Tilting a Titan: The Men Who Would Kill God

By Rachael "Liltalen"

     As many know, this past weekend was the Mid Season Invitational (MSI) for Riot Games and League of Legends. The winners of the spring split of their respective regions were invited to Tallahassee, Florida to play in an international tournament against the best of the best worldwide.

     Among the 6 teams invited to the games were Team SoloMid (TSM) from North America, Ahq e-Sports Club (AHQ) from Taiwan, Edward Gaming (EDG) of China, Beşiktaş e-Sports Club (BJK) of Turkey, Season 3 World Champions SKT Telecom T1 (SKT) of South Korea, and the mighty European favorite, Fnatic (FNC).

     Days one and and two were comprised of a round robin setup, and as the teams rotated through their games to determine who would make it to the semi-finals, some things became rather easily discerned.

     Beşiktaş, while winning the wildcard spot to MSI, were hopelessly outclassed. That's not to say that they didn't put up any fight at all, but simply that the capabilities of the teams from larger regions made short work of the Turkish team.

     TSM was not on their game. They weren't even close to being on their game. Of their 4 games, the only one they managed to win was against the wildcard BJK.

     Ahq e-Sports Club held their own, securing themselves a spot solidly in the semi-finals.

     EDG played bloody, forcing fight after fight as they steamrolled their opponents

     Fnatic came to play, and they looked sharp. Sharper, in fact, than most may have anticipated going in to MSI.

     Through all of the games, however, one thing became evident quite quickly. SKT was still strongly favored and highly capable, and Faker was still considered King on the Rift. With his God like attributions, however, came another realization; people would do much to shut down the midlaner of SKT.

     Not even 3 minutes in to the second game of the day, SKT's first of the series, and Beşiktaş pulled off a 4 man dive in the mid lane to kill Faker for first blood, and while they then proceeded to take a beating from the Korean team, one thing stood in the minds of many: The God could bleed, and the God could die.

     From there, one has to wonder what went through the minds of the men that went up against Faker. While occasionally, Easyhoon was the man in the mid, more often than not in these games, Faker was the behemoth to beat for these teams. The fact of the matter is, anyone who knows anything about professional League of Legends knows just who Faker is, and at least a little of what he's capable of. For the guys going up against him? It had to be a bit nerve wracking, to be sure.

     SKT's second game vs EDG, Easyhoon played the mid lane, and the fans were a bit upset to not be able to to watch Faker go up against PawN, but the next game was one that had been widely hyped for a while. What happened when the fabled mid lane of SKT met Bjergsen of TSM?

     The answer was perhaps not what the NA crowd was hoping for. The clash of titans started off slow in the lane, and escalated. Faker's first kill on Bjergsen came with the aid of a gank from Bengi, and from there, SKT simply out-rotated and outplayed TSM at every turn.

     Game 4 in the round robin, and the one of the questions seen consistently online was "Faker or Easyhoon?" Everyone wanted to know now, whether or not they'd get to see Faker play.  In the game versus Fnatic, the answer was "Yes."

     Fnatic proceeded to join the 'Kill Faker' train as Huni roamed mid at around 7 minutes to help Febiven pick up first blood on Faker's Lulu. In fact, until almost 40 minutes, Fnatic held a convincing lead. At that point, SKT managed to acquire the second baron, turn the game around with a Pentakill for Bang, and a push to win. Still, though, Fnatic managed to make a point. Not only could the God bleed and die, so could SKT.

     The following game, once again Easyhoon played, and while he had good mechanics, and solid play, the fact remained; the fans wanted Faker.

     In game 1 of the Semi-finals up against Fnatic, SKT played as expected, ramping up, playing safe, and steam rolling the European team, causing many to wonder if Fnatic's play the day before had been a fluke.

     The second game, however, Fnatic proved it had been no accident, forcing SKT to dance to their tune across the Rift.

     Game 3, ten minutes in and the game was fairly even, Febiven and Faker both 0/0/0, and Febiven went for broke. The heavens watched with baited breath, the fans trembled, and Febiven will tell his children about the day he 1v1'd Faker and walked away with the God dead at his feet.

     Less than 4 minutes later, Febiven did it again.

     At the end of the day, SKT defeated FNC, going 3-2 in a best of 5, but there were whispers of something that hadn't been before. SKT Telecom T1 could be beaten. Faker was fallible.

     Finals, Bo5, EDG up against SKT. Game 1 saw Easyhoon in the midlane and SKT dictating the pace of the game toward a victory. Games 2 & 3, still no Faker, and EDG put their foot down and smashed SKT, walking away with kill after kill to eventual wins for both games, actually forcing a surrender in game 3.

     Game 4 the fans cried out, "Faker! Save us!" and Faker returned, and the God demanded tribute, and the Rift ran red with the blood of the fallen as Faker went 6/0/12 on Kassadin, leading SKT to victory and tying up the series.

     It came down to game 5, and EDG had one more card up their sleeve. In the international tournament, in the final game, with everything on the line, the Chinese team left LeBlanc open for Faker, and then when Faker blind picked his undefeated champion into his lane opponent? PawN brought down the hammer with his Morgana counterpick, and the rest of EDG fell in line with a team designed to shut LeBlanc down.

     The game was very controlled back and forth, but EDG simply began to overtake SKT, PawN surgically seeking out Faker in every fight to pin the hyper-mobile LeBlanc down with Dark Binding and destroy her before she could blow anyone up. If Morgana didn't get to her, Maokai and Alistar did. The game slowly slid out of control for SKT as EDG forced team fights over and over.

     Faker missed his Distortion over the wall to help force EDG off of his team after they slaughtered Bengi, and EDG rotated for the Baron. EDG sieged, eventually taking the mid inhibitor, taking a second Baron and turning around to slaughter Faker one last time before they pushed on through for the win.

     SKT Telecom T1 had been defeated; Faker, on his signature, heretofore undefeated Lady LeBlanc, had fallen to Edward Gaming and PawN.

     The question becomes, how hard must it have been for Faker? Right from the start, when Beşiktaş made it their goal to take on the herculean legend that Faker has become for those who play League professionally, all the way to EDG and their team designed to take him out. What sort of pressure is it on a player when you know that the rest of the professional scene looks at you and considers you, for the most part, the pinnacle of what it means to play the game? Can Faker be tilted?

     Only the man himself could tell us.  The fact remains, however, that Faker is still among the best in the world, and only time will show us how the God on the Rift returns.

Article Written 5/17/2015

Questioning College

      I'd like to know at what point we're going to stop telling our children that they need to "go to college to get a good job," and instead start telling them the truth.  The sad truth has become that these days, you have to go to college to get almost any job, or advance past a certain point in any field, and the "college experience" has become more and more expensive with each passing year.
I went to college after graduating high school because that's what I was told I should do to "get a good job," but after two and a half years there, I took time off because, in addition to dealing with crippling depression, I had no idea what the hell I was in school for.
I went in to college hoping to learn new, important life lessons and ways of achieving my hopes and dreams. Instead, I was forced to take courses in subjects completely irrelevant to anything I was interested in, as well as courses that had nothing they could actually teach me that I was not previously capable of doing.
When I questioned my ability to perhaps test out of courses that I felt I had already mastered, I was curtly informed that there was no way to do such a thing, and that I simply had to endure the courses for what they were.
I wanted to believe that there was something more to be learned in these basics that I was being re-taught again for yet another time in my life, but when I sat down with one teacher, she told me that with the skills I possessed, there was nothing she could teach me in her class.
I was floored.  How could it be possible that after how much money I was paying to be at this college, and how I had been assured that this was 'for my own good' that I attend these basic classes and learn all these things that I surely did not know, I had someone telling me what I'd ascertained all along. I already had all these basics, and I was being forced in to taking these needless credits for no good reason, except the only one I could establish.  The college was forcing me to take these classes, regardless of my own ability, to increase their overall income.
Why did they not have a way to establish the level at which each individual student was operating?  Even if there was an extensive test that I had to pay a certain amount to take, in order to prove where I should be in terms of advancing toward my degree, I would have been willing to do so.      There was no such thing, however, and I strongly believe that this feeling of hopeless resignation and despair lent itself to the debilitating depression that I experienced, ultimately leading me to take time off of college to figure out what it was that I needed to do.
It's been 5 years since I stopped going to college to figure everything out, and in that time, I got married, I've moved several times, I've continued work as a waitress and a bartender, and I've struggled to get by on money... The reason?  As of now, 5 years down the road, I still have almost $15,000 in outstanding student loans, and I have been paying on them the whole time; hundreds of dollars a month toward pointless credits I achieved at a university that cared more about how much money it could wring out of me than how much I was learning.
The establishment that I went to, I hesitate to call a college, because to me, and I feel like to most, the word 'college' implies a place of learning.  I went to place that was a business, and their merchandise was perfunctory information in return for being paid incredibly handsomely on money that was not even mine in the first place.
I've resigned myself to the fact that most businesses require a college degree to even call back for an interview, much less actually give a job, but I find that I have many friends that have acquired their expensive piece of paper, called a "degree," and yet they still have positions equal to myself in the customer service and retail industry because no one will hire them without experience.
Here is where we enter a point that gives me some sort of morbid amusement, a sick joke on those that finally achieved their sought after college degrees.  I say it provides me with a twisted sort of amusement simply because as I sit back now without my degree, and while I am in debt, it's moderately less than it could have been, had I continued to do what I was  'supposed to.'
All of these young people have been told 'go to college, get your degree so that you can get a decent job,'  but now that they have graduated?  The job market in inundated, flooded, with hundreds of thousands of young people who believed the lie they were told.  They bought it hook, line, and sinker.  Now they're stuck paying back tens of thousands of dollars while they apply for jobs that respond with 'sorry, you need more job experience before we'll consider you.'  How are they ever supposed to get job experience when no one will hire anyone without job experience?!
My husband and I, we are swimming, drowning, in debt, because he bought the lie, too.   He went to school, and he excelled.  He graduated with his bachelor's degree in economics in just 3 years, and immediately went on to graduate school where he graduated with his master's degree in public policy with a focus on economic development in just another 2 years.  My husband has a master's degree, and he works in a hotel where he makes $11 an hour.  No one will give him a second look because, regardless of the fact that he has this expensive piece of paper that states the schooling he had, and his abilities, he doesn't have enough experience in fields that are considered 'relevant.'  It doesn't matter to them that he has his degrees, nor that he is incredibly intelligent, driven, and capable of doing any tasks set down before him.
I am much the same in that I am intelligent, driven, and capable.  If you are able to teach me what you want, I can do it.  It's as simple as that.  I'm just as intelligent as most of the people I know that have a degree, I am merely less in debt and unpossessing of that incredibly expensive piece of paper.
Now I wait for all of you that tell me I should have finished college, just to do it so that I had a degree, to go out in the world and do what I wanted.  Though I do understand that mindset, that's what has led to what's occurring now.  Thousands of people with no idea what they want to do, jobs that won't hire people without experience in relevant fields that they can't get jobs in without experience, and then there's me.
I wish I were capable of feeding in to the lie.  I wish I had had the capability of finishing my college degree just so I could say I 'accomplished' this thing, but at this point, I'd like someone to take me at the merit of my person and my intelligence, and to give me the opportunity to prove that even though I don't have a degree, that doesn't make me worth any less.