Tonight a talk of The Sea People during family night reinvigorated a spark in me to want to play modded Civilization III. (In this case, specifically yet another revisit to the Rise of Rome campaign, featuring some basic modifications to it, mostly in adding an eighth luxury, upping gold/silver to strategic resources, maybe introducing Stone and approximating locations from it from combining Stone locations from Middle Ages and Mesopotamia, adding in/modifying the existing wonders to include some of my personal favorite features, and a minor rebalance to unit values without completely breaking the game balance, plus making the barbarian nations playable.)

I also realized that time-wise this was the chance to get the last holiday-specific item I was lacking in Epic Battle Fantasy 5, reinvigorating my urge to play it.

And I was reminded of my ongoing castle project in minecraft.

And I've been logging hours every day in Stardew Valley.

And as I am typing this I remembered that by now, the TFT weekly quests should be released.

...I am not going to be productive any time soon, to say the least.

...But I knew it'd be that way between family night, community night in the community I'm in, and such.
That said.

I spent around 5-6 hours compiling a massive reddit post about Ashe which is, essentially, the sort of post I made about Ashe on my blog last year, only done in a place where people actually will see it.

I should type such thoughts here as well, but given that it's 7 am, at least TODAY, that's not happening; we'll see in the future. (I've like 5-7 times in the last 2 or so months been wanting to blog about League, but never made the blog for whatever reason. I should fix that.)

I'm expecting to get flamed big time for it, called delusional, have people point out I don't understand things, and so on and so forth. It's a League subreddit, of course they're going to do that. That happens to me all of the time in the game; I expect it even out of the game, in a spot dedicated to the champion that I know and love, for people to point out every mistake I make and use it to discredit me, to point out how trash I am, etc. Or even for people to just go 'tl;dr' but in a more vulgar way.

Basically, I'm expecting it to go poorly.

I'll be pleasantly surprised if it's anything else tho!

I'd love to see people genuinely engaging me on that, asking questions about the builds, runes, items, what I think about other combos, etc., from that thread, and I'd be happy to explain in a civilized fashion my thoughts! It could lead to actual breakthroughs with me discovering things I didn't think of before with people shedding light on other angles I hadn't thought of.

​But call me a pessimist; I'm expecting a bunch of hate for it. Still, tho. It felt good to make, so it wasn't a waste of time in my opinion. Just. Wasn't productive, obviously.

That depends on what I manage to do tonight. So tomorrow, I may move it back one day, two days, or no days, depending both on tomorrow and today. Basically: I might not be doing Phyrra and Cyrus tonight (tho it's not off the table altogether), but I did have an idea which I want to investigate. (Basically, I was thinking of making a tiktok and releasing daily videos with a particular gimmick.)

​But today, in a blog that will last until at some point the site inevitably removes the content, fails, or something of that sort. As in, a blog that will presumably last a fair amount of time rather than remain invisible. A public blog that may not last forever because no website does and websites can pull stunts like deleting content on them. (And weebly isn't a site I have much trust in.)

I wanted to, in a broader platform, put on here what amounts to a slight copy-paste of blog-worthy material I've been placing elsewhere. (Heck, it was those answers which actually got me back to blogging here.)

Someone asked me what I think is my most useful talent/skill. I told them that it's my bottomless barrel of creativity and ideas.

I literally come up with a bunch of ideas every day. Some are for things to do in games. E.g. builds in League, ideas for things to do in minecraft, comps to test out in tft, customizing modded versions of Civ 3 in the Civ 3 editor.

Some are for things in real life, which I would do if I had the resources to do.

Most are for various different forms of entertainment, though:
Video games that I come up with that I'd love to create, if not for lacking the skills.
Webcomics that I come up with that I'd love to create, tho sadly most are too ambitious given my level of skill.
Stories, usually novels (but occasionally shorter ones), that I (mostly--some are rather ambitious) have the capacity to create, if I focused on them and dedicated myself to making them.
Songs that I lack the skills to create.
Music that I mentally compose but have no way of bringing to reality.
Animated stories that I would love to create but which with what little research I have done would cost in the range of one million dollars to actually fund (due to animators being expensive and voice actors being expensive--keep in mind, one million dollars is the amount I estimated with animators/voice actors working at just below market rate, and that it's closer to 1.5 million if they charge market rate or higher).
(Heck, I've also come up with ideas for becoming a streamer, doing tiktok videos, maybe dabbling in youtube creation!)

I can pitch to people my ideas and they will always go, "That sounds so COOL!", pointing out how awesome, amazing, and unique the idea is, how incredible it sounds, how they wish it was made (so do I! My greatest regret is that all of the beautiful things inside my mind that will never be created because in spite of how rich their worlds/characters/etc. are I cannot make them all), and how they wish me luck in my creative endeavors.

But then I can't actually make them.

Yet they appear on a daily basis.

Literally almost every day, I am creating a new idea.

But even if I could commit to an idea, each idea would take, what? A year? Two years? At minimum to pull off. (Some ideas I've calculated could take ten years to pull off!) A year or two, for one idea; new ideas, every single day.

I make new ideas faster than I could ever create them.

And few, if any, of them are bad. Most are wonderful, vivid, unique, breathtaking, highly creative, and just...overall. Something that should be made, which had every right to be made.

They just...aren't.

And then there's always the chance.

That I go my entire life without bringing any of them to a fully, wholly, entirely realized life. Where they are, in completed form, distributed across the world for all to have access to. There's a chance literally nothing I ever dream up ends up being made. After all. I've been actively trying since I was 13 (I've been making things my whole life, but 13 was the first time I had the idea of marketing these ideas to others outside of my brain), and that was 14 years ago--

In 14 years of trying, I've yet to succeed. In 14 years of trying, I've not once managed to pull it off. I've always fallen short, I've always failed, eventually, at some point.

That doesn't mean succeeding on my own is impossible, or that I've given up entirely. I haven't. I just need to be realistic in accepting that, yes, I've got a very high hill to climb.


Not gonna lie tho--
Something I really really wish I had was a sort of 'life manager', or at least, 'idea manager'. Where I could have someone who could keep me on-track, keep me on the road to success, remove the distractions from my life or at least strictly budget them, force me to work on things even when I don't want to, find ways to work with me to focus my creative energies, brainstorm my ideas with me, and with their push, get me to make them real.

But, I don't think that's something I can get. Not for free, anyway, and I certainly don't have the money to pay someone to do that. It's also something which I imagine would be more effective to be done in-person, both because I am liable to forget things online, procrastinate, etc., and it's harder to get things on-track online compared to in-person. I can definitely say there's a huge difference between my dear friend reminding me to do something and my mom or older sister (both of which I live with) reminding me to do something.

The former, I may do, but not always, and often with delay. The latter, I may do with delay but almost always WILL do, often immediately.

I know that if I had someone who could do that sort of thing for me, I would, guaranteed, succeed--but waiting for a person like that to show up and accepting defeat before then is something that will mean I never will succeed.

So I try to make do without, to try on my own. With a very very low success rate, but trying > not trying, waiting, and hoping that in the future some mystical force will come to my rescue/aid.

I was also asked what ideas I would make if I had the time/focus.

​The big one would be Phyrra and Cyrus, an anime-style 2D animated (ideally posted onto the web) series. Separated into four seasons, each approximately 12 episodes (tho I believe the last season would do better with 2-4 extra, for 50-52 total instead).

The basic premise; the world (the working universe title was INFINIverse/INFIverse, but I found out both of those names for a universe were taken so I settled on colliniverse, the origin of that being the collision between INFINITY and Nothingness) is a High Fantasy world. The protagonists, Phyrra (a swordswoman) and Cyrus (a tactician/strategist) Thaumason (Thaumason is pronounced almost identically to 'Thompson', just instead of a soft 'puh', it's a soft 'muh', and is about as common a surname in Lilim as Thompson is on earth), are twin (fairly mature-for-their-age) 11-year-old adventurers, with aspirations to become the greatest adventurers of all time--even in the world of Lilim (the name of the planet), this is an unusual oddity, since most adventurers start at least at 16, if not 18, with the average adventuring age being 16-36.

They didn't want to wait that long, but they realize their young age will be held against them. Their goal is to seek out the legendary artifact, the Book of Infinity (which, in actuality, is a remnant of INFINITY itself, but to explain that I'd need to give an explanation for what INFINITY was), which rumor states is able to grant the user(s) any power they imagine, including ability to magically age oneself.

In the first episode, they succeed--they find the book in the same chamber containing the four major elemental books (Book of Fire, Book of Water, Book of Air, Book of Earth), and they manage to actually activate the book of infinity...which triggers the curse/trap of the book. Designed to kill any individual who touched the book, when both of them grabbed the book at the same time, it instead switched their souls, placing Phyrra in Cyrus's body and Cyrus in Phyrra's body. However, it also gave them access to magic (magic, in this world, can be learned by anyone...but it takes approximately 30 years to master, and even 'spellbladers', who use specialized specific lesser magic oriented on one specific trait, are typically in their 20s), as well as the ability to access and master the four elemental books.

To escape, they activate the book of air, summoning its guardian, Gora the Rock Golem (all elemental books are protected by their opposite element), who helps teach them the spell necessary to leave. And from there, their adventure continues. The cast of the Thaukama (Thaumason + Nakama portmantu) expands to include Ace Samson, a teenaged adventurer skilled in tracking, ranged weaponry, and medicine (think the DND class of 'Ranger'); Cedrick (don't have his last name memorized, oof), their initial rival adventurer, a spellblader whose magic is specific to telekinetic control of platinum spheres; Kaze, the Wind Shade (guardian of the book of earth); Myra, the Siren/Mermaid/Sea Serpent (guardian of the book of fire); Bard Tune Song, a teenaged street rat (think an even more hypercompetent Aladdin) whose father was a powerful Demon that resembles a werewolf; Clara (also don't have her full name memorized, oof), an apprentice Paladin (Paladins being a specific spellblader school specializing in light magic); Hera, the Dragon Phoenix (guardian of the book of water); William Grant Clemency, an Adept (basically, can see the true nature of things) who is nobility in Lilim's New World (largely uncivilized new continent, think America circa 1700s); Lilian Rose Wolfe, a tailor; and Alena (also don't have her full name memorized, oof), a young Botanist/Alchemist.

Throughout their adventures, they fight monsters, villains, evil overlords, and make their name known, all while seeking a way to undo their switched souls...because as long as they are in each other's bodies...they won't age so much as a day, and are stuck eternally 11 until such a time as they figure out how to undo the curse permanently.



I can explain more, like the way the four worlds (afterlife, demon realm, spirit realm, mortal realm) work, the way spirits work, the way demons work, various magitek items involved in the setting (they have stuff which basically is on the level of a smartphone), etc. but I think the idea is clear enough.

I originally thought that there would be much much heavier themes involved regarding the body swap, that it'd touch more heavily on issues like effectively being trans--but over time, I realized that in spite of the body swap, it's actually only a minor thing. Something that, yes, comes up, and yes, is essential to the plot, but which is only a minor thing. It's a story of adventurers first, a coming of age story second, and has the issues of the body swap only third.

I have names for almost every episode; I have mentally worked out almost every episode; I basically know what happens, when, down to the episode, with entire plot arcs mapped out.


But, 1: I have no experience writing for an animated project, I have no clue what I'm doing, and,
2: Animation is ludicrously expensive. Initial google search I did right now says one second of animation is $150 at the cheapest--times that by 60 for one minute, times that by ~25 for the length of the episode, times that by 48-52, and you get: $225,000 * 48-52. (I did a google search two years ago and I think that one said $30/second, which is cheaper, but still hugely expensive.)
Just for the animation.
And then you've gotta hire voice actors.
Not to mention, composers to compose the music for the series.
Not to mention, video editors for sound effects.

It might be possible to get a kickstarter going for the project. But to get a kickstarter, I need to be in a position better than what I am in now. Plan is to write the initial script for all the episodes, try and map it out loosely scene by scene, roughly estimate the amount of time it takes, finish the lyrics for the openers/closers of each season, maybe make some loose storyboards of panels screencapping loose ideas of what I want to make, and hope the fuck that by the time I get all of this done, it's gotten me enough competency to know what I am doing to the point where I am able to justify a kickstarter to fundraise it.



All of this is ludicrously ambitious, I know, but Phyrra and Cyrus is the project I have most wanted to complete for over two years now.


If I give up on an ambitious project that I am very much out of my depth for? If I decide that I need better connections before jumping off the deep end, if I decide that I need to be established in an industry already before branching out?

Well, the main area I'd do that is in writing. Right now, mostly superhero stories. Well, one's a superhero story, but most of them are supervillain stories; I've thought up at least four different ones. Most have some inspiration from Worm, but each is distinctly their own universe, with their own rules, their own premise, their own characters, etc. Writing them is comparatively easy, and they're largely fleshed out enough where I could make any of them reality; I just haven't done them yet.

When it comes to talents I would like to have but do not possess, the obvious answer would be the ability to animate things myself. (That, or the ability to do everything necessary in editing videos. Either skill would save me a ton.)

But in skills not applicable to my ambitions...life skills. Washing/drying laundry (my mom showed me how to do it once or twice, did not stick as a skill, need to learn the ins and outs of it), washing dishes or at least how to properly handle a dishwasher (how to organize it, what to put where, what I need to do to run it, and when run, what to put where), cooking food, and also: doing makeup.

Laundry and dishes I think I can maybe figure out how to fumble through on my own, cooking is something that I haven't really done but which I may have the ability to fumble through on my own, so of these I'd say the skill I'd most want due to it being the one I least think I can fumble through on my own, would be learning how to apply makeup to myself.

I've seen makeup be applied to people before, and even have them talk through the process as they were having it applied. But in order to get good at applying makeup, I'd need to have all the supplies in front of me, and be able to freeze-frame, frame by frame, analyze with clearly visible what's-what things, step by step, work through it, and figure out what makeup is right for me.

Tho that said.

There's one skill that's both project-related, AND, real-life related: voice manipulation, as a skill/talent. Changing your voice takes lots and lots of practice and is something I lack right now, so I REALLY loathe my voice right now. And if I put in the work to have a more feminine voice, then in the process, I might pick up the skills to be able to voice some characters, or if not, at least give a better model for what I envision their voices to be. Or if not, at least hopefully allow me to sing better. Basically, lots of stuff with my voice would be useful for projects, but it's something that also would help for transitioning, too.

(Basically, overall: for a project? Animation. For real life? Makeup. For a combination of both: voice.)

​I was also asked what in 2020 I'm thankful for. In that, I instantly found my answer: ​increased presence on twitch and one community in particular there where I joined their discord and even am involved on their minecraft server.

I realize I don't have the setup for streaming, in spite of what I would want, and I realize that being involved in those communities isn't letting me spend time creating things on my own that have a tangible permanence to them (by which I mean, being involved can make me contribute to jokes, uplift spirits, etc., and my contributions there aren't meaningless since the community wouldn't be quite as good without them, but because I am one of dozens upon dozens there, while every drop I add into the pond matters, none of my additions there are something people will remember as being from me years from now; they helped, they were important, they meant something, but while you might remember the general vibe I contributed, you wouldn't remember my specific contribution to the vibe, because it's not my community, it's a community I am a part of).

Which is to say: doing stuff there isn't, for instance: making a game, writing a story, making art, making an animation. So spending time there isn't helping me succeed in any of my life's ambitions/dreams.

But I am, explicitly, okay with this, because I value that community in my life that much. They're worth it. I've asked myself if I would rather succeed in my goals or spend more time in the communities I love and remain a nobody, a person who hasn't succeeded at anything with tangible permanence to it, whose only successes are contributions to communities I am a part of but explicitly not the head of. I've asked if I'd rather strike out and succeed on my own while giving up on the communities I'm a member of, or if I'd rather remain intimately a part of those communities at the cost of increasing my odds of never succeeding in my grander goals.

The two are not actually mutually exclusive, of course. Spending less time in a community doesn't mean a total severing of ties with them; being intimately a part of a community does not mean I am guaranteed to fail at my grander ambitions.

But if it ever did come push to shove a choice between the two. I think I'd take the community I feel at home at, over the shot at success.
Ideally, I get the best of both worlds, obviously. I'm intimately involved in the community, but still trying to strike out on my own. But I value the community I'm spending time in more than I value a shot at success.

I want to succeed, but if I didn't succeed and spent a life in mediocrity, obscurity, in nothingness, but remained a part of communities I'd cherish, I would be content with that. Not happy, because I want to succeed. But content. I even developed a theory that was, more or less: almost every human has dreams and ambitions of doing great things in their lives, but most give up on these dreams and ambitions and fade into obscurity without being memorable on the grander scale of things; my theory is more or less that the conclusion I reached was the conclusion they reached, too; that it's alright, that it's okay, to not become famous, to not have tangible permanence in a legacy lasting after you are gone, if you are happy with the community you've built in life. The two are not mutually exclusive, but if forced to choose between one or the other, community > fame 9 times out of 10.

It's important to not accept defeat, to not give up, but it's also important to see how strong you value things. I value the community I've become a part of more than I value success in tangible permanence. And I know getting both isn't impossible. (Heck, basically all of the mods in that community have done exactly what I aim to do. They're becoming successful writers, artists, etc., and are successful streamers, who're building communities of their own! Yet they're still a part of the community. But their own communities, while overlapping with the community I know them from, are explicitly THEIRS, not just a carbon copy clone of the original community. I want to build a community of my own, that is truly mine, unique to me, and still be a part of that community. I know it's possible because I've literally almost a dozen examples from that community demonstrating their successes. It's just something I'm struggling with.)

I apologize for the haphazard lazy throwtogether of content I put elsewhere copy-pasted to here, but I figured it'd be good to get up on here, too.

Not that anyone reads my blogs, butstill. At least in theory, my blog is more accessible than the original location.

Hmm, well, I shouldn't say that, but it is a solid 90%, which would be I believe August 29th, 2022?

Anyway, an update on my Ashe build: I am beginning to lowkey suspect that the build is absolutely absurdly broken. In a game where I was being ultra-hard-camped with the enemy jungler not going to the top side of the map so much as once until well past the 20-minute mark to engage in full teamfights, and by a midlaner who never went top until well past the 20-minute mark to engage in full teamfights, with both permanently visiting botlane basically on repeat, nonstop.

I ended up with 11 deaths that game, tied for highest on my team. And I did lose first turret. No duh, I had what amounted to a permanent 1v2, 2v3, even 2v4 down there! Naturally, I was going to die a lot and lose my turret because of being dead so often and needing to base.

...And yet? We still won that game, in large part thanks to me. We got every drake in the game. (Although I admit, the one and only death of mine not to the enemy jungler or the enemy midlaner was during the third drake, where the enemy adc showed up while I was at very low health, but we still got it, so it was still worth.) Including the elder.

We got two barons.

I solo-took the cloud dragon that got us soul; I duo'd with my midlaner the elder. I even elder-zapped two members of the enemy team (and if the jungler hadn't oneshot me, I'd have probably solo-ended the game right then and there). I also even earned a solo-kill on the incredibly-fed-enemy midlaner! (Never killed their jungler tho.)

And you know what? In spite of the enemy team literally hardest of hard-camping my lane. I still out-cs'd my lane opponent, I still outdamaged my lane opponent, I had better stats across the board except in deaths, to my lane opponent. I, the adc with 11 deaths who lost first turret. Had some of the best stats in the game. And still won the game, in part due to repeatedly taking objectives.

I could not have had a harder game than that. The enemy team threw literally everything at me to shut me down, and targeted me specifically. They went out of their way to target me. As in, while four members of my team were sieging their base, they'd still send 2-3 members to try and kill me. And in spite of them having rather good success at doing precisely that. I was still relevant.

I was still more useful than my lane opponent who had a fraction of my deaths and who had the turret gold.

The enemy team tried hard to set their adc up for success and tried hard to shut me down. I still was one of the most dangerous members of my team, with literally the only enemy team member able to kill me being the enemy jungler oneshotting me. (I mean, one of the strongest junglers on the patch with a transformed muramana and full lethality in the form of a duskblade ghostblade edge of night and more who ran dark harvest and had to have had over 20 stacks on that rune, against an Ashe who has one of the squishiest builds possible. I aint living through that.)

An assassin jungler oneshotting me, being the one and only way to stop me, with me being able to kill literally everyone else on the enemy team, with me applying heavy pressure. And this, after being hard-hard camped.

Now imagine that if I hadn't been camped.

If I had free reign on botlane without being camped, I never lose my bottom turret and take one, maybe two towers. I probably also get kills in the 2v2, because there were at least 3-5 times where the only reason we didn't get those kills was due to the jungler or midlaner coming down to bail their botlane out. Over and over, we almost killed them, stopped by that presence alone.

Without that presence, we get those kills and hard-snowball through the botlane. 

This is the build I mentioned before, by the way. Lethal Tempo, Presence of Mind, Legend:Bloodline, Cut Down I think? (the middle one, using enemy's higher-than-you health), Transcendence, and Manaflow Band. With the extra runes of CDR and, normally, adaptive force + armor (this time I took double-armor due to a 4-AD comp, not that it did anything to help me since the jungler still oneshot me in spite of being ad and the midlaner was ap so in hindsight if I had known about them camping bot should've just gone for the normal adaptive force).

And building manamune, ionian boots, runaan's, phantom dancer, statikk shiv, and rapidfire cannon (to transition into essence reaver replacing rfc and infinity edge replacing statikk shiv and blade of ruined king replacing ionian boots).

Without being camped, I legitimately think there was a good chance I'd get to the upgraded full build. (As-was, I got to the zeal of the rfc so was on my final item!)

So I think that my build is actually broken on her. Cheap items, cheap powerspike, lane bully, scales well...I literally had a scoreline that looked like inting but was still crucial in winning, suggesting that I can easily play from behind with the build. If I can play from behind with the build, and can play ahead with the build even better...it's perfect.

Today was largely a self-care day and do-errands day, so I didn't really put the time in for writing. Right now, watching the OCS finals best of five, and that'll take the majority of my night even if it's a 3-0 sweep (which I doubt it will be).

There is some rather unpleasant news; my old dog, an 16-year-old fart of a toy fox terrier, got bitten badly by another dog; hopefully, he'll be alright (we did get him to the emergency vet fairly quickly).

But I'd prefer to focus on other things. I'm one game away from getting Yone to S on the spirit realm quest, and within reach of my third S+ as well. I knocked out all of my tft quests for the week, and I've been playing a fair amount of Nexus Blitz during the day, and even dabbled in Summoner's Rift while there's Draft during nights. (I stay far away from blind and ranked, because both are a whole different level of toxic.)

I've been trying out a build, but it's not quite the build that I said I wanted to. It's the same runes I said, and same core items; manamune into muramana, with ionian boots and runaan's and phantom dancer. From there, it should be the trio of infinity edge, essence reaver, and blade of the ruined king, with one of them replacing the boots.

I've been trying out the idea that, if the game went super-duper late, replacing items with those three, but running the cheapest build humanly possible, the cheapest six items for an adc to buy. Which happens to be manamune (2400), ionian boots of lucidity (900), and then...quadruple zeal items, with each and every single one of them being 2600.

No other build is cheaper. There's cheap builds, some using some of those items! Iceborn Gauntlet is 2700, only 100 gold more expensive. Lethality is also fairly cheap, with Umbral Glaive being 2400 and the rest of the items not being much higher, but while Umbral Glaive is 200 gold cheaper, Duskblade is 300 gold more expensive (bumping the gold to +100 a 4-zeal build), Edge of Night is also 300 gold more expensive (bumping it up to +400), ghostblade is also 300 more expensive (so, +700), and sanguine blade is 400 gold more expensive (bumping the full build to be 1100 gold more expensive).

But the cheapest full build for the most bang for the buck is Runaan's-Phantom Dancer-Statikk Shiv-Rapidfire Cannon.

I actually quite like it. Building four zeal items gets you the 100% crit on Ashe, whose passive makes heavy use out of crits. It gets good attack speed, which you can pair with lethal tempo. It gets good movement speed, basically doubling her movespeed (may be a slight exaggeration there). Plus, Runaan's Hurricane plus Statikk Shiv is disgusting waveclear from autoattacks and Ranger's Focus.

I can just right click, and bam, wave is basically cleared with one auto. Get a full four in, and the only way it's not gone is with a super or if it's baron'd up.

Then, there's the fact that zeal items actually have a fairly good resell value. They resell for 1820 gold, which is only a 580 gold loss. Not exactly the most efficient item to resell, but, still fairly price-effective. If I ever get to the full build and get 1480 gold (1580 for infinity edge), I can sell one of the zeal items and get a bf-sword-crit-item, essence reaver or infinity edge.

Get that a second time, I get both.

And then I can go for the BorK to replace the boots.

Of course, the build is flexible. Against a fully-full AP team, I ran MR, merc treads, and after building the manamune was building Wit's End (attack speed mr-item), Maw of Malmorteous (attack damage/cdr mr-item), and Mercurial Scimitar (lifesteal mr-item), with the intention of after getting that trio to finish the build off with something like death's dance or spirit visage.

I didn't win that game, didn't even finish the build, mind you, but in my defense: I was the only player, me the sole adc of our team, building MR, so we had no frontline because everyone on our team was squishy, even the "tanky" champions because they built armor/ap instead of mr. But I digress.

Another game, I saw that the enemy team had some incredibly tanky champions, or at least champions who could build tanky. (Amumu, Nunu, and Sett.) That game I still went manamune and ionian boots first, and then runaan's because I expected to be teamfighting early and often to spread bolts to the entire enemy team, but I was building BoRK after that. (We won before I finished it, butstill.) From there I'd probably have gone either ER or IE, then the other, not bothering with the quad-zeal strat.

So, I'm really liking the build. 

If I wasn't such a trash iron player who can't cs to save my life, I'd probably be able to get the initial full build in like 20 minutes and transition to the better full build by 30. But since I am, sadly, the initial full build is more like 30-35, and a transition would take to 40-50 minutes to obtain. One way or another, the game's probably over before I get there.

Ah well. I still think it's a really good build for me, so I'll be moving forward with it as my default bottom-lane rune choice.

I'm probably not going to work on anything tonight, OPL playoffs will eat up my evening presumably, so no work done, ah well.

On that note, I wanted to talk more about League for quite a long time.

I am still an Ashe onetrick.
But I can't always play her. When I'm autofilled to jungle, I've taken to playing Kindred. When Ashe is banned, I play a lifesteal on-hit Vladimir (think Kayle items: Gunblade Nashors Rageblade Beserkers Spirit Visage Death's Dance). Coincidentally, both use nearly-identical runes. I wanted to ramble on them for a long, long time, but I'll save it for another blog.

I wanted to talk about my progression on Ashe tonight specifically.

I've tried various setups. I tried an armor-shred Ashe, an on-hit build. PTA, BoRK, Runaan's, the idea being to build rageblade and black cleaver after that, and something more after that, don't remember--never got it off the ground because it never worked for me. Something similar to it might work for another player, but that style of play isn't me.

I've abandoned the idea that I'd run lifesteal Ashe for similar reasons in spite of how fun that is (tho every build I run tends to have a healing rune in it, beit bloodline or the domination one; only one getup doesn't have it, and even that one might if font of life allows you to heal as well, honestly not sure on how that works).

So I've been favoring poke-oriented builds.

I've got two or three (third was not always so) "tanky" Ashe builds; I've got two lethality Ashe builds; I've got two support-Ashe builds, and all of them work. (There is overlap there, btw. One support build is a tank build, one lethality build is also a support build.)

One tank Ashe build I play exclusively in toplane, because as a botlaner you're expected to deal damage and I wasn't convinced the build dealt enough damage. The idea of the build was to turn a squishy immobile adc into a tanky fairly mobile ranged tanky toplaner.

That build is Grasp-primary, with shield bash, minion deaths giving health, and I believe bone plating (tho most of those runes are flexible), with overheal and bloodline secondary. You take tabis or mercs, and build in whatever order the enemy champions dictate: Iceborn Gauntlet, Spirit Visage, Death's Dance, Deadman's Plate, and Abyssal Voyage, with some flexibility built in.

It actually works remarkably well and functions exactly as advertised by and large, unless I face an unfamiliar champion to me and/or get ganked and set behind. I become tanky, ridiculously hard to kill, and provide a reasonable frontline, while offering the utility Ashe offers, with her ult, with her slows, etc. I really like it as a toplane build but I know it's only viable in that lane.

The other tank Ashe build is also a support build, but one which came back to my original theory behind building manamune on Ashe. It still runs Grasp-primary, but runs sorcery-secondary, transcendence and manaflow band. This one runs with font of life, due to no items/abilities giving a shield for shield bash. The build here is similar: rush manamune, build mercs/tabis whichever of the two is better, and then build exclusively items that give mana that're also tanky items.

The universal item I'm building first in that build is Zeke's Convergence--I know it is a support item, but it gives 300? mana, high armor, and also magic resistance. From there, depending on need, there's: Righteous Glory (300? mana, health regen), Iceborn Gauntlet (highest mana item at 500, gives waveclear, good armor), Frozen Heart (slows attacks, highest armor, 400? mana), and Abyssal Mask (400? mana, extra mr).

The idea of this build is obvious enough. It is basically to be the ultimate utility, with a good balance of everything. Still an immobile champion, sadly, but otherwise monstrously good. Absurdly tanky, good cc, arrows quick to be off cooldown from the cdr, and once the manamune transforms into the muramana, dealing the maximum possible damage, while also boosting an ally's damage potential.

I've run it both top and bot, concluded it's better top and works just as well as the other tank build. If not better. Every game I played it in, I was either even or ahead of my opponents! And then my botlane got crushed, losing that lane, and/or my jungler inted/fed, and/or my midlaner fed or even in one instance ragequitting the game. I never lost using it in laning phase and it worked to do exactly what I wanted it to do, every single time. But alas, it is not a 1v9 build so even if I won an isolated 1v1 or even surviving 1v2s, if my teams lose 4v4s or even 4v3s where they had number advantages, not much I can do!

Basically, the build I feel works and works really really well, so I quite like it. A tankier Ashe does remarkably good in toplane, the one and only flaw to be had is that botlane players sometimes want Ashe, which is problematic, and it's less effective of a build in the botlane 2v2 (still works, just not as well).

The next notable build of mine is a manamune into full-lethality Ashe mid: Dark Harvest paired with Cheap Shot (which is GODLY good on Ashe). From there, well, eyeball's the only real rune to use in that column, and when it comes to Hunters, the choice is between Ultimate Hunter and Ravenous Hunter. Ultimate Hunter would eventually allow for spamming arrows on a ridiculously low cooldown, but I'd have no lifesteal in the build unless I built sanguine blade (which I don't).

The secondary rune is sorcery. I used to run transcendence, before I realized that I never exceeded the cdr cap so all it'd do is get me to max-cd faster. Now I use manaflow band for some extra mana and mana regen, while running gathering storm. The build is manamune and ionian boots, into duskblade, into ideally ghostblade (for movespeed and highest lethality), and from there there's options: umbral glaive for ward sweeping/killing and cdr and extra lethality, or rapidfire cannon for extra range and built-in crit and extra movespeed. Technically those aren't mutually exclusive, that's six items, but games tend to not last long enough for me to get even remotely close to that full on the build.

I could, if forgoing the rfc, build either sanguine blade for high high high isolated damage and lifesteal, or edge of night for a spellshield to give me protection. 

This build is ridiculously squishy and rather immobile. But the poke hits like a truck and I don't think there's any higher-damage poke-oriented build for Ashe. Sure, sustained damage over time builds, probably are better builds, but poke damage from volleys and an ult that, post-muramana, can in of itself half-health any non-tank champion? It's a feel-good build.

I could run it botlane, but in botlane it tends to be less effective because it takes longer to get online and it's easier to get dove and harder to get influence and such, so I mostly run it midlane.

So that leaves the botlane, which uses the same exact runes between support/adc-Ashe, just building differently. Arcane comet, manaflow band, transcendence, and gathering storm, with presence of mind and bloodline as secondary. As the support, the build is spectral sickle as the support item into manamune into lethality, starting with ubral glaive, then duskblade, then maybe ghostblade. (Which, with ionian boots, would be full build.)

The idea of that is to poke poke poke and bully the enemy team, force them away with low healthbars. You want your adc to get the kills, minions, etc., so you just focus on utility but still deal significant damage.

As the adc, the build is manamune into...well. Into anything. If iceborn gauntlet is built, or abyssal mask is built, is fairly tanky. Other items would be rfc for crit, attack speed, range, and movepeed, and runaan's for crikt, waveclear, movespeed, and attack speed. You could maybe throw in an ER in there somewhere, too, for replenishing mana, extra crit, extra damage from excess cdr, and raw attack damage. It's really really good at poking, throwing volleys nonstop, and giving decent survivability. 

But I want to try out a new build now.

It was mathed out that, statistically speaking, in damage over time over a period of ten seconds in a sustained engage, the highest-possible damage build for Ashe, that is also the cheapest build possible, that is also applicable regardless of opponent's hp and at all stages of the game?

That's actually still a manamune into muramana build. But, manamune into runaan's into a suggested IE into something like Death's Dance into a final situational utility-based item, was what the person who mathed it out suggested. (That person being one of Cloud 9's ace adcs.) Running lethal tempo and inspiration, in their case approach velocity and magical footwear.

That build would, presumably, rely on autoattacking and kiting to an extent that, while it'd work for other Ashe players, has been shown to not be ideal to my style. The one and only autoattack build I've managed to not be trounced on is the lifesteal build, and even then it wasn't very remarkable. 

So I wanted to make a build that would still be good at poking, while also having the high damage of that sustained damage over time when actually autoattacking. 

The build I came up with is in fact circling back to lethal tempo as a rune, taking presence of mind, bloodline, and on the third I believe the one that does the most damage overall on Ashe is Cut Down. And as secondary, running sorcery, in this case, transcendence and manaflow band. Transcendence here is actually necessary due to a lack of cdr in the build otherwise and still wanting to get to that 40% mark. Well, I still only get 30%, between ionian boots, the cdr rune, and transcendence, buuuut, there is an option for that to get it up further.

I'd still run manamune, but then build Runaan's. The items I'd be looking to fill out the build: Phantom Dancer, Infinity Edge, Blade of the Ruined King, and Essence Reaver.

Not in that order necessarily, mind you. I'm honestly not sure what order to build in, I'm actually thinking cheapest item to most expensive, which would be phantom dancer into bork or er, then the other, with ie replacing boots as a sixth item if I ever got that far.

Phantom Dancer would help make me be less immobile, especially in tandem with Runaan's also giving movespeed. It'd give that shield to give temporary tankiness as well. Building it gives the 50% crit in tandem with Runaan's, and pairs well with the attack speed.

I've yet to test it out, but my theory here is that the manamune with presence of mind and manaflow band and a still-respectable 30% cdr from just ionian boots and runes. So I could still spam volleys, with volleys dealing pretty dang high damage post-transform (doubly so, with any of the items that have attack damage in them).

And then with high attack speed, being able to use autoattacks in tandem with that. Escape potential (especially with bork-pd, a classical combo), cheap build, good slows/damage, I wanna try it out and see if it works in practice.

We'll have to test it out sometime, but ah well. Probably not tonight.

So I've been watching a fair number of people play Civilization 6 recently--I'd never play that game because I like unit stacking and more importantly I hate hex movement squares (I much prefer the square grid where you can move all eight directions), but this does instill a deep-seated desire to play Civilization III.

I've been watching a fair number of people play Final Fantasy VII Remake--similarly, that's a game I'd never play because they turned it into a hack-and-slash, one of my least-favorite genres of all (I'm like pretty sure that it's up there with button mashers and first person shooters for being a definitive three least-favorite), and while the game does offer a "classic" mode, from my understanding, even the "classic" mode doesn't really change it from being nothing like the combat in the original version of the game.

...But it does make me want to play the original Final Fantasy VII, which I happen to own on steam!

I've been playing a little more League of Legends, and it's been going pretty well! I've been winning most of my games, though I've had this unfortunate situation where in games that I was performing exceptionally well, someone on my team either hard-ints or outright leaves the game (often both) leading to an inevitable loss, and the games I am winning I am getting hard-carried because I have a terrible K/DA, terrible farming, terrible stats, and am often underperforming.

Right now, on that front, I'm experimenting with running teleport instead of heal--this was initially an accident born of forgetting to change it back to heal after playing a One For All, not noticing it. But in the match, I ended up noticing that with how I played, I wasn't in a situation where I'd be using Heal. I didn't need it to save my life, nor need it to save my allies. And in the next game, got similarly promising results, though more recent results have been mixed where I've looked at that and went, "...this would probably have been livable with heal", but it's something that's still not definitive, still not sure of.

Other than that, mostly going the same. I start with cull because it gives better lifesteal than Doran's Blade, nearly identical attack damage, and allows me to get gold for my items sooner, which I often need due to being terrible at farming. (Yes, I know, cull is an item you'd normally expect to be taken because you're good at farming. But as a starting laning phase item, it can still help if you're dismal, because one extra gold per kill can mean the difference between an item or no item when you back.)

And then it's Manamune start, boots of Ionian Lucidity at convenience, and then I'm usually by default aiming for Runaan's Hurricane into RFC into Iceborn Gauntlet, except for when I need the tankiness of the Gauntlet to not die. Not that most of my games last long enough for that, of course. Win or lose, most games end within 25 minutes pretty much without fail right now it seems.

I also like to play Teamfight Tactics daily and am currently working on an annoying tft quest involving rerolling more than five times, fifteen times. Rerolling six times is 12 gold--not including any champions you'd want to pick up. Since by the time you're rerolling, there can be 2-3 champions on any given shop you want, costing 3-5 gold...if you buy any of them...well. You get the idea. It's hard to do.

I could of course brute force it. Level up to six, doable by about Krugs, then economize until 50 gold, wait a turn to get 62, and then ignore champions to reroll six times down to 50, but knowing me, I'll cave to the impulses. Get distracted, then end up not rerolling six times.

Another thing I've been doing more is minecraft. I haven't been playing much on my friend's server (though, there's no reason for me to not, that world has an incredibly good start to it, I love what I have there, I have just about everything I'd need), but I have been playing a ton on the server for Girbeagly, one of the streamers I love to watch a lot. (He's one of many inspirations to me that makes me want to do things with my life, knowing that even if he's not super-duper-mega-famous, he's still successful and also well-connected with celebrities as friends pretty much and that's basically the sort of person I could only dream I could possibly ever become if I got godly good luck on my side.)

And, yes.

I actually do want to make that book, now, about Sam Sidney Tailor, Projection. The superhero/supervillain who made the one key choice to differentiate the direction in their life. In spite of me knowing just how hard, how difficult, it would be to actually write that and make it work. I am not some genius who can write out in meticulous, realistic, detail a masterwork like Worm. I don't have the head for the logistics to, sayyyyy, write out how a supervillain would pull a heist on a bank or such. I don't do research like that, but I'd need to, and I wouldn't know how to make it work, and there's just all sorts of similar details, and yet that passion is still there. I want to do it.

And you know what's not on that list?
Phyrra and Cyrus.
Well.
It kinda sorta is, but in a different way than the above ones.
The above I have passion and active desire to do and know what I want to do in them, too. 
For Phyrra and Cyrus, I want to make it, but it's different--there's currently not the passion/active desire to, and there's the hardest of hard writers' block on how to make it, too. I don't know what to do even though I want to. There's the objective knowledge of knowing that, yes, I need to work on it, it won't get done if I don't, but I don't know what I want to do on it, and how to do it.

And there pretty definitively is not time to do all of these.
I'd be lucky to get one of them to the point I'd be happy about, yet alone, all of them.

​I suuuuuuuuuuuckkkkk.

Basically, talking a bit about pro teams. It's a little heartbreaking that Dignitas couldn't quite make it into the post-season because they fought hard and I think they are immensely good--so are the Golden Guardians, and so are the Immortals, and honestly it's disappointing that only one of them could make it in when all three were good enough to be worthy of it.

But, I was elated to see 100 Thieves make it through, even though they are currently as I am writing this, going into their make-or-break fifth game of the series. I'm watching pick/bans as I'm writing this pretty terrified because I really really want 100 Thieves to win. I don't want TSM to lose and it'll be sad if they do and if they win they'll certainly have earned it and I can't fault them for winning of they do, but I am just...I really really like 100 Thieves this year.

And as I have said before--this year, I can more or less say, "Go Clutch Gaming!" whenever Cloud9, Dignitas, or 100 Thieves play, because those are the three teams to have Clutch Gaming players. Casters keep on praising Vulcan as being one of the best supports in the LCS, if not the best; it's not like he magically got better in the off-season, so he was that good last year, too, on Clutch, he's just got an even better team this year to show off his skills.

And casters also keep praising Cody Sun, more or less saying that in spite of him being 'quiet', he amasses massive lategame power fairly silently and then slams the enemy team dealing massive damage, has good farm, good endgame k/da, doesn't die often, etc., and overall is probably one of the best adcs in the lcs--not as good as Zven, but better than most of the adcs around, almost always a bit of a stable rock for them to fall back on.

And the casters praised Ryoma, an Oceania import, from the OPL, expected to be losing against veteran midlaners as an lcs rookie from a minor region, but like. I am a big OPL fan, I legit think the region is majorly underrated and they have some really good talent, so seeing proof of concept in one of their star midlaners from that region popping off in playoffs...it warms my heart to see and I love to know that they're doing well.

...That being said, as much as I am cheering for them, as much as I love them, and want the casters' predictions of a TSM win to be wrong...as much as I hate it. Gotta say that TSM pretty much won the draft in my opinion, so I just don't think that they're going to win. I really really want to be wrong, I really really want 100 Thieves to win, but I don't see how they win this, not even with the first blood.

On the edge of my seat watching, tho! And hoping, and praying, they can pull it off. 

I kept on touting how Muramana can do some serious damage.
I kept on saying, 'this does deal damage'.
When pairing muramana with presence of mind (and in my case, also manaflow band), mana = damage.

Turns out that I was right.

It was brought up in the LEC broadcast what the stats for it are--a completed muramana could deal 90 damage...compared to the 80 damage of an infinity edge, as the broadcasters said. (As in, did do damage--as in, the person using the muramana was dealing the most damage in the game at that time.)

So I was right.
I am right.
I knew I was right.

Muramana is viable.
​So I'll be continuing to make use of it.

...But I did do work on Phyrra and Cyrus today.

Mostly came to talk about, courtesy of the LCK, my current challenge:
Mordekaiser, Irelia, Kai'sa, Rumble, Jarvan, and Miss Fortune--how to build a TFT comp using them.

First, expand it to have Kayle, for valkyrie and blademaster.

Then, probably expand to Fiora, to finish blademaster3 and get cybernetic (2/3) undergoing.

If I were to actually keep this comp, then there are options for the ninth.
Gangplank for demolitionist and strong power.

Drop a synergy to field Fizz (infiltrator 2 with Kai'sa) and Annie (for the mech)--you could do this by removing one of the core units (jarvan or mordekaiser), or by dropping Fiora to get rid of the blademaster synergy. Very viable and doable.

Keep all and field one of Ekko (for infiltrator 2 cybernetic 3) or Shaco (for infiltrator 2 dark star 3).

Or drop the rumble and field both Ekko and Shaco (for cybernetic 3, dark star 3, and a chance at infiltrator 4 if you get the spatula item for it).

Basically, I don't think, barring a force of nature, there's a way to make the comp with all six be viable, but if you drop one of the six and keep the other five, should be incredibly workable.

And I do want to try, because I actually managed to run my last comp--granted, I got a very very very early force of nature that game (two spatulas dropped at the same time), butstill, the fact I finished second (and it was a close second) shows that I did theorycraft correctly that the comp was at least somewhat viable. (Admittedly, again, I lucked out. Buthey, I'll take lucking out.)