#b) orr? nope. c) kryta? nope.

[anghraine]

I am pretty hypocritical in my GW2 annoyances, in all honesty.

I was super irritated the other day by some guy ranting about how humans and the human gods were the worst thing that ever happened to the world in-story Because Lore (but a very, hmm, slanted perspective on the lore). Someone actually pointed out that the goddess Kormir became a god by basically saving the world and the dude reverted back to ranting about Kormir stealing the glory from the players blahblah and ffs it's 2023 and somehow Kormir Stealing the Glory discourse from 2006 is still a thing.

Now, do I cherish my eternal grudge over the thousands of civilians massacred in the Searing and in the consequent invasion, from the game released a year earlier? Well, yes.

IDK!! Trahearne discourse was just Kormir discourse 2.0 with less misogyny, but getting original flavor is just ... let her go, she's fine, she did her best and game mechanics aren't her fault. But I am solidly on team never forgive, never forget about the Searing and the invasion.

#the forever incomplete invasion though #everyone goes on about how the charr triumphed and it's like ... they attempted total conquest of ascalon orr and kryta #and a) they spent 250 years trying to eradicate the ascalonian people from ascalon and nope! human ascalon survives in ebonhawke #b) orr? nope. c) kryta? nope. #so at least there's that consolation #but my grudge is still eternal! #tumblr keeps recommending charr stanning tags to me and i'm '.........' #but i don't get the kormir thing. she was cool. hope she's having a good time being a god #anghraine babbles #ascalonian grudgeblog #anghraine's gaming #anghraine rants #guild wars: nightfall #gw1

[anghraine]

I made another GW2 human, in part because you can get a black lion chest key for playing the level 10 storyline once a week, and the human commoner storyline is particularly fast—and in part because of a different angle on my inexhaustible resentment wrt the Charr / human PCs' inability to lean into in-world human cultural quirks by contrast to ... everyone else, pretty much.

What if I don’t want to be reasonable, ArenaNet?

See, one of my many gripes with the Charr is that they didn't only fail at their goal of the total conquest of a) Ascalon (nope, Ebonhawke held out and Charr-controlled formerly-human Ascalon is haunted by both Ascalonian terrorists and literal ghosts), b) Kryta (nope), and c) Orr (nope, their grand vizier obliterated his people in a massive counter-attack that drove out the Charr rather than endure Charr atrocities). BUT ALSO, there are other human nations who didn't really have anything to do with these events in the first place.

So it's deeply annoying that the Charr keep going on about how supremely victorious they are and how they triumphed over your character's ancestors and complain about all the evils of "your" king whether you choose to be Ascalonian or not. And it makes sense that all human cultures are kind of interchangeable to them (they're imperialist conquerors, it's extremely on-brand actually!). But it makes less sense that human characters don't get to be pissed off about it and especially that there's no equivalent of a "fuck you, I'm Canthan" option.

Of course, there's always headcanon. So I was thinking about it and thought ... hell, why don't I just make a character that I can headcanon as the "fuck you, I'm Canthan" character. And now that there are so many Canthan-themed options with EoD, she can actually be Canthan (though even my liberties with GW2 canon don't extend to her being from Cantha itself; she's still a Krytan citizen and her family would have lived in Kryta for a long time).

However, I also have always really wanted to make an Orrian character. Not secretly undead or whatever, but I've thought for awhile that an Orrian diaspora would make sense. After all, not every Orrian would have been on Orr when it was destroyed, and between one thing and another, "Orrian" has such bad associations for most people by the GW2 era that living Orrians might stay quiet about it. And you actually do encounter a handful of members of the Orrian diaspora in the personal story, so it's definitely a thing, even though the game doesn't let you select it for your family background.

And then I thought, well, this version of the PC is a random commoner from the Salma District (i.e. one of few not divided by its inhabitants' cultural/ethnic origins). There's no reason she couldn't have Canthan and Orrian ancestry and cultural ties, and although she primarily presents as Canthan, she does have messy, intense feelings about Orr and the necessity of fighting the Risen, and the Charr—whose imperialism precipitated all of this—going on about their triumphs over "her" people when she isn't even slightly Ascalonian is enraging in a very specific way.

And on the flipside, the cleansing of Orr could be a huge deal for her and the natural resolution to her complicated relationship with being Orrian as well as the more publicly acceptable Canthan.

(Althea can relate to the Orrians and is touched by the experience, but doesn't have much more of a personal stake in it than anyone else would, but for Xiulan? A very different experience.)

Anyway, it was really fun to create her and I'm having a blast imagining her arc :)

#and yes i'm adding xiulan to my list of pcs who all exist in some form in each other's pact commander continuities #i think althea would very much get xiulan's rage despite and because of being so fiercely ascalonian herself #probably won't delete her which essentially leaves me one slot with a character i'm willing to delete for key farming. rip #anghraine babbles #ascalonian grudgeblog #anghraine's gaming #anghraine's headcanon #long post #xiulan azar #althea fairchild #gw fanwank