{"id":29290,"date":"2015-11-03T05:26:21","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T10:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=29290"},"modified":"2015-11-03T01:36:14","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T06:36:14","slug":"half-time-ch6-fat-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=29290","title":{"rendered":"Half Time CH6: Fat Chance"},"content":{"rendered":"

The fix is in. I’ve finished playing a raw, unrehearsed, honest, no-save-scumming league, and the results are…interesting. The next two posts will share my results in the usual grim detail. But for now, an interlude:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What I’m ending on this manky barstool is a moderate type #45 Bad Night, with deep foundations of rotten karma, shades of last Winter when I’d gotten a molar yanked out by an indignant bookie, and a sassy garnish of migraine. All that’s drizzled with a rich sauce of humiliation and despair I’ve only begun to catalog since becoming manager of this team. I beg my sommelier to recommend a wine pairing.<\/p>\n

“Dwarf moonshine,” says the barman.<\/p>\n

Excellent choice.<\/p>\n

Now that I’ve had one–let me set the scene for you. No full recap is necessary, no blow-by-blow. Elves have been ruining my life for so long it’s become its own genre, and the story I’m about to tell you is replete with cliché.<\/p>\n

Flash back to a day ago. I was flush with\u00e2\u20ac"let’s not call it victory<\/i>. Let’s say I was flushed with the heady absence of defeat after my early-season draw with the Wood Elf team. So flush, in fact, that when I discovered I’d be up against them again for day two I was cautiously optimistic. “I have put my faith in the smallest and humblest of creatures,” I thought. “Because they desire neither power nor glory, but only superlethal doses of mayonnaise, they are truly the wisest among us and will ultimately prevail.” I would describe my state of mind as “stunned.” It couldn’t last.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

How had I missed all the strokes of luck that had brought me level last time? How I noticed that, as much (clogged and knackered) heart as my boys had, they were only scoring goals by the pork skins on their teeth? How had it failed to catch my attention that everything had gone right and nothing had gone wrong and I had tied<\/i>?<\/p>\n

Why was I surprised when it didn’t happen again?<\/p>\n

Relax, my assistant coaches had told me as I shooed the cat food butcher away from the pile of bruised-but-alive halfling remnants. I’d done good, they told me as I dug a cleat out of Polo’s inner ear. The final score had been 3-4 and that was perfectly respectable, they informed me as I asked the goblin coach next door if I could borrow his chainsaw. I should really calm down, they advised me from the boughs of the tree outside the locker room.<\/p>\n

It was a bad day. It had brought to light just how much of my game relied on blind luck\u00e2\u20ac"that rat bastard elf coach had gotten a goal through just about every time his players had performed to reasonable expectations. The pattern was: I’d kick the ball, he’d scoop it up with his catcher and race it out of my halflings’ short reach, he’d shift one or two good players out of my clumsy and unreliable tacklers’ ranges and from there it was a simple matter of shipping that ball down the elven pain train straight into my end zone. How could I compete with that? How was it physically possible <\/i>for us to compete with that? And he had a goddamn treeman on top of it! How was that fair?<\/p>\n

A polite cough stirs me from my self-indulgent moping. I look up into three-quarters of a face and upgrade my pity party to a fear fiesta. It’s Dickie the Landshark, and he has got a clipboard<\/i>.<\/p>\n

“Evening,” he says. “So we don’t usually do this, but we all formed a huddle on this one, and I’ve been put in charge of prosecuting the case on our joint behalf.”<\/p>\n

“You mean making me pay my gambling debts before you break every bone in my body.”<\/p>\n

He flips back a page on his clipboard. “That is our mission statement, yes.”<\/p>\n

“Look, I get a payout from McMurty if we win at least one game. I know it’s a longshot, but…”<\/p>\n

“We’ve seen that contract. Listen\u00e2\u20ac"we’re going to sum this up for you. With interest, we’ve determined what it will take for this debt to actually be made whole. The absolute minimum<\/i> amount. Would you like to hear it?”<\/p>\n

“Sure.”<\/p>\n

“You have to win the cup.”<\/p>\n

“So where we going to do this? Can I call my apothecary first? He’s getting drunk too, but I’ll take my chances.”<\/p>\n

“It’s possible <\/i>for you to win,” he says, “and therefore we will wait to see if you win. You’ll need to win the next match to make it to the playoffs; win every game then<\/i>, and you can take home the cup. It’s not impossible.”<\/p>\n

“Nothing’s impossible!” I say cheerfully. “But if I gave up now, could I get a discount? Maybe I get to keep one <\/i>kneecap? Just as a good faith thing.”<\/p>\n

“Good luck tomorrow. I heard the team is highly rated.”<\/p>\n

“I bet my team wishes they were finely grated<\/i>! Parmesan! Over some pasta<\/i>! Seriously, I’m really drunk, this is as good a time as any. I mean that. I mean, I’ll probably be drunk any other <\/i>time too, but…”<\/p>\n

He’s gone.<\/p>\n

I stumble back to the locker room\u00e2\u20ac"my current place of residence–giggling furiously. All my troubles today had been from losing my wafer-thin allowance of hope. Being rid of that was actually a huge relief. There was no chance of winning tomorrow’s match against a decent-rated team, let alone making it to the finals. This whole thing was easier when it was a foregone conclusion, and it didn’t get more foregone than a team of bumbling meatballs gamboling fecklessly up and down the pitch going up against a respected crack team of, of…<\/p>\n

“Hey,” I say to an assistant coach sleeping in one of the lockers. “Who are we up against tomorrow?”<\/p>\n

“Pinkfoot Panthers.”<\/p>\n

“Huh? What are they?”<\/p>\n

He tells me. I’m pretty sure I’m misunderstanding him, so I ask him to say it five different ways and in six extra languages, none of which I actually speak. But finally I get the idea.<\/p>\n

“So we’re a team of halflings,” I say, “going up against a team…of halflings<\/i>?”<\/p>\n

“Yes,” he says.<\/p>\n

“So…they’re just like us?”<\/p>\n

“Except for their skill, training, fans, budget, and success at the sport, yes. They’re exactly like us.”<\/p>\n

Sickening hope bubbles in my gut. “Okay,” I say. “I can work with that.”<\/p>\n

NEXT WEEK: TWO HALFS MAKE A HOLE<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fix is in. I’ve finished playing a raw, unrehearsed, honest, no-save-scumming league, and the results are…interesting. The next two posts will share my results in the usual grim detail. But for now, an interlude: What I’m ending on this manky barstool is a moderate type #45 Bad Night, with deep foundations of rotten karma, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-play"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}