Posts Tagged ‘warcraft’

(Instant Ramen) Siblings in War

Friday, June 2nd, 2017

Double art post! There was a little over a month’s gap between them but here’s some art of my and Robert’s WoW mains.

Also here’s some process videos:

#gronngaline

Thursday, November 5th, 2015
#gronngaline

1-2-3-4-GRONNGA! (courtesy of Morri @mindfulaide)

So, tonight was supposed to be our big bad Normal Archimonde kill. I was even set to record the raid session and from it prepare a YouTube of the actual kill so that Sarahtonim (our goblin Resto shammy) can see, since she’s on extended leave (though her twin sister Suzi was able to come back).

And well, we did get some pulls in! But our boss-man (who is also one of our tanks) had car trouble and had to take an extended AFK so someone could drive him back to his workplace to get stuff out from said car. So, loyal Peons being loyal Peons, we wait. Others wander AFK themselves for bio breaks/beer reloads/letting dogs out…

…then silliness starts during the downtime. Those of us who raid know this well.

Robert is the type who would whip out mounts from his ginormous collection for showing off their /mountspecial. Eventually he gets to his Coalfist Gronnling that I gave him on his second day back, and then a Gronnga Line happens. (Oddly enough, we must credit the Gronnga Line to Suzi, way back when we were just poking at Hellfire Assault.) I mount up on my own Gronnling and jokingly /yell GRONNGA LINE! Because, uh, siblings in silliness. :P

Other guildies (specifically Luna/Niisaar and Morri) join in, following Robert around on their Gronnlings (and with the “RP walk” on, no less) and I’m behind them, awkwardly trying to get a screencap to toss on Twitter. (they are also tweeting this #gronngaline, hashtag and all, and our handles get exchanged) Then George/Ninigi (other tank) and Schado get in on it, too.

#gronnhug

aww, a group gronn-hug!

And this goes on for a good half-hour before Linux pipes up on vent, announcing that because Char is taking way too long to get back, we’re going to stop for the night. Still, we got a pretty good #gronngaline going, complete with hashtag (and I still question why the crap Robert doesn’t have Twitter, he even uses “hashtag punchlines” like I do). We also learn that my brother is a filthy Burning Legion loyalist and probably chugs Gul’dan-made Gatorade on a regular basis, since he was /saluting Archimonde and such. You could basically drop him in Kilrogg’s place during that particular cutscene in the legendary ring questline, and absolutely nothing would change. XD

For tomorrow’s alt run via Critically Insane, I’ve not only recruited Robert since he wants the fist weapons that drop from Fel Lord Zakuun, but Schado is tagging along as well. Not for loot, but because Schado was so amused by the OpenRaid notice that Frailin (Critically Insane boss-man) writes that he wants to meet these dudes that my cow priest hangs around with. Okay XD

For the curious, some choice pieces of the OpenRaid notice:

About us: We are a filthy casual group. We lust/tranq on trash routinely, but it’s usually because one of us is cracking up everyone else, or talking about the War of 1812, or Disney World. Occasionally, we kill bosses.

Composition: (…)  If you are new or inexperienced you are also welcome – we will take you under our filthy wings.

Voice communications: We use Mumble. Please download and install before raid start. You do not have to speak but you MUST listen for callouts and our inane banter. 

Misc items: We curse and tell dirty jokes and whatnot. We occasionally make tongue-in-cheek comments on potentially sensitive topics. I expect people in this group to be mature enough to know how to converse with other adults in a jovial but respectful fashion – our conversations often remind me of happy hour, complete with the alcohol.

Now, I’m not a drunk raider (even though that’s what Critically Insane is, drinking raid group) but anyone who goes out of his way to make silly raid advertisements like that has to be worth hanging around with. XD

Christmas Creep (or, “I am a filthy contrarian”)

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2015

So I see a bunch of people on Facebook are, in addition to posting aggravating “simpler times were better/I am an 80s kid and it rocked back then” and “I’ma wear my Jesus on my sleeve and if you don’t like it you’re a horrible person” memes, and also the “parents should regrow their backbones and smack their children” ones (which led to me making a low-key but still kinda vocal rant on Twitter about how people who say “I was spaganked and I am okay” are not really okay at all because they were conditioned to think violence against children is acceptable, with the noticeable disclaimer that because of my background I am more likely to view such things through the lens of abuse. I blame my lack of post-surgery pain meds for that one because I am usually much better at holding my tongue).

Ugh, okay, fine. I don’t obnoxiously broadcast my atheism/asexuality… and this being the internet, my obsessing over cats seems to be well-tolerated.

Now we have the “Christmas Creep haters” and the “these awesome stores are closed on Thanksgiving” memes.

Oh dear.

The Christmas Creep haters can actually get pretty, uh, vicious in their hate. One is all “for every mention of Christmas, God kills a baby reindeer.” Overkill much? o_O I get that you kinda want to give Thanksgiving its proper time, and your aversion to the blatant commercialization of Christmas at the expense of its spiritual origins, but, damn. (Spoiler alert, Thanksgiving is heavily commercialized too.)

But I’ma be the wielder of unpopular opinions and contrarianism once more. I LOVE Christmas. Yes, I’m a filthy atheist and I freaking love Christmas. I fully embrace its blatant secular commercial aspects. For one thing… lights! Lights are shiny and happy and this is the one time of year I have no problem jacking up my electric bill to illuminate my tiny-ass synthetic tree (that I unfortunately need to replace due to aging, it’s breaking apart pretty badly). I love seeing the house lights on the rare occasions I am able to go out, and this year I intend to try walking around my block on a regular basis to look at them. While I live in SoCal, the land in which snow is something you would see more on TV/art than in real life, I like the winter-themed decorations in the stores and around the city. I will even happily stomach your blatantly-religious Christmas music since it’s quite pleasant to listen to. And, of course, Christmas is an excuse to eat eat eat and eat some more, candy and sweet breads and such.

(Loot is… a distant perk, I guess. About 10-ish years ago it might have been more important, but not so much anymore. I mean, it’s nice if I get something, but… no big, you know?)

So, yes, I am in favor of Christmas Creep. I’m not a big fan of Thanksgiving because first and foremost, I find turkey and most Thanksgiving food rather bland and unappealing. (Sadly the hospital food was NOT helpful in this regard, they kept pushing turkey and I’m all “uh no thank you, I was happier on the liquid diet since that way I got chicken soup”) This of course leads into the guilt trips over not liking turkey like “normal” people, which in turn leads to a lot of needless mashing of my depression and anxiety buttons. While in recent years that hasn’t happened so much because nobody comes over for Thanksgiving anymore, and we have opted to ditch turkey in favor of takeout like the filthy Americans we are… you never forget that stuff.

This leads to the second part, my distaste for people gloating about stores being closed on Thanksgiving. The original message, that people should be given time off to be with their families, is completely legit and I’m okay with that. But when you start gloating and shaming others because they shop at places that ARE open, that’s what I have a huge problem with, because you’re missing other sides of the story. For instance, some people don’t have families to spend the holidays with and/or WANT to work on that holiday, because they need the money (and maybe to get away from family. Yes, here I go, seeing stuff through a lens of a person with narcissistic parents.)

Also, I’ma go to bat for those of us who are chronically less-prepared, or just have shit come up and “oh, we don’t have enough food. SURPRISE MARKET TRIP!” If the haters had their way and shut down all the stores– ALL OF THEM– then we’d kinda be screwed. Surprise Thanksgiving Market Trips are, surprise, a common thing in my house because my mom is a LITTLE bit scatterbrained is known to forget to restock/get stuff even though she has apps to remind her. Yep. It would be nice if everyone were perfectly prepared and there were no sudden instances of “oh noes we are missing/don’t have enough of X” so all the markets can shut down for the day and give everyone the day off.

Also ALSO: we statistically have some Canadian-born people that may have already done their Thanksgiving and wouldn’t mind being at work to pick up an extra shift? Just a thought.

Again, this feeds into my true complaint about it, that people either forget or are plain unwilling to consider alternate scenarios. Le facepalm!

I had my post-surgery follow-up appointment thingy yesterday, and the doctors (the surgeon who actually did the surgery, and a cute lady doctor who… well, I don’t think she was in the OR, but she was definitely someone who was involved in evaluation and analysis) removed my JP drain flask. I MAY have inadvertently called it a “jejunum-placed” drain rather than its proper name (“Jackson-Pratt”), oops. I was sent home with antibiotics because the little hole where the JP drain tubing was inserted was starting to get red, and the doctors were all “ruh roh, let’s stop that before a bad infection crops up.” Long pink pills (Clindamycin) are loooooong.

Gotta come back in a week to get the staples taken off, and then it’s just a matter of waiting for everything inside to fully heal.

Arrowhead is a pretty hospital. ALMOST as nice as Kaiser. (Kaiser does have mini-waterfalls in its enclosed garden, so it scores slightly higher there.) You can go to JLSinc.net to achieve high class design.

On the way back, I was hungry, had some extra coin + coupons, and dammit, I was curious about the new All Day Breakfast menu at McDonalds, so I got two Sausage+Egg McMuffins (buy one/get one coupons FTW). And I got fries because fries are better than those tiny hash brown patties. When I got home I poured out some syrup into a condiment bowl so I could dip my McMuffins, kinda like a breakfast version of au jus. It was gloriously tasty, would very much recommend. :)

UNFORTUNATELY things took a tragic turn a couple hours later, as when I was moving my table that had my water cup and my ninja macbook Dinah, I kinda sloshed the water and some big drops got on Dinah’s keyboard, and I guess enough got in where the damage was critical. Stupid me! I should have closed her lid, but I was so used to doing this that… ugh. I dried her off and powered down and turned her upside down to let anything in there drain out, and tried to reboot her later that evening, but it was too late. Her “body” is in situ near my bed. :\

She’s 2 years out of warranty, and the current Mac Book models are way too expensive to even consider… so I’ma have to go without for the foreseeable future. Sort of. Rather than get a replacement laptop, I guess I’ll just fling my spending coin (the portion of my SSI money that I do my best to keep away from my mother when she drains me every month for bills) on the iPad Pro+Pen that’s supposed to come out later this month. I thought I was going to not bother looking into that even though it has tasty pressure levels and I can use it as a proper drawing tablet, but with Dinah broken, this suddenly became a more appealing option. I’ma have to piggyback on my mother’s Best Buy credit though, something I am not exactly jumping for joy over… but yeah. Definitely getting it in gold, because if I’ma get Apple, I may as well go Full Bling. :P

BECAUSE OF THIS (needing more coins, and having something to facilitate art), I will most likely be opening up Gourmet Ramen commissions soon. I was hesitant to do any commission work after being approved for SSI because of concerns about interference with benefits, but, screw it, it probably gets read as “beer/fluff money” and won’t count (and I don’t think the government cares enough to track recipients’ bank accounts in real time, that shit is probably expensive to do for not much reward).

Finally, today is Tuesday, which is yay because that means raiding with bro and Lazy Peons. Robert sent me a cute tell when he was logging out, “yell at me if I oversleep!” (Usually it’s ME who oversleeps…) I was all “I will (politely) yell at your phone. And then give it cookies. Because mage tables.”

Absolutely no regrets in dragging him into Lazy Peons. Probably one of the best things I’ve done in WoW, and we’re all better for it. He seems happier having more people to talk to, he gets to be an Orc, I have more reason to play my Horde people, and the guild overall likes him. We just gotta get him to talk on Vent, so people will believe me when I describe him as being a blend of David Hayter and Will Smith (complete with “oh HELL no”).

(Instant Ramen Sketchbook) Yoshi ~Hydromancer~

Friday, October 23rd, 2015
Water. Lots of water. Also a Yoshi.

Water. Lots of water. Also a Yoshi.

Art post, what? Yoshi (the human version) with the basic version of Ebonchill (the Frost Mage Artifact weapon), and lots of water.

Originally, Kiros and Kestine were to appear in this as well, but I had a lot of setbacks time-wise because of repeated illness and had to drop them from the final composition. ANOTHER TIME, I suppose!

This piece is for the Legion art event on Wowhead. As of this writing the results have not been released, but there is potentially a Wacom Cintiq 27QHD Touch on the line. But there’s also 13-inch Cintiqs up for grabs as well, and even if I were to place 2nd, it still means a free copy of Legion. Because I’m on disability income, any coin I don’t have to spend is always going to be a good thing. (That said, I would be very very happy if I could get either kind of the Cintiq prizes because I’d otherwise never be able to afford them!)

This week I actually got to raid with Robert, and it was pretty effing rad! He’s already racked up 3 tier pieces and up to ilvl 691. He is also open to tagging along on the Critically Insane runs (technically alt runs for me since I’m using cow!Phil with them on a regular basis again, with Robert here and Suzi likely to return next week, Lazy Peons won’t need so much cowbell anymore. Their loss is Mr. Frailin’s gain, I suppose) to fling bonus rolls, since he still needs some pieces to fill out his gear. He’s better geared for Enhancement than Resto, of course.

Let’s hope the Peons can help me sell bro on getting a headset and talking in Vent. Right now he says he can’t be bothered, but I think once he sees how nutty we are he would want to jump in and sass off with Char. Or validate my assertion that he’s voice actor material. It’s been YEARS since I’ve heard bro break out his flawless Dr. Evil voice. Don’t make me a liar, man!

Gut Punch Redux

Friday, October 16th, 2015

I was supposed to raid with Robert on Tuesday. Was going to record the whole thing. It was supposed to be awesome!

Except early Tuesday morning (like sometime after reset)… I’d just made some more Shaman glyphs for him, grabbed my bonus rolls and logged out to lie down a bit, and then SUDDENLY HORRIFIC, SOUL-RENDING PAIN.

Yeah, another intestinal blockage (which could have also been a UTI), and it was obviously bad enough to get myself to the ER. I was so out of it from pain an stress I wasn’t able to poke Robert to let him know what’s what, so now I had the additional worry of “oh crap I’m going to flake out on raid AGAIN, and on bro’s first day raiding with the Peons.

short version of that hospital trip: no no no, under no circumstances are you sticking that NG tube in me again, find some other way to fix this no matter how long it takes or how many days I go without food. (NG tube to suck out the air. Unfortunately in those situations it calls for the bigger tubes which basically render one side of my nostrils/throat useless for breathing, meaning sleep does not happen, and I was exhausted from all the pain and stress. Fortunately waiting it out with IV medication ended up working, and more importantly it was decided that I am to undergo surgery for a hernia repair (it’s been the true cause of these SBOs). GOOD.

But my mother was extremely late in coming to get me on Wednesday, meaning I missed the Part 2 raid. Questions about my priorities aside (let’s be real, as a disabled housebound woman, can you really hold it against me for putting as much emphasis as I do on what goes on in muh vidya gaems? I’m not exactly curing cancer or searching for the mathematical formula for world peace here), this and the underlying “oh no I threw my brother in and totally flaked on his first week” worries were glaring at me the whole time. ARGH.

Yeah, I’m pretty bummed about that! More than, you know, “oh gee, I have a hernia that’s causing me a ton of pain, and have to have surgery” (since that can be fixed) but I can’t re-do Robert’s Lazy Peons raiding debut or the first contact with Char! Those things only happen once! While it was moderately successful without me (he got quite a bit of loot, including tier pants, and stomped on Tyrant Velhari), they were missing one of their healers and Robert was in Enhancement mode (as in, he’s more geared for that than Restoration) and… argh. If my mother hadn’t been super-late, I coulda been there and brought in my cow priest.

Next week, I suppose. :S

Apparently Cy decided to take Robert and some others through Mythic dungeons to get more gear, so that’s good. And Char promoted him to Loafer-rank (I must find out how THAT happened), also good! And so by the time the next LP raid happens, he’ll be better prepared.

Despite everything that happened, I’m really glad I brought in Robert. He seems happier than before, and getting more comfortable around everyone else. Perhaps we’ll be able to sell him on talking in Vent soon enough. :)

As for which of us gets to Lust (if I’m on my mage)? I guess we’ll have to /roll for it. :P