I tried a brand new (to me) champion this week, Jarvan IV. Or J4, as people apparently call him, which I think is hilarious because it makes him sound like a teen heartthrob. Or maybe just a teen magazine (J-14 – did anyone else read this when they were in high school? No? Just me? Ok). I liked him; he is certainly a champion that I would struggle with but he does some cool stuff for sure.

I gave Malzahar another chance as well and I actually like him now! I’m not sure why I didn’t like him before, tbh. Maybe something happened to him between then and now? I feel like he did get some kind of update but I have no idea what it was or if it would be enough to cause me to do a complete 180.

Also new this week is that I bought Blitzcrank, who I’ve played a number of times before, but now I own him. I still haven’t played him in a PvP game yet though (except for one ARAM that went terribly) and I feel like I might have trouble when I do. I’m anticipating that people would expect a lot of me as Blitzcrank, or at least that I land the vast majority of my hooks, because he’s just such a strong champion if played well. And, at least for me, Blitzcrank is banned so frequently that when someone gets to play him, it’s like aw snap, shit is going DOWN.

Aside from that, I spent most of the week practicing with Karma and Nami. Nami was easier; I even got an S- with her! I was having terrible game after terrible game with Karma though, and I was starting to feel like I would never improve, but then just the other day I had one where I got an A. Our team struggled but in the end we won and I definitely felt like I was a major contributing force, for once. I still managed to get snapped at for something, of course, but overall it was still a nice feeling. Something that I learned that really helped was that her shield also gives a speed boost. For some reason I never noticed that before, but once I did, I was able to identify more opportunities where it would be useful. My boyfriend also says that I need to work on using her W more, and I agree. Practice makes better!

I’ve also been practicing with Ahri in bot games a bunch and I do think that I’m improving. I’m still not good enough, but it’s something and that feels nice too. Something my boyfriend pointed out was that when I charm someone, I have a habit of walking towards them to continue to attack them (because I want to use my W) rather than letting them come to me. He says that moving towards them puts me in greater danger and I would have a better chance of surviving and getting a kill of I stayed in place or even moved slightly further away. To compensate for the distance, he suggested to use her Q first, THEN her W – I usually do it the other way around.

I enjoyed that last week’s rotating game mode was Poro King once again. I played a Poro King game with one of you lovely readers in which our entire team was comprised of support champions – Karma, Bard, Taric, and me, Sona – except for Vel’Koz. And I immediately conjured an image in my mind of Vel’Koz looking super cool, maybe wearing sunglasses, with 2 supports at each side leaning up against him/her in sexy outfits, like some kind of hot new pop band. Vel’Koz & The Supports, anyone?? (Someone please draw this for me; I need this in my life.)

Anyway, I had not been able to play Sona in Poro King or ARAM yet, so I was excited to try her out. And I…did well?? I got 50 assists and I was like THAT IS A LARGE NUMBER. I know that Sona is just really great for those game modes in general but still. I was proud of myself. Honestly, our entire team killed it. I know that supports are definitely capable of succeeding on their own but it just felt so effortless, not even like we were compensating for our lack of raw power at all.

This week’s rotating game mode is Dark Star, which I had not played before, and it was um…interesting. Definitely not my favourite. But you can watch this week’s video for that.

Switching gears entirely (I’m great at segues!), I saw a post on reddit from a person who said they had tried everything to stop being a toxic player on League, including turning chat off (they just compulsively turn it back on), but they can’t seem to stop. I found this fascinating and it really gave me a new perspective because I always thought that players like this don’t consider how their words and actions affect others, or if they do then perhaps they think that their words and actions do not affect others in any meaningful way so it doesn’t matter what they say. Or maybe they want to affect others and they want the other player to feel bad because of whatever grievous error they feel that person has made. In short, I assumed that they were okay with everything they were doing, for whatever reasons they had.

I guess this shouldn’t really surprise me too much though – I am very familiar with the difficulties regarding emotional regulation. I come from the mental health field and there are a plethora of mental illnesses that can cause difficulties in regulating mood and emotions, though my experience primarily has been with sadness and anxiety. I suppose I never connected the two communities, but of course there would be overlap, considering that (in Canada) 1 in 5 people will have a mental illness at some point in their lifetime, and millions of people play League. And of course the everyday stressors and tough life situations that we all experience take their toll on everyone, mental illness aside, and that can manifest in many different ways. Just because my response to stress is to curl up in bed and cry doesn’t mean that others respond to stress in the same way.

I know that was a bit of a weird tangent but a big theme that has recurred on this blog, and also in my discussions with some of you, has been toxicity in the League community so I wanted to throw this in there.

What do you think? Do you think there is ever a situation where it would be acceptable, or at least understandable, to be mean to another player?

Death snack of the week: mini sugar donuts

P.S. We wanted to upload a video for you guys today, but we weren’t able to film until yesterday so it will be late this week, I’m sorry! The program we were using turned out to be extremely buggy so my boyfriend has been learning to use OBS, as well as setting up our new mic. Our videos are going to be BLOCKBUSTER quality from now on, guys! It should be up tomorrow (Monday) though. So stay tuned for some Dark Star & Karma footage!

And by the way we won’t be posting every video here because this site is really meant for text posts, not video, so if that is something you are interested please subscribe to our youtube channel here.

P.P.S. Does anyone else find it strangely intimate when you’re practically standing on top of another player in a bush?