Writing is Harder Than It Looks

It's so easy to be a geek when all you have to do is consume other people's work.

Producing that material is so much more work.

But that's me. I'm not content to let other people be the geeks so I can be a fan of their geekiness. Nope. I've got to go and create more geekiness.

So what do I do? I decide to write a fantasy novel. But not just one. A whole series of fantasy novels. People will tell you to 'start small' and 'work your way up.' Nope, not me. Those are tactics for normal people. I'm not normal people. I'm crazy and I have too much time on my hands.

I can't even have a normal fantasy novel. It has to be different. So different, in fact, that it needs its own magic system. I mean, technically, it doesn't need one; the fantasy canon provides a perfectly decently set of magical principles for general use for the low low price of $19.95, shipping and handling, and your first-born son. But I'm just too cheap even for that I suppose.

Hey I know. Instead of writing whole books, I should just create the magic systems that go in them. Let's see here, what can we make magic out of?

Oh, I know! Coffee. Coffee-based magic. Whenever you want to cast a spell, you have to drink a cup of coffee. Different flavors of coffee are used for different kinds of spells, and the better the coffee, the more effective the spell. But of course, all magic has to have a side-effect. In this case, the more coffee you drink to fuel your spells, the more jittery you get. Eventually, the effect of the jitters cancels out the power of the coffee and you just can't do any more magic. You also can't sleep.

What about light-based magic? You can use the sun and stars, or lack of them, like the shade under a tree, to cast spells. The power of your spells is based on the intensity of the light or darkness. Drawbacks: sunburn from casting too many powerful light spells.

Hair magic: spin and weave your own hair to do magic. Curly hair is bad for magic because it makes crooked spells. Straight hair is more reliable, but awfully boring. Drawbacks: Bald men can't do magic. Also, if you do enough magic, you'll be bald from using too much of your own hair.

Hell, let's make a magic system that uses herrings to chop down trees. That should be interesting.

Perpetual Newbie, Perpetuated

So.

We learned the other day that perpetual newbie is perpetual.

I've been struggling with DPS despite having the right gear, spec, rotation, and gear enhancements. I was just keeping up with raid DPS.

So.

We were doing a guild run of Naxx. Now, we've got Naxx on farm. We're all in Ulduar and ToC gear at least, and some of us have a few ICC pieces.

So we're in Naxx, about to down Heigan. The raid leader asked for a soul well and I obliged. Next thing I know, the priest (and raid leader's wife) asks me why I'm using the first level of soul well. I'm rather puzzled; isn't there only one level of soul well?

So we get to looking, and there is another level. It trains at level 80. How did I miss that? I decided to double check, and I was missing another 80 spell. And a third. And a fourth...

Horror dawned on me. I HADN'T TRAINED LEVEL 80! Upon further investigation, I hadn't trained 79 either. At this point, my dear dear husband announces this to the entire raid. The raid leader stopped the raid and told me to head back out and train. So I headed to Undercity to train.

I ran out of money.

So our raid leader follows me, despite my insistence that I had trained everything important. He gives me some gold and I finish training.

We head back to Naxx, and my DPS has doubled!

"OMG YOU GUYS I FOUND MY DPS! IT WAS IN UNDERCITY THE WHOLE TIME!"

Damn I'm good.