Secrets of the admins of a right-wing memes page

[Bodark]

You shouldn't request things that are going to make you unhappy!

What? No! That was better than I ever could've dreamed.

[Gyro]

Play solo-lane Slark, and don't forget to mutter the true names of the demiurge beneath your breath while drawing the sephirot on your desk in your own blood. Oh, also, build armlet since that's pretty good on Slark and gank mid as soon as you hit level 6.

[Zekka]

Boots still smells like blood.

I need something for my breath.

A stagehand looks Boots up and down and promises to get him something appropriate.

Play solo-lane Slark, and don't forget to mutter the true names of the demiurge beneath your breath while drawing the sephirot on your desk in your own blood. Oh, also, build armlet since that's pretty good on Slark and gank mid as soon as you hit level 6.

OK! First I think we should take a quick look at the stage. Boots has seen it, but we haven't.



This is an example of an e-sports stage. It's color-coded and there are two viewing areas: one for each team. There's a section in the middle with viewing for both teams.

This is one of two philosophies for constructing an esports stage. The other is to place the players in two little cubbies, like this -- where each cubby limits visibility the other team's view.



Trump Condominiums doesn't really have the resources or the budget for such elaborate accommodations, but they've roughly coopted the second design by dividing the stage with a sheet and putting the two teams on opposite sides of it. It's curiously elegant for an e-sports event.



This is a view from center-stage. Of course, Boots isn't seeing this now -- this is more-or-less what he saw while he was coming in. Right now the lights are low and PewDiePie is out. He looks like he's still in mic test mode, but the audio hasn't been turned on, so he's just ranting and raving silently into an endless black void. Quiet chattering and popcorn-eating completely drown him out.

The spotlights come on, bathing the computers in light. Boots can't even see the sheet.



One by one, the monitors flicker on. Boots imagines it must be center-out, although of course he can't see the other side.

In the distance, at the back of the white void, Boots can see a little sheet with words projected onto it. What does it say?

RAPE.

Here comes the audio.

--AAAAAAAAAAAAAAPE

The ground shakes with thunderous applause.

Introducing <...> Dendi.
Tonight we have show with Slark and Dendi.

PewDiePie looks over his shoulder. No one pops out from either side of stage.

Introducing <...> Dendi.
Dendi!

A second stagehand grabs Boots' arm and urges him to go onto stage. The first stagehand pops through the door and -- although Boots can't hear it, he can see an argument beginning to emerge between them. He hurries out, still wearing Dendi's jumpsuit, then assumes a more natural walk once the light is on him.

Probably to coordinate with his nice yellow jumpsuit, the stage operators put on a cool blue backdrop. It feels a little gross... kind of like being outside.

Dendi is a professional. He's good at Dota, unlike me.
Look at how he smells!

PewDiePie takes a long, inappropriate sniff. Something rolls out along the waxed stage floor.

Here I am: Dendi!

It tastes like a breathmint. Somehow he suspects this is not helping him pull this off.

This is a good matchup. We've brought in Dendi, formerly of Natus Vincere, along with never-before-seen superstar collaboration KantrIP, for a five-game series sponsored by ESEX.
Tonight's games are going to be excellent I'm going to play Dota for you, good luck.

Another e-sports professional peering out from the other side of the curtain helpfully shouts out the fact that Boots isn't Dendi.

Take a nap.

Still hungry, unfortunately. Which makes sense, seeing that a rat only contains about 15ml of blood, and he probably only drank 10. Another cricket rolls in along the stage. He sucks on its legs before swallowing. His lips feel cold and numb, making it a lot harder to tell if his teeth are sticking out.

I'm looking forward to this.
Let's take a look at the caster's desk, where ESEX's Vince Chaos is casting.

Dendi isn't there. Neither are any ESEX guys. It's a squat, empty booth, facing the stage.

Let's play Dota immediately, without any hesitation whatsoever.

He rushes over to the bank computers, grabbing the mouse for the one in the middle. He instantly picks Slark and locks him in.

He told me he would call me...

He's just staring down his screen. Obviously the computer character isn't flinching. It's a computer character. Third cricket.

I'm waiting...

Boots comes over behind his shoulder and touches PewDiePie's cheek with his claw, just trying to get his attention. He licks the neck's fake skin, reminding himself it's just a suit. The scaly texture seems to have had the wrong effect on PewDiePie, who embraces the arm and salivates.

It's over.
It's not... friend...

He slips his kiddish, round head under Boots' armpit.

I've moved on.
I have a thing for cuckoldry...
With Meepo.
Oh...

It occurs to Boots that, perhaps, he should have clingfilmed PewDiePie's human crotch too.

Rubick?

PewDiePie looks too shaken ever to beat off again.

I'll be Slark. Solo offlane.

He elbows PewDiePie one seat over, then takes the seat off the very end and swaps it over to PewDiePie's previous computer. A stagehand helps the shaken, semiconscious PewDiePie lock in Meepo. You hear a sound like a balloon deflating as PewDiePie suddenly tightens his fist around the mouse. His elbow drops to his thigh and he doesn't stop moaning.

What's the game plan?

Looks like a teammate.

What does Dendi usually do?
Not Slark. At least not under today's team composition.
I'm not really a Dota expert...

Boots draws a Dota board.



Oh yes, what am I drawing with? My own blood.

He looks down at his arm. Looks like PewDiePie bit it while he was fantasizing, but it's already almost healed.



After adding a few more points to the figure, and using a couple Hebrew letters to denote shops, he's satisfied with it.

This is adequate.
I was just... uh, freeballing?
Looks like the Demiurge strat.
Who are you guys?
Team RICHeS. Formerly five, now the three finest legal minds in Dota. I'm Ashto.
Although I'm only licensed for e-sports law in Guam, we figured this was going to be our big break...
Interesting...

Where's the third legal mind? He doesn't appear to have arrived.

Usually there's a chant that goes with this build. Uh, we don't need to do that... Cheapskate usually does it. You really just need to worry about ganking mid at level six.
I'll prompt you if I need help.
Who are you anyway? You seem kind of pro-tier.
A friend of Dendi's. Amateur.
Crap. We're carrying two.

The game starts. It looks like Ashto manually assigned the not-yet-seen teammate to Pudge.

Just in case Dendi gets here first.

There's a little rattle from the stairs leading up from the casting desk, though.

It appears to be the fifth member -- and also the man from the mysterious clingfilm photograph, long ago. Dendi has not yet been seen.

You aren't Dendi. No need to explain.
I am Albert-trang Einsten-nguyen. I used to be a chess grandmaster, then a backgammon grandmaster. I played professional poker for a while. Now I'm a Dota grandmaster. I am a racist.
Build Armlet.

They sit down and start clicking. Soon it's twenty minutes in and miraculously, no progress has been made on any lane. But no ganks either -- just close, tense teamfights that seem to run into each other almost without pause. But soon it's obvious that Boots' disadvantage seems too great -- despite his masterful reflexes, PewDiePie's brain damage is too much to account for. KantrIP, the team on on the other side of the divider, is really good.

The auditorium is eerily quiet. Cheapskate, Boots, Ashto, and sometimes Albert desperately whisper each other advice, while the folks on the other side of the curtain speak Korean at conversational volume. All the audience hears is PewDiePie's continuous theatrical whoops.

The audience doesn't cheer or boo: it just looks on in horror at the quality of play and Boots' emerging cricket habit. He must have eaten eight or nine of them by this point. He doesn't even have to look away from the game.

The thirty-minute mark is reached. Then a familiar Ukrainian voice sounds from the so-far silent casting desk.

Game 1 and all is well. The time has come to get serious about Dota. It looks like Demiurge build versus... a normal build. And here I thought we were going to be tournament-legal!

[Sherman Tank]

Kill and eat PewDiePie. Or call Slowbeef for help.

I have no fucking reference point for any of this e-sports shit.

[Zekka]

I have no fucking reference point for any of this e-sports shit.

==== E-Sports Quick Reference ====

Dota is a round-based competitive role-playing game e-sports game! The Dota board looks like this:


There are two teams of five people. One team starts on the bottom left and the other on the top-right. There are monsters on every line segment (of which there are six) and tougher monsters in-between. Before the game everybody picks a character to roleplay as and kill monsters with. Your goal is for your team to grind monsters faster than the other team does, Diablo-style -- then kill the giant tower in their base.

However -- the other team can fight you! They can attack you at a time that's really bad for you, like when you're alone and they're together. That is bad, because when you are dead you are not grinding. A fight involving more than two people is called a team-fight, and they're very important because they can prevent more than one person from grinding! Killing people who weren't expecting it is called ganking. That is what Slark is good at doing!

You win if they lose. They lose if their base is dead. The same is true for them with regard to you.

Sometimes you craft stuff. "Armlet" is an example of a thing you can craft.

ESEX is an e-sports clip.

Dendi, in the highly-competitive Dota industry, is famous for playing really really well. His favorite character to play is Pudge, because he is so good at it. He is widely considered to be a genius!

ESEX and Dendi are the only real e-sports entities featured so far. PewDiePie is a real person, but that's stretching it.

Kill and eat PewDiePie. Or call Slowbeef for help.

Advice noted!

[Bodark]

Surely we can channel the spirit of a great, omniscient sage to help us win.

Help us, Robi-wan Parroti, you're our only hope.

[Sherman Tank]

Surreptitiously install that Rick and Morty DOTA voice pack.

That's literally the only thing I know about DOTA.

[Ashto]

Try throwing the Korean players off their game by making random gossip, only instead of using names, use [you]. Bonus points if you make inflammatory accusations that turn them on one another.

[Yavuz]

I cast "Summon Bunnybread" to make fun of this dumb esports stuff.

[eldritchhat]

What would happen if you silently changed the game to League of Legends, so that you instill mass chaos?

Or is that too dark a technique?

[Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop]

What would happen if you silently changed the game to League of Legends, so that you instill mass chaos?

Or is that too dark a technique?

That's how this year's UEFA is going to end

[eldritchhat]

What would happen if you silently changed the game to League of Legends, so that you instill mass chaos?

Or is that too dark a technique?

That's how this year's UEFA is going to end

AgentCoop, your avatar reminds me, what is Boots's stand? Why has this vital information not been revealed yet?

Does his stand randomly change MOBAs?

I must know this to prepare a proper strategy.

[Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop]

What would happen if you silently changed the game to League of Legends, so that you instill mass chaos?

Or is that too dark a technique?

That's how this year's UEFA is going to end

AgentCoop, your avatar reminds me, what is Boots's stand? Why has this vital information not been revealed yet?

Does his stand randomly change MOBAs?

I must know this to prepare a proper strategy.

I know the name for certain

[Guts Going Nutz]

Feed the enemy team and then kill them to get the shutdown gold.

[Zekka]

The sound has been turned very low for post-game commentary. Unusually, it's down both for the game *and* for the commentators. Furthermore, the lights are on and the screens look dim. It looks like post-game commentary isn't going to be a centerpiece of this event. A champagne cart is traveling down the aisle, along with two bowls of chips, a white sauce, and a curious red sauce that's almost empty. The serving staff at the back, however, seems to have access to an endless supply.

Wow! That was a surprisingly slow loss for how esoteric the decisions were.
Thanks to the actions of fake Dendi, who I wholeheartedly endorse as an adequate substitute, I only caught the last ten minutes.
I would probably attribute that loss to PewDiePie, who appears to have spent maybe half the round collecting runes, the other half eating trees, and the third half feverishly clicking Slark. For those of you new to Dota, that means he spent the whole time intending to compete over non-scarce resources, which is economically unsound. Nobody give him the Federal Reserve. By the end of it, he was level... four! Out of twenty five. That's pretty terrible.
Fake Dendi was... pretty good! He held top lane basically the entire game against Disruptor and Chaos Knight. That's one of the hardest things to hold top lane against! That is totally respectable. He never left the lane either.
Ron Paul fans might consider giving him the Federal Reserve. Throughout the game he collected the most gold and never spent a coin of it on anything past his starter items. Excecpt -- oh, maybe twenty minutes in he bought an armlet. That's pretty good.
In summary, one player was effectively useless, one was literally useless, two were playing a defective build and Cheapskate was getting the demiurge chant wrong.
Thank you Vince.
Go get me some churros!

It looks like whatever Boots wanted to do didn't work. But he gets two-to-four second chances, depending on how the next few matches go.



The curtains go down and the lights go out. All the lights. There's a brief reflective shimmer as they drop, right at the edge of the stage, which Boots can't account to physical reality.

Boots can still see, but it looks like the rest of the players are having trouble. He swallows the cricket leg stuck between his teeth. He can't feel it on his tongue anymore, and the sense of taste is gone. His mouth is totally numb, but there's a muscle in his gut that tenses deeply whenever he swallows -- his heart? -- and, with his adrenaline nearly gone, the lurching sensation has started to make him seasick instead of enthused.

Who's that behind the stage? It's color commentator Vince Chaos from ESEX.

We're punching up the next few games. And changing the format.
Fake Dendi, go do some promotional stuff by the marketing booth. You have about 20 minutes. It's been requested that you lose the next game, then win the next two. Team KantrIP has already been briefed.
Did they agree?
They didn't, but that's the thing. You're really good. Dendi says you can probably swing the next three games by yourself, with a little coaching right beforehand.
I guess they could throw.

He trails off ominously, balling his hand into a fist.

Is Dendi on board with this?
Don't volunteer any information.

Kill and eat PewDiePie.

Unexpectedly, looking down at his hands, he sees a little rat, crotch wrapped in clingfilm, which he's been playfully batting from hand to hand. It occurs to him that PewDiePie went suddenly silent during the hurried final seconds of the end of the game, and that he hadn't been watching where his hands had gone.

Impulsively, at the first sign of sensation in his fangs, he takes a really deep bite and -- oops, head clean off.

Interesting. Can you do that onstage?
You do know who that was, right?
No, I don't. That's an old shock-rock trick, though.
You don't know about PewDiePie's secret?
Well, traditionally the role is played by a female rat...

The clingfilm is dripping.

If you're sure and you held me to guessing I would guess the female rat was pregnant. This looks like a juvenile.
Are they all suitable for the -- cough -- role?
They're indistinguishable.
There may be three or four of them. I bet you just ate the smart one.

Boots sucks out the last half-ounce, not really feeling satisfied, but every little bit helps.

Or call Slowbeef for help.

Boots is kind of an anti-authoritarian and an anti-capitalist -- so really, the last thing on his mind is the thought of heading to the marketing booth. Instead he finds a pay phone: suitable apparatus to feed the man in a different way. 50 cents per call; inflation. The destination of the call is New Jersey and the man of the hour is Slowbeef.

I cast "Summon Bunnybread" to make fun of this dumb esports stuff.

Just as he finishes dialing, an old friend appears.

You need to cut this e-sports shit.

He doesn't have any legs. He's hovering like a genie or something. Slowbeef picks up.

I saw you on TV.

Surely we can channel the spirit of a great, omniscient sage to help us win.

Help us, Robi-wan Parroti, you're our only hope.

The TV turns on and there's a picture of a parrot on it.

I saw you from TV.
I'm on the router. I'm in the wires.
I know you too well, Boots.
Don't listen to him. You're great.
He's not great. He's passable.
What are you talking about? Dendi said he was great. He's missing his own press conference.
He needs to go to the green room.
Don't listen to those suckers! There's nothing in the green room.
Levi's not in the green room. Don't you think that's peculiar?
Go to the marketing booth. Get some pictures taken. Play real slow and I'll drive real fast. We could hit it so big, you have no idea.

Bunnybread unplugs the TV.

The show must not go on. You're a loser and a faker.
Go home right now and forget about everything.
I'm going to do something I don't ordinarily do. I'm going to tempt you.

For a second there are two symmetrical spots of glint in the air above Bunnybread's hair. It looks like horns. He drops his genie slacks, revealing an indisputable gem of human man meat, then covers them back up and tightens his belt.

Go big or go home. Go big or go home. Go big or go home. Go big or go home.

The signal suddenly cuts. It's Bunnybread in stereo.

Go home. Go home. Go --
Go home. Go home. Go --

But then Bunnybread vanishes in a camera flash; if you the scowl on his face can be trusted, not of his own power. He, like Boots Raingear, is a creature of the darkness, and the lights backstage have come on. The Koreans are frozen in a victory pose which Boots has inadvertently placed himself in the background of. Downstairs to the west is the marketing chamber.

What's your Dota name?
Boots Raingear.
No good. Too many characters.
Just Boots.
Best to think on it and get back to us later.
For now, you're MYSTERY_LIZARD.
You'd better come up with an alternative or we're branding you MYSTERY_LIZARD.
Oh, come over to the mirror.

They snap a bunch of quick shots before he can even respond.

Nice jumpsuit. Always gotta wonder what the inside of one of those looks like.
He doesn't show up on camera.
Mirror either. Try one of those digital cams.

The next picture comes out pretty clear, but something is missing.

No shadow.
Put him in the dark. Just get those eyes... and those cheekbones!
We can light his face.
Do we have one of those white voids they use for fashion shoots?
I won't disappoint.
Light it so it's purple. Lizards look good in purple.
I'm going to pose?
No, let us pose you. You'll do it wrong.
He looks like a nerd. Tell him to do the tongue thing.
MYSTERY_LIZARD, do the tongue thing.
I'm doing the tongue thing.
He's all nerdy.

Boots hisses from the back of his throat -- he probably sounds fiercer than he looks.

It's good!

No, needs more postprocessing.
Make it left-to-right for the American audience.
Blue is a good color.

That jumpsuit doesn't work for his skin tone.
His skin tone needs work.
Just use the "Alien Map" filter.
And posterize.
A star is born!

Good enough to eat.
Maybe we should do a straight take.
With the stetson?
We'll be the richest esports photographers in Korea.

Boots decides -- for now -- that it would be best to leave while things are pointed in a positive direction. The editing machine vomits out a tourney badge which he pins on his jumpsuit.

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