I am just blown away by the response to this project. I honestly never expected that so many people would read anything I’ve written. This blog has been public since its creation, but no one ever visited it until my boyfriend shared it on reddit.
As of posting this, the blog has now had nearly 43,000 unique visitors and 262,000 cumulative views. That’s fucking INSANE.
So, thank you reddit!
I want to be some kind of writer, like as a career, so all of the compliments about the writing itself are such a gift to me.
I may continue updating this blog – probably not as frequently, but whenever something interesting happens. It was really fun for me to do, and it also helped me learn. By writing about my experiences, I was able to retain more information and analyze situations in greater depth. And now it sort of feels like the writing equivalent of “pics or it didn’t happen”. Not really sure how I would notify people of new posts though (aside from the WordPress subscribe feature).
Part of me also wants to start a youtube channel or stream or something (in the beginning, this was supposed to be a blog AND a youtube channel to go with it but I quickly realized I couldn’t handle all that) in which my boyfriend and I play together, but I’m not sure if we have the necessary tech for that. If that’s something that anyone would be interested in though, definitely let me know because I’d love to give it a shot. Plus, my boyfriend is amazing on his own and has wanted to stream anyway in the past.
I guess, if you genuinely would like me to keep writing the blog and intend on actually reading it, follow via the little blue button on the right so that I know how much interest there actually is!
If anyone wants to keep reading, or is interested in reading anything else I write (I also have a general/mental health blog here, although I haven’t updated it in a while. And I’m writing a novel, but unless you’re in the publishing industry, that is not really helpful information I guess), that would be so wonderful.
I’ve been a blogger for many years, but never found an audience, and that was all I ever wanted.
So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
And thank you to the many people who added me on League! Honoured that you would want to add an unranked player who’s been playing for 6 months and has already let the world know that she kinda sucks. (Except at like, two champions.)
Also, ~2000 RP randomly showed up in my account at some point over the course of the evening. There were no gift notifications and it doesn’t show up in my account/purchase history so I don’t know where it came from! My boyfriend thinks that it came from Riot themselves because a few staff members saw his reddit post. But if it was you (random person or Riot-er), please let me know so I can thank you properly!! Because that is just so, so kind and very unexpected. (And if you’re wondering what I did with it – I bought Jinx, and I’m saving the rest for Lissandra when she goes on sale in July.)
In addition, thank you to everyone who told him to put a ring on it, because if you read the entire thing, you’d know that is something I want and something I was hoping would happen. But honestly, I think he already knows. (Or at least, he does now.)
Even if I didn’t have any fun at all during this process, it would all be worth it just for the look in his eyes. I haven’t seen him so happy since we started dating. I’d been searching and searching for a way to get that look back, but never found one until now.
I was worried that he’d be angry at me for keeping a secret, or not want me to take over “his thing”. And I figured that if he did appreciate the surprise, he’d probably read some highlights, maybe play one or two games with me and that would be the end of it. But he read the entire thing immediately (on his phone, no less), has played several games with me already, wanted to watch pro games with me and we’ve had so many conversations about the game already. He actually values and respects my opinions, even though I’m new and unranked and he’s been playing for 3 years and is platinum, and wants to continue teaching me but is also respectful of the way that I like to do things.
He’s so impressed and proud of me and honestly no one has reacted this way to anything I’ve done since I left university. And that was like, school stuff. No one’s reacted this way to nice gestures I’ve done/gifts, etc. in a relationship EVER. One of the first things I told him when we met was that I often feel like Leslie Knope in that I often go above and beyond for my friends/boyfriends but no one gives a shit, and that makes me sad.
This makes me so, SO happy. Like, his reaction was a gift in and of itself.
And of course, he’s been telling everyone and their mother and posted it on reddit, that’s how proud he is. Every guy deserves a girlfriend who will do something like this for them, but every girl also deserves a boyfriend who would react that way.
To answer one common question though – many people seem confused about how I
could possibly hide it for 6 months. The thing is, that’s WHY I gave myself such a long time period. I only did it when he wasn’t home. I did slip up here and there (there were at least 2 incidents where he came home early and I had to slam my laptop shut and pretend I was editing “videos”, to explain the mouse which I never use), but he’s not that observant. I’m the kind of person who thinks “I booked the day off” = a proposal is coming, but he’s the kind of person who thinks “I booked the day off” = “I booked the day off”. He takes everything at face value and is probably the most trusting person I know. (I hope this doesn’t change that.) So lying to him is quite easy to do (minus the guilt) – but I promise to only ever use that power for good.
And regarding the support role – a lot of people have been disappointed that I ended up maining support, but I think that if you understood my past experiences and insecurity you would understand why it felt like it was the only option for me to start with. Growing up, people teased me and got mad at me for everything and anything (video game related and otherwise), and as I’m sure everyone is aware, the general League community isn’t very supportive (at least not in the in-game chat). Muting people early on wasn’t a realistic option because it was extra important that I did not miss any actual information people were trying to impart. While people’s comments didn’t hurt me personally (except for that one day), I still did not want to let anybody down and I wanted to have a fun experience, which is hard to have when people are yelling at you. And people yelled at me the least when I was support! So there you go. It wasn’t actually because I thought it was the most fun position, though I came to love it over time. I initially wanted to main mid (and had I continued to have access to Lissandra, may have ended up doing so).
And also, I just really liked Soraka as a character – in the beginning though I hated that I had to play her support. Eventually I realized that my problem wasn’t with the position, but with how other people treated it and people who play support (especially girls). Many girls may play support, but there are good reasons for it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if what I said above, or something like it, is a big one. From childhood most men have been taught to have thick skins and praised for their aggressive natures, and many men probably played video games as children. This would make them naturally better at the game to start with and also more able to easily brush off haters. This is not to say that women do not have this background too – I definitely had a few gamer girlfriends in high school – but far fewer do. And we are not taught the same kind of confidence as men are, most of the time.
That said, there are still some things I dislike about the expectations of the position itself,
like the concept of CS-stealing and KS-ing. The ultimate objective should be to succeed as a team and while a support should never go out of their way to get last hits/kills, if they do, they should be praised, not punished. ESPECIALLY if someone is at risk of dying. The support’s job is to protect the team and sometimes that means eliminating the threat. And I think that people forget that support players need gold too! Less, but they still need it. I rarely get a full build when I play support and that shouldn’t be the case. If supports were allowed to get SOME CS (let’s say like 20-30%), I think that they’d be stronger and the whole team would see an improvement. That said, the new support quests definitely help with this problem, though still don’t solve it. (My boyfriend told me that if someone accuses me of ks, I should just say “kill secured”. I’m not sassy enough for that, but that’s still hilarious. He’s still not on board with my opinion on CS, though.)
There is absolutely nothing wrong with support as a position and I am glad that there is a slightly less intimidating option for new players who might need one!
I also wanted to main one position so that I could make sure I was actually good at something when I revealed this to my boyfriend, and not just all over the map. Had I not been concerned about that, I would have just done whatever I felt like in the moment, and I definitely plan to diversify now that the project is over and I have a teacher! I’d like to do more mid-laning and start ADC-ing.
Some people were also for some reason confused as to why I was so excited about strong female characters, even though I definitely explained it more than once. It’s about representation. You can say, “I don’t care about feeling represented!” all you want but that’s easy to do when the majority of strong characters out there in video games/media in general are already male. So finding characters that felt like ME was a huge win for me and really helped me get into the game! That’s not to say that I’m only going to play those champions forever, though.
Also stop being mean to him for playing Yasuo!! (I know most people are kidding but still.) I hate playing against him, but it’s not because I feel like he’s actually overpowered or a douchey champion to play. I just don’t know HOW to play against him. For example, I was dismayed that Lux’s Q could be blocked by his wind wall, but I didn’t know yet that the wall has like a 20 second cooldown or something (my boyfriend told me after reading that post). Had I known that, I would not have done so badly! I think people’s issue with him comes more from a lack of knowledge about him – and I’ve also heard that it’s hard to actually play him well, so it’s not like any random person can just pick Yasuo and be like I’M AMAZING NOW! If I played Yasuo, I would die instantly. And it’s not like he’s an evil character! He actually seems like a pretty cool dude! With great hair!
By the way, if you’re wondering how I actually revealed this to him – I honestly wasn’t sure how to do it considering that it’s digital, and I wanted to be able to play it off as no big deal if he didn’t like it, so I just sent him a facebook message when I got up saying, “If you thought my obsession with unicorns only started a couple weeks ago, you were wrong” (I started playing Robot Unicorn Attack on my phone recently and he likes to tease me about it) with a link to the blog.
And at first I thought he actually was mad because he made a frowny face while reading, but it was for another reason. And then I thought he just didn’t give a shit because he was kind of just like “cool thanks”, but throughout the day he got progressively more and more excited. I think maybe he was just tired and also needed some time to process the full extent of the situation because yeah, this was kind of a game changer. It was my “proposal” to him.
So for those hoping for a reaction video…I hate to disappoint you but there was no one “HOLY SHIT” moment, sadly! I was hoping for that as well and I wish I had a better story, but I am just happy that he got there eventually.
In other news, his birthday is in a few days and he’s going to be thoroughly underwhelmed now.
P.S. to the MANY people who said I look like that one guy, fuck you. IT’S JUST THE GLASSES. *cries in corner* *puts on pounds of makeup* *desperately tries to make hair grow faster* *buys 75 push up bras and pairs of high heels* (jk I don’t need more of those)
Someone also said I looked like a porn star, which is really interesting because a couple of years ago someone else also said that. I’m wondering if both people were thinking of the same person.
leagueoflove.ca 
As another female player, I can sympathize with a lot of the reasons you gravitated towards the support role. For myself, it was insecurity because I wanted to be in the background while also helping as much as I possibly could. After playing the game over 6 years, I’m still a support main, but I’ve learned you can truly carry the game from this role in many ways. Vision, motivating your team, protecting your carries, and – when playing a more aggressive support – putting the team on your back by securing kills.
My sister plays as well, and we also both gravitate towards female champions. It IS great to be represented, and females are so diverse in this game, just like in real life. I’m glad, just as you were, that they have strong female characters.
I might add you on League if you don’t mind, though you’re probably getting far more friend requests than you care to handle. I just thought I can be some assistance since I main support and also Soraka (though from what I can see, you’re doing very well yourself. The amount of progress you made in 6 months is AMAZING!).
I’m so happy that you made this blog. It was an amazing read (truly) and it looks like your boyfriend loved it (as he should). Good luck in all your future endeavors! I’d love to see more from you in the future.
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Thank you so much!! I am so glad that you can relate and thanks for adding your voice. And yes definitely add me if you have not already!
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I read the whole blog start to finish. And I am in tears. And I’m a guy. Picking up league is an unfathomably big task. The sheer amount of information is daunting. It’s such an expression of love that it’s better than pretty much all rom-coms out there. Don’t stop the blog it’s amazing.
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Thank you so much! Yeah it kinda does read like a rom-com doesn’t it….and yeah I think I just might keep going!
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Wow. This is such an amazing story! It was awesome to see your progression from complete newbie to someone who understands the game and isn’t a complete newbie! Your excitement for discovering the game reminds a lot of how I felt when I first started playing years ago. You really are a talented writer, and and even better girlfriend.
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Thank you very much! That means a lot 🙂
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Hi Chelsea,
First of all, I’m not a reading person at all but I read everything on this blog when I saw the post on Reddit 9 hours ago and did a 1-sit reading through the night and let me tell you: I loved it!
Like some other readers, I got a bit disappointed that you got “pushed” to the Support role but that’s very nice since we need more Support players in the community and your secondary role is Midlaner so you got plenty of time to master it too.
I also got a bit disappointed that you gave up the idea of trying at least 1 Ranked game because I was exciting to read about your experience and I think you would do great.
I was also expecting to read about a PvP Jungler experience because I mained Jungler for a couple of years. But don’t hold your back, don’t be afraid to try new things, that’s how we learn to play and that would help you a lot to understand the Jungler role better so you can better understand what your Jungler and the enemy Jungler are trying to do.
You did great learning the game and your progress was amazing in 6 months! I really love your capacity of analizing the game and the research you do to understand things. You said you’re a slow learner, don’t know if it’s true but in case of LoL that was not true, quite the opposite to be honest.
But reading through all of this I really can’t undertand one thing that annoyed me so much, why the hell do you refer to a single player as “they/their/them” when you should write “he/his/him”? When you talk about champions you refer them as “he” and “she” but when you talk about a single person (normally in the ranting posts) you talk as if its plural, can you explain it?
By the way I really hope you continue the blog, I’m so forward to keep reading your progress because you just got started, I won’t use the “Follow” in the lower-right corner but I will bookmark this blog and visit it at least once in a week.
Thanks for the reading you provided to us!
P.S.- My picture is 10 years old and I don’t know how to change it u.u
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It’s because I don’t know their gender and writing he/she every time is annoying haha. I guess I could just assume one or the other, but it always bothered me when people just assumed I was a dude for whatever reason so I don’t like to do that. I get that it makes it harder to read, though. And I know…for a while basically every post I was like “I’M GONNA JUNGLE, I’M GONNA DO IT” and then I never did XD I still intend to someday though. Same with ranked! But I could only pack so much into 6 months without feeling like I was just all over the place. Thanks for reading and I probably will continue it so thanks also for bookmarking! 🙂
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Oh that explains a lot hahaha.
I still think that “he/she” would be better even if its a bit longer but less coomplicated, just my opinion tho.
Here in Portugal every noun is rather male or female, so we have 2 ways for telling “the player” depending if its male (“o jogador”) or female (“a jogadora”) but when we don’t know the gender we normally use the male word.
So I’m wondering (since english isn’t my main language), is it wrong to refer to “the player” as “he”? Or would you have to write “he/she” everytime to be technically correct?
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Technically you’d have to write he/she to be correct, but I also could have done something like “the player”, “Player 1 said _ and then Player 2 said _”. Maybe I’ll do that in the future. I didn’t consider how confusing it could be to people who don’t speak english as their first language so thanks for drawing that to my attention!
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Well that was great reading :3 im not usually one for reading blogs though, so i hope you guys will start a stream together or something 🙂 (probabbly wanna do it now, so all this attention can be funnled into something :3 )
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I would love to, only problem is I don’t know how!! Our internet and laptops aren’t the best either :S
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The blog has gone viral, so if you can strike while the iron is hot, I think you could quite easily grab a good numer of viewers for a stream or Youtube channel. You could potentially skip years of otherwise necessary community building if you’re interested in pursuing something like that.
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We want to ! I stayed up till 6am last night trying to figure out how lol but our computers are the worst and we don’t have money for equipment or anything. But even if we can’t do that, we’ll definitely continue the blog. Idk if you saw already but we started a subreddit for it at /r/leagueofloveblog so if you came from there, please check that out!
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Hi Chelsea! Just wanted to say that you seem to be really amazing and kind person, I wish we could play together, but sadly I live in Europe 😦 (you’re from US, right?). I’m a girl too. I kinda started played because of my boyfriend too, but I only kept it as a secret for few days. And yes, learning this game can be rough, reading the post when you cried for half an hour after game made me sad, because that’s basically me, I though I won’t make it because people in this game can be so mean! But still, I’m glad I did it, because I love this game now. I wish you all happiness in life, in game and in love. I will still read the blog if you’ll decide to post here!
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I’m from Canada, so yeah NA region. That is too bad! I think I will continue to post so thank you so much!
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Hi,
Come from Reddit.
But have to say this blog is amazing.
Well done on everything you have acheived.
And I hope you continue to update.
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Thank you very much! I think I will 🙂
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I saw this on r/all today and read the whole blog. I stopped playing LoL a couple of years ago but this made it sound like it might be fun. Please continue to update this blog every once in a while, it was a really great read.
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Thanks so much for reading! I think I will as long as people are interested 🙂
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Hey Chelsea,
I looooooove your blog and I have a huge respect for what you have accomplished. To be honest, I don’t think I would have that much strength to keep up as long as you did on my own. My friends did a great job pulling me through all highs and downs of this game. (A short thanks to you guys!)
While this game is getting more popular, a kind if guide is still missing. I know the tutorial/practice-tool/champion-spotlights are there, but all the stuff you had to note down like the buffs/dragons/roles/towers. I don’t think this should be extra work that you have to track down your own. I hope Riot will address this soon after seeing this and release a better way to introduce new people to our hobby.
I’m also in love with your social attitude towards other player and can relate to all the things you wrote. The amount of non-constructive comments/toxicity/flaming in-game make me sometimes feel like there are just a handful of people who just want a peaceful game, so i am much more surprised about the way you thought about this all. People are getting way too far into winning and frustrated while forgetting, that we all just want to play this game because it is fun! Everyone can have a bad day and losing the lane. And yes, losing a game isn’t that tragic as long you gave your best, right? I did joined the tribunal after the first time some made me cry for the same reason. I hope they will be returning something like this in future again?
I wish i would have seen this blog earlier and I definitely would have loved to give you some advice/cheers for your games. Have fun and good luck on the Summoners Rift with your boyfriend!
P.S. THANK YOU for letting us taking part! I’ll keep track for sure!
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Thank you so much for reading and for such a thoughtful comment! Someone was saying that it’s unlikely the Tribunal will come back now that they have their instant feedback system, but one can only hope, right? I will likely continue to update the blog as long as people are interested 🙂
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Came from reddit, read the whole thing in one setting at work, wanted to stop but just couldn’t.
“Just one more day, I’ll read the rest at home.”
“Alright, just one more, then I…oh, I’m at the end. Oh, it’s x hours later. Oops.”
From one support player to another, keep it up. -preforms complicated but secret support handshake-
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Lmao! Oh no I hope I didn’t get you in trouble ;P thank you for reading!
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Hi Chelsea,
I just wanted to say thanks for writing this blog. I’ve been playing this game casually since the beta (around 2009 I think?) so it has been so many years since I became a new player, and have already forgotten trials of learning the game. I really enjoyed reading about your experiences learning the game from almost no game knowledge to where you are now.
When I met my wife we started playing league together, but we would stick to bot games. Over time she got comfortable playing some PvP normal games but would die a lot and get upset. But she kept playing and eventually she got better and could finally hit some ult’s (she plays Sona mostly), and over time gets less upset at dying. I think it is great that you and your boyfriend can share this game together now and hope you continue to play together and have fun! Maybe we can play together sometime!
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Haha yeah I have to say that ever since I made so many ranked friends, my performance has seemingly worsened CONSIDERABLY and let’s just say that were I to try for my goal now (i.e. dying fewer than 5 times), achieving that would be impossible. But that’s because I’m playing with way more ranked people than I was before. So I get how it can be disheartening…but that is how you learn 🙂 and of course, I would love to!
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Yea especially if you are playing with your boyfriend and other more experienced players, you will get some equally skilled players on the other team which probably makes the game way harder than when you were playing by yourself. Actually a couple days ago I played some solo games and won 3 in a row and when my wife got home we played and got demolished bot lane (and every other lane was losing as well) 3 games in a row. She told me if I ever won any games that day to not play with her that day lol.
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Haha! That makes sense I guess. Oh well
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“I want to be some kind of writer, like as a career, so all of the compliments about the writing itself are such a gift to me.”
Yeah i actually noticed that you are a gifted writer
i’m not a native English speaker , but i really like your style its actually insane how you can distinguish a good writer from a bad one by reading a few lines !
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Thank you very much! And yes it’s true it doesn’t always take very long 🙂
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Speaking as someone who was raised on proper spelling and grammar (thanks mom!), I have genuinely appreciated your competence in writing. And speaking as an avid reader… What genre is the novel?
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Thank you for the lovely compliment! It’s young adult – I’m calling it a romance but really it’s kind of an anti-romance. It’s about an emotionally abusive relationship and finding yourself afterwards, that kind of thing. It’s about 1/3 finished at this point 🙂
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Hi Chelsea!
My boyfriend linked me the reddit post with the blog when it was released, so I’ve been a bit slow with reading your blog (4-5 posts every week whenever I remember to look at all of the tabs I have open LOL), and I’ve enjoyed every single one! I’ve been playing for… 3.5 years now???(wtf), but I honestly think you’ve made sooo much more progress than I have, especially with your champion and role diversity (I literally only feel comfortable playing Jinx ahahahahaha, PLUS I’ve still never jungled before), so you’ve got to be extremely proud of yourself! 😀
I just really want to say how wonderful this blog is for highlighting the new player experience, and I’ll definitely try to keep up with your adventures when I remember… >_> The commitment that you made for this gift to your boyfriend is also just phenomenal – it occured to me today that I should actually try and get more into my boyfriends’ hobbies too, instead of being passive-aggressive towards him for them v_v
Thank you, thank you, thank you! You are a truly, truly outrageously (RIP old Taric) strong person with a beautiful heart~
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Thanks to you I just discovered that Taric line (I made my boyfriend explain and then I youtubed it) so thank YOU! LOL for real though thanks so much for reading and I’m really glad that you’re enjoying it. So far I’m on a schedule of uploading new posts/videos on Sundays and sometimes Wednesdays if that helps you remember 🙂 Also there’s a “follow by email” option and a subreddit if you didn’t see those.
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Hi Chelsea!
Your blog brought me joy over the past few weeks. Constantly making me smile and often laugh out loud so thank you for letting me be a part of your journey 🙂
I admire your determination to keep on going despite all obstacles and our rough community.
Outside of the game the community is very friendly and welcoming towards newer players. Especially the Reddit community can be very helpful as you probably know by now. /r/summonerschool and the champion specific subreddits (like /r/SorakaMains/ or /r/Janna) are perfect for studying advanced tactics aswell as getting to start a new champ.
As a male Diamond 3 to 1 Janna and Nami main I want to tell you the support role is just as crucial as any other role in the game so there is no reason to feel bad about it.
Maybe I can show you another perspective on your idea to take 20-30% of the farm from your adc:
The job of the supporter is to make sure everybody else can do their job properly and enhance your teammates abilities. If your adc has more gold he deals more damage and so you implicitly already helped your team. 400 gold on your adc means he might get that BF. Sword or the Duskblade on one trip back to base less, snowballing into a kill.
Like playing with one player top, one mid and two players bottom it is widely agreed on to let the adc get the farm in bottom lane unless you agreed upon sharing some gold with your adc beforehand.
Greetings from Germany
PS: English is obviously not my first language so please excuse any mistakes.
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I’m glad that you liked it and thanks for reading! Yeah I softened on that stance since then because it was later explained to me that that rule is a huge oversimplification and there ARE cases where it makes sense for the support to be hitting the minions like I thought (and the types of situations where I was usually doing so). I just didn’t like the idea of “DON’T TOUCH THEM. EVER.” Cause that’s no fun lol
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