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Move along, everyone, over to Sketch Suppression which is where you'll find me from now on!

What's in a Name?

So, I'm thinking about changing the name of the blog. There are reasons for this which will probably become apparent in the near future, but for now I'll just say "I need a new name" and leave it at that.

Well, almost. See, my imagination is kind of...lacking. I've been told this is extremely silly, cause when you mention your hobby is art, people expect you to be all imaginative.* And I can be, by all means, but unless I'm naming a dog, I suck at names.**

So I've been through a lot of suggestions by now - Guardian Ditz*** is an old favorite cause, well, it's a fun name. However, I'm not going to be all about priests, and especially not holy at that. My priests**** are disc, after all! (I might have reserved the name, tho, just because it is awfully cute.)

Aymsorb is pretty fun too - a nickname an old guildie threw at me. And it's not just about priests, as druids and pallies also have the ability to absorb stuff - and I'm pretty much known as Aymee on the web, so it's not entirely restricted to that char of mine called that. However, it's pretty short, and calling your blog simply "Aymsorb" sounds...silly. This opinion of mine has been somewhat reaffirmed by four friends all going "....don't you have any other things you can call it?" when I presented this option to them.

After that, I moved on to first looking everywhere in hope of sudden inspiration, and then starting to consider silly renaming of movies, along the lines of "For a Few Healers More" and "A Fistful of Heals".
I rather like the last one, if I'm to be honest, but I wonder if it might not be a bit too descriptive. Half of my blog is (supposed to be) art, after all, not to mention my love for my feral-druid tends to pop up a lot. (It's being suggested to me that "For a Few Alts More" would maybe fit better, but I leave that name for Toes. Besides, "alts" is a bit too short for the name to be awesome enough.)

At this point, I'm liable to just start picking random words I like. "The Peregrinations of Aymee", for example. Or something involving the word "efficacious", simply because it's awesome.

*I just DRAW stuff. If you want people with imagination, go find a writer.
**This is the result of raising your daughter in a forest miles away from people, with fourty or so dogs. We'll be masters of snow and dog-naming, and possibly not much else.
***Not even my idea. Toes came up with it for me.
****Yes, "priests". Plural. Go away, I'm allowed.

Oops.

So, uhm, yeah. Hi!

I blame Toes. He got me hooked on Dragon Age, which led to me getting Mass Effect 1 and then ME2 came out and Torchlight is really fun and and and...

Between actually doing schoolwork (Shut up, hektor, I really am this time! You can ask my professors!), showing up for work so I can get money, and all those funny games, WoW sort of fell... off....away....somewhere.

My poor raidleader, I feel for him. Both a discpriest and a holydin went "AFK LULZ" on him, but I have now promised, on my soul and all the music that is good, that this coming week I shall attend at least 75% of the raids. (I would attend 100% but we're doing extra raids on Thursday now, and I can't raid those days, boooo!)

Now, however, I shall try to do an heroic, and see if I remember how this game works. Huzzah!

Raiding - Choosing your Category.

As I've mentioned, I'm a raider in a ten-man guild. We do okay - and by that I mean we spend one, sometimes two raids to get through ICC, depending on when we start. Our alt-raid has cleared both left- and right-face, tho they haven't had any tries on the Professor yet. (Which oddly enough means that our alts are doing as well as our mains, since we've yet to down the Prof too. Had him at 1% this week, tho!) My only lvl 80 alt isn't quite well enough geared to join the alt-raids, so I tend to sit those out.

Last week the big question popped up. We'd been approached by another guild, also focusing on ten-man-raiding. They wanted to team up, a raiding-coalition for ICC 25. We had a guildmeeting to determine what to do - would we agree to setting up another raid every week - quite possibly spanning over several nights before all of ICC would be released and we'd cleared it?

Now, I draw, a lot. I never took any classes on it, though I often considered it. I've fantasized, more than once, about getting a degree in animation - but I suspect my abilities aren't quite there yet, and I can't really afford it either. Nonetheless, a lot of my spare time is spent either on my tablet or with a sketchbook in my hands. The best present I ever got, hands down, was Painter 11 from my boyfriend.

I work part-time in a bookstore specializing in fantasy/scifi-stuff, that also does used books, lego, playmo, games workshop, and a gazillion other things. (Branching out is a necessity if you want to survive in a small town) This is where I spend three days a week*, and it's how I pay the rent, my wow-subscription and all of my other things. I've chosen not to do the whole student-loan-thing, as it's perfectly possible to go without if you have a job that pays well enough. It does mean, however, that I can't afford to miss work, nor turn down extra shifts if offered.

I'm also a student - I've stuck my toe into both lawschool and computer science, but have ended up feeling best doing a course that focuses on the english language and literature. Granted, I study less than I should, and could stand to attend my classes more, something some friends of me tend to tease me a lot about, but still, it's something I do that takes up a certain amount of my time. I do my reading, I take absurd amount of notes**, and so on.

My point in this? I don't really have a lot of spare time. While some might argue that both WoW and drawing are things I choose to do and thus should be sacrificeable (is that even a word?) I tend to approach it as something I have to do. I would never play a game I didn't find fun, but I was raised with the notion that if you do something, you do it properly - and that philosophy stuck. My main source of fun in WoW is raiding - and if I'm a raider, I attend raids and I do my best. If I'm to draw, I will practice as often as I can, and I will have goals and work towards those.

This attitude does, of course, come with drawbacks. I've burned out, more than once, when I worked as an officer, or attended too many raids every week - I've come to learn that 25-man raiding is ill suited for me, as you're usually expected to also attend 10-mans. Two raids a week is my general limit, and while I can do a third once in a while, it's not something I want every week.

"But Aymee", someone once said, "you can just sign off, you know! You don't HAVE to come every time!".

True enough. I CAN do that. But let us say that your guild is struggling with attendance - especially among the healers. Let us say you're the only discipline priest, a healer-type that can be dumped into almost every situation and still do an excellent job. You're wanted for that ability - you can fill in for that paladin who couldn't make it on tank-healing, or go full absorb-mode to help out on raid-healing should the shaman be unavailable, and most of all: simply cause the raid NEEDS one more healer, class be damned, and if you don't come, the raid doesn't go.

I've been there, several times, and I know myself well enough by now: I have trouble saying no when I know just how much another healer is needed. Especially if it means the raid just might not get off if I choose not to go.

This brings me back to ten-mans - it's a lot easier to fill the raid-slots there and have a few spare raiders, thus not making anyone more "important" than others. We have healers enough, I know that in a pinch I can sign off and the raid wont suffer for it.*** Keeping my raiding strictly to tens is my compromise, really. It ensures I'll have enough evenings free for drawing, studying and my social life.

There's also the fact that while I love my priest, I like to do other things than raiding too. I pvp sometimes, I have alts, and I love running heroics with my friends in the evening. It's a great way to stress down, it's a nice way to keep in touch with the people who live far away - and lets face it, when you live all the way up in Norway, EVERYONE not in your town is far away.



In the end, almost every raider in our guild voted no. Some, because we were doing really great on the Strict 10-man Progress List, and if one more person got a 25-achievement, we'd be unqualified for that. More than a few for my exact reason - time. Combining studies, work and a social life with progressraiding can get tricky, and some of us found our answer in sticking to one category only. (And then, of course, most of us are elitist bastards and didn't really fancy having to cooperate with a guild with rules and values that didn't really fit with ours. We're pretty happy-go-lucky, we roll on loot, and most importantly: almost every one of us is in the guild because someone we knew there got us in. )

I'm pretty happy with that. I miss doing 25 once in a while, but what I gain from not doing that far outweights the emblems and loot I could have gained.


Even if this means I'll be stuck with the HoR-offhand forever. ****




*Often more, depending on the amount of customers we're getting, if I need to make certain orders, etc. I'm solely responsible for keeping the manga-, roleplaying- and comics-sections stocked and up-to-date, in addition to taking the monthly order of future releases.

**A habit aquired during my year in lawschool - our professors covered a lot we should know that wasn't in the books, and the books were seemingly written around the time Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, if you judge by the language used. Getting through the required reading took a lot of dedication.

*** We do not, however, have an abundance of tanks, which is kind of why my alt is focusing on her bear-gear.

****There is not a single offhand in 10 that does not have hit. My only hope is that there's a twohander from Arthas that'll be an upgrade.

Aymee - Discpriest Extraordinaire

So, this is what I did this weekend. Mostly. Well, in addition to various heroics, some JC-grinding and a lot of other things. It was one of the first saturdays I had off from work in a very long time, so I had a lot of spare time.


Naturally, I have a gazillion things I'd like to fix now, but at some point you have to say "Okay, no more". I have a tendency to never finish things, ever, unless someone rips it out of my hands and refuse to give it back. I'm being good. I'm being Done With It.

In other news: finally got my authenticator - no hacker will be disenchanting MY gear, no sir! More importantly, I finally have my own little core hound pet. That pesky little Fawn will be mine, one day.

I don't actually have any T10 yet - but a girl can dream!

Toesies!

Did a really fast sketch of Toesies, after him bugging me while waiting for groups. It's now seven in the morning, and I really need to find my bed, but I'm having too much fun doing quick charactersketches. Toying with the idea of doing it of my guild - we'll see what tomorrow brings.

(Being home with a cold has its' perks, after all)

Mitsune

Doublepost today, in honor of our second try at Rotface. Our beloved raidleader is running a wee bit late, so I'm using that time on my blog instead. Anyone would agree that's a sensible priority, right? Right!

Anyway, Mitsune belongs to my roomie. She's a paladin, and while her owner might object, she was one of the first prot-paladins on Darksorrow, back in the vanilla-days. Healing her was a pleasure, and I never seem to grow tired of sketching her. It might have something to do with her eyebrow-piercing; I always wanted one when I was a kid, never quite dared to get one.

Instead I got a tattoo. Critics claim tattoos should be more scary than piercings, but I disagree. They're punching a HOLE in your BODY, cmon!