Kindred, The Eternal Hunters

One aspect of League of Legends that I love is the fact Riot Games is constantly striving to improve the game through patch balances and new additions to the game. They recently revealed the next champion that they are releasing, a character know as Kindred. Kindred is unique among the cast of League champions, as it is comprised of two individuals; Lamb, the stoic archer, and Wolf, the savage spirit.

Riot Games

The lore for Kindred is immensely interesting, as it is revealed that they used to be one being (Most liking the physical representation of Death in this mythos). Everyone ran from this being, as no one wanted to meet with Death. This caused Death to become lonely, so he split himself in the middle. This resulted in his personality being split as well. Lamb, the physical female personality, hunts the souls of those to die and gives them a peaceful rest if they go to death willingly. She has a long memory but lacks many emotions. Wolf, the spirit-formed male personality, tracks down the souls of those who try to escape death and give them an awfully painful death. He leaves memories for Lamb, focusing on the present and the hunt at hand. He is also more playful than Lamb, but brutal.

Official Splash Art

The other aspect of League that I love is the community involved in it. The artistic talent of people all over the world comes together and creates such amazing pieces of art. Kindred's release was less than a week ago, and the internet is already exploding with art about Lamb and Wolf (The furry community has been fairly kind too, and there isn't a crap-ton of porn about them. Yet.) 

Also by Inkiness

By Inkiness

vurdeM

Lighane

Mkuchima

Gumae

Pyroan

Rin

KiyaKoda

Skyen

Rin

There is already so much more art out there about Kindred since I went and collected these few images. Feel free to Google some art, and let me know if you find some really cool interpretations of Kindred. Or send me some art you've found about your favourite champion in League.

Toodles!

Yosnakorn Sothonwong

A form of art that I always find interesting is gender-bending, or gender-swapped, characters. It is the process of taking a well established character and switching their gender (usually from cis male or cis female to the other).

Something about those chains just works better with Female Thresh

Yosnakorn Sothonwong is an artist on Deviantart that makes some absolutely amazing work. The above gender-bent Thresh is an example of his work. Anyone who has played League with me (or just has been following my blog for a while) knows that Thresh is thematically and mechanically one of my favourite champs. 

The cavalry has arrived, indeed.

I do talk a lot about League on my blog, as it's probably my favourite game. But artists do more than just League art. This is a character known as Tracer from the game Overwatch. Tracer is a spunky Australian with the technology to rewind her place in time by several seconds. She is able to reload her weapons, undo damage done to herself, get out of ambushes, or surprise enemies with a position reversal into a flank. If you're familiar with League, she seems to play very much like one of the newer champions, Ekko. Anyway, Yosnakorn does an impressive job of capturing many aspects of Overwatch and it's characters with this single image. The smirk on Tracer's face hints at her playful attitude, the light lines from her weapons imply her impressive speed as a character. There's even a subtle "time shadow" behind her, as her ability to rewind is a core mechanic for her in the game. On of the other characters, Winston, is in the background ...appreciating... Tracer's athletic build. All in all, the artwork captures the spirit of the game and it's characters well. The colouring and shading is beautiful, and it never hurts to have more art out there of a sexy character.

Yosnakorn also likes to merge different fandoms in his art. This piece combines characters from League with the Avenger's franchise (He really likes to combine League with Marvel stuff). The champs that fit each character in the movies are portrayed well in the image. Gnar is hulking out, quiet literally, as his rage-fuelled transforming ability is incredibly similar to The Hulk. Xer'ath is using his magical lightning to power an Iron Man suit. Braum grabs yet another shield to add to his repertoire as Captain America. The hammer of Thor, with it's flexibility of fighting style and powerful emissions is a logical choice for Jayce. Miss Fortune fits the body type, attitude, and weapon style of Black Widow, with Varus and his amazing bow backing her up Hawkeye-style. Lucian's stoic attitude makes him a great choice for Nick Fury (Sorry Ekko, you're a little too punk rock for that one). Master Yi takes over the role of the fast running Quicksilver, with Morgana taking the role of his sister, Scarlet Witch. If that wasn't enough, Malzahar takes flight as Vision, and Azir commands his minions as Ultron. The fact that all of these characters work so well in the art and as crossover personalities is really impressive to me.

From gender-swapping chain wardens, to the most attractive Rengar I've ever seen. Yosnakorn's art is always a pleasure to peruse. Some of his art is NSFW, but the Deviant art filters hide his more revealing works from underaged eyes. This particular character is a favourite of his, with several pieces dedicated to the female Rengar. Yosnakorn also uses the Fem-gar, as it's also known, to cross over skins within League. Here is the Battle Bunny skin that Riven uses, but adapted for Fem-gar. It really makes me wish that one: Fem-gar was a character in League, and two: That this skin happened ASAP. There is also a Heart Seeker Fem-gar, complete with heart eye patch and accents.

This artist really likes to do gender-swaps, and makes some really sexy artwork (a little too sexy for some of my more conservative readers). Give his page a look and support. Maybe one day Riot will pay him for some new skin ideas...


Toodles!

League Community Art

League is obviously one of my favourite games. Part of what makes it so great is the majority of the community that follows the game (There's always toxic people, let's just ignore them). One of the amazing things about a game as huge as League is that people all over the world get inspired by it, and some do absolutely amazing things as a result. Since I don't have a specific post lined up for today, here's a small collection of the awesome things people do with their love for League.

I do apologize for all the artists who made such great work, I don't have the link to the sources or the artist names in question. I will be VERY CLEAR that I DID NOT MAKE ANY OF THIS. Don't abuse Creative Commons, people. Just enjoy the art, and don't steal for profit.

DJ Sona rocking the house

The Meeps are pretty awesome little buddies

Seriously people. Supports aren't the only ones who can buy these

Don't mess with these ladies. They'll destroy you with their balls.

Unnnng. Thresh is so good....

Dat yellow card lock tho

No art collection is complete without some gender-swapping

I'm glad Diana can't go full eclipse in game. Hard counter to Leona. 

SHOOT ALL THE THINGS

Gotta save that ADC when he does the dumb

How can you hate that face? LOOK AT THAT FACE 

Only a technomaturgist would see eye to eye...

Some awesome contest art Riot received. Everyone wants Teemo dead.

And of course, my buddy Nautilus getting ready to STOMP.

Got any awesome video game art? Shoot me a link in the comments!

Toodles!

Renegades into the LCS // Female Gamers

This week was the conclusion of the LCS Challenger Series in North America. This is a long collection of matches that take the best teams in North America that currently aren't in the LCS, and matches them up against the lowest winning teams in the LCS from the previous split. Essentially, the Challenger teams are fighting for a chance to become part of the LCS, and the relegated LCS teams are fighting to get back into the LCS and have another season as professionals.

A relegated team from this last season, Team Coast, made it up to the final round and only had one team left to beat. Up against them was Team Renegades, a challenger team that now only had to defeat coast to become an LCS team. The finals are played in a Best of Five games, and it got taken all the way. Renegades won 3-2, and secured their spot in the NA LCS in the upcoming season. A big congratulations to them, and I look forward to watching them play once the regular season starts up again.

Now, you may be wondering why I'm mentioning and explaining all of this. Team Renegades represents something new to League of Legends eSports. The Support player on their team, Remilia (Current team picture on the right) is a female. This is the first time since League began that a team has made it to the professional circuit with a female member. I'M SO FREAKIN' PUMPED. I know how toxic the gaming community can be towards women who game, so I give her all the support in the world. I hope she just takes the encouragement from the positive members of the community and ignores the idiots that exist in any culture.

There was a team entirely made up of women that tried to get into the LCS, but they unfortunately fell to infighting and their in-game performance suffered too greatly. They now feed the terrible stereotype on Twitch that women just use their bodies to get followers instead of good gameplay. Those who follow the League scene know who I'm talking about, so I won't be mentioning any names.

Best of luck to Renegades, and kick some ass Remilia! Keep on rocking that Thresh!

Renegades website here

Toodles!

Imagine Dragons

If you watched the League of Legends World Championships last year, you would know that the live show was amazing. For those who didn't see it, a group known as Imagine Dragons performed with their band, a full orchestra, and a collection of taiko drummers (It was in Korea). Imagine Dragons is an incredibly talented group of musicians who turned out to be massive nerds. During an interview, the members admitted to being late to perform for a concert because they were finishing up a game of League. 

I'm going to let their musicianship speak for itself below, so I'll talk about how awesome these guys are as people. They love League so much that when Riot Games asked them to make what was basically the theme song for the World Championships, they agreed wholeheartedly. The song was released to the public FOR FREE (Because Riot loves it's fans, and Imagine Dragons love League). Imagine Dragons is also known for it's more publicly popular song, Radioactive (shown second below).

For a group of guys to be this generous, this nerdy, and this talented, Imagine Dragons is doing music right.

Seriously, listen to these awesome nerds.

Toodles!

Inspirations from Sp4zie

It's Tuesday! Plantie and I are headed away from home for the summer today. There will be pictures of the ride and our new living quarters for the next couple of months.

Some of you may be wondering where the inspiration for Plantie came from. I do not take credit for the idea. I totally ripped it off from my favourite Youtube personality, Sp4zie (Pronounced spazie, like someone having a spaz attack). Sp4zie streams regularly on Twitch and creates videos from his gameplay to put onto Youtube. He mostly plays my favourite of games, League of Legends. Sp4zie's videos are hilarious to me. His skills as an editor and his personality as a comedian make for content that I have watched and rewatched countless times. I've adopted some of his more frequent sayings while I play League (I often shout "JUKE IT" with a terrible Swedish accent on a regular basis, "derp" has made it back into my vocabulary, as well as me making terrible noises while narrowly escaping with my life).

I posted earlier about the band Instalock, and how their content is easily appreciable to people who don't play League. Sp4zie's game content might not be appealing for those who don't play the game, but in addition to his stream footage, Sp4zie also does a ton of work with the development of new media content creators. That is to say, he speaks at conferences, radio shows, and other forms of media about what it is like to be a full time content creator in today's society. He is extremely charismatic, and has taught a lot of people how to become better content creators.

Sp4zie's channel is here, you can look through his videos at your leisure. However, there is one video of his that ALWAYS makes me laugh. A reminder that this is my personal opinion, so if you don't think the video is funny, well, too bad. I like it.

Toodles!

Lee Sin Poro

Poro is doing his own version of the LCS workout. Because reasons.

The LCS Workout

Happy Friday, folks!

Today is video-game day, and what better game to discuss than my favourite one, League of Legends. The most played game in the world, with literally millions of players, League of Legends is a based on a hidden mini-game within the old Warcraft III game (Not World of Warcraft, it's much older than that). The main game mode for League puts you on a team of players against an equal team of opponents, both made up of five players. The game has an ever-evolving "meta", which is to say, certain strategies that are strong at the moment. This meta changes constantly, as the game is updated every few weeks for balances, new features, and new playable characters. This constant evolution makes the game feel fresh and fun to play over longer periods of time than other, more stagnant games. On top of it all, the game is free!

I could talk about the intricacies of League forever, and it will probably make a lot of appearances in my Friday posts. BUT, today I wanted to talk about the professional tournament that League of Legends puts on. The League Championship Series, or LCS, takes the best teams in North America and Europe and pits them against each other each week in a series of games. Korea, China, and Oceania all have their own separate tournaments. At the end of these tournaments, the winners from all around the world come together and duke it out to be the best in the world (It's usually the Koreans, spoilers). Basically, the LCS is sports for nerds. They have analysts, coaches, shoutcasters, referees, tech specialists, and a butt-load of production money. There's a Fantasy League of Legends League, more on that in a moment! Players in the LCS have even been given travel visas as professional athletes because of their position in the world's biggest eSport.

Like a bunch of people hanging out to watch football, the LCS matches take place over several hours. Each match takes anywhere from 20 minutes to more than 60, depending on how well a team performs. There are usually four or fives games streamed in a single day, and there are two days each for Europe and North America. Doing the math, that's a ton of time sitting and watching.

It may come as a shock to some of you, but not all gamers are out of shape. There are several members of the LCS that are in extremely good shape. One of these players started a workout regiment for people watching the tournament, based on the player performances. As I am part of a Fantasy league myself, I decided to throw together a workout regiment for my group of friends. How many follow this, I don't know, but I sure am going to do it!

Player point exercises:
1 kill = 1 push up
1 death = 1 sit up/crunch
1 assist = 1 jumping jack
1 CS = 1 second of wall sits
Triple Kill = Add 5 to everything
Quadra Kill = Add 10 to everything
Pentakill = Add 20 to everything
10+ Kills or Assists = Add 10 to everything

Team Point exercises:
First Blood = 5 burpees
Towers = 5 squats/tower
Baron = 10 lunges/Baron
Dragons = 5 russian twists/dragon
Match Victory = 10 high kicks
<30 min Victory = Plank time equal to CS count

Bonus Stuff:
Having a player worth negative points = Double all exercises
Dragon Steals = Double dragon score
Baron Steals = Double baron score

Enjoy your workout, folks!

Download and try League of Legends here
Watch the LCS here

Toodles!

Teemo Poro

Poro has decided to become the evilest version of himself. How he pulls that off with a heart patch on his stomach shall remain a mystery. Why he does it, because reasons.

One Corner of the Internet

Now, to be fair, Youtube isn't exactly a dark corner of the internet. There are a lot of piano playing kittens, dogs that can't catch, and unfortunate souls being kicked in the groin. You can get to some pretty weird stuff if you stay in the "Related" tab rabbit hole for long enough. After a large amount of thinking about what the hell I was going to write about today, I decided that the answer was right in front of me. Literally. I've had Youtube open pretty much all day, listening to music.

One aspect of this blog is to show people what I think is cool (Poros), and this Youtube channel is something I love to follow. Instalock is a group of three young guys who decided that they wanted to make parodies of popular music, themed around the video game League of Legends. I personally love the game, and have no idea what popular is doing anymore. So when I came across this channel, I probably watched all of their videos in one day. They are musically quite talented and their wordplay is clever, nodding to both the original song and the game at the same time. I often find myself hearing a song on the radio that everyone else knows, but I sing the Instalock lyrics instead. While amusing for me, I probably confuse the crap out of people around me.

If you play League of Legends (Which you should), the videos are doubly impressive. You can often relate to the situations in the videos and there are lots of little things you would only appreciate if you were interested in the game. An example of this is the fact that they hide a Teemo in every video. That said, even those who don't play the game can appreciate the musical abilities of these guys.

Also, one of them just got engaged. To a gamer girl. Lucky bugger.

Let me know what you think of Instalock in the comments below! Or leave a suggestion of another random piece of Youtube you think others should heck out.

Toodles!

Yasuo Poro

Today, Poro shows off his musical side, though he prefers the flute over percussion. Because reasons.

A Trip down Memory Lane

So, this is going to get really personal. If you don't want to get into my history or just don't care about it, skip to the bottom for a Poro picture (It's why you all come here anyway). As I sit here typing, outside is absolutely pouring. It's hasn't rained like this in a while, and I find myself hating the weather despite the fact that many people love rain. Obviously people who farm (which is a lot of people where I live) enjoy the rain as it helps their livelihoods. But I personally know a number of people who see it raining outside, and rush out to stand in it. I usually stand under a roof somewhere and look at them in confusion.

Some backstory to my dislike is probably in order. A number of years ago, I met a girl (Cue groaning, tiny violins, and other forms of cliches). This girl had me absolutely smitten, to the point that the young me believed I was in love for the first time in my life. I spent a huge amount of time with her and did everything I could to impress her. I played piano for her so she had an accompanist, I sang songs for her despite my very unimpressive singing voice, I tried to get all the answers right in theory class to show off to her (This was all at band camp, so music stuff is basically all we did every day).
Anyway, this went on for a while and I began to slowly work up all the courage a geeky teenage boy could to tell the pretty girl how he felt. Literally the day a planned to tell her how I felt, the worst possible thing, in my mind, happened. A boy she knew from before showed up. He was athletic, he was suave, and he had history with her. He was also a colossal ass-hat. You might be thinking that I only thought this because he swooped in and stole the girl I was pining over, but this was an opinion shared by everyone I talked to about him. Somehow, he took my place in her affection within minutes of his arrival.
The next week was spent watching the girl I was in love with spend all her time with someone I despised. The worst part was that this guy saw that I liked her, and paraded her around in front of me, mocking me. After the week of came to a close, the girl of my affection (and Mr. Ass-Hat, thankfully) went home. There was only one week left for me at this point, but I probably didn't care at all. It rained for that entire last week. Not "Drizzling on and off for a few days". Every. Single. Day. For a week. So the skies matched my mood, and engrained the association with rain and depression into my mind.

Now, I look outside and see the rain. I remember my friends who love the rain and all those scenes in movies where the two lovers finally kiss while it's deluging out. They all seem so happy in the rain. I think it's time I was happy in the rain again.

Plantie has angered the Skygods. The mock him with water that he cannot reach.

Today's Poro is pretending to be a mermaid, and even has a few little fish-Poro friends. Because reasons.

Toodles!

A Matter of Stoneware

As I come to the second day of blogging, I've come to the realization that people who do this full-time are massively impressive. To come up with a new topic for every post already seems like a difficult task, let alone to do it every day. It doesn't help that watching a particular episode of How I Met Your Mother has left me wanting to make every sentence rhyme.

I drink a lot of tea. Like, A LOT a lot. Some people have to work to make sure they drink enough water in a day. I easily exceed the recommended amount, and only have to make two pots of tea to do it. Having a 5 cup capacity teapot and drinking green tea (which you brew more than once) helps immensely. I'm sure there will be a post at sometime or another about that teapot, but I need to keep my options open so I can post every day.

Now, for the matter of stoneware. I was recently in Winnipeg visiting family. While I was there, I was able to attend a pop-up shop set up by my sibling, Ash. In case you're interested in some really cool knitting, getting yarn, or patterns to make yourself, check out Sunflower Knit.
They were selling yarns and sewing creations at a local artist shop downtown. At this particular artist shop, Tara Davis Studio Boutique, there was tons of pottery. I am a sucker for mugs, which helps feed my tea addiction. While gushing over this mug or that one, I noticed a corner of the store that had taller mugs. Upon closer inspection, I discovered the amazing part of the store that housed their collection of stoneware. I love how stoneware feels with tea. The weight of the mug, the texture of cup's lip, the way heat transfers from it to your hand. Uuuung.

I'm I geek. Shut up...

Anyway, this particular mug was beautiful. I love the difference in colouring on the inside compared to the outside. A mug with a well-designed handle is a wonderful thing that I don't think everyone truly appreciates. A badly made cup can ruin a lovely drink all on it's own.

Here is the mug in question, along with Plantie. Plantie loves mugs too.

Today's Poro is pretending to be a barbarian. Because reasons.

Toodles!

A Long Hiatus

It's been quite a while since my last post, and there have been a lot of changes in my life in that time. I'm not even sure I live in the same place as I was when I last posted. Regardless, I've made a lot of lifestyle changes in the last couple of months. Getting back to posting my thoughts could be another positive change.

So one of the big changes I made was actually going to the gym. Not "Oh, I should work-out more." *Proceed to binge a Netflix show with a bag of chips*. To be fair, I still love watching Netflix and have been given the clear to eat a ton of food. What I mean is that I actually go to the gym, and work out all of my muscles. This causes me to be sore. Like, all the bloody time. The difference now is that my muscles are sore instead of randomly in pain. I must say, I'll take sore over pain any day.

Another big change since my last post is the fact that I am, once again, single. This is certainly for the better, based on how that relationship turned out. The crappy thing about being single is missing human contact. Not like shaking hands, or giving a friend a smack for being dumb. I sincerely miss intimate contact, having someone to hug or hold hands with. Someone to just sit directly next to and sit against them happily. Yes, I am a huge romantic and extremely cheesy. That's just how I do relationships. While I miss this kind of contact, I'm coming to terms with the fact that right now I just don't have that. I've got some great friends around to keep me sane, even if some like to be jerks about it and mess with me. When you have people around that know you well enough to screw with you, without being genuinely mean, you're in a good place.

I don't really know how this blog will evolve at this point. The post might be pretty random unless people ask for a specific direction. If you stick around, I appreciate the interest.

This is Plantie. He lives in my apartment at the moment, and I am doing what I can to keep him alive as long as possible. You shall see more of Plantie in the future.

And this is a Poro, from League of Legends, simply because he is adorable. He is pretending to be a pirate. Because reasons.

Toodles!