...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.

...And in this regard, I was highly successful overall! I still have three, lengthy, videos to watch (one is two hours; two are each 45 minutes), but I watched about ten videos today to get entirely caught up there. There were a bunch of things I needed to get caught up on, though, and...I was...less successful elsewhere.

In Minecraft I did do some work but had the tilting experience of zombie death losing my experience and risking my items...again. And now I wasted a bunch of time for what amounts to nothing.

In Teamfight Tactics, I needed to play five games for the orb of enlightenment and play enough games to get the four quests done--this also contained extreme tilt of either lousy luck in the earlygame and by the time my fortunes were turning around...being eliminated by those who had the amazing luck earlygame and were just strong enough to beat me before I could make a comeback...

...Or godly good luck earlygame, but which was severely soured by the lousy luck lategame where I would spend 100 gold and not get a single T3, not get the key T2 that I was after, and in many cases, not get the 5g unit I needed to make my comp transition into the lategame, where I knew I had the earlygame crushed but I knew that I needed to go to a very specific comp to not get outscaled...and couldn't because no matter how much gold I spent in spite of being the requisite level and literally nobody else running my comp, the unit just. wouldn't. spawn.

Which lasted until I got a few games I considered passable enough. Still didn't complete the latter two quests but considering one of said quests requires me to play nine games to completion and each game is like 30-60 minutes long, an average of 45 minutes...that...didn't happen.

Then in League I had multiple misfortunes. I had my Ashe stolen from me; that game went predictably badly. I was assigned a game of jungle. I said that I don't play jungle, recommended a swap, nobody took me up on the offer, but fortunately when one of my teammates noticed that my champion locked in was Ashe and asked "can Ashe jungle" and I bluntly said 'no', they dodged. (I generally assume that most of the people who dodge have alternate accounts or aren't willing to play games that they know they'll lose. I do not have alternate accounts and I will play games that I know I will lose, because I figure that they might give me a learning experience.)

Then I got a game where I accidentally took the wrong runes--the runes I took were runes I use on Ashe, but in that specific game, I really really needed Sorcery, and yet I was stuck with Fleet Footwork. Sorcery would've allowed me to get a ton of kills that game that I didn't get, because I took the wrong runes accidentally due to the Vlad game. Even if it was winnable, it became unwinnable when two members of my team dc'd.

And then I got a game where my team did flame me for my build--to be fair. I was 0/8, but in this case, that legitimately was not entirely my fault. My "support" was Tryndamere. Tryndamere can be played in 4/5 positions, like Ashe can--top, jungle, mid, even in the right circumstances adc. (With Ashe's four being top, mid, support, and adc, obv.) He is very much not a support in any way shape or form.

He didn't take a support item--which meant that whenever he last hit, he was stealing my cs. Because he was stealing my cs, I had less gold than I should have had. He also took fights that would be fine for him to take, between his ult and his spin--but he criticized me when I went in and criticized me when I didn't go in because while he has tools to escape from death...I do not. And he was expecting me to have some magical get-out-of-a-2v4-situation.

Because, yes. We were 2v4'd. Repeatedly. Given that it was a 2v4, I did fairly well given the circumstance. I could burn my ult defensively and summoners to escape to safety, and did so repeatedly, which kept me from dieing like four more times than I did, and at least two of my deaths were due to me getting collapsed on by 3-5 people when I didn't have vision on them and thought that they were somewhere else. (Those are at least partially my fault, yes, but when caught out by 3-5 people, I'm dead; there's no escaping that.)

He wanted me to engage in fights that were 2v3, even 2v4. I could not, and when I tried, I died. He wanted me to engage in situations which I knew I wasn't in position to engage in--he has a spin he can use for a gap close; if he spins into a fight when we were previously together...I can't get in range to help in time because Ashe is much much slower than Tryndamere's spin.

Not helping was the fact that my toplaner lost hardcore and my jungler was also in on the flaming (the jungler and "support" were the ones doing the flaming), in spite of my jungler himself having done pretty terrible. And it reflects in their scorelines, too. I had the second-lowest number of deaths in the game, but only by one. (Somehow, the jungler had one less death than me.)

It was all-around incredibly frustrating. Ashe can engage in all-ins, but she is primarily a specialist at dealing poke damage. She is the queen of kiting--of hit-and-run. Hit, retreat. Hit again, retreat. And only after the enemy has been whittled down sufficiently, do you engage...preferably still with enough ability to leave room for a disengage or a finisher.

Being asked to engage engage engage without kiting, to go purely on the offensive especially when we were behind in every lane with only one player on our team doing even close to remotely well, is the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do on Ashe, especially when behind.

Heck, even the enemy team had a member who recognized that I wasn't the problem. And I believe it was my midlaner who shared that opinion, mentioning that Normals are a good place to practice or something to that effect, with at least one person in the game who wasn't the jungle/support saying that I could be pioneering a new meta.

Maybe they were sarcastic, maybe not, it's hard to say for sure, especially from vague memory, but if they were sincere in giving that benefit of the doubt then they were giving me far more than my own team did. (Plus at the beginning of the game I am fairly certain one or two members of my team dropped the N-word but since I was too busy playing the game I couldn't look up who it was. I have two very obvious suspects tho.)

And, heck. At the end of the game, I ended up with stats that were still some of the best on my team and I could tell that in teamfights where I was able to kite away from the enemy I was actually dealing significant damage, contrary to my teammates' claims of my build being worthless for damage. I was less than 400 damage away from dealing the second-highest damage on my team and I had the sixth-highest damage in the game; I did more damage than the enemy adc. I was one of the only two on my team to damage a turret. I earned more gold than our toplaner, which is an impressive feat mind you since, again I must reiterate: my "support" was stealing my cs so my gold income was halved. I was one point off of having the second-highest vision score on my team, and also one point off of matching the enemy adc.

I had the highest minion kill of my team...and had an exact tie with the enemy adc, down to the last number, for being second-highest in the game. The only player who killed more minions was the enemy toplaner. (Who, being Mordekaiser when Mordekaiser even post-nerf is kinda OP...was. Well. Mordekaiser.)

Are those good stats to have? No, not particularly. They are still not great. It still means that overall I was a little bit sucky. But in spite of my team having placed the blame on me and my build...I genuinely don't think that it was my fault? Like...toplane lost hard against a champion who can and did 1v5 us. Hard, HARD lost. Midlane was the best of us but even they in spite of getting the kills they did were barely going even with their counterpart and were losing against the enemy toplaner and losing when outnumbered.

My "support" didn't take a support item, took half of my cs (when I am already not good at csing), entered into areas we had zero vision of and expected me to follow, took fights that I couldn't engage in, took fights that I couldn't disengage from, and sure enough had the highest deaths in the game.

It is not an uncommon belief that in games, supports are the main difference between winning and losing--a good support might not win by 1v5ing the enemy team, so much as they win by setting their team up for success. A bad support directly loses their team the game, by setting them up for failure.

And, hey.
I didn't place blame on them in-game.
I never flamed back.
I never asked them questions about their rather-questionable tactics.
But I feel like I have the right to believing that that game was genuinely just not my fault? Like, sure. I admit. I made many, many, many mistakes. I did get genuinely caught out of position multiple times. I should have been smart enough to recognize, "I can't engage on that." I should have been smart enough to ping my teammates not to engage on that. I should have pinged when I was trying to engage on something.

And I made many misplays. Missed most of my ults. Missed many volleys. A ton of my volleys got minion-blocked where one minion (or if I were lucky, multiple minions) ate all of my arrows, meaning none of them connected. I did legitimately play a bad game, and I feel they had room to call me out on the mistakes I did make.

But they were calling me out on things that I genuinely don't think I was responsible for. Ashe needs lifesteal? I had it. I didn't have the full 12% because I couldn't farm it out, couldn't get champion kills, but I don't think that my inability to do those things lies on me. Ashe needs damage? I was dealing considerable damage when I wasn't instantly deleted. The only thing that they called me out on which I feel has merit is that Ashe needs crit, for a stronger slow. Crits double her slow and deal increased damage to slowed targets; my build didn't have the crit yet.

But honestly--in that game, I cannot think of a single time a crit giving increased slow would've made a difference. I was building defensive items that are designed to help keep someone alive, and which just so happen to on this build give me extra damage and a bottomless supply of mana. Would a stronger slow have allowed my team to kill an enemy who got away? No occasion that I can think of. Would a stronger slow have allowed someone to survive in a situation they didn't? Not when the slow would be applied to one enemy champion when someone is being dogpiled by three enemies. A stronger slow applied to one still leaves two in kill range.

I am fairly certain that there was no way I could have slowed them and made a difference.
But I am also fairly certain that I couldn't have done more damage with a different build.
The problem was that I kept dieing before I could deal the damage. There's no build in the world which can deal damage on Ashe when you're dead before you can so much as proc Ranger's Focus. If you get to only launch one volley and maybe one autoattack and are dead before you can launch a second auto...there's no Ashe build in the world which can get her a kill there. She can't oneshot like that.

And the build I go for is actually one of the best possible builds for trying to prevent being killed. It's a hugely defensive build with a metric ton of armor and a ton of MR in it as well. I was still being killed before I could get a full combo off, because I didn't have my teammates taking the damage for me. They were dead, they were fighting elsewhere, they were unable to stop the enemies from bypassing our frontline to focus on me, our backline. All three at different times.

I don't think there was any build I could have done. None. Which could have prevented that.
And sure enough.
I had a final game I played where I ended up hugely popping off.
I do admit--I had an incredibly competent support, and my midlaner won lane. I think my jungler and toplaner actually lost lane tho? I mean, I remember almost all of my deaths were in the earlygame and yet I wasn't the one who gave first blood; it was my toplaner. And I recall my jungler having died early, too. Might be mistaken tho.

And I will fully confess. Even if we didn't all play well early. There wasn't a single weak link later in the game. (The closest was us having an uncoordinated assault on the enemy base where when some of us were dead, the others were attacking, and when they died, the others who respawned tried attacking, but that was a collective int from everyone including me making miscalculations.)

So it's not like I singlehandedly won my team the game. I had the most deaths on my team and the lowest kills to my name, but almost second-highest kill participation in the game. (Highest was my support, second-highest was my midlaner, by a slim margin--they had one more than me. Though I admit, I only had one more than our jungler or toplaner who both were just one behind me. Suffice to say: we teamfought a lot and worked incredibly well as a unit.)

I had better stats than most of the enemy team and better stats than the enemy adc across the board, and overall I did incredibly well. My team was friendly, supportive, we worked together well, coordinated reasonably well enough, and even when we inted, we usually got something out of it. Securing a drake even if three of us died (not exactly worth), securing a nexus turret even if most of us die (probably still worth), the like.

And this brings the total games I've run this build in on Normals, with the runes and items, up to five. I thought it was more than that, but I could only find five in my match history. Three of them have been victories. Two of them have had teammates who hard-flamed me in the form of some combination of {jungle, midlaner, support}. 

I blooged about the prior defeat before, and this is my blog about the defeat here.

But so far I still maintain my conclusions thusfar.
It feels like the build's success/failure rate has less to do with the build itself, so much as it does, the team I am on. If I have teammates who are making plays that are blatantly mistakes who then flame me when those plays go south...it doesn't work, but I don't think any build would work for those games for a player of my skill level, which is to say, not very good. I will fully admit to being a trash-tier player and a significant portion of my losses are due to mistakes I made so I will own up to having been a significant contributor to the loss.
(Though, as I said last time: I feel like I am in the right to justifiably not take exclusive blame for the loss and that my teammates played equally as large a part in the loss, at a minimum if not more of a part than I did.)

If I have teammates who are chill, work well with me, synergize with me, are willing to own up to "whoops, that was my fault" when they make a mistake, accept me saying the same, and who have a plan to recover rather than running in and doing the same thing we just got killed trying to do...it tends to work. Mind you, I admit: given those circumstances, probably any build would work.

And I do confess, this game I had a little bit of an extra edge; the enemy team was all-AD (a fact I didn't recognize until midway through the game; I probably should have built tabis in hindsight, or rather, since I didn't notice the enemy team was all-AD until midway through the match, sold my Ionian boots for Tabis), when two of my items give some of the highest armor in the game. Frozen Heart gives the highest armor in the game (100 armor), and Iceborn Gauntlet is in the top...I think six? Maybe it's only top eight, but it still gives a ridiculously large amount of armor. (I did let my team know about this fact, which they found useful to know, because apparently I was the first one to realize the enemy team was all-AD and none of them had realized it until I pointed it out, so that was a good contribution of mine. I mean, not sure it made much of a difference; the two members who built armor were two members who are already tanks, and a third who was maybe building into tank is also sometimes albeit not always played as a tank, so it's hard to confirm for sure that their itemization was due to them taking note of the full-ad enemy team after I noted it, but hey, I'd like to hope that I made a difference in helping them.)

Obviously, in terms of games to run the build in...a build where the enemy team has some difficulty bursting me down (though Pyke could still deliver killing blows with his ult, annoyingly enough, because many times where I thought I was high enough HP to survive, I received a nasty surprise that I didn't realize would kill me until it did) is going to be a bit more successful than a game where they can kill me even if I got to full-build easily.

And obviously, in terms of games to run the build in...having two tanky frontlines who have excellent tools at protecting their backline from being accessed, preventing the enemy champions from getting on top of me (with a third who, at least with their itemization, was also a tanky frontliner that had excellent tools at protecting me), is pretty much the dream. Gnar was building tank and he can toss people around; Sejuani has multiple ccs/slows in her kit; Leona has some cc in her kit and a gap-closer (admittedly, one-way--towards her enemy. But if the enemy bypasses her and she has the ability up, she can use it to again place herself between them and me).

I played it not as well as my other two wins, which is reflected in my final gold score and to some extent champion damage and similar stats. In spite of this being probably the best comp of my three victories for the build, it was my worst performance with the build of my victories.

But that wasn't the build's fault, that was me being tired, tilted, and making multiple misplays. I would've been those things with any build. In fact I would again argue: using any other build other than the build I used, would've resulted in me being the LVP, least valuable teammate, of the game, because any other build for this game would've had me still be tired, tilted, and making multiple misplays, but with a build not suited for perfectly working with my team's comp, to perfectly counter the enemy team's comp.

Overall, my faith in the build isn't being shaken by anything.
Briefly, in the game where I was being flamed for it.
I did consider it.
Of, "is it actually not that good in spite of my insistence otherwise?".
I did.
But after that consideration.
And upon reflection of looking at how that game went, the scoreline, how that game felt to me as a player, with how at the end I did feel like I was doing the damage I was supposed to be doing, how most of my problems were due to mistakes I made as a player with my team certainly not helping, and looking at the postgame to have an intuitive feeling for what my instincts had told me about my team. (My instincts told me that my "support" didn't have a support item; my instincts told me that my support and jungler weren't really playing well; my instincts told me that the enemy toplaner had hard-stomped due to how strong he was compared to the others on the enemy team.)

I just have the feeling that it really wasn't the build's fault we lost that game, no matter what my flaming teammates might believe. And feel like I am rather justified in that belief.

I feel like the build is working for me.
Heck, even if it's not a build which works for other players.
I think it is a build which works for me. And if it works for me.
It feels good to run.
My successes feel like a large part due to the build.
My failures don't feel like they're due to the build.

Then I feel like it is the right build for me.

But I digress.
I've been writing this blog for at least an hour; I suspect it is closer to two. It's 3:48 am right now, the game I finished I believe finished at 2 am? I don't think that I went straight from it to here, but I certainly didn't do much after it before coming here to the blog.

I have work tomorrow.
I get up at 8 am for a shift starting at 10.
And, oh yeah.
I still have a bunch of stuff I need to do.
I got some stuff caught up on.

I got most of my stuff, not.
Like, I still need to get caught up on my emails and to send one to my boss about trainings. They said that the ones available were full, and that they were "looking into" options. I need to give them a reminder of, "Hey, I uh...really need this?" Because trainings are a Big Deal to keep up to date on.
And I still have a ton of daily chores to do that I haven't done yet.

I half-considered writing a blog today saying "god I am pathetic" by listing all of the things I need to do, which I promised I would do (I promised to do judging today, after having previously promising to do it on Monday and failing to deliver on that promise), because...well, when you think about it.

I really kinda am pathetic.
I watched videos instead of attending to those matters.
I played games instead of attending to those matters.
I wrote this long-winded blog post that amounts to little more than a ramble ranting about my delusions of having a good build and complaining about teammates calling me trash when I believe that they themselves more than qualify for that term themselves, something which even if it is true leads to a dangerous road of me not acknowledging my own faults. (I try to take responsibility for what was in fact my fault, but if I think that it isn't my fault and is my team's fault, even if that is true, it can lead to me thinking it isn't my fault and was my team's fault...when it isn't true. And I want to avoid that.)

I basically started today thinking, "today will be a day where I get everything I need to, done...or close to, knocking out almost everything on my immediate to-do list!".

I ended up realizing that while I did do some things and while nothing I did ended up in a complete and total waste...
...Due to tilt, I ended up doing just about none of what I set out to do. Some, I did! Most I did not.

So yes.
I do suck and am a piece of utter garbage for failing like this.
No wonder I prefer to focus on writing the gaming entries like on League.
Because at least on those I feel like I am writing about things I'm not​ a failure on.

...Since, in spite of the date displayed, this is just an actually-really-late addendum blog to my previous blog.
In my previous blog I mentioned the build I am currently running, the mana/cdr-focused build. Well. I already knew that in theory it could work having done well in botgames but botgames are a poor example of it working in an actual game so I was not convinced it would work in practice against actual people.

Except.

It did.

Not only did it work, but it worked so well that the game I ran it in was literally the best game of League on Ashe I have ever played, ever.

No, seriously.

I checked my stats.

I viewed my record on the web, listing every single Ashe game. I narrowed it down to games I won, games I had similar end gold to, and games where I had reasonably low deaths. And while there were three games that were at least vaguely comparable...this game that I played was literally better in almost every way. I've had games where I've earned more gold, but usually slugfests that lasted longer than they had any right to that in one critical teamfight we ended up losing. But those games weren't me playing well; those games were both sides having screwed up enough to let everyone even their deadweight members (read: me) get to basically-or-entirely full-build.

This was a game where I actually played well. Better than I have ever played before. Was it perfect, no. I made mistakes. I did get caught out a few times (albeit once I knew I was probably overextending and another time if my jungler had been with me rather than pressuring botlane turret we would've won and it was my fault for knowing my jungler wasn't there yet still trying so at least half of my deaths were easily preventable), about 65% of my ults missed even when they had every right to hit (I once missed a point blank ult on Yi--which ended up allowing him to steal a drake he had no right to steal because if I hit my ult he'd have been killed. Granted, that was the aforementioned time that our jungler was right there near us and easily could've helped but chose not to, butstill, feels bad), I often was too far away from the engagement and didn't autoattack as much as I should have, being overly safe and staying too far back so I didn't help my team quite as much as I ought to have.

But in spite of those mistakes.
I played incredibly well. The stats tell the story; I had almost the top damage in the game (the only one higher than me was the enemy team's Xerath, due to Xerath, like Ashe, being a very very heavy poke-based champion and he was only higher by like a few hundred), had top turret damage, one of the highest objective damages in the game, had the third-highest cs in the game (second only to my own team's jungler and for whatever reason the enemy Vayne who somehow had a bunch of CS in spite of being utterly worthless), had the second-highest gold in the game (beaten only by Qiyana)...

...I was fed. I was incredibly fed. Remarkably, I think I only got a bounty on me once, a small one at that, which was collected by the enemy Yi when I overextended and got chain-cc'd (again, that was the aforementioned time where I knew I was overextending but decided to greed for it for no real good reason), but I had every reason to be proud of my performance that game. I got first blood, I got first brick as well, I collected a number of tower plates, I was heavily winning lane and basically made the enemy Vayne be useless all game long (Vayne out-csd me all game long, somehow, in spite of me hard-winning lane, probably because she split-pushed and farmed while her entire team was being wiped out across the map in a 4v5), I was doing a ton of work.

It was everything I had ever hoped to achieve.
And I did it with the mana/cdr build.
And played as best as I ever can.

Now, admittedly.
I won the lottery.
We got a four-cloud drake soul. This, combined with my 40% cdr, meant that my ult was literally on URF timing--every 20 seconds. So I could spam it. Fire it at the beginning of a fight, fire it again in the middle of a fight, and fire it a third time near the end of a fight. No joke, I had fights where I shot off three enchanted crystal arrows!

We also had an incredibly competent team which won or went even across the map. My support was a good 65% of the reason I was able to win lane (I won't pretend that was me); my jungler had a bit of a weak start but was a monster in teamfights; my midlaner hard-stomped the enemy midlaner; my toplaner did a bunch of work in teamfights and I didn't see them die very often so presumably they did well toplane, too. (Given how the enemy toplaner was basically a nonpresence, that suggests my toplaner won.)

We had remarkable coordination and good synergy. There were a few instances of not ideal interactions (Singed tossing an enemy out of the trajectory of my ult for instance where we both targeted the same person at the same time but he caused me to miss--whoops!), but by and large we were able to chain abilities one after another to lock them down, deal a ton of damage, and just...dominate.

That game shows everything I want to do with my games.

It will never happen again!
I will never do that well again and if people expected me to perform that well every game they would be sorely disappointed. That game is the exception to the general rule of me sucking hardcore. And I was only good because my team was good as well. I'd say that I wasn't good because of my team, and my team wasn't good in spite of me; I'd say that, yes, I have the right to say my team was good in part because of me, if I can also acknowledge I was good because of my team. 

That is to say, I was not carried, but I did not carry; we all played an equal part in that victory and I easily could have honored any of my teammates. (And two of them honored me!)

Most games...won't have that.

So I will never do this well again.

But this game showed me what I could do.
What I can do at my best, when the stars align, when everything goes right.
It shows the theory can work in practice.
It shows that the build, given the right circumstances, can pop off.

It's hella fun and can still perform remarkably well and it suits my playstyle and I think given all of that I will continue to run it in future games, with the hope that those games will go as well as this one did.

Most won't!

But who knows.

Maybe.

If I keep practicing.

Honing my skills, refining them.
Keep on trying this out.

It will end up being my thing and working.

​Now if you don't mind I am going to bed now.

Yesterday I got caught up on almost everything. In Minecraft I knocked out most tasks I had set out for myself; I got caught up in videos; I did a bunch of stuff, not that I remember it now (it was a full 24 hours ago and I am already immensely tired), but I remember yesterday being an incredibly productive day.

Today I've done nothing.

I played one game of TFT, but I didn't feel like playing even that one and certainly not playing more than the one--I still have a quest to complete. Heck, I accidentally cheated myself out of 25 beta pass points by not realizing I hadn't played 5 games and had only played 4 and I need to not do that again.

I don't remember doing anything productive in minecraft.

And I've done literally nothing else.
No videos.
None of my duties (aside from a quick check-in and answering a question, but I was supposed to attend to something today but it'll have to be done tomorrow).
No progress on my secret santa gift.

A big.
fat.
pile.
of nothing.

Nothing to show for it, and no clue what I was really doing. There wasn't any stream I was watching to distract me/make me think I was more busy than I actually was. (Okay so there was earlier in the day, a charity stream, but that ended like six hours ago and after that there wasn't any streamers I was following online at all.)
There wasn't some game I was playing.
There was just...nothing.

I know I did have a slightly busy day. Work and then family night. But while work was my morning and afternoon (a 5.5 hour shift), family nights I basically automatically tune out and ignore, so family night is not an excuse for me having gotten nothing done today.

Yesterday I was doing so well.
And today I slacked off and ended up getting nothing done.
​And any day that I end up getting nothing done, is a day that I end up falling behind during.

Okay so I did play a little Minecraft (trying to document and fully explore my mine's terminal points--I didn't even get remotely far but I was still mostly successful in this endeavor), and I did play one game of League (only one game because the client has a weird error where it's frozen on the 'concluding game' screen and restarting the client didn't fix the problem), and I didn't fully finish getting caught up; there's a few videos I've still got to watch (three?), and there's still three Kongregate games I need to play (this is the first week where I've had four games I needed to play for their badges; usually, it's one or two, at most three, but this week I had almost none of the badges).

But I did watch like...a vog I needed to finish, about 20 youtube videos, one of the Kongregate games, and that's on top of other stuff I did today.

Admittedly, I did waste ~2 hours of my life researching Carol of the Bells covers, citing 20 of them (which I listened to in their entirety, plus about 20 more which I listened to without citing), all for the sake of making the stupidest of stupid arguments.

Basically, my argument was that with the right arrangement of an instrumental/orchestral version of the song (that is, the song sans its lyrics), you could turn it from being a traditionally-Christmas-song into a Halloween song ridiculously easily--or, alternatively, into a year-round song not tied to any holiday, an epic tune which could be used for, sayyy, as an example, epic boss battle music, or something along those lines; something which would be appropriate at any time, not just at the holidays near the end of the year.

I have very good backing behind this, a fair argument which as I mentioned, cites 20 videos' worth of evidence demonstrating the aesthetic I am talking about. (Apparently, it has something to do with the key the song is in?) The silliest, stupidest of things to argue about.

​Gonna say worth tho.

I had a really, really, really lengthy blog planned for today. As much about family stuff as I could think of (the guy who fell is fine, by the way, thankfully enough), but also a lengthy blog about a couple of things I've been toying around with. As a reminder, we leave tomorrow. We're supposed to be gone by 10 local time (which is 8 my time), which means being clear before then which means eating breakfast, packing, and leaving before then. Probably in six or so hours by my guess.

I wanted to stay up for like four of said hours, so I thought I had the time to blog here--even when going on the best date with my girlfriend as is humanly possible given the circumstances (no sound available to me). But while I want to sleep as much as is humanly possible on the trip tomorrow...I'm not sure I can pull it off. I'm fighting off the urge to sleep as is, and have been since before midnight.

Kinda sucks. I feel like in spite of not having set my watch to local time (I've deliberately kept it at my time). In spite of going to bed after midnight my time (which is after 2 am local time) and waking up as late as was humanly practical. That somehow, in spite of me taking every precaution against it. My body has acclimated to the new timezone and is treating this as 2:45 instead of 12:45.

That, or being sick leads to tiredness and tiredness leads to continued sickness and sickness leads to more tiredness...

Butstill. I shouldn't be falling asleep so easily so early. And yet here I am, struggling to stay awake.

Oh well.

Won't get the blog I wanted to give and given my track record, doubt I ever will. But it's the thought which counts.

For a start, I thought of a really freakin' cool story idea which is ready to blog about, but which I should probably be more lucid to attempt to blog about. I did well in TFT today, both gaining points in ranked and also winning a match in unranked. I even performed adequately in League itself! I had to be carried pretty much, but I still managed to hold my own well enough in the games I won. Wasn't the best on my team, but helped contribute to the win both times.

My one regret for today: the day is over. Like, I did a nice workout this morning; I didn't have a hard time at work; I thought of a good story idea while at work; I had fun playing games once home from work; literally the only bummer about the day is that the day is at its end.

I've been up for 19.5 hours, and even though it's only just past midnight (12:30), I'm dead tired. I want to stay up longer. I want the day not to end. I want it continue. I want to still do stuff. But I'm just...out of energy, both physical and mental. And for most tasks, emotional. Doing the stuff I did was great, but it was also draining and I don't think I can handle any more of it for a while.

​So I guess it's to bed with me.

AAAAHHH IT'S 1 AM AND I GET UP AT 5 AM TO DO TAE KWON DO AND THEN WORK AFTER THAT AND THEN PROBABLY BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION STUFF ONCE HOME FROM THAT (yes, July 23rd is my birthday but I'll probably blog about that more tomorrow) AND I SHOULDN'T BE AWAKE RIGHT NOW WHY AM I AWAKE RIGHT NOW.

And I know that typing this out is cutting into my already-technically-below-six hours of sleep.
And I know that this'll force me to type out an entry tomorrow before midnight, because this is an entry for the 22nd past midnight when my prior entry was before midnight so if I changed the date of the blog it wouldn't archive correctly forcing me to leave it as the 23rd even though for all intents and purposes this is a second entry for the 22nd.

And I know that I am sick and should be asleep.
And I know that this'll mean the last thing I see before sleeping will be the unhealthy light of the computer (when before this whim hit me I HAD done a bit of a pre-bed digital detox which prevents that).

But dangit.

This is not a blog I'll remember by the time that I would blog tomorrow. I wouldn't blog tomorrow morning even IF I remembered this, and I wouldn't remember it by the time I got home from work most definitively.

Basically.

I had this brilliant idea before falling asleep--in fact, it was the idea I was going to use to fall​ asleep. 

Like most of my best ideas, this idea originated from the darker side of my brain. No, seriously. A fair share of my best ideas originated from the dark recess of the inner monster my mind is capable of producing. In this case, it's barely scratching the surface; light perversion is healthy enough and not really that dark so not really monstrous although that's only because of the direction it ended up turning.

I was expecting the idea to probably lead my mind down the road of things like rape, torture, the like--which is, yes, dark. But my mind surprised me...because it didn't. Instead? Well it still started off with the potential to go down that road, but didn't actually take it.

The basic idea that popped into my head was, (pardon the incoming language but this is verbatim the thought driving the idea and is something meant to come directly from the mind of a teenager who would use such language) "What if an average teenaged guy made a wish, that was actually granted, to 'have a female me that I can fuck'?"

You can probably understand why I was expecting that to take a darker turn--it's not like that's the sort of thing which doesn't already exist in hentai. Similar premises are actually staples thereof. (Yes I read hentai back in my teenage years. No, I don't anymore, but not because I don't want to; my reasons for not doing so now are purely because teenage me didn't care about infecting my computer with viruses whereas adult me is paranoid and that quite literally is the only reason I DON'T still do it...and I admit even then I take peeks using google image search in incognito mode, just making sure to not actually VISIT any site. Which I imagine isn't entirely risk-free still, but is probably significantly LESS risky than going to the sites. MY POINT BEING. I know from experience that similar stuff appears in hentai because I've actually read hentai with similar.)

The thing is...it snowballed out into an entirely different direction. This being the average teenaged guy, he was someone who I imagined as, while stupid enough to have made that wish and not realizing the consequences of it enough to not make it, after having faced it realized what went wrong and not take advantage of it, having more of a "my god what have I done?" moment upon realizing that someone with all his memories, thoughts, and feelings, was now standing in front of him, as a girl.

And as he's heterosexual, he realized very quickly that outside the influence of magic, she wouldn't be attracted to him; outside the influence of magic, she would potentially not even be a 'she'.

And the story I imagined would mostly follow her, albeit having him as a prominent character, as s/he would go about life after having been created.

...It was a brilliant idea.
I really really really liked it.
...But it was about this time that I realized.
"...Wait.
...Isn't that basically Ellen from EGS?"

And I let out a great big siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighhh.

I DO think the idea didn't come from EGS at all. Had absolutely zero influence on its creation or evolution at all.
I think I came up with the idea separately, and had I not read EGS, I'd have had proof that any resemblances were purely 100% entirely coincidental.

...But since I HAVE read EGS, and keep up to date on it no less...there's the lingering doubt of maybe I did subconsciously get biased by it and end up making an almost clone of her, just as a different take.

OH WELL.

Was worth a blog entry at least.

And now if you don't mind I'm only getting five hours of sleep now so need as much of them as is possible to be actual sleep.

It's just that with shutdown week at work, I don't work for six days (stupid bloody staff meeting scheduled during last day of shutdown week means I don't quite get the full week). No work, no need to go to bed at midnight. Also, with depression set in as well (it comes and goes but is still definitely here to some extent), I had free time.

Lots of free time.

As in.

"Binge-read about 840ish comics in a night", time--albeit spread out across two comics. One appears to be on a hiatus for whatever reason (the tvtropes page didn't mention why, but it's probably something which I could track down the info on why if I searched, but I don't need it to recognize that not updating for a year is a hiatus for some reason), but was quite the good read in the form of dream*scar.

The other still updates, and is called The Fantasy Adventures of Jack Cannon. Though I haven't read them yet, I also picked up two extra comics which I may or may not get around to binge-reading this week. I just...kinda...felt like reading, I guess? Depression tends to be the time I do a lot of that. Comics can be kinda uplifting to read (even if the content is anything but--within reason), and for some reason I just am really good at reading stuff.

Those 800 pages? It was done in less than three hours. That's about my estimate, at least. Didn't mark the exact begin time, but I know that I started well after midnight--I started on TVTropes, with a browse based around the EGS trivia page (image liiiiiiiiinks), and it was only from there after reading multiple pages (well parts of them anyway) that I found the comics, which is where my estimate comes in.

I'm guessing that the TVTropes browsing concluded at about 1:30ish? Okay so maybe it was under four hours, but I was finished before 5:30. Depending on my start time, then, guess it may or may not be that impressive. But to give you an idea of the TVTropes browsing I did, it was the pages The Atoner, Chirping Crickets, Conveniently Seated, Deadly Upgrade, Defensive What, Defrosting Ice Queen, Differently Dressed Duplicates, Distracted By My Own Sexy, Dope Slap, Education Mama, Fantastically Indifferent, Faux Yay, Filler Strips, Flat What, Gender Bender, Hates Being Touched, Humanity Ensues, and Hyperspace Mallet.

I started after midnight, made my way through all of those, then started the webcomics, and did that in less than five hours, sooooo. Reference point, kinda sorta. Point is. Pretty sure that's not a normal reading speed and that most people can do less than that in that amount of time.

One of my gifts, I guess.

Once more, by the way, my conclusion's the same as I made originally; reading vastly enriches my life, but largely gives me nothing except a method of doing something other than sleeping to deal with the depression. When you don't feel like doing anything else...it is something that at least feels like it had purpose, because, again. Enrichment. I feel genuinely enriched by the experience.

Not, mind you, particularly inspired (though there's a really good EGS sketchbook entry I'm deliberately not moving past because reading it was incredibly inspiring and I'm hoping that rereading it will get me reinspired when the depression wave has faded), but still enriched. I don't see anything productive from spending the time reading the stories/tropes. But it still felt good, and it felt like it was something that I was better for having read. 

Which, given the depression, is about as much as I can really ask for.

Oh and by the way--speaking of the time. Did I mention it's almost six am? I should probably go to bed soon. The coffee I had six hours ago's by now fully worn off. Not that that was what was stopping me from going to bed mind you. But. It contributes. I'm not particularly tired (tired enough to go rambling on in the magic productivity zone of "tired enough to wander, not tired enough to not be able to be any semblance of coherent"), but I can feel the sensation of tiredness and even if I couldn't...

...Objectively. I kinda know I should be going to bed anyway.

Soyeah.
Spent the night reading.

​Now to spend half the day sleeping.