Hello everyone! Snarfunkle, AKA tect, AKA Chelsea’s boyfriend here to give a rundown of my experience with the League of Love reveal! As you probably have read by now, I was totally taken by surprise by Chelsea on our anniversary when she directed me to her blog that morning.

Initially, I was still kind of sleepy; Chelsea likes to joke that I have all of the “koalaties” of a koala. I don’t think I quite processed what was going on very well as the post Chelsea initially presented me with was “The Last Day – For You” (what was then the final post), which doesn’t actually explicitly mention League of Legends.

I was on my phone while lying in bed, and the site does not have the greatest formatting on mobile – the menu only appears if you tap to show it, so I didn’t even realize that there was months’ worth of archived posts. I suppose one way to frame it is that I gathered that Chelsea was rambling ever so slightly about grand romantic gestures in the introductory paragraph. At this point, I don’t recall even noticing the title of the blog/domain, or even the tagline outlining her quest. Needless to say, I was a little confused! I seem to remember thinking that in the context of “two things that you basically eat, sleep and breathe – I’m one of them”, the other thing was our dog. In retrospect, I guess this was a rather peculiar line of reasoning.

By the time that I reached the end of the blog entry, fuzzies were starting to well up inside a bit, but I still had not fully fallen under the spell of the League of Love. I couldn’t help but throw myself into the early blog posts, eager for insight into Chelsea’s quest, fascinated by the scope of her endeavour and the depth of her commitment. The further along I read, the more acutely I realized that this was the real deal! She had truly immersed herself into the League universe, dedicated not only to learning, but to truly understanding what makes the game special to me and countless others. This was no half-assed attempt to impress me with a cursory interest in my most time-consuming hobby. She wanted to make it a part of herself as well, to find qualities and characteristics of League that would make it genuinely special to her. How can you not admire someone for that?

For the rest of the day we co-existed in a League bubble. I continued to read the blog through to the end while consistently reviewing the entries with Chelsea. Her gift of writing permitted me to feel as though I was watching her learn right before my eyes, but at such a pace that I had difficulty fully reconciling the reality of her time investment over the past 6 months. Had she really been spending all of her free time playing? This was staggering for me!

Now, I have an idea of what you may be thinking: League has taken over our relationship/lives. While not entirely false, the fact that we have yet another significant pastime to enjoy with one another just feeds into the dynamic of the relationship we already shared. The reality is not that League has taken over, but that we have even more avenues through which to engage in deep discussion and spend quality time.

Soon after the revelations were made to me, we decided to load up onto the Rift against some AI – truth be told, I believe that we both felt a little more comfortable this way for the first game together. I was impressed with the number of habits that seemed to come naturally to her, like last hitting, warding and trading.

After a few games we were confident enough to play some PvP. Over the past week or so, we have definitely won some games hard and lost other games equally as hard. All in all, seems pretty standard. Many of the games have been learning experiences for both of us. We had a mix of blind and draft pick games and tried our hand at bot lane duo or trying to make jungle-mid synergy happen since we are sitting across from one another. That part of it has been really fun because when we make plays or when she learns something new, we can look across the table and see each other’s reaction, which is something I have never experienced before!

Chelsea has been filling her friends list with a number of you who have read the blog, and it has been a delight to meet so many of you and to get to play games with you all. There is something very pleasant about coming together to play this game with you where the objective is not just to destroy the Nexus, but also to make a connection over things such as the League of Love blog, the champions we choose for our roles, and even just chatting in between lobbies about how daily life has been outside of the game.

Overall, this has been a tremendous experience so far and I look forward to establishing more connections on and off the Rift with fellow Summoners I hope to call friend

-Snarfunkle, AKA tect, AKA Chelsea’s boyfriend