The Queue: Return of the Shoulders

In honor of the patch 9.1 separate shoulder transmog option, this Queue will be answered by me, with help from Rossi’s Rosin-Soaked Shoulderplates, since we’re friends now.

They are my favorites. They will be your favorites too.

My shoulders think Arms. The Kyrian don’t generally allow themselves to explode in fury, that’s more of a Forsworn thing.

Then just being around my shoulders must make you astonishingly powerful.

I mean, I get my eyes injected with a medication that’s created in genetically modified mice every six weeks and I’ve had a series of holes burned in my retinas to cauterize my blood vessels to prevent further degradation of my little remaining vision, so… no?

My shoulders think you should give Lasik a shot.

My shoulders think that Milhouse and Millificent will bring forth a creation of terrifying might, which will reveal the truth of the Arcatraz — that Milhouse truly is a being of incomprehensible power, and we only have a little time left to destroy him before he brings about our doom.

They’re kinda paranoid, these shoulders. But they’re mine, so I put up with it.

You already got your answer in the Queue but just so anyone else struggling with this issue also gets helped, I’ll repeat it here — according to Rossi’s Rosin-Soaked Shoulderplates, the most helpful of pauldrons, you don’t actually find Anduin (his fate progresses in patch 9.1, in fact) but instead you run the Twisting Corridors for three drops off of the bosses on the sixth, twelfth and eighteenth floors. You can get the items by simply repeating the first six floors three times, or by doing the first twelve and then repeating the first six, as long as you kill three of the TC end bosses you’re good.

You take these clues back to Bolvar and we later get to see a cutscene after you beat Denathrius at the end of Castle Nathria that shows Anduin and Sylvanas, which also hints at what’s coming in patch 9.1.

When I was eighteen, because of how broke we were, my mother couldn’t afford medical care (I lived in the United States at that time) and ended up dying from a pneumonia-like condition that’s never really been identified. As a result, I had a great deal of anger to work through, and I spent years doing unhealthy things like drinking heavily, getting into fights, and so on. I’m lucky to be alive today.

What I do today when I get really angry is think about what anger actually is. In many cases, rage is born out of fear — fear of loss, fear of the potential for harm, fear at events being out of our control. Our lives are tenuous and brief and we can’t really control what happens to us — we can do our best, of course, but in the end random chance can always lead us to an outcome that is disastrous and that’s terrifying.

Anger doesn’t always come from fear, mind you, but my first step is always to interrogate that anger. I want to make sure I know what it is, where it’s coming from. Is it wounded pride? A sense of something being unfair? I’m not perfect, and I mess it up all the time, but I find that the first step in knowing how to deal with my anger is trying to grapple with what it is I’m angry at and why.

It’s facile to say this, but life is a brief thing, and it’s a waste of time to be angry if there’s nothing you can do with that anger — if you can’t make it help you redress a problem, then it’s best to try and come to terms with it. Yes, you’re angry, but being angry honestly doesn’t have to control you. I get angry, even now — I’ve even gotten angry at the comments here sometimes. Sometimes, that’s actually healthy. Accept that you’re angry, let yourself feel it, let it act on you. But when it becomes a poison, seeping into everything, preventing you from moving on, it’s time to figure out how to deal with it.

In my experience the only way to do that is to take the time to understand what it is, and to put it into a context that lets you deal with it. What are you angry about, why does it make you angry, does your anger mask another emotion? Anger and fear are often two sides of the same coin, but anger can feel better — make sure you’re not using that to keep from having to face what’s really going on.

Also sometimes I eat something, like chips or ice cream, something not good for me. Not often, though. Keep in mind I have anhedonia, so I lack a lot of the positive feelings that can be useful in dealing with anger, so if you can, maybe do something you enjoy to take your mind off of it until you can sit down and think about it.

Okay, that’s the Queue for today. Hopefully y’all are doing okay. I’ll see y’all next week. I got my COVID first shot this week, so hopefully relatively soon I’ll be able to… well, to keep hermiting in my house, because this pandemic has taught me I really hate going out. But at least it’ll be by my own choice now, and that’s something.