EPT
Writing
My writing’s been a bit lazy at times, and a bit repetitive at others, but hey—writing 55k words on Proleague in a year on how Jin Air won again is bound to bring up the same things a good few times. Still, it's been better than last year I feel, while there's still tons of improvement to come. Interviewing David Kim and Tim Morten was a pretty cool experience (if a little nerve-wracking), and I’ve had the freedom to write on loads of cool little events that we’d never have had the time to write about in the past (NSL / SHOUTcraft / VSL for example). In general though, I’m pretty happy with how things have gone in 2016. On a personal front, I felt my BlizzCon preview for TY was a pretty nice cap to the year, but more than anything, I finally put out my Squirtle article after working on it iteration by iteration for fourteen months (as Zealously will attest to). It remains the only thing I’ve ever written that I’m 100% happy with. Not to tease too much, but I’ve had a GuMiho article brewing slowly in Google Docs since July; hopefully it’ll be here this time next year I guess.
Editing
Is fucking hard. Especially when you speak to everyone you’re editing on a near-daily basis. And when they post their stuff at 1am. And when you have no graphics ready, and when you have no artistic talent whatsoever.
TBF though, it is made easier by the fact that everyone’s pretty great at writing already.
Events
So, 2016 marked my first set of esports tournaments that I’ve ever attended. A week-long stint in Korea came first, which was awesome to watch solo in the crowd, but flying out to BlizzCon was something else. Meeting other TL people for the first time was great, and that arena setup is pretty spectacular. HomeStory Cup topped the lot though, as a great event to round out the year, as well as bringing together an absurd amount of TL staff (5 writers to cover one event may have been a little overkill).
Starcraft
I hate reapers; I think disruptor PvP is horrible 95% of the time; I thought that the quality of Starcraft in the first couple months of 2016 would make me quit with the endless mass adept pushes and ravager rushes. But hey, I’m still here, and the future looks bright in 2017, especially with mutalisks finally back on the ZvT agenda. I’d be lying if I said that this was the most I’ve ever enjoyed Starcraft, but I still love it a hell of a lot, and more than any other game out there. You don't put thousands of hours into a scene every year if it's not still a bit special. If things stay alive (KR pls), I’m not going anywhere soon.
Films
Were pretty disappointing this year. Lots of stuff I liked (sometimes a lot), but nothing yet that I love wholeheartedly. Your Name is the closest I’ve seen; Arrival is hopefully the cap on the year that I need. Then again, San Junipero is probably my favourite hour of filmmaking in the past decade or so, so it’s not all been bad.
Thanks to all the TL Writers; you brighten up my day with silly arguments, and every thing you write means less work for me. To TheOneAboveU—thanks for waking me up every day for BlizzCon, and for soloing Proleague with me. To hexy—thanks for the superhuman feat of soloing an entire season of SSL, and for all the pretty photos. To Soul—thanks for saving me from writing all of WCS. To Destructicon—thanks for all the brain warping weirdness you bring to fanfics. To CosmicSpiral—thanks for being a constant reminder that I write shitty English. To Stu—thanks for being an outlet for all my CSGO shitposting. To Joe—thanks for the Proleague shirt; I will treasure it forever. To Zealously—thanks for being patient for so long with your advice for my Squirtle article, and lemme know when part 3’s ready for reading. To Olli—thanks for being a constant help whenever I fuck up. To lichter—thanks for always reminding me that I’ll never write anything as awesome as the dinosaur preview. And thanks for sending me to BlizzCon!
Thanks to Kenzi, Shayla, and the rest of the KR photography crew who feed my twitter feed.
Thanks to Shiro for constantly being there to fix my HTML fuckups.
Thanks to Monk for helping me out at BlizzCon; thanks to Wax for all the esports gossip; thanks to Nazgul for being awesome.
Thanks to all the awesome people I met at HomeStory Cup; hopefully I’ll see you all there again sometime next year.
Thanks to anyone who’s ever read one of our pieces, or commented that they like what we’ve done. As much as I say that I’d be doing this even if we had a fraction of our audience (which I truly believe), it means more than you know when you compliment us, and similarly when you point out stuff we could be doing better (except for the people who point out editing errors where I fuck up—you guys can all fuck off). Not that I’m in any position to really give out advice, but like most things in life, learning to write is about getting things wrong rather than getting things right. Let me know if there’s anything you want to see, whether new or improved, heading into the new year.
2016’s been a weird transitional year for me. I moved country; I left my job; I went back to university. I went one step backwards, and two steps in a direction that’ll hopefully turn out to be forwards. Let’s try not to fuck up this time. I always link certain songs to certain places or times in my life; this has been my 2016.
The Spook School - Try To Be Hopeful
Obligatory second lichter shoutout:
![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CxvQqMrWQAAkP9q.jpg)
