Hi friends, thanks for tuning in! You’re probably seeing this on your Reddit feed or were sent this directly, most likely by me, accompanied by a cheeky caption like “impostor syndrome? i don’t even know her!” or something. Any way you’ve found this, I would kindly ask that you pass this along to someone who you think might (also) be interested.
This one is a little later than I intended since I’m in the middle of a very busy Labor Day weekend and I’m slowing down on this project to compensate. As I hope you will be able to tell, this took a decent amount of research to put together and I definitely don’t plan on doing this every time.
Day 2 « » Days 5-7
I expected to feel a degree of loneliness during this challenge.
In my years around this game, I’ve come across various constructions of Widowmaker and her players, cumulatively representing a standard that’s neither flattering nor unique. Smash together the single-player mindset of the stereotypical Soldier: 76 COD transplant, the feast-or-famine performance of a Doomfist one-trick, the rage-inducing playstyle of a Symmetra bandwagoner, and the internet history of your local “Blender hobbyist.” Then mix that noxious blend into one of the oldest and most contentious archetypes in the genre, and you get the most solitary and maligned character in this game’s long history.
Widowmaker’s lineage as a cultural object turns playing her into something I feel resembles what Jean Baudrillard called hyperreality in his 1981 treatise Simulacra and Simulation. He argues that tools of abstraction and simulation (like Disneyland or the economy) have become essentially self-referential, maps so detailed that they have become the land they claimed to signify, leaving in their wake a world that is neither land nor map. Gilles Deleuze explains the resulting “domain of simulation” in a letter to Serge Daney (included in 1995’s Negotiations: 1972-1990):
The question is no longer what there is to see behind the image, nor how we can see the image itself – it’s how we can find a way into it, how we can slip in, because each image now slips across other images, “the background in any image is always another image,” and the vacant gaze is a contact lens.
I felt myself slotting into each of those different archetypes at times, pictures of pictures of pictures each symbolizing a reality that is no longer real, nevertheless contorting my experience to fit them. I tunneled into my performance and ignored my teammates; my performance swung like a pendulum between lack and luster; my modus operandi drew ire and praise from friend and foe alike; and honestly, my browser history was never “clean” in the first place. As much as I will deny, oppose, and rebuke stereotypes, I can’t claim in good faith that anyone is immune to them, especially myself. They’re so far above me, symbols larger than generations suspended by a thousand invisible strata, spread like layers of infrared paint atop one another until the sky becomes functionally non-existent.
And so, I become them.
Baudrillard expands on the reaction to these conditions with the fractal subject, an experience of living that defines itself through the objects it engages with, relates to, or (literally and figuratively) consumes. In doing so, the self dissolves into signifiers of relation to those objects, modifying itself through a simulated existence in pursuit of the roaming goalposts of health, productivity, and achievement. As Baudrillard expresses in Simulacra:
Such is the last stage of the social relation, ours, which is no longer one of persuasion (the classical age of propaganda, of ideology, of publicity, etc.) but one of deterrence: "YOU are information, you are the social, you are the event, you are involved, you have the word, etc." An about-face through which it becomes impossible to locate one instance of the model, of power, of the gaze, of the medium itself, because you are always already on the other side.
So while I’m traversing this web, I might as well play the spider.
I went 9-10 on Friday, forgoing any games but starting this draft on Saturday since I was visiting a friend who’s moving away. Starting the day queuing with a different friend than the previous days, we trade two close wins on Samoa and Suravasa (a 3-2 nailbiter that I am very proud of) for a good loss on New Queen Street and a…less-so one on Hanaoka before they log off to run an errand. I squeeze in two more confidence-boosting wins attacking Hollywood (good contributions throughout) and Havana (great on first, not so much elsewhere) before they come back and accompany me on a very winnable losing trip to Nepal.
As much as I’ve stressed my focus towards positioning, Nepal and her stages still confound me as I scramble for spots based on a loose grasp on fundamental principles. Every one of my most intuitive spaces came with fatal compromises on either sightlines, cover, or exposure, and I would experience their consequences in comically predictable ways: inopportune architecture obscures my vision right before a do-or-die teamfight, an amazing perspective gets flushed out down a wide-open flank, a bad ledge snags my grapple before I can escape.
But I digress. Back to recap.
We pick up two more hard-fought wins on Lijiang Tower and King’s Row with two of the same stellar teammates each time before my groupmate leaves a second time. After a win attacking Midtown that split my momentum into thirds, I picked up the first two losses of what would become an honestly soul-crushing 2-7 run that closed the night. A struggle loss for my whole team on Aatlis precedes a struggle loss for just me while attacking Eichenwalde, both losses punctuated by one-sided sniper duels to different Hanzos that felt like a failure to put knowledge into action. My groupmate from earlier pops back in (after I pull the Sylvanas skin!) for a loss on Junkertown that left me feeling bone-deep embarrassed in fights with each member of their team and questioning the fundamentals of my approach to positioning.
The next match attacking Numbani, this time with a second crewmate, was a major crash and burn moment for me. Doubts and insecurities seeped through every crevice and drowned my senses through an achingly slow loss that left a 10-2-5 stat line with 7.7k damage over 10 minutes feeling erratic, undisciplined, and immature. Utter shame accumulated behind my eyes, leaving a syrupy, sticky stain on my psyche for the rest of the night. In reflection, it’s not nearly as bad as it felt to go through in the moment, but it was precisely that momentary fog that felt like my worst fears about this challenge coming true; a fragile confidence slipping through my fingers and shattering on the floor; a numb miasma choking my self-control and dimming the lights; a familiar disappointment creeping up my arms and down my cheeks.
I wasn’t dreading bad games. I was dreading living with myself through them.
I scrape some of that determination back together in two consecutive wins on Busan and Blizzard World, the latter most likely assisted by the coaching session I watched through the other day, but an unfocused and angry loss attacking Paraíso sent shards of it tumbling back down, trailing cuts on my hands with the gravity. The three of us closed the night with a frustrated loss on Ilios and a tired, dispirited steamroll on Hollywood defense, leaving a bitter taste in all of our mouths and a copper one in mine.
This was the most challenging night of the challenge so far, but I at least left it nearly a quarter of the way through this challenge. The irritation and shame dug deeper than I’d anticipated and left me feeling totally alone in a voice chat of three and lobbies of nearly a dozen. But a nugget of advice I got in the night’s refractory has stuck with me and I feel responsible to hold onto it as tight as possible and relay it to anyone else going through something similar.
Don’t let this destroy you.
Having Friday’s piece get a good amount of positive reception (read: less than ten views and a couple nice comments) has been really encouraging and I’m very honored that y’all have been liking this little project of mine. You can subscribe to the newsletter to get the rest of this series and everything else I write here delivered straight to your inbox or you can simply come back to this website right here as I slowly but surely unload every spider pun at my disposal.
Until next time, I’ll be doing something else. Au revoir.
Today’s Record: 9-10
Total Record: 15-33
Total Playtime: 06:54:47