“When I walk to work I feel like a marine scouting an enemy Zerg’s base, knowing that I could step on a burrowed baneling at any moment.”
“for the rest of the movie Death (with a capital D!) comes back to find them, sadistically picking them off one by one. No matter what they do, their demise is inevitable. They simply cannot beat death.”
Over the last week, a handful of theories that I’ve had were confirmed with unquestionable certainty. First, it sucks living in Boston in the winter. Second, Charlie Sheen is batshit crazy. And third, Koreans are a lot better at StarCraft than the rest of the world.
Let me explain.
Boston having terrible winters is nothing new. And I know, other cities have had a brutal winter too. But Boston has taken it to a new level this year with an epidemic that my wife calls “ice poop”. This is when people take their dogs for walks, let them crap on the sidewalk in the snow and then assume that when the snow melts, their dogs’ poop will magically melt away too. Well the snow has started melting and I can definitively say that the poop does not disappear. When I walk to work I feel like a marine scouting an enemy Zerg’s base, knowing that I could step on a burrowed baneling at any moment.
Next, there’s Charlie Sheen. Just look at his quotes from the last week: "I am on a drug. It's called Charlie Sheen. It's not available. If you try it once, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body." and "It's perfect. It's awesome. Every day is just filled with just wins. All we do is put wins in the record books. We win so radically in our underwear before our first cup of coffee, it's scary. People say it's lonely at the top, but I sure like the view." The second quote makes me suspicious that he’s secretly playing SC2 when he wakes up. I’m sure a lot of people log in first thing in the morning before they even put on pants. Then again, I spent all week trying to find an excuse to work a Charlie Sheen reference into the column and this is the best that I came up with. It was worth it for the quotes.
Finally, there’s the Koreans’ continued domination of StarCraft II. In the last week, Jinro and HuK both got eliminated from the GSL, and Korea’s C team swept the IEM World Championships. Losing the last two foreigners in the GSL was disappointing, but at least they each put together decent runs. Jinro will remain in Code S and HuK earned a shot at the up/down matches; unfortunately those matches are filled with former champions and two time finalists this season, so it could be a tough road into Code S for him. The real statement though, was made by Ace, Moon, and Squirtle. All three were eliminated in the GSL Code A round of 32 this season but went 1-2-3 at IEM against some of the best foreigners in the world.
That’s not to say Socke, Sjow, IdrA, or mOOnGLaDe were pushovers. They all put up decent fights. But in some ways, watching their matches reminded me of the Final Destination movies. You know, where the main character has a vision of his roller coaster falling off the rails, or the race track he’s at turning into Chernobyl? He manages to barely avoid the catastrophe and escape death along with a few friends. But for the rest of the movie Death (with a capital D!) comes back to find them, sadistically picking them off one by one. No matter what they do, their demise is inevitable. They simply cannot beat death.
There were moments when it looked like one of the foreigners would take down part of the Korean trifecta. Sjow and Socke forced a three-way tiebreaker against Squirtle that lasted four rounds before the Korean Protoss unfailingly came out on top and eliminated both foreigners. IdrA and mOOnGLaDe both took their last series to a fifth and final game before they too were defeated. Respectable performances all around, but really, these efforts seemed no different than one of the characters in Final Destination escaping from a car seconds before it gets crushed by an oncoming train only to be decapitated afterward by a piece of flying debris. No matter how many times it seemed like they had won, Death always found a way to come back; and the Koreans were no different.
But here’s the thing about the Final Destination movies - they’re extremely predictable and handicapped by poor acting, but they’re also incredibly entertaining. The death scenes are spectacular, creative, and even though we’re not necessarily rooting for Death, we can at least appreciate how good he is at what he does.
From early on at IEM, it looked likely that the Koreans were going to dominate. Moon won every series in the group stage and Ace didn’t even lose a single game until the finals. So no, we weren’t shocked by the ending. And no, we probably weren’t rooting for the Koreans. But it was still a great tournament with a lot of exciting games, some crazy tiebreaker rounds and a climactic final series that was awesome to watch even if you didn’t have a dog in the fight.
Also, it’s important to remember that the Final Destination franchise keeps pumping out sequels. There have been four movies already with a fifth being released in August. There’s another season of the GSL coming in May and big tournaments like the NASL on the way as well. Just because no one has conquered Death in Final Destination or proven that they’re better than the Koreans in a major tournament yet, doesn’t mean it will never happen.
Woody "soso" Favinger is the author of The soso column, published every Wednesday on GosuGamers.net. You can contact him via email at [email protected] or follow him on twitter at twitter.com/wfavinger
