Azeroth’s Dylan Thomas

Big day today!!! Bravetank hit 50. I know – most people reading this are probably thinking- is she still only 50! It’s taking her ages. But Terema is 84 and a half so it’s not all bad – I’m just spreading myself too thin that’s all (as the butter said to the toast …totally made that joke up – who says comedy is hard). By the way  that 84 and a half thing goes back too my childhood. I used to sign all my poems that way when I was young e.g. “Michelle, Age 9 and a half” etc – I don’t know why I thought future generations would find the age I wrote my poems so important- I think even then I knew I needed an excuse of some sort to explain their standard.

Quick example:-

Autumn (By the way – they always used to make us write about autumn when we were in school- start of the new school term and everyone’s spirits were high. All the teachers thought maybe just maybe they’d have another Dylan Thomas on their hands. And not just in the drinking stakes. I also wrote quite a bit about snow. Did you know it was white? My poems make that point over and over again. And it’s bright. Did you know that too? Helpfully that rhymes with white. The poems used to write themselves. I have no summer poems though. By the time the summer term rolled around the teachers were all fed up and were happy to let us play board games and watch Superman for the hundredth time. Anyway Autumn went as follows:-

“The Autumn leaves are falling/Softly to the ground/The wind blows the leaves /Though they don’t make a sound/Brown leaves, red leaves/They all are falling to the ground/Of all the seasons that we see/Autumn is the best for me.

Hmm. In fairness I think I was about 8. Obviously very obsessed with leaves and rhymes. The last but one line is definitely wrong – all I know is it rhymed with “me”. Husband will moan if I demand we go upstairs to ransack the cupboards to find my old poetry book.

While I’m on a roll – I won a prize for this one:-

Hurray Hurray it’s St David’s Day/Children are dressed in a fine array/Girls wear daffodils, boys wear leeks,/The dragon stands tall on its towery peak./We’re all so excited we shout Hurray/Because you see it’s St David’s Day

It was St David’s Day. In case that bit had escaped you! I was about 8 then too. My dad gave me the towering peak line. I remember him saying it proudly in the kitchen when we were doing the dishes and brainstorming (what rhymes with leek??? meek, streak, PEAK, oh my god we’ve got it!). It was a family affair. I won points for my House. Like in Harry Potter we had school houses. (Are school houses posh by the way? I am from a very working class area so it seems weird to me now that we had Houses – or maybe Harry Potter has just made them seem posh? Like they’ve made magic seem easy & made it so much harder to explain to children that waving a stick at an angry dog and shouting Expecto Patronum is not the best form of defence.)

Anyway where was I? I’m rambling today. It’s the excitement caused by Bravetank hitting 50 that’s done it I’m sure.  Plus I’ve had six cups of coffee this morning and 5 chocolates so I’m totally caffeinated and sugared up. I am going to the gym later though so all those keeping a watching brief on my weight can breathe a sigh of relief.

Anyway Bravetank and 50. I did it in a cowardly way I have to confess – I did it by questing. I had a thought last night. My healer husband is constantly complaining that my health goes down too quickly (too quickly because he’s far away looting & can’t run back to me in time but I’m not going there again today). But it suddenly occurred to me that because I pick which dungeons I go in & don’t trust the random finder I don’t get my little satchel, and because I run the same dungeons quite often I don’t get many gear upgrades. This means my gear is not that great. (I know this isn’t rocket science  but I’m quite proud I finally figured it out!). So I did a couple of quests today and got upgrades for a few things plus bought myself two imperial plate items and had imperial bracers given to me from very kind guildee Jacqlyn (thank you!!!!!). So I’ve decided to do both questing and  dungeons to get the best out of both worlds. Plus it was really relaxing running round the Badlands and Searing Gorge attacking dwarfs, spiders and doing something weird with chickens. Like Saturdays of old – before I got into WoW.

But I am taking my life into my own hands questing as Bravetank because I’m on an RPPvP server. That means at every corner I run the risk of someone emoting something dramatic or a sharp blow to the head – both equally unpleasant. Not sure why I picked an RPPvP server originally. That was back in the day when Bravetank was Sparci and I fully intended her to be ret. Then I had my Road to Damascus moment (or Road to Duskwood in my case),  decided I wanted to be in a tank, got a shield, went in the Stockades, caused a wipe at Hogger & then fled. A legend was born. But before that I think I just wanted to try a bit of world PvP. Still sort of excited at the chance it could happen.  But nervous too (in fact from now on just assume I’m nervous about everything – much much easier. I’ll report differently by exception.). But so far I’ve hardly seen anyone around. The Cauldron in Searing Gorge is not the hip swinging place it used to be. I did bump into one scary horde person when I was suffering from resurrection sickness (too lazy to corpse run) but he left me alone because  I wasn’t worth any honour I assume. But it was tense for awhile and I think I showed myself up a bit by trying to hide behind a questgiver.  But that’s been it so far. And role play has been even less. I’ve seen a bit of it happening in Stormwind but not that much. Not sure how you can join in anyway. What’s the protocol? Do you whisper someone OOC (see I know the lingo) & say what’s the story, can I play please? Or do you keep everything IC (you’re all impressed now aren’t you – actually I looked that one up- I typed IIC and then couldn’t work out what the second “I” was for!) and start talking and hope they all play along or is that frowned on? I’ve not even got a backstory for Bravetank yet. I know all the cliches you’re meant to avoid so that’s no problem (no love child of Jaina and Thrall here though they are trying to adopt me). As my poems above show original is my middle name…. Actually that’s given me an idea. Maybe Bravetank could be a frustrated poet or something, forced to run dungeons to get enough money for a quill, ink and parchment. Maybe she could emote totally in poetic  form….?! Yes. Perfect! And happily enough it’s still Autumn so I have my opening lines sorted. And soon it’ll be winter. Azeroth needs to know that “snow is sparkling and white/ and in the sun is very bright.” Dylan Thomas eat your heart out!