Tag: motherland

kT LOLster

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is not a rebroadcast from last year: Samsung Galaxy defeats kT Rolster, advances to Worlds

Honestly, despite knowing that this was always a possibility, I would have put my money on kT to win the regional qualifier, and make it to Worlds as the #3 seed for Korea.  I don’t think it’s at all that often that a team of talented players doesn’t figure out how to rectify their shortcomings and overcome obstacles in their path; however, on that same token, it’s never out of the realm of possibility that a competitive team also has their kryptonite, and that for whatever reasons, falls short to the exact same circumstances repeatedly.

Regardless, despite being the vaunted meticulously constructed super team, kT Rolster for the second year in a row, will not be going to the League of Legends World Championships, falling short at the hands of Samsung Galaxy, again.

If it sucked being kT Rolster because they couldn’t ever beat SK Telecom at all throughout the year, it really sucks to be kT Rolster when they didn’t just fall short of winning Worlds, but didn’t even make it into the tournament at all.  This would be like if the Miami Heat didn’t even make it into the NBA Playoffs in the years that they had LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.

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It must suck to be kT Rolster

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In Spider-Man comics, Doctor Octopus brought together Kraven the Hunter, Electro, the Vulture, Mysterio and The Sandman, to form the Sinister Six; a group formed with the intention of destroying Spider-Man.  Numerous times, they failed, and everyone’s favorite web-slinger always stood triumphant at the end of every conflict.

That’s pretty much kT Rolster’s League of Legends team, whom made big waves this season, when they dumped four-fifths of their previous year’s roster, and replaced them entirely with all-star caliber free agent individuals, most of whom were returning to Korea after unsuccessful stints in China.  Mata, Pawn and Deft, three former Samsung players with the first two being members of the S4 Worlds champion Samsung White squad and the reigning LCK MVP Smeb joined Score, the lone kT holdover, to form a team that on paper looked unbeatable.

The goal of this League superteam was obviously to win Worlds, but there was no secret about how the organization specifically wanted to dethrone the 90’s Bulls of League of Legends, SK Telecom T1, aka SKT.  Organizationally, kT and SKT are basically the AT&T and Verizon of Korea, two giants of the telecommunications industry, who are in endless competition with one another.  And the players themselves, many of the newly signed guys were players that either had long-standing grudges with their SKT counterparts, were simply tired of their one squad always winning, or both.  Both Pawn and Smeb have something of vendettas against SKT’s Faker, the oft-proclaimed best player in the world, easily stemming from resentment of said title.

Needless to say, prior to the start of Season 7, there was much ballyhooed about the construction of the new kT Rolster and how they’d fare against SKT throughout the year.

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Why is Ahri x D.Va a thing?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If I can sound like a bitter old man for a minute (again) here, naturally it was through social media in which I first saw fan art, then obnoxious cosplayers of this bastardization/hybridization between League of Legends’ Ahri and Overwatch’s D.Va.  Taking Ahri’s tails and slapping them onto D.Va’s body, taking the D.Va facial makeup markings and putting them onto Ahri, and all sorts of other combinations that blended the two characters together, and I’m sitting here thinking: whyyyy????

My knee-jerk cynical reaction is that it’s a bunch of nerds who want to really hammer home the notion that they are versed in both League and Overwatch, and they need to let people know that they’re so hip to both that they can acknowledge such strange abominable mash-ups.  And then cosplayers who are so attention-starved see something that’s trending and immediately start a rat race of who can do the first make-up test, who can finish the costume and wear it to a convention nobody knows of, and then who can do the first sexy-boudoir-lingerie photoshoot of it before jaded curmudgeons like me get wind of the whole thing.

My curiosity wishes to know why such a combination exists at all?  Both are undoubtedly popular and relevant characters in their respective properties, but why are they being shoe-horned together?  Naturally, my assumptions go towards one of the worst possible reasons: MICROAGGRESSIVE RACISMMMMM

Ahri is a character borne from Korean fairytale.  D.Va is a Korean.  THEY’RE KOREANS SO LETS MASH THEM TOGETHER ARR ROOK SAME PLS LIKE

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The other side of the table

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As closing day for my new home approached, I knew that I was going to meet the sellers of the place eventually.  There was admittedly a little bit of apprehension in the thought, since these are basically the people that I’d been playing hardball with in negotiating listing prices, how much of the closing costs I wanted them to cover, and the additional costs I made them incur in repairs and requests found through home inspection, and now I was going to have to face them so they could hand the keys of their property over to me.

This was somewhat a new experience to me; the last time I was at the closing table, I was the seller, and the buyer was tremendously low-maintenance, was willing to cover most of the closing costs, and barely asked for any work at all.  And the first time I purchased a home, it was brand new and purchased directly from a builder, so there was nobody on the other side of the table that I had the innate feeling that I was taking something from them, regardless of how legitimate and normal the transaction was.

Furthermore, I had my suspicions initially based on an errant piece of litter on the property that the prior owners may have been Asian, and it was confirmed during the process that despite not being anywhere near Duluth or Suwanee, they were in fact Koreans.  Yeah, I lol’d too at the strange coincidence of it all that I would of course, pick the home of other Koreans to choose to plant my new roots into.  So, I knew going into closing day, that I would be coming face-to-face with other Koreans, after I had kind of put them through a little bit of the ringer, just so they could sell their home.  I wasn’t necessarily scared to face them, but there’s no denying that my requests probably cost them a little bit of money they probably were hoping to not spend.

Regardless, the whole closing process wasn’t at all a bad one; the seller(s) were really nice people, and there was no indication that they were at all sour over the expenditures necessary to make the sale happen.  I was amused by their realization that mother couldn’t speak to daughter discreetly in Korean without me being able to understand it, so most of the correspondence was kept in English, for the sake of the other non-Koreans involved in the process.

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When to not fuck with Wawa

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TL;DR: Wawa suing New Jersey convenience store named Dawa for infringement of copyright, citing that their name and wordmark is too similar to theirs

I’m torn – on one side of the field is Wawa, the convenience chain that I went to a lot when I got my license, whose sandwiches and iced tea I love more than many people on the planet.  But on the other side, Dawa is Korean owned and operated, and I always have a soft spot in my heart for my people just trying to make a living and minding their own business.

Ultimately, as much as it pains me to take the side against Koreans, the reality is that they don’t really have much ground to stand on when it comes to going up against a vastly larger company such as Wawa.  And honestly, Wawa’s not wrong, since Dawa’s storefront and wordmark are pretty much copied straight out of Wawa’s identity.

The defense isn’t wrong, and “dawa” in Korean (다와) is roughly translated to “come all,” which is a pretty positive name for a convenience store, but the unfortunate reality is that when the day is over, Wawa came first, and they have the high ground when it comes to who gets to use the goofy-sounding word and what all imitators are based off of.

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lol Rito, let’s try this again

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The actual reason that the public won’t see: after SK Telecom trampled the competition, Riot Games is kind of tired of Korea owning the League scene, so they come up with alternate international events that mitigate the amount of domination that can be exhibited.

Introducing Rift Rivals: A League of Legends international event where Korea only gets to dominate (collectively) one other region, instead of all of them.

If anyone remembers, Riot tried a No Homers Club before in 2013, when the did the Battle of the Atlantic,* which pitted solely teams from North America versus teams from Europe.  Obviously, this was arranged in a manner in which the two regions could compete against each other, without getting shit on by the superior level of competition from Korea, Taiwan and China but mostly Korea, and ultimately it was a fairly lackluster event, with a convoluted and lazy format that Europe ultimately won because their 3-4-5th place teams defeated NA’s 3-4-5, despite the fact that NA’s 1-2 defeated their 1-2.

*a stupid fucking name if I might add, because despite the fact that the Atlantic Ocean is indeed what separates North America from Europe, games would be held in Los Angeles . . . y’know, along the Pacific Ocean.

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I wonder if SK Telecom T1 hates international fans

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of the main reasons why I enjoy professional League of Legends so much is because it’s simply something that Koreans are absolutely, irrefutably the greatest in the world at.  I’ve watched and had my heart crushed enough times at watching Koreans excel but fall short in a variety of international contests such as baseball, soccer and various Olympic sports to know how much I actually want to see South Korea win things, and in professional League, I not only have such, but because I also play the game recreationally, I have the ability to relate and understand how the players are playing and to appreciate just how good they really are.

Needless to say, over the last four years or so of watching professional League, I’ve witnessed Koreans dominate the scene without any legitimate concern that the ride is going to end any time soon; and personally, I love it to no end.

Obviously, a discussion about professional League of Legends dominance cannot be had without mentioning SK Telecom T1, the be-all, end-all when it comes to the entire esport.  Three-time World champions in an arena that’s only six years old, winners of countless tournaments both domestic and international, and after yesterday, two-time winners of the Riot Games Mid-Season Invitational, AKA mini-Worlds.  The bottom line is that SKT wins big and wins often, and their dominance over the scene is pretty overwhelming.

In other sports, this kind of suffocating excellence often prompts discussion over whether their constant winning is a detriment for the sport as a whole, and the League scene is really no exception.  SKT has been on top of the League scene for nearly four full years now, with only hiccups in Season 4 and the first Mid-Season Invitational, where they failed to win, but won just about everything else otherwise.  Suffice to say, it’s not really that big of a surprise that there are large swaths of League fans out there that have simply gotten bored of SKT’s constant winning, and have turned their allegiances against them.

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