ただいま (interlude)

two if by c.
Jul 28, 2017 · 6 min read

Long time no see. It’s been a while, and I’m sorry.

I tried, I really did, but despite my best efforts, I can’t remember any of the games I’ve watched recently. I know I watched them — I have the sleep debt to prove it — but it’s like the games from the last few weeks went in one ear and went out the other. I can’t really remember compositions, or narratives, or storylines, or any of the things that I expect myself to keep track of. And without those, a feelings diary is just that — a pile of maudlin feelings.

Riot Flickr Account

The thing is, since my last entry, I’ve switched employers, moved literally cross-country, gone apartment-hunting, found a new apartment, and started a new job. I had five consecutive goodbye dinners. I drove my cat eighteen hours all by myself (she cried for four of them). I’m still planning a wedding — which is supposed to happen in two months. It’s, as the kids say, a lot.

These are excuses. I know they are. People with busier lives than me, with family and children, manage to come out with content. What is my excuse? But for the first time since starting this, watching league felt both more and less like a hobby. More, because I did it to get away from the stress of my real life. Less, because every game I watched felt like another reminder that I wasn’t blogging my way through it, week by week, like I said I would. I felt, very heavily, the responsibility I had taken on, the promise I had made to myself — and to you — without delivering.

I was going to work all of this into the next entry, but reading this intro now, it feels so self-indulgent and pointless. So I’m cutting it out and sticking it here, like a technical pause in a game. Think of it like a skin issue. I meant to show you a better me, and instead what showed up was a bug. Now Monte and DoA are going to talk about their lives in Korea for about 45 minutes while we wait for everything to clear up. Only Monte and DoA aren’t here. You’re stuck with just me. So I hope you won’t mind if I take this time to have out with a very maudlin diary entry, one that is just barely about league.

In about eight hours, I’m getting on a plane and flying to Los Angeles to attend my very first live League of Legends event. This is coming right after I watched the very last ever North American Challenger Series game from my kitchen island, and right before APEX Season 3 finals, starring Kongdoo Panthera and Lunatic-Hai. Life is cyclical — we are always at the cusp of something ending and something else beginning. What will become of Gold Coin United and Madlife and Fly, who have come to the United States to make a new life for themselves just as the promotion/relegation system gets terminated? What will become of Kongdoo Panthera, who carry the hopes of their sister team on their shoulders as they face down the current kings of Overwatch, right as the Overwatch League ramps up, no doubt already cannibalizing even the APEX Korean teams? What will the world of League of Legends and Overwatch and all esports look like next year, next month, next week? This is a liminal space, for us and the players both. I am holding my breath, and I can’t tell if it’s out of anxiety or excitement or, more likely, both.

I fell into league, as you know, almost wholly by accident, and my connections to the players and teams I love often feel out of my control. I didn’t choose them so much as they chose me. Overwatch and APEX, on the other hand, felt more like choices I did make, for better or worse. I picked Kongdoo because of their LCK team, sure, but I went into supporting KDP and KDU with open eyes (pun intended), knowing full well what I was getting myself into — more sleep debt, needing to learn a whole new slate of meta and hero pools and gameplay, painstakingly memorizing all the different map types and time bank rules. It was in supporting Pancia that I started using my public twitter account for more than just retweets and translations. I sent them cheery replies before games and retweeted any and all English language content they pushed out. I wanted, desperately, for them to know Lunatic-Hai wasn’t the only organization we Westerners knew. I felt ownership over their successes and their failures. Kongdoo not getting further in APEX Season 2 felt like a personal affront, like I had done something wrong. They were my team.

In some self-absorbed and utterly irrational way, KDP getting to APEX Season 3 finals felt like a gift, just for me. Like I had earned it somehow, by caring so hard. Of course I didn’t. Of course it had everything to do with the players and the coaches and the organization and, in no small part, LW-Blue and LH’s unfortunate roster problems.

But OGN scheduled these finals on what would turn out to be the same day I would be in LA to watch NALCS with the person who fell into league with me and the person who ultimately dragged me into league back in November. Is this a coincidence? Is this a sign? There have been so many moments already this year — that telecom war spring finals, or the Tigers reunion the next day — that I am overwhelmed with it. I have been too lucky. The universe has pandered to me, towards keeping me interested in esports when all signs in my real life are pointing me away and telling me I don’t have time. Have you ever felt like an actual gravitational force was bending the circumstances around you to appeal to you? I am not a romantic person, but in this moment I think I could be.

(Did you know Birdring was a League of Legends player first? So maybe I didn’t choose Kongdoo after all — maybe it has always chosen me.)

Maybe this is just sentimentality. Maybe everything feels like a sign of something, just because I am obsessed with the idea that everything around us has greater meaning, that you and I were brought here together for some greater, narrative purpose. In moments of great etc. etc. we give weight to things that were meant lightly and read into them a predictive power they never had. But just a few days ago, Riot released DRIVE: The LemonNation Story. I’d gone into it just expecting to learn more about what the league was like when Lemon, the oldest pro still playing, started off, maybe some background on early Cloud9 and his perspective on Flyquest now.

But instead he looked at the camera and said, “I love Hai. He’s my best friend. I’m very lucky that I randomly got put onto a team with him. I wanted to play with those five [Cloud9 teammates] for as long as possible. It felt like we were family. At the end of the day, what makes me happy is my friends and the connections I’ve made through league.”

And for a moment I felt justified. Like I’d ended up in the right place for me, after all. Like Lemon was speaking to me and telling me that he got it, he got me. I too love Hai. I too love my friends. I too want to sit with them side by side and watch esports for as long as possible. Sometimes I feel like this — you guys, this writing, all the people in this proverbial bar— could be family.

If this a sign, a message from the gods of esports to me, I’ll take it. I know I can do better. I will do better. There are no issues we can’t fix, if we try. So stay with me, and I’ll stay with you too.

And see you next week with a real entry. I promise.

two if by c.

Written by

cathy. bronze tier blogger. you win some, you lose some more, and sometimes you write some entries for your feelings diary while it happens. (lcs, lck, and owl)

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