I had some unexpected time to play on Thursday, so I played some of the free champions. I revisted Karma and Ekko, who I like more than I remember. And I tried Azir on Saturday, who I hate with a burning passion. I thought he’d be like Malzahar and his sand soldiers would just attack automatically but no, you have to click them, and I kept ending up moving forward rather than attacking and it was really hard to position well. So at least now I know that I can disenchant or re-roll the champion shard I got for him last month.

And then on the weekend I had a bunch of mediocre games, but some with some annoying players. I also had one with a player whose name was fizzonhervijanna, and I just need to give that person some love because *slow clap*

The most interesting part of the weekend by far was on Saturday night – I didn’t have much time left, but I thought I could squeeze in one more game if it was a bot game. So I get into the game and head to the bottom lane, because that’s what was open, and the fifth player doesn’t join me. I thought they were just having connectivity problems or had to go suddenly – it sucks, but it happens to the best of us. So I just did my best alone, but this was my game with Azir, who as I’ve already established, is the fucking worst. So I was having some struggles. But what can you do right?

Except then, some other teammates were discussing banning this player for being afk, and they decided to chime in, all, “Why would you ban me? I’m not afk”. No, they weren’t afk, just SITTING RIGHT FUCKING THERE WATCHING US. I mean WHY?!?!? If you’re going to sit there and be present, why not actually play? What is the point? I could understand getting into a bot game and then walking away to do something else while your team (ideally) wins the game and some IP/XP for you – it’s shitty, but it makes sense. I just…why. Whyyyy.

And beyond that, they seemed to think this was totally normal and socially acceptable behaviour. They kept asking why we were mad because it was just a bot game, acting like everyone does this. And our team was like yeah, probably we’ll be fine, but we’d win a lot faster if you played and also it’s just a shitty thing to do on purpose? At least pretend like you’re afk? Normally I don’t really care about these things but honestly, it took us 40 minutes to win the game (I was lucky I didn’t have to go before that) and I was 1v2 the majority of the game on a champion I was terrible at. It was not fun. I didn’t say much, but when the MIA player said, “no one else cares”, I said, “I sure as hell do”.

So anyway, the majority of our team, if not the entire team, reported this person, but they kept insisting over and over again that nothing would happen to them because bot games don’t count, or something. I very much doubt that this is true, but now I’m wondering – what does actually happen when you report someone?? How many times do you need to be reported before you get banned? Does it matter what type of game it is?

I also reported one player for using the n-word (they also had it in their username), albeit misspelled. And I wonder – what is the etiquette around this word and words like it within largely anonymous online communities? From what I’ve observed, it seems acceptable for black people to use the word and reclaim it for themselves, and for all I know, this player was black. But also, for all I know, they were a racist douchebag, and for all they know, I or any of our other teammates could have been a black person taking offence. WHAT ARE THE RULES?! I should ask reddit.

There was ALSO one game where our jungler was being kind of unhelpful – I didn’t think much of it; I just thought that they were busy with other things every time I pinged for help. I mean, they can’t be everywhere. But other players were getting really mad at them, and towards the end of the game, they said they were just trolling for their YouTube channel (or ‘channal’, as they kept saying) and that we should subscribe. Like…what?? That’s not even good trolling?? Honey, if you ever start streaming, please do not do this. DON’T BE THAT GUY.

So yeah, it was a pretty boring week during which absolutely no progress was made.

I did have one game with Lux where I did insanely well (pretty sure I had both mid-lane turrets destroyed with no help within the first 15 minutes), but it was because my lane opponent wasn’t playing well, not because I WAS playing well – I might even say they weren’t even playing properly because after I took the first turret, they disappeared. Maybe they were just needed elsewhere or had temporary connectivity issues but yikes. They also played Garen – why, I don’t know, since he is not a mid-lane champion or a good counter for Lux. At first I thought that maybe they thought I was going to play Lux as a support, but then I looked at the rest of my team – we were all ranged, and we also had Rakan, who only plays support. So, I don’t know. Maybe they were new and somehow got matched with a bunch of level 30 players?? That definitely happened to me a couple times.

There are updates coming to the rune and honor systems, and I have to say that I am thankful for them.

The new rune system combines runes and masteries into a much simpler and faster process and while this may eliminate some element of strategy, it will make things a lot easier for new players and players who simply don’t want to dedicate all their free time in life to LOL. As things stand now, you basically have to update your mastery and rune pages every two weeks (with every patch), and ideally you would have a separate page for each champion. I’m sure some players enjoy this process (I mean, my boyfriend seems to), but I just find it tedious. Not to mention that higher level runes and additional rune pages cost lots of IP/RP. The best thing about this new system, I think, is that it will be free for everyone. This means that new players will already be competitive without having to dump a bunch of IP on tier 3 runes (which I haven’t done). I’m not totally sure what the new runes/masteries will actually be, but from the examples I saw, it looks like they will be more impactful even though there are fewer. Almost like summoner spells.

This change isn’t coming until “pre-season” – I’m not sure when that is, but given that “mid-season” just happened, I’m guessing late this year/early next year – but I’m happy that they announced it in advance because, while I was never really planning on spending IP on runes before I owned all the champions I want, now I know for sure I don’t have to.

The new honor system should be coming out sometime in the next few weeks and it sounds cool. I don’t think it’s ideal; there are still some things about it that don’t make sense to me (#1 – why do levels start at 2?!), but it’s MUCH better than what they have now, which is basically not even a system at all because no one understands how it works. Something I don’t like is that you can only honor one player per game, but I also understand why that change was made since it is now going to be a much larger aspect of the game and I’m sure players don’t want the honoring process to take all day. But the overall gist of it was that players will now receive clear “rewards”, whether that is simply by leveling up their honor, receiving “flair” on their loading screen image (although, if you get it after every game that you received honor in, doesn’t it sort of become meaningless?), key fragments or other loot-related things that they hinted at but didn’t really specify.

Now, what’s next…

To be honest, I have no fucking clue. There are only 20 days left, and I know I can’t play again for another few days, so really, there are only 14 days left. TWO WEEKS. And I don’t know how much time I will have within that two weeks.

I guess maybe I should focus less on actually playing because let’s face it, I’m not going to improve that much in two weeks, and more on how I’m going to reveal this in such a way that he doesn’t kill me.

Honestly from the way I go on about it on here you’d think that he’s a scary dude; he’s really not, I’m probably scarier than he is, but I’ve also never done something like THIS before so like who knows how he’ll react. I’ve done some crazy shit, but nothing deceitful. IS IT LYING IF IT’S FOR A SURPRISE?! I’d say no, but who knows if he’ll feel the same…

I mean, if he were going to, I don’t know, propose to me for our anniversary, I’d imagine that would involve quite a lot of secret-keeping as well, and THAT wouldn’t be lying, would it?

But then again, I guess that would be for something he would know for sure I actually want.

Games played: 18

% of PvP games that meet goal: 60%

Hours: 12

Champions played: Karma, Ekko, Azir, Akali, Ashe, Tristana, Soraka, Morgana, Sona, Lux, Anivia

Death snack of the day: Oreos