The doctor gave me the week off of work so I could relax and let the nice strong medication (Lexomil) he’s put me on take effect.
At least, that was the plan. Reality, however, likes to kick my ass on a regular basis.
There was a situation in my old guild (Stormcrows) that led to a rather large, messy blow-up on Wednesday. There were some things I did to contribute to this situation — namely not taking the two people at the heart of it aside and shaking some sense into them months ago. In my defense, the reason I didn’t do that is because 1) I wanted to stay in the guild and felt that doing that would just get me a nice /gkick and 2) I feared it would cause an explosion (which, in the end, it did).
Critic (Tau’re) inadvertently triggered said explosion by taking one of the parties aside on Monday and talking with them about the situation and asking what could be done to help resolve it. The other party decided to turn around on Tuesday (after Crit, I, and most of the others thought it was resolved and all was on the way towards being cool again) and shout at all of us, accuse us of shutting the two parties out of the guild, gossiping behind their backs, etc, etc etc.
Take two people who don’t say “hi” to anyone for going on six months now. Add a lot of other people wondering if they have done something to make those two angry. Add general confusion as to whether those two people care about the rest of the group. Mix in the officers spending months smoothing things over, explaining that the two are a couple and just want time together and do care…all the while the two do their damnedest to show that they don’t…blend in a person who is on the verge of a nervous fucking breakdown, is ordered home from work because of non-stop panic attacks, is getting ready to announce some world-shattering, life-altering news to various parties who are fragile after a tragic loss that’s left a gaping wound that will never fucking heal, who is having trouble at work, and is just, in general, under the kind of pressure of which diamonds are born. Know what you get?
You get a fuckin’ shitstorm. That’s what.
So, I left Stormcrows and decided to make a go of my joke guild Causes Without Rebels. Before the sun had set Wednesday, I think something like 80% of the Stormcrows had come over to my guild. I spent all day Wednesday setting up the guild site, getting the ranks organized, getting the guild tabard and bank done, and just generally getting it set up.
I’m still amazed that this happened. It totally didn’t have to happen this way. If either of those two had been willing to even acknowledge their role in this clusterfuck, we could have resolved things. Instead, they want to paint themselves as innocent victims instead of seeing that by spending no time with the others for months on end, they created the perception that they didn’t care and that they could not be approached. Maybe there were things that the rest of us could have done to make it better (I’d love to hear specifics on this one!) but we weren’t the ones who forced them to segregate themselves. We didn’t force that dynamic to happen. We did our best to keep things running smoothly even with it going on and, in the end, when we reached out for the final time to ask “can you at least just say “hi” to us once in a blue moon?” we get shouted at.
One of the two made a remark to me that is completely apropos. She said “this is just like being back in school.”
Damned straight. It’s just like being back in high school were the two “cool kids” can’t be bothered to say “hi” to us poor scrubs. Only this time, the scrubs don’t have to keep taking it.
Of those two parties, one of them can go fuck herself. I never, ever want to hear from or of her again. She could win the lottery and I wouldn’t be cheered. She could keel over dead in the street in front of me and I’d just be careful not to step on the corpse. But the other…the other one…the one I thought was one of my closest friends…the one I thought of as a brother…the one I trusted (and I trust damned few people on this planet!)…if he ever decides I’m good enough to speak with again, well, he knows how to reach me. My hand is out to him. All he’ll ever have to do is take it.
There. Glad to get that off my chest. I’ll be going back to the doctor tomorrow to evaluate how well the medication is working and whether or not he thinks I’m stable enough to handle returning to work full time. In the mean time…I have a guild full of my friends I’m going to go hang out with.
— G
Guild Stuff
Argh!
Normally, I post updates to Alayne’s Story during my lunchbreak. However, when I was about halfway to work today, I realized I’d left the USB key with the story on it at home. So, that update will happen later this afternoon when I get home from work.
Thank God I get off work a little earlier on Fridays.
To tide you over for the next few hours, you can watch this totally awesome video* I made of my guild doing Icecrown Citadel.
*I’m not biased at all.
Don’t make promises…
…that you can’t or won’t keep. Unless, of course, you want to get on the Fast Track To Pissing Me Off.
Seriously. How stupid does a person have to be to understand that if you do something such as…accept an invitation somewhere, you’re expected to show up? Do people just randomly go around accepting invitations nowadays? If you wouldn’t do it IRL, why do it online? I always decline invitations to events I know I can’t attend. But then, I was raised right. I’m just going to have to accept that some people have little to no “home training.”
Honestly, if you sign up to participate in something and then don’t show up and never bother to offer an explanation, do NOT act all shocked when I refuse to take you again. Especially if it’s a situation where nine other people are counting on you being there. If you stand up my raids and you do not have the decency to explain yourself or you have a dumbass excuse, all you’re going to do is land squarely on my Shit List.
Gah! This is why we should decline to accept anyone under the age of 25 into our guild in general. Children cannot be relied on, cannot empathize with those of us who have to work full time because Mommy and Daddy don’t pay our rent/food/transport/insurance/medical/children’s/childcare/etc bills for us, and just generally are immature. Yes, there are the odd exceptions to that rule but, in general, someone who is only 18 is going to be much more likely to be an inexperienced immature fuckwit than someone who is 28. Ten years of life and several years of working at a real job DOES make a difference.
Sarth 2D Down!
Groggy just sent me a text message saying they got Sarth +2D down tonight! Congratulations Stormcrows! I wish I had been there but I was just too tired from all the PuG raids this weekend and I wanted to get some work cleared out on Alayne’s Story and The Unexiled.
Grats guys. Hopefully we’ll be able to try it with 3 drakes up soon. That would be just too awesome.
Getting Closer…
I hate to say this aloud because every time we get to this point, all hell breaks loose and we wind up back struggling just to get one 10 man group going.
My guild is so close to having a 25 man group running I can taste it. We’ve had a lot of good recruits from the weekly PuGs we run and more people seem interested in raiding since Ulduar came out. Where some of these guys were when we were struggling through Naxx, OS, and Maly, I don’t know but…well…maybe they’ll stick around this time.
We managed to get Hodir down in Ulduar 10 last night as well. We got a good look at the Thorim encounter but never managed to aggro him (Arena group had issues). I think we’ll be going back there Monday or Tuesday to give it another try and hopefully we’ll get Thorim down. That would put us 9/14 in Ulduar. We also have a decent chance of getting a second 10 man group going this coming reset. That would be awesome.
Some people in our PuG have been asking about doing Ulduar 25. The answer is “not until the Legendary has become as common as dirt or is removed from the game entirely.” Seriously, we have enough loot drama over purples from Naxx (and we added one more name to the blacklist today from it). Can you imagine the whining that would commence over that orange? Even if we were up front and said “all legendaries go to Grognak and he passes on everything else” people would still bitch and moan. If there were a way to guarantee that it never dropped, I’d consider doing an Ulduar 25 pug. Until we get that option, though, I’m not taking random people in there. The most I’d consider would be teaming up with another guild with a clear agreement on the loot arrangement for those shards but that’s it. And, at any rate, we’re dangerously close to being able to do it ourselves so…
Well, I’m going to get back to working on Alayne’s Story and The Unexiled again. I just needed a short break. I’m making real progress on both. I’m kind of hoping to have The Unexiled finished by Christmas so I can try to get it published next year or something.
And it’s back to normal now
I woke up this morning half-expecting a text message from Grog and Crit asking if I was dressed and awake so they could come over. Funny how you can get used to a totally different routine in just a short time, huh?
Last night, once we were all back, we discovered something. Two people decided to transfer away from our realm after we finished gearing them up for Ulduar. Well, those two little pricks are going to be in for it. Bad enough they did that without at least saying “guys, we’re going to transfer to a new realm” but when one of our officers created an alt to ask them why they had gone without even saying goodbye, they put him on /ignore.
So, if any Horde guild members on the realm Magtheridon are readers: Callmecamel and Amoai screwed us over. We gear them up and they transfer off Quel’Thalas. I wouldn’t take them into any serious raiding guild if I were you. If they’ll do it to us and they’ve been in our guild since TBC and we’ve put up with their crap, their overall unreliability, their random vanishings for months on end, etc: they’ll screw you just as hard. And, Camel and Amoai: if you’re reading this, don’t bother to come back. You’re on our little black list and I don’t care if you go out and win the Nobel Peace Prize tomorrow; you’re not coming back to our guild and we’ll warn any guild that does take you in about this little stunt you just pulled. Your buddy Artimize may be in for it if he were part of this (he’s about to have some serious explaining to do).
Yay for guild drama. 🙁
At any rate, I’m still hurting from that last rollercoaster on Thursday. I think I’ll probably take it easy today, try to get some writing done, and just not do anything that requires use of my back. No heavy lifting for me today. I need to try to get relaxed so I won’t be going to work in agony tomorrow.