Breaking the Curse

There are many curses in competition. Some are spiritual, like the Chicago Cubs' 71-year title drought following their exile of a local tavern owner and his goat. Some are personal, like the Boston Red Sox's 86-year drought following the sale of one of the greatest players ever to their rivals. Not all last for eons—some are short-term, and yet so intense that they remain rooted in the essence of the afflicted. soO lost four straight GSL championships in 2013-2014, remade himself, and then lost two more in 2017 before losing on the BlizzCon stage.

SpeCial's curse is not quite as epic as the ones aforementioned, but it's no less sinister. In StarCraft, a finals is an opportunity to have the entire world gaze solely upon you and your opponent, an opportunity for one set of seven games to decide everything, an opportunity to stand as the lone victor over all. There's great pain in blowing such a chance, but there might be even greater pain in never having earned such a chance at all.

In 2017, SpeCial suffered three semifinal eliminations at WCS events: he blew a 2-1 lead to Neeb at WCS Austin 2017, got 3-0'd by Snute at WCS Valencia, and was crushed by soO on the BlizzCon stage. That final loss brought a bittersweet end to SpeCial's fantastic Global Finals run. SpeCial had been going through quite a slump prior to BlizzCon, enough so that his ability to qualify had come into question. He tweeted in September "I promise, if I qualify [to Blizzcon] you will see the best of me." SpeCial made good on that promise after barely cinching the #8 seed, as he went on to play some of the best games of his career at BlizzCon. We saw him overcome his friend and mentor, the great LotV Terran TY. We saw him bring builds that were so precisely prepared that he pierced Stats' vaunted defenses. We him reach the top four in the biggest tournament of the year, proving that he was one of the most skilled foreign Terrans to play the game.

We also saw a player who failed to reach the finals again. That one feat, repeated over and over, has come to define SpeCial's entire career. He's good at StarCraft II. Incredibly, fantastically good, sometimes. But he's not the best, nor has he even entered that that discussion. Even making the semifinals at Blizzcon is not a feat that sticks out for long, as impressive as it was at the time. It's unfair and it's cruel, but legacies are built in the finals. As Rogue and soO walked to their career defining triumph and devastation, SpeCial's spotlight was already fading. He would not warm or break any hearts—he was simply stuck in the shadows.

2018 was a year of great upheaval for StarCraft II, but only SpeCial seemed to be running in place. At WCS Leipzig, SpeCial once again climbed to the semifinals, only to be knocked down by the rising Serral. The same thing happened at IEM PyeongChang where SpeCial was put away by sOs (his third semifinal sweep). After such discouragement, no one could have blamed SpeCial for falling off, and for a moment, he did. He went 3-9 in games at IEM Katowice, and then went 1-6 against Reynor and iAsonu at WESG.

The decisive moment of Special's year came at WCS Austin. For a moment, the sky parted: with Bly as his first opponent in the playoffs and Serral sitting on the other side of the bracket, there was a ray of sunlight leading him to the finals. Neeb and Snute (both opponents who had knocked him out in the semis in the past) awaited as potential storm clouds, but their fading form meant SpeCial had as good a chance as ever to take them out. He took care of his initial opponents, beating Bly 3-0 and dominating Elazer by the same scoreline, only to find himself facing a most unexpected opponent in the semifinals. Instead of Neeb or Snute, it was MaNa who was staring him down.

MaNa hardly seemed like an obstacle in comparison to the players who had denied SpeCial access to the finals stage in previous events. MaNa hadn't even made it to a quarterfinals for all of Legacy of the Void and was coming off a disastrous WCS Leipzig where he placed in the top 48 after losing to Lambo and JonSnow. The match should've been a formality, a warm-up fight ahead of SpeCial's first finals. Instead, what followed was a classic WCS Circuit match, one of the best from the entire 2018 season. It was, perhaps, the most exhilarating series of SpeCial's entire career, and one that came to define him better than any other. With all the odds in his favor, with all the glory of the finals stage dangling in front of him, Special lost again.

In the months since, SpeCial has fallen hard. He was swept by Reynor in the RO16 of WCS Valencia and ended his Circuit year by losing to ShoWTimE in the group stages of WCS Montreal. At GSL vs. the World he was smashed in unceremonious fashion by Stats. While he managed to beat soO in the Code S Ro32, he was still eliminated by Rogue and KeeN in the subsequent matches. Every step he has taken since losing to MaNa has come alongside half a dozen steps backwards.

If SpeCial were any other player from the Circuit, our expectations would be at an all-time low ahead of BlizzCon. But, for all his shortcomings and inability to get over the semifinal wall, SpeCial is undeniably resilient and determined. He has some of the best work ethic in the entire StarCraft II scene, Koreans and foreigners combined. His time spent in the KeSPA system taught him that there's no replacement for hard work, and it's all that you can rely on when your performances falter. All it takes is a look back to last year—where he went from a top 48 finish at WCS Montreal to a top 4 finish at BlizzCon—to see his potential. SpeCial promised to show up as the best version of himself at BlizzCon 2017 if he managed to squeeze his way in, and he over-delivered on that promise. Nearly all of the players at BlizzCon are more accomplished than SpeCial, but he's the one who's still giving it his all to achieve the things they might take for granted.

SpeCial's match against MaNa was his most significant match of the year, but not because it was the latest in a long series of crushing disappointments. It reminded us that you can't break curses with easy brackets and lucky breaks—you have to do it the hard way. Of course, that's something SpeCial has known for the longest time. He's a player who went from from dreaming about being a KeSPA pro, living that dream, and having it torn away from him because he wasn't good enough. Instead of giving up, he took what he learned and worked to become even better. Neeb, Snute, Serral, Nerchio and Elazer all went to BlizzCon 2017, but at the end, SpeCial was the last foreign hope standing. SpeCial enters this year's Blizzcon as a stronger, more experienced player than the one who was 3-0'd last year. He's prepared prepared and ready to fight his cursed fate, to finally ascend, to do what no foreigner has ever done. SpeCial has the BlizzCon finals in his sights.