Inting: Or, How A North American Esports Team Tried To Win Worlds

By Chris Zamat

Inting is an intimate exposé of a North American esports team with players of contrasting and varied personalities who must band together to overcome the seemingly-insurmountable odds of winning a World title. In a scene dominated by the East, each player must confront the deepest, darkest recesses of their individual lives for the betterment of themselves and of the team.

Conquering the world, though, is not as hard as conquering themselves. This ragtag bunch will have to learn to put aside their differences while battling personal demons - as well as online harassment - in the pursuit of a common goal, and even then… it might not be enough.

In Inting, the personal meets the professional. What happens in the game, never stays in the game. And what happens out of the game, always bleeds into it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Zamat
• Release date: Oct 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201269388

Chris Zamat

Chris comes from a family of editors, journalists and librarians and has always been predisposed to storytelling. In his formative years, he studied philosophy, sociology and political science at university before moving to Toronto to pursue a career as an actor. Since then, he has acted in a number of commercials, films and TV shows and has written several produced screenplays as well as a fictitious novel, with more works on the way.

Book preview

INTING:

Or, How A North American Esports Team Tried To Win Worlds

Chris Zamat

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

Edited by Victor Yan

Cover and map design by Adam Bonney

What follows is utterly and unreservedly true,

not that it matters.

Contents

Chapter 1: The Superteam

Chapter 2: Scrims

Chapter 3: Misclick

Chapter 4: Crisis Management

Chapter 5: Do Your Best

Chapter 6: The Leak

Chapter 7: Protect The Puppy

Chapter 8: Bot Gap

Chapter 9: True Bros

Chapter 10: Cringe

Chapter 11: Better Hands

Chapter 12: Win Fast, Lose Fast

Chapter 13: The Godfather

Chapter 14: XD

Chapter 15: The Hardships of Being Quixotic

Chapter 16: Shed Your Ego

Chapter 17: The Mountain

Chapter 18: Mortal Wounds

Chapter 19: Either Together Or Not At All

Chapter 20: Go Next

Chapter 1: The Superteam

In the winter of 2017, Lei Wu Chen, a Chinese-American billionaire magnate, supposed-philanthropist and founder of the largest technology company in the world, Illogigear, felt an emotion he once believed had long been washed out of his system: embarrassment. Embarrassment because his passion project, a Twilight of the Ascended[1] esports team called Team Inting – of which he was the majority owner – had just crashed out in devastatingly humiliating fashion at the most prestigious tournament in the sport, the World Championship, bowing out of the group stage without winning a single game.

The camel does not break its back twice, some of Chen’s Chinese business colleagues had haughtily said to him after Team Inting’s historically dismal 0-and-6 performance, but yours seems to have broken its back six times. Others in the esports community derided Chen by asking, Was your team doing a speedrun to the airport? These quips so readily antagonized Chen that with alacrity he demanded the players’ flights back home be switched from first class to economy. Such bouts of pettiness were not unprecedented for the billionaire and did not at all surprise the players, who, on some level, expected harsher punishment. 

But by far, the most backlash and vitriol came from the internet and, in particular, Reddit and Twitter, which never question an opportunity to bash anyone at any time for any reason whatsoever. Keep your chin up Team Inting, wrote one Twitter user, seemingly in support, You really did shock the world with how trash you are. In fact, Reddit was littered with rows and rows of threads questioning and berating Team Inting’s performance, with such astutely poignant and methodical arguments made to explain Inting’s hapless Worlds appearance as Inting players are vegetables and Screw your mom Team Inting.

Chen was derisively uncomfortable with the emotional state he now found himself rolling up against, not just but especially because it reminded him of one unassailable truth: no amount of wealth and ambition could ever replace the fundamental fact that he was human (all-too human, as they might say) and was therefore doomed to mortality. His need for perfection, for permanence, had been tainted by Inting’s performance, and so, naturally, Chen did what any other billionaire-with-an-ego would do; he fought against the rudiments of his impermanence and decided, once and for all, that his name should – nay, must – be clawed in legend. To this end, Chen sought to form a superteam of sorts, a team that would not and could not fail, and would therefore re-assert his pride, power and stature amongst his peers.

Chen began his endeavour by hiring Joe Weili Park, to whom he delegated the role of Coach and General Manager, and on whose shoulders lay the bulk of responsibility in actualizing Chen’s aims. Coach Joe had achieved great renown in the Korean TotA community[2] as the coach of TKS Telecom, for he had lead the team to three world championships when no other organization had won more than one. Moreover, he possessed a kind of mythic aura because he held an incontestably medieval attitude towards player performance. That is to say, while many former players of his had been excessively (and perhaps suspiciously) complimentary in their assessments and appraisals of him in the past, some did take issue with the sometimes-violent measures that Coach Joe would take. Chen, of course, did not hold any reservations towards the whispers of beatdowns and belt whips that haunted the coach’s impressive resume, not just because Chen was dead-set on winning at any cost, but also because these alleged measures would never be taken against him, just the players, which was a price Chen was comfortable paying for a world championship.

Oddly, Coach Joe began the formative process of building Chen’s superteam by taking a proverbial flyer on two rookies. One of those rookies, Winston ‘WildCard’ Justice, was promoted from Team Inting’s Academy and was therefore a known commodity in the scene as a mechanically-gifted[3], low-economy player who required few resources[4] to function effectively on the map. These characteristics made him an ideal Top-Laner, Coach Joe believed, for the top lane was a metaphorical island isolated from the rest of the map, and as such Top-Laners were often tasked with holding their own while resources were invested into the rest of the team. WildCard, to this point, couldn’t singlehandedly win games, but he wouldn’t singlehandedly lose them either, and his stability offered Coach Joe much freedom in terms of strategic development.

Elizabeth ‘Lizzie’ King, meanwhile, had plied her trade for years in SoloQ[5], regularly reaching Rank 1 on the North American server in the position of Jungler[6]. Lizzie was profoundly adept in TotA’s jungle, tucked away in the foliage between the three lanes, as her foresight and vision helped her accurately predict the enemy’s movements and positions, and her sense of the macro – i.e. the bigger picture – was, Coach Joe realized, fundamentally sound and in tune with his own. Moreover, when Coach Joe delved deeper into Lizzie’s analytics, he found a player remarkably capable of both carrying and supporting the team – a distinction as rare in the Twilight scene as was her gender. Lizzie had, on several occasions, attempted to join a professional organization but had been hereto foiled, as several decision-makers (all males) and self-proclaimed high-minded individuals (all males) had decided that hiring a woman would evidently cause a disruptive imbalance among all-male teams. Lizzie, Coach Joe thought, had a chip on her shoulder that could sometimes cause her to seem antagonistic, yes, but overall he believed to have found an overlooked diamond in the rough, and he knew her to be well-deserving of being the first woman to play for a professional TotA team.

In WildCard and Lizzie, then, Coach Joe found two team-oriented players who would do anything for that vaunted and hallowed Win, even if victory came at the personal expense of their own statistics or stature in the team. And though Chen would have paid any financial cost to field his superteam, that these two players were determined rookies looking to break-in as outsiders was, for Chen, icing on the cake, for this in his view entitled him to underpay them. They should be glad for the exposure, he thought to himself as he justified his mendacious acumen.

Song ‘Scooter’ Coot-jin, meanwhile, was a former MVP who had been imported from the Chinese League (dubbed the TPL) for the record-breaking price of six-million dollars. Though the price tag to import the Mid-Laner was hefty, Team Inting actually received a family discount, as Scooter was Chen’s nephew. In fact, Chen had actually upped the figure associated with the transfer, believing that this would send a clear signal to the rest of the community that he was all-in on his ambitions. Coach Joe had actually advised Chen against the signing, however, for Scooter’s English was laughably poor and he therefore was an ineffective communicator in a setting where teamwork and coordination were of critical importance. Still, in Scooter, Chen saw an opportunity to poach a once-prodigal talent from the East and that alone, in his eyes, was worth its weight in gold for the brand recognition, the historical significance and the next day’s headlines. However, Scooter failed to disclose to Team Inting that he was beginning to suffer from early onset carpal tunnel syndrome, restricting, as such, his capabilities. Unbeknownst to Team Inting, they were paying Scooter for his past production in China, while Scooter, mentally-speaking, was looking to retire in America and consume as many cheeseburgers as possible.

And finally, there was Gabe and Artie...

Nicknamed by the community as the best bot-lane in the West, Gabe ‘GabeX’ Valentino and Artie ‘ArtieX’ Cursaro were the only returning players from Team Inting’s pathetic 0-and-6 Worlds roster. That Chen, in all of his ignominy, decided to keep these two players is testament not only to their talent, but also to their popularity. Gabe’s jersey, for example, was the second best-selling jersey of all-time in every part of the world, (behind only three-time winning world champion Zeus), in part due to his innate talent but more ostensibly because of his smooth smile and pretty eyelashes. Gabe did not look like a nerd, but he sure was one, and everyone seemed to love that dichotomy in him. That Gabe played the most skill-expressive and diva-esque position in TotA, the Marksman position, combined with the fact that very few people could genuinely lay claim to knowing the man, only further factored in to the ‘mythology’ of GabeX.

Artie, meanwhile, was far less popular and in many circles was treated with disdain despite his wholesome and good-natured personality. In fact, few people cared to get to know Artie, for it was widely believed that he was tethering Gabe to mediocrity. As a Support player, Artie was tasked with protecting the Marksman, who by design needed to be sheltered early on in the game before eventually scaling into a powerful win condition later. The problem was that false narratives and memes were spun on social media that deduced that Artie was malignantly bad at his role and that, like a tumour, needed to be removed from Gabe in order for the Marksman to reach his true potential.

The truth of the matter – not that anyone is concerned with the truth – was that Artie kept Gabe on a leash, for Gabe customarily played overly aggressive even in situations that required calm and patience. On too many occasions, Artie was put in less-than-ideal binds as a result of Gabe’s aggression and it was therefore Artie that had to suffer the consequences for his lane partner’s actions. To the fans, however, the eye-test spotlighted a player in Artie who repeatedly died without purpose and reason, thereby trapping Artie in an echo chamber of hate-fueled mongering that even Houdini could not escape. Gabe, to his credit, would repeatedly give honest and profuse praise to Artie in post-game interviews, but to the community this only served to present Gabe as a magnanimous champion of all things virtue, further cementing the idea that Artie was responsible for everything from Team Inting’s poor performances to cancer in infants.

Naturally, Chen had tried to fire the Support player a handful of times in the past, but Gabe and Artie, who had been joined at the hip for some ten odd years now, had it purposefully written in their contracts that neither would play without the other, and they remained steadfast in their wishes. That is, until the winter of 2017, when the abysmal performance at Worlds, combined with Artie’s ripe-old gamer age of 27, meant that Artie was beginning to ponder life after esports. Gabe, meanwhile, was very much in his prime and near the height of his powers. The truth, for Artie, was that he no longer had the zest for Twilight of the Ascended, and he did not regard the amount of time spent at a keyboard and computer as healthy and conducive to a good life, and in turn he began to sense that he was not living a life authentic to his soul. Artie, on this point, had a voice gifted to him by the heavens, and the thought of pursuing a singing career had tickled his fancy several times over the past offseason. But when the premise of leaving Gabe behind was broached in his mind, he simply could not convince himself that it was the right move. Gabe and Artie were much more than friends or even brothers, all things considered, and life without each other seemed unsalable.

While WildCard and Lizzie were low-resources players, Gabe was the polar opposite, requiring and consuming as many resources as possible. This meant that, according to Gabe’s view of how the game ought to be played, the team’s strategy had to revolve around him. His teammates’ every movement, every click, and every rotation had to be designed with him in mind, and it was not extraordinary for Gabe to request that his teammates donate their own economy-generating resources to him as well. The aim of this approach was to create micro-advantages for Gabe who would then justify this playstyle by, as the kids say, 1-v-9’ing, which meant that Gabe could and often did solitarily win the game for his team, sometimes even in spite of his teammates. To audiences, the pressure that this playstyle put on opponents was mesmerizing, as Gabe, merely by just existing in the game, was always a win condition for Team Inting.

This style of play, of course, clashed with Lizzie’s and Coach Joe’s own philosophies, who each held map-oriented beliefs about the game. If, for example, the enemy Top-Laner was in an ideal position to get ganked[7], Lizzie believed that she naturally ought to attack that lane and create an advantage for her teammate – even if that temporarily rendered the bottom lane vulnerable. Coach Joe held similar beliefs, advocating that the meta[8] decided the approach. If the meta called for the bottom lane to play weakside[9], leaving them to fend for themselves while the rest of the team accomplished certain goals, then so be it, thought Coach Joe. More to this, Joe believed that the Support player ought not confine himself to the Marskman nor to the bottom lane, and should instead roam around the map and help other players too. And thus, an inherent conflict was inadvertently but perhaps inevitably created, where Lizzie and Coach Joe were concerned with playing good Twilight of the Ascended, while Gabe was concerned with playing good Gabe of the Ascended.

A coach as adept and intelligent as Joe would, of course, account for this apparent conflict, and he practiced at length an emotionally mature speech that he would deliver to Gabe to convince the superstar to buy-in to his philosophy. In this speech, Coach Joe believed that he would illustrate the logic of his paradigm in an easy-to-understand manner and that he would convince Gabe that elevating his teammates would elevate his own performance. Gabe, then, would ideally see the plain error of his ways and without hesitation adjust his playstyle. But, as the saying goes, you can’t teach old dogs new tricks, particularly when sponsors pay good money to see those dogs shine, and Coach Joe could never account for the stubbornness and fervor with which Gabe held his attitude towards the game. To Gabe, asking him to take a backseat was like asking Kobe Bryant to pass to Derek Fisher for the buzzer-beating shot. That Gabe genuinely was the closest thing to Kobe in esports only helped fuel the divide.

Nevertheless, in the winter of 2017, Chen’s superteam was revealed to much fanfare and online hype. The acquisition of Scooter, in particular, was heralded and acclaimed by many in the community, and most were excited to see the former MVP in China play alongside the reigning MVP in North America in Gabe. Chen would spend hours scouring Reddit and WeChat, his pride growing as commenters reveled in this newly-formed superteam from North America – a team that had the unmitigated aspirations of snatching the Ascended Cup[10] away from the grasp of the Koreans and the Chinese, who had hitherto dominated the scene. That Chen himself, despite still loving the game, had stopped playing TotA some years back and therefore knew nothing about its contemporary state did not matter one iota to him, for he believed, as all billionaires do, that he was now destined for immortality. If anything, he was smugly proud of himself for asserting his ambitions so openly and publicly. As a billionaire, he could of course buy anything on this planet wholesale, but becoming the first Western team, let alone the first North American team, to win Worlds? That, he could not buy outright, and it became the focus of his obsession.

But the truth of the matter – which, again, is merely an inconvenience to some – was that this superteam had no chance in hell, heaven, or earth of attaining international success. Team Inting could capture 1st place in North America, sure, but they had done so already in the past. There was an elephant in the room that nobody wanted to speak of, because that elephant also happened to be a 500-pound immovable gorilla. This elephant-gorilla hybrid was the fact that there were reasons why Asian teams had dominated the Twilight international circuit for so long. For one, the player base was about 100 times larger in China than in North America, which meant that the quality of play in that part of the world was objectively higher. That is to say, in terms of players, there were more options for teams to choose from, and that created an internal competitive drive among the scene in those regions that could not be mimicked or recreated in North America. It’s not that Gabe and co. did not feel the pressure to perform, it’s that their opponents rarely did, and practicing and playing versus worse opponents will eventually lead one to play down to their opponent’s level. Iron sharpens iron, as they say, but marshmallows also make you pudgy. Team Inting, then, were essentially eating marshmallows on the daily in North America.

Then, there was the more substantive and complex issue of ping. When a player clicks anywhere on his or her screen, data is transmitted from that player’s device over to a server on the internet and back to the device again – this is what is called ping. Typically, the higher the ping, the longer the delay and the more awkward the reaction, as the game is less responsive to the player. In Asia, teams practice and play at a ping of around 5 miliseconds. In North America, the ping is 85. What this means is that there existed an inherent and substantial disadvantage between the East and the West that simply could not be mitigated without significant financial and structural upheaval. This was a defect of equipment that everyone knew about but no one could really change, not even Chen. Metaphorically, it was the equivalent of a mixed martial arts contest where one competitor enters in typical attire, light and free and encumbered only by his or her own capabilities, while the other, having trained just as hard and just as consistently, is shackled to a snowsuit.  

Regardless, the human spirit is strong and never fails in its aspirations of reaching novel and wondrous endeavours, even in the face of catastrophic and impending doom. That Team Inting was the superteam destined to fail is merely but a cliff note in this story. Rather, this story is about a team that will fall from the mountain a thousand times, always with faces full of dirt and hearts filled with shame. But still, this team will climb, knowing that the summit is probably out of reach and that they are fated to fall again, because the lesson is not in the climb, after all, but in the fall. What Team Inting display is evidence of the indelible quality of humankind to want more, need more, and eventually, be more. Otherwise, what are we doing here?

Chapter 2: Scrims

Artie yawned as he sat slumped in a bean bag one early morning, regrettably slurping a cup of Iviza coffee in one hand while watching something on his phone in the other. Iviza was one of Team Inting’s many sponsors, and though Artie had always felt like their coffee tasted like a mixture of hot chocolate and piss, he was beginning to agonize over his financial future which, after esports, remained uncertain. Artie was mindfully adopting a more frugal lifestyle, and he therefore decided that ‘free’ was the best seasoning to anything.

In reality, one wouldn’t be remiss to assume that Artie (and Gabe for that matter) had adopted the frugal life for years, as the apartment he shared with Gabe was rather barren, though unintentionally so. There were no signs of plant life or furniture or home décor except for two worn-out bean bag chairs in the living room and the gaming computers in what Artie and Gabe coined the ‘Battle Room’. Artie and Gabe’s apartment was a veritable bachelor pad, in the sense that it contained nothing but monk-like necessities and a fridge full of hard liquor, which Gabe, Artie quietly noticed, was pulling and replenishing from more and more often.

Artie’s phone was playing an official hype video created by the TCS (abbreviated from Twilight of the Ascended Championship Series, the North American league), which Artie was half-watching. With the Spring Split[11] now about to bloom just a few days away, the untapped potential of Inting’s new superteam was beginning to stir palpable excitement and curiosity among fans.

Scrimmages, in the weeks leading up, saw Inting falter to a sub-50 percent winrate, which meant that Team Inting was losing more than they were winning. Artie was not much concerned, as there was an obvious feeling-out process wherein each individual player would learn how to amalgamate themselves into the greater whole. Twilight of the Ascended was a team game, after all, and synergy was not built in a day.

I promised I’d win Worlds, Gabe recited in the melodramatic TCS video, the music escalating and escalating until the tension came to a head: And this year... I will.

What was slightly of concern to Artie, beyond the impending existential doom with which he found himself wrestling against, was the fact that Mages[12] were now appearing in the bot-lane meta. Most Marksmen did not excel at nor put much practice towards this class of champions, Gabe included, for Mages were but-seldom strong anywhere on the map other than the mid-lane. Artie knew that Gabe tended to overcompensate when uncomfortable and that in turn meant that Artie was likely to find himself in some bad spots in the near-future. In the past, trying to cover for his lane partner’s  aggressions – and dying for it - had always meant that Artie would get flamed by Reddit and Twitter, and though he had become stoically accustomed to the insults and name-calling, it certainly did not mean he enjoyed reading and hearing about them. 

In fact, Gabe and Artie had gone well into the wee morning after scrims the night before, playing SoloQ to iron out all of the deficiencies in their game. Artie had called it quits around 4:20 in the morning, for the team had VOD review[13] at 10 o’clock, but he knew Gabe well enough to know that the kid had played all through the night.

Indeed, just moments later, Artie found Gabe intensely fixated to his computer screen in the Battle Room, an hour before VOD review. Gabe, having by now chugged some litres of RedBull, still had zombie-like energy, his fingers rapidly clacking his keyboard while his mouse moved with extreme purpose and precision. 

Just press R Malzar, for the love of God man! Gabe bemoaned his faceless SoloQ teammate, the red bags under his eyes betraying his lack of sleep.

You look like you just watched Watermelon Express and your eyes can’t believe how bad of a movie it was, bro, Artie spoke from behind Gabe’s gaming chair. Artie, in general, detested buddy comedies.

Thanks bro, replied Gabe sarcastically without turning around.

Disconnect from your game so we can make it to VODs in time.

I’m almost finished.

When? Artie asked.

5 minutes. We’re gonna grab Blackclaw and end the game... and it was at this precise moment that the enemy team stole the Blackclaw[14], extending the length of the game. Gabe hid his puckered expression in his hands, then rubbed his temples in an attempt to itch his tilt.

No, sorry, I meant, ‘When did I ask?’ Disconnect and let’s go, Artie replied with an irritated tone.

The source of Artie’s irritation was the fact that the duo had been late to VOD reviews earlier in the week for this same reason, and Coach Joe had threatened Artie with the belt if such tardiness were to happen again. Believing this to be a bluff, Artie reached out to one of Coach Joe’s former players in Korea, who confirmed to him via pictures that the belt was far from an empty threat.

Gabe, for his part, recently developed an apathetic distaste for VOD review, as he had always received passes from previous Inting coaches for his mistakes. Coach Joe, however, highlighted every player’s errors and dished out criticism and punishment equally.

Last fight, Gabe indicated, Get the Uber ready, will ya?

Fine, but I’m using your phone, said Artie, with frugality on the mind, You need a Morning Shot, by the way?

I mean, I look like I just watched Watermelon Express and my eyes can’t believe how bad of a movie it was, said Gabe in jest, his eyes fixed to the screen still.

By ‘Morning Shot’, Artie meant Adderall, which had become a necessity in order to keep up with Team Inting’s 12 hour scrimmage sessions. Afterwards, players were contractually obliged to play no less than eight SoloQ games, which amounted to four extra hours of playtime and which exposed them on a nightly basis to vitriolic trolls of all kinds. In SoloQ, Artie had been on the butt-end of all possible insults under the sun, ranging from new-age name-calling like, You’re a dog to the tried-and-true Just kill yourself already. Then, players were obligated to commit one hour to 1-v-1’s with their Academy[15] counterparts in order to practice specific matchups for the upcoming fixture of games. Though Artie was a natural-born teacher and was able to explain complex details and interactions in an easy-to-understand manner, in his heart he resented the idea that he was essentially donating years of acquired knowledge and experience to someone that would replace him in seconds should he fall into a slump.

That Twilight of the Ascended felt radioactive in the sense that the game indirectly promoted toxic practices of the mind and body was something Artie had always had trouble coming to terms with. Many buzzed nights high off Adderall, Artie would philosophize about the real-world impact that the negativity one was subject to in SoloQ could have on a person’s spirit.  Even stone sober, Artie could notice his mood change considerably after a particularly arduous SoloQ game, and for years he observed these micro-agitations slowly overwhelm most, if not all, of his teammates. Though he was not religious, Artie would sometimes pray for those faceless SoloQ teammates that would be subject to the gross and bitter toxicity that he would read online, hoping that no one ever solicited BigBootyDaddy6969’s advice to kill themselves, while realizing that, statistically, at least one out of the hundreds of millions of people who play this game must have.

Artie and Gabe took their Adderall and set off, though L.A. traffic ensured that they were half an hour late to the VOD review. Gabe took advantage of the idle time by catching some shut eye, snuggling cozily up to Artie in the backseat. Artie made a point to clock that he ought to talk to Gabe about the performance benefits of recovery and that thing that humans need called sleep.

They arrived at the team’s multi-million dollar gaming house – outfitted with high-tech streaming rooms, a cafeteria and even a (dusty) sensory deprivation tank – in time to overhear Lizzie’s quip about those cucks being late for VOD review.

What’s a cuck? Gabe asked innocently.

That’s a part of the internet you prettyboys are just not ready for, replied Lizzie with a smirk.

Ooh! You think I’m pretty? asked Artie rhetorically. Artie loved Gabe to death, of course, but he appreciated that Lizzie, despite being a rookie, called the superstar out on his privilege. What’s more, in Lizzie, Artie found a companion he could self-flagellate with, for both were frequent targets of online evisceration – Artie, for his age and Lizzie, for what was between her legs. They had developed a mutual rapport in their suffering, and would scroll through Reddit together between SoloQ games, reading what was being said and speculated about them. Look at what Guy In Chat said about you... they’d say to one another, forming their own shared language. Then, they’d laugh, before the laughter gave way to the profound sadness and hopelessness in the realization that some hundreds of thousands of people hated them for no reason whatsoever. Haters gonna hate, Artie, Lizzie would say, and players gonna play; Artie would respond with a stoic It is what is.

"Saekki! Coach Joe shouted, removing the belt from his waistline before hurdling menacingly towards Artie. Artie had barely flinched when Gabe hurriedly stepped between the two, saying Coach... Coach! It’s my fault... I stayed up too late playing SoloQ."

There was nothing Coach Joe wanted more in that moment then to beat the ever-living guts out of Artie, for Artie had a kind of carefree disposition that grated the very-serious Joe to the bone. Gabe, Coach Joe knew, was off-limits with regards to disciplining, for Joe was currently mired in a controversy