The Nam-Shub of Rex

If you're looking for some sort of response to the State of the Union you're going to have to look elsewhere. Honestly, I tried to watch like a good little member of the informed electorate should but oh my fucking god, I wanted to tear my eyeballs out by about the fifteen minute mark and had to turn to other amusements.

So, I switched off on the game of kings, grabbed a beer - to dull the pain - and loaded up the game of nerds. Figured I'd been avoiding it long enough so I rolled up a Monk and headed to the RA. Because, baby, if you can Monk in RA, you can Monk anywhere - totally unsupported, no idea what your teammates have, running for your life, being targeted with everything the other team has to throw at you. It's controlled chaos at its finest (I'm reminded of something I once wrote in a guide to Monking that, for one reason or another, I never got around to finishing. "A Monk has to be, above all, calm. A placid sea of rationality amidst the roiling chaos around them. While other characters are about speeding up the game, a good Monk tries to slow it down. The first rule is not to panic. To take a measured look at the situation and apply the right countermeasure at the right time. Good reflexes help but so does an ability to triage: help the ones you have to, ignore the ones you don't , and forget about the ones who are already gone." Sigh, I really struggled to find another word for "measured" there, you know. So much wasted effort.). In other words, a lot of fun.

It's something I've been meaning to do for a while ever since I picked up Zealous Benediction with some faction I had laying around. Build wasn't anything too fancy - ZB, Gift of Health, RoF, Dismiss Condition (another nice pickup I've made along the way), Shield of Absorption, and Holy Veil formed the core of it. None of this twitchy Infuse stuff for me, I'm not quite quick enough for that yet but just straight out power out the healing and scramble to keep your team afloat (And it's not like people spike in the Arena anyway.) that's right at my speed. Rode high on Divine Favor and equaled out Healing and Prot. For my secondary, since over the weekend I saw a lot of Assassins carve up Monks like no buddy's business, I went with Warrior. I figured a combination of Balanced Stance and Shield Bash would blunt spikes enough for me to prot my way out of them.

For the most part, I was right. My timing's a bit off and I missed getting Shield Bash up in time to catch them as they tried to port i but it usually caught them on the dual which works just as well. And Balanced Stance was great for keeping from getting knocklocked while also preventing those huge Dervish crits. So I was Monking it up alright but my teammates were another story. One of my friends likes to twirl around the RA as a Monk (Pretty much for the same reason as I do. Way back when the game came out someone once asked me why I'd Monk around in RA so much. I told them it's the only way I know of to make sure that the person keeping me alive knows what they're doing there. My best streaks have always come when I'm playing as a Monk. Go figure.) named "Kill Someone Please". As I told him tonight, I completely understand where he's coming from now.

There was the one team comprised of two Monks and a defensive Rit with a warder which was fun. Topped, though, by the team of four, count 'em, four Monks - if you've ever played around in the Arena wanting to trade your kingdom for a Monk, I'm sorry but I think we just used up the supply with that team - other team, much to their grumbling, couldn't kill us until everyone on my team quit in frustration (Sadly, I'm not uber-Monk enough to handle the pressure from three or four characters indefinitely yet. I did hold out for a while, though, and that makes me feel good. Hey, let 'em call me a n00b and other names for kiting them around and making them work for it. I call it practice.). Another team had me and another Monk along with an Assassin and a touchy-feely Ranger - we went up against this team featuring some kind of weird Signet based MesMo that gave them fits, I guess. Because they couldn't get a kill for eight freaking minutes (Which, um, is a long time in the Arena). And by the time it was over another three minutes later we still had a flawless.

Beyond that my real problem was fighting off hexes. Holy Veil's nice and all but just doesn't do the job of mass removal - getting burried under a stack of hexes is something I don't have much defense against. And damned if I know what else I can do about it. Because it's not like there are any hexes out there that really hurt and can be covered up easily at all.

So, I didn't get a lot of faction on the night. But I think in the brief time I played that I was getting into the flow of things.

Speaking of which, writing's going great, thanks for asking. I didn't get much of that done tonight because I've been trying to get caught up on my Math studies which I've been neglecting. But I've got outlines and blocks of text for several stories knocked out and waiting for me to pick one to run with. Short stories are the way to go at the moment, I've decided, instead of jumping back into things with a novel. It's a format I'm much more comfortable with anyway. With luck I'll have at least one done by the end of the week which is my goal. Not quite back to the days of churning out 10k at the drop of a hat but I'm getting there which makes me feel good.

That, I think, is why I just had to tune out the SotU and the ensuing coverage (Which I also just made the mistake of trying to watch. I think there's another case of beer in the fridge. I'm going to need it.). It's just been so depressing lately. Following the giddy high of that marvelous election and those rays of morning sunlight peaking over the horizon in my heart, it's come crashing back down into reality. Just settled back into routine the way the world is want to all the time. It's been hard to hold out hope as opportunities are being squandered. Hard to stay interested when the whole process just sickens me. But, you know, I think that just means it's time to try even harder - because if I stop who else will? No, things are a mess but things are always a mess. And working to make them better is the only way they'll change.

Outlook: Energized.

Time to work harder.

[1] - 30 minutes.