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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...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.

...Not a very good one mind you but it'd have been a bit lengthy.
But I had a long workday followed by dance and even if I didn't.
I've been dead tired all day for god only knows what reason.
And I have work tomorrow anyway.
And it is surprisingly, alarmingly, late.
So I am going to go to bed.

It wasn't really a good blog entry in my opinion anyway. Would've been lengthy, sure, but just me rambling on some more nonsense.

...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.

Yesterday I really really wanted to do things, but was way way way too tired to do any of them.
Today I am awake enough where I could do things, but in spite of not being tired, I just...want to go to bed, because I don't feel like doing them.
I played Minecraft fairly extensively. There's a new version of it, though it seems to have introduced a bug with right clicking and maybe maybe maybe item durability. (I hope not but it's possible.) I don't feel like doing more even though I am still working on my current project. (Basically, it's to pretty up the entrance to my mine with stone blocks; it's mostly complete but not all the way complete.)
I need to get a win every single day in League because for blue essence I'm broke and I get some from a first win plus leveling up gives a champion capsule which frequently contains some extra blue essence (and if it instead is a champion shard, is...still blue essence!).
I need to play more TFT games to get the weekly quest finished there, too.
I've got a stream which I have been catching the last few weeks to watch because it started earlier this week than normal and caused me to miss like an hour and a half of it.
I've got videos to watch.

I have the time, and ability, to do any of these and probably more.

Oh and then there's how I have a rather extensive blog to make in talking about art.

I feel like doing none of them.

I just...want to sleep.

I don't know why in spite of not being tired, I just want to sleep, but.
I just...want to sleep, dunno why.
I guess I will then.

This time, with me finally finally finally starting to play the third Danganronpa game. It's long-overdue. Finished the prologue, but that took a ton of time, soooo. Gotta sleep now, too tired.

We're watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Believe it or not--I've never seen it before.
Yes, really!
I've never seen it before!
I'd have loved to have seen it! My lack of seeing it wasn't out of any aversion to it, it's just that...it was never available to me in any way shape or form. I've always wanted to see it, I just never had the ability to see it.

I have read just about every single spoiler possible for the series due to TVTropes.
Mind you.
Read, does not equal, remember.
I do not remember most of them, but I have read them all.

So like. I in THEORY know almost everything there is to know about it--but nothing quite beats seeing the actual show in person and it is amazing. <3

​We've finished the first season and we'd do more if I didn't need to go to bed because so tired...

...And even if I didn't have a nightmarishly long hellish shift tomorrow which starts early and goes fairly late at a high traffic time (the one hope of it not being high traffic is maybe MAYBE the hope, HOPE, that the day after a holiday will be reduced traffic).

Which mind you, I do; I need to go to bed for that.

Even if I didn't have that.

I am already dead tired from today.

I've been feeling exhausted since the moment I woke up and it hasn't improved during the day at all.
I'm tired, I need bed, I have work anyway, so all those things which need to be done, won't be done.
Sucks.
​But it is what it is.

I've somewhat calmed down from this by talking to others, at the expense of going to bed a full hour after I was supposed to, butstill.

I just...haven't really been feeling mentally good for a long long time and today was particularly low for me.