I sure have played a lot over the past week! Between my boyfriend wanting to play whenever he’s home, and you lovely folks wanting to play with me the rest of the time (well, at the same time too, but you get it), I have a lot of options.

Most games have gone the same way as the last several, i.e. terribly. My boyfriend says I’m learning things just by playing, even if I don’t realize it, and logically I know he’s right, but it sure doesn’t feel that way. It’s really disheartening, and it makes me sad.

But I still have lots of fun in bot games, so there’s that! And even games where I play badly can be fun too.

One thing I did learn for sure was how to use Discord! Some guys wanted to play with me and use Discord, and they kindly let me join even though I didn’t feel comfortable speaking for various reasons. I, again, didn’t do very well, but they walked me through everything and explained why we were doing certain things and so on. If I died, sometimes they would tell me how I could have avoided that. And the whole time they were so calm and cheerful! Or at least they sounded that way. It was a really nice, non-stressful experience. I told my boyfriend that I’d like him to try to adopt that approach a little more when playing with me. So thanks, guys!

From that game, I learned that a ward is no good if you’re dead – I died after I placed a ward in the river bush because I felt obligated to, though I knew that it wasn’t an especially safe time and there was a chance that the enemy team could potentially get me, which they did. It was a few minutes in and I still hadn’t placed a ward there, and I thought, I better do it now or else they’re gonna get mad.

Later, my boyfriend* told me that wards like that are shallow wards, i.e. they are so close to you that, though they are better than no wards, they don’t give you much reaction time. It’s much better to place wards further away to see them coming (deep wards), for example in the middle of the river. Sometimes those can’t be placed that early in the game, and good players will recognize when warding is a good idea and when it’s not. I don’t think that many players at my level realize that – it really does seem like warding the river around level 2 is mandatory and I have had people get frustrated at me before for not warding because I felt unsafe. But I mean, really, it makes total sense.

Another reason why I died in that game was because I did not use Sona’s ultimate on an enemy who was low health – I was scared of being accused of ks, like that one time I showed up and was like “HELPING!!! *ults*” as Sona. I was pretty sure that my ally was going to get them, anyway. But I died and I’m pretty sure they did too, and they told me that I should have, regardless of whether I ended up getting the kill or not.

I guess a big thing that I’m learning is to trust my instincts. Of course, sometimes I’m going to be wrong, but it turns out that I actually have decent ones. There were those two situations, and then there was another situation where my boyfriend was the ADC and I was the support. He recalled, and I kind of wanted to stay to defend our tower and because I had no reason to recall myself. That’s what I would do if I was playing on my own. But I figured that he would want me to recall with him, especially since he doesn’t want me hitting minions, so I did. And then our tower went down, and he was like, “That was probably the worst possible time for you to have backed.” And I was like, “Well you should have told me that then,” but…yeah. If only I hadn’t second guessed myself!

I continued to practice with Karma and Nami, and I feel like I’m decent at both of them now. They are probably my favourite champions to play right now, which sort of makes me feel like I’m cheating on Soraka, but…eh. The newest thing is always your favourite thing, right? Nami’s abilities are just super fun to watch, and Karma’s shield is more visible, I feel, than other shields, so I feel less confused when I give it to someone. When there’s a team fight going on or the recipient takes damage immediately after I give them the shield, I’m always like…what just happened??

Most interesting to you guys will probably be that I played Zyra since she was on free rotation, and I like her now! I was just underwhelmed before because I was expecting her seeds to be stone-cold murderers.

And I bought Lulu, who I didn’t really want all that much, but according to everyone, you’re not a real support player until you have Lulu, or something, so I did. (It also helped that I got an IP boost with some of the RP Riot gave me, so it didn’t feel so painful.) I warmed up to her as well! (Again, it also helped that my boyfriend bought me her Star Guardian skin.) She’s a little stressful because 3 of her abilities require clicking on a specific person, which in my opinion is even worse than skill shots because it’s just like STOP MOVING!! And it’s hard to tell whether you’re in range or not, too. But she’s real cute – I mean, she’s basically just hair – and her abilities are real sparkly, so it’s worth it.

Playing Lulu led to my discovery that you actually don’t have to click on the person, per say, you can just hold down the button, hover your cursor over them, and then let go. That is a bit easier for sure! Now I just have to get used to doing it.

My boyfriend is also all up in my grill for not using my number keys for items/wards, but I don’t want to have to take my fingers off of my abilities! That seems like a recipe for death, honestly. Maybe not for other people, who have decent reaction time and are used to this kind of thing, but for me.

He taught me how to place wards over walls though, and I’m hoping he can teach me how to cast abilities and flash over walls, too, which I didn’t even realize was a thing. That’s right, I’ve been playing for 6 months and NEVER KNEW YOU COULD FLASH OVER WALLS. I knew that some champions had abilities that allowed them to do that, but ANYBODY with a flash spell can do it. Including me! Do you even know how many times I could have avoided death if I’d known that??? A LOT.

I am learning a lot from him though, as frustrating and stressful as it can be, and while I do kind of miss the other things we used to do together, it is really nice to have this in common and be able to talk about it.

We were just lying in bed chatting the other night about Aziz Azir, and he said, “I actually have a really cool skin for Aziz. I got it from a box.”

“…A box?”

“Yeah.”

“You mean a chest?”

“Same difference. A chest is just a fancy box anyway. If anything, a chest is inferior, because you can’t even take the lid all the way off.”

To be honest, I kind of agree…and that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we’re perfect for each other (the sole reason. There can’t possibly be others).

Seriously though, what if chests were just called boxes? Would it make it feel more or less exciting? And what if Thresh’s ultimate was called, like, “The Prison” instead of “The Box”? Would that be less creepy?

Let us know in the comments! (Here at League of Love, we talk about the deep stuff.)

Death snack of the week: Chip cake and actual cake

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*Ok, I really feel like I’m saying ‘my boyfriend’ too much. How much is it bothering you guys that you don’t know his actual name?? Should I just call him tect??