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.