2018 Blaugust wrap-up

2018 Blaugust wrap-up

Today is the last day of Blaugust, and everyone is starting to reflect on the month and what we’ve accomplished. Before I get to that, though, I want to thank Belghast for setting everything up this year. There’s a bunch of time and stress associated with getting a community project like this off the ground. I’m so very grateful that he made the effort to revive Blaugust, give us some guidance and our Discord, and be our biggest cheerleader during this month of nonsense.

I managed to get 29 posts written here this year (counting this one). I would have had a perfect 31 but I decided to take last weekend off to avoid burn-out. Luckily I also have my other blog, where I have faithfully posted every single day. So in fact I will have a total of 60 posts up for the month. That’s so much blogging!

One thing that really set this year apart for me was the amount of interaction I’ve had with my fellow bloggers. I had more than double the views and almost ten times the comments compared to this time last year! I definitely attribute that to being more active in the comments here and on the blogs I’m reading. There are always so many awesome things to read over Blaugust, but I really made an effort to try to comment more this year too, which led to some really fantastic conversations. Most years I feel so exhausted and burnt-out after posting every day for a month that I end up taking a big break in September. This year I’m really motivated to stay active because I don’t want to miss out on chatting with the new friends I’ve made.

Thank you, fellow bloggers, for making this the best Blaugust ever!

FROGS!

FROGS!Shoutout to my friend Mor, who suggested the topic of today’s post. FROGS!

Frogs are some of my favorite creatures. I’m not really sure why I like them so much. Maybe it is their cute little froggy faces, or their weird amphibian life cycle, or all the crazy colors they can be. All I know is I love frogs! That’s why I’m so happy that there are new froggy friends to enjoy in BfA.

I’ve already talked a bit about my love of Krag’wa, the enormous frog Loa in Nazmir. Krag’wa’s burrow is surrounded by naga and blood trolls, but he’s knows he can take them. He is worried about his children though. I’m not sure if they are literal or metaphorical children, but either way the the naga are stealing frogs and doing mean things to them. I happily murdered a bunch of naga to save the adorable froggies. Interestingly, there seems to be a connection between the crawgs and Krag’wa. Are crawgs what happens to Krag’wa’s spawn when they get corrupted? Or does Krag’wa just watch over all the weird swamp creatures? When you rescue a tiny crawg during a quest, Krag’wa tells you he can’t help it, and asks you to watch over it.

There are “spawn of Krag’wa” all around Nazmir. There’s even an achievement for finding all of them and sending them back home to the burrow. Although little compared to Krag’wa, these babies are the size of a large dog. I would love to have one as a pet, but I wonder what they would eat? Something that big would have to eat birds instead of bugs!

FROGS!If you really can’t get enough of the Krag’wa-model frogs, there’s good news. For only 75 polished pet charms you can get Tragg the Curious to come and join you on your adventures! This was one of the first pets I bought this expansion. Speaking of battle pets, there are even more frog pets to collect. There’s both wild and vendor pets with a new model that looks like a poison dart frog. They are extra cute, and they can have some pretty useful moves for pet battles too!

Lastly there’s the amazing frog mount. It has been datamined, but there seems to be no way to get it in-game at the moment. I really hope that they make it available soon. I need to be able to hop around the swamps of Nazmir and strike fear into the hearts of my enemies from atop my very own riding frog!

That’s enough of my love of frogs for a bit! Do you love frogs too? Or is there another new model in the game that you’ve fallen in love with?

Reading Challenge #73: The Legend of Drizzt Series by R. A. Salvatore

Time for yet another reading challenge post. For this episode we take a time machine way back to 1990. A young Gracie was in middle school, a time usually best left unmentioned. In this particular year, though, a much older cousin handed Gracie two books he thought she might like. And so, without realizing it, Gracie partook of a nerddom cultural phenomenon: The Dark Elf Trilogy, part of the larger body of work that is now known as The Legend of Drizzt.

Wikipedia informs me that there are a completely ridiculous number of books in this series. There’s a new one coming out in September and it is apparently book number 34. Obviously for my reading challenge I’m not going to read 34 Drizzt novels. I’m also not going to start in order of publication, back with the Icewind Dale trilogy. No, I’m going to start with the first prequel, and the book that started it all for me: Homeland, first published in 1990.

Come along with me as I re-read the book that I thought was the coolest thing I’d ever seen, back when I was in middle school.

This story is an unapologetic prequel. It tells the story of the famous Drizzt Do’Urden, the drow (dark elf) with a heart of gold that spawned a million copycats in RPGs ever since his creation. The story of the Dark Elf Trilogy spans the time from Drizzt’s birth in the Underdark up through his eventual arrival at Icewind Dale in the surface world. It is high fantasy, but it focuses far more on character development than any sweeping wars or political intrigue.

Homeland starts on the night of Drizzt’s birth, where he was spared from being offered as a sacrifice to his people’s spider goddess when one of his brothers assassinated the other during a battle. From the start we see the cruelty and ambition that form the foundation of drow society, and how Drizzt seems always at odds with it.

Drizzt spend the majority of the book training. First within his house, and then eventually at his city’s fighters’ academy. Everything comes easily to him, and he’s a natural expert swordsman. He’s an exceptional character even in the Forgotten Realms, the D&D setting where pretty much everyone is a ridiculously overpowered super-elf. His struggles are never due to physical limitations, but rather stem from his naivete and from having a character alignment that is at odds with the default for his race.

There is a plot that isn’t just about Drizzt, but it just adds some seasoning to the character development. There is war brewing between noble houses of the drow city of Menzoberenzen*. When I was a kid reading these books I remember getting super wrapped up in the intrigue of drow house politics. How gross is it that one of the few times I remember as a kid reading and being excited about female characters being super powerful and respected in fantasy books it was the evil drow? Looking at it now I can’t help but see all the ways ambitious women get associated with evil over and over again in different media throughout the ages. But it left an impression on me.

Weirdly, this book also reads like a parable of a queer kid who decides he’s better off choosing to leave home instead of staying with his abusive family. Drizzt knows exactly who he is as a person, and he knows that he will never be able to conform to the expectations of a family that will never accept him. He sees good people forced to fit the mold of their hateful religion, and he refuses to stay and live that way. This is a perspective I was not expecting when I dove back into this book!

What also surprised me on this re-read, a good decade or more since the last time I picked up these books, was how reasonably well it stood up. Yes, somebody could write a whole dissertation on the implications of featuring an entire race of evil dark-skinned elves. Yes, Drizzt is so well-known now that he’s a trope. And yes, the writing occasionally jumps with both feet into traps of the “he gazed with his piercing lavender orbs” variety. But on the whole it holds up about as well as it could. The thing that I think some of the people who name their MMO characters XxDrizztxX forget is how compassionate Drizzt is. They remember the “edgy” dark elf and his fighting skill, and not always his innocence and honor. It was worth the re-read just to be reminded of that.

I actually read all three books in the trilogy, but I’ll leave this review at just the first one. It is my favorite of the three, but I enjoyed re-reading them all.

TL;DR: Love it or hate it, the story of Drizzt is an iconic one in the fantasy literature, and probably worth the quick read if you haven’t already.

The Legend of Drizzt by R. A. Salvatore

Rating: 4/5 stars

Next up: A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

 

*spelling left intentionally wrong because seriously, nobody can spell it right on the first try without looking it up.

Best Loa

My post yesterday was a bit of a downer so I wanted to balance it out with something fun. I was having a discussion with friends about all the Loa we see in the Zandalari zones. There are a lot of new ones, and some of them are really great. I decided I would give you my top 5 Loa list. Spoilers for the horde story ahead!

5. Gonk – This large raptor/mini t-rex Loa is very helpful. I chose him over the pterodactyl one because he offers lots of speed boosts around Zuldazar. I love zipping around the city grabbing the Gonk totems!

4. Rezan – The Loa of kings. His appearance in the opening cutscenes (horde-side) was so cool, I may have yelled a little. Sadly his coolness is tempered by the fact that he is now a dungeon boss.

3. Bwonsamdi – The Loa of death. He has a huge personality and an equally huge role in the horde-side story this expansion. I am curious to see what happens with him in the future. Plus, he makes fun of me when I die (and makes me all nostalgic for WildStar!).

2. Krag’wa – The frog Loa. He seems pretty chill but will totally lick his enemies to death when necessary. Hangs out in an awesome pond with lots of frog buddies. I love him. Last night I spent my hard-earned pet charms to get the battle pet that looks like him.

1. Jani – The trash raptor Loa. Jani is the best Loa because it is fun to be a trickster. I really enjoyed seeing random trash piles in all the different zones and knowing that Jani would be waiting for me with maybe some trash prizes or a quest. So far my favorite has been messing with Nesingwary.

I never got that into the troll lore in WoW until this expansion. This time around I have really enjoyed learning more about their cultures and the Loa are a huge part of that.

“Which Loa do you bargain with?”