EPTBetween my TeamLiquid posts and my LiquidHearth posts, this is my 10,000th post on a Liquid forum. I'm electing to make my 10k blog to commemorate that achievement as I felt that a stream of consciousness now would be more useful than whatever I could produce further on, assuming I even was keeping track at the time. If you consider it cheating, I'm sorry, but this is my blog, and this is how I choose to do things. So there.
Ten thousand posts. How…strange. This site has certainly taken away a big chunk of my life. I know it’s largely because I so deeply love esports, with SC2 at the forefront (#passion)…but I think a big part of it is also how much of a community we’ve developed here. The forum family, the LR family, they’re not only cool people, but they also give me an outlet. This forum allows me to be more social than real life, by miles. I know and understand some people on this forum better than I know the people I work with at school. And that’s awesome. But I feel like I still wind up where I am in most social setups in my life: On the fringes, outside of the main “crew”. I'm part of the group, but I'm essentially a B-teamer. But then I realize I haven’t exactly said much about myself to merit that kind of connection. So here’s a little bit about some weird dude who fell in love with esports and decided to post a bunch on some forum about them. (This probably looks self-indulgent, but it’s helpful, trust me.)
Who the hell is this Circumstance dude?
Well, I’m Circumstance. I’m 20 years old and I live in Southern California. I’m a university student, in my sophomore year, and I love SC2. I first started getting into SC2 during a very dark period of my life. I had always loved gaming since I was a child. Games, competitions of all varieties, they were my outlet. I was able to feel a sense of accomplishment in competing that I never could in academia, which probably explained why, despite my understanding of the material and consistently noted intelligence, I was never able to do more than tread water in formal schooling. But games, competitions, they were always there for me, and I always loved them. Due to money restrictions, I wasn’t always able to play that many games myself, (and due to utter social incompetence, I wasn’t able to play multiplayer) so what was the next-best thing? Watching. When I was a kid, I would go to a friend’s house and just watch them play whatever new games they were interested in. Eventually, I would find my way back to this idea through Let’s Plays. YouTube was a way for me to rediscover video games, a hobby that I hadn’t been that interested in for a few years prior, mainly in middle the first year or two of high school, where I got my outlet for competition in other ways. I started out mainly by watching a particular group channel, whose guest Let’s Players led to an increased knowledge of the YouTube gaming space. What eventually led this to esports happened when one of those Let’s Players I had learned about was on this program that I kept seeing pop up in my sub box. It was called the TGS Podcast. It was my first foray into more mature gaming discussion, my first look at the industry side of gaming, and most important for the purpose of this blog, it was how I learned about the person who hosts the podcast: One John “TotalBiscuit” Bain. The program quickly became a weekly ritual for me, and “WTF Is…” became regular viewing as well. This happened to coincide with one of two extremely dark portions of my life, but that’s getting into the second section of this blog.
Anyway, I noticed that TB would almost always be talking about this thing called Starcraft, and he had a team in it. I knew he was friend with a guy called Husky whose channel was all about the game, and I would watch this Bronze League Heroes series every now and again and laugh at how exasperated he was getting, even though I didn’t understand why. I tried watching one series of it because he had a player in some big tournament, but I wound up only seeing the final series, after that player had been knocked out. (It turned out that, believe it or not, the first time I ever saw a best-of series in tournament-level SC2 was seeing Sniper win Code S.) I didn’t really understand what was happening, so I didn’t actually watch any non-Husky SC2 videos for several months later, until TB aired the first Shoutcraft America. I thought, what the heck, I’ll try it again. Still didn’t get much (really didn’t get much for a while until I started doing research on Liquipedia on tech trees and unit capabilities and whatnot), but I was enjoying myself. A short time afterwards, I watched my first-ever Twitch broadcast, which was MLG Anaheim 2013. The passion and excitement from that crowd, and the importance they placed on achievement (that was Polt’s Triple Crown) was what got me to commit more. I watched nearly every match of the next WCS America season, as well as a fair amount of Europe, while fervently learning all that I could about the game. By the time they got to the Season Finals, I sure as hell knew who these people were, and how big of a shock it was that Innovation promptly joined Team Acer afterwards. I don’t remember when I actually started posting regularly on Team Liquid, though I seem to have made my first thread in March 2014, so there’s that. Since then, this community has deepened my love for Starcraft 2 and for other esports (I’d venture to say I have at least a 50% chance against anyone on TL besides Helium in Cardstone) a thousandfold, and there have been times where I’ve really needed that.
Why esports means so much to me
Well, like I said, I’ve always had a knack for competitions, for games of all sorts. I was never physically gifted, and things like debate can only do so much, so gaming of various sorts quickly became my go-to for that thirst for competition. Esports found me when I needed it. TB’s podcast started becoming a weekly ritual during a period of my life when I had essentially nothing going for me. I had just had my Uni acceptance rescinded due to my aforementioned “only treading water” academically, and I was spending a year of my life essentially doing nothing. No job, no education, no forward movement towards progressing as a human being in any way. Did I have depression? I don’t know, I never saw any psychological or psychiatric professional who could have made that determination. But it wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve recently discovered that people who’ve been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, like I was more than once, are far more likely than the general population to have depression or report depression-like symptoms – a majority, in fact. And make no mistake, I was dead inside. I would frequently listen to songs at 2 in the morning that were meant to try and draw the emotion out of me. During that time period, I was only able to occasionally smile because of The Runaway Guys (still funny, and the one member who streams is brilliant) and The Game Station podcast, now known as the Co-Optional Podcast. These things that led me to esports were also my like in a time of extreme darkness. I found my current educational home at pretty much the same time as I found pashun. It helps me to pretty much always have something to care about.
And, well, I’ve kind of needed something to care about recently. My life is currently entering a troubling déjà vu, as I find myself struggling academically, at legitimate risk of failing multiple courses, and simultaneously experiencing what the campus counselor has confirmed is definitely depression. If there has ever been a case of two problems feeding into one another and exacerbating one another to an extreme degree, this is definitely it. I struggle more with my courses because of my depression, and my depression gets worse due to my becoming less likely to pass these classes. It’s particularly frustrating because they’re not difficult classes, it’s not difficult work, and I’m not actually bad at it. I’m just encountering some kind of block preventing me not only from doing the work, but from even trying to do the work, attempting to make things go in the direction I need them to. Now I’m in a position where I can’t even reach a state where I’m treading water, I can’t even retain the same status for next year as I’ve had for this one, I’m still not having anything that bears even the slightest resemblance to a social life, I’m still not living independently, I’m still not acting like an adult, and I’m further away from being able to become a properly functioning member of society today than I was when I graduated high school, not to mention that the person who wore that cap and gown on the football field would debate the pants off the guy writing this post. At least, these are the thoughts that keep plaguing me. This is the internal dialogue that my counselor has also been trying to stop. I’m trying to doubt its accuracy, but it’s hard. So as you might imagine, having a place like TL where I’m accepted (well, “tolerated” is probably a better word) is a very valuable tool for my mentality, among other things. This is a place that allows me to talk about something I love with people I enjoy talking to in a way that allows verbose concepts to be explained and claims to be easily verified.
Thanks, both General and Special
First of all, I want to thank every person who helps to keep this site a civil and tolerant community instead of Reddit or whatever the hell LiquidMoba threads turn into. (Nothing against the people who run those 2 sites, it’s not their fault that the games lend themselves to a seemingly lower degree of community tolerance.) I doubt I’d have as much of a sustained interest in this site, in SC2, or even in esports if not for how well this site is run and organized. So I’m thankful for all of you.
In addition, a special thanks to some of the unsung heroes, like the people who vote in Recommended Games polls or the people who try to watch smaller events on Twitch for the games they love. Also, here’s a shoutout to the people who run those smaller events. Without you, we couldn’t have the Dreamhacks or the IEMs.
Now, for some forum-specific shit:
Thanks to The_Templar for typically being a boss, making the transition from “dude who makes all of the LRs” to “dude who makes all of the LRs and also writes for the site”. He keeps things fresh and interesting, and created one of the greatest moments in HSC history.
Thanks to KingofdaHipHop for being my TL fraternal twin. We both really love our local region, we share a lot of the same opinions on the game, we both post a shitton in LRs, we primarily got into the game through the same event, and we seem to have a lot of personal stuff in common too.
Thanks to SetGuitarsToKill for being a guy who reminds me how important it is to believe in yourself, as well as having a bunch of passion. He’s also a really great guy at heart. When he wasn’t able to PM non-mods, he actually got a mod to PM me to wish me a Happy Birthday while that birthday was going pretty crappy for me. That’s dedication to making a positive impact.
Thanks to Lorning for always keeping the LR machine oiled up and running smoothly. Also for helping me out when I failed at the personal touch on my first intentional LR thread.
Thanks to Cricketer12 for making a point of letting me know beforehand he was mentioning me in his own blog after I was upset and made my current sig.
Thanks to Die4Ever for simultaneously being the brain behind the stats that have become ubiquitous in WCS and also being a cool LR-posting dude.
Thanks to DarkLordOlli for having 10x the patience that is required of him, and being the only mod to ever give me a warning about the possibility of getting a warning, as well as recommending blogging to me as a method of dealing with the struggles I experience. Also, for explaining how TL’s blog system works to me.
I’m sure there are a TON more people I should be thanking, but alas, I am writing this very late at night and can’t properly think of all the names and explanations that I ought to. So finally, here’s one big thanks to YOU for reading through this whole blog-rant-milestone thing. It’s my first time writing here, and I don’t know how often I’ll do it in the future. But I hope I wrote something that gets what I’m trying to say across and is in some way enjoyable to read.
Here’s to arbitrary-post-number more! 
