Rang him for a pugscrim, was super impressed with how solid he is: chill, positive vibes, good dm and mindset, an all-around pleasure to play with. Honestly think he'd easily fit on a top advanced squad.

I mean it's not like I'm not motivated as well, I'm super hyped to play this season and really happy with my team, again it's not about "being perceived as bad". it's specifically that our squad did not really make playoffs but just got in off a technicality. I don't understand how a team cheating is considered the true playoffs team when the entire season they cheated in the league. If anyone can actually address this point as opposed to just misinterpreting my actual argument that'd be chill.

Okay bitch, so first off, yeah I am mad at you, but let me restate again what issues I had with sin's comment since you seemingly can't read or purposefully are misconstruing my argument. Specifically what sin said was that we weren't a playoffs advanced team since we got into playoffs due to the cheater team being banned. I feel that is not a fair statement as the cheater team literally were cheating in league matches, meaning their results should not be seen as legitimate. I really don't give a shit about people calling my team bad, if I seem mad, it's mainly that this wasn't really my initial argument but instead something that everyone seems to be fixated on.

Again, if you read earlier I conceded that top advanced and bottom invite are interchangeable. As far as I know, that has been the case for many, many seasons, sometimes even where the top advanced teams are better than the bottom invite squads due to people not wanting to play invite and sandbagging in advanced or whatever the div below is called that season.

The last point about cutting our demo in the first two weeks, that seems like a random point but I'll address it and provide some context. Last season, we contemplated cutting slin in the preseason, we decided in favor of sticking it out and hoping to be able to address the problem throughout the season, but despite putting in the time and effort it didn't work out, we continued to have problems with our med which led to hostility (this part I regret and I would change if I could go back in time) and he ended up leaving before playoffs. Rosters locked, and we were omega fucked and had to play with a ringer, initially makka was chill with us having a perma ringer but then he started to enforce the rule that we had to have a different ringer every week. We were the only playoffs team that had to deal with this, which I understand was due to our player leaving right before playoffs but it still felt like garbage. This season, we encountered similar problems with det where we did not mesh well, argued in comms, and it was extremely difficult to criticize and have him receptive to it. He would tilt whenever we started losing to teams he thought we shouldn't lose to and there wasn't very much we could do about it. Our team came to an agreement to cut him, although I will say some people were indifferent, I very much did not want a repeat of last season. On that note, we also were criticized last season for slin leaving, where we could have solved the problem early on by cutting him. You can't have it both ways, in comp tf2, sometimes you need to make a hard decision and save yourself the hassle later down the road.
I know you are an intelligent person, so I really don't appreciate this purposeful twisting of the conversation, it makes you seem like a cunt. I'd love to talk more in voice if you have any response.

mhm

How is this related, it's just a harmless cute name. We stole it from another team that had it a couple seasons back. That comment on the other hand is harmful, although I'm sure certain people see it differently.

I mean let's say we're the bottom invite team, like we lose every match (I'm hopeful that doesn't happen but it totally could). Does that mean we aren't playoffs advanced level? I totally concede that top advanced and bottom invite could be interchangeable, but to me when someone claims that we wouldn't even make playoffs in advanced like that's where I feel like our journey and level isn't being recognized. I'd like to spend this season hopefully proving we deserve the spot in invite, but people bringing up playoffs from last season? I'm over it. I'm by far the worst player on my team and I don't have any insecurities around where I'm at in regards to my skill level, I'm new to soldier and I often joke my soldier is main level, but the reason I'm upset is for my team mates, who'd I'd love to see get more recognition. We have 2 players who literally are coming into invite from div 2, to me that's super exciting, and it sucks to see us getting such a hostile reception.

So funny story slicerogue, last season I actually reported a few instances of transphobia. Here's one that sticks with me, I don't have the picture saved on my computer but you can check with makka or my team mates to confirm (I think some other people are aware as well). Elijahh and mxr are both discussing playing our team and are making fun of our map pick of sunshine (since they had beat us previously on that map) and say something along the lines of "what are these t-slurs thinking I guess that's what estrogen does to your brain." I have a literal screenshot, I show it to makka, keep in mind I am an admin at the time, and makka says "Yeah, we don't ban people for shit they say in discord messages." I think you and every other tf2 player knows that rgl doesn't do shit unless it's in game chat and even then it often doesn't result in any action, y'all happily say all your slurs in your dms. The action I want taken isn't even by rgl, it literally happened in a pug group it would require stricter policing of the pugs. So why didn't I just talk to jemond or another admin? Funny story slicerogue, before when kevito frequented those pugs and said a whole bunch of transphobic shit to me, I did report it to jemond and guess what slice, nothing happened. It's not me "throwing a tantrum" it's literally just doing the only thing that actually makes people aware. When there is no accountability, you can't tell someone to just "report it if you care so much, people should be allowed to be transphobic." I am also allowed to oppose it, I shouldn't have to just be okay with it.

Second point, it wasn't really shit talking though was it? It was about the legitimacy of our team making playoffs last season, which I think is very different from shit talk. If you want to talk about shit talk, I might be slightly annoyed but I don't think trash talk is at all a problem, I trash talk tons of people myself like you said :P

The internet is definitely not a "politically correct place" but we have a small community, with lots of members from different backgrounds. When you make these jokes you exclude these community members and make them feel unwelcome. The onus is not on them to learn to cope and deal with it, although that is often what happens, but for those other community members to regulate discourse for the good of the community. It's not that I can't "take a joke" do you think I start crying uncontrollably every time someone calls me the t slur? No, it's that I'm trying to do my part and what I consider my moral prerogative to make sure transphobes and racists feel unwelcome. Basically bully the shit out of them. We're not going to agree here because my view is that you and all these other morons don't deserve any place in the community and you would probably argue that if I don't like it, I should just leave.

the main thing is like saying that we are not playoffs advanced when we had to play a last minute qualifier for invite because your team ended up fucking over 3 separate squads' plans for the day and then also qualifying by beating out the yerb team. Not to mention during playoffs last season, we ended up beating ag (although lots of people would be quick to point out that we rang exile as a potential out for them, we also ended up beating the core of this team again in the qualifiers so idk). On another point like, how does the logic that the cheater team made playoffs and we only made it because they were banned work exactly? Is that saying that the cheater team were truly playoffs advanced and because we placed below them we weren't? They literally had cheaters how is their placement at all being considered valid.

Some of my annoyance stems from admins initial handling of the qualifiers, but the fact that on top of having to go through this extra process that your team from last season for example did not have to go through, people are claiming that we aren't even a playoffs advanced squad despite literally qualifying to play this season of invite like idk, it just feels like a really shitty way to treat potential new invite blood, especially considering that our roster has mostly stuck together for over 3 seasons. I understand that you and other higher invite players might not care about us like we're just free wins for y'all, but looking in from the outside healthy bottom invite teams seem extremely important to the overall invite experience. Seasons where the bottom teams die a few weeks in and it becomes a 6 team invite like last season aren't as fun I think for everyone (correct me if I'm wrong). The way we are being treated does not really recognize the role we play towards making it a fun season for everyone.

in the 3rd clip someone says "you unleashed the estrogen rage." I feel that is transphobic because it is dismissive and pointlessly brings up my transness in regards to my complaint. I can try to describe more how it is a transphobic comment, but if you don't agree with me and aren't going to change your mind, I'm not going to bother.

EDIT: Clips were deleted, here's the highlight vid thanks to sin https://www.twitch.tv/videos/907104507

My voice was a lil shaky at points cuz I had like that silent anger, but I'm chilling. I left the pug mumble at some point cuz I mean, I didn't really want to play with sin and yerb in there and I wanted to get the clip on sin's stream. Apparently after I left, all these cowards decided to start shit talking me (say it to my face morons), one transphobe (anyone know this idiot's voice?) saying "you unleashed the estrogen rage" and yerb launching into a story about how he lost to me in mge years ago (that's crazy that's like one of your traumatic memories). Also funny how sin tells me to go cry despite sounding like he's about to break down. All in all dudes, just say shit to my face please if you have a problem with me, I'd love if you got banned for accidentally crossing the line.

I don't really care about all y'all that side with him, I'd appreciate if the people who see morons like this (especially like transphobes, racists, etc. like in that 3rd clip) would call that out so I don't have to do all the work. And everyone else who totally just lets people get away with this shit, I mean, me and every other person who has to deal with shit like this sees who stands up for us and who doesn't, your actions never go unnoticed.

these "people" should be ashamed, dumb neets smh

guys who's ringing demo for us

our demo is getting his wisdom teeth removed the admins aren't responding (we assume they can't push the qualifier since they already have it so late) so yeah we need a demo ringer i guess

makka I hope you trip and fall fucking moron

crazy player who always put up insane stats, excited to see his invite debut

eat shit, shit-eater

when ur roamer is nimby and not gloperz, ur job is to buff him and get the fuck out of his way.

I stand by my sgc demo ranking

Hey, thought I’d make some power rankings cuz this season’s div 1 is super close and I had fun making some of these a couple years back for esea. I also tried to include a little player ranking for funsies, but these are mostly just meaningless numbers so don’t take them too seriously. I based these off my team and my own experience playing against these different rosters in scrims and matches. Let me know what you think and if you agree or disagree!

Div 1 Power Rankings

#1 Alan Gaming
Scouts: yerb and morsca (#2 scout combo)
Soldiers: tony and rowpieces (#1 soldier combo)
Demo: hunter (#3 demo)
Medic: dylan (#1 medic)

Description: Top seed for the div, super solid team with a lot of smart players. Their soldiers do a ton for them, their scouts roll, and dylan takes the spot as the hardest medic to kill in the div. They did suffer an early loss in the season to no name but many have speculated as to other extenuating circumstances being the cause for that. Since then, they’ve had a clean run so far and look to continue their strong form.

#2 Milkies
Scouts: scarves and bbc (#1 scout combo)
Soldiers: jetz and gloperz (#3 soldier combo)
Demo: pandoo (#2 demo)
Medic: luddy (#4 medic)

Description: This team has insane dm potential in scarves and bbc but seemingly lacked the cohesion and teamwork alongside their other classes early on in the season. That said their soldier coordination is coming together and they don’t need to do all that much to capitalize off their scout players. While I think this team can out dm a lot of the lower teams, I think they will fail to beat out AG’s smarter play, demonstrated by AG sweeping them 4-0 earlier in the season.

#3 no name
Scouts: dit and elijahh (#3 scout combo)
Soldiers: urmphi and kevito (#5 soldier combo)
Demo: mxr (#4 demo)
Meidc: rkt (#3 medic)

Description: This team is a bit of a wildcard with a lot of recent roster changes as well as inconsistent performances. On one hand, they beat the top seed in the div, on the other hand they have had sketchier performances against lower level teams as well. On the bright side for the roster, after having picked up rkt they have strung together a clean 3-win streak. Hopefully they can retain that streak leading up to playoffs.

#4 Football Team
Scouts: shiningstar and dishsoap (#5 scout combo)
Soldiers: safrix and alexandros (#4 soldier combo)
Demo: spaceghostscoffee (#1 demo)
Medic: peppermint (#5 medic)

Description: This team has had a back and forth season, but in my own view their roster shows a lot of promise. Their soldier combo has great timings and their scouts aren’t lacking either. I don’t think it can be overstated how central sgc’s role is in both their team’s current success as well as their potential growth. While a fourth place may be an ambitious estimate based off their current performance, this is definitely one of the rosters I could see surprising teams later in the season.

#5 Kronge Realm Off-White
Scouts: ambroon and skele (#6 scout combo)
Soldiers: bwelp and alley (#2 soldier combo)
Demo: nomi (#5 demo)
Medic: pladinium (#2 medic) / maybe ales? (in which case med ranks are fucked up)

Description: Considered veterans for the division, offclassing kronge realm have mixed skill levels. For example, where ambroon would be one of the stronger scouts in the division, skele would probably be considered one of the weaker ones. That said, their soldiers play well and if they did pick up pladinium, they’re one of the better meds in the division for sure.

#6 lotad
Scouts: ether and exile (#4 scout combo)
Soldiers: toy and brimstone (#7 soldier combo)
Demo: asura (#7 demo)
Medic: msh (#6 medic)

Description: lotad has had surprisingly close games against some of the higher seeded teams, notably AG and milkies, so they have the potential to be another sleeper team. That said, they’ve had a rough season so far, just barely squeaking out a 5-4 win against The Bradman Bunch. They have some amazing star players in exile and toy however and no matter how their season goes, I’d for sure expect some more killer games.

#7 The Bradman Bunch
Scouts: animus and triple (#7 scout combo)
Soldiers: mustardoverlord and marty (#6 soldier)
Demo: zbra (#6 demo)
Medic: figsy (#7 medic)

Description: The Bradman Bunch rounds out the pack at 7th. They have had a couple close games against some of the lower level teams, but have failed to bring home the win. In their strong suits, their soldiers are smart and make a lot of space for the rest of their team, and despite being ranked at the bottom, their scout combo is not that far behind the likes of football team or kronge realm, although their teamplay is not necessarily there. I could see them climbing up to 6th but not much higher but hopefully they’ll play some more great matches to watch leading up to the playoffs race.