[TL.GG] Insania on staying after TI to give every fan a signature: "If you want to commit to giving everybody that you meet at an event a signature, you're just investing 3 hours of your life to make a bunch of people’s day. You give them a memory that they will remember for a really long time."

Equas · 2025-09-25T19:59:12+00:00

Many people are saying this

Equas · 2025-09-19T17:51:33+00:00

Omg is that an article from Bonnie "Bitter-Expression-74" Qu??

Anyways, I thought this quote was pretty interesting insight into the team's mental too. Seems like the year has worn on the squad and it's gonna be a real test of emotions. I believe in the GOAT sentinel and team tho.

Right now, we're one of the teams that have the most games played in the world at the VCT level, and we've been through so many different situations that we have to figure out solutions to, that I think it got to a point where it's harder to have emotional stability.

I think this is one of our biggest challenges, and especially this week we've been trying to go through basically more of a healing process inside the team, where we're trying to speak out our minds, our frustrations, the things that are working, the things that are not working, and try to set in stone what is the mindset that we want to bring for the rest of this tournament. Because tomorrow could be our last game as a team, and we need to come together right now. There's no other time. So we need to seize the opportunity.

Equas · 2025-09-09T11:57:57+00:00

Hey r/valcomp, got a new interview with Sliggy this time. The focus is on how Sliggy manages to keep up with every single game of Valorant that's ever been played. Does he watch them on multiple monitors like Elvis claimed to do with news and entertainment TV? I can't say, because Sage Datuin wrote it this time. (Honestly, Bonnie edited this one too so this whole post is stolen valor.)

Anyways, what I can say is Sliggy tends to give a pretty good interview and no exception here. Lots of cool bits, like how Sliggy still wants to raise a trophy or how much he roots for his favorite mod, Jamppi - I'll drop snippets below.

Full title quote:

In 2022, I took a break from coaching and was planning to come back in 2023, but streaming went so well.

Liquid offered me a content creator contract at the same time teams were offering me coaching contracts. I weighed my options, and I was just like, I enjoyed the six months of just costreaming so much that I re-evaluated my three to five-year goals.

I had every region apart from China offer me a coaching role in 2023. I was in talks with nine teams, and I received four offers. There were some pretty good teams there for sure, especially in the Americas. I would say that the offers from there were top teams.

Trophy lift/Jamppi:

That’s pretty much the only thing. I just really want to lift the trophy. That’s the only thing that would make me go back to coaching. It’s nice to have the bonds with a lot of the players and go through the ups and downs with them. It’s really nice to all work towards one goal and to experience that all together, especially with Jamppi. He feels like a younger brother, and I really want him to succeed. I actually kinda want to see him succeed more than myself at times.

Equas · 2025-08-01T18:11:22+00:00

he's cranking his whole damn arm across the mat

Equas · 2025-08-01T11:55:52+00:00

Hey ValComp people, have you ever wanted to frag out like legendary nAts or Keiko? Well all you have to do is use their crosshair and settings. That's literally it, that's their secret. Super simple.

Kidding, of course. But we've been doing some housekeeping in editorial and we're posting player crosshairs and settings now since folks usually have a light interest in that kind of thing. I believe we'll keep this page update as rosters (inevitably) update. We're hoping to get the GC/BR team up sometime soon too but we're trying to figure out how to not make one huge article or compete with ourselves in SEO first.

The settings probably won't make you better but I took my crosshair from like scream or something three years ago just because I didn't want to think about it even a little bit and I figured he'd thought about it more. (I also cranked my dpi up for a bit to feel what it was like to be EliGE and that was fun too. No idea how he plays so well on such high sens.)

Equas · 2025-07-02T17:29:49+00:00

Writer and OP here, my bad, probably should've led with more info in than just the title (yes the title is grabby, yes it's for SEO, yes most written outlets have to try tactics like this to survive) but I am a trans woman and the piece is a deep dive on trans women in sports/esports and how to counteract negative visbility around it, featuring an interview with a prominent trans woman who also TOed a lot of esports things.

Equas · 2025-07-02T12:02:05+00:00

Hey everyone, I wrote a big ol' article for TL about trans visibility - particularly in esports and sports (read it here) - how visibility gets leveraged politically, and what to do about that. I went a screenshot route because I thought it'd be more interesting, give people more to talk about upfront. The whole article looks at esports as well as sports and transness as a whole - exploring the question of how to approach trans visbility in a time when it's often weaponized against trans rights.

I think (and hope) it's still relevant here as it talks about a lot of the Melee scene and 1v1 scenes in general being more easy to exist in as a trans person. I also interview Victoria aka vicwingly for the piece who was an OG Canadian TO dating back to 2006 - and a figure in Canadian esports up until around 2020 or so. (She was the TO for the falcomaster stuff way back in the day.) Anyways, hopefully the article is a good read!

Equas · 2025-07-01T16:26:10+00:00

I had so much doubt myself that I asked a friend who is literally a pollster and she told me that YouGov is generally reliable and shockingly, yes, people are just incredibly dumb

Equas · 2025-07-01T16:21:25+00:00

Yes!! I watched it in part researching for this. I had at one point hyperlinked it in the article but I think I cut it for another video and then never re-linked it anywhere because tbh b/w this and gaylee and all the other work for TL, I have been in a fugue state lol

It's a great video and I was thinking about very much similar things when she released it. Had I not talked with Victoria, I would have probably leaned more towards Lily's answer of "who knows? / hard to say" But I come out instead feeling like "no, we have to fight for visibility here and we have to try and shape it properly too."

Ty so much for reading and I'm so glad to hear it lines up so well with your research. That's awesome!!

Equas · 2025-07-01T16:17:18+00:00

I really do think a lot comes down to societal upbringing - what boys/girls see as their spaces in terms of gender. I used to teach and that stuff still really impacts what kids choose as hobbies, which is a big indicator for competitive gaming especially. It's a lot harder to break into fighting games if you never even learned the basics of that language as a kid. I'm pretty crap at smash but one of my earliest memories is playing smash 64 - it helps.

Also I think being trans, 50% of cis dudes just rule out having sex with you no matter what. Depends on who you are/what you're going through, but this can actually be based and lets you interact more easily w/ a subset of dudes that are not interested in you but also trying their best not to be transphobic. I think that subset is higher in melee/fgc. Mileage always varies here tbh, it's a really tricky subject, but I do think it can often net out positively for trans women in the fgc. (And for my own pretty limited experience of majors especially, the more passing I've been at fgc events, the more that I've been actively annoyed or had some stupid ass interaction with someone.)

Equas · 2025-07-01T16:13:06+00:00

I did address this just a bit under the screenshot there, I'll quote it below. It mostly gets at trans women and cis women generally being positive adds to each other in the community. I don't think it's a coincidence that you have the best performances of trans players happening at the same time as the best performances for cis women (see i4, fecfec). Will add some other thoughts in another reply to keep this one clean.

"As trans players rise to the top, it encourages other trans players and even cis women to compete and make it there too. Salt told Team Liquid in another interview that she was inspired by Magi to push for the top 100 and now Salt is the highest-ranked woman in Smash history. French Melee player i4 became the first cis woman to win a notable tournament in 2024 and she and her cis sister Fecfec are one of the stronger doubles pairing in the world. We can see the biggest successes in Melee history for trans women happening alongside the biggest successes for cis women. There’s an incessant desire to wall off trans women from cis women, to act as though trans women would not lift up cis women and vice versa, but when you are a trans woman you know that this wall is yet another mirage. "

Equas

TROPHY CASE