#also won an esports tournament

[infinitepeacocktheorem]

dreamt that a person i knew from two of my classes had a tumblr blog. in the dream, they got really mad when i asked them about it.

[psycho-linguist]

i edit the videos for my robotics team (we teach adorable little robots to play football) so pls watch it <3

[sparefry]

nisha saying that current liquid is very emotional vs yapzor saying that old secret was very unemotional (a roster that included both nisha + zai who are on liquid now) hmmmmmm

[cinnamostar]

colors of you

pairing : felix x gn!reader

summary : skz, semi pro league of legends team, now has a new competitor to face in the scene in the upcoming regional tournament, but after a few practice matches, felix knew he hated you and thought you were a complete asshole.

wc : 5.8k

cw : not proofread (i am lazy), collegiate esports au, very competitive rivalry on one end, unrequited love, enemies to a secret third thing i won't disclose, cursing, some angst, sadness, fluffy feelings, and y/tn = your team name + y/ign = your ingame name/username.

a/n : this fic was inspired by league of legends worlds 2023, except not as hardcore. i didn't write tooo much on the gameplay so anyone who didn't play league would also be able to enjoy and follow the story well. likes, reblogs, and feedback is appreciated as always

⌲ SKZ - semi-pro league of legends team

member profile

⌲ channie - in game leader, mid laner, azir + zed main

⌲ dwaekki - adc, caitlyn main

⌲ hyune - supp, pretty girl supp main (everyone has to beg him to play anything else)

⌲ miniverse - top laner, sett main

⌲ sunlixie - jungler, diana main 

* currently undefeated in collegiate regional cup, three year streak

⌲ Y/TN - up and coming semi-pro team

member profile

⌲ y/ign - in game leader, jungler, briar + kindred main

⌲ nyangknow - adc, kaisa + jinx main

⌲ jone - mid laner, ahri main

⌲ bibibread - supp, renata + rell main

⌲ some guy - top laner, yone + aatrox main **

* has won smaller level tournaments, gained entry to collegiate regional cup through these wins

**(a/n: some guy is literally some guy lmao sorry i did not feel like adding some random idol to the story)

･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･･

Felix clenched his jaw as flames of anger flickered within him, the obnoxious, classic, yet familiar, league of legends red defeat screen only fanning the resentment that burned hot through his veins. He ripped his headset off as he swallowed down the third bitter loss his team faced that day, his face glaring down at your username that seemed to mock him in every post-game lobby chat. 

y/ign: GG! Thanks for the skrims :) Same time tomorrow?

He rolled his eyes at your message, trusting Chan to coordinate with your team for the next matches as he closed out the client while reaching for his headset once more, letting out an exasperated groan. 

“Well… that went as well as it did last time, huh?” Chan’s lighthearted laugh rang through Felix’s ear which only irritated him more, unsure how he was able to remain so positive after three soul crushing defeats. “Overall, their team is really solid and versatile. I can see why they’ve been dominating the lower tier teams and why they’re in our division now, but those games definitely helped us understand the skill of each of their players and what champs we need to ban.”

Changbin hummed in agreement gloomily, “Man, I don’t wanna play against them more, that y/ign guy is fucking annoying to play against. I can’t even farm properly without them ganking my lane every few minutes.”

Felix scoffed, “Yeah, imagine being counterpicked by them and having them take your jungle camps every game,” frustration colored each of Felix’s word a bright and gaudy crimson as he spoke through gritted teeth, taking a swig of water hoping it would somehow cool down the unbearable rage he felt bubbling inside him.

“I’m sorry, man, I know those games were especially rough on you,” Chan mumbled apologetically, carefully choosing his words to avoid hitting a nerve, “But we now know what champs to ban for them, we know to ward your camps early game, and to change our approach.”

“Yeah, I guess we can try out a more dive heavy comps and try to get early picks so they can’t shut us out of the game so quickly,” Seungmin suggested with uncertainty as he weighed the options his team now had, “Or more tanky… Maybe we need more CC?”

“Ah, well, it’s hard to say because god knows what other champs they can play. Each game they had an entirely different comp, so I guess we can try to prepare for every scenario we have seen so far, but we will still have to stay wary during the champ select process,” muttered Chan as he reflected today’s matches, trying to formulate a game plan for the team, “All good though, let’s just rest up for today. Skrims at the same time tomorrow, but log on an hour before so we can review our vods and discuss what we wanna try out in our games, alright?”

With that, the team grumbled a disheartened goodbye as Felix exited the call, once more tossing his headset in annoyance while he rubbed his face, clicking his teeth as he replayed each death from today’s games and how it was always you flashing your mastery after each kill. 

Felix had no idea who you were, but your team had randomly emerged into the scene these past few months, quickly making themselves a well-respected and feared team as you dominated the lower tiered scene which now meant SKZ, a team well known within the semi-pro scene had no choice, but to take your team as a serious threat. Chan had reached out to you via discord, asking if your team was interested in a few practice sessions against his, which leads us to today.

There was no mistaking that your team was extremely well-versed and had done their research against SKZ, promptly banning each of their signature mains during the champ select process while picking characters that were either, quite frankly, annoying to deal with or countered their own. Felix should have known it was a bad omen when your team banned Chan’s Azir and Changbin’s Caitlyn, but once he saw you pick Briar against his own Diana, he knew he was in for a rough day.

You were perhaps the most annoying person Felix has ever had the misfortune to go against, somehow knowing just how to piss him off as you counter jungled him throughout the game and took every opportunity to gank his teammates, ultimately ruining their chances to catch up to your team’s gold. You even stole Baron from them, which ended up costing them the second game after your team immediately wiped his. He was filled with vengeful rage each time he saw your character on the screen, cursing internally whenever you made a good play, not even giving him the chance to trash you because you seemed to never make a mistake.

After today, Felix knew he hated you with all his being and made it his personal mission to give you a taste of your own medicine, swearing up and down that he would make sure that any games he played against you were absolute hell. He had a month to prepare for the next LAN tournament, where he would embarrass you on stage and disgrace the newly-founded prestige your team name had earned this past year. y/ign would no longer be the latest jungler breaking into the scene, you’d no longer be the new talent to keep an eye out. He wanted to make sure you were nothing but an utter disappointment to everyone who looked forward to your next performance.

･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･･

When the next day came, Felix was brimming with confidence after spending last night researching your team, but with extra attention focused on you and your playstyle. Felix looked through your team's past matches and if he was lucky enough to find an old broadcast of the games, he’d scrub through them to gain a better understanding of your jungle pathing and how it differed by each character you played. Today, he refused to be caught off guard by your skill and would not give you the chance to gain as much map control as you did yesterday. 

When logging onto his PC, Felix noticed a notification on his discord:

✩ y/ign sent you a friend request!

hey! wanted to thank you for the games yesterday and look forward to playing you guys again today :) 

While you probably had the best intentions in mind, Felix immediately felt the scorching, yet thrilling, heat of competitiveness settle into his body as he scowled at your message. “Fucking asshole,” he mumbled under his breath in disbelief, assuming you sent that as a way to get under his skin before today’s skrims. 

sunlixie accepted y/ign’s friend request! 

sunlixie reacted to y/ign’s message with a thumbs up!

Great, not only are you extremely talented at the game, but turns out you’re an incredibly cocky person! Anything Felix had ever learned about you, aside from his research last night, was completely against his will and it was only making him despise you even more. He hated how easily you ticked him off, how easily you filled him with unbridled rage by doing the absolute bare minimum, and he hated how sour the taste of anger was. He hated this feeling, as it always ended up clouding his perception and made him an absolute hellish person to be around, but it was also one of the most driving forces behind his competitive nature. 

Despite his huffing and puffing, Felix decided to close his eyes for a brief moment, as if he was meditating away all the negative emotions you so effortlessly planted within him with a simple message. After taking in a deep breath, Felix joined the discord call with the rest of his team, greeting them with a cheery ‘hello!’

“Felix! You sleep well? Sounds like you’re feeling better from yesterday,” asked Chan, the smile in his tone was impossible to miss.

Felix nodded before responding with a “Yup, got my eight hours and feeling a little more confident after some research.” 

“Good, good, that’s what I like to hear.”

Before Chan could continue with their pre-match meeting, Hyunjin piped up a question, “Did anyone else get a message from y/ign?”

Just hearing your username was enough for Felix’s entire mood to deflate as he sunk into his chair with furrowed eyebrows. He was about to open his mouth to tell everyone how rude you just are, but to his surprise, Changbin beat him to it, “Dude!! They are so nice!” a giggle escaped Changbin as he recalled the message, “They said my Draven was pretty good and that Hyunjin’s Lux had their bot lane nervous!”

Now that was not what Felix was expecting to hear from anyone as his jaw dropped, completely shocked to hear just how sweet your messages were to everyone else and how downright rude yours was to him. What the hell is your problem? Felix hadn’t realized how tight he was gripping his mouse til he felt the plastic material slip from under his fingers, landing on desk due to all the force applied.

“Right! It’s nice to know we had them sweating even though they looked so composed,” Hyunjin eagerly added.

“They’re super kind and humble, which is refreshing to see in this scene,” laughed Chan, “Maybe I gotta play a little better today to get my own compliment, but they did thank us for playing against them and for agreeing to not post the vods. What about you Felix? They say anything to you?”

Felix was still recovering from shock after processing the information he just learned, stammering in both surprise and upsetness, “Dude… I… I don’t know what to say because they were a straight up asshole to me.”

“What?! No way!” gasped Changbin, “Maybe it’s because you’re their match up in the game, but that doesn;t sound right…”

“Yeah, that’s weird,” Seungmin added, “What did they say?”

Felix then pulled up the message you sent, reading it out for the rest of his team to hear, adding an annoyed “Can you believe the nerve of this guy?” 

.

.

.

A few moments had passed by where no one had said anything, the call remained dead silent as everyone tried to figure out how to gently inform Felix that he was being an idiot and turning a very friendly message from you into an ill-intended one.

Chan cleared his throat, holding back a laugh as he realized your performance yesterday really struck something in Felix, “Bro, I hate to break it to you, but that was definitely a nice message… I don’t really see where they’re being rude at all.”

This time, it was Felix’s turn to stay quiet, a perplexed look overtaking his features after hearing the rest of his teammates agree with Chan. Maybe if he squinted really, really hard he’d be able to find a hint of kindness in your message, but Felix had already convinced himself you were his ultimate rival who was trying to throw him off a game. There is no way you’d ever send him a nice message just because, right? 

“Well, I don’t know… Maybe you guys are right,” mumbled Felix, not completely convinced by his friends, which prompted Hyunjin to chuckle.

“Lixie, I have never seen someone get to you so easily before! Those games yesterday must’ve done a number on ya, huh?” 

Felix rolled his eyes as he let out a peeved exhale through his nose, unable to deny any of what Hyunjin had said, “Yeah, yesterday was rough, but surely today will be different, yea?”

･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･

Luckily for the SKZ boys, today was different from the day before. This time, the boys were able to secure a win in the first game, while the second game was a very close loss due to Changbin being caught out, but this just called for better positioning and map vision, all things that could be easily resolved by being more mindful. 

Despite the major improvements in the SKZ team’s gameplay, your performance did not fall short from yesterday’s as you still managed to be a threat SKZ couldn’t ignore. Although Felix was able to maintain control of his side of the map and trade some camps with you, you were still able to fill him with rage by somehow targeting him every fight, which made it nearly impossible for him to play the game. Luckily, Seungmin ended up using his Mordekaiser ultimate on you, which gave SKZ a chance to focus on the rest of your team while Seungmin did his best to tank your damage in his realm. This strategy definitely led them to their first win against your team, but as soon as the second match started, your team switched up to an entirely new comp, which SKZ struggled to answer.

Unfortunately, your team wasn’t able to stick around for a third game due to some prior commitments, so there was no decisive winner for the day.

y/ign: GGs! sunlixie, you really were sweating today on that diana jg kek

nyangknow: if i ever see you irl, its on sight, sunlixie… targeting a poor lil adc like me? 

nyangknow: lol but gg! y/ign slammed their desk when u stole elder last game kek

y/ign: shut up before i expose ur government name

nyangknow: …

channie: haha, sunlixie wasn’t gonna let u guys embarrass us again 

channie: GG! dm me on disc if you guys wanna set up some more skrims 

dwaekki: :3 gg!!! u guys did great, heh ty for games!

Once again, Felix found himself frowning at your message in the post-game lobby, irritation bubbling up in the pit of his stomach as his knuckles turned white from clenched fists. “Dude, I don’t get what their problem is with me,” whined Felix as he closed out the client once more, not even bothering to send a message in the chat.

Seungmin snickered over the mic, finding Felix’s one-sided rivalry hilarious, “That was definitely a compliment, don’t take it the wrong way.”

“Whatever,” he mumbled snarkily at Seungmin’s response, not being able to find any of the validity in his comments, “Just felt like they were poking fun at me.”

･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟ

The weekend of the Regional Collegiate LAN tournament had finally arrived, and luckily for SKZ, they didn’t have to worry about traveling since their university was hosting the event. This event did hold some importance, but it mostly helped determine seeding for the next tournament with only a few teams at risk for elimination. Due to SKZ’s skill level, elimination was the least of their concern with them being favored to win first place. First place did receive a cash prize to help cover travel costs to nationals, but it also helped any team gain more support and made the pro scene more aware of potential candidates for their team. 

SKZ was getting set to prepare for their first match of the weekend, but had some time to kill so they settled on roaming around the venue to catch up with some friends from other teams and greet any fans that approached them. In this world, it wasn’t uncommon for any of the more popular teams to have fans, as some people were either fans of individual players, their skills, or they were a fan of the entire team. 

Today was no different as Felix walked through the venue on his own, chatting with friends from other teams and meeting any new recruits while he was at it. Frustratingly enough though, your team and you had been quite the topic amongst his friends, each of them expressing concern at how intimidating and difficult your team seemed. Everyone in the scene knew that SKZ and Y/TN had gone against each other in a few practice matches, meaning everyone was swarming to them like flies, trying to extract as much information as they could against your team. Although, you and SKZ had an agreement to not leak out any team comps or skrim information before playing, so Felix had to deal with a whole lot of begging while trying to skirt around the subject.

Felix had finally gotten a moment of peace as he excused himself from the last interrogation, deciding it was time to group up with the team seeing that their match was in about an hour from now. Before he was able to get far, he heard a voice behind him call out:

“Yo! Sunlixie, is that you?”

Well, he was wearing a jersey with his name on the back of it, so it wasn’t weird for fan interactions to go this way. He put a smile on his face and turned to greet the owner of the voice, who he honestly thought was a little too cute to be wandering around the convention center on their own, but nonetheless he pushed the thought away and decided it was best to maintain a level of professionality when interacting with fans. 

“Hi! Yup, that would be me!”

The mystery person had a smile stretching across their face reaching out to shake Felix’s hand, which he took politely. He had no idea who this person was and it didn’t look like they were part of any teams since they weren’t wearing a jersey, so it was safe to assume this was just another fan.

“Wow, it’s so great to finally meet you! I’m y/ign, or you can just call me Y/N if you prefer.”

Felix eyes widened in pure surprise when your username left your mouth, not expecting the human he was talking to was you of all people. He did his absolute best to maintain his composure, but the sound of your name dampened his mood in the blink of an eye, his shoulders visibly tensing as his smile fell into a more awkward version of it. 

“Oh, sorry! You aren’t wearing your jersey, so I didn’t realize it was you,” he forced an uncomfortable laugh, but you had already picked up on the stiffness Felix was now carrying in his shoulders, “But, uh, you can call me Felix.”

Ever since you became acquainted with SKZ through your skrims, you could tell that Felix definitely wasn’t your biggest fan. Maybe you had gotten off on the wrong foot, but other than playing the game, you weren’t sure what you had done to make him dislike you so much. You had quickly befriended everyone else on the SKZ teams, even going as far as playing other games outside of league with them or meeting up with them to get food, but Felix was the only member who was uninterested and incredibly dry towards you. 

You had done your best to reach out to him and try to get to know him a little better, thinking maybe he just needed time to warm up to strangers, but that theory was quickly disproved when you found out Jeongin and Jisung had played some ARAMs with him and even met him in real life. Apparently, he was the sweetest and most pleasant guy to be around, yet you never had the pleasure to be met with his warmth. Instead, all you knew was an icy and cold exterior that pushed you away at every corner. At some point, you had been discouraged to attempt to be his friend, but you still thought it would be best to remain as cordial as you could with him, which meant greeting him and inviting him to any events your team hosted.

Not everyone was going to like you, that was a lesson you had learned long ago and you weren’t going to let it get to you when you had other things to focus on. You didn’t need to be his friend, anyway. 

“Yeah, my team isn’t scheduled to play til way later, so didn’t really need to wear it,” you smiled at the boy, nervously playing with the hem of your shirt as you watched Felix’s expression slowly drop, “Well, uh, I’ll let you go back to your team. Good luck in your games!”

Felix raised an eyebrow as you hastily turned away, surprised at how different your demeanor was in person compared to his initial impression of you. 

Online and through your varied interactions, Felix had pinned you as some overconfident, cocky, and disrespectful asshole who was purposefully targeting him. While everyone around him insisted that was not the case, he couldn’t help but feel the burning flames of hatred burst in him every time he received a message from you, each seemingly mocking him for whatever play he made that day. 

However, this version of you was entirely different than what he had imagined this whole time. You didn’t ooze out that same confidence he had pictured you to have, but instead you seemed a lot more timid and welcoming in person. There was a gentle shyness that accompanied the warmth of your aura, golden and bright hues of yellow radiating off you as you smiled with not a single hint of malice in your eyes. When he met your gaze, he thought he would be staring right into the same sweltering, scarlet fury he had become so familiar with, but while searching your eyes, all he found was the brilliance of your tender-hearted benevolence, only rays of sunshine and light coloring the bright green meadows that expanded across your being.

What was this? This wasn’t the scorching, volcanic, blindingly red world he had been living in the past month, yet he still found himself melting under the comforting warmth, wanting nothing more to bask in your glow and forget the blistering one-sided rivalry he had imagined. For a moment of time, he felt the amber light you emanated was slowly turning his ugly red into a more placid orange, one akin to the sky’s palette during sunset. 

Maybe the boys were right, maybe you did mean well. Maybe he was the asshole, not you.

･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･

The crowd cheered loudly as the announcer’s voice boomed over the intercom, officially declaring SKZ as the victors of the regional collegiate cup for the fourth year in the row. As soon as the blue victory screen popped up during their 5th game against Y/TN, the boys quickly stood up from their seats as they huddled into a group hug while gleefully jumping up and down, ecstatic screams and laughter leaving them as they celebrated their win. After an intense final match where SKZ and Y/TN had traded wins, in the very last game, SKZ was able to pull out with the third and final win needed to end the tournament. That was perhaps one of the most difficult finals SKZ had to play in a long time and for the first time in years, they were afraid that their reign was coming to an end, but luck was on their side today and all the skirms against your team had come to fruition. 

Across the stage, your team stood amongst the chaos erupting throughout the venue, you remaining still in your seat as you watched the defeat screen go through its animations, tears pricking the corner of your eyes in humiliation. Second place was nothing to be ashamed of, but you couldn’t stop the overwhelming rush of emotions that filled you, the blinding stage lights causing your vision to go blurry as the feeling of failure took hold of you. You enviously watched SKZ celebrate their win as you wiped away your tears, standing from your seat with the rest of your team as you headed to congratulate the opposing team.

As your team approached SKZ, Felix immediately noticed the shift in your emotions and saw through the fake smile you forced onto your face as you congratulated each of them. All he could see was the bleak tears that clouded the brightness that once occupied you, the golden aura of yours being overtaken by the blues of sorrow and disappointment. The sun that once gleamed through your entire being had been replaced by flooding waters from a relentless storm of emotion, the cerulean raindrops overtaking the shining yellow hues of your personality. 

As the colors of your emotions blended, Felix swore he saw the slightest tinge of an ugly green forming as the two aforementioned colors danced with one another. Was that jealousy? Although, as soon as he took note of it, the color instantly melted away as you shook his hand, a sincere ‘congratulations, you did amazing,’ leaving your mouth despite the tumultuous storm that dampened your conscience. Somehow, even as the bitter taste of failure lingered on your tongue, your genuinity never once faltered.

The vengeful, piercing, crimson rage Felix had felt for you weeks prior had dulled out as your sadness bleed all over him, guilt now washing over him as he had realized how sorely mistaken he was about you. The burning competitiveness and hatred that once fueled him had been put out by your misery, a deep violet now painting over him as the heavy hands of culpability dragged him down into numbing darkness of shame.

For some unknown reason, Felix felt the urge to run after you as he watched your figure shrink off the stage, wanting to apologize for his unwarranted attitude towards you this past month and bring you back to the warmness he had just learned about to revel under it once more. He remained unmoving as his teammates dragged him into another celebration hug, insisting to take a photo to remember this moment, yet Felix wanted nothing more to forget the sight he had just witnessed. Even though his wish had come true, he couldn’t bring himself to savor this victory against you.

･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･

A few days had gone by since your team had lost the tournament, suffering from what you had considered a rather embarrassing loss. While the games were incredibly close, you were sorely disappointed in your own performance, as you felt that you made too many mistakes that had cost your team the game. After walking off the stage, you succumbed to all the emotions you felt in that moment, letting your body tremble as tears rushed down your cheeks, choked sobs escaping your mouth. You remember how hot your face grew as the rest of your team turned to console you, feeling self-conscious how you were supposed to be the leader, yet you allowed your emotions to get the best of you. 

Despite that, you had managed to get over the brunt of your emotions after a few days, but the message you found waiting for you today on discord had taken you by complete surprise:

✩ sunlixie sent you a message!

hi y/n! i wanted to reach out and apologize to you for how rude i’ve been to you. i’m really sorry, there’s no excuse for any of it. to be honest, i kinda just got rlly tilted from when we played our first skrims, and i guess i ended up taking anything you said the wrong way. again, there’s no excuse for this and i apologize for being that way, but i’d like to have a fresh start and be friends if you are ok w that!

oh, also, you did really great during the tournament! don’t beat yourself up for it, that was the first time we had to play all five games out in the finals, so you guys had us nervous!! 

Well, that was entirely unexpected, but as soon as you read the message, a smile broke out on your face while letting out a sigh of relief, happy to know that it had all been a rather strange misunderstanding and not something you had done. With that, you hastily wrote out a response to Felix, letting him know that all is forgiven and that you would love to be able to finally form a friendship with him. Well, maybe something good did come out of this loss.

･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･ ✩ ･

After playing a few league games with Felix, you both began to develop a close friendship with each other. You finally began to understand what everyone else meant when they described Felix, you were beginning to see why his username was sunlixie. The coldness you had come to know him as melted away as the days past, only to reveal that under that hardened exterior was a boy filled with so much love and gentleness, that it’d blind anyone who stared into his soul for too long. The deep tone of his voice only added to this inviting warmth, adding a layer of comfort and safety that could lull anyone in a peaceful sleep, it was no longer a scary sound that reeked with hatred. 

Eventually, you and Felix had decided to go on small outings together, usually opting to grab a bite at your local coffee shop as either of you would ramble on about a new game to try out or discuss practice for nationals. On the occasion, one of the SKZ boys would tag along or Minho, a member on your team, would join you both, but every time this happened, Felix always felt disappointed that he would miss out time with just you alone. 

Truthfully, he wanted you to himself during these rare moments, wanting to be the only one who made you laugh and be the center of your attention. Jealousy would inevitably creep up behind him, pointing out each and everyone of his insecurities while he watched you interact with the others, it whispering in his ears that you’d never look at someone like him romantically, that he’d never have a chance with someone like you. He hated how much time he had missed out on getting to know you and being your friend due to this childish rivalry, feeling jealous over how much closer you were with everyone else, especially Minho.

Of course your bond with Minho was deeper than everyone else, you had known him longer than Felix and the other SKZ boys and were teammates. Yet, the pangs of insecurity would hit his heart directly each time he’d watch you laugh at a joke Minho made, always playfully slapping his arm in a fit of laughter. 

All Felix could ever think was how much he had wished that was him, how much he wished he’d be able to make you laugh to the point of tears as the unpleasant color of green slowly festered within him, becoming more vibrant as time passed. He was crushing hard on you and he needed to do something about it before it became unbearable to deal with because he hated the unsettling feeling of jealousy.

Thus, Felix decided to finally bite the bullet and asked you to come out for some coffee today, but letting you know he needed to talk about something personal, so he’d prefer if you came alone. 

As you approached the coffee shop, you wondered what Felix could have possibly needed to discuss with you, but you were honored to know that he felt comfortable enough to reach out to you and confide in you with something so personal, which only goes to show how much closer you two have gotten. Upon entering the building, your eyes searched for Felix, finding him seated in a more secluded corner with two coffees waiting on the table. Once his eyes met yours, you waved from the entrance with a smile on your face as you skipped over to the table.

Sliding into your seat, you caught onto Felix’s jittery energy as his legs bounced while his fingers anxiously tapped against the table. His body stiffened as he met your eyes with a nervous smile. Your eyebrows furrowed upward in concern, as you never seen the boy in this state before.

“Hey, is everything okay?”

Felix’s eyes widened at your question, his body completely stilling, not completely aware of how on edge he looked from the outside. He felt a familiar warmth rush to his face as a gentle pink dusted across his cheeks and ears, the rosy color of shyness making itself nestling itself in his stomach. The buzzing flutters he had felt in his stomach earlier sped up with the drumming of his heart, his head feeling like it was about to explode as he scrambled to find the script he rehearsed last night.

“Uhm, yeah, everything’s okay. I just wanted to talk to you about something,” his voice trembled meekly, cringing at the sound of his voice.

You nodded at his words, a panicked look overtaking your face, “Oh, no, did I do something wrong? Did I upset you?”

The blonde haired boy shook his head vigorously, finding your worriedness a bit charming, “Ah, no, not at all! It’s nothing like that!”

The tension in your body dissipated, as a caring smile returned to your face, “Oh, okay. Thank god, I was scared for a bit. Then what’s up? What did you need to talk about?”

“Well, I don’t really know how to say this…” he mumbled quietly, but just loud enough for you to hear. He felt himself shrink under the intensity of your gaze, surprised to see an overwhelming amount of concern etched on your features. 

“That’s okay. Sometimes, you just gotta say it.”

He exhaled nervously, nodding in agreement with your words because he was freaking out on the inside, unable to recall any of the words he had prepared for this moment. Right, at this point, he should just say it.

“I… I like you, Y/N. I really, really like you and-”

Oh, that isn’t the reaction he thought he’d get.

You were never good at hiding your facial expressions, and this moment was no exception as your face morphed into a surprise expression, your mouth dropping as the words left Felix as the warmth you once held paled into white cast of shock and confusion. As soon as you processed his words, you bit your lips while trying to find the words to respond to the sudden confession.

“Ah, wow, thank you, I’m really flattered, but…” you paused for a moment, confusion and uncertainty laced in your voice, “you do know I’m dating Minho, right?”

[salted-caramel-tea]

ok lets get into the creator league stuff (local essay andy is back)

I mean first and foremost what Is the creator league

its an esports tournament ran by eFuse and presented by Mr Beast. its designed as this kind of interactive league allowing fans to play with and for their favourite creators. their trailers on instagram claim that theres gonna be a full years worth of content, however Mr Beasts recent video claims the event will happen across a 10 month time frame.

so the ting that makes this event 'special' is that the creators are not listed as players in the event but as 'team managers'- which is where the creator pass comes in. Each creator has a 'pass' that allows you as a fan and viewer to join their team and participate in the league events. Each pass costs around $20 and from what ive read I believe you can only sign up to participate on behalf of one player.

obviously for reasons of fairness, not everyone who buys a pass will be able to officially compete- there is a limited number of spaces on each team and the places are won via an open qualifier Fortnite tournament where they will also be competing for a $50 k prize- although im yet to find any comment from creator league or any articles on how this money is split. But don't worry even if you don't qualify youre still entitled to a free box of mr beasts chocolate should you buy a pass before September 9th. yey.

so what's the problem with this.

I mean first of all. creators arent even required to play. they can fully just let their team do all the work in every event which might work for people like Vinnie Hacker I guess. This might be a way to try and 'even the playing field' by not giving creators with gaming backgrounds any advantage, however it makes the marketing of 'playing with your favourite creator' a little meh. also as a viewer, id be more interested in watching an event that my creator was an active participant in than just watching my streamer watch other people play on their behalf.

the other huge thing that everyone is really waiting to hear about in this post is the nft situation. so recently the narrator of the creator league announcement video, brycent, conformed that the passes are nfts to be minted on the blockchain operating system Near Protocol. so obviously people are extremely concerned about this discovered involvement in NFTs and crypto currency.

so I went to investigate the website to see what its looks like when you purchase a creator pass and unsurprisingly there is no mention on nfts anywhere. The passes are sold on mynt.gg , which according to their faqs is a 'first of its kind marketplace looking to evaluate esports through community' just have a look actually

so no mention of the passes actually being nft purchase here's . if we go to the check out as well this is what we see for the descriptors

so . people who are purchasing this have no way of actually knowing they are purchasing an nft. you also need an account to add a pass to your basket and im not willing to make an account so im unaware if at any time during the payment process people are made aware of what they are purchasing. its listed and discussed more like a membership than anything, and in a way it is there are benefits to it, however with no information as to what people are actually buying its extremely sketchy and a literally misleading purchase perhaps a scam even . since the fact that they've just purchased an not isn't listed anywhere on mynt.gg prior to purchase. and after going through a few more articles .

so theyre definitely trying to hide it from you. as mentioned you need an account to purchase anything. and you only get to know what youre purchasing if you go through the TOC, which most people don't read lets be real.

it's worth noting as well creator league is the only collection available on mynt.gg at the minute, it seems like this entire business was started FOR creator league.

after reading through the faqs again I want to correct myself and say that yes you can buy more than one pass, but only for one creator. so this seems to me like a pay to win scheme.

im not going to go super in depth into this bit bc its a topic that has already been discussed in detail but obviously a lot of people are not happy with the inclusion of nfts because of their environmental impact, the secrecy and dedication to hiding this fact that the company is involving crypto in the event itself is a little weird if u ask me. oh yeah theres been reports on twitter too that they have been blocking and deleting replies to their posts that accuse them on using crypto.

so theyre lying to you as the viewer about what they are and what youre purchasing. but it seems like theyre lying to the creators too.

again. crypto and nfts is not mentioned anywhere at all. not in the trailer, not on the website not in any announcements . only discovered when people were paying for passes bc they wanted to support their fave creators.

recently one of the listed creators Connor CDawgVA released a twitter statement conforming that he was completely blindsided by the fact that there was cryptocurrency involved in the event- if u haven't seen his tweet here

so this raises the question were creators told about their involvement with Near, or was it written using jargon that people unfamiliar with crypto would not pick up on.

CEO of TAMU Esports Dylan Liu also weighed in on the creator league misleading their creators as well here's his statements too

this isn't everything Dylan has had to say hes done a lot of discussions with people on blockchains and of the event itself as someone who has known about the event for a while, id recommend checking out his twitter if you have time he goes into depth about how much funding theyre getting from near and way more issues with creator league than I have time to explore rn .

but it really does seem that the Creator League and eFuse have gone out of their way to try and hide the fact that they are using cryptocurrency from everyone possible. This is a marketing scheme to try and trick people into buying into their market- and if you google Near Protocol right now you see that they are declining so they actively need more people to buy into their schemes.

investors are leaving Near right now. Theyre tricking people into buying into their organisation. At least thats my understanding of it im not hugely knowledgeable about crypto.

I have a headache lets just wrap this up

this is super sketchy . as of right now CDawgVA is the only creator to have withdrawn from the event, but I hope a lot of creators follow suit. its unknown to us the details of their contracts but from what we know of the event they have done everything to hide the genuine content of creator pass purchases from the viewers- making a lot of people rightfully angry that the event is trying to pull the wool over fans eyes. hiding tweets and refusing to acknowledge their involvement in crypto programmes to the point where its unclear if people like Mr Beast and any of the participating creators are aware of it is super suspicious activity. Especially with how vague their promotions have been on the event, very little information has been available on their instagram and I think it was yesterday that we actually got some kind of timeline of the event. its supposed to start like next week and so many people are still so unsure of what is actually happening in the event or what prizes theyre actually getting if they participate. there has been no redeeming quality in the way that this event has been conceived and executed and I really do hope to see that the event is cancelled or that creators start to speak out against the way that the event is being run and support the fans who feel cheated and blindsided by the organisers . I will say I do not believe any of the creators willingly involved themselves in a cryptocurrency scheme, it's all just too sketchy . and no I did not proofread this nor can I be bothered to .

[gaiaxygang]

nut introduces himself as a ragnarok online esports player in interviews as late as 2021. he talked a bit about this tournament in boys journey ep 1 as well! here's him in 2017 (his team won)

he also mentions skipping classes in university to game in a nutplan video (i do not have the link on hand) 😭😭 he doesnt game as much now but he did stream on tiktok in january, i think with topten? hoping to see more of gamer supanut someday

[divorcetual]

PART TWO OF MSC THIRD WHEELING SAGA:

Me: oh you played identity v too thats so neat!!!

Bai Liu: of course, its a horror mobile game made by a local (chinese) company, also quite interesting mechanics (even though its mainly from DBD)

Me: they worked together tho right? the games' production company

Bai Liu: Yeah they did, very cool tbh. Btw, did you play ranked? like won any esports tournament?

Me: me???? pfft nah i was like a casual player i guess. Who did you main?

Bai Liu: mostly player Survivor as Mechanic but I also dabble in playing Prisoner or Prospector. What about you, who'd you main (as a survivor)

Me: oh thats freaking fun man im a gardener main. What about Hunter?

Bai Liu: I mean I don't really main Hunters but i do admit they have pretty good designs, not so creepy to not get censored but quite intriguing and unsettling in their own way. Like Wu Chang? cool mechanic

Me: Right??? i could never play him though I'm mostly like a Naiad main?

Bai Liu: Naiads cool and quite OP, wish there was like a merman hunter too lol

Mu Sicheng: this pork is so good you guys i hope you two KILL YOURSELVES right NOW. ill set this table on fire . ill take all of it with my skill and we will finally be free of this purgatory. You guys have ANY idea how much time we're wasting right now????

Bai Liu: like , 4 minutes? tops?

Mu Sicheng: IT'LL BE 12 HOURS BY THE TIME YOU TWO ARE DONE YAPPING

Me: what if i killed you? shut up. let us talk about devising a strategy to collect the monster book pages

Bai Liu: oh yeah we havent been doing that havent we

Me: I mean, we've mostly been talking about the economy and horror gacha so no, also you guys havent told me what yall want and what yall are offering for this supper btw

Mu Sicheng: i want your damn life

Me: hey man I know im like famous but my life is probably worth more than your entire game inventory so like no thanks, can you give me unbothered henry instead?

unbothered henry: 🙉

Bai Liu: can i get like infinite mental bleach from here and keep it in my inventory? it counts right?

Me: well i have a lot stocked up so surezies what are u paying with

Bai Liu: a chance to browse all my irl game accounts in different games and try out all my characters whenever you want

Me: okay deal

Mu Sicheng: SERIUOUSLY??;?!!!??! ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?!?!?!?!

Me: system, mute disciple Mu Sicheng hes interrupting our nice friday night dinner right now

System: ['The Last Supper' Target Mu Sicheng is currently in Mute 🔕 mode! Time set to 3 minutes muted as there are 3 participants currently in the domain!]

Bai Liu: unbothered henry doesn't count as a guest? that's so sad

Me: nah hes a meal

unbothered henry: 🐵...

LMAOOOOOO

[excludedmiddle]

An interesting metric of a given individual competition (sport, esport, etc) is how small the pool of players are that can win a top-level event - for ex, in tennis, we had a very long era (now slowly ending) where only Nadal, Federer, Djokovic, and occasionally Murray could ever win an open.

I also talk about this a lot with Starcraft 2 - there are, at any given moment, something like 6 or 7 players who could conceivably win a premier tournament.

On rare occasions, this group becomes so hyperelite that players within it don't lose to players outside of it. This doesn't happen in most games - in SC2, for example, Rogue, who many players consider the GOAT (I don't, but just saying) regularly loses to low tier players.

While I don't know how you would formulate the argument, I think Magnus Carlsen is a good example of this - he almost never drops a game to someone outside the top 10.

But a more classical example is the 5 gods era of Super Smash Brothers Melee, when five players simply did not seem to lose matches to anyone except each other.

That era is long past, but NES Classic Tetris seems to be entering such an era - only six players have won the premier tournament, and they haven't lost to anyone except other players in that group.

[weaselandfriends]

hey! Just watched Players, and was interested in hearing more of your thoughts on it--in what respects you found it hewed true to your own research/experience. I've never engaged with eSports, but Players' depiction of "online masculinity" more broadly was very compelling to me, and reminded me of Jay from CQ, albeit with a more balanced/positive slant. I think that sincerity/positivity hurt the show by preventing it from exploring racism/sexism in gaming culture; you catch glimmers of it, particularly in the internet's reaction to Nightfall's replacement of Guru, but the show goes out of its way to avoid couching it in those terms, presumably to show eSports in a more sympathetic light. Race and gender are common themes in your stories; do you think you would have placed more of a focus on them? Also, have you seen American Vandal? That show's first season was memorable to me for its dissonant ending, which placed all that preceded in a new light; Players has a more understated version of the same, in which Organizm's inhuman, unhinged voicemail is shown to have perfectly predicted Creamcheese's feelings, thus humanizing it in retrospect--only for Organizm to reject this, sacrificing everything in pursuit of impossuble perfection. Many of the show's characters are embodiments of some skill/archetype, and it asks what exactly separates these paragons from ordinary people--which I felt closely matched your own style of characterisation. Thanks for your time!

I'll preface this by saying that I haven't actually seen Players. I just know about it, since it was heavily advertised on the LCS stream when it came out. I'll mention a fun fact though: Nightfall's actor is actually an ex-LCS pro named Youngbin, a Korean-American who once played for Team Liquid. As I understand it, the show also has cameos from many other real pros and esports personalities.

I can speak about some of the topics you brought up, though. First up, racism in the esports scene. This was one of the major topics I wanted to cover in my planned esports story. In particular, I wanted to use the story as a vehicle to challenge the idea of American exceptionalism. In League of Legends, the North American region is a distant fourth best, behind Korea, China, and Europe. In the early days of the scene it was possible to chalk this discrepancy up to infrastructure, especially when it came to Korea; having already developed a sophisticated esports scene due to StarCraft, Korea had an organizational and coaching edge over the rest of the world from about 2012, when the game first took off in Korea, to 2017, when big money investors in the other three regions were injecting huge cashflows into teams. This was an era of Korean dominance, where Korean teams won almost every time. To catch up, the other three regions would import Korean players to their regions as much as possible (since 2015 there have been rules in place to limit imports to 2 per 5-man team), and the only region to ever really catch up to Korea is China, which combined high-money importing of top Korean pros with the gargantuan Chinese server population (China loves League of Legends, it's like the national sport) to finally start winning some tournaments.

North America has consistently lagged behind even China and Europe, an issue mainly related to low server population and poor American internet infrastructure, which forces most prospective NA players to learn and practice the game on much higher ping than pros in any of the other major regions. On top of NA being bad, NA is consistently buoyed by high-profile import players, as opposed to "native" North American players. Actual American and Canadian players often take up filler role player positions around imported Korean and European stars, which has led to a general fact of life that Americans are simply not that good at the game compared to the competition. This is in spite of the fact that League of Legends is an American game made by an American company. It's a joke in traditional sports that Americans are only the best at sports they made, but in League, Americans aren't even that. I wanted to center my story around an American role player in a more supportive position like top, who would have to grapple with the fact that despite being in the top 1% of the top 1% of the top 1% of players, he was simply not good enough to matter beyond that.

Racism in the esports scene is an odd issue, because it's less "racism" and more "regionalism"--or xenophobia. This is due to the league format of professional League of Legends, in which regional leagues (Korea, China, Europe, and NA) feed into a major international Worlds cup. In a sports scene where teams are not tied to specific cities the way they are in traditional sports, this regionalism is often what drives fans to support certain teams, what causes people to root for a team that feels like "theirs." This makes the fan ecosystem closer to the way people root for teams or players at the Olympics or the World Cup, instead of what it's like in the NFL, NBA, etc. Where things get complicated in terms of League is that unlike the Olympics or World Cup, teams from a region are allowed to field players from other regions to represent them. In North America, as I mentioned, this issue is exacerbated because not only are North American teams bad, they're bad often without even being quote-unquote "North American." I mentioned before that there is an import rule that ostensibly ensures every team is 3/5ths comprised of native players. However, due to a variety of loopholes and also the United States' significantly more lenient legal residency and immigration restrictions compared to China, there are many players who were imported to NA solely to play League of Legends who are now technically counted as non-imports. At the most recent Worlds, NA sent three teams, and of the 15 players on those teams, only 3 were "native North Americans," the rest either being imports or former imports who got green cards, making them legally residents. One team was comprised entirely of imports or former imports. Meanwhile, other regions are represented by teams that have a majority of "native" players. So the fan ecosystem is designed around supporting "your region," but NA is in the unique position where "your region" is majority comprised of players from "another region." Hence the point of soreness.

The racism question gets further complicated by the racial makeup of "native" North American players, which heavily slants toward Asian-Americans/Asian-Canadians. Of the 3 "native" players at Worlds last year, 2 were Asian-American/-Canadian (the third was Quebecois). Doublelift, the most famous and beloved North American pro, on whom I believe Players' Creamcheese was modeled, is a Chinese-American whose real name is Yiliang Peng. The breakout rookie star of last year, Jojopyun, is a Korean-Canadian who "native NA" fans held up as the shining hope of native NA talent. Youngbin himself, who plays Nightfall, is a Korean-American "native" pro. This begs another interesting question: Is it racism to support Asian-Americans over Asian Non-Americans? I think this uniquely positioned sports ecosystem creates a complex and interlocking system of identities that is prime for exploration in a narrative format. With the prevalence of European importing, it becomes even stranger. Most of the white players in the North American league aren't Americans or Canadians, but European imports, who are often subjected to the same prejudice and bias among fans as Korean imports. THEN it gets even more interesting when you factor in country of birth, which isn't even tied to citizenship or residency. One of the most famous "native" North American players is Spica, who was born in China and moved to Philadelphia when he was 10 or so. He still has Chinese citizenship and is only considered a "resident" of the United States, exactly like many of those green card-holding "imports," and yet Spica is universally considered "native" talent by fans. Last year, one team (CLG) made a splash by fielding almost entirely "native" talent, and was held up by fans as the "native talent" team--even though one of their players, Dhokla, was born in India. So where is the line? What distinguishes "native" from "foreign"? This is such a complex notion of identity that I feel like I could talk about it for hours.

As for sexism, yeah it's just really sexist.

I guess it's a bit more nuanced than that. League of Legends is like chess in which there is ostensibly no physical reason why women wouldn't be able to compete at the top level, and yet there simply are very few women who do. I follow the League scene from the amateur system to the pro leagues, and it's not like there is a large number of talented female players who are simply being withheld chances to compete due to organizational/player/fan sexism. There have even been instances of major organizations creating all-female development teams, but these teams are generally comprised of players who simply aren't at a level high enough to compete in the major leagues. Every so often you get a female player or two in the amateur or development leagues, but they don't generally stand out enough to be realistically promoted to a major league team.

In all four major regions, there has only ever been one female player who competed at the top level, that being Remilia, a trans girl, whose story is brutally tragic. She was manipulated and abused by the owner of her team, Chris Badawi, who provided for her a botched gender-reassignment surgery that left her with permanent pain for the rest of her life, until she died by suicide some years later. As you might imagine, any fan discussion on Reddit that even tangentially involved Remilia was a graveyard of posts deleted by moderators. The prejudice there, sadly, is about as rampant and overt as possible.

This post went pretty long, especially since I haven't actually seen the show you asked about and wasn't able to give any more specific thoughts on it. Hopefully, though, this provides a bit more context to the strange and complex regional and racial identity issues in the scene.

[disregardcanon]

okay so @petsohp and i recently watched players (2022) by paramount and by god guys it was GOOD

Paramount’s Players is a complex, Shakespearean tragedy. No, I'm not exaggerating. This mockumentary about esports has some of the tightest, most compelling characterizations that I’ve ever seen. It’s also a great examination on how having motives that LOOK the same, on the outside, can create conflict. 

While there are a lot of characters that have some weight on the narrative, it primarily centers on the relationship between Cream Cheese and Organizm. These are both their league of legends handles and I’ll be using them for this analysis since it’s their primary identifier in the show. 

Cream is one of the founding players of the professional team, Fugitive. He is an “aging” player (late twenties) who’s been in the business for years and plays “support” to different “ADCs”, who are the heavy hitters on a team. His first ADC was someone that he idolized that left them for greener pastures and is not always… kind or respectful of their past relationships. 

Before that ADC left, Cream and Fugitive came close to a decisive victory in the North American Championships, but Cream made a mistake early in his career that cost the team badly and has never quite recovered his pre-mistake sense of ease and ability to be PART of a team rather than the undisputed “leader”. 

Organizm is a seventeen year old who is very talented, driven, and has difficulty seeing past his own goals. He is hired by the team’s owners to become the new ADC and face of Team Fugitive. His arrival is met with a lot of conflict from Cream and the rest of the team because he is untested, has difficulties communicating, and replacing a more seasoned player who is a good friend and team player. 

Org brings his own hangups to the group on TOP of his youth. His family who made fun of him for his interests in the past is now very supportive of the idea because it can bring them money and fame. His older brother, who used to bully him for playing league of legends at all, is now attempting to be his manager. 

Cream initially rejects him outright because of the way that he came to the team, and it takes a long time for the two and the team to build up the trust and synergy that they need to be successful. 

But they do it! Organism learns to communicate better with the team and trust them, Cream learns to trust him, and the team as a whole comes out on top of the North American Championship. 

That’s the big goal that Cream Cheese had, was winning this competition to prove that he could. The rest of the original team is riding the high of achieving this thing that they’ve worked YEARS for… but Organizm is a bullied child prodigy. He’s still chafing at the fact that he isn’t, demonstrably, the greatest League of Legends player on the planet. 

The rest of the team called it a night after they won the North American championship because that was their personal goal. Going to “Worlds” was just icing on the cake. They didn’t super think they’d get there and winning that wasn’t really their goal. They were basking in a victory that they’d spent years trying to achieve, while Cream was saying “yo Org you’re the best you’re the greatest you’re wonderful I’m so glad that we got you the BEST ADC! WOO! My legacy right here!” Which both activates some of his trauma with his brother only deciding that his interests matter since they could get him fame and money and taking credit for it, as well as prickling at him because he knows that isn’t true and if he doesn’t keep fighting and fighting and fighting it never will be. 

Fugitive Gaming achieved their goal that took them years and years of working for. Org didn’t. Winning the US Championships were not He was just like “okay we got that punch on my card and now we need to try our absolute hardest to win Worlds”. Which is a reasonable thing for a professional athlete to want, I think. If your team won like, the United States National Soccer Tournament and THEN went to the World Cup and didn’t take the World Cup seriously because they just won the part that mattered to them. 

But this is the United States Mens’ Soccer team… they were never going to win the World Cup, right? It’s an honor just to be invited. (not for the star rookie who wants to be the best player that ever existed) 

So what I’m saying is that Organizm decided that Fugitive Gaming wasn’t taking competition seriously enough for his liking and he left. I think that it won’t work for him well in the end, but it’s GREAT because it’s perfectly in character, could have been solved with some communication, and creates a great amount of emotional stakes going into a season 2. 

[vague-humanoid]

what?

SonicFox and UMISHO won at Skullgirls 2nd Encore and Guilty Gear Strive, respectively. SonicFox is a nonbinary player who has competed in multiple different fighting games throughout their career. With this past weekend’s win, they’ve taken home EVO Championships in Injustice: Gods Among Us in 2014, Mortal Kombat X in both 2015 and 2016, Mortal Kombat 11 in 2019, and now Skullgirls in 2022. They were also awarded Esports Player of the Year at the 2018 Game Awards.

UMISHO, on the other hand, is a newcomer to the scene, having started competing in Guilty Gear Strive this year. This makes sense, considering the game released just over a year ago. During her relatively short career, UMISHO has seen significant success, taking second at the Vortex III tournament, first at the CLG Run It Thursdays #2 – East Coast tournament, and third at Heat Wave 2022. Now, they’re the reigning champion of one of the fighting game ecosystem’s newest titles.

[force-majuere]

PH TEAMS CONQUERING OTHER STRONG TEAMS WORLDWIDE IN MOBILE LEGENDS BANG BANG

E-Sports in the Philippines is not quite popular back then but when mobile legends came into the Philippines, E-Sports is likely becoming popular. Many people tried to look for their teams and Moonton created a MPL(Mobile Legends Professional League) that's the time where everything started. Moonton also created different tournaments these are MDL, MSC, M3 and etc. Also mobile legends is also being part of SEA(Southeast Asia) games. PH Teams dominated the Mobile Legends Bang Bang internationally since MSC 2018, after that in M1 World Championship, Indonesian got their first and last championship. After the Indonesian got their championship the filipinos started to dominate the entire international tournaments. PH won in the M2-BREN ESPORT, MSC 2021-EXECRATION, M3 WORLDS CHAMPIONSHIP-BLACKLIST INTERNATIONAL, MSC 2022-RSG PH, SEA(SOUTH-EAST ASIA) GAMES-BLACKLIST INTERNATIONAL. In the current tournament BLACKLIST INTERNATIONAL and ECHO PH destroying the teams in the M4. Blacklist pillars are Ohmyveenus the captain and (ROAMER) of blacklist, Wise the (JUNGLER), Edward the (EXP LANER), Oheb the (GOLDLANER), Hadji the (MIDLANER), under the coaching staff of coach Bon Chan and Master the Basics the analyst of the team. The group stage of blacklist in M4 world championship is 2-1 they won 2 times against INC(Incendio Supremacy) of Turkey in best of 1 and RRQ akira of Brazil in best of 1, they lost against Falcon e-sports of Myanmar of best of 1 in the knockout stage Blacklist destroyed RRQ Hoshi of Indonesia, one of the strongest team in Indonesia, the kings of kings of in Indonesia in the score of 3-1. So the Blacklist is seating on the upper bracket and waiting for the upcoming result of the game of ECHO PH against ONIC ID. On the other hand there is ECHO PH the second team that represent Philippines in the M4 championship the pillars of ECHO PH are Yawi the (ROAMER) of the team, Karltzy the (JUNGLER), Sanji (MID LANER), Bennyqt (GOLDLANER), Sanford (XP LANER), and Jaypee (ROAM) extra player. The group stage of ECHO PH is 3-0, they won the 3 games in their bracket. They defeated RSG Singapore in best of 1, occupied thrones of Mena in best of 1 and the last team they defeated is RRQ hoshi of Indonesia in best of 1. In the knockout stage they are on the upper bracket and they destroyed THQ of Malaysia, the champion in the MPL Malaysia and they advances on the upper bracket and they faced ONIC ID the team that won MPL Indonesia, the number 1 team in Indonesia that expecting to dominate in the M4 Championship but ECHO PH proved that Philippines is the strongest country in terms of mobile legends bang bang #pinoylangmalakas, ECHO PH defeated ONIC ID in the score of 3 - 1 in favor of ECHO. So far our representatives in the M4 is in the good place in the upper bracket. Still filipino teams are dominating in the international tournament M4 Worlds Championship.

[mariacallous]

In October of 2019, the professional esports player known as “Blitzchung” was being interviewed on a livestream discussing a match he had just won in Taiwan as part of a tournament for the game Hearthstone. Wearing a gas mask and goggles and speaking to the official Taiwanese Hearthstone stream, Blitzchung repeated a popular slogan of protesters in Hong Kong who had recently taken to the streets to protest China undermining the island’s independence: “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time.”

Blitzchung, whose real name is Ng Wai Chung and who hails from Hong Kong, quickly found himself in the crosshairs of Activision Blizzard, the company behind Hearthstone. Blizzard shut down the stream, suspended and punished Blitzchung, and wrote a formal apology in Chinese on Weibo (but never released it in English). Blizzard declared Blitzchung to be in violation of player rules that forbid conduct that could be offensive or might harm the company’s image, banned him from competing for a calendar year, and demanded he forfeit thousands of dollars in prize money. Blizzard also fired the two streaming journalists who were interviewing Blitzchung and banned them from covering future Activision Blizzard events.

The “Blitzchung affair,” as it came to be known, highlights how video games pose unique challenges to free speech. Western companies complying with Chinese censorship demands—in this case, attempting to suppress advocacy for a free Hong Kong—as a cost of doing business isn’t new, but the role of video games as an important venue for speech and a central battleground for free speech remains underappreciated. Conflicts over free speech in video games go far beyond Hearthstone. Whether in the chat features of video games or in the narrative decisions made by video game designers, the censorship demands of countries around the world are increasingly shaping the digital entertainment consumed by the world’s more than three billion gamers. These demands create a difficult challenge for video game companies: balancing the need for business growth with a commitment to free speech.    

The business of games, the business of censorship

Video games have been globalized for so long that their global reach can sometimes be easy to miss. Since the 1980s, a game has been as likely to have been made outside the United States as within it. Companies like Sega and Nintendo are Japanese, Ubisoft (which makes Assassin’s Creed) is French, Witcher developer CD Projekt Red is Polish, to name a few. For the most part, these companies reside in countries that respect values like free speech. But that is changing. A global investment push by the Chinese tech giant Tencent has made it a major player in the video game industry. Just last month, Tencent doubled its stake in Ubisoft. Activision submitting to Chinese censorship should be no surprise, since Tencent has a 5% stake in the company worth nearly $3 billion. Tencent also has large stakes in several other U.S. video game companies like Riot Games (acquired in 2011), Fortnite maker Epic Games (a 40% stake), and the chat service Discord. These investments give Tencent the power to enforce Chinese speech values on non-Chinese players at venues outside of mainland China, as in the Blitzchung Affair. Other authoritarian countries hostile to free speech are taking note and pursuing similar investment strategies, most notably Saudi Arabia, which just last month announced a $38 billion investment push into the video game industry.

The censorship power exerted by deep-pocketed authoritarian governments is a worry familiar to other creative fields, especially cinema. As documented in a 2020 report by PEN America, “Beijing’s censors have affected and influenced Hollywood and the global filmmaking industry.” Values deemed unacceptable by the ruling Chinese Communist Party are often either removed from production or edited out for distribution. In one prominent example, the 2018 film Bohemian Rhapsody, which depicts the life of a very gay Freddie Mercury had all references to homosexuality removed from the Chinese release. China has this power because their financial support keeps Hollywood alive in the era of global blockbusters. As a result, films about Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or the ongoing genocide of Uyghurs are impossible to make at studios that do business in China.

Video games have, for the most part, escaped the same level of scrutiny over content censorship that movies have received. The lack of attention has given the Chinese government space to impose rigid restrictions on what non-Chinese game makers can do in the Chinese market. Most games go through a design process known as localization. When games are being made in one free country and published in another, localization is akin to translating a book: Idioms need to be altered, sometimes dialogue reconfigured to make sense for the scene in question. Localization, in other words, requires selecting what speech to put into a game and in what way, creating an easy opportunity for censorship. But China’s market is large enough—and budgets are small enough—that Chinese censorship often gets incorporated into games at the development stage, not edited out later for distribution. Some of the rules around what is prohibited are almost inexplicable to foreign audiences, like references to Winnie the Pooh (a stand-in for Chinese leader Xi Jinping) or small details of female character design. Even for gaming giants, these local restrictions can be so onerous they aren’t always worth complying with, like when Epic Games decided last year to halt production of its Chinese localization of the popular Fortnite game, citing the difficulties of adapting an existing project to cumbersome censorship demands.

China is not alone in imposing censorship on video games. Last year, the Russian government announced a plan to use neural networks to search for banned content in video games released in the country and censor them. The Russian government insists it is to identify child sexual abuse media, suicide, and drug use, but the censorship extends far beyond those topics. Over a decade ago, for example, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 featured a shocking scene where a player could execute civilians en masse at a Russian airport—a rather clumsy reference to the scourge of Chechen terrorism. Moscow demanded the scene be removed entirely from the game. Much like China, Russia is aggressive at erasing queer people and content from video games and has done so since its 2013 law criminalizing the positive mention of gay people around children. Other countries engage in video game censorship as well. India threatened and bullied the PUBG Corporation into pulling PlayerUnknown’s Battleground Mobile from the market, only allowing it to be reintroduced after major changes to content and gameplay. Meanwhile, Pakistan banned Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 for “painting the country in a negative light.” However, tracking censorship at a global scale is difficult: many developers do not wish to attract negative scrutiny from governments they need to appease for market access, and there is no feasible way to track the role of self-censorship at game developers.

The censorship conflicts in video games mirror similar dynamics on other tech platforms. Until last year, for example, Microsoft complied with censorship demands on LinkedIn before it shut down the platform, citing “a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements.” In China, writers have seen their words censored at the software level if it is deemed too sensitive. The social media app TikTok, while ostensibly an American version of the video app Douyin, nevertheless censors content in compliance with Chinese censorship laws. The app aggressively, but quietly, censors content deemed “political” according to CCP dictates. In 2019, teenage TikTok influencer Feroza Aziz used her makeup tutorials to draw attention to the ongoing genocide against Uyghurs in western China; TikTok prevented her videos from being shared. TikTok also restricts references to the Tiananmen Square massacre. Like every other creative industry dealing with demands from China, Russia, and elsewhere, the app also suppresses queer creators and limits the reach of creators who are overweight or have disabilities in an effort to keep “ugly” content from appearing on its main recommendation feed. TikTok also censored content about the democracy protests in Hong Kong, just as Activision Blizzard did. And just as worryingly, Chinese tech companies, from Alibaba to Tencent to ByteDance, have admitted to sharing user data with the Chinese government—so anyone who uses their services to push banned content might be registered in a government database.

Structural challenges to global free speech

One reason Chinese censorship has been exported so widely is the consolidation of media companies in the west. As Disney, for example, has acquired production houses and franchises like 20th Century Fox, Marvel, and Star Wars, executives at the company have grown increasingly unwilling to make films that might upset censors. Communication research has shown that media consolidation—which Disney represents most clearly but which applies equally to Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global, and other large conglomerates—makes self-censorship to appease government demands more consequential and with more wide-ranging consequences. It should come as no surprise that the gay themes of Bohemian Rhapsody were edited out of the film for Chinese audiences, when the company responsible for distributing it was 20th Century Fox, a Disney subsidiary.

The video game industry is consolidating in a way similar to television and movies, which risks exposing the medium to the same self-censorship dynamics of the film industry. In just the last two years, Microsoft purchased ZeniMax Media (which makes Doom, Skyrim, and Fallout) and is attempting to acquire Activision Blizzard for a whopping $75 billion. In just the first six months of 2022, more than 600 video game mergers and acquisitions took place worth over $107 billion. The concentration of capital in a shrinking number of companies dramatically raises the stakes of any censorious government imposing speech restrictions on games by making those decisions ripple across the globe. And as China remains an enormous market many companies must tap into to continue growing, the ways Chinese censorship demands affect non-Chinese consumers and players will only become more salient.

China threatening U.S. companies with lost access to markets if they support free speech presents a difficult conundrum. In the economic reality of the 21st century, large companies need to grow in order to remain competitive—and it is more difficult to do that if they are unable to access a billion consumers in China. At the same time, what obligations do US-based companies have to uphold American values? In his annual letter to CEOs, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink often invokes the need for companies to have a “clear stated purpose [and] consistent values.” Can a company be profit-seeking and actively safeguard the values that define American culture, like free expression? The video game industry offers a clear example of this conflict and, at least so far, the results aren’t encouraging.

As a global medium, the risk to free speech in video games is global in scale—decisions made in one country will have ripple effects on how people experience games in other countries. This happened recently with the enormously popular mobile game, Genshin Impact. The developer, miHoYo, imposed a global language gag on the in-game player-to-player chat, in every widely used language, to forbid references to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tiananmen, Falun Gong, and other words and phrases banned by China. Blizzard has made similar concessions in Hearthstone, censoring card art to appease Chinese authorities. Instead of making localization changes for the Chinese market, it is easier to concede globally to censorship. Despite the ongoing concern about Chinese financing for films, there is—still—relatively little outcry about Chinese financing for video games, even though it has already led to Americans in the United States being censored.

The necessity and limits of outcry

The challenge of protecting free speech in the video game industry has no easy answers. It is the result of structural pressures and a gap between corporate and democratic values. Shifting those values will not happen overnight, and they cannot be legislated into existence. Community pressure from gamers that demands full speech rights from the owners of game platforms and services can help to set a norm that speech rights need to be prioritized, not discarded, when localizing products.

There are no clearly defined norms and expectations around how speech is best defended in a globalized market, and gamers arguably have an opportunity to shape them. Facing a torrent of criticism from gamers, Blizzard navigated its way out of the Blitzchung Affair by reversing the most severe of its penalties, apologizing to players, and resuming normal operations as quickly as it could. Blizzard also reiterated a “no politics” stance for its livestreams, but avoiding politics does not mean politics are absent. When a repressive government demands silence, caving to that silence is not neutral—it is doing the repression’s work. Blizzard folding in the face of criticism points to the important role gamers play in shaping norms and unacceptable behavior: With enough negative media attention, and enough player unrest, game companies will be more willing to soften penalties or adjust policies. By carrying out direct forms of activism—boycotts, walkouts, live protests at gaming events, and persistent pressure on social media—players can hold companies’ feet to the fire when they behave undemocratically. However, public outcry can only go so far. It is unreasonable to expect coordinated player response for every instance of misconduct—ultimately, such an expectation places a higher and higher onus on players, while absolving the company of developing agency over its own policies.

While government regulation might seem like an appealing way to safeguard speech rights in gaming, at least in the United States, it would be a difficult sell. Directly imposing speech requirements on companies is unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court has established that companies have the right to restrict speech in their workplaces, products, and services. In fact, people rely on those restrictions to limit online speech the government is unable to, like hate speech.

Government officials do have an important role to play in placing public pressure on companies that comply with censorship demands. In a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, Senators Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, and Ron Wyden joined Congressional Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Tom Malinowski, and Mike Gallagher to send a letter to Blizzard in 2019 condemning the company for sparking the Blitzchung Affair. Massive player backlash and an employee walkout showed unequivocally that the company lacked allies supporting its decision to punish a non-Chinese player outside of China for endorsing the Hong Kong democracy protests. While the effort involved was enormous, outside pressure can be effective in setting boundaries for appropriate conduct in the video game industry.

In sharp contrast to the video game industry’s submission to Chinese censorship, Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine has seen its leading companies suspending sales in Russia, suggesting that the industry is perfectly capable of taking a principled stand for human rights when enough popular sentiment is behind them. Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony were early voices in boycotting sales in Russia to protest their latest round of violence against civilians. Other video game makers followed suit, effectively freezing out Russian consumers and players from the global game market. The response to the Russian invasion also illustrates the stark differences in the industry’s challenges in China: A dramatic and illegal invasion is a different context than routine business, where it is difficult to maintain public outcry over the compromises necessary to operate in a local market. It can be hard to make an individual act of censorship, especially one that takes place during localization, into an urgent issue worthy of sustained public outcry. And this is a challenge inherent to defending speech globally, as it can be difficult to feel an urgent threat.

In the meantime, there is a window for a combination of consumer outrage and corporate frustration over speech restrictions to take root. The severe disruptions of the Covid crackdowns in China have led to an historic drop in confidence for doing business in that country. Losing the promise of easy, double-digit returns might open up more space for businesses to feel comfortable resisting demands for censorship. But this is a narrow window, one that may not last much longer.

[toxapexremade]

ive been enabled so now i get to talk about being a tournament enjoyer but league torneys are extremely fun to watch once youve gotten the hang of how the game works. which is kind of how i feel about all esports but i love watching team based shit a lot because theres a lot of skill expression when you can make things work in tandem with others and its just soo cool to see people pull off crazy shit w/ their teammates im always like woaw!!!! also i found out that the 2016 world championship was won with someone playing nami so ive chosen those matches as my next vod to go thru in honor of the nami revelations from tonight

[jeannailcarter]

From Tournaments to Charities - The Journey of Cuddle_Core

Jeannail Carter

Jeannail Carter's accomplishments have proven that the gaming industry is not solely a domain for men. Her journey, which begins in the heart of the gaming community and extends to her active participation in various charitable causes, symbolizes a changing landscape in the realm of gaming. An icon and influencer, Carter's story portrays not only her prowess in gaming but also her dedication to advocating for mental health, promoting self-worth, and championing diversity and inclusivity. This narrative serves as an introductory glimpse into the life of Jeannail Carter, a woman who has truly transformed the face of the gaming community.

Tournaments and Triumphs

Jeannail Carter's journey in the competitive gaming industry is adorned with numerous accolades. She has consistently proven her mettle in the world of esports, notching up victories in prestigious tournaments. Her crowning achievement came in 2023 when she won the major tournaments: Defend the North and Texas Showdown. Being a part of illustrious teams like Red Bull Gaming and Cloud9, Carter has represented them in more than 50 top 8 finishes in tournaments such as EVO and ICFC. Her gaming prowess earned her revered titles like a Twitch ambassador, a Forbes 30 UNDER 30 honoree, and a Playstation Playmaker.

Not resting on her laurels, she uses her successes to further advocate for diversity and inclusivity in gaming, a testament to her commitment towards positive change in the industry. Her impact extends far beyond the gaming community, inspiring a generation of gamers and non-gamers alike to embrace their uniqueness, break barriers, and champion diversity and inclusivity in all facets of life.

Online Communities and Support

In a world where online gaming is an integral part of the gaming experience, she found herself embracing the virtual communities that blossomed on platforms like Twitch and Discord. These online spaces provided her with a platform to connect with fellow gamers and build a loyal following. It was here that she honed her skills and, more importantly, fostered a sense of belonging.

Through these online communities, she found allies who shared her passion for gaming and her commitment to breaking down the barriers that had long restricted women in the industry. The camaraderie she experienced online further fueled her determination to make a positive change.

The Dark Side of Gaming

The journey was not without its share of adversity. As she continued to rise in prominence, she encountered the darker side of the gaming world: harassment and sexism. She received unsolicited messages, faced offensive comments, and even threats, all because of her gender. Rather than backing down, she used these experiences as fuel to fight against the deeply entrenched biases that still exist in gaming.

Addressing harassment in the gaming community became one of her missions. She became a vocal advocate for safe and inclusive gaming spaces, pushing for greater accountability from gaming platforms and developers. Her efforts, alongside those of other activists, started to bring about significant changes in the industry, leading to stricter anti-harassment policies and better enforcement of rules.

The Transition to Charity

Jeannail Carter's altruistic efforts go beyond simply organizing events. She has taken her advocacy to a new level by aligning herself with various charitable foundations, prioritizing mental health and self-worth. Understanding the potential challenges that gamers face, including mental health issues and self-doubt, she has made it her mission to create awareness and provide support. With the spotlight firmly on her, she has effectively used her platform to break stigmas and encourage open conversations about these issues.

Carter's commitment to these causes reflects her belief that gaming is not just about competition, but also about community, understanding, and mutual support. Her philanthropic endeavors have undoubtedly raised the benchmark for social responsibility within the gaming community, establishing her as a leader both on and off the screen.

Changing Perceptions

Through her journey from competitive gaming to charitable endeavors, she had transformed not only her own life but also the perception of gaming itself. It was no longer just a pastime but a force for good, a means of uniting people from all walks of life. The gaming community was no longer just a gathering of individuals pursuing their passions in isolation; it was a powerful collective that could change lives and make the world a better place.

Her story serves as a powerful reminder that stereotypes can be shattered. The gamer girl is no longer an anomaly; she is a powerful, influential force within the gaming world. Her journey from tournaments to charities is a testament to the ever-evolving and inclusive nature of the gaming community. It reminds us that the true power of gaming lies not only in the pixels and polygons on the screen but in the hearts and minds of those who play.

Conclusion

Carter believes strongly in the power of gaming as a platform for positive change, and she continually strives to utilize her influence for the betterment of society. She actively promotes mental health and self-worth within the gaming community, a testament to her deep understanding of the unique pressures and challenges faced by gamers. Through her work with various charitable foundations, she has raised significant awareness and support for these crucial aspects of well-being.

Besides, Carter is a fervent advocate for diversity and inclusivity in the gaming industry. Aware of the barriers and biases that exist, she tirelessly works towards dismantling them, leading by example and speaking publicly about her experiences and insights. As a female gamer in a traditionally male-dominated field, Carter's success story is particularly inspiring for other women and girls who aspire to make their mark in the gaming world.

In conclusion, Jeannail Carter is much more than a pro gamer. She is a trailblazer, an advocate, and an influencer, who has used her platform to drive meaningful change in the gaming community and beyond. As we watch her journey unfold, one thing is abundantly clear: she is just getting started, and the world is eagerly waiting to see what she accomplishes next.

[mr-rogers-blood-stained-sweater]

Riot is a bad game designer, bad e-sports designer, bad company, and full of bad people (mostly).

This post is a callout and warning specifically to riot, esports players, wannabe esports players, investors, future investors, team owners, and pretty much anybody else involved in this shindig, GET OUT. RIOT DOESNT LIKE YOU, RIOT DOESNT LIKE ITS OWN EMPLOYEES GET OUT. Riot has a long and steady history of screwing over its esports players for very little reason. Why wouldnt they screw over you? (see this link for the most recent incident)

Riot illegally and sexually harrassed its own employees many times why wouldnt they harrass you? (Once again, another link to the most recent case, theres a few)

Riots games are copys of other more succsesfull better managed and balanced games with less monetization and more flexibility(dota 2 vs lol,csgo vs valorant), i mean for christs sake valorant has you install an "anti-cheat" that has kernel level access, its always fucking on unless you hunt it down in task manager and yes it does bog your pc down a little.

Riot balances their games around the meta that is active in the pro scene which can be wildly different to what is actually playable and usable, pros necesating nerfing of popular low skill champs is a common occurence and regularly ruins any new player accessibility and alienates even moderate players. This also leads to poor communication between devs and players but also a feeling of disconection, like the league i play isn't the league the devs had in mind when balancing.

This doesnt even begin to touch how games like valorant are all reaction based and pattern memorization based, very little skill is actually involved when most matches are boiled down to allowable nade throws and who gets to certain corners first/who has better connection. For those who dont know counterstrike players had the game down so well that they had to start using higher refresh rate monitors back in the source eras as games were already so close that a couple more frames per second were giving players an advantage. (Tl:dr whoever sees the other guy first usually wins)Csgo/valorant are not skill based games, but are a luck/timing/memory based game with varying levels of paint and a forced esports perspective.

I feel like the modern esports gamer is to us as a pug is to a healthy mixed breed, they have chosen to specialize in such select skills that they dont even realize they muddy their own enjoyment of games as a whole.