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the Dagon Knight4015 Posts
I don’t really post too often. I try to, but I seldom feel I can add anything to a discussion. In spite of my hardly prolific posting, I’ve reached my 500th post and wanted to share something. In the same way as I’ve not been much of a poster, I’ve never been much of an SC player. For me there is no “my life in StarCraft” styled blog post. There is no history of years spent grappling with the love of the game to declare.
What I do, I suppose, is read. The other day, I reread a David Foster Wallace piece that included the words,
Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty.
I suppose that this is, for me, the crux of what it means to be watching the game, and to truly understand what is happening at every moment. So to me there is some sense of beauty in the act when Nestea rushes forward with an overlord to spread creep and rush with a spine crawler, or when Piano uses the splash damage from firebats to break down a stack of blocking temples. It is a strategy that will, in all likelihood, never work as well as it once did.
For one game, it was perfect.
For one player, just once, there were a few heartbeats where he knew he was untouchable.
The beauty here is in the ingenuity, the practice, the preparation… and the transience of it.
The first time I saw Jaedong crush Fantasy in a final, a flock of mutalisks hammering down turret after turret, there was a moment where my mind said, “No, Jaedong. You can’t- this is not how mutalisks work.” A moment later, before Fantasy punched in his GG, there was a split-second where Jaedong was elsewhere, and I saw two control groups of mutalisks begin to drift apart. I was touched; it seemed a victory of pure, cold-hearted, brute force APM over… well, just about everything.
There was beauty in that too.
What it means to be Bonjwa:
I know there are really well defined rules about what it takes to be a bonjwa, but I can't help but sit there and think, "Well, Player X is totally hip, so cool and really handsome. He should be a bonjwa." I know I'm not alone in thinking that, but whenever people argue about what it means to be a bonjwa, I think back to this paragraph:
The metaphysical explanation is that Roger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws. Good analogues here include Michael Jordan, who could not only jump inhumanly high but actually hang there a beat or two longer than gravity allows, and Muhammad Ali, who really could ‘float’ across the canvas and land two or three jabs in the clock-time required for one … Like Ali, Jordan, Maradona, and Gretzky, he seems both less and more substantial than the men he faces.
For me, this has to be the standard that the kind of player I’d hold up to the status of bonjwa; those few, utterly exceptional players for whom everything is up for grabs. Balance, conventional play, the way we’d normally think of how a human being can possibly divide attention, everything.
Whenever there’s an argument about whether or not player A, B or C should be considered a bonjwa, I think back to that paragraph and it almost invariably invariably leads me to say, “No, not at all.”
+ Show Spoiler +Lookalikes:Other stuff that’s been on my mind, but probably doesn’t deserve it’s own blog post: July has always looked like a cerebrate to me, and I don’t mean that as a “July is kind of overweight” joke, I just mean that I can’t help but make the aesthetic connection when I consider the race he plays and the manner in which he plays it. It’s awesome. Better men than I have forged a deep connection between Tasteless, Artosis and the muppets. I first saw this with Bert & Ernie and was utterly floored. It seemed so simple, how could I have overlooked it. The man who made this was a genius. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5fJ2W.jpg) Then Disciple, surely a wiser man than I, established the connection between Tastosis and Statler and Waldorf. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/a0r9T.jpg) If it is at the heart of greatness to have made a comparison between Tasteless & Artosis and muppets, then I will do my damnedest to follow in their footsteps. Whenever I see Tasteless and Artosis side by side, especially why Artosis makes his, “I am thinking about what’s just happened” face, my mind is led inexorably to this image: ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/TUr2c.jpg) Sorry if this post hasn’t met anyone’s standards, I promise the blog I post at 1k will be exactly twice as good as this. If it is any better than twice as good, I will remove some content from it to ensure that the maths of the posts are accurate.
 
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youre my favourite poster nowadays, your blogs are pure genius  . Gratz on 0.5k man!
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Bunsen Honeydew looks so much like moletrap.
And Beaker like wolf...
OH MY GOD!!! While the others are certainly tastosis...I think this last one has to be Wolftrap.
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Maybe you should consider posting more often. Each time I laugh out loud I check the poster and very often it's you :-)
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Cool post. I also love how this was sort of personal and reflective, and then everyone above me responds to the funny images in the spoilers. Not that there's anything wrong with that...
Anyways, it was a good read.
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Foster Wallace's essay collection "Consider the Lobster?"
Good 500th post. You lay down some good non-statistical groundwork for feeling out the first great SC2 player. ^^
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I specifically clicked on the blog because it was written by SirJolt ^^
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I hope anyone who has ever argued about What it means to be Bonjwa read the What it means to be Bonjwa section of this blog.
Well written. An excellent half milestone.
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the Dagon Knight4015 Posts
On June 21 2011 03:15 Gnial wrote:
Bunsen Honeydew looks so much like moletrap.
And Beaker like wolf...
OH MY GOD!!! While the others are certainly tastosis...I think this last one has to be Wolftrap.
I can't believe I have come so close, only to fall so far. I was within a hair of greatness and let you down. I am sorry, Gnial.
On June 21 2011 04:53 bellhop wrote:
Foster Wallace's essay collection "Consider the Lobster?"
Actually those are both quotes from a piece he wrote about Federer as a Religious Experience. I have a copy of Consider the Lobster, but haven't yet delved into it. Foster Wallace is one of those writers who comes so close to meeting his own definition of greatness that it disappoints me to know there will be no more new work after The Pale King. I find myself rationing it out so I don't sit down someday soon and say, "That's it, there is no more DFW for me to read."
On June 21 2011 05:23 ComaDose wrote:
I hope anyone who has ever argued about What it means to be Bonjwa read the What it means to be Bonjwa section of this blog.
Well written. An excellent half milestone.
I wish I could take the credit for it  If even one person uses it in discussion of what it means to be a bonjwa I'll be very pleased. It gets a little bit under the skin of just the kind of players we might consider great.
Here's to another 500
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the Dagon Knight4015 Posts
I had meant to post this earlier, but if anyone wants to read the piece that inspired me to write some of this, you can read it here.
I'd love to hear what other people think of it
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On June 21 2011 10:24 SirJolt wrote:I had meant to post this earlier, but if anyone wants to read the piece that inspired me to write some of this, you can read it here. I'd love to hear what other people think of it
I read the article and thought it was pretty cool. I'm not particularly interested in tennis, or even most mainstream sports, so I cannot really relate to the idea. Beauty is all about perspective. I certainly found the idea compelling, and the article presented it in such a way that were I to be interested in tennis, I might be swayed into considering the argument.
I'm also not sure the same applies in Starcraft, or at least not in the same way. Watching an SC match doesn't involve watching the player's crazy APM and hand motions. There is no physical element to the beauty. It has to be cerebral since the movements in the game represent those finger movements.
I would also argue that for most sports, it is all micro. All of the descriptions of Federer's movements I would categorize under micro. How does one appreciate macro from a viewer's perspective in Starcraft? It would be similarly difficult to appreciate defense. Tennis seems somehow easier in this regard since defense automatically can turn into a counter offensive. Compare this with a sport like soccer. Most of the videos, top ten lists, what have you, will include crazy goals shot from far away, or trick shots. Every once in a while there will be a cool save from a goalie, and there are also a lot of dribbling around defenders. Where are all the videos of the defenders dominating the strikers? There aren't many because it frankly doesn't look as impressive, even if it is just as difficult.
In that regard, Starcraft is somewhat easier to appreciate defense, but it still presents challenges, as the only defense immediately appreciable involves coming ahead in the battle.
Going back to micro and macro, I would argue that macro could also involve tactical decision making during the game. An amazing macro decision would be done during pressure, or right after a battle to capitalize on the situation. The problem with this scenario is the alternative isn't always clear. Yes, player A won, but what did he choose NOT to do to achieve the win? How was his macro decision done to do what he did? Micro is just so much easier to observe.
Perhaps your examples just weren't clear enough to me, but they felt more micro focused rather than macro focused, and while I definitely agree that the beauty in the micro can be recognized, I feel that might do disservice to players that macro beautifully. The latter may even be unknowable, but no less impressive.
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Actually those are both quotes from a piece he wrote about Federer as a Religious Experience. I have a copy of Consider the Lobster, but haven't yet delved into it. Foster Wallace is one of those writers who comes so close to meeting his own definition of greatness that it disappoints me to know there will be no more new work after The Pale King. I find myself rationing it out so I don't sit down someday soon and say, "That's it, there is no more DFW for me to read."
Ahh, I'll have to look for it. In 'Consider the Lobster', he writes a book review of a former female tennis pro's autobiography, and there are some similar lines. I, too, am sad to never see more DFW. That just means infinite readings of Infinite Jest. Mmm Toblerone.
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On June 21 2011 10:24 SirJolt wrote:I had meant to post this earlier, but if anyone wants to read the piece that inspired me to write some of this, you can read it here. I'd love to hear what other people think of it
i read that article. then read "This is Water" a commencement speech he wrote. Then i watched this interview and I have to say i'm falling in love with this author.
i found the idea of writing about the spectator aspect of a sport interesting. i found "this is water" heartfelt, and the interview sealed the deal. His honestly, and the way he talks about casual topics but slips in academic speak is good too. i'm having trouble articulate what i find so fascinating about him right now, i'll probably elaborate later.
Mostly i just wanted to thank you. I love teamliquid for posts like this. While I feed my guilty pleasure of staying up to date on starcraft there are gems like this. showing me insight into things like this author which is great and really inspired me in my other pursuits.
so in general... thank you
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the Dagon Knight4015 Posts
Wooops, meant to send someone a PM quoting this topic... but it didn't work out that way. Sorry for the bump folks D:
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EPT
