Warcraft! I wanted to be a vrykul before they were cool

[sincere]

I've been playing a lot of WoW. And I was reminded of something I love in this game.

One of the quest chains in Storm Peaks involves being disguised as a frost vrykul, a race of warriorlike half-giants who live in Northrend, who are highly, highly matriarchal, women (even enemy women) being well-regarded and respected, and men (even non-vrykul men) being considered worthy only to be slaves. The playable races have to be disguised as frost vrykul women to get by there, but once you do, it's sort of awesome.

A frost vrykul says to you, "Bears are beautiful creatures. Wild, strong, and fierce in battle. Much like us, sister."

I love the different standards of beauty. These women appreciate polar bears the way they think they, themselves, are beautiful. Because they're strong and difficult to control and they can fight.

There are many jokes and flirts that also indicate differing standards of beauty. (I always wince at the dwarf female flirt where she goes "I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW I CAN FLATTEN STEEL WITH MY THIGHS." Honey, that-- that could be bad.) I really like thinking about some of them, although some of them are also a little strange/nonsensical/oh.

But my favorite is definitely "Single Draenei female seeks blacksmith with grinding wheel to take care of me and my gorgeous hooves."

She says it in such a fluffy tone. Her hooves are gorgeous. And she wants a man who can take care of them. I love it.

Female goblins are so cute and I'm in love with some of their lines. "I'm a free spirit. I don't like to be tied down. What? You mean literally? Oh no... totally into that."

/will return to regularly-scheduled Tales of Vesperia rambling shortly

Comments

[vangirl]

Haha YES! WoW isn't perfect but one of the reasons I love playing the game so much is that I have the ability to create female characters that fit my idea of what's beautiful, instead of just being limited to one ideal. I know races like the tauren are problematic but I still love the option of playing an eight foot tall woman who could probably pick you up and toss you out the window if you gave her reason to.

I still maintain that WoW has so much room for all sorts of kinks. The anti-ERP sentiment on a lot of RP servers makes me pretty sad cause a lot of the time it ceases to be "this dude is trying to drag people into his ERP without even asking and that's creepy" and then it's just "this dude in the corner is mentioning his fetish, which is creepy so he's creepy". :(

[vangirl]

...And additionally note:

But my favorite is definitely "Single Draenei female seeks blacksmith with grinding wheel to take care of me and my gorgeous hooves."

She says it in such a fluffy tone. Her hooves are gorgeous. And she wants a man who can take care of them. I love it.

I definitely think there's room for her to be looking for a woman who can take care of her hooves too. :D

[sincere]

Of course it does! Although the joke in particular evokes the old cliche/trope/stereotype of the woman who "loves" a rich man more because he can pay for her nice things than because she genuinely likes him, so my brain reads it as heterosexual. I'd happily read the lesbian version of that, yes sir.

WoW is definitely guilty of some nonsense (hypermasculinizing and hyperfeminizing their designs, for instance; I'm still annoyed about buffed-up blood elf men and supermodeled-up troll women) but they also really kind of have fun with things. Although I was pretty disappointed in Metzen's approach to Thrall/Jaina, there is a lot to work with, a lot of potential and awesome setting stuff, so it's more than possible to take the awesome setting and run with its potential to your little heart out! The MMO aspect is... less encouraging; even RP servers only see RP in the sense of "the pretty elf people gather in the pretty elf people places and walk verrrry slowly while conversing in /say" and either shy away from or outright sneer at anything better.

BUT THAT'S WHAT LJ/IM/FORUM RP IS FOR, I GUESS?