The Queue

Shad’har is one bad dog. I don’t blame him though. Being raised by an Old God wouldn’t be the best environment to grow up in. Plus have you seen his dog house? It’s a weird flesh pit in the middle of a city that may or may not exist! Who wants to live in one of those.

I just had the pleasure of spending a night and a half working on Mythic Shad’har. There are a lot of moving parts and if I let my attention wander at all, it can quickly mean my offtank is going to die. Which has been hard, I was a raid shot caller for so long that it’s hard to turn off. I’ll be paying attention to all the other mechanics and suddenly I’ve stood in five puddles, and Shad’har has swallowed my partner. We’ve gotten close though! We’ll teach that dog to sit, stay, and rollover any pull now.

But since my raid week is over, it must be time for — The Queue.

Just what are all of these eyes staring at, you think? Do they ever get bored? Do they have days off?

It seems like a tiring, thankless job, being an ever-staring eye in Ny’alotha.

You may recall me being pretty excited about Animal Crossing: New Horizons last week. That hasn’t changed. I love the game. I want to spend every second playing it. I can’t believe I’m even here writing this right now when I could be in my town, saying hi to Isabelle or organizing my fruit orchard.

But instead of Queue and A(nimal Crossing), let’s have some Q&A, shall we?

So, true story. Back in 1995/96, I spent a year or so studying in London. It was pretty great — since it was part of a Theatre program at my college, I ended up going to something like fifty or sixty plays, including getting to see some amazing performances like Mark Rylance as Macbeth and Iain Glen as King Henry in Henry V, and I even met some cool people like Tom Stoppard and David Edgar.

But as cool as that was, I still remember with chagrin the day a family saw me out in public, ran up to me, and excitedly declared that they’d come to London to see me perform and asked me to autograph the program for the show. Confused, I looked at the program in the father’s hand, and it was for Meatloaf. Now, Meatloaf is a year older than my father and I really don’t see the resemblance, but no matter how often I demurred, they would all smile almost in unison and say You are Meatloaf, yes?

So anyway, that’s how someone out there has pictures of me with his entire family and a program to a Meatloaf concert signed I am not Meatloaf at the bottom. There was a very large expletive in that, but this is a family site and I trust you all to work it out.

It’s been twelve nights since we started the whole social distancing thing, and since that’s my favorite Shakespeare play it seems a good a reason as any to celebrate! Unfortunately there aren’t any movie versions I’m fond of — there was one in the 90’s starring Helena Bonham Carter as Olivia, but it’s uneven at best. One of the best versions I’ve seen was nominated for a Tony, featuring Helen Hunt as Viola and Paul Rudd in a purple loincloth as Orsino, but aside from the showings on PBS I’m not sure the proshot was ever released. Header photo is unrelated.

This is The Queue, where we ask you As and you give us Qs, or maybe it’s the other way around.

I level characters so infrequently now that some of these old dungeons can be mazes. Luckily I have my trusty map with me. Wait, was it the left path to get to the last boss or the zombies… wasn’t there supposed to be a giant hydra around here somewhere?

Ah well, I’m sure I’ll find it eventually — after all it’s a giant hydra how stealthy can it be? Until I track the beast down, let’s Queue!

Long live the Old Gods.

If I haven’t made it clear over the last forever, I’m excited that Animal Crossing: New Horizons is finally here. Or, it will be tonight. Same thing. We’re in the final few hours and my excitement could probably power an entire continent. If you don’t hear from me for a while, it has nothing to do with *general hand gestures at world* and entirely everything to do with Animal Crossing. I AM SO EXCITED, YOU GUYS!

…

Anyhow. Let’s Queue.

When I feel tense and irritable and I don’t want to socialize at all, which is often, I play Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. The combination of being able to climb anything, sneak up behind people and stab them to death and my love for the character of Kassandra absolutely keeps pulling me back in to a game that’s in a series I never cared about before.

I feel kind of bad for people who were diehard AC fans and who hate the series new direction and swerve into RPG elements. But for me, that swerve made a game I dearly love, so… sorry, guys. I hope the next AC is to your liking. I suspect I won’t be coming along since it won’t have Kassandra in it.

Anyway, it’s the Queue. We’re all trapped in our homes waiting for life to start up again, so until it does, let’s do the question/answer dance.

I hit the grocery store for the last time early on Thursday morning to pick up a couple vital medications, a gallon of milk, and some candy which is currently hidden from everyone in the house, including me because I forgot where I hid it. I looked into doing musicals on stream but that’s kind of a no-go, because aside from limited medleys you still need to pay for performance rights on everything newer than Pirates of Penzance. My four year old is also incredibly unimpressed by my belting skills. Maybe I’ll learn the ukelele with my daughter’s plastic 4-string Minnie Mouse guitar? I just superglued my fingers together, so that might be a no-go too.

No, I’m fine, it’s fine, everything’s fine, it’s fine. It can’t be that hard to cut your own bangs, right?

This is The Queue! Please wash your hands before asking us questions, which we’ll answer from way, way over here.