Rebirth of Suck (Uncool Like Dat)

The Crisis of Suck

I think it's time for calling things uncool to make a comeback. We need to call things just plain lame. I'm tired of 'cringe,' I'm tired of 'mid,' I'm tired of... 'ick?' Am I using that one correctly? Point being, I think the plot has been lost at least a little bit when it comes to saying things are just wack.

Allow me to present to you a landscape, a landscape of the death of just saying things suck:

'Cringe' now has its natural counterpoint in 'based,' where people compete to depict themselves as the one with the strong jawline, and even setting aside the weird space 'cringe' and 'based' occupy in right-wing social spaces, it still has the baggage of often being used to point and laugh at slightly embarrassing but ultimately harmless earnestness. 'Mid' has completely broken the language of review and criticism, and still has its foil in the judgment of 'peak.' 'Ick,' I dunno, I just kinda needed to bring my list of false gods of calling things dumb to a clean three, but much like 'cringe,' I tire of words that are basically shorthand for "You were too enthusiastic and/or vulnerable."

Call Things Lame

I appreciate the insult cluster of uncool-lame-wack for a lot of reasons. It's more or less value-neutral, and doesn't necessarily function as a judgment of quality (though it absolutely can), and it doesn't reflect some particular cultural moment or political framework (the problem being absolutely beholden to context, not belonging to context). It doesn't say the other party or offending object has done something wrong. It's also basically subject-neutral, capable of being leveraged against pretty much everything in an identical way. I can call a movie lame, and you'll understand what I'm saying about my thoughts on it in the exact same way as if I had called a restaurant or a person lame.

Most significantly, however, getting called uncool is a fatally untenable position. You know what's the least cool thing you can do? Adamantly insist that you are, in fact, cool after getting called uncool. Automatically zeroes all the wind in your sails, if you even had any. All your cool is void, potentially forever. Based-cringe naturally devolves into a dynamic of who's depicting who, mid-peak at least approximates value judgments, but are you really about to say to someone "No, you're wrong, I am cool?" Hell no. Because insisting on your own coolness is, fundamentally, lame. It's wack. It sucks. It's uncool.

Let me spit about some uncool things.

Sol 2P

Round starts in fighting games are pretty neat. In some ways, they're the closest fighting games get to actual rock paper scissors -- two people select options and throw them basically simultaneously in a highly regulated context. They're a great place for people to showcase their matchup knowledge, or tell on themselves for lacking such knowledge. You know what makes round start Sol 2P so beautifully uncool (in Guilty Gear XX Accent Core +R, specifically against Venom)? It actually accomplishes both of those things at once. It's a stellar showcase of lab time spent badly, of an overcooked theoretical game plan that's just a little too charred in reality.

In GGXX, Venom's 2S is generally regarded as the ultimate bet-hedging tool when it comes to round start. At six frames, it's a ridiculously premium option at that range, since virtually nothing else occupies the entire grounded round start space in the same timeframe. Its relatively short overall duration also protects it from most of the game's scariest mid- and low-crushing moves, and from forward jump round starts. And while it's not ridiculously threatening, 2S > H Stinger Aim is a fairly low-risk buffer that nets Venom decent damage off a poke, though it does leave him at an overall frame disadvantage. Point being, 2S is a solid "man, whatever" input to slam.

Many characters find Venom 2S quite vexing at round start. Sol Badguy does not. He can Grand Viper it for ~50% damage, backdash to build space, block and RPS against the worse set of options Venom presents after a blocked distant 2S, and he can actually threaten it with a forward jump because his j.H denies Venom's anti-airs at that specific spacing and timing. You know what many Sols choose to do? They hit 2P.

Yes, Sol 2P beats Venom 2S at at round start. 2P is five frames and clips the non-disjointed portion of Venom 2S. It beats it if both options are timed perfectly, for a grand total of eight damage in a game where characters have (basically) 460 health. If the Sol mistimes their input and the two normals trade, they reset to a spacing that's very amenable to Venom. If Sol 2P works, he can gatling into 2S for 30 total damage and a spacing that is, yet again, more comfortable for Venom than it is for Sol.

This is what I call a 'desert island' option; it feels like an option that has been arrived at in a vacuum. The gains are so small, so easily erased, and so lacking in momentum, that I would describe it as basically being a technicality. The best possible outcome immediately leads to a losing interaction, because Sol is now at more than round start distance from Venom with the slimmest of life leads and no real frame advantage or unreactable pressure.

I could tell you all that. Or I could just call it uncool, which it is. Are you really going to tell me Sol 2P at round start is cool?

First Pick Annie

You ever watch drafting in mobas? It's actually really cool. Watching teams arm wrestle for meta picks while trying to piece together strong overall compositions, individually winning lanes, and viability at different game phases is fascinating, even absent off-meta curveballs. I won't break down how drafting is structured on the whole, but here are three key facts about how it works in League:

• Blue side picks the first champion
• Red side picks two champions after blue's first pick
• Red side picks the last champion

What this means is that blue side is always picking at least one champ blindly, and red side is always guaranteed the opportunity to pick a strong pair of champions, and the opportunity to counterpick an opposing champion with a strong matchup. As a result, blue side's first picks are often extremely high-priority meta picks or highly useful champions that are somewhat difficult to counterpick.

Annie has popped up as a not-infrequent first pick for Korean teams, which honestly drives me nuts. She's picked basically exclusively for her early skirmishing power because her passive turns every 4th (offensive) spell into a stun, which synergizes well with her high-range point-and-click Q; low-counterplay crowd control is somewhat premium in the mid lane before champions get their ultimates. Additionally, Annie is generally viewed as something of a neutralizer, with her long attack range and relative degree of safety. So why is this a problem?

First of all, Annie being a neutralizer does not actually mean she makes it out of every lane unscathed. Aurora and Ahri do quite well into her, for example. Neutralizers aren't an opt-out of lane matchup troubles, they're a middle position that still present problems. Annie is also ultra-low mobility, ensuring the team picking her has a sidelane liability; Annie gets into trouble easily and doesn't tend to make it out, and thus will need cover from the jungler or to be rotated somewhere safe. First picking mid also guarantees the enemy team can generally counterpick every solo lane or pick a strong duo (mid/jungle, top/jungle, or bot/support) unopposed, while still reserving ultimate last pick.

There's also a more subjective, aesthetic matter: Annie has been first picked for ultra-elite mechanically skilled midlaners like Showmaker and Chovy, which is agonizing because she's one of the most no-hands expression-less champion in human history. I've watched Showmaker 1v4 on LeBlanc and express dissatisfaction that he didn't solo-pentakill the entire enemy team, I've watched him make Swain look competitively viable, so we're putting him on the dog with a 1ft leash? Sure man.

I could tell you all that. Or I could just call it uncool, which it is. Are you really going to tell me blue side first pick Annie is cool?