I've been trying to write this media for a while. I'm greatful for a lot of things in the league but its hard to really articulate things sometimes for me. What I keep coming back to is how little the league needs us to and instead rewards people for doing things. I know thats really confusing and doesn't make sense but let met try and get these words out to help express what I'm saying.
When I came into the league I really had no idea what was going on just like anyone else that just comes into the league but what I was struck by was the variety of people. There was this great unfamiliarity to things but at the same time I felt a sense of belonging to a lot of people. CLG rampage ruff ruff being an RBBC before it was cool. Deadly player being the hype man of the group, Dulio being the adult in the group. The list goes on and on but the memories keep fading. Everything was just so thrown together with all of us yet at the same time it had this structure that didn't break down. I get that it was the 17th season and it was just a lot of new people but to me it felt like a real event to be apart of. I think that we keep trying to chase what that felt like and anyone in an organized job keeps trying to give that experience to anyone new coming into the league. As time goes on it doesn't really fade as I worry sometimes to see new people come in. Beefstu came into the league like a house on fire and was working on some truely incredible things in regards to simming and roster management. His spark for the league died but I'm grateful to have been around to see him have that experience and to have shared it in some way. A group like that always comes in around that same time and its always been great to be in a chat to meet them and to learn about them. Its not a shock that they usually all like football or other things on the internet.
The Minnesota Grey ducks have been really important to me these last few months. Even before recreating they opened their arms to me and let me into the war room. My interest in the league was changing and I had a lot of new experiences that I'm thankful for having. The past few months have been pretty rough for me but they were always there for me, for my good times and even my worst of times. I highly suggest anyone who is even mildly interested in going into GM's one day ask to be in their DSFL war room at first. The biggest and best thing we did with the people in that war room was this dispersal draft. We all took a couple ISFL teams (this was before the berlin and new york expansions) and redrafted everyone in the league. It took weeks to run through all the players in the league and then to do commentary on all the picks but in the end it ended up being longer than more novels are. The things like the bolded text's, indentations, and other formatting in it got wrecked when I copy pasted it to the website (46k words or more if I'm not mistaken) but its a project I was really proud of after everything was said and done. I'm thankful for a league that made that relevent and all the players that we were able to draft in order to make it such an epic in the making.
Earning in the league can be really hard it seems at times and I can fully understand why its such an issue for some people. You get this anxiety of creating something and this great worry about what people will think of what you make. I'm sure some people worry that no one will see or care about what they make. I don't think that there are really any more creative people or less creative people in the world. Having a creative output is important for someone well being I feel and it can be hard to put yourself out there in such a way that you risk your feelings being hurt in ways that people don't intend to. In an age of exposure with everything in our lives and the lack of privacy, causing us to search for some sense of identity, having some sort of way to express yourself without worry is important and should be encouraged for everyone, no matter how bad your output is. No one has ever really given me any criticism of my terrible narrative pieces and I get that they aren't really interesting or good in any way but I'm grateful that the league rewarded my time on it and provided an opportunity to do that again. When I was an awkward kid in middle school I wrote a few books (30k words or so) because lunchtime was always terrible. I threw them away when I went through them recently because I knew they were terrible and my spelling has always been terrible to the point where I'd have to pay a lot more to get it fixed than I'd ever make on self-publishing on some ebook. My career has no creative output and I seriously doubt that it'll ever give me any opportunity for that. Having an opportunity to do that again was a great experience for me even knowing how terrible they were. Getting writing again has been great during covid and I've been working on a few personal projects that I would never have done on my own if it wasn't for the league. I promise I wont make any narrative podcasts.
One thing I think that has always shown a lot of promise in the league but never really delivered in is twitter. A few incidents I think have prevented it from flowering into its own universe but having yet another no risk outlet is pretty cool I think. A few funny events where real world bots have come in to interact with our fake person twitters have given me great joy. What always interests me is the narrative of the league and the players in it. Seeing the promise that the Baltimore hawks had and yet never able to get past either the Wraiths or the Otters year after year was something beyond discord that I felt was really interesting. A lot more people have been using twitter recently and the team twitters have been expanding from just being media bots to interacting with players. There have been growing pains but a lot of very fun stuff has come out of it.
What I'm getting to out of all of this is that none of this has been demanded from the league. No GM has ever messaged me asking me why I haven't been earning as much as I should be or trying to be "encouraging" to get me to earn more. So then why am I or any of us putting so much effort into media or any earning activity? I can't talk for anyone but I think its because we're really all grateful for what the league gives us and in some way we want to give back. Maybe no one really cares about some of our point tasks, maybe no one really listens to our podcasts and only the graders really look through every single graphic. But even if just one person finds something in what we do or it makes any of their days better, its worth it. And sometimes we don't even need that because we're that person. At the end of the day thats the thing I'm most greatful for from the International sim football league, It has made me that person.
When I came into the league I really had no idea what was going on just like anyone else that just comes into the league but what I was struck by was the variety of people. There was this great unfamiliarity to things but at the same time I felt a sense of belonging to a lot of people. CLG rampage ruff ruff being an RBBC before it was cool. Deadly player being the hype man of the group, Dulio being the adult in the group. The list goes on and on but the memories keep fading. Everything was just so thrown together with all of us yet at the same time it had this structure that didn't break down. I get that it was the 17th season and it was just a lot of new people but to me it felt like a real event to be apart of. I think that we keep trying to chase what that felt like and anyone in an organized job keeps trying to give that experience to anyone new coming into the league. As time goes on it doesn't really fade as I worry sometimes to see new people come in. Beefstu came into the league like a house on fire and was working on some truely incredible things in regards to simming and roster management. His spark for the league died but I'm grateful to have been around to see him have that experience and to have shared it in some way. A group like that always comes in around that same time and its always been great to be in a chat to meet them and to learn about them. Its not a shock that they usually all like football or other things on the internet.
The Minnesota Grey ducks have been really important to me these last few months. Even before recreating they opened their arms to me and let me into the war room. My interest in the league was changing and I had a lot of new experiences that I'm thankful for having. The past few months have been pretty rough for me but they were always there for me, for my good times and even my worst of times. I highly suggest anyone who is even mildly interested in going into GM's one day ask to be in their DSFL war room at first. The biggest and best thing we did with the people in that war room was this dispersal draft. We all took a couple ISFL teams (this was before the berlin and new york expansions) and redrafted everyone in the league. It took weeks to run through all the players in the league and then to do commentary on all the picks but in the end it ended up being longer than more novels are. The things like the bolded text's, indentations, and other formatting in it got wrecked when I copy pasted it to the website (46k words or more if I'm not mistaken) but its a project I was really proud of after everything was said and done. I'm thankful for a league that made that relevent and all the players that we were able to draft in order to make it such an epic in the making.
Earning in the league can be really hard it seems at times and I can fully understand why its such an issue for some people. You get this anxiety of creating something and this great worry about what people will think of what you make. I'm sure some people worry that no one will see or care about what they make. I don't think that there are really any more creative people or less creative people in the world. Having a creative output is important for someone well being I feel and it can be hard to put yourself out there in such a way that you risk your feelings being hurt in ways that people don't intend to. In an age of exposure with everything in our lives and the lack of privacy, causing us to search for some sense of identity, having some sort of way to express yourself without worry is important and should be encouraged for everyone, no matter how bad your output is. No one has ever really given me any criticism of my terrible narrative pieces and I get that they aren't really interesting or good in any way but I'm grateful that the league rewarded my time on it and provided an opportunity to do that again. When I was an awkward kid in middle school I wrote a few books (30k words or so) because lunchtime was always terrible. I threw them away when I went through them recently because I knew they were terrible and my spelling has always been terrible to the point where I'd have to pay a lot more to get it fixed than I'd ever make on self-publishing on some ebook. My career has no creative output and I seriously doubt that it'll ever give me any opportunity for that. Having an opportunity to do that again was a great experience for me even knowing how terrible they were. Getting writing again has been great during covid and I've been working on a few personal projects that I would never have done on my own if it wasn't for the league. I promise I wont make any narrative podcasts.
One thing I think that has always shown a lot of promise in the league but never really delivered in is twitter. A few incidents I think have prevented it from flowering into its own universe but having yet another no risk outlet is pretty cool I think. A few funny events where real world bots have come in to interact with our fake person twitters have given me great joy. What always interests me is the narrative of the league and the players in it. Seeing the promise that the Baltimore hawks had and yet never able to get past either the Wraiths or the Otters year after year was something beyond discord that I felt was really interesting. A lot more people have been using twitter recently and the team twitters have been expanding from just being media bots to interacting with players. There have been growing pains but a lot of very fun stuff has come out of it.
What I'm getting to out of all of this is that none of this has been demanded from the league. No GM has ever messaged me asking me why I haven't been earning as much as I should be or trying to be "encouraging" to get me to earn more. So then why am I or any of us putting so much effort into media or any earning activity? I can't talk for anyone but I think its because we're really all grateful for what the league gives us and in some way we want to give back. Maybe no one really cares about some of our point tasks, maybe no one really listens to our podcasts and only the graders really look through every single graphic. But even if just one person finds something in what we do or it makes any of their days better, its worth it. And sometimes we don't even need that because we're that person. At the end of the day thats the thing I'm most greatful for from the International sim football league, It has made me that person.