Not quitting. Moving. Closing this shop, opening a new one.
I thought long and hard to come up with a meaningful metaphor.
Imagine you run a baking shop. Imagine it is a good baking shop, by your standards anyway. You aren’t making millions, you don’t have a massive chain. It’s just you, the sole owner/proprietor/employee, in some small town somewhere. You have, say, eight thousand or so regulars, most of which you remember by name.
Time goes by. Years in fact. You bake and you bake and you bake.
You experiment sometimes. Make a bagel at least half your customers fall in love with immediately. Dip your toes into doughnuts, though a Tim Hortons opens up just down the way and forces you out of that particular market. It doesn’t matter though, your customers never abandon you.
Sometimes you take sick days, and there’s that one time you were accidentally caught up in a hilarious spy romcom starring Brad Pitt as Johnny Depp’s unwitting gay lover.
Many years in, you can feel a weight. You’re not sure what this weight is, but you can feel it. Just… a remote pressure, gently squeezing you and increasing in intensity over the course of several weeks.
You finally recognize it as a book closing. Your book. The book of the bakery.
The bakery, you see, is coming to an end.
It’s not that you suddenly dislike baking. It’s not that you suddenly don’t enjoy it or became particularly bad at it.
Something, somewhere, shifted. And now the bakery is ending.
You think about becoming a florist.
You decide to go with it.
Baking is done, now it’s all about floral arrangements.
But, you see, you can’t use the same name or the same store.
You see, cause that name, that name is a bakery. That store saw the creation of confectionaries and delightful pastries and yes, even wholesome loaves of bread from time to time.
You can’t change that, you can’t retcon it into something it isn’t. It is, and always will be, a bakery. You can’t morph it into a florist. You can’t simply remove the ovens and replace it with a greenhouse.
The bakery has become something beyond you. It has sprung from you, created a life for itself, lived and reveled as its own entity.
I can’t bring myself to kill it.
I can’t bring myself to take it out back and shoot it.
It is what it is, and shall remain so.
By opening a new place, I create something that has no history. No past, no personality. A true tabula rasa, a blank slate. A solid square of marble, untouched by the chisel.
Critical QQ is something that has already been forged, grown and developed, matured, battle hardened.
You cannot return a painting to the blank canvas it once was.
Solution?
Get a new canvas.
And with that, I proudly present Preposterous Pretentious Prattle (threepr for short), my new canvas.
I am unsure where this new place will take me. I have freedom here, total and unchecked. We shall see.
I’m not particularly fond of, nor good at, goodbyes or thanks, which is why I haven’t posted any.
What would I say? How would I thank the loyal legions?
I’d be all…
Gnomeaggedon. You are an absolute blast, in every sense of the word.
Krizzlybear. WEEABOOOOO!!!
Larisa. YOU’RE OLD.
(Seriously, if you got all us mages together, Larisa would be the kindly, grandmotherly figure everyone genuinely liked. Except, you know, don’t mess with granny, cause piss that harmless old woman off and you will be embraced with liquid streams of absolute death.)
Pike. Man, I don’t even know what to say. You and your fellow nerds-with-uterii cause my higher brain functions to fail at extremely inopportune moments daily. Fucking baller is what you are.
Rilgon. I honestly found you first as a commenter in MMO-Champ. I would actually scroll through MMO-Champ threads specifically to read your comments. Then I said “I bet this guy has a totally kickass blog.” I WAS RIGHT.
Saresa. In honour of warlocks such as yourself, every six months I level one to twenty and then delete it whilst cackling.
Do you want to delete Lolbutts, level 20 warlock?
HAHAHAHAHA YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Megan. I’d let you corpse camp me any day. If you know what I mean. And I mean SEX.
Jong. See what I said to Megan. SERIOUSLY.
… DO YOU SEE HOW HORRIBLE THIS WOULD BE. Who wants to read like several thousand words of this?
It would take multiple days to thank everyone individually, and I would still miss people!
I mean, I’d probably fucking thank my goldfish from third grade before I remembered I forgot to thank my own mother. The stress would be unbearable. I’d be sitting here going “did I thank Tam? did I send that note to Grimmtooth? what about that e-card to Rhii? did I remember to mana-bonk theerivs? oh god what about repgrind, better double check!”
And then I’d reread like ALL THREE THOUSAND WORDS (volume one of forty nine) just to see if I missed someone, and I’d run out of paper, and I’d start writing names down in blood on my desk just to make sure.
Nobody wants that.
❤ I'm going to go and play my little gnome mage, and let her be killed by Murlocs. And I'll be sniffling and thinking of you the whole time.
I’m such a weaboo, it’s not funny. But I always thought “weaboo frost mage” was tuna’s label, but somehow I also had that in spades. Who’d have known?
I’m gonna miss you dude. Manly tears at this post. Especially the bakery shit. *brofist*
Rip, you know that I’m your biggest fan and I’ll follow you until you love me.
PA PA PAPARAZZI
Okay so actually I just wanted an excuse to stuff some Gaga lyrics in here somehow. Seriously though, much love ❤
Fuck Timmy’s. Their doughnuts are dried out and gross. I still have a free one from “Roll Up The Rim”. (Someone bought me a coffee one time…)
What can I say? I’m going to miss the local shop that put a nice, different spin on things.
I guess I should also say, “Thank you!” No, really. How I made it through Vanilla and BC as a mage is shocking. But I finally starting doing research and found CQQ. And then I e-mailed you. And you took the time to help me become a better mage. So yes, thank you for that.
*sniffle*
Krizz… hold me!
I never stopped letting go ;_;
While I hate to see my bakery close down I’m strangely optimistic about the future of this little town. They say you can eat flowers too. Some of them. So I suppose I won’t go hungry.
I’m glad that this isn’t a closedown, but just a new beginning. Because you are gifted, young man. I’m just telling you. Grandma is good at spotting those things. You’re one of just a handful chosen ones in the wow blogosphere who have more talent for writing than fits into a little blog. I’m certain you’ll go far. (and yes, I’m slightly envious, being one in the masss rather than a chosen one). But also greatful to have seen your first steps on the road you’re about to take. Or the road you CAN take if you really make your mind to it. It’s up to you. It’s not easy. It’s not for everyone. But I hope you’ll take it.
End of cookies, enter flowers. Whatever works as long as it takes you forward. Just keep channeling your source of creativity, your lust for storytelling, your passion for the written language! Keep doing it and see where it might bring you. Go ahead and make more magic in the world!
And if you ever feel like it, pop a visit to grandma and have a chat and a drink. You know where you’ll find me.
Cheers!
*salute*
Critical QQ closing or not, you will always be the “Euripides that Doesn’t Suck” to me.
I know I didn’t browse you for a good long time, and never even got around to blogrolling you (which I sincerely regret, especially since I DID blogroll the Euripides that Is a Giant Dickweasel), but the content I did see from you was phenomenal.
I cannot wait to read more on 3PR, whatever it may be. Thank you for the kind words – they mean everything, when the other, less-awesome Euripides can’t stand me. 😛
The bakery/florist metaphor is a good one. Well said.
God, I think I love this post.
All the best Euri, most of all have fun with your new blog!
I hate to see your bakery shutting down, but I hear there is another decent bakery just down the street, even if it is run by a crazy gnome. Now flower shops, that is what we need here more of, and as much as it breaks my heart that the old bakery is going away, a flower shop sounds real nice right now.
Thank you.
Thank you for helping me level and play my mage right.
Thank you, for having good valuable information.
Thank you, for making said information a good read.
Thank you for being entertaining – you know blogging.
Rip, I can honestly say there’s never been a post that didn’t entertain in some way, usually with laughter. While the closing of CQQ is ensaddening in a way, I can’t wait to see what you do with 3Pr. Also, am I the only one that wants to call the new place C-3PO?
I, for one, would love to read several thousand words of that. It would be hilarious.
Also, Khol, no, you’re really not. At first I thought there might have been a 3PR droid similar to CPO as R4-D5 was to R2-D2, but a quick google search shows a much more likely reference in the form of a Norwich-based public relations consultancy.
touched & tearing. Going to miss Rip but devour threepr.
Bread will never taste the same, but flowers will always smell that much sweeter.
GL & all the best
So this is it. QQ no more. All good things come to an end.
I’ll go check out the new blog.
Now imagine if instead of people, those were mages.
That’s how this feels right now.
Goodbye, comrade.
So this is it. The last post at Critical QQ.
Where will I go for my mage QQ fix now?
I’ve been a silent fan and reader of this blog for years now. I always find delight in your topics and choice of words as well as your powerful ability in mixing humour with important issues like mage strudels and pirates.
Oh, I will miss these so very much 😦
All the best with your new canvas. I am certainly looking forward to more Pressies from you.
I’m hungry now for some reason. Well you really are a clase act, and look forward to your future endeavors.
[…] like to thank Euripedes one more time… I’m sure there will be more times.. but one more time for Ol’ […]
Love ya, Rip. Thanks for everything. You’ve been such a positive influence for so many people playing this game. Best of luck with threepr!
Well said and thank you. See ya at the flower shop – I’ll be needing a steady supply of daisies to plant on the graves of the ‘locks I have pyroblasted.
/sniffle
/tear
/cry
/mourn
/weep
/bawl
/wail
/wrists
Sad to see the bakery closing. But you better have some 3P1C fucking flowers 🙂
I bid you good luck.
I’ve been reading for years, never commented, but enjoyed your stories and magecraft.
Take care. 🙂
I’m grefutal you made the post. It’s cleared the air for me.
HariI also visited these places on 18th Feb. 2010. Kaohsiung is also very beautiful city in Taiwan. I love this place very much.When I checked your blog, I found that all the photos are very beautiful. Wonderful job! Thanks for these very beautiful photos.
Fare thee well. You will be missed.
Hopefully you will step back into the kitchen for a little baking from time to time dear. No toon can live without chocolate chip cookies.
Good luck:)
/salute
All the best with the flowers.
I suck at playing a mage, I SUCK at PvP, and I play squishy Alliance. Really the only thing I think we have in common is being Canadian. But… I LOVED your blog.
Thank you. And good luck.
Yours was the first mage blog I ever read.
Yours was the reason I actually decided to resurrect my blog as a WoW-based one.
All the best with the threepr! I’ll see you over there! ^_^
So, This is the first (and last) time I have posted on CQQ. You are the reason I continued leveling my 51 mage after my rogue hit 70. You are the reason I stopped playing my rogue. You are the reason I stayed in WoW, because your posts were so funny, and so entertaining, I thought that I just had to be a part of this culture again. I never got to talk to you, but I imagine that you are a great guy. Have fun with your new blog, I’m sure that I’ll read every post. So long, and thanks for all the portals.
This blog will be missed. I always made a point to check when you made an update. Have fun with your new project!!
Thanks for the awesome run! You rock! We will all miss you! Good luck with the new blog!
K
BAH. I can’t yell “OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS I NEED FOUR GRAND OF THESE THREE MINUTES AGO.” while chewing apprehensively on a petunia. That sensation is reserved for the strudel, and the strudel alone. I’ve read your blog for over a year now, and will miss the edgey perspective and the maeg raeg that can boil my coffee through my monitor that was unique to CriticalQQ.
However, I hope you see success by the assload in the future of, ahem, THREEPR. Hmm. Threepr. Threeeepr.
ALL OF YOUR FOLLOWERS ARE NOW THREEPR CREEPRS.
-Inua, Level 80 (Thanks to CQQ) Mage
dont let the door hit ya in the ass loser
Humorously, the Google ad just under your blog post today was for a Pastry Baking School.
But seriously. It’s gonna be fun trying to play my mage without your insight. I may actually have to play it on my own now. Good luck wherever this new blog takes you.
Very nice article.Thanks to the writer for sharing these stuffs that I believe will be helpful for me next time.
o_O!
Is Basil Cosmos the real name of Euripedes? He’s stopped posting on his other blog as well for a year now and I miss his writing so dearly…
It’s been a year since anyone has commented on Euripedes’ last blog post and nearly 3 years since the actual post! An hour of Google searching has given me zip on what he is currently up to. Euripedes, where are you?
Same here, I have missed reading his blogs but from other readers’ comments, it seems that Euripedes has gone on another path now. I do wish there would be some closure with his blogs.
Wanted to comment that I, on occasion, am reminded of this blog. 🙂
-Azryu
wh0cd237393 viagra viagra
What do you mean, this is closure enough
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