When I played SC before finding TL, I played a lot of average zombie UMS maps and sometimes melee, but always in a bastardized form like trash maps, money maps, or just on BGH. A lot of vsing computers with buddies on maps like Dire Straits or anything in the Blizzard folder. Sometimes FFAs and team games when internet friend groups intersected. When it came down to it, the real man inside even a newbie knows that you have to take it to low money to be serious. And there are no maps lower-money than Blizzard maps. Natural expansions with 5 mineral patches and no gas. Mains within a vulture's grenade throw of each other. The best player in the group being the only one who is skilled enough to play Z, and even then he plays like H.O.T-Forever in 2000.

This brings me to something. I think each of us wishes we had found out about TL and about Korean SC earlier in our life than we did - maybe with the exception of GTR. We think this may have made a difference. It's like a time traveler's fallacy. We know what SC is now and we think if we found TL earlier, we'd catch a wave to OGN Sparkyz or Hexatron. Just look at how bad the players were, right?

So actually, that's not what happens. If we started earlier, we'd still not have access to information about the future. We couldn't transplant 5 hatch hydra to 2003, for instance. And we'd still be ourselves in that our work ethic, our attitude, and our principles would mostly be the same. Yet since we were younger, they would be even less developed. Is that what you want to go back to? I'll cite Tapestry as explaining why the past should be left alone.

After I came to TL, I understood that there was a hierarchy to being good at SC. A real hierarchy, instead of the primitive trashtalking anarchy where people believe that a 1-0 into perpetual dodging against a superior player means that you're actually better than him. Extend this and the only way to decide whose skill was superior was always one 1v1 set. (Preferably on Lost Temple since what map could be more pro?)

The ropes of SC looked like finding pro guides and using their builds or copying the builds of Proleague games. Guides mention what's good against what, and I took that to mean you could win games by doing builds that are good against what your opponent is doing. And if you're winning games, that must mean you're good. In the process of assimilating to TL SC in place of my old SC habits, I therefore took a huge hit because I stopped thinking about what my units could do.

Timing is different than following a guide. Timing is just about thinking. Rather, it's a skill you learn from experience. It's a specific intuition. It's different from multitasking, which is basically control; timing is basically decision making. It's something you build from experiencing the same situation enough times to apply it to any new situation. It's like approximating any statistical distribution with the standard normal distribution. Thinking this way is how you try to go into the future of a game. Copying a build won't get you any farther than the highest supply you know in the build unless you do it hundreds upon hundreds of times. A game isn't just opening siege expand or doing a 4fact push or going to three bases with two armories. There's always another situation on the horizon. Every game can go from an opening to a midgame to a lategame to an endgame. If you're good, you'll be able to manage yourself in every stage of the game even if something radical happens that you didn't expect when you joined the match. Every situation is possible. If you're better than your opponent, you can just put him into a situation his decision making can't make heads or tails of. Put him into a situation where his control can't keep up with yours. But don't be too proud of your 1-0. Tomorrow you'll both be better than you were yesterday, and now he might be your superior.

It turns out life works the same way, except it's a really long game, and it's the only set you get to play. But since it's so long, you have a chance to learn by seeing what billions of other people have done and are doing with theirs. But you can't copy their opener without thinking about what you're doing.

The man next to me is singing some Korean tune while eating a baguette and playing Go online. He must be some kind of ancient, stoic Go master just playing for the sake of playing. Meeting him online would be like meeting Nal_ra's smurf on battle.net, I imagine. And here I am, some lowly SC scrub taking up space. I'm not worthy of breathing the air he farts. No wonder, now he's going to the bathroom. Let me take a peek at his score.

Oh, he's a scrub, too. In fact, maybe he's me.