities and Towns

Describing locations in fantasy books is often a lot more in-depth than in any kind of modern fiction story set in the real world, for obvious reasons. It’s easy enough to get away with saying “it was a town like any other ordinary town in [America/Britain/Denmark/wherever]” because many readers will have lived in, visited, or otherwise just seen in other forms of media the kind of town that’s being referenced. It loses a modicum of impact when you say “it was a town like any other in Cardolan,” though.

In terms of both fantasy and modern fiction it’s largely dictated by the writing style of the author, of course, but generally speaking more elaboration is called for in an entirely fictional world into which only the author can see.

I find it much easier to give a clear picture of the settlement in question if it’s a place that the characters return to often; such places often develop a character of their own, in a way, like the iconic Ankh-Morpork in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, from which I can name streets that have been visited by multiple characters from that world. Describe enough parts of a place, and revisit it enough times, and it does take on a familiarity, both for the readers and the author, which allows more vivid imagery to form and a greater picture of the town/city/farmstead/whatever location you want to be compiled.

I have a harder time writing a snapshot description of a place that will not be visited again – a one-time visit to a certain town along one character’s path, that they won’t be coming back to, that will never be written about again. In short, if there’s anything I want to say about this place, I have to get it all out in the one description, and I find this to be a lot of pressure.

Ironically, I’m the opposite when it comes to people; it’s much easier for me to describe a minor character who probably won’t be elaborated on again than to describe a major character who will probably be seen in a different light later by somebody else, I think mostly because I really want to capture the major characters in exactly the right way.

I started thinking about all of this because of what I wrote today, roughly two thousand words (which is my daily goal, for now), which contained a description of an Irtysu town called Cillasca that the story won’t be revisiting after this part:

“…they were still a very noticeable band as they crested the lip of the rise below which Cillasca sat, squat and crowded, inside a sheltered valley, plumes of chimney smoke rising into the air like beacons. As with many Irtysu settlements, it had originally been positioned in the dell for strategic reasons, and had gradually outgrown the natural defensive walls of the valley, leading to partial excavation of rock in some places and in others a few clusters of houses perched on the walls above the rest of the settlement, and clumped buildings bordered by wooden barricades squeezing out of each end of the basin.

Though the rooves were a mixture of slate tiles and cheaper thatch, the buildings were all made of stone, each and every one, as was the standard across Irtysuhëm and indeed in Havershom as well. In the cold of the Winter Peninsula, wood as a building material was only really used for ships, barricades, weapons and shields, and furniture, since it would burn too easily to make building houses out of it very practical in a land where fires were essential and raiders a very real possibility. As a result, stonemasonry and quarrying were important industries all across the Winter Peninsula, and this was one of the reasons Serutric often found himself having to push further and further east to reach truly wild parts of his people’s land, since quarries would pop up anywhere where sufficient amounts of stone could be extracted.

There was one, rather small by usual Irtysu standards, on the western outskirts of Cillasca, above the township and mostly out of sight; Serutric knew that Gullinis, having been born a farmer, preferred fields and animals to mining and industry, as he did, which was probably why the nearby quarry was so unusually modest. Beyond the northern borders of the settlement were several plantations of blue ash trees, which were grown specially to be harvested and carted off to the shipwrights, and were the Ascandar tribe’s main offering to his father, where other tribes often sent stone or food.”

I prefer a more piecemeal description of the larger cities in my story, as with the Havershonian capital city Lockolme where I gradually build up a picture of the slate rooves and cobbled streets, noting its position below the mountains and adding specific districts and buildings that are crucial over time as the story spends more time there. But for Cillasca, especially given what will be happening there, I needed to get the description all out at once.

Is this usual for fantasy stories? I am not sure, though I am quite curious. The fantasy books I have read most are of course The Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien could never resist the urge to describe any part of his world. It is naturally very important as a writing technique, particularly in fantasy, in order to draw the reader into the world, so I hope that my descriptions turn out satisfactorily.

If I can create even a tenth as vivid a world as Tolkien managed to do, I will be a happy woman.

An Appendage to the Appendices

So I broke out my copy of Return of the King last night in order to look through the appendix that talks about pronunciation in preparation to do my own little summary to go in my section of Elvish tutorials, and I find some parts that… how shall I put this? Are… misleading? I won’t go so far as to say wrong.

I realise that sounds more than a little conceited, but let me hasten to assure you I’m not saying that I know better than Tolkien. What I’m saying is that some of what’s written in the appendices, particularly in regards to Sindarin, he later contradicted himself about, and we generally tend to favour the later interpretations when it comes to correctness.

With regards to the diphthongs of ae, ai, ei and oe (for those who do not know, a diphthong is two or more vowels that together make only one sound – such as the ‘ai’ in the English word ‘fair’ where the ‘ia’ in the middle of the word ‘trial’ has both vowels pronounced separately), there seems to be some blurred lines when it comes to their pronunciations.

Ai is universally accepted as being pronounced like the English word ‘eye,’ with the last syllable of Dúnedain sounding like English dine rather than deign. Ei is described as being pronounced like in ‘rein,’ and he states that basically there’s nothing in English that sounds properly like ae and oe should be pronounced, but that you’ll get away with pronouncing them like ai and oi without being laughed at too much, probably.

Which, firstly – way to vowel-shame English there, guy – and secondly… you’d think he could have tried to explain, at least. And the pronunciation of ae in particular is made exceptionally confusing when you realise that his description of ei was later revised.

Even though chronologically in the Tolkienverse Noldorin came about much earlier than Sindarin, conceptually Noldorin as the bridge between Quenya and Sindarin is the youngest of the Elvish languages, with a lot of Tolkien’s thoughts about it coming after the publication The Lord of the Rings (and thus its appendices).

Ei was primarily a Noldorin diphthong in Tolkien’s later descriptions, being almost entirely replaced in Sindarin by ai, by means of being basically the same sound spelt differently. So why then is it labelled as being pronounced differently while the diphthong ae (which occurs frequently in Sindarin even sometimes alongside ai) is noted as the same as ai, when we know the Sindarin saw ai and ei as interchangeable? Are they all pronounced the same and it’s only his notes on early ei that were later corrected? Or did ae later replace ei in his mind as the diphthong that took the “ay” sound in “May?”

Unfortunately, we’ll basically never know. My curiosity piqued, I dug out my DVD copy of Fellowship of the Ring, and both Galadriel and Arwen used words I knew off the top of my head that contained ae (the first line in the entire movie in Galadriel’s case, i amar prestar aen, and the first part of Arwen’s incantation to the Bruinen river Nin o Hithaeglir) pronounced the same as ai. So there’s where David Salo (who I have mentioned before was the Sindarist for the movies and is a total genius) stands on the matter.

Still sheds no light on the ei/ai conundrum, but thankfully it’s so rare in Sindarin that it almost doesn’t matter. It’s probably best to assume that in later Sindarin Tolkien’s notes about the pronunciation are correct and that it was changed from the ai pronunciation used in Noldorin – Ereinion (Nol. scion of kings, the birth name of Gil-Galad ) would be pronounced with the ei like the English word ‘eye,’ but the Mitheithel river (Sin. grey-well) would have the ei pronounced like “ay.”

So for the first time I really understood the thing that people have said to me (often), that the appendices to Return of the King can be confusing, though for presumably vastly different reasons than most people.

As a sidenote, doing some research into what other people who know about Elvish think about the whole thing, I now feel vastly inferior and unknowledgeable, to the point where… I don’t know. I may just stop writing about Elvish from now on. There are far better sources from much smarter people out there…

(SINDARIN) PRONUNCIATION GUIDE FOLLOWS

News and Writing Tidbits

So it has been several days since I last wrote anything, mostly because I find myself constantly in a position of wondering whether anything I want to say is even interesting enough to tell my friends, let alone post publicly on the internet. It’s also partially, however, because due to inexperience, I’m not sure how much I’m supposed to share of my writing, particularly before my book is done.

For instance, I’m aware that posting whole chapters online is probably not a good idea so long before it’s finished, but since it’s the most interesting thing I’m doing at the moment, I constantly want to talk about it (as I have done recently several times).

The other thing I have to say is that unfortunately this book is going to have to take a backseat in my life for a while from now on. I’m currently studying an IT degree with a flexible courseload so I took the month of May as a kind of break to work on my writing much harder, and now I have to go back to focussing on the course.

I’m terrible at implementing organisation, but I’ve done up a whole schedule for myself that I will try my best to stick to, which includes time for blogging everyday (provided I can come up with anything interesting to say, although I can always just fall back on Tolkien facts, I suppose) and a smaller amount of writing whenever I can manage it. I also have plans, so that I don’t go mad from not being creative enough, to undertake one small project, like a poem or a short story or an outline for something, every week, which I may post here.

I’m frankly flabbergasted as many people have viewed these things I’ve rambled about as has been happening. I honestly thought this would just be me shouting into the void, although I suppose some of the posts probably are. I have a very wide range of interests, and the posts about writing (and science) are the ones that garner people to go so far as to follow me (to my terror), and those are the ones I am the most unsure about.

So… because I am writing about them currently in the story, here is a profile of a fantasy race from my book Into the Sun.

The Irtysu (for English speakers, pronounced like the words “ear” “too” and “sue” put together)

Culture type: tribal, pastoral. Farmers work their lands and give tribute (in the form of food, since they do not use currency, only barter) to tribal leaders living in larger settlements in return for protection from raiders and enforcement of laws.

Homeland: Irtysuhëm. The land in the furthest northern reaches of the Frozen Continent, it lies on the western coastline of what is called the Winter Peninsula, though they seek to push all the way east through colonisation efforts. Aggressive farming efforts struggle to produce enough food in the harsh conditions, the land often giving way to tundra that must be landscaped by planting trees and diverting riverways. It snows almost constantly through winter (though lightly) and the bracing cold is a mark of pride for the Irtysu, who state that it has made them strong. Its north and south borders are formed by high mountain ranges, and to its south lies Havershom, with whom it has intermittently been at war for several hundred years.

Religion: a pantheon of various animal-themed Gods. Most notably Grannoch, the Bear-God of Strength; Korvannon, the Crow-God of Storms; Rinca, the Doe-Goddess of Life; and Avellor, the Horse-God of War.

Government: feudal. The tribal leaders often go to war with each other but heed the rule of whichever tribe is counted as having the Chieftain until they are ready to fight each other for power again. Alliances are made and formed based on power struggles and trade opportunities and the favour of those tribes who live near the border to the neighbouring country of Havershom is always highly sought-after. The current Chieftain, Runatric, hails from the Gerau tribe, with the seat of his power at Gerausund in the centre of Irtysuhëm’s coastline. Much of his tribe’s power stems from their ready access to the sea and sailing prowess. The Gerau rose to power during the time of Runatric’s father Segaldic and have held their position since.

Physical characteristics: blonde, silver or white hair, generally. Darker hair colours exist, particularly reds, but they are something of an anomaly. Very pale skin. They tend to be quite bulky; men in particular are usually muscular, as life and the work they all do is hard. Both genders tend to be tall and broad-shouldered by comparison to other races. Blue, green or grey eyes are most common.

Other notable facts: adulthood begins at 15. Women can learn fighting if they choose and can find a master who is accepting apprentices. At 15 each Irtysu acquires their own first horse, usually paid for as a birthday present by their parents. The Irtysu hold horses in very high regard and have formidable cavalry forces which they pit against each other or Havershom. Any Irtysu who kills a dragon is granted the title of Sky-cleaver by the Chieftain and may ask for any gift he or she wishes. The Irtysu have an above-average number of magic-users due to their fortitude and strength cultivated by their harsh lands.

Real-life inspiration?: not entirely. The climate of the Winter Peninsula informed a lot of how the Irtysu turned out for me. They probably come across as seeming quite similar to the Vikings, wearing a lot of fur, being quite aggressive, that sort of thing. It was unintentional; I needed them to be big and burly to survive in the ridiculous cold, and stubborn and proud and not all that bright overall to explain why they didn’t just leave. Some of my races have a basis in real-life culture, but not the Irtysu.

If anyone found this interesting, I have a lot of races I could do this for. We shall see!

Diversity in Media

So I’m going to touch here on what is probably going to be called a ‘controversial’ issue. Mostly because I find it very confusing and as a writer I sense it informing my internal debate around certain choices I need to make about my books.

I feel like at some point, possibly, particularly during the era when I was in high school slightly less than ten years ago, you could write a book with a homosexual character in it without receiving a backlash of gargantuan proportions. Sure, you might get messages from the same extremists who message anyone who’s ever said anything about how homosexual people probably shouldn’t be murdered or bullied, but (speaking as a fantasy author) they’re the same kind of people who would automatically say your book leads to worship of the devil and witchcraft anyway, so, you know – why not.

Recently, particularly in regards to video games, the large numbers of people crying out for diversity in the forms of media they consume have begun to be seen as something of an angry mob, and in response one can now find an attitude that decries any diversity as either being forced onto creators (who could never possibly have wanted it in the first place) or pushing some kind of social justice agenda (for those who state that it was their own decision to include the characters that are described as diverse). We saw this just recently with the release of Mad Max: Fury Road, the movie being labelled “feminist propaganda” by varyingly extreme degrees of people who subscribe to this idea of diversity as an oppressor.

Now, the fantasy book that I am nearly one hundred thousand words through right now has four main characters, one of whom is female, and one of whom is a homosexual male… and as someone who isn’t pushing any kind of agenda it’s sad to me that I feel like the book may be doomed already before even seeing the light of day, because of this backlash. It’s a rather intimidating thing to have looming so large in the public eye and causing such a stir in the already-turbulent waters of trying to become an author.

I thought, for a very long time, about either doing what J. K. Rowling did with Dumbledore’s sexuality (which is to say, never mentioning it at all in the books, and making it known outside of the canon), and also about trying to find a way in which the female character dying would make a good plot point for the story so that she wouldn’t be so far to the forefront, gathering so much attention that could have people labelling my book as feminist propaganda, too.

That may sound cowardly, to say that I considered those things. In essence, you are correct, but I am a very shy person, who doesn’t stand up well to being shouted down, which is why this blog is such a huge step for me.

And I decided against both of those things, in the end, because not only did both options lessen the story, but I didn’t write my characters with those traits for any other reason than because that’s how the characters seemed right to me. I wasn’t going to hide something I had done that was in no way wrong even by particularly judgemental standards in a manner akin to drawing dots on your skin that look like measles but really aren’t, and then quarantining yourself anyway.

And I wanted to talk about why that is, why it is that me writing characters who are female or homosexual has nothing to do with an agenda. For me, it comes down to the difference between how I use plot devices, and how I use character devices.

A plot device, as the name implies, is an aspect of a character or thing that informs the plot of the entire story. A character’s skills might cause them to be called for to undertake a certain task that is integral to the plot, or their family and ancestry could involve them inextricably in parts of the plot if they are heirs to thrones or involved in some kind of Montague-and-Capulet-esque blood feud.

A character device (at least to me; please note that in no way am I saying this is the only way to write or even particularly better/worse/comparable to anyone else’s) on the other hand is something that informs the emotional arc of a particular character. Like a traumatic event in their past, which causes them painful memories, or devotion to a particular deity that colours how they see the world.

While even under these definitions it would be entirely possible to use race or gender or sexuality as a plot device, especially if you were going to make it about some kind of riot, in the case of my main characters, both Annimelda’s gender and Bactiar’s sexuality were chosen as character devices, not as something to specifically govern the plot.

It would be easy to make Annimelda male (Andrius? I don’t know what I would call him/her). All of the major plot points from the beginning of the book – the disappointment of a father in his heir not having the right kind of magic that has always been in their family; the loveless arranged marriage; a corrupt court assisting in the overthrow of the heir once the father is gone; the resolve to take back the throne – these can all effortlessly be applied to a male character.

But I liked the way having a female character complemented the other three main leads, and how her being a woman changed the dynamic of the arranged marriage slightly, and how it changed her relationship with her father slightly, and essentially just how the character interacted with the plot itself. I didn’t do it because I believe it would have been lesser if the book had featured Andrius instead of Annimelda because of Andrius being male, or because I wanted to push a feminist agenda.

Similarly, I didn’t write Bactiar as gay because I thought the story would be worse if he were straight, or because I felt like I needed a homosexual character to tick a box, I wrote him like that because it seemed right for him. Just as some people in real life are gay, so are some characters. The plot doesn’t hinge around it; a big deal isn’t made out of it; it’s simply how he is.

Do I find it likely that the people criticising Mad Max will accept that reasoning? Not really, no. But it is my reasoning, and I find it equal parts interesting and alarming that fear of not being able to get a book published nearly caused me to change parts of it. Ironically, this is exactly what these same people state must have been done to force diverse characters into certain things, the loud voice of public pressure cowing creators into submission.

In the end, I decided that I didn’t want to let total strangers make my decisions for me. Only time will tell if those same strangers will object to being left out of my writing process later.

The Torment of the Nexus

“Damn it, Sarah, it didn’t have to be like this!”

For those of you who don’t know, Heroes of the Storm is a MOBA (massive online battle arena) game published by Blizzard, purveyors of several other games, most notably World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. Heroes of the Storm itself creates some kind of canon-bending-Nexus-thingy that brings together characters from all three of these game series, to fight alongside one another and (more frequently) murder each other brutally.

It’s a game that’s quite willing to admit that it’s messing with the games’ various canons, with the tutorial telling one of the characters (James Raynor, from Starcraft) “don’t think about it too much” as he wonders how exactly he came to be there. The majority of the characters, however, are borrowed from World of Warcraft, with a fair number of the villains being present as well as the heroes.

On the one hand, this can lead to some great interactions between the characters when a game opens (of which each player will hear a different one), especially between characters who actually hate each other in their own individual games. The WoW Night Elf Stormrage-Whisperwind love triangle gets a lot of attention, as does the enmity between Sylvanas and Arthas, and the various Diablo characters and their unmitigated hatred of, well, the character of Diablo.

We get a giant undead scarab-bug-person king (Anub’arak, from WoW) hitting on a Zerg broodmother (Zagara, from SC), Illidan Stormrage full-on professing his former love for Tyrande Whisperwind in front of the three other yobs who make up their team without batting an eye, and a fairy dragon from WoW (Brightwing) saying she’s looking forward to murdering people in a cutesy little girl voice that comes off as excessively creepy.

I will not deny that I giggle evilly in satisfaction every time I hear Illidan tell his brother Malfurion “oh, get over yourself,” something I’ve wanted literally anybody to say to Malfurion for a very long time.

But it’s the characters’ interactions with characters on the opposing team that interest me the most. You might think, given that Tyrande and Malfuron are… sort of married? De facto? Officially a couple at least? That when one of them kills the other as they appear on an enemy team, there might be some kind of emotion displayed. However, the most I’ve heard Tyrande say is a fairly bland “Forgive me, my love,” in her usual deadpan voice, before she moves on to shooting his friends.

Raynor, whose romance with Sarah Kerrigan in SC is basically confirmed not to be a thing, and almost certainly won’t be resolved in the upcoming Legacy of the Void campaign unless the Protoss get really nosy, on the other hand, sounds genuinely distressed when Kerrigan dies at his hand, lacking only the animation ability to kneel beside her body and shake his fists at the sky, since the emotion is clearly there.

But the words “damn it, Sarah, it didn’t have to be like this!” make me wonder. To what is he referring? Their failed romance in the games that contain their own canon? Or the entire business of Heroes of the Storm? It’s a brilliant money-making scheme for Blizzard, encouraging people who play some of their games to investigate the others, but from the point of view of characters who we’re supposed to follow through story arcs and sympathise with, being thrown into a MOBA is a pretty traumatic character development – dying constantly, over and over, and continually being forced back to the Nexus to wait for the next match, where you’ll be pitted against some of your friends and teamed with some of your enemies with complete randomness, chaos and confusion for all eternity.

Maybe Uther tells Raynor not to think too hard about what they’re doing because thinking about their actual situation would be really fucking depressing.

It seems to me, that out of all of the characters from all of the games Blizzard has pulled together, Raynor would be the most likely to try and convince everyone to work together and escape from the Nexus. The WoW Alliance and Horde (neither of which can really be classified as the “good” side) characters are too busy having grudge-matches with each other and their villains to be the voice of leadership, and Raynor has a long history of working together with his occasional enemies the Protoss and the Zerg to make things right in the SC campaigns.

Every time I hear his grief for Kerrigan yet again, it makes me think that he’s not only lamenting that someone he cares about deeply has been killed (even though she will be back shortly), but that he’s rueing the fact that all of the characters that have been brought together were so contentious and fractious that they could have escaped the hell of the constant cycle of unending death that is Heroes of the Storm if only they could have been convinced to work together with him. Fanciful to imagine, perhaps, but when you take a character from a game with an elaborate story campaign like SC and throw them into something utterly story-less, one can’t help but wonder how they would feel and react.

It makes me miss the cutscenes from SC, particularly the second game; I would love to see, perhaps as a counter to the opening cinematic (depicting Raynor and Kerrigan on opposite teams fighting each other), some kind of cutscene of Raynor’s team murdering Kerrigan, and him stopping while the others take their whirlwind of destruction onwards, to close her eyes and make the whole thing seem less grotesque. Raynor’s (albeit scripted) ability to care about one death of Kerrigan’s in what is undoubtedly millions by now is probably one of the most endearing things about this game, emotionally speaking.

It would also please me greatly, if, one day, if Blizzard ever gets around to closing Heroes of the Storm down, they could end the game with one big cutscene of the heroes escaping from the everlasting torment of the Nexus – one last big adventure.

I doubt it will happen, of course, but one can only ever hold out hope.

Elvish: A Delineation

Now, I’m not one to assume that my rather peculiar interests are shared by a large number of people. I know very few people who enjoy Korean music, the Mass Effect games, Blizzard lore and the Tolkien universe as much as I do, and none of them span the entire spectrum. But when I was watching a Youtube video by an author I follow, I realised I might actually have something non-writing-related to offer people – though a Tolkien fanatic, he knew next to nothing about Elvish, and lamented that there was no Elvish for Dummies book (to our knowledge).

Often, and this is something many people might have experienced during school, if you like something passionately enough, you become known in your group of friends as “the Tolkien person” or “the Star Wars person,” and so on and so forth. If you are foolish enough to tell said high school friends that you know about Elvish, you then become “that person who can speak Elvish.” Which is fine, albeit somewhat embarrassing, because they feel the need to tell everyone about you.

Then, when they meet other people, who also have an Elvish person, they take it upon themselves to introduce the two Elvish people, as though they must automatically be soulmates, and although I can see the logic, the following scenario has happened to me multiple times as a result:

New Elvish person: So, you speak Quenya, too, then?

Me: Ha! No, I speak Sindarin.

Them: Oh.

Me: …yeah.

(WARNING: do not read beyond this point unless you want to read about the history of the Elves from The Lord of the Rings and their languages!)