"I find penguins at present the only comfort in life. One feels everything in the world so sympathetically ridiculous; one can't be angry when one looks at a penguin." – John Ruskin
Shortish post for this week as I made very few notes about it, I’m a week late, and my memory is bad. What I do remember is I spent most of my awake time playing World of Warcraft.
In World of Warcraft, other than doing world quests and a bit of archeology, I mostly concentrated on the Jaina questline. This is one of the most emotional storylines I’ve ever played through, and I cried. As it’s long and there are major spoilers for an important Alliance questline below, I’ve put them in a couple of spoiler thingies (the first video is from the beginning of the main questline, the second is from near the end, the furthest part I got to this week).
Start of Jaina Questline Stuff
When you initially go to Kul Tiras (some human islands) as an adventurer to ask them to rejoin the Alliance, Lord Admiral Katherine Proudmoore (ruler of Kul Tiras) declares that Jaina Proudmoore (her daughter, also the most powerful human mage on Azeroth) is a traitor at the insistence of Lady Priscilla Ashbane (Katherine’s best friend), and throws you both into jail. Cool people (Taelia Fordragon and Flynn Fairwind) break you out, but Jaina is sent by Priscilla to Fate’s End, where no-one has ever come back from.
It turns out that Lady Ashbane is plotting to usurp Katherine and take over as ruler of Kul Tiras. With help, you discover the plot and are able to show Katherine that Priscilla is a traitor. Priscilla gets away, but Katherine apologises for throwing you in jail and agrees to talk to the Alliance leaders.
King Genn Greymane of Gilneas is able to convince Katherine that he would do anything to see his dead son again, and so you set off to Fate’s End to try and rescue Jaina.
Emotional Jaina Questline Stuff
Fate’s End is connected to Thros, also known as the Blighted Lands, ruled by Gorak Tul, who is not nice. Lots of quests and a dungeon later, you get there with Katherine Proudmoore and look for Jaina. You find visions of Jaina as a child, as she runs away saying it’s all her fault. When you catch up to her, Katherine tries to tell her she’s alright, but Jaina yells, “No! You can’t help me! No one can help me!” and splits into three. Katherine explains Jaina as a child used to run away and hide when frightened or upset, but she was always able to find her.
The illusions have three events where Jaina feels she is to blame for other people’s deaths, as she tried to find peace with the Horde. After fighting some monsters, you reach Jaina and a cutscene plays where Katherine struggles to cope with Jaina’s guilt, but is able to bring her around.
The cinematic is below, but Arthas was her boyfriend and he eventually became the Lich King (Jaina refused to help him kill living people who were going to turn undead), Daelin (her father), insisted on trying to wipe out the Horde after going to Theramore to find her and Jaina helped them defend themselves, resulting in his death. The final scene is from the beginning of the expansion, where Jaina returns to a home that believes she’s a traitor due to her helping the Horde against her father and the Kul Tiran navy. Katherine is able to change the ending there, and helps Jaina forgive her father, and to forgive herself.
Afterwards, Gorak Tul says you’ll never leave, Jaina and you fight him, and when ready, Jaina teleports all three of you back to Boralus… where Taelia comes running in to say there are ships on the horizon and they’re flying Ashvane colours. Looks like the family reunion has to be put off for a bit.
Jaina’s guilt and feeling she is to blame for everything felt incredibly familiar to me, as that’s how I was when I had severe depression. Even before the events of the questline, it is obvious she has PTSD (as shown in the first cinematic). I had to pause several times while playing through the questline as it brought up some bad memories that I try to keep buried. It’s also why this blog post is nearly 2 weeks late – I need to process the emotions before I could blog about them.
Other than WoW, I mostly spent time on my tablet and slept. I also bought a new monitor, as after Johan swapped them over the oldest one was so heavy it was pulling the overbed table over. Got a cheap 1080p one to replace it and I can now move the overbed table without it tipping, which is good. Johan bought it from the local computer shop and also got a new keyboard there as the backlight on his was dying. Another week where so long as I didn’t move or be touched, I was mostly okay (other than digestive system playing up).
Overall mood – Mostly awesome, a couple of good. High symptoms some days due to digestive ebils.
Average daily sleep – 9 hours 28 minutes
Longest sleep – 15 hours 3 minutes, from Thursday morning to evening.
Clothes changed – 1
Wipe wash – 1
Water wash – 0
Hair wash – 0
Books read – 0
TV watched – 0
Streams watched – 0
Youtube videos watched – Jessica Out of the Closet, Tom Scott, vlogbrothers
Music listened to – Battle for Azeroth soundtrack
Podcasts listened to – 0
Blog posts written – 1
Penguins cuddled – Yup
Johan hand holds – Yes
Johan hugs – Yup! I needed one after that storyline.
Time on Twitter – 6 hours 33 minutes (average 56 minutes a day)
Time on Reddit – 20 hours 6 minutes (average 2 hour 52 minutes a day)
Time on Facebook – 1 hour 56 minutes (average 16 minutes a day)
Other –
I really need to either do these on time or actually write things in my diary, as I can’t exactly rely on my memory 😛
The weekend wasn’t quite as good as that’s when my digestive system played up. I hate taking cyclizine but I hate vomiting more.
Being on my computer more meant more video chats with Sammie, which is awesome.
Johan makes me watch the Jessica videos with him now, as he loves them as much as I do. She’s awesome, and with Claudia they make an adorable couple <3
Games played – 5
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
Cross Stitch
Neko Atsume
Godville
World of Warcraft
AC: Pocket Camp Level – 120
Godville Heroine Level – 58 (36% done)
Godville wood for ark – 38.0%
Godville savings – 1 million, 612 thousand
Cross stitch completed – 0
Most played game – World of Warcraft (25 hours 28 minutes, average 3 hours 38 minutes a day)
Other –
World of Warcraft is definitely my obsession at the moment. It’ll calm down at some point but I’m really enjoying it right now.
I just want to give Jaina a hug 🙁
Continued with the Google flower event and the geodoites in Animal Crossing.
Mostly logged into other games just for daily bonus, because WoW.