Apples and Silk

If I had any artistic talent I'd make a WoW Comic about the quest Items of Some Consequence. I'd draw it from the perspective of a female character who is striving to make it in a man's world. I see the feminine adventurer traveling alone through the vast City of Stormwind in search of answers, tracking down the insidious plotters behind the Defias threats. She is bruised and tattered from battling Edwin VanCleef and Bazil Thredd, weary from trudging from one spy to the next, but determined to solve the mystery and gain her reward. She's sent to a gnome who maintains surveilance on the shady nobleman Lord Lescovar and he promises to help lure the lord and his minion out so she can take care of them once and for all. In his dialogue bubbles, the gnome says, "Okay, I'll need you to get me a few things before I can put my plan into effect. I got the perfect disguise that'll get Spybot past those guards. Bring me some silk and a couple apples. The silk's up to you, but Clara's little farm right outside the city has the perfect sized apples." She quickly retrieves the items he needs and returns with the silk cloth and the apples, expecting him to use the unusual items in some clever way to sneak his robot through the guards. Maybe she imagines an elaborate ruse where the robot offers poisoned apples to the guards and, once they are incapacitated, the gnome restrains them with the silk. She's not sure how the gnome will accomplish his task, but she's eager to help.... Until he wraps the silk around the robot and stuffs the apples down the front, giving the heap of metal the illusion of breasts. Then my heroine would shake her head in disgust, pin the gnome to the tree with her daggers and stomp off muttering about men under her breath.

Unfortunately, I have no artistic talent. So the best I can do is paint the scene with words.

Although I am not into role playing, each time I do this quest on one of my female toons, I imagine her shaking her head when the spybot is transformed into a buxom brunette priest and sent in to lure Lescovar to his death. Don't get me wrong, I think the quest is quite clever and I enjoy it, but everytime I complete it I am reminded that in many ways WoW is a game for men. The idle animations for female characters almost always involve some sort of breast jiggling hop. The dances are sexy (except human females--the macarena has never been sexy). And the female models of armor often barely cover the essentials. But I am willing to admit that I wouldn't change any of it. My Night Elves are sexier than I will ever be. I'm proud of my Draenei's derriere. And I go out of the way to make all of my characters pretty. Items of Some Consequence may make me shake my head at the use of apples to make women, but it makes me laugh, and it reminds me that neither I nor my characters should take ourselves too seriously.