But first, I should also mention the civ 3 modified scenario I was working with. This is something which is applicable to all my scenarios for Civ 3 though--Across the Ages (even if the project is somewhat...well, not the best), my original 'Zeo Rise of Rome' (named so mostly for the sake of locating it because Z would place it at the bottom always making it easy to find), all other scenarios I've made (well, modified from existing ones), and every scenario that I've planned to make.

I recall planning a 4-way 'Battleship' scenario where Battleships would be your King unit (I imagine due to how it works programming-wise, this would probably not work for the AI, OH WELL, but hey I did put extensive thought into how to make it theoretically work), and I also recall planning a 4-way game based around a single pseudo-King unit that isn't actually a King but which you can't win the game without using.

(Basically, that scenario involves you being unable to create units--your pseudo-King unit can enslave defeated enemies to create new units, and those units can enslave defeated enemies themselves to create your infrastructure, and each pseudo-King civ would have a different specialty. One with worker actions on military units, one with treating all terrain as roads, one with increased movements, one with better stats, if I recall the division correctly; they were meant to have the aesthetic of the four civs in the Age of Discovery scenario, with the Iroquois-based one being movement, the Inca-based one being terrain as roads, and then between the remaining either the Aztec one as more stats and Mayan one as worker actions, or vice versa.)

What I went to ask yesterday is something applicable to all of them, including my current project.

Basically.

When I play a game, I am always looking to try and top my top score for that game. It can be a vanilla game of Civilization, or it can be a scenario. (Btw I imagine the easiest way to get an unbeatable high score in vanilla conquests scenarios is to save scum as Persia in Rise of Rome on the highest difficulty--avoid war with Rome at all costs, conquer Macedon, conquer Egypt, and you can achieve victory. If Rome captured cities rather than razing them to the ground, Rome would with its Legionary IIIs being produced every turn basically overrun the whole world, but because they do raze cities to the ground they don't have the same landmass that you do. I did most of this once until I got bored with the endeavor because higher difficulties to me aren't harder, they're just more annoying. Since I play for fun, being annoyed = less fun = not worth it which is why if you look at my history of playing on the easiest difficulty you'd think I was a basic bitch baby who can't beat the higher difficulties. It's not that I can't, it's that they're just not fun to try to.)

So every time I play a game, I want to know what my score is--if it's higher or lower than my high score. Which in a normal game, or in any of the basic conquest scenarios that came with the game (unmodified Mesopotamia, unmodified Rise of Rome, unmodified Fall of Rome, unmodified Middle Ages, unmodified Age of Discovery, unmodified Mesoamerica, unmodified Sengoku, unmodified Napoleon, unmodified WWII, I think that's all of them?), you can see in the postgame Hall of Fame.

If you set a new record, it will replace your old record, more or less.

And I love striving for that. It's a little disappointing to know that in a run you felt you did really well in, that you didn't set a high score, and you don't know by how much you missed doing so, but that's not what I wanted to find a workaround for. You might be able to guess what I was wanting.

In custom scenarios, or in the existing scenarios if they are modified in any way, shape, or form...once you reach postgame, that's it. No recording. Outside of the save file. It's as if the game didn't exist at all. It isn't captured in the hall of fame. It isn't something you set a score for. And I searched for any way to find a workaround for this problem, yet I couldn't find any.

So I bit the bullet and created an account on the Civ fanatic forum to actually ask (since that is one of the best sources of information for modding Civ 3 on the internet), as well as asking on Steam. It's only been 24 hours since I asked, but initial results: looks like the reason why I couldn't in my searching find anyone with a way to do it, is because it is impossible for most people to do it.

Not impossible altogether, but nigh-impossible overall, requiring rather than just a small every-day tweak of things, a fundamental alteration to the game's code, more or less. To put this into perspective--you can add sound to the game easily; you can add unique art to the game easily; you can add unique animations to the game easily; you can add units to the game easily; you can adjust a bunch of settings in the game easily, things that vary from scenario to scenario, things that you see change, can be changed.

But some things never change about the game because in order to change them, you would need to fundamentally edit the very core nature of the game. (I'm pretty sure, for instance, that the game having four eras is hard-coded into it. You can make a scenario that makes use of less than four, but there's still going to be four ages. I am pretty sure that you can't make a scenario with more than four ages, without this fundamental change to the game code. The editor only supports four ages.)

And apparently, recording your score in custom/modified scenarios to the Hall of Fame is a change of this nature--thus, why I couldn't find information for it. It's a change that nobody has made because nobody, without incredible difficulty, can change it.
(I got the impression more or less that the order of change was, to put this in perspective, similar to the Majesty mod that involved basically turning Majesty into a separate game--nobody else in the Majesty modding community has been able to figure out how that mod was able to do things nobody else has figured out how to do. The answer I got so far said more or less, 'you can contact this one person who apparently made their mod work with altering the original game coding' basically, which sounds a lot like a similar parallel in concept. That it can be done because someone did do it, but nobody outside of that person knows how it can be done.)

You never know, though, so hopefully, with time, some answers can come in and help me there. I did ask on two sites, so I maintain my hope that with more than 24 hours, that with a week or two, that I'll get better answers that will result it me maybe pulling off something that I have wanted to do for ages upon ages: have custom scenarios be recorded.

On that note, I did notice that for the first time in like two years or so, there's an active modder or two for Majesty, designing scenarios and mods that may be interesting to check out. I'm not quite convinced of them, but it may be worth trying out at some point.

Majesty never stopped being fun for me, it's just that the things I like to do in that game take an absurd amount of time to successfully pull off (for instance, making mages out of Warriors of Discord or similarly ambitious undertakings: get someone to have all their weapons and armor to the maximum level coded into the game, poison their weapon, have every Bazaar item, every marketplace item, and every spell learned that they can learn).

And because they take absurd amounts of time, and I am prone to not coming back to things I start in there, and it's not something I really find fun to spend "an hour on this scenario each day", I've just got better things to spend my time on overall.

But bringing it back to what I promised I would be talking about from the beginning--Riot Games stuff. I'll start with the intro: I finally finished the accursed quests requiring me to play three Ranked games. RANKED games. I said this before and I'll say it again; Riot was out of their bloody minds by making it a 100% requirement with NO other way to fulfill it, by requiring players to play RANKED games to fulfill a quest.

I, justifiably, got flamed in all three games. I am not a Ranked player. My placements list me as Iron III but that's probably because my team hard-carried me to a win in the first game because I have every reason to believe that I am an Iron IV skill level player--and I know that I am that skill level.

Most of the players who are going to try and fulfill the quests are probably filthy casuals like me. Most of the players who care about quests are people who play the game for fun and see the quests as fun things to try for, achievements for rewards. They are not tryhards who play the game to be competitive.

Basically, when it comes to games, there is a fundamental divide between "I play for fun" and "I play to win". These are not mutually exclusive, because someone playing for fun isn't trying to win--they will still try to win, but they aren't really upset if they don't win because their goal was to have fun, not to win. Winning is usually more fun than losing, but it is not a requirement to win to have fun.

And vice-versa is applicable as well. Someone playing to win is trying to have fun. They wouldn't be playing the game if it wasn't fun. But to them, the fun is in the striving to win. For them, the goal of being competitive, of playing seriously, is the goal. Is what they are after. Their fun comes from doing well in the game, not from doing fun in the game. They can get upset if a game doesn't feel fun, but if they are still going to win, not a loss in their book, more or less.

I probably am not adequately enough explaining the "play to win" mindset when it comes to League because when it comes to League I am firmly in the "play for fun" camp. Yes, that's partially because I'm not good enough to play to win, but it also revolves around other factors, like how I got into the game (from a good friend), wanting to hang out, finding it enjoyable, but not something I wanted to take too seriously.

But, my point being: most of the people who I imagine play to try and complete the quests given to them, such as myself, I imagine are in the "play for fun" camp.
Ranked games are, inherent in their nature, the "play to win" camp.
You can't play ranked games for fun without risking eating a ban for your troubles, because ranked games have actual consequences to them. Four other players will be negatively impacted, taking losses they shouldn't have, and even the five players on the enemy team are probably not going to exactly be happy about it. (Eh, depends, but "I want to play the game and win, not be handed a win" isn't that uncommon.)

You can't exactly play Normal games for fun with total impunity, but there is a much greater slack involved. Trolling that is obviously trolling still isn't really appropriate, but playing bad because you are bad, with a build that isn't optimal because you're not an optimal player, isn't something that will get you in trouble the same way it would in ranked games.

I hated that quest with a passion and while I didn't know where to voice this opinion to Riot with it actually being listened to, you can bet I tried. Because it is a terrible idea to force casual players, who deliberately avoid playing Ranked and who don't want to be playing Ranked, to play Ranked.

Yet casual players are, presumably, the majority of the players who try to play the quests to completion, so the quest requiring Ranked games is incredibly alienating. Either they bite the bullet and play Ranked games they really didn't want to, or they bite the bullet and deliberately fail to complete not one, but TWO quests as a consequence. (Because one quest required completing the Ranked Game quest.)

It's just not fun at all. If those players wanted to be playing Ranked, they would already be playing Ranked. Does Riot think that forcing players who normally don't play Ranked, to play Ranked, will get more people to play Ranked? No, it'll just encourage people to quit trying the quests, maybe even quit the game. It's not like people don't know about the existence of Ranked. A quest requiring playing Ranked doesn't raise awareness of Ranked games and it doesn't encourage people to keep playing Ranked games because the people who play Ranked games as a result of the quest, are going to be miserable because of it.

And sure enough that was exactly what I was. I did give my team fair warning each game. The first game we won in spite of me, not because of me. The second game, I'm pretty sure wasn't exclusively my fault, but my jungler flamed me and certainly blamed me for it. (To be fair, was playing Ashe support, and while I have some practice on playing her as support, I haven't mastered her. I figured playing the champion I am comfortable > playing a different champion though.)

Granted, said jungler was tied for me with the highest deaths in the game and had stats not in any way really much better than mine, but the flame wasn't entirely unjustified. Of course, not much I could do in some cases. When I was level 5 I had no ult and when they engage on someone while I am traveling to lane, I can't get to the fight in time so that wasn't on me; when I am out of the enemy team's vision and am flanking from behind, throw my ult at a Yasuo who has no way of seeing the arrow coming and no reason to windwall behind him since my entire team other than me was in front, and yet he somehow windwalled behind him to block the ult, not much I can do about it; I had every reason to believe that ult would connect and via the stun, let my team kill him, and I don't know how he knew to put the windwall there.

Butstill, the fact that I was underperforming for my team that game is undebatable; I was a hindrance to our team's chances of winning.

The third and final game, the one flaming me was my support though similarly to my previous game with the jungler, they had an identical K/D to me (which is to say, incredibly negative) albeit having a couple extra assists. Each game started the same, too. They started friendly, we do well early, can even get first blood, then when we start to lose...flame begins.

And while the fault for the loss cannot be exclusively on me.
It can be mostly on me. So when the flame is justified...not a good experience.

And I hated every moment of it.

​This is NOT what Riot should do to people.

But it's done now.
At last.
So let me talk about something else Riot-related now!
What I originally came to talk about today.
And yesterday, for that matter.
​My TFT girl Vayne.

Vayne was my favorite set one unit, and she was basically unchanged in set two. She was always my carry unit aside from rare instances where it'd be Braum or Ashe or Sejuani or Kayle or Pantheon (because every unit in the Glacial/Noble/Guardian comp could be a carry unit). 

But in the second set.
In spite of her herself being mostly unchanged.
Still having the same ability, still having the Ranger synergy, having a new synergy working similarly to Nobles.

I just...stopped using her.
She is hard to be a lategame carry and for the life of me, I can't make a Ranger comp work, or a Light comp work. They just...I know they can work, I just can't figure out how to make them work.

So I stopped using her.

But on Saturday, almost using her in URF.
Inspired me to run some games with her yesterday.
Vayne has seven-eight items on her which are good--one of them I prefer not to and a second I didn't know worked on her until I looked it up yesterday and with that item specifically working, another item also becomes good on her that in isolation isn't.

The obvious item is the rageblade. Stacks attack speed so that she can proc her passive, and gives AP which boosts it.
Since her synergy doesn't innately give her reliable healing (my main issue with figuring out how to get the light synergy working), gunblade is an obviously good item on her. It heals her and boosts her passive.

A third item which is excellent on her is Rabbadon's Deathcap for the raw boost to her passive's max health shred. (It dealing true damage means nothing reduces it.)

Runaan's Hurricane is also fairly excellent on her, allowing her to hit two targets with her bolts instead of one, giving her some MR, and attack speed, too--I'd shy away from this unless I have no other choice, but it's not a bad item on her, I just think that if you can get the others, they'd be better.

Quicksilver Sash is godly good on her if she has a rageblade. It prevents cc effects on her, meaning nothing except dodging (which frankly I think they should add back into rfc as 'attacks cannot be dodged' since with the removal of the Wild synergy...nothing counters dodge chance) can stop her from stacking bolts, while also giving some MR and also dodge chance. It keeps her alive and in a gain ridiculously heavy in CC (there's no comp in the world that's lategame which doesn't have some form of chain-CC), it is a godsend to have.

The sixth item on her, the last of the original ones I recognized as being decent, was red buff--some armor, some health (which helps for her Light synergy), and prevents her targets from healing. One of the only units in the game who has use for a red buff over a Morello (since I looked it up and apparently Morello doesn't proc on her passive). Now I personally prefer not to use it. Vayne's max health shred should outdo the healing from any heals, and the damage over time shouldn't be relevant because Vayne's meant to shred through health bars on the third attack. Still, I recognize why it is built on her.

The seventh item on her which is good is an item that I didn't think worked on her--but looking it up and testing it out myself, I think it actually does work. That item is the Jeweled Gauntlet. Vayne's max health shred on her third bolt, with it, can crit. Jeweled Gauntlet giving 30% crit was apparently a bug and it was meant to give +20 like other offenssive sparring glove items, so that was fixed, butstill:
25% base chance + 20% = 45% base crit chance.
You might be able to see where this is going.

I don't know how crits work, especially in regards to spells. Say a spell does 100 damage. Base crit damage is listed as 125%. Is that +125% damage, e.g. a spell doing 100 damage deals 225 damage, or does it mean +25%, e.g. a spell doing 100 damage deals +25%? I think that it's the latter, but regardless, you can see where this is going.

With a jeweled gauntlet, building an infinity edge on Vayne turns her damage from strong to absurdly strong. 45 + 25 = 65% base crit (with an easy way to get more), and with Infinity Edge buffing crits...her spells should deal extra damage.

Say her third bolt proc has the base damage of 10% max HP. Critting that would be 22.5% max HP, I think, if my understanding is correct. (Like I said: math on how it works is hard to find and even if it wasn't, I don't have very good understanding of how it works.)

But say your AP items and another AP source (again, you can probably see where this is leading) boosts that to be 20% of max HP.

That would be 50% of max HP on a crit.

Meta-build-wise, Vayne is Light/Ranger as a unit.

...But I had the thought.
"What if Karma boosted Vayne's attack speed and shielded her, and then we used the Lunar synergy on her?"
Vayne, Karma, Thresh, Ivern, Leona as core units, building into one of three synergies.
The first, Light. Aim for Light 6, Vayne + Lucian (without Senna) + ?Yorick? + ?Aatrox? + Soraka (Soraka for sure) + Nasus or Jax, which if you do the math is more than nine units, so replace the Ivern when you can obtain Light 6.

The second, Ranger. Aim for Ranger 6, Vayne + Twitch + Ashe + Kindred + Ezreal + Varus, which has identical math; more than nine units, so replace the Ivern when you can obtain Ranger 6.

The third, originally the build I thought would be least effective of the three, is upon reflection, I think my favorite:
From the core units, build into Mystic 4. Any Mystic 4 combo works, but some are better than others.
Nami has the across-board CC to enemies and ally buffs, not to mention, gives you Ocean. So that is an obvious good one.
Soraka shares Vayne's Light synergy giving you a potential in to Light 3 and her suppression is an excellent way to prevent the entire enemy team from casting spells.
Janna gives a bunch of heals and pushes units away from Vayne--of the three mystics added to Karma, this is probably the least-valuable overall especially if Vayne has a Gunblade, but if Vayne has no internal source of healing, having Janna give it can help save her life.

Master Yi would be an excellent unit to have as a secondary carry, due to his untargetable, self-healing, nature as a frontliner dealing damage, but obviously, he's not someone who buffs Vayne even if he's a smarter unit to have overall. He's probably better than not having Mystic 4 (so if you have him but not one of Janna/Nami/Soraka yet have 2/3 of them, fielding him > fielding Thresh or Ivern, particularly Ivern), but otherwise not the best for this specific comp (I fully recognize  Master Yi is a 5g unit for good reason; I admittedly don't know the units to make him a carry but I know he is a carry for good reason).

The 120 MR is very very clutch for keeping your team alive.

You can see how this comp works, particularly with the crit Vayne.
The Lunar synergy is basically a better version of the Sorcerer 3 synergy--giving +40% AP to the team, including Vayn'e passive. (Which at least at one point was precisely the amount Sorcerer 3 gave. Riot changed the Sorc 3 value a lot, but at one point it was +40%.) What makes it better is that whereas Sorcerer 3 aside from a squishy-shield-reliant Kassadin had no frontline and were squishy and highly spell-reliant...Lunar has no such problem.

With Leona as an exceptionally-tanky frontliner and with no spell-reliance from the synergy, it is much much better. It does have the drawback of taking time to activate, but again: with a bit of a tanky frontline and with the Thresh/Ivern shields, that extra time isn't hard to achieve.

Lunar also boosts crit chance and crit damage--which works with Jeweled Gauntlet. +15% crit chance, times four: +60% crit chance at maximum. You may note that Jeweled Gauntlet, in of itself, provides 45% so this gets you to above 100% for guaranteed crits.
It gives +15% crit damage, times four: +60%. Not as strong as Infinity Edge's 125%, about half as strong in fact, but still strong and by the way...can stack with Infinity Edge.

So say Vayne has Rageblade Jeweled Gauntlet Infinity Edge.
+80% spell power means her bolts do a lot. 13% (T2 Vayne because T3 Vayne's too hard) * 1.8 = 23.4% max HP, base.
Crits dealing + 25 + 125 + 60% extra = +210% of that. That's ~50% of max HP by my estimation, if it works the way that I think it does.

Is that a three-shot in of itself, no, but it is really really strong.

Of course the max AP would be 75 + 75 + 75 + 40% from triple-deathcap + Lunar = 13% * 265% = 34.45% AP if my understanding is correct. (I could be mistaken, but the wiki itself lists a Deathcap as giving 75 AP, so I'm pretty sure I'm not being too liberal with my estimates though it is possible I'm being too conservative and the amount is higher, whereas in the above it was possible I was too liberal and not conservative enough.)

So that's more or less what I aimed for.

It's not easy to pull off partially.
Getting one of the item combos isn't too hard overall.
But I never quite got it to work the way I wanted it to--I did get really really close, tho, multiple times, and was satisfied with that. 

Still!
Is immensely fun, not hard to do, and preforms pretty well overall.
So my girl Vayne is back!
It just took forgoing her synergies in favor of supporting her through other whole-team synergies and boosting her and shielding her.

​Incredibly off-meta, but hey, it allows my girl Vayne in TFT to destroy and I am happy with that.

Yesterday, I played AR URF--and of all the champions I could have gotten, I got Ashe!
Mind you, I couldn't run my normal Ashe build--manaflow band and presence of mind are disabled on the map, presumably due to you not using mana. This would present a problem since I use them for their maximum mana boost capabilities, if not for the fact that the Manamune is also disabled in that gamemode.

There's three possible explanations for that.
1: Per above, Riot thinks of it as a mana item, and thus, useless. (Disappointing if true.)
2: Because mana isn't used, they decided it was worthless. (This shouldn't be true, because even manaless champions can charge a manamune. No, really. You'd think, surely, they couldn't--they don't have mana, so they never expend mana! Except as part of a stupid-ass quest, I was required to play a Garen game...where I ended up doing precisely that, stacking the manamune, in spite of him being a manaless champion.)
3: Most likely, they deemed it just far far far too OP because it would be precisely that.

Notably, Ionian Boots were also disabled which is disappointing because I still had Transcendence and any items would give me bonus damage if they had CDR. Presumably disabled for whichever of the two above is the reason for the Manamune disabled. Either Riot thought it worthless (it's not), or they realized it wasn't and thought it the opposite, too strong to include.

Still built most of the items from the build anyway due to them being tanky items which I needed that had cdr as well for damage, though ultimately, it ended up not mattering much--we had a player decided to jungle in URF. I had the misfortune of, thanks to this, being in a 1v2 for pretty much the entire game.

Now, granted. It ended up working out. Because we had a jungler, mid was 2v1; bot was 3v2.
This gave our team a huge lead to snowball the game.
But it also meant that there was no way for me to make use of the fact that I got on my half-trick champion because even on URF it doesn't matter if I'm playing on Ashe, I'm not going to win a 1v2 until much much later, IF I get fed, and thanks to the 1v2 I never got fed.

Disappointing, but when you have a 1v2, not much you can do. I also fared fairly well given that it was a 1v2. I still had a negative K/DA because if I had no summs and no ult, I had no way of surviving the MF-Blitz combo if it connected, but every time I had any summoner spells and/or my ult up, I could survive--sometimes, even thrive!

Still gave them first brick and over half a dozen kills and was way behind in levels items and such.

But in spite of clearly losing, I lost softly enough for my team to still win.
The rate the enemy team was winning top, was lower than the rate at which my team was winning bot/mid. Because the enemy team couldn't capitalize on their lead on top because while they had a lead it wasn't an insurmountable one, whereas my team could capitalize on their lead bot because their lead there was insurmountable, I can't really complain.

I was, in a word, a sacrificial lamb. I did poorly so that the rest of my team would not; I attracted sufficient enough attention that the enemy team didn't realize what was happening elsewhere until it was too late.

The game before that (where someone dodged, alas), I got Vayne--which made me think about her in TFT.
I actually played a few games using her today, but not the meta builds!
​I'll talk about them tomorrow, though, because I waited too long to make this blog and I am tired enough that I should be going to bed now.

...But I honestly don't know what I would talk about?
Today was basically entirely my training for work.
Beyond that, I haven't done anything. I should have done stuff, but I haven't. I was in the mood to veg out more or less, and have done precisely that, so I don't have anything to add?

I would love to make long blog entries every day, but blog entries require inspiration--inspiration that I am currently at least today, lacking. I'm not inspired in games, I'm not inspired in art, in writing, in anything, and I can't think of anything to talk about from today. It's just a bit of a slow day, a bit of a rest day in spite of me having worked via a training.

​I really don't have anything to blog about--not even mental health. It's about the same. Mostly good, just occasionally not so good.

...In fact I was planning on it already but I realized I didn't make the blog entry yet.
Yesterday in my mega-blog post one thing which I neglected to mention--Phyrra and Cyrus continues to be something I work on. A while back, don't think I mentioned it, but I added something to Bard's character that made perfect sense and made a particular storyline feel more nuanced and natural (albeit having one necessary adjustment earlier in the story to accommodate for it).

Very, very recently, I did similar for Clara, adding a significant section to her previously-rather-underdeveloped (considering her status as a childhood friend of Phyrra and Cyrus) backstory which helps increase her role in the story ever so slightly, fleshing out an already-planned moment.

So Phyrra and Cyrus is not a project I have forgotten about.

I also did today lay the groundwork of the simplified expanded Rise of Rome scenario, too, but that blog can wait.

"...Wait, didn't you say that yesterday?"
Yeah funny how that works out.
Turns out shortly after my blog entry, we lost it again! For almost a full 24 hours. Fun times.
Now I did try to sleep sleep sleep the troubles away and now that my power is back, hopefully for good, I have a ton of catchup work to do, but there were plenty of eventful things I think are worth talking about.

Yesterday, my family made the decision to drive to Denny's for dinner--we had no food prepared and no way of preparing food with the power out, no generator, nothing. On the drive there, my mother and my sister were both rather alarmed by my father's haphazard driving; his carelessness made them rather...on edge.

And while I have utterly desensitized myself to thoughts of various different catastrophes by playing the scenarios out in my head (I have talked about this before on my blog, about a month ago, a little bit more if I recall correctly, so you can find me talking about it there--normally, I would be all too happy to talk about it again but this blog is going to cover a ton of things which leave me with a need to rush the rest of the subjects).

I found myself sharing similar sentiments.
Which is rather surprising.

Because you know that headspace I've been in? The rather negative one where I haven't had a reason to live? I'm still in it and even now to some extent am still feeling it.

And yet.
My mind was filled with thoughts of.

"I don't want to die."
I had an overwhelmingly strong urge to live. My will to live is still there. I don't know what's driving this strong power, I don't know what the basis of it is, I don't know where it comes from. But it was most definitively, positively, overwhelmingly there.

I was sharing my sister and mother's concern, because I didn't want to die.
I don't know why I didn't want to die.
I still haven't figured it out.
But I don't want to die.
And in fact, to the quite opposite: I am afraid to die. It's terrifying me.
I haven't a clue why.
I still don't know why I am alive.
I still don't have a reason to live for.

You'd think that in order for me to have this strong, overwhelming urge to live, I would have some sort of motivating reason, underlying justification for not wanting to die.

But if it's there, I haven't found it yet.
In spite of me not having a reason to live.
In spite of me being in that negative headspace.
Of thinking.
"The world might just be better off if I were not in it", more or less.
That terrible headspace I blogged about less than a week ago, that I never left and am still in it even in this very second.

​That doesn't change that the feeling was there, that fear of death and very strong desire to never let it pass, as long as I have any ability whatsoever to fight against it. (Mind you, realistically speaking, this is a bit morbid and grim, but I don't expect to live to an old age. The two most likely causes of death would be either in a car accident or more likely, due to something like cancer from not taking good care of myself, not checking in with doctors regularly, and the doctors probably not searching for the signs of the diseases that would kill me until it's too late. If I did get, sayyy, skin cancer, and the doctors didn't notice it until it was stage four and had metastasized to multiple organs in my body...I'd be pretty much a goner in no time flat. If that happens, not much I can do about it, but you bet that I'd still try to do something.)

And knowing that deep down.
I very much am fighting to stay alive.
Even if I don't know why I am fighting to stay alive.
The fact that the fight is there is, in of itself, empowering.

It's a little disappointing, not knowing why I want to live.
But I do know that I want to live.
I haven't discovered the reason why I want to stay alive, so I need to keep searching for a reason to keep living, but knowing that I want to live is, in of itself, just that tidbit, enough to keep me afloat for as long as I remember it. (Which is one reason I'm writing this blog, mind you! It'll make it easier for me to remember the feeling that was there, even if I don't know what the feeling is for or about, so that I don't forget.)

That was one thing which happened during the outage.
There were a couple of extra things as well, though.
One thing was working on a webcomic project which has many, many, of the same themes as The Descended does, with a similar core cast size (four protagonists), following a 'villain' in his rise to power, that has a notable beginning and end, in a Fantasy setting (albeit an Urban Fantasy setting of sorts; religious notes about it but not a lot of actual nonhumans otherwise), which I wanted to blog about ages ago yet never got around to it.

In fact.

If you check my December blog entries, at or after December 13th of last year (that is to say, December 13th, 2019 or so), you'll keep seeing me refer to "I really need to blog about this!", and then I never did because I am a moron about that sort of thing.

Well, blog entry made! Or, started, anyway. Still need to finish it.

Basically, I don't know if any blog readers will remember it, but around December 13th, I had mentioned that there was an idea for a webcomic that I really really liked and which was really really fun, but which I didn't have the skills to pull off. The webcomic, Freakshow High, remains something that I cannot make for a vast majority of reasons; I would need a co-writer who would take my basic ideas for the setting to come up with characters and plots which I would collaborate with them on.

Traditionally, I have never been involved in a collaboration which went well. Admittedly, though, that was me working on other peoples' brainchilds, rather than someone who shares my ambition and can see what I am going for, fleshing out my concepts to make something of their own that I just so happen to also have credit for. Butstill, I imagine that's a bit of a tough ask.

How do you get someone to be a co-writer for a webcomic by telling them, "take this basic idea and then make it so that I can make it"? I mean, I think that some collaborative efforts actually have worked out from similar, but the question is could I do that? I'm...not so convinced. Even if I could, the point remains, by myself, I wouldn't be able to make it in any world no matter what; I'd need help, help of a specific kind.

However.

Freakshow High did revive the artist within me.
And more than that--the worldbuilding narrative-writer within me. (Which I think is reflected in my dreams. The last two nights, my dreams have been amazing, cinematic, masterpieces, beautiful, fluent, works of art with fleshed out characters and deep, intricate plotlines and amazing worlds with simply stunning visuals, that I was really bummed out to wake up from because I knew that my awake mind couldn't continue their plots and that I wouldn't get the stories back if I went to sleep so they were killed mid-project, essentially.)

I did a 5-minute drawing of the protagonist from that series, Hey You.
It was done in actually closer to three. In ink. With no reference images. And it was better than most drawings I've made in pencil, with no time limit, using reference images. Was it perfect, no, there were obvious flaws born of me improvising on the spot. But for what it was, it was the best drawing I've ever done...

...Until I drew the Dean of Freakshow High, Dean Master Satan Hercure, in a similar timeframe. I called it a 5-minute doodle concept sketch, but it was done in three, and it would be passable as being in an actual webcomic page.

I did better than that, too.

For the first time in years.

I designed a webcomic logo to apply to the webcomic. Not the most inventive of logos (Freakshow High, underlined by bull horns that surround the text, with flames on top of it), but still an actual well and true proper logo for a webcomic, even knowing that it's for a webcomic that I'll never actually be able to make on my own.

And it goes further.
That worldbuilding I said I hadn't done and was feeling uninspired to do?
That didn't last!
I created a list, incomplete, of attendees to Freakshow High, with details about them.

Demons are among the 'infernal' attendees, who more or less feed off of energies radiating from their source of specialty, particularly emotions. Each demon has a unique specialty (though these are usually genetic, with a clan of demons sharing their specialty), but can still sustain themselves off of other methods. Think a lot like Cubii as portrayed in Dan and Mab--they are usually attached to an emotion (mostly negative ones), and feed from the energy radiating from it.

They may occasionally gain abilities pertaining to their primary source of sustenance, which can include things such as minor shapeshifting or invisibility among others.

Devils who the Dean is among, are among the 'infernal' attendees, and are not to be confused with Demons. They more or less get their energy from contracts, sustaining themselves from bargains, both written and spoken. This is neither inherently nefarious nor inherently benign. They are obligated to fulfill the terms of these deals for their duration, but have the power to terminate any deal they want to at any time. They also have very loose definitions, open to interpretation, on what a deal is. (They can call things deals which weren't intended as deals, with some creativity, and with specific interpretation of wording, get away with breaking the spirit of a deal in favor of rules lawyering the wording.)

They have reasonably decent shapeshifting abilities.

Succubii who should not be confused with Incubii and should not be confused with Devils or Demons, are among the 'infernal' attendees. They are, technically speaking, all hermaphrodites, who in spite of being hermaphrodites do true to what you'd expect, usually appear female. They do indeed feed off of the type of energy you'd expect, love energy, most potently from sex, but they can recharge themselves simply by hanging around people who have a bond of any form of love--familial, romantic, platonic.

They get the most energy from having sex with someone and more or less 'draining' them, but they can sustain themselves just passively by being around strong bonds. Due to having the same resource pool as Incubii, they are bitter rivals with Incubii by and large, absolutely loathe being compared to them, will probably murder you if you make the mistake or even if not give you a rather lengthy lecture on the differences between them.

To a lesser extent, this also applies to Demons. Most demons can partially sustain themselves off of the Succubii territory resources, and some demons specifically require it as their unique specialty, but Succubii are a different species altogether.

Incubii who should not be confused with Succubii and should not be confused with Devils or Demons, are also among the 'infernal' attendees, and much to the chagrin of Incubii and Succubii everywhere, you could take the paragraphs above about the Succubii and apply them to the Incubii--they are, technically, hermaphrodites, who in spite of being hermaphrodites usually appear male. They feed off of love energy, are bitter rivals with Incubii as a result, loathe being compared to them, would probably murder you for doing so or at least give a rather lengthy lecture on the differences between the two, and these differences to a lesser extent apply to them and Demons.

Imps are among the 'infernal' attendees, who're anywhere from 25-75% the height of an average human. At their tallest, they just look like a shorter human; at their shortest, they are like the size of a dog or big cat. They make up for this by having limited illusions and shapeshifting capabilities, which allow them to, should they so choose to, appear normal size, something aided by their wings naturally supporting flight.

Fairies are basically more insectoid Imps. About the same height, with the same illusionary and shapeshifting powers, who have wings that allow them to fly.

The Fairfolk are much as you'd expect the Fae to be: basically alien in thought process, but incredibly attuned to the world otherwise. They have unparalleled hearing and sight, which non-Fairfolk suspect is the reason they appear to be crazy (because they see and hear things others do not, and can't turn this off), and like the vast majority of attendees to Freakshow High, have no limited lifespan, accumulating knowledge and also quirks as time passes and they get bored, usually choosing to obsess with something. 

Gorgons can paralyze people with eye contact--note that this is an activated power, not something that always applies at all times. Their hair is indeed snakes, but these snakes can take on the appearance of dreadlocks and can be cut to any length the gorgon wants their hair to be. These snakes are prehensile so long as they are in snake (not human) form, allowing gorgons to manipulate objects using their hair.

Lamia are basically the land-equivalent of the merfolk: they are basically anthropomorphic snakes. Think like a centaur but instead of the bottom half being a horse, it's instead a snake. However. At puberty, lamia's tails will split in two, allowing them the option of either slithering, or walking on two 'legs'. (Yes this is blatantly ripped from One Piece, I thought that was incredibly neat, deal with it.)

Lizardfolk are pretty much what you'd expect; anthropomorphic lizards of various kind.

Dragons are, well...exactly what you'd picture a western dragon to be. Gigantic creatures, winged, scaled, four legs, tail, claws, teeth, with a big breath weapon. They are inherently master level shapeshifters, though, and almost always take far, far, more reasonably-sized shapes, usually humanoid. They are some of the strongest creatures in existence and do indeed have a taste for greed, but they are not invincible and do lay eggs unless they maintain their shapeshifted form 100% of the time, so they almost never appear in their natural forms.

Merfolk are also pretty self-explanatory, with the add-on I mentioned ripped from One Piece: they are amphibious, able to breath both air and in water, are the best swimmers bar none in the water, and at puberty their tail splits in two allowing for them to walk on land rather comfortably while still maintaining their ability to swim.

Fishfolk are not Merfolk; they are basically anthropomorphic fishes. Whereas Merfolk can vaguely be thought of as terms of literally half-man, half-fish a la Centaurs being half-man, half-horse, Merfolk are instead just hybridizing human and fish features throughout their whole body. It's a little cheap to do especially given what I already stole, but again, you can more or less just look at One Piece's depiction of Fishmen to see what I am getting at here.

Insectoids are to insects what Fishfolk are to fish, humanoid versions of various different insects.

Werebeasts are pretty self-explanatory: humans who have the ability to transform into a different, usually mammalian, creature, in various different forms: full transformation (fully become the creature), hybrid form, and partial transformation (where they're mostly human but have a few features accentuating them that come from the creature they are a werebeast of).

The most common of these by far is the werewolf, but there are plenty of others like werecats as well. You can indeed be either born as one or gain it as an infection; the infection can only be transmitted on a full moon, and there is a slight difference between those born werebeasts and those who're infected; those born have full control over their transformation from birth and are not obligated to transform during the full moon, whereas those infected need to learn how to control their transformations yet no matter how much control they gain they are always going to be in either their hybrid or full-beast forms on the full moon.

Vampires are pretty self-explanatory as well. No, they don't fry in sunlight, but the sun does weaken them. They're pale in complexion. They drink blood; this doesn't need to kill the target. They can be transformed or exist from birth; transforming requires draining someone then giving them blood when they are on the brink of death. They don't explode when impaled by a stake, but leaving a stake in their heart will paralyze them and put to halt their regenerative capacities; long enough will kill them.

I'm not sure on what abilities they have for sure. Do they have hypnosis, shapeshifting, turning into a mist, etc. powers or not, more or less, haven't decided that yet, but they are more or less your standard fare for vampires who aren't ridiculously weak and yet also aren't ridiculously brokenly strong, either. Average run of the mill vampires pretty much, who don't have stupid quirks (they're not compelled to count, repelled by holy water, do not require invitations, can cross running water, are unaffected by crosses, you get the idea), but don't have dominance either.

Witches are a separate species from humans, technically, but for all intents and purposes, are basically just "humans who can use magic". This magic is genetically passed on from parent to child no matter what (general rule of thumb: almost every single attendee of Freakshow High is fertile and capable of having children with almost any other attendee of Freakshow High, which means that yes, you can have someone who has anywhere from 2-20 species in their lineage although it should be noted that you're not going to have best-of-all from this, you'll basically inherit one or two and then the rest basically don't exist aside from having a small chance your descendants manifest them, think dominant versus recessive in that you'll have a few dominant with most recessive), and on every rare once and a while, can appear in someone who previously lacked it.

They are disproportionately female, but not inherently so. (Usually any witch who randomly gains powers in spite of lacking a lineage of it will indeed be female though.) There's plenty of male witches, but they still call themselves witches in spite of that term usually having a female connotation to it.

Their magic is currently not well-defined, though what I have in mind is more or less, "very very versatile and capable of a lot, but still having set rules to follow which make it not capable of anything, with limitations to what is possible", I just didn't put in the actual work yet to set said limits and such.

Ghouls are creatures that are 'cursed', more or less a generic term that applies to many types of things. A wendigo would be a type of ghoul, for instance, due to the curse of consuming flesh until passing it on. These curses can be of numerous different natures. Common curses that create ghouls originate from Witches, but they can be from plenty of other sources. As long as they retain enough autonomy to function in the supernatural society, however, they are more than free to attend Freakshow High and work towards whatever goals they have. (Some curses can be ended, others are eternal.)

Zombies are not the infectious type--they are, specifically, people who were raised by the voodoo magic of a witch. This applies to all zombies, but normally, most zombies are automatons that have no free will, give no thought, are basically raised creatures that are slaves to the one who created them to do their bidding and nothing but their bidding. However, it is a not-too-uncommon happenstance where zombies gain sentience and with it, a sense of free will. They think, they are no longer mindless, they no longer are slaves, though they may remain servants, they just aren't nothing but a body. They have a mind and thus are entitled to everything which comes with it.

In this sense, zombies are technically speaking a very specific form of construct, but they are classified differently because constructs weren't actual people before gaining sentience whereas zombies were. The personalities zombies gain may or may not reflect who they were before. They may or may not have memories of who they were before.

Constructs are magically-created golems that have somehow gained sentience. Whereas golems are mindless automatons that have, of sorts, 'programming' that they follow, constructs can think, have free will, and are thus entitled to everything that comes with it.

The quintessential example of a construct would be Frankenstein's Monster (though depending on how much of Frankenstein's monster is nuts and bolts and how much is flesh he probably qualifies more as a zombie); that is in a nutshell what a construct would be. Something artificially constructed that has gained a will of its own.

Ectoplasmic creatures, which I am calling 'ethereal', are also numerous in attendance.

Ghosts are the most famous of the 'ethereal' species, due to more or less being the ones who overall have the best abilities. Like all ethereal species, most ghosts are not born, but while they have incredibly reduced fertility, they are not actually sterile, so it is possible for an ethereal creature to be born as an ethereal creature rather than simply randomly existing by happenstance.

They have optional invisibility which they can trigger at will. Like all ethereal creatures, they can fly--and of the ethereal creatures, by shifting their legs into a ghostly tail, they can achieve the fastest flight speed of any ethereal creature, and are basically to flight what merfolk are to water.

Wraiths are ethereal creatures who have the ability to teleport. In this sense, they can rival ghosts in speed in flight, by repeatedly teleporting over and over again, but while they can shift from one location to another instantly, this is not something they can spam indefinitely. (They can do it in rapidfire short-term, and there's no hard-limit to what they can do, but they do get winded the more they use it.)

Banshees are ethereal creatures who more or less have the ability to shout really really loudly and painfully. But it's a little more complicated than that; they basically have mastery of sound of all sorts. They can mute sounds that would normally be made, or crank up sounds that would normally be inaudible. They can't travel at the speed of sound, but they can otherwise fully manipulate sound in ways that make them basically unparalleled masters of sound.

People know them as shouting really loudly and painfully though because while Banshees are capable of really complex, nuanced uses of their power...inherent in being a Banshee is basically an innate sense of drama queen (note that there's a dead even split between male and female banshees), an inherent hamminess, laziness, desire to play things up, and the like, and also an utter lack of awareness to how they are perceived by others, who think that their loud screeches are 'true art' and that the people who cover their ears are haters that don't understand, more or less.

​Phantoms are ethereal creatures who have the ability to phase through matter. This is an optional ability. Other ethereal creatures are still very much physical, which is something you might not expect. And all ethereal creatures thus have the ability to interact with objects (which is why I didn't add poltergeists to the list of ethereal creatures originally, though I have since reconsidered), and be interacted with.

Phantoms can optionally disable this interaction and optionally pass through walls and such.

Specters are unique among ethereal creatures as having the ability to shapeshift. They can choose what form they appear as, which makes them one of the stronger ectoplasmal creatures since they can fly and more or less choose what mass and shape they have, which can have a number of rather useful effects, even allowing them to somewhat mimic the powers of other ethereal creatures. (Take on a form small enough to pass through a wall if the wall has a crack in it, for instance, or accelerate themselves by physics, and so on and so forth.)

Poltergeists were originally not in the list because all ethereal creatures can interact with objects, but I decided to add them in with them being unique among ethereal creatures as being able to do this from a range with them having telekinetic powers whereas other ectoplasmal creatures require touch.

Bigfolk are basically your Yetis, Bigfoots, Sasquatches, and such.

Sirens are similar to Banshees in being masters of musical noise, but with more of a pleasant take on it and also being more seductive, with their sounds inherently containing hypnosis to them.

Among the attendees would also be a word that I imagine exists and I could find but was too lazy to for this blog because this is a massive tangent from my true blog entry, involving a catch-all term for Satyrs, Centaurs, and Minotaurs.

I also included from Greek Mythology Harpies, Chimeras, and Sphinxes (who would also take on the Egyptian mythology there as well as the Greek one), with the intention of adding more similar with research.

I also added in Ratmen, anthropomorphic rats, and Avians, anthropomorphic birds (aka birdfolk).

One classification I also added was something I wanted to be distinctly separate from Witches, Necromancers, who more or less are masters of the dead, having a high attunement to ethereal creatures, can raise the dead, and perform some low-level magics separate from Witch magic that revolve around various aspects of humans specifically.

And that's a list I expected to be incomplete.
It's all I have.
But it's something I made on December 11th with a little added on December 13th (though for this blog I did a little bit of on-the-spot decision making, namely, including Poltergeists).

I did far more than make the attendees though.

I did an estimation of the size of the school, somewhere in the range of 200-500 students.
Given that number, I estimated that there'd be around 15-30 teachers and probably 20-60 total faculty (since not all faculty would be teachers though there would of course be people with multiple jobs).

I named the town the school of Freakshow High is in, and modeled it as being a fairly isolated town-city: not small enough to be a town, but small enough that when most people think of a 'city', they're going to think more populous than what this is. (To put this into perspective, probably about the size of Snohomish or Monroe here in the state of Washington. Not entirely rural, but also not exactly a metropolis. No skyscrapers, but a fair amount of industrialization yet enough undeveloped land that there's plenty of trees and the like around.)

The school is in Edenville, and I even gave Freakshow High its sports teams' names: the Edenville Devilsnakes.
I think that the size of a small city-town is somewhere in the range of 2000-10,000 though I admit I would need to research this a bit. (Not exactly sure where but it's not a big enough deal for me to focus on.)

I have character bios on Hey You and the Dean, a fair idea of Hey You's background and where they came from, the like. A ton of work I put in.

And yet in spite of all that, it is a project I will never make because I would need help to make it.

...So what was all of that build-up for?

...Because on December 13th, sharing a sheet of work scrapbook paper that the first half contained the additions for Freakshow High.

...Was a webcomic project that I could​ do on my own.

This is a long, long blog post, so, uhh...lemme pull it back and remind you of exactly what I was on about since I realize we went on the longest tangent ever. Go way back to the, "One thing was working on a webcomic project which has many, many, of the same themes as The Descended does, with a similar core cast size (four protagonists), following a 'villain' in his rise to power, that has a notable beginning and end, in a Fantasy setting (albeit an Urban Fantasy setting of sorts; religious notes about it but not a lot of actual nonhumans otherwise), which I wanted to blog about ages ago yet never got around to it.", section of this blog entry.

That project is what I actually set out to talk about.
I can't make Freakshow High on my own.
But if I so chose to. (I probably won't, but I have the choice that I could.)
I could make this new project.

​This new project has the first chapter more or less mapped out. It has a set beginning, end, and various middle parts set out. I know what I want to do with it if I were to do it and I know how I would do it, more or less.
I have the main characters modeled out as well as the three other demons in the setting. (The minions of the three other demons, the later lesser followers of the titular demon, the lesser followers of the three other demons, the followers of more holy divine powers, the lesser followers of more divine holy powers, and random people who aren't followers of anyone? Yeah I have absolutely none of them modeled out.)

Which is to say, the most important characters, I know what they look like more or less and know their personalities in a nutshell.

I have done rather extensive worldbuilding and can talk about every aspect of the world; it's a fairly simple world to pull off easily enough. It's neat, it's beautiful, but also fairly simple to grasp once you get into it, just get a few of the basic bases down and you can follow along rather freely. 

And like Freakshow High, I did more work than that.
I made a really really cool logo for it that I can draw repeatedly and easily because while simple, it is easily replicable. (It is probably not a very original logo concept, but it is still something I took time to design which I feel like I put my own spin on that makes it a signature of my webcomic.)

I even made the webcomic's slogan too.

During the outage, I went one step further and drew the cat in the series, too. Mind you--I did so in about three to four minutes, with zero reference images (this was at Denny's so no kitties to use) and zero erasing. I drew a cat in five minutes with zero references and in spite of that, it actually looks passable as being a cat. 

The only reason I didn't draw more was due to lacking time, usually being busy with other things.

But all of the pieces to make the webcomic are there if I were to so choose.

That project is one which I'm not sure I want to mention by name, but ehhhh...sure, I'll risk listing its name; it's Bazu's Fourthsworne.

To keep a long long story short:
There are four rulers of Hell, the Foursworne, and Bazu the Broken (full name, Bazu Fourthsworne, the Fourth Foursworn) is the weakest of them. (He is associated with snakes and the color yellow.) He was UnPersoned by the first foursworn, trapped to rule the smallest section of Hell and with no presence on earth and no followers and no means of manifesting.

The story follows his rise to power after he is, through a sheer stroke of luck, manifested by pure happenstance in a ritual that had every reason to not go right but somehow actually did go right. (It was deliberately written wrong as to sabotage any efforts to make it successful, but by a one in trillion chance occurrence, managed to fulfill the conditions that had been left out.)

The main characters aside from him (this contains first-episode spoilers by the way):
Creed, his summoned Avatar. Creed has four forms: possessing the cat, possessing the cat but transformed into a humanoid form (that of a little boy), using the cat as a way of manifesting an incomplete form (very loosely modeled off of Ryoma Hoshi from Danganronpa V3), and a fully manifested complete form where he is the will of Bazu incarnate.

Adam Caine, the person who did the summoning, becomes his head follower, basically what you'd get if you combined the Pope with a King in that he has almost absolute authority over Bazu's domain (which, as noted, at the beginning of the story...is nothing, but Bazu makes it clear that as he gains power, so too will Adam), second only to Bazu himself.

Lilith Edenson, one of the people present at the summoning, becomes a servant of Bazu by making a contract with him. During the summoning process, Adam killed his sister--Lilith, in love with her, was very much Not Okay with this. Contracts with a demon can be broken down into more or less trivial (the demon does something and in exchange the servant does a single task for the demon and is then free), difficult (the demon does something hard to accomplish and in exchange the servant has lifelong servitude, but is free once they die), or impossible (the demon, via the contract, accomplishes something that shouldn't be possible for the demon, in exchange for the person making the contract becoming an eternal servant, damned to forever be the slave of the demon), to more or less keep the long story short.
Reviving Adam's sister, whose death was integral to the success of the ritual, was an impossible feat, which via the contract, was achieved, but as a consequence, Lilith has become an eternal servant of Bazu.

And the actual protagonist of the story (because Bazu is more of the deutagonist), the one whose perspective the majority of the story is told through:
Evelyn Caine, preferring Eevee (not Eve), is the sister of Adam Caine and more or less FWB with Lilith. (Lilith is a lesbian, Eevee is pan, Lilith's love for Eevee is stronger than Eevee's love for Lilith but they have communicated their feelings. Eevee does love Lilith, just...not as much as Lilith loves Eevee, and Lilith has accepted this and is okay with the status of their relationship since both Eevee and Lilith are happy with it.)

Since Adam, her brother, becomes basically a lord of the damned helping Bazu accomplish his will in exchange for becoming more powerful, and Lilith her sort-of-lover is eternally indebted to Bazu to always serve his will, she more or less tags along with the group of them.

She is heavily a deadpan snarker, will heavily riff on Bazu, has a low opinion of him, will insult him, and so on and so forth. For his part, Bazu considers her expendable and will often trick her into doing things that are far more dangerous than they may seem, to further his own ends, and has no qualms of letting her die again and no intention of reviving her a second time should she die again. He demonstrates, both with his actions and his words, that she is essentially cannon fodder for him, a useful tool, but not an actual asset.

She doesn't really have a reason to help Bazu but more or less nonchalantly tags along and inevitably ends up helping him anyway. Sometimes by choice, sometimes to help Adam (she is his sister so she does care for him), sometimes to help Lilith (she does care about Lilith more than she cares about a friend), but often just because Bazu manipulated things that way.

Because Bazu is, specifically, the Demon of Charisma and is the most charismatic bastard around. Not the smartest, not the strongest, but his charm is why he was basically removed from the mortal realm; he was too much of a threat if allowed to roam free...

...And yet, the story follows precisely what happens after he does exactly that.
​From Eevee's viewpoint, by and large.

I love the project and I like it a lot.
I can make it, too.
Will I?
Ehhh...not sure.
But it's primed and ready for me if I ever decided to.

So what else?
I kinda have a growing urge to mod Civilization III again.
I don't want to work on the Across the Ages project--that was a bit too cumbersome. I do like what I was doing with it, but it just was something that had too many issues that I don't think someone of my skill level could work out.

Instead, I wanted to work on a more toned-down attempt at a modified version of the Rise of Rome scenario.
My first modified Rise of Rome scenario was my first, and grandest, venture into modding Civ 3 stuff.
It had a ton of stuff done but was atrocious overall and I basically made it ridiculously easy mode regardless of who I was playing on, adding everything and the kitchen sink to it.

This toned-down version would have a few modifications that would risk pushing me into that territory, but which with luck I'd be fine with.
The basic idea, 7/8 playable, Egypt still on the decline, but with each civilization having specific traits of theirs emphasized and played up. 
I'd remove pollution as much as is possible (this is just a quality of life improvement), add in Wool in locations as close to the Medieval scenario as is possible and no other locations (which would actually make it difficult to achieve for half the civs, which is a good thing!), turn silver/gold into resources, add in the wonders from Mesopotamia that aren't included, two outposts for Rome to allow for contacting the Celts and Goths (one in England, one in approximately Germany near the rivers there) with one unit on them, an extra Carthago Novo unit for Carthage as compensation, an outpost for Persia to allow first-turn contact with Scythia and similarly an extra Macedon unit as compensation, and then the draw to the scenario:

The units.
Goths would have a focus on raw offense, forgoing defense but having offense rivaling or even exceeding even Roman units.

Celts would have movement speed, traveling extra distance. Their units would have bog-standard attack/defense.

Carthage would have units that take less shields to produce, but require more resources to make, emphasizing their cheap mercenary nature. These units would be loosely equal to normal units, but some stronger and others weaker.

The Scythians would have units that treat all terrain as roads, but no extra movement speed, to differentiate their units from the Celtic units. Their units would have bog-standard attack/defense.

Rome would have their units be able to use all worker actions, have the strongest overall units in offense/defense (including a defensive horseman that'd be able to match their citizens), but pay for it in having those units be more expensive overall in terms of shields.

Egypt would have unique units, but have all of them be weaker than units from other civs, to represent their 'on the decline' nature.

The Greeks would have amphibious warriors/swordsmen (who would have stats equal to other swordsmen otherwise) and be self-balanced against the Persians for their spearmen to be loosely equivalent to the Persian swordsmen with Persian units having higher offense and lower defense and Macedonian units being equal in both.
Their units would be stronger than Carthage, but weaker than Rome.

I wouldn't touch things otherwise for risk of turning things too complex and ruining the simple idea as it is now.
Now, admittedly--there would still be about 75 units in the scenario, but that wouldn't be "75 units plus the ones already in there", it would be "75 units including the ones already in there".
Maybe bump it up to 80 when you add in leaders, armies, gallies, and workers.

But I am pretty sure a total of 80 units in the game or thereabouts, is not more than most scenarios.
I'd have to double-check to be sure, but I feel like if it's not actually much more than is in most scenarios, no real harm in striving for it.

It feels incredibly doable, I'd just need to do it.
Hmm, what else...I think that beyond that, it's just 'catching up' stuff.
I need to play a few TFT games to get the quest there.
I have eight days to play two RANKED (yes, RANKED) games of League, and to also play one of Garen, Jax, Draven, or Leona. (Sadly, I only own Garen of them. The one I'd least one to play.)
ARURF is life and I want to test if my build with a mana champion works on ARUF, where cooldowns are at 80% and every item is thus over the CDR limit. But also mostly to see if a manamune can transform into the muramana in ARURF.

I have obligations that I am days late to attending to, and these once I finally finish this blog entry (I think I've been writing this blog for an upwards of six hours?), those are going to be what I probably focus on.

I have a vod to watch and multiple videos to watch to catch up on. Probably about 12-24 in total. Most of them ~10 minutes but at least four of them are longer.

​Busy, busy times.

Surprisingly.
I suppose I should talk about League--Riot is killing crit-based builds by nerfing Stormrazor (it didn't need the nerf, it was already a situational item) and on top of nerfing it, nerfing every crit cloak item--if Zeal maintains the 25% crit, this will help kill Stormrazor, Infinity Edge, and Essence Reaver as items because it'll mean that you'd need more than four crit items but less than five to get 100% crit. 

Mind you, I don't really care about the killing Stormrazor/Infinity Edge nerfs as I don't use them, but it would be upsetting if Essence Reaver, the staple item of adcs everywhere, got a nerf, during a season where adcs are already a joke. In season 10, adcs are basically "in the teamfight, maybe they clean up and deal damage", basically acting as a second support to mop up the mess.

Zoning work, waveclear work, objective pressure, but in terms of making a difference in the fight...they are pretty much useless.

And that's not just me in my Iron skill level saying that, and it's not just me on Ashe a utility adc saying that.

It's literally every level, even Challenger, where this applies. And even in competitive games from what it seems like. It feels like right now it's "pick Aphelios, or let the adc be useless almost all game long", with Miss Fortune being the closest adc they've got to a damage-dealer and even she is being out-damaged by the midlaner, toplaner, sometimes even the jungler.

And if you look, unless the players go out of their way to get the adc fed (and sometimes even then!), that continues across most game levels. The toplaner/midlaner in tandem with the jungler, deal most of the damage, take most of the objectives, are most important in teamfights, make the difference in a win or loss.

That being said--on the bright side, Aphelios is set to receive much, much needed nerfs, finally. Frozen Heart, an item in my current Ashe build, is set to receive a buff, which I will definitely see use of. 

​In Teamfight Tactics, it seems Riot wanted to buff some of the strongest comps in the game, and then quickly realized, "Wait hold on, these comps are winning a lot" and are trying to tone back on the strong comps. Specifically, I'm referring to Mage 6. (Riot is really crazy there.)

Riot is mostly on the right path with their changes, though. Assassins weren't weak, but as far as lategame comps go, they were underperforming compared to other OP comps. They were heavily item-reliant before; if these changes go live, they'll be super-OP, but that'd just be them joining the ranks of other super-OP comps.

Inferno as a comp could work well, but again was usually item-dependent to make them be OP. With the buffs there, they may end up being super-OP which would put them in line with other comps.

Summoners were too strong in particular due to their easy synergies (e.g. with Inferno, but also Light and Shadow), so that change I feel was healthy. A bit out of line with the rest of their changes, but healthy overall.

Nobody had any use of vieing for an all-woodland comp. Nobody. I would still run Woodland 4 because I needed Neeko for damage, LeBlanc as a living synergy, Maokai for a tank frontline, and Ivern would be my disposable unit if I needed to remove one but I'd still field him for the shields. But I'd never use woodland Lux.

With the addition of copying every woodland unit rather than a random woodland unit, the Woodland trait is now literally in the exact same niche the old Noble trait was in: strong earlygame powerspike that falls off hardcore lategame...unless you manage to get the six-synergy version of the trait.

I am a bit disappointed that it requires Lux in order to actually work, though, because with that requirement, it's not possible before level 7 and it requires you randing the very specific Lux you need in order to pull it off. Still, though, it'll be ridiculously strong, if it goes through.

Karma and Leona are receiving nerfs, but I think Riot missed the mark there--they're nerfing the champions who're part of the Lunar trait, rather than nerfing the problem which is the Lunar trait itself.

Desert 4 getting the armor reduction boost helps them be more relevant given that an item basically singlehandedly replaced the need to use Desert at all. (Really, Riot, when you put an item in which has the exact same effect as a synergy, you should realize that either the item or the synergy will then go unused.)

Shadows are receiving a buff, when they were already OP, so this change will shift them into the super-OP comp territory other comps were already in.

Warden 6 was already fairly strong, but unless you got very specific items and probably the mountain map, wasn't really viable. I'd argue that the inclusion of the Lunar trait in tandem with a Morello/Shojin Malphite (which does take up 8/9 of your units, admittedly) made them viable if you got that very specific combo, but they were not super-OP; their buff to Warden 6 can help make them so.

I have to say, though, that I am disappointed.
There are nine wardens in the game.
You can make more wardens with a wardens vest.
The synergy maxes out at 6.
I would've preferred they kept the synergy at 6, and then added a synergy for 8.
Or, heck, if they felt like that was too strong (they apparently don't think it is tho, but let's play devil's advocate), realtalk, I'd be fine with a change to Wardens being a 3/6/9 synergy rather than a 2/4/6 synergy provided that the 3/6/9 synergies give more armor than their current 2/4/6 versions do. (Sayyy, +250% for 3, +500% for 6, and +999% for 9.)
But ideally just give it an extra level of the 2/4/6/8. +150/300/450/999% armor, seems fairly logical. There is a notable spike from my hypothetical warden 6 to the hypothetical warden 8, but that would be more in line with the idea of fielding more wardens in my opinion.

But OH WELL.
​If Riot gives it to me, I most definitely will take it!

Funny, I seem to recall blogging, heavily, about Snowmageddon about this time last year. Maybe it was two years ago (it seems heavy snow is every other year), but I kinda feel like it was last year? Maybe it was a bit earlier so technically 2018, maybe a bit later, but I do seem to recall early circa last year, there was heavy snow.

And this year.

There is ridiculously heavy snow.
Which is kinda annoying to be honest.
Our uninterruptable power supplies aren't actually working--right now, they're glorified outlets, serving as nothing other than precisely that, something to give multiple things needing power, power...so long as you have power. The second power goes out, even if it's for a split second...BAM. Everything dies. Computer, internet, everything. Not a single thing stays up.

And our generator isn't working (not that we have internet when we have no power anyway), so no generator, no UPS, means that when we have a power hit...everything goes down until we get power back. Meaning anything I am doing, better be automatically saved and not crucial because if it ain't automatically saved or if it is crucial...I be screwed.

Notably.
This does allow me to do stuff like watch people; this does allow me to play TFT. But it doesn't really allow me to play Minecraft; it doesn't really allow me to play League.

I can.

Can.
It's just incredibly risky, to the point where it's not something I really want to do unless I have teammates who know about it in advance and can cover for me if it does happen and I leave my team in a 4v5.

Now, admittedly.
Given that I play on Oceania's server.
Me having a sudden dc due to weather? I'll blend right in! Or so I imagine. Opposite extremes, quite literally, because I'm in a land of ice, Australia is a land of fire right now, but I imagine the effects would be similar when it comes to playing the game; high likelihood of getting sudden dcs.

Admittedly, I don't really know nearly as much about the fires in Australia as I should. My close friend is from Australia, their family lives in Australia, and I have multiple friends and associates who live in Australia. I know it is really, really bad, but...I don't know as much about it as I should, and I don't know what I'd realistically be able to do to help.
(I mean. I imagine there's donations to charity and the like. But I am notoriously stingy with my money; I know it makes no sense, but I usually just...I will give hundreds, even thousands, of dollars to a friend in need. They need not be a close friend. They need not have the expectation of paying me back. Anyone I call a friend, anyone, I would give hundreds, even thousands, of dollars to if they were in need of the money, with no expectation of them ever paying me back. Yet donating to a charity? Donating to a charity which would help the friend, which would have 100% of the money go to a good cause that I would love to support and I know is a good cause and I know the money will do good...for whatever reason, I just...am incredibly hesitant to do so. I guess it's more or less the difference between knowing the face of who I'm helping, versus helping an idea which has no true face, if I had to wager a reason.)

Like...should I better educate myself on it to know about it more? What would I actually do with that knowledge? Spread it to people who could have use of it, spread it to people who with it could help? The people who I know that could have use of the knowledge, are already more knowledgeable on the subject than I am; THEY could teach ME. So that'd leave the 'spread it to people who with the knowledge can help', but even there, I'm not sure what I could do.

I don't really feel comfortable asking people to, what, give money, for a cause especially when I myself am not contributing to it. So what would they be giving? Relief supplies, maybe? Similar story there; I'm not comfortable with asking them to give things I myself am not giving. So I just...don't know what I would do to help. Write to the government asking the government to help? As one of their constituents, contribute a well-thought-out plea for them to help?

Maybe, but I'm not sure how I could pull that off and I'm not sure who I could spread the word to that would want to do it and could, who hasn't already done it. (Basically, the people with the skills to do it and will to do it that I know, have already informed themselves better than I am.)

In that sense, I just don't really have any idea of what I could do to help and I feel really guilty about it but like.
I don't really know what I could do.

But I digress.
I'm also having the obvious heavy depression. There's not much to say about that though. It's fairly self-explanatory. I feel worthless. I feel like I am a piece of trash. A failure, fraud. Someone who makes promise after promise.
And delivers on none of them.
I am just.
Objectively.
Terrible.

And it's very negatively impacting me.
Where, yes.
I have the thoughts of, "it might just be better if I wasn't around", because then people wouldn't have those false hopes about me. Then people wouldn't expect me to be any good, when I am demonstrably not. You could always go. "But Bree. Can't you just...decide to not be in those positions of responsibility?" Resign, step down, be forcefully removed, and so on?

Why yes.
I could.
And then I would lose what little hope I am holding onto.
I would lose one of the only things keeping me alive.
I don't really have a reason to live right now, but having duties, obligations, that I am bound to, helps to at least keep me floating by--losing those duties, losing those obligations, means I lose the things I am floating by on.

I would be way, way worse off if I lost them.
And yet every day I feel like I am losing them, specifically because.
I am failing at them.
And because I am failing at them.
​I am at constant risk of losing them.

And what makes it worse.
Every day.
I have visions of my jobs as they could be.
And I have visions of my jobs as they should be--not as optimal as they could be, but at least realistically humanly achievable. Things that I have no reason to not achieve and then...I don't achieve them. For. no. good. reason.

I think about the job as it is most optimal, every day--but that daydream I have no delusions of becoming real. It's fictional, unrealistic, not something that I could ever achieve. It's worth striving for anyway, but I have no disappointment if I fail because I know that it's not possible in the first place.

But I also think about the job as it is most practical, every day--the job as it could realistically be done easily. There is literally nothing stopping that from becoming real because it's not unrealistic. It's easily doable, and easily achieved. And yet I don't do them. For no good reason. No excuse, no real reason for it.

When I inevitably fail to achieve that, how could I not feel disappointed in myself? It's fully possible, and easily so, for me to do the things. So why on earth do I not get them done, when I can easily get them done? There's no excuses, no justifications. I have no alternative answer.

Other than "I suck".
I just fail.
No reason I shouldn't have done it, yet I didn't do it.
What can that be.
Other than a problem with me?

You might think.
"Maybe your thoughts of 'this is pragmatic' is off and your pragmatic is still 'too perfect'?"
Except no.
It isn't.
I know what is too ambitious for me.
I might still try the too-ambitious anyway, but I'll hold no illusions of when it fails, of it being unrealistic.
I have a very good sense of what is basic minimum, versus what is absolute maximum. 
And I am constantly, consistently, below the basic minimum.

And if you asked others who have or had the same job, they would agree. They would look at what I did versus what I am expected to do, and agree with my self-assessment of it being below the acceptable standards. That I am not performing to the expectation of my jobs.

If they said otherwise to my face.
They would be lying to try and comfort me.
Or maybe they would be delusional in legitimately thinking I'm okay, due to bias from liking me and thinking surely I couldn't fail and maybe them being highly self-critical of themselves. (Basically, there's a higher chance that they'll think I'm fine, if they are self-critical enough to think that they weren't doing what they should.)

But if they were to honestly assess me, in private, not to my face, talking to others in the business.
They would be forced to confess, to admit, to face the truth.
That I am not performing to the levels I should be.

I know that I have low self-assessment most of the time.
Where due to my ego I have high expectations of myself and due to this am largely self-critical when I fail to live up to my own self-hype.

But I know that if someone were to objectively rather than subjectively measure me and assess what I've been doing.
I objectively would not be living up to expectations and nothing they can do or say will change that objective truth.

And if I am not living up to expectations.
The only conclusion to draw from this is that I am failing.
And if I am failing at everything.
I feel like a failure.

How can I not?
I'd argue that if I am failing at everything, I should feel like a failure because if I'm failing at everything...I feel like I should feel like a failure because what do you call someone who's failing at everything? The best word for it would be failure.

The fact that I am constantly calling myself a POS (except I am saying the full term unabbreviated) should tell you as much to say the least.

But I still want to write blogs.
Not gonna lie--not really in the mood to blog today, I was more in the mood yesterday...but then I did the thing which I was going to blog about me wanting to do yet not having done yet and while I constantly, constantly got screwed over either by getting the absolutely worst random luck and by the time I was turning it around, got eliminated by those with better luck just before I could make the comeback...
...Or, I was getting godly good luck early, but in the lategame, the key units that I needed in order to not get massacred just. wouldn't spawn. Quite often, NOBODY had them. Not on their boards, not on their fields. Not a single person had them, and yet in spite of spending upwards of 100 gold in rerolls, I couldn't get them.

It was incredibly frustrating, but eventually, I did get it to work well.

To explain what I am building: I am more or less playing around with Druids, Lunars, Mountain (specifically, Malphite), and Nami. There are multiple comps that I wanted to run and I have at least partially run most of them.

My dream of dreamteam comps:
Malphite with spear of Shojin, Morellonomicon, then any third item but usually a defensive item of some sort, buffed by Karma's shield.
Plus Nami with spear of Shojin, Morellonomicon, then any third item but ideally Warden's Mail.
And Neeko with Seraph's, Morellonomicon, then any third item but ideally a defensive one.
Get Taliyah for Mountain.
Leona for Warden 2/4 and Lunar.
Karma for Mystic 2 and Lunar.

And then that leaves me with three units.
Option one: Ocean 4: Thresh, Nautilus, Vladimir.
Option two: Mystic 4 plus one spare unit (or a redundant Mystic 5): two of {Yi, Janna, Soraka}. Soraka for her ult to stop the enemy's mana; Janna to heal your team; Yi to heal himself and deal damage.
Option three: Druids into woodland, with one spare unit: Ivern and Maokai.
Option four: SHIELDS SHIELDS SHIELDS! Add in Thresh and then two of Ivern/Diana/Scarner.

There are five shielding units in the game:
Thresh and Ivern were staples. (Ivern got nerfed into oblivion but still can help.) Diana also got nerfed, but Scarner got buffed. (That said, Diana's ult deals guaranteed damage, whereas Scarner's ult gives attack speed while he's shielded; the former is usually more helpful than the latter to be honest.) And Karma is now the fifth.

A comp I ran was to try for all five, plus Leona for Lunar, plus the mountains for eight, and then leaving open the ninth unit as ideally either Nautilus (for Ocean 2/Warden 4 and Nautilus's ult giving CC), Taric (for Crystal 2/Warden 4 and his ult giving immortality), or Nami (for Ocean 2/Mystic 2 and Nami's ult giving whole board CC, healing, and such to the whole team).

That comp is a comp that you can probably see the problem of--it has basically no synergies until much later in the game and most of the units for it are high-cost meaning you have trouble obtaining them and the units are usually fairly contested. So I don't want to try running it again unless I get very specific luck that makes it viable--but I did pull it off!

So basically, right now I am running pretty much every single game, Druid/Woodland + Mountain/Warden + Ocean 2 + Mystic 2, trying to get a Morello ideally on Malphite or Nami but settling for Neeko, too, and ideally with them also having a spear of shojin.

The reason for this is pretty obvious.
The comp, as a Druid comp, is amazingly strong earlygame.
A problem with Druid comps is that they are usually tremendously weak lategame, outscaled by other comps.
But by using Nami, Malphite, and the Lunar trait, they don't get outscaled. Well, they can be if you get screwed over, can't get all the units you need, most of your units aren't T2, you have no T3s, don't get the right items, etc.
But if they get the right items and if you get most of your units especially key ones to T2, they aren't outscaled.

They CAN lose, still.
The comp isn't unbeatable, it's just difficult to beat and a bit RNG-based--if your Malphite with a morello chooses to ult an isolated unit rather than the group of six, seven units, that round will not be a good time for you. Depending on who your units aggro and who your enemies aggro, you can win matches against players, barely win matches against players, barely lose matches against players, or get hard-stomped against players.

Which, while frustrating, is still overall fair in my opinion. The comp is OP. Ridiculously OP. But every comp which makes it to the lategame is OP; they wouldn't make it to the lategame otherwise. And when one OP comp faces a different OP comp, one of the OP comps has to lose. And usually it's a lot due to luck.

The core reason the comp works is quite obvious, too. In the current meta, red buff is almost worthless for most units because the unit needs to be heavily autoattacking to make use of it. Most units don't make good use of it, though there are some niche exceptions. (For instance, I commonly see it on Vayne. I don't think that's the optimal item for her but I also think it's a good item on her even if others are better.)

Morellonomicon is better in most situations. A TON of comps make heavy use of healing. Any Olaf comp, any Druid comp, any Braum comp, and more. Morello cuts it down if you place it on the right unit. Units who heavily, heavily use spells due to really low spellcost can get mileage out of it, and units who are really really hard to kill get heavy mileage out of it, and units which are both are the best. (This would be why Vladimir is a common Morello user; he casts his spell constantly and it keeps him alive.)

But better than both of those are units whose spells are aoe and can potentially hit the entire enemy team, basically nullifying their healing and dealing 18% of their max HP over time guaranteed from one single cast--so if you cast it 3 times in a fight...that's almost 60% of the whole enemy team's HP gone.

Nami and Malphite are the best because of this AOE application, with the added bonus of applying CC to the whole board, so that this burn damage cannot be healed, cannot be prevented, cannot be dealt with. By stunning the entire board, and applying anti-healing to the entire board, and applying burn damage to the entire board, they can basically set up the rest of the team to burst down the enemy ridiculously well.

Neeko's ult isn't quite as good, but she's the third-best item for good reason: she's hard to kill, she's got a low mana cost so she can spam her spell, and it's aoe. The reasons she's not as good as Nami/Malphite for it but is still good are more or less:
-Neeko needs to be T2 minimum to be effective, whereas Malphite/Nami while stronger as T2 don't need to be T2 unless you're facing Veigar. (In which case all your units need to be T2.)
-Neeko's aoe applies three times in a wider radius each time, but this delay in the attacks means that her ult takes too long to apply the damage.
-Neeko's ult has atrocious targeting, where frequently the first and second blossoms hit thin air with only the third actually hitting anyone.
-Neeko's ult is blocked by Braum's shield (and plenty of people are running Braum even without Glacial/Warden comps for whatever reason). Malphite and Nami's ults are not.
-Even if Neeko's ult was targeted not at thin air, it synergizes poorly with Taliyah's ability and similar, where enemies which were in range of it are knocked out of range. This isn't a problem on Nami/Malphite.
-Due to the delay, Neeko's ult frequently is aimed at targets that are at low health and are dead before the ult connects, leading to it hitting thin air altogether. This can happen on Malphite but is incredibly rare, whereas on Neeko it is incredibly common. It is almost unheard of on Nami.
-Neeko has less scaling than Malphite/Nami. She's strong earlygame, but she's weaker lategame.

That's probably an incomplete list to be honest.
There's likely more.
Still: Neeko's not a bad choice for Morello if I need an immediate powerspike. To keep a winstreak that I am afraid I will otherwise lose when I haven't had the ability to find Malphite yet, or to put a halt to a losestreak which would leave me with too little HP to make a comeback.

Heck, a dream of dreams on Neeko would be an AP Neeko. Full-damage would be Gunblade, Deathcap, then either Luden's or Morello, full-MP would be Seraph's + Magecap; actual AP build would be Seraph's, Gunblade, and then either Morello (if Neeko's more of a support-carry or if she needs to cut down healing more than she needs damage) or Deathcap (if Neeko is the carry carry or if she needs damage more than she needs to cut down on healing).

It's just that anything Neeko can do, Malphite does overall better.
She's more fun, Malphite's more pragmatic.

What's better, I can run this comp basically every game.
There is one annoying thing though.
During the first carousel, it used to be that everyone saw the champions/items at the same exact time: almost immediately after the game began, before the shield had fallen.

Now, it is very very VERY obviously not the case: I am not seeing the items or champions until the exact second the shield falls, give or take a second (that is to say, the shield can sometimes BE FULLY DOWN AND I CAN'T SEE WHAT TO GRAB), whereas I can see the other little legends gunning for areas of the map at the time that it used to be visible, meaning that THEY are still seeing it at the time it used to be.
But *I* am getting royally screwed over because the first carousel can set the tone for the rest of the game particularly on Mountain maps.
And I can do nothing to fix this.

This has...rather negatively impacted my enjoyment of the game to say the least.
It's not fun to not be able to choose how you start the game and be locked into lousy starts.
I have played the game often enough that I know how to position my little legend to vie for control of a champion/item I want to grab on the first carousel. It's a skill I have practiced. Do I get it every time, no, but I get it most times.

Except now I can't.
Because by the time I actually see what I want to grab, everyone is in position already to grab it.

In a sense, this forces me to go for things that are off-meta, low-priorities, things that are strong that people don't realize are strong.
Since apparently people think other things are strong than what I go for, that helps me a lot.
But it's just.
Frustrating.

It used to be painfully obvious that everyone saw the first carousel at the same time. Literally everyone, every single match, started moving towards the spot they wanted, at the same time.

It is painfully obvious that nobody sees the carousel at the same time anymore. Literally everyone starts moving at a different time, every single match. Whoever sees things first, gets an unfair advantage because by the time the person who sees things second, sees them, the person who sees things first is in the ideal position.
And so on and so forth.
And I suspect it is ping-related.
I play on 200 ping so I am consistently 8th in seeing things (which is where the ping-related seeing things suspicion comes from).

This was NOT a change for the better.
Everyone seeing things at the same time left it open to skill.
Everyone seeing things based on who has the lowest ping means that there is no skill to be had.
Just better internet and better luck.

I am in a very very very negative headspace right now in fact.
I could talk about a bunch of things, and should.

But right now.
All I am thinking about.
Is, "you'd be doing everyone a favor if you disappeared", type thoughts.

Not outright suicidal. Not quite dangerously bad.
But.
Really not a good place to have my mind.

I don't know what to do to get out of this headspace.
I don't know what to do to improve.
I'm not going to die.
But if I don't kick this out, I'll be in a place where I may as well have with how much everything I love to do, just...would drop from my life.

Every time I have been in this spot.
It has cost me something.
I don't want to have it cost me something again.
So something needs to get better.
​I just...don't know what.

I have had.
every.
chance.
Every opportunity.
No excuses.
No reasons not to.
Every moment.
To do the things I am responsible for doing.

I have avoided them anyway.

What does that say about me.

I have neglected.
Time-sensitive things.
With zero reasons to have not done them, no valid excuses to justify having not done them.
Not tiredness.
Not business.
N o t h i n g.

And yet.
I am deliberately.
Actively.
Avoiding them.
In spite of their time-sensitive nature.
In spite of people who have tried to remind me of it.

What does that say about me.
When I have every chance to do the things I signed up to do and, repeatedly. REPEATEDLY. Have promised to do.
And then I don't do them.

What does that say about me?

There's no answer other than pathetic.