Feel the Hatred of Ten Thousand Years

In Heroes of the Storm, Illidan Stormrage says, “Feel the hatred of ten thousand years!” Let’s pause here for a moment and note that Heroes of the Storm is a crossover brawler game created by Blizzard Entertainment. Illidan, a central character in the Warcraft franchise, fights other Blizzard game characters: Tracer (from the Overwatch series), Diablo (from the Diablo series), and Sylvanas (also from Warcraft). They fight for no canonical reason. Illidan’s words are a kill quip. Disposable by design.

Now let’s unpause. The words are significant. Illidan delivers the words in combat, yes, but they aren’t really about combat. Ten thousand years is about accounting. The number signifies a ledger of what was taken, what was refused, what was endured. The hatred is the residue of that long accumulation.

The story of Illidan Stormrage must be framed as one of contradictions, of sacrifices, and hard choices made. But also, his story is one of anguish and rage. Rage is hot and immediate. What Illidan carries is something colder and more structural. Grief calcified, exhaustion metabolized, the scar tissue of repeatedly not being seen by his people, by the object of his love Tyrande Whisperwind, by his brother Malfurion. There is a point when longing stops expecting to be answered. And Illidan’s has been imprisoned for ten thousand years.

At some point in those ten thousand years, the injury stops being something that happened to Illidan and starts being something he is built around. He is not healed. Not resolved. Just… structural. The architecture depends on it now. This is what “I am my scars” actually means. It’s not about triumph or peace. It’s committed inhabitation of the cost of surviving. Illidan’s kill quip is an assertion that holds illegibility, the impossibility of being seen and understood by others, as an identity. 

What does it cost to get there?

I’ve been thinking about the costs of living inside systems that slowly erode me. What I am sure of, at this point, is that I am not there. Unlike Illidan, my longing is still present, still real. I don’t know yet whether that’s openness or just a wound still doing its work. What I do know is that the hatred of ten thousand years didn’t begin as hatred. It began as exactly what I feel now: the desire to be seen, to belong, to be embraced by the people and institutions that matter to me. The hatred is what that longing becomes when it stops expecting an answer.

I’m still expecting an answer. For now, that’s where I am.