Sunset Speaks

[sunsetspeaks]

Sunset Speaks turned 3 today! Ah, remember when we first started writing about esports and feelings?

[sunsetspeaks]

A Short Study on The Use Of Words

A long time ago, a man I know told me that he loved me. Just before he decided he didn’t anymore, he told me the reason I don’t put on lipstick is the same reason I don’t clean my apartment. It was a long time ago. Now I clean, and I wear lipstick like armour - bright red armour through which words like weapons cascade. I used to use words to build large walls, so nothing that could hurt me would ever reach me. I used words like barbed wire, like bricks, like huge barking guard dogs, until I was a fortress, because you were the enemy. Then one day, someone else’s words built a surprising door. Now I’m trying to use words for different things. I pile words together gently, some delicately falling by the wayside, as I build you a sandcastle that I want you to be proud of. I use words like tiny, tiny eyelid kisses. I use them to paint a picture of how things were, how things could be, how things really are if you look a little closer. I see the power of words, I see what they can do - words can wage war or point you to the moon. They can destroy ideals, shake down your definition of humanity. Sometimes we squash them into 140 characters and watch them tumble in real time - a stream of consciousness from the humanity we personally construct. But in the end, I want to point you towards the beauty in things you would never suspect, because it’s the beauty in those things that keeps me alive. I have spent too long using words to attack. I want to use my words like a peaceful protest, full of hippies singing songs in massage circles. Using words is an art in which I am embarrassingly uneducated. Had I spent more time honing it and less time building walls, maybe then I would be better at them. Maybe then I could wield them like giant swords, to fight evil and protect the weak. Maybe then I could use words to change the world. Instead, I write about video games. And this. I guess. Yes, it is what we do with our words that define us - sometimes we are even more defined by when we choose silence. But it’s always a choice, you know, about what you communicate and how you do it, and to whom. And there are small battles and large battles, and we fight them in the only ways we know how.

[sunsetspeaks]

Moments from MLG Anaheim: Part Two

I have this friend with whom, when we talk, I turn into a full-blown Australian. "You gotta fuckin’ let it go, mate!" I drawl loudly. I’m driving home from work in the dark, seemingly screaming into nothing in particular thanks to Bluetooth phone connectivity. It’s been a week since I got back from America. It’s Saturday night and it’s raining - my windshield like black and orange bubble wrap against the glow of streetlights - and my friend is high as a kite. She’s talking in bursts of two words at a time, which makes conversation hard to follow. I get the general idea of what she’s saying, though, which is why I keep sighing and drawing back aggressively on my e-cigarette and yelling, “Mate! Mate! Just let it go! Fuck!” **** Two weeks earlier, I am on a plane which has just landed in Boston at midnight. The whole 5-hour flight was turbulent. I am tired and hungry and questioning every brain cell in my pickled mind. Everyone’s packed into the aisles, unable to move, and I am in a foetal position up against the window as the speakers on the plane play a piano version of Let It Go from Disney’s Frozen. Everything inside me is screaming. This has to be a test. *** Seven hours earlier, I am on a shuttle from Anaheim to LAX. There is a small girl behind me singing Let It Go. It was innocent, completely lacking in any sort of self-consciousness. It was actually a little bit beautiful, until she sang it for 56 minutes straight. It wasn’t until we could see planes on the tarmac at LAX in the distance that her mother said, “Do you know any other songs from Frozen?” MAYBE YOU COULD HAVE ASKED HER THAT I DON’T KNOW 50 MINUTES AGO *** Two days earlier, Huk had tweeted there were 500 people to two bartenders at the Hilton bar and I thought he was exaggerating. He wasn’t - those numbers were frighteningly accurate and it was impossible to be served alcohol. On the last night of MLG, by crikey. There was also water all over the floor. “Someone fell into the fountain!”, a guy hooted. So at 11 o’clock at night, a bunch of us were walking back from the 7-Eleven near the Convention Centre with cheap American alcohol in tow. As we approached, we could see a bunch of people sitting in a circle with their heads down. I squinted. “The fuck is that? A cult? The fuck they doing?” I ignore it and go inside and finally work myself up to introduce myself to Smix. Now, there’s something everyone should know about Smix. She is all these things that you see on live streams - she’s kind and articulate and gorgeous - but she’s also rambunctious and hilarious, and it makes her more beautiful than you could imagine. I think Smix is someone I could get drunk with a lot and laugh with, but she, like many people and things, could literally not be further away from me in the world if they tried. Such is the way of things. Her and I and Stephanie go out the front and these CoD kids are giving us lip. You think we took that shit? Hell naw. Fucking CoD kids. I go back out and I’m sitting on the ground in a dress because the aforementioned cult took all the chairs. The cult turns out to be Esports Mafia, good on them. I’m drinking the world’s biggest Heineken, talking to mates, laughing, trying to remember some Australian words Americans wouldn’t understand for new mate David, watching Fenner salsa with numerous people while wearing two pairs of glasses. “Look, Sunset, I’m wearing two pairs of glasses!” “Why?” “...I’m wearing two pairs of glasses!” The Esports Mafia kids keep yelling at us to be quiet. I’m drunk enough that I rant about how maybe if they want quiet, they should play their game somewhere quiet, and that you can’t just commandeer the only place I can smoke and drink and sit in a chair at the same time in the entire Anaheim Convention Centre precinct. Someone I didn’t expect to use the c-word ever used the c-word to describe their behaviour and I find this so hilarious I laugh loudly. I mean, I get the Esports Mafia is an institution or whatever, but go be an institution in a hotel room or in a quiet corner or the lobby. You ain’t no spectator sport. Some of us have drinking and laughing to do. *** Seven hours earlier, Babybowler and I were at the near-deserted Hilton bar in Anaheim, having our now-daily pick-me-up drink. I would drink whiskey and she would drink rum. When the bartender would inevitably ask us if we would like another drink, we would let out long, drawn-out sighs, and simultaneously, sadly, say no. We saw HerO and Leenock sitting together on some couches. Babybowler had seen on Twitter that HerO had just been knocked out of the tournament. “We should buy him a drink, maybe.” “What would he even like?” “Something basic, can’t go wrong with something basic.” “Wait, is that creepy if we buy him a drink? Is that fangirly?” “Are we fangirls?” “What if he quits Starcraft because he gets emotional due to drunkenness?” “And it’ll be out fault. Do we want that?” “DO WE WANT THAT ON OUR HANDS?” “It’ll be on Twitter and we’ll be like FUCK.” “OK, we won’t. Fuck.” “Fuck. Wow. That was close.” *** Two hours earlier, I was outside the Anaheim Convention Centre, sitting on one of the many concrete blocks next to cigarette ashtrays, sleepily filling my lungs with tar. The foot traffic is a blur in front of me, people moving between each other, left and right. I look up and I see HerO sitting on a staircase under an enclave, a popular go-to smoking spot for people ducking in and out of the centre. He’s almost resplendent in his pristine white Team Liquid jacket, his hair looks perfect. It always looks perfect. I have this hypothesis that his performance in tournaments is directly related to the quality of his hair. He’s looking into the distance at nothing as he slowly smokes his cigarette, his knees pulled up to his chest. I tapped my own cigarette gently between my fingers and watched him. The foot traffic continued to move between us as the sun sat deep, throwing long shadows over all of us. No-one gave HerO a second look - they didn’t see him, or if they did, they didn’t know him. He doesn’t see them either, it seems. He doesn’t see me. But I see him. So we’re there with a sea of people and shadows and cigarettes and 10m between us and I’m just fucking struck by how some big things are so small, and how some small things are so big. Esports. Fucking hell. *** Six hours earlier, I am bleary-eyed, clutching a coffee like my life depends on it. I’m floating around the open bracket area - I’m not awake enough to know exactly what I should be doing in this moment, so I just lazily write thing in my notebook, searching for someone I know well enough to use as a metaphorical leaning post. My eyes finally focus on a group of people walking in my direction, and I see Harstem. His eyes find mine and he smiled one of the biggest, genuine smiles I’d ever seen. I smiled back. Not like that, you perverts. I downed the rest of my coffee and headed to the press room. *** Two days earlier, I said that I wanted to write something about how StarCraft 2 was smaller than it used to be and how I’m OK with it. This is a hard point of view to project, because you’re basically saying, “Hey, man, remember in 2012 when SC2 was the crazy-omg-sick esport and it was always one of the most watched on Twitch? And Tastosis came to Australia for a WCS round hardly anyone watched but it was amazing and we all got drunk? Remember how good that was? You know how it’s not that now? That’s awesome.” I have a better way of saying it than that, don’t worry. Artosis often says StarCraft 2 is beautiful, and you can tell that he means it by the way he says it - all awe, wonderment and sincerity. It’s the same kind of tone you hear in Apollo’s voice sometimes when he’s casting, this almost childlike glee at what SC2 can be. It is, indeed, beautiful. The complexities achieved in hundreds of actions a minute, how one of those hundreds can lead to countless outcomes. The refinement required to be competitive, let alone professional. How the best in the world, when they move their units, make it look smooth, relaxed, like they’re painting a picture. The game, itself, is beautiful. But as I stand here, watching people rushing to their stations as the open bracket begins, hours late, it’s clear the beauty runs deeper than the game itself. I feel like a visitor here, even though this is a world I immerse myself in more than most others, but there’s a sense of community and familiarity that I feel stronger here, now, than I ever have. Larger professional teams and small grassroots teams alike are shuffling around, huddling together, patting each other on the back. Groups of spectators lean into each other, pointing out their favourite players, trying to get to the best vantage points to watch them. There are no outsiders here. We are all here, and we all love this beautiful game. Two years ago, people posted on Reddit and Team Liquid about the bubble bursting for StarCraft, like manic street preachers yelling into the abyss that the end is nigh. They were only half right. The bubble burst, but there’s no end in sight. People who call this a dead game have never been here, where I am now. They’ve never been in this crowd. It’s like another family, another home. If there were 10,000 people here, would I feel that? Beautiful things require understanding, to truly recognise the intricacy. Understanding takes effort, and people, generally, dislike effort. I am happy here. I am happier here now than I have ever been.

[sunsetspeaks]

Everything I Wrote in America, In One Convenient Location!

1. From Melbourne to Santa Monica 2. The True Length of Dreams 3. Moments from MLG Anaheim: Part One 4. From My Phone, in Bed, at the Hilton in Anaheim, California 5. From LAX to Boston 6. What I Learned In America This Time (or, How "Journey" Is A Stupid Word)

[sunsetspeaks]

What I Learned In America This Time - AKA: How "journey" is a stupid word.

I hate the word “journey” because it is overused in reality TV shows and, therefore, has lost its value. Even now, it seems silly to suggest it ever held value at all, because of the friggin’ sound bytes shoved down our earholes about that “incredible journey”, the “life-changing journey”, “coming to the end of my journey”. “I’m so honoured to have taken this journey,” she sobs to a screaming crowd, a heavily-edited montage of the last 6 months of her life playing behind her head. I can’t even think of a similar word that I could use to substitute. “Quest” sounds a little too epic, although frankly, life would be a lot easier if certain people had exclamation marks over their heads. Click this motherfucker to lose dexterity for the next 10 years, click this handsome young man to gain +50 charm. Journey, quest, adventure… It all seems so trite when you apply it to something in real life. All these things have been happening to me lately which have made me realise how long things actually take, and how that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I know that’s really vague and annoying to read, but I’m not sure I can be really more accurate than that without writing my memoirs or some shit, and only assholes write their memoirs when they’re 30. What I Have Learned In America This Time Around: 1) To not even try to use US coins because people look really annoyed when you don’t know what each one is worth. One woman was so desperate for the correct change that I held open my wallet for her to fish out the correct amount. I gave all my coins just now - maybe $8 worth - to a drag queen outside LAX who needed change. She screamed, “MAKE IT RAIN, GURL!” 2) America is a large country and it takes a really long time to fly across it. The time difference is three hours from one side to the other. It’s important to check maps to scale when planning trips. 3) Just because alcohol is cheap here, I shouldn’t drink it all. 4) I need people to look over my travel itinerary so I don’t do stupid shit like end up in LAX for 12 hours with $20. 5) I was pretty broken as a human being last time I was here, and I thought I fixed it by now. I haven’t, at all. Not by a long shot. But I’m getting there, and that’s half the fun, right? 6) Seriously, though, I need to work on my shit. I need to write more, just about anything, in whatever style is taking me at the time. I still care a lot about what you all think of it, to the point where I get too nervous to show certain things, but fuck that, and fuck you. Just kidding. I love you. 7) Speaking of love, I learned a lot about that too. Maybe not in the way you’d think. I learned love begins and ends with your own silly face, not anyone else’s. I learned you can’t love properly without being happy with who you are. I learned love is very close to when it’s my pair of eyes and another pair of eyes, nose-to-nose, unflinching and deep and beautiful - like looking into something I could have if I worked harder on being happier and healthier and did more of what I love and less of things that go against those things. ...maybe that was the way you thought I learned about it, I don’t know. I’m not a mind-reader, man. I came back to this place one year after I was last here thinking nothing else would surprise me, I guess. And I leave, dear friends, surprised as fuck. I achieved a lot in the past year. Imagine what I can do this year. WHAT A JOURNEY. I’VE BEEN AWAKE FOR 24 HOURS. WEOOOOOW. Fuck, am I even going to survive this goddamn 16 hour flight? I have to DRIVE HOME when I get to Melbourne and I don’t even remember where I left my friggin’ car in the long-term car park, by crikey. *tackles crocodile* Until we meet again, America, I carry you in my heart.

[sunsetspeaks]

From Melbourne to Santa Monica

There’s a no-shit grown woman three seats away from me with a large Elmo doll that she is half cuddling and half using as a pillow. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Not that it’s any of my business. There’s a beautiful, tiny, snoozy American girl two seats from me. She orders a drink, then I order, then she changes her order to my order. White wine, bourbon and coke – mixing alcohol ever-so-intelligently 10,000m up in the air. In front of me is an American girl with dyed dark red hair which she puts up in a ponytail, pins back, lets down, then repeats. Over and over again. Maybe she’s a nervous flyer. Maybe it’s like a tic. The ground turned to sky so quickly. There’s a map showing our flight path and it’s just ocean, you know. We went past Sydney, kind of, then we turned and that was the last I saw of Australia – the coast disappearing slowly behind the clouds into haze into nothing. I feel drunk and tired. I’m watching Her and it’s freaking me out. The guy sitting next to me has the worst breath I have ever had the displeasure of consuming. Tiny snoozy American girl is none too impressed - she sits with her knees up to her chin and her hoodie pulled up over her nose. I feel bad for bad-breath guy, because he's actually rather polite. But sweet merciful lord. Her just finished and the ending was so annoying it's made me regret watching it at all. Now I just feel uncomfortable things about love and I don't need that right now, brah. Don't kill my buzz. I do not sleep, at all, the entire flight. I catch a taxi to Santa Monica after being spoken to by TSA for 20 minutes, yet again because I'm travelling by myself. I'm tired and stupid. I arrive at my hotel and it's pretty OK. "You Australians always arrive so early! Your flights! I get your room cleaned, give me 20 minutes." So I smoke out the front and I meet a black transgender lady from Sweden in a beautiful outfit. She's funny and boisterous and makes me forget how tired I am. This feeling only lasts until I open my hotel room door. I don't know how long I've been awake and I don't want to check what time it is back in Australia. I wander a few blocks to a supermarket and I'm so overwhelmed by the sheer size and price of the liquor bottles contained therein, I just kind of stand there, holding my basket, my eyes falling out of my face from sleepy. It's 11:30am. I am walking back to my hotel carrying a paper bag containing everything I forgot to pack - razors, moisturiser, sunscreen - plus a giant bottle of Jim Beam that would be mostly gone two days from now. Two days in Santa Monica before MLG to get over my jet lag. This was a good plan. On paper.

[sunsetspeaks]

On the Plane from LAX to Boston

(Transcribed from what I wrote in my notebook on the flight.) It was in a patch of sky over Utah, however-many-thousand feet in the air, that I realised I haven't the slightest clue how planes work. I'm in a chunk of metal in the sky and I have no idea why we're flying and not falling. I'm sure it's all very science and complicated, and I'm not even sure that I entirely care too much about the details, but I actually have no fucking idea. I need it explained to me in a few simple diagrams. Maybe some PlayDoh. I've never flown over so much land before this flight. It's always ocean. In Australia, we skirt around the edges of our country. Here, we're going in deep. No water at all. Flying out of LA was beautiful. I've never seen anything like it. A city so densely populated, and around it - as if the terrain is made of silk - the ground has been pinched up to form mountain peaks. Some seem almost as high as we are flying. Mountains turn to desert, desert to trees and lakes, trees and lakes into sunset and darkness, as we relentlessly chase the night across America. Something about this makes me think about how scared I still am. We've come a long way, baby, but there's still a long way to go. There's a lot waiting for me back home, let alone what's in Boston. I do too much flying around the edges. Some things only come alone once, and may never come again. Need to be me, in a shot glass - all potent, burny-feeling, intoxicating, and when you have too much of me, you feel vaguely ill. ...that was a shit metaphor. It is so hard flying without alcohol. Holy shit. Honestly.

[sunsetspeaks]

Moments from MLG Anaheim 2014: Part One

The other event going on at the Anaheim Convention Centre is a volleyball tournament of some kind - lots of late-teen males walking around in team jerseys, long socks and sports shoes. Frighteningly similar to people who come to watch, and participate at, MLG. We started a little game where we’d watch people when we were outside and guess if they were volleyballers or gamers. *** I’m standing with Babybowler outside the barrier separating us from the playing area. There’s something about all this, you know, a kind of familiarity and intimacy. Reddit keeps saying SC2 feels like 2012 again, and they're right. “I’m trying to work out a way to write about the fact that I don’t mind that SC2 has become smaller,” I say, “the way it was before it blew up. But there’s, like, no good way of saying that.” Babybowler nods. “True,” she replies, “it sounds elitist.” I shuffle. “Yeaaaaah…” *** There are so many female CoD players. Seriously. I want to make friends with them but I’m scared. *** Everything’s been delayed. It's been two hours since the SC2 open bracket was supposed to start. Babybowler and I had made the executive decision to head to the bar in the middle of the floor - media has access - when Tilea came walking towards me, her arms outstretched like a zombie. We hugged. “Sometimes gestures say more than words,” I say, and Tilea falls asleep in her hands and looks up at me with puppy-dog eyes. *** There’s this vaguely enthusiastic yet otherwise emotionless guy who announces over a PA which players need to be at what stations during the open bracket - this kind of droning that eases in and out of the ambiance of the dance music and loud conversations that drown the convention centre floor. Suddenly, a hint of amusement is in the announcer’s voice, so I prick my ears up to listen: “Steven Bonnell II and...Nestea, station 12.” A member of the press was near me. “What station did he just say? 12?!” he yelped, then rushed away. I chuckled. *** I see Tilea setting up to play in the open bracket against Select, squatting down to do up her shoe. “Tilea!”, I hiss, to get her attention. She looked up at me, smiled, then shuffled over - still on the floor. I squat down to talk to her. I’m saying things like “you’ll be OK” and “you’ve got nothing to lose” and silly coach crap like that, when a pair of shoes appear beside us. I look up at see an MLG admin. “Sorry to interrupt...” he says, glaring down at us. We both stood up quickly. *** I’d brought a jar of Vegemite over from Australia for Iaguz for reasons which I guess you can only understand if you’re Australian. I didn’t declare it when I entered the US - when they ask if you brought in food, it’s under the same category as things like animal and agricultural product. So they would think I’m bringing in kangaroo testicles or something when it’s just freakin’ Vegemite. Is breakfast spread really a food? Maybe. Probably. My bad. I had the jar tucked in my handbag as I walked to the StarCraft 2 playing area, where Iaguz was playing games facing the spectator barrier. I stood in front of his line of sight, fished the jar out of my bag and waved it in the air. His eyes flicked up, saw the jar, and a big smile spread over his face. He got up, bounded over and took it off me. “This is the good shit,” he said. *** I wanted to say hi to Scarlett but I knew I probably wouldn’t get a chance to. That was until a group of my friends met a group of her friends waiting at the elevator of the Hilton in the wee hours of the morning. They all started talking, and Scarlett and I were just standing there. I was drunk. I stuck my hand out to her and said, “Hi, I’m Sunset.” She took it, shook it, and said, “Hi.” That was it. You kind of envision the way you’d like to introduce yourself to people you admire - not only admire, but are proud of, despite the fact that you feel maybe it’s a bit strange that you feel proud of someone that you never met. She played in the same female-only ESL tournament as me about three years ago, before the IPL breakout, and I was in awe of her then. Even more so now. And all these feelings materialised in my small handshake, Jim Beam up to my eyeballs, as shy as the days at MLG are long. I disappoint myself sometimes. That said, I’m not sure what else I would’ve done. It’s a quandary.

[sunsetspeaks]

From my phone, in my bed at the Hilton in Anaheim, California.

Going from being surrounded by countless friends to suddenly alone in a bed, in a hotel half a world away from home, is disconcerting. I've written some things about MLG. It was hard - because media wasn't allowed in the playing area, I couldn't really gather what I wanted. What I wanted was to watch and listen and give you MOMENTS you can't really understand unless you're there. I have some, but not as many as I'd hoped. I'll work with what I have. Hopefully you'll still like it. I can't really keep making these trips, from a financial perspective, and that realisation bothers me a lot. It's like having a second family, this whole thing. To go without them in person anymore would be a sad thing indeed. A lot has happened. I have a lot of feelings. I'm a ball of feelings. A dehydrated, sleepy, stressed barrel of flesh and feelings. In a good way, I think, maybe. I feel bruised, battered and sore. I've systematically removed all my energy from my body over three days and ended up here. I am sober, drained of all things. I am wrapped in white Hilton sheets, illuminated by the glow of an American TV droning hypnotically. I am satisfied, happy, but...but...something. You have to take scary leaps sometimes. Travelling alone is like that. Love is like that. Life is like that. I am happy I was here for this. I am happy I could see old friends again, and make some new ones. I feel lucky - I AM lucky. Esports are truly beautiful and it's the people who love it that make it so. I feel scattered. Tired. Maybe I'll be more articulate about how I'm feeling after a good sleep. Anyway. I just wanted to say hi.

[sunsetspeaks]

The True Length of Dreams

Did you know that dreams only occur in the last few minutes before you wake up? No matter how long the dream feels, it occurs only in the minutes when your body is rousing back to consciousness.

I did Psychology in my last year of high school. We studied statistics, ethics, learning and sleep, and this is the only thing I really remember - about the dreaming. That, and you can learn to juggle in 1.5 hours.

Learning the true, human-time length of dreams is equally a shock and a marvel. How can it be, that thing you dream - that party, that forest, that city, that cliff - how did that only take 60, 120, 180 seconds in real time? So carefully packaged, so well-put-together, those few minutes are scripted down to the second. From when you begin to wake up, until you open your eyes.

The brain’s a crazy thing, right?

This kind of phenomenon, though, is reflected sometimes in full consciousness. Moments so precisely measured, in small numbers of seconds, can play out a whole movie in your head of what can be, or could be, or would be. The way that a look or a touch or a small event extends to a lifetime in your mind, recalled vividly, as if recorded on fucking high-definition Blu-Ray.

Then there are the other dreams - the ones you have for yourself, what you want to achieve, who you eventually want to become, what you want to contribute to the world before you are no longer a part of it.

A series of events recently made me think about the true length of those too.

I was not born with, nor have ever possessed, a real talent for anything measurable, or drive to be something in particular.

I fall into things. I am a faller.

The last real “dream” I had for myself was when I was 18. It was to live in New York in a shitty apartment and write a novel while studying improvisational comedy. Then life happened, and I had no dreams since.

It is only recently that my mind’s been clear enough, and my life reasonably empty of shit, to allow me to sit back and think about what I actually want. It feels good to want things for myself again, and to feel no obstacles besides the styrofoam walls that I’ve build around my brain.

A lovely older lady that I know looked at me recently with the kindest eyes as I lamented my lack of talent in anything tangible. “Why couldn’t I just be good at science or engineering or teaching?”, I complained, my arms flailing, “I’m so vague.”

She smiled. “The thing you learn,” she replied patiently, “is that being happy or satisfied isn’t about being good at, or achieving, one particular thing. Happiness is about reaching a series of things, one thing leading to another - happiness is the process, not the things.”

Thing is, she’s right. I’m somewhere now, where if you asked me one, three, five years ago if I’d be right here, I’d never have believed you. Being here isn’t the best part - making it here is. And I’m not really anywhere. But that’s not the point.

There are two true lengths of dreams - the lifetime it takes to move from one goal to another, and the small space of time your mind writes a script, either asleep or awake, planning out the rest of your life. It’s both infinite and hardly anything at all, but nothing in between.

The girl I met outside Jamba Juice, all yoga’ed out and everything I imagined a friendly Californian girl would be, she said to me, “You’re so, like, matter-of-fact, and funny. But you have to own what you’ve done. Aren’t you, like, proud of what you’ve done?”

I am drinking Jim Beam in a shitty hotel room in a shitty part of Santa Monica. I am nowhere and everywhere, all at once. Maybe we are all falling. Maybe we are all fallers.

[sunsetspeaks]

The Time Someone Asked Me for Writing Advice and I Failed (Then Fixed It)

One night I was playing ARAMs with a friend and a friend of that friend. We were on Skype while we were playing. I wasn’t paying much attention to what was being said because I was concentrating so hard - gnawing away on my lower lip, my eyes narrowed half out of concentration, half because my eyes are mostly broken. This friend of my friend learned I was a writer, and asked me for advice. Without thinking, I absent-mindedly said, “No-one will ever pay you for anything because there’s always someone out there who’ll do it for free,” madly right-clicking. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that I realised what a horrible thing that was to say. “I’m sorry,” I said suddenly, interrupting their conversation, which had already moved on. “That was a terrible answer, when you asked for advice.” Then I launched into the main advice I could possibly offer anyone who enjoys writing: Write the way you want to write, about what you love. That got me to thinking about what I know about writing. I’ve never been paid for anything I’ve written, so if that’s your benchmark of success, maybe I’m not the best person to listen to. I also don’t consider myself a “journalist” - never have, never will. So if you want to be a journalist, this isn’t for you either. Write About What You Love and Do It With Love OK, so maybe what you want to write about isn’t the most popular thing in the world. Maybe it’s a game not many people play, or a concept that’s a bit left-of-field, but I find, personally, it’s important to deeply indulge in what you’re passionate about. This is where your “easiest”, highest-quality writing will come from. Sometimes, Write About Something You’re Uncomfortable With By “uncomfortable”, I mean something you may feel you have no business writing about. Maybe a scene you’re not necessarily entrenched in or something. Your view is unique and as important as someone who lives whatever it is you’re writing about. Just don’t be a dick about it - don’t be condescending or obnoxious. I’ve found the pieces I’m most satisfied with are the pieces I wrote in this category. Two Pairs of Eyes are Better than One This is something I learned at my job. You are not a robot and your writing will contain typos, grammatical errors and other mistakes. This isn’t because you’re bad, it’s because you’re a flawed human being, like everyone else. Get someone whose English skills you trust to look over your work. Feedback is Precious You will hardly ever get good feedback if you don’t ask for it. When you do get it, don’t take it as an attack. This is all you have in order to get better. Ask people you trust to give you honest feedback about the content and the mechanisms you use to engage the audience - where they were lost, where you dragged them in again, what lines they felt were unnecessary, what needs adding. The people you ask don’t have to necessarily be writers themselves - aim for someone who’s in your target audience. You WILL Be Rejected Not only that, you’ll be rejected often. Over and over and over again, and you won’t be told why. Learn to live with it. I know it sucks - honestly, it’s probably the worst feeling in the world, because you pour everything you have into what you write. But it will happen, consistently, and you will learn to deal with the rejection. Don’t go all sad crazy ex-girlfriend on yourself. Pick yourself up and keep going. Know The Rules, Then Break Them With Your Own Voice It’s important to read everything you can, as often as you can. Particularly if you’re aiming for a certain writing job with a certain company - read their articles, their promotional material, their copy, even their Facebook posts and tweets. Learn how they like to communicate. Read novels, read newspaper columns, read short stories. Writing is a creative endeavour, but there’s also a science to it - there are rules about grammar, tenses, punctuation. You need to know these rules in and out, back to front, and nothing will teach you faster than reading. Once you know the rules, feel free to break them - only if it serves what you’re aiming for. Don’t be fancy-pants for the sake of it. Personally, I like using short sentences and line breaks, because I like how it holds attention. That said, I’ve been known to overuse those mechanics as well. It’s a balancing act, to be sure. Don’t be afraid to develop your own voice. Don’t be afraid to be you. Be inspired by other writers, but don’t try and copy them, as such, just experiment with techniques they use - use their rule with your own voice. USE GOOGLE DRIVE TO STORE YOUR WRITING (OR SOME OTHER CLOUD) OR YOU WILL LOSE SOMETHING EVENTUALLY AND IT’LL MAKE YOU SO FUCKING SAD OH MY GOD PLEASE WRITE ON SOMETHING THAT AUTOMATICALLY SAVES Don’t Delete Anything Don’t throw out anything you’ve written ever. This is super important. I don’t care how shit you think it is, if you wrote it while you were drunk, if it’s cliche - don’t friggin’ delete it. Trust me on this. You can write 1000 words of tripe, but in the middle of it will be one golden sentence. One day you’ll want to remember that golden sentence, which you can’t do if you deleted it, you douchebag. “Write For Yourself?!” People say this a lot. I’m not entirely sure I agree with it. I’m a bit of an arty-farty person, always have been. Personally, art is most satisfying to me when it is selfless. Writing for yourself is very transparent. It feels self-indulgent to the reader, because you were being self-indulgent when you wrote it. That’s not to say there’s not beauty in your feelings, but keep in mind that you want people to read what you write. Writing for yourself is cathartic and beautiful and awesome, but not necessarily something you want to publish. For example, for me, my motivation when I write is wanting to make people feel something. Not writing for myself. So I keep my audience in mind when I write - what will grab them, what's important to them? That said, I need to write, or I’ll die. Like a shark needs to keep moving, Is that writing for myself? Godammit, I dunno. Why would you listen to me anyway? :)

[sunsetspeaks]

Our Ocean

Almost a year ago, I stood with my toes in the water on Santa Monica beach at sunset, my shoes held tightly in my left hand, a cigarette clutched sheepishly between two fingers in my right hand. Nobody in LA smokes, and I felt constant smoker’s guilt - so much so that I carried around a portable ashtray, because LA is also pretty skint on garbage bins, and far be it from me to dirty up a country that isn’t mine. I wriggled my toes in the sand and turned my jet-lagged face towards the setting sun. There was a busker at the base of the stairs of Santa Monica pier, a woman singing, and she was far enough away that her voice traveled gently on the breeze - from the back of her throat, along the sand, softly moving through my hair, before carrying on to touch groups of tourists nearby taking selfies. This was the same ocean I’d left behind 24 hours earlier, only I was on the other side of it. It had taken 15 hours to get here, but I’d landed in America three hours before I left Australia. Time travel is, indeed, exhausting. As one would expect, I guess. Made worse, I think, because of the grilling I’d received from TSA when I’d landed - why was I alone, why was I here for a video game thing?

I took a drag of my cigarette and closed my eyes. The world felt so big and so small all at once. This ocean was my ocean, this sun was my sun, only no-one here sounded like me and I’d never been further from home. *** The disconnects between the internet esports experience and the real-life esports experience are less than you think. You assume physical distance equates to some kind of emotional distance, but it doesn’t. One of the things you learn, if you ever make the trek to a live event, is that the feelings you feel when you’re there in person are much like the feelings that you feel when you’re at home, watching by yourself. That tingly feeling you get when you hear a crowd react? The heart in your throat when your favourite player or team is on the edge of winning or losing? You feel that in person, too. Only about 10 times more intense. I like to think it’s what binds us, you know? You and me. Not just you and me - even people who think I’m an idiot. Even the people who are so sadomasochistic that they spend their entire online life being douche nozzles, even they feel that. They get the tingly feeling, they get their hearts caught in their throats. Their ocean in your ocean, their sun is your sun. They just don’t sound like you. *** At MLG, all I had was my Macbook. My Macbook is, I think, quite possibly the oldest functioning Macbook in the world. I got it over five years ago refurbished. The battery hardly lasts and bits of the plastic edges fall off every now and then. It’s a bit embarrassing. I was in the MLG press room with it, and nothing else. Well, I also had a charger. A charger, the World’s Most Ancient Macbook, and me. Where we were sitting looked down over the League of Legends area, next to the Riot people. They had fancy things. Everyone else had fancy things.

When the venue was empty, it was a surreal feeling, like the walls were breathing in anticipation. When it was full, it was like an ocean.

I knew basically zero about LoL then, but when that crowd surged, you could feel it. When CoD surged, you could feel it. When SC2 surged, you could feel it. Differing intensities depending on the distance from the press room, but you could always feel it. LoL’s ocean is SC2’s ocean, SC2’s ocean is CoD’s ocean, CoD’s ocean is LoL’s ocean. They just don’t sound like you. I know, OK? It’s corny circle-of-life-type shit. I get it. I’m getting sentimental in my old age. *** When I was a little kid, I had an atlas I used to read all the time. It had a double-page spread with the title “Our Shrinking World”. It was about how transportation had progressed over the years - boats became better boats, planes became better planes - so that travel time from one continent to another had gradually become shorter. I was young enough that I completely misunderstood it, and I believed the world was physically shrinking. I believed that for an obscenely long time, maybe until I was about 7. I felt like I knew some kind of special secret science, so I never brought it up with anyone; until one night, when I confided in my mum in hushed tones about how excited I was that the world was shrinking. She had to set me straight. No, the world’s not shrinking - not physically - and yet it feels smaller than it’s ever been. So there, Mum.

[sunsetspeaks]

I Wrote This in 30 Minutes on my Phone in Bed

I am writing on my phone in my bed in the dark. Straight from my brains, to the tips of my stumpy thumbs, to you, guided gently by autocorrect. I apologise in advance for incorrect autocorrects, but maybe they add something to whatever something this is. I have this problem where I buy a book of poetry about once a year, read it cover to cover in a short period of time, then never read it again. But I keep them nearby. Stupidly fucking nearby. Like, Walt Whitman is on my other pillow right now for no reason at all. I was really depressed to discover he never actually wrote, in anything, "We were together. I don't remember the rest." That's actually a paraphrase of several lines of poetry he wrote. The sentiment was the same, but there's something much more resonate in the paraphrase due to its simplicity and it pisses me off I feel that way. I often wonder if beauty like that can ever be created again, you know, in this world we live in. By "beauty like that", I mean incredible poetry or literature. We're becoming so fucking broken as a race that tl;dr is a way of life, whether you know what it means or not. Are we too lazy for beauty? To create it? Is it being created and we won't ever fucking see it, because it's buried in the depths of Tumblr, hidden deep within selfies and GIFs from The Big Bang Theory? It's a scary thought. I guess beautiful writing can be redefined within these perimeters we've built around our attention. Anyway, Billy Collins is an amazing poet and he ain't fuckin' dead yet. Last I checked. Let me google it. Nope, he's not dead. He's great, by the way, you should look his readings up on YouTube. This one time, a man read Billy Collins' poetry to me on New Year's Eve, and I was like, fuck, this is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. Billy Collins was the Poet Laureate of the United States in the early 2000s and it's nice that Poet Laureate is a thing. But you know who thinks being a poet laureate is cool? Other poets. And me, I guess, but I'm a stupid hipster arty fool anyways, so I might as well be a poet. I own a beré. Art for artists is...pointless. I've always wanted to create the kind of art where people don't even know they're fucking looking at it. "Here, read my art." No, man, you gotta sneak art into places where people least expect it, or else they approach it like its non-approachable. That's why I like writing about esports the way I do sometimes - like I did at MLG in America or ACL in Australia. There's beautiful stories there, you know? They just need to be told. And it's not "JOURNALISM", it's just writing. It's not poetry, but this little esports world is beautiful, so whatever. I don't do it justice, but I try. Is it art? IS IT ART, THOUGH?! I don't know. Semantics. I forget what the point of this was. I'm so tired. I just surround myself with Whitman and Collins and Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson and Vonnegut, like I can somehow physically absorb something from their books, so I can somehow magically express things the way I feel the things deserve. I don't think any of them would esport. Hunter might've, in a parallel universe. He was a sports writer after all. Fuck, what was it I wanted to say? I can't remember. I'm so tired. All I know is, on the way home from work, I was singing so loud in the car my throat cracked, and I'm not even mad.

[sunsetspeaks]

Riot Oceanic Autumn Regionals: How I wasn't there, how bad I am at LoL, and stuff about primordial ooze.

So there’s this certain feeling you get when an esports event happens and you’re not at it. As Australians, it’s a feeling we feel often, because, well, not much happens here. It’s a “feeling that we feel”, in the great words of singer-songwriter Taylor Henderson*. We stay up late or get up early, depending if the event is EU or NA-based, all pajamas and coffee and slippers and tired eyes, and watch these games and these events that we’re so passionate about, that we can only dream of experiencing in person. It’s even worse when an event is in Australia - one of maybe, I don’t know, five - and you can’t go to it because your workplace is a cruel mistress that would rather suck all the depth from your soul than allow you to spend a weekend doing what you love. This is where I found myself this weekend - trapped in a metaphorical dark pit of darkness, but always with a browser open on the Riot Autumn Regional event at the pop culture convention Supanova, on the Gold Coast in Queensland. Geography lesson: Queensland is at the top of Australia, and I am at the bottom, in Victoria. Anyway, what was I saying? Ah, the feeling that you feel. It’s like everyone got invited to a party but you, basically. And not just any party. A party with mates. A party with mates, at which you could make new mates, if you arrived looking OK and not overcome by your inner Socially Awkward Penguin - neither of which I would have done, but the grass is always greener and all of that. *** I remember my first real experience with live competitive League of Legends. (I don’t count MLG Anaheim last year, because I mostly watched from the press room, wondering what the hell the game actually was. Nor do I count PAX Australia, because it was just a blur of pinging noises, people taller than me in nerd shirts jumping for bananas and cupcakes, and Teemo hats, and commentators I couldn’t hear.) No, my first real experience was at ACL Sydney in October last year, held in a cavernous building (I think named after an ex-Prime Minister) at the University of New South Wales, which was stuffy, but had a bar upstairs, which makes it A-OK in my book. The StarCraft 2 finals finished early, I guess, and the LoL finals were still going, so I moseyed on over to watch, much to the displeasure of my StarCraft mates. Really, it was probably the best first experience I could have had. I sat next to Mirko Gozzo, the head of Riot Oceania, and he was explaining all the champions and abilities and things to me, like the good egg that he is. The finals were between Team Immunity and Nv. Mirko told me Immunity’s old mid-laner was Nv’s new mid-laner. “Oooh,” I said, “I wish I knew more about League. That’s a good story.” *** Fast-forward to yesterday and we have the finals of the Oceanic Riot Regionals - the first “marquee” event of the year, I suppose, in a series of three seasons which ultimately provide a pathway to Worlds for a team in the Oceanic region. I like how they call it the “autumn” regionals, because, as Oceanic esports followers, we hear “fall” far too often. Fall. Fall. It’s a verb, not a season. So I’m at work watching one of the the semifinals on day one - nV against Av Ascension - full screen on one monitor, while brainlessly fixing journalists’ spelling mistakes on my other monitor. I’m trying to explain to my workmate what League of Legends actually is. “So you’re on a team of five, right? One starts on this side, and one starts on this side. Each player picks a little dude, and each little dude does different things, like there are wizard type characters, and dudes with swords, and…” “MATTRESS! GO, MATTRESS!” my other workmate suddenly yells out from her soundproof (?!) booth. She doesn’t know about esports, but she’s my good mate, and I’d tweeted this 10 minutes before: It was nice to have real, human interaction about something I cared about, in lieu of a crowd of sweaty, passionate nerds an entire country away. *** The nifty thing about the finals of the Autumn Regionals was that it was between Team Immunity and Nv. Again. Don’t let that fool you into thinking that the season was predictable and full of complete walkovers - it wasn’t. In the short amount of time the Oceanic region has had a dedicated server (about 10 months), the skill level of top-tier teams has really begun to level out. I’m a noob, and even I can see that**. All this is on the back of two major esports organisations entering into the Oceanic League of Legends scene - Dignitas and Curse. Dignitas and Curse. Well, hello there, international esports powerhouses. Welcome to Australia. Please, sit down. Get a beer up ya, ya flamin’ galahs. ...wait, what? *** So the finals were between Nv and Team Immunity, and Immunity sweep it 3-0. I couldn’t watch it because I was busy at work, but I know the first game went for 28 minutes, and that’s pretty quick. But what I do know is this: This is the beginning of something. Sure, PAX Australia happened, and the esports faithful of Australia were happy and grateful and were inspired by the commitment shown by Riot to put on this big, live, esports event. But there was also a feeling of trepidation. Us Aussies are a suspicious lot, and we were waiting patiently to see if it meant anything, really, in the end. Was it a sign of what was to come, or were we just a flash in the proverbial pan? Then Riot announced the $150k prize pool for 2014, spread out over three seasons, with a pathway to Worlds. Then, this happened - the finals of the Autumn Regionals. No matter what your choice of game, no matter how casually or intensely you follow the local esports scene, you can’t help but feel this is the start of some sort of new era for us. In 50 years time, when kids are riding to school on hover boards and sitting in space pods learning about Australian esports history, they’ll do a class about this time, right now. "Back in my day, you had to walk through the Rift up hill. Both ways." The time when game developers started giving us local servers, when international organisations started giving us a chance to show how good we are and, almost more importantly, who we are. Oceania has a proud history of esports, despite our copper-wired internet and being an island in the middle of nowhere, far away from anything and everything that matters to us. We have, over more than a decade, been a small, but dedicated, quirky group of gamers. We can not only match it with the best of them, - now we have the technology to do so - we’re also idiotic smart-asses with a self-depreciating sense of humor. Not only are we good, we’re marketable. Want to know the intricacies of the Riot Oceanic Autumn Regional final? Couldn’t tell you. Couldn't really watch it - work was being a pain in the ass. Someone out there with better game knowledge could, and should, do a better job at detailing the drafts and how the games played out. They could, and should, talk more about this mid-laner switch. It’s a human interest story, you know? But what I can tell you is this: This is one of the most exciting times in Oceanic esports in the 10-ish years I’ve been following it. This will only snowball - not only for Riot, but for everybody - and I can’t wait to see what will grow in another 10 months. We’re writing the history of our little slice of the esports universe. Right now. It’s pretty special. We’re all like little amoebas emerging from the primordial ooze, man. So much potential. Heaps fuckin’ esports, hey, brah? Straya. * They’re not great words. They’re shit. It’s like saying food is a food that you eat. Like, no shit, Taylor Henderson, you wanker. ** Seriously. Huge noob. I think I can only just now say, tentatively, I can name all the champions on sight. And I’m so bad, I probably get abused one out of every three games I play, for being bad. It’s hard to argue when they’re right. It’s a good thing mute exists, to save my fragile self-esteem. Thank you, based Rito.

[sunsetspeaks]

A Conversation with my Mum about Video Games and Esports

I wrote this on my break tonight at work. Be kind. So we’re sitting on the couch, Mum and I - half watching TV, half chatting. I’m curled up in my pajamas, eating grapes after a long Work Sunday of drinking honey-flavoured whiskey, writing and playing video games, and Mum’s next to me drinking wine, chatting about her day at work. There’s a lull in the conversation. “I was thinking about you last night,” Mum blurted, “and I want you to know I respect what you’re doing.” “...what I’m doing?” My mouth was full of grapes, and my attention was mostly on Law and Order: SVU, so I was a bit confused. “Yeah. You know...this esports stuff and...video game stuff. I want you to know I respect it.” I swallowed the grapes. “Oh. Thanks, Mum.” I paused. “You mean the writing, or...?” “Yeah, and...you know, video games and this esports stuff, that’s pretty...new, isn’t it? And...you’re writing and talking to people about it and you’re being creative and...it’s new ground, you know? I want you to know I respect it.” She was struggling. It was cute. I smiled. “Thanks, Mum.” “No, really. I want you to know I support you and I respect it and I’m proud of you.” She nodded definitively, took a sip of her wine, then stood up to go outside for a cigarette. And it was nice for three reasons, specifically: 1) When I was watching Free To Play - full of parents who don’t get it until you get money, or never get it at all - I thought a lot about how lucky I am that my family never gives me hell about video games or esports. My brother once told me I was like a sports editorial writer, which was the moment I realised he really respects this. Whatever this is. 2) Curled up on the couch, I was wearing my old university sweatshirt from when I studied video game design at university. I don’t know why I keep it because it just screams “failure” to me - I dropped out in my final year. Not because it was hard, but because life and money was too much to deal with, and I didn’t really want to be a graphics programmer, which was the direction the degree was heading. But I should have moved on to writing or something, not given up completely. I’ve spent so much of my life giving up. I’ve wasted so much time. 3) I’m working harder than I ever have, and sometimes I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. Not because I don’t love it - I do - but because of everything that comes with it. It’s like having blinders on. I feel like I’ve wasted so much time, that I’m constantly conflicted about whether I’m doing too much or not enough. And you just kind of do it alone and hope it's correct. How much is sustainable when I already have a full-time job that is deadline-centric, stressful, confronting and draining? How do I get out of it? Which way is out? Am I expecting too much? Am I just...shit? ...so much time wasted. I don’t even know what the end-game is, to be honest. I just want to immerse myself, somewhere in this universe - video games, esports - and stay there, and bleed every word and ellipsis and line break and exclamation mark into it. And when your mum says that’s cool, well, that’s pretty cool. This is the fourth year I’m working on football coverage every Friday night, every Saturday night, every Sunday, for months on end. I don’t even like football. What am I doing here? And I need to stop writing this self-reflecting crap. No-one cares about this shit. Gotta get serious now.

[sunsetspeaks]

A Short Study in Motivation: The Conversation with the Tradesman

Where I live is like a roller-coaster in socio-demography. There's a whole bunch of lower-to-middle-class houses around me, and I get on my bike and weave my way through them, heading for the ocean. When I pass people, they always smile and say good morning, like we're in a movie. The closer I get to the ocean, the larger the houses become, until I emerge on the coastline and the houses are worth millions. They're always empty, which is a shame. The people who own them only come when the weather is good over summer, so it's ghost-like most of the time. So it's a beautiful day and I'm all cowboy boots and bright-pink helmet, meandering along the footpath in the sunshine. Up ahead is a tradesman getting things out of his car parked on the road, so I slow down to not get in his way. He looks up, sees me and smiles. "Morning, love!" "HOOOOOI!" I reply - the eternal Socially Awkward Penguin - lowering my feet to the ground to stop. I look into the front yard of the house, and I see this beautiful square-shaped pool he's working on - right in the front yard, right on the ocean - surrounded by a few piles of tiles. "Woooooooow," I exclaim, "did you make that?!" The tradesman laughed. "Not a bad piece of work, is it, darl?" "You're not wrong," I reply, taking my sunglasses off, squinting at the reflection of the sun on the bright blue water of the pool. "How the other half live..." I mused. The tradesman lowered the pile of tiles he was carrying to the ground, wiped his brow, and leaned against the fence. "Tell me about it - I had to work five years building pools like this to put a deposit on a house a third the size of this one," he said, gesturing to the house behind him. "We're putting a pool in ours before the summer coming up though." "Is that...hard? Working on things like this when you don't...have them yourself?" "Nah, love. I know if I do enough of this, I'll get something like it eventually. You just keep working and you get there." "Oh..." I replied - dumbfounded, I guess, by how simple it all really is. The tradesman smiled. "It ain't that bad, darl," he said, picking up the pile of tiles again. "Besides, it's a nice day for it! You have a good one now." I put my sunglasses back on and waved, "You have a good one too!", and rode away. I crossed the road to the ocean, riding along the water, slowly weaving around the boardwalk, deep in thought. And now I'm here, writing for the sake of writing. I don't know. I don't know what my metaphorical pool is but whatever it is, it involves this - whatever this is - and I'll get it eventually and I'll swim in it every day (metaphorically) and remember the times I couldn't.

[sunsetspeaks]

Blizzard ANZ Reaper of Souls Launch

The idiotic thing is, of course, I’m never early for anything, but I was early today, and now my flight is delayed at least 2.5 hours. So I’m having an admittedly early boozy lunch at the Irish pub inside Melbourne Airport. I don’t feel bad – I was going to drink on the plane anyway because it’s always midday somewhere. My back-up logic is that time doesn’t really exist that high in the air. There’s an old dude in here with a young Chinese woman and he’s tapping her ass to the beat of Love Cats by The Cure, which is playing over the sound system. Love is a many splendid thing. My hope is one day someone will tap MY ass to the tune of Love Cats. A girl can dream. There’s another couple in my line of sight and I can’t tell if they’re fighting or desperately in love – she constantly looks close to tears and he’s always talking earnestly and kissing her. It’s actually really off-putting so I keep looking out the window to my right at all the planes I’m not on. Why did they change the smoking area at the airport to an enclosed box out the front? I pay like $15 tax every time I buy tobacco, you bastards. Stop treating me like a criminal. I fund roads and shit. Anyway, video games. I’m always surprised when I get invited to go to cool things. I know the default writers’ self-depreciation is not at all endearing, but it’s how I feel. I live in constant fear that one day everyone will find out I’m just a borderline alcoholic moron who likes games, who basically writes her internal monologue with passable grammar. The day people work that out will be a sad day indeed. But, until then, I am grateful for the opportunities I am presented with. Blizzard ANZ have been good to me since I met PJ at WCS 2012 – he was running around like a chicken with his head cut off, blurting “TASTOSIS IS HERE!” at any given opportunity, then scuttling off again. He’s been a mate since then. Such a mate. Now they’re all mates. It’s funny how things work out - from when I was a brat 16-year-old playing the hacked version on StarCraft (sorry, I was young, I legit own it now, check my account), to now, playing Heroes Alpha. Life’s thrown a lot at me over the years, but Blizzard games have always been my constant, my salvation, my beautiful escape, my Northern Star. So now I’m heading to Sydney to go to the Blizzard ANZ Reaper of Souls event. And I’m two wines down, at the airport. It’s funny how things work out. Won’t have a third wine. I’ll go smoke in the box of the great unclean, then go through security. Again. Fuck me dead. I suppose I should be grateful that I am not on a plane with engine trouble, but really, if anything bad happens because I’m vaguely tipsy from airport sav blanc, Virgin Australia should pay the compensation. Just sayin’. I’m having the longest shower when I get to the hotel. I’m a mess. *** I was going to write more on the plane to Sydney but I’d had two wines and two coffees so I went into a mental coma. Luckily no-one was sitting next to me on the flight, so I curled my cowboy-boot-clad legs up onto the seat - a ball of stubby limbs haphazardly pressed up against the side of the plane, psychically begging the flight attendants to not disturb me. I don’t think I really slept. I got to Sydney and it was steamy. Steamy as hell. Melbourne was 6 degrees warmer but Sydney is so high in humidity that I felt like dying. My hotel was sweet - the bed was big and comfy and I had a great view of Darling Harbour. I have never had any kind of view of Darling Harbour before so I appreciated it a lot more than I probably should have. And by appreciated, I mean having a shower and gazing at it in nothing but a towel. It was good to no longer smell like airport, looking at a city I should probably know better. I met up with the Silicon Sports guys in their hotel room. They organise my local Barcrafts in Melbourne, so needless to say, we’re pretty good mates. Rez was playing Heroes of the Storm on the hotel internet and Glenn was delighting in pointing out the queen bed they were sharing that night. I told him to Vine them in bed together. He said he doesn’t Vine - a great loss to the internet, that Vine that will never be. We have two pre-drinks at the hotel bar, then head off. I wanted to get there early because I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help out. Mary arrives, and we start sorting out the food and drink tables. “Are you calling me an elf? Are you saying I’m UGLY?!” Mary’s yelping. “You can be a panda,” Marie offers. She works for Blizzard and is lovely. “I want to be a panda…” I mumble. *** Mary and I are the door wenches - she takes the pier side and I take the side street. Everyone is using Mary’s door, though, so I spend a lot of the time leaning against my door and pouting at her exaggeratedly whenever she looks over. If it’s possible to be aggressively friendly, that’s what Mary is, and that’s how she greets people. “DIABLO?! YEAH! WHAT’S UP?! I’M MARY! WHO ARE YOU? WHO DO YOU WORK FOR?!”, all bouncing around and enthusiastically shaking hands. I wish I could be like that, but I’m pretty shy around people I don’t know. Until I drink. And by the time the presentation starts, I’m about four beers down. *** Chris starts the proceedings. He’s clearly very excited and a bit nervous. It’s endearing. I like how he uses the word “jazzed” a lot. He’s talking about the special guests who’ve come to the event - “Sunset and Mary” get a mention. We happen to be standing together at the back drinking beer. I throw up the horns and yell “WOOOOOOOOO! YEAH!” rather obnoxiously. This was, perhaps, indicative of how my night was going to go. *** Paul Warzecha is the guest from the US, a lead character artist. I have a soft spot for artists. They possess a quiet warmth, this kind of glow that I suppose comes from having a deep imagination you get to draw on daily to survive both spiritually and financially. The lucky bastards. Paul’s like that. He talks about creating angels and demons, and some aspects of the development process for the world of Westmarch. He talks about having to create piranhas, then zombie piranhas, then a tornado of zombie piranhas. I turn to Atlus - the artist formerly known as Slappy Baggins, a League of Legends caster - and we collectively coo over how fantastic that would be to do as a job. Paul opens up ZBrush and starts to manipulate a sphere of virtual clay, talking casually as he creates an amazing demon head. “And this is something I made while I was waiting for the plane here,” he says, and opens up this incredibly detailed badass demon. JUST CASUALLY. JUST CASUALLY MAKING BEAUTIFUL BADASS ART WHILE I WAIT FOR A PLANE. YOU KNOW. JUST ANOTHER DAY. Sometimes it feels incredibly unfair that certain people possess the talent of 50 people, all smooshed into the one brain in one person’s head. *** I start talking to a dude who won a Steelseries competition to be here. We talk about tattoos and World of Warcraft. He’s telling me about the people he’s in a guild with and how they all kind of grew up together and a lot of them have children now. “That’s the thing about games, man,” I slur, “It’s like, you know, it’s like a way of making mates, you know? You make mates and they’re real mates, you know?” “Yeah!”, he exclaims, equally intoxicated, “It’s like you know the person before you...know the person.” *** We’re out on the deck, and Glenn’s being Glenn. “Sorry, Amelia, I’m not staying in your bed tonight,” he says, putting his arm around Rez, “I’ve got to keep this guy company.” “What a shame, I’m heartbroken,” I reply dryly. “What can I say? I break hearts. I’m the REAPER OF HEARTS! OH, MY GOD, REAPER OF HEARTS!” *** “Zorine was looking for you,” someone tells me. My hands are full of beer and hand-rolled cigarette. I see Zorine, associate editor at GameSpot, through the window, talking to Tony, the head of Team Immunity who also works for Steelseries. “ZORINE!” I yelp, bopping around, waving my hands like an idiot. She doesn’t see me. I can’t remember whether I did this or not, but I think I snuck past her and kissed her shoulder and ran away. I can’t remember if I decided that was a good idea to do, and did it, or if I thought about doing it, and decided not to. Either way, I’m sorry for either thinking it and/or doing it. *** Nick Vanzetti, the owner of ACL Pro, introduces me to Yug, who organises PAX Australia. I think Nick calls me an esports person, or writer. “AND I TWEET A LOT,” I blurt idiotically. Yug also was an owner of a video game bar in Melbourne that shut down last year and I thought it was best not to bring that up, so I was like “Hey, man, PAX was cool. Shame about the weather, but it was cool. This year will be better.” Yug starts talking about all the travel he has to do over the next few months and the preparation and it seems like Nick and him are talking about important things so I just kind of clink both their beer bottles with mine and waddle off. *** We’re outside and we’re talking about Heroes of the Storm and someone says something about how it’s great that you’re so attached to all the heroes you can play. And I want to say something like, “That’s exactly how I feel, it’s like this insane acid trip inside a devout Blizzard fan’s head, this game, and don’t you think it’s great how they kind of poked fun at the whole narrative concept of the game in the tutorial, and did you read that thing on GameSpot about how this dude at Riot doesn’t think narrative is important, and don’t you think it’s the past narratives of these Blizzard characters that makes up an element of the fun involved, and don’t you think it’s silly that Riot isn’t taking advantage of this whole area of the game they’re just ignoring, because it’s a way to drag people in, you know, it’s another level of appreciation of the game, when you feel attached to the characters, I mean, you don’t have to write Portal, but do you know what I mean? I am so friggin’ attached to all these characters and I just wanna put Patriot Raynor on a rainbow unicorn but Blizzard doesn’t want Australian money.” But I’ve been drinking a lot, so I don’t. I just nod and smile and smoke cigarettes. Probably for the best. *** Chris tells me he likes when I tweet about watching the GSL while drinking wine. This makes me happy because one time ROOTiaguz mocked my Twitter by saying “I’M DRINKING WINE AND WRITING AND TWEETING ABOUT IT” and it made me feel insecure, but Chris likes it, and he works for Blizzard, so that trumps everything. *** The lights are on and Paul is signing people’s Reaper of Souls art books. He’s pointing out how, on the cover, if you look at the drawing from a distance, it looks like a skull. He starts talking about how he likes looking at old art for inspiration. I say, “Don’t you think it’s great how in some really old European art, how they had no idea about depth perception?” I think it was kind of out of left field but he rolled with it and agreed with me. Like I said, I have a soft spot for artists. *** Suddenly it’s midnight or something and I’m back in my hotel room. I’d shuffled back with Glenn and the dude who likes tattoos, cuddling my Reaper of Souls CE to my chest. I’d told them I’d meet them out the front in a few minutes to go to that casino, but I suddenly didn’t want to. I’d been drinking for 12 hours and I’m 30 and I was tired but inspired. When the writing bug bites, you just have to let it nibble on your brainmeats until it’s done. And now I’m here - I have one lamp on and I’m sitting at the desk at the window, curtains wide open. I’m looking out across Darling Harbour, lit up in the night, reflected fuzzily in the water below. I’ve pinned my hair back, my shoes are off, and I’ve been writing like an idiot. I spent the evening with a room full of people who love Blizzard, to celebrate another great release, to reminisce about the great times Blizzard games have given us and to get excited about what will come in the future. Tonight, the room was full of talented, passionate and interesting people. Sometimes I wish I had more to offer - that I was an artist or a marketer or a PR person or a proper journalist. Anything, really. All I have to offer is this, I suppose. This is my thing. This is what I do. I can’t believe I’ve been drinking for 12 hours. Thank you for everything. Goodnight.