I...Spit Hot Fire?

Shortly before the end of Dreamhack Leipzig, PtitDrogo joked that he would change his name to Drogo if he won the finals. The 'little dragon' had been popping up in European tournaments since summer 2013, but Théo Freydière understood the significance of the moment. Since his debut he had established himself as a credible threat: a pair of top 8 finishes at HomeStory Cup and silver at Assembly Summer will do that. With upsets over Snute, Nerchio, Rogue, KeeN, StarDust, San and others, he knew he could rumble with the longtime veterans. Yet the French phenom had failed to establish a general sense of momentum. Those shining results were nuggets of gold gleaming in a pile of mediocrity. All his previous Dreamhack outings had ended in disappointment; he was routed 0-3 by Bunny during his only WCS Challenger appearance of 2015; he came up agonizingly short in big qualifier after big qualifier. His stellar reputation at home withstanding, PtitDrogo knew he was on the cusp of transforming his career. Only Bly stood between him and a ten-fold increase in prestige, an incalculable boost in confidence, and a complete castoff of the diminutive form. If he could endure the countless roach runbys and overlord drops, Leipzig would make him a star.

The finals went far better than expected. After three consecutive nail-biters, Bly proved relatively easy to handle. It wasn't a clean win by any stretch of the imagination. PtitDrogo's opponent refused to capitulate and fought back with abandon. He stubbornly harassed with units in all places, at all times; PtitDrogo stamped out so many wild roaches he could been the new spokesperson for Raid. Throughout it all the eventual winner didn't panic. Even when Bly managed to ravage his mineral lines, he resisted the temptation to retaliate and therefore fall into his enemy's tempo. Instead, he played as if he was in absolute control. What mechanical or strategic nitpicks we could single out in hindsight, PtitDrogo had the attitude of a champion down cold.

If only the story ended there. As we all know from The Notorious B.I.G., success doesn't come for free. Finally relieved of the pressure of landing a championship, PtitDrogo was now confronted with the challenge with being one. Naturally his breakthrough win produced a new narrative: he was now a fully fledged terror and a threat in everything he entered. Even if that wasn't the case, the exhilaration would provide the needed impetus for another few months. Eventually he would be “figured out” (which happens to everyone, given enough time) but by then, he would be well-established in the upper echelon of the EU scene.

Fast-forward ten months and PtitDrogo's name remains the same. If you look at his record since Leipzig, you could swear it was his Cinderella moment: after taking off the glass slippers and losing the pumpkin carriage, he went back to dutifully scrubbing floors. The post-2015 tournament results are almost a carbon copy of the pre-2015 results, an assemblage of Round of 32 finishes mixed in with the occasional quarterfinals appearance. Like in the old days, there are bright spots. He can boast first place in the WCA Europe qualifier—with two wins over Nerchio to boot!—and the semifinals of Gold Series International. And if we were talking about a lesser player, this would be satisfactory. Would we be willing to belittle PtitDrogo that much? He's tasted the fruit of a premier win; surely, he's putting everything he's got into these performances. How is it that he is still stuck at the same level as before? Did Leipzig alert his future opponents and remove the threat of obscurity? Or was Dreamhack a fluke, like the time InCa stumbled into the GSL finals off the back of DT shenanigans and proxy void rays? Could he break through the ceiling into a new level of skill, or would MarineLorD and Dayshi haunt his steps for the rest of time?

If Leipzig was where the stars aligned, BlizzCon is where PtitDrogo can prove he is above luck. Niceties aside, he's not supposed to be here. Suffice to say a lot of improbable things inexplicably happened. Like a bad Alejandro Iňárrritu parody, we learned that we are all connected in ways we never expected. Planning a marriage one day means you lose $10,000 the next day; not attending Dreamhack Austin eventually leads to not having enough points to surpass your rival to attend BlizzCon. Thanks to a mixture of marital obligations, martial obligations and unfortunate math, PtitDrogo finds himself headed to Anaheim to play against the best in the world. For someone struggling with stagnation, there is no better opportunity to cast off the weight of the past. He won't be dealing with the tedious unpredictability of online qualifiers or the marathon endurance runs of a weekend tournament. He already knows his opponents ahead of time: the best players in the world without a pushover in sight. They probably don't know him and it could prove their undoing. A strong performance here and PtitDrogo will pull himself out of the quagmire with one swift yank.

In the past we would dismiss such a possibility out of hand. Once upon a time, being a foreigner was enough to signal your doom in an international tournament. Even being the best foreigner meant you were the biggest guppy in an isolated pond. During those days a player like PtitDrogo, untested against the best from Korea, would be barely worth writing home about. For years, Dreamhack and ESL resembled miniature GSLs more than a worldwide showcase; WCS America and Europe became self-mocking titles. We became accustomed to being underdogs at our own events, watching our hometown heroes drop out before the quarterfinals, entertaining tired old narratives of 'relatability' and 'creativity vs mechanical superiority' and all that jazz just to maintain a modicum of tension. According to history, this would last forever...or at least, until the Korean sponsors decided forever wasn't a cost-efficient timetable.

The last two months have done much to upend that sacred cow. Under those assumptions ByuN never won GSL; correction, he could have never won GSL. The idea that someone returning from a hermitage after 14 months, eschewing the standard team environment for isolated practice, only to win a Korean tournament was preposterous. Not even TaeJa had proven capable of pulling off that magic trick. Skeptics would have further scoffed if you suggested a foreigner would win KeSPA Cup. Then tell them he would dominate the semifinals and finals of said event. Befuddled viewers are still trying to figure it out. Did they slack off at practice due to anticipating disbandment or like the European aristocracies of yore, did the Korean scene succumb to the perils of being insular? Is the game to blame for eroding the skill gap? Did foreigners figure out alternative ways to catch up? Was ByuN just that good? Was Neeb just that lucky? Could you ascribe a 4-0 thrashing to coincidence? Whatever the case, Korean superiority is no longer an indisputable face. As the scene slowly crumbles into oblivion/sustainability/Lord of the Flies 2: Electric Bugaloo, opportunities open up. The impossible stops seeming out of reach. Foreigners are no longer pitiable souls or flotsam to be scorned.

Through the most unpredictable road imaginable, PtitDrogo finds himself at the crossroads of history. For the longest of times, he only sought recognition as more than a French prodigy. Like any ambitious player he yearned for glory beyond the confines of his home country. Once he accomplished that, he struggled to recapture the glimpse of genius that possessed him for that one weekend. Now PtitDrogo enters BlizzCon as the wildcard in an era of change. Not since the early days of SC2 did foreigners and Koreans share anything approaching parity; most sensible critics never expected those days to return. But these are wild times. An 18-year-old American holds a Korean trophy. A recalcitrant nobody just took GSL against common sense and all things sacred. And here comes PtitDrogo with everything to prove and very little to lose. For too long this little dragon has sought the special something, the catalyst that would unleash his full fledged form. If he finds it, everyone will do well to be on their toes. Foreigner or not, Drogo will leave a smoldering trail of destruction in his wake before BlizzCon concludes.