Challengers: A Character Study

Challengers released back in April earlier this year and I still can’t stop thinking about it. I recently rewatched it on a plane and I couldn’t help but write down a few of my thoughts on the film and how intelligently written all of the characters are. 

The depth of human emotions and motivations isn’t exactly easy to break down and fully understand. Challengers does a phenomenal job of showcasing just how convoluted humans are. 

Patrick represents the struggle of choosing your dream and passion to subsist off of. Literally a starving artist, if you will. Patrick is driven by his passion and nothing more. There is nothing safe about him or his intentions. He lives and breathes tennis and is consumed by it.  

While Patrick has charisma and is an attractive character, he doesn’t have a lot going on, His whole self is extremely shallow and it reflects in his passion for tennis. We never see him take any advice from anyone else and is extremely cocky. He doesn’t even take advice from Tashi who he knows is better than him but refuses to admit it. 

Art is the complete opposite of Patrick. Art represents the smart but safe mindset to life with the understanding that your passion can change as you grow in life. Art has always liked tennis but he shows that he can take it or leave it. It's a hobby he’s good at and that’s the most it’s really been for him. 

He pushes himself to be passionate for the game even long after he’s checked out of it for the sake of the one thing, or person in this case, he’s truly passionate about: Tashi. Art’s priorities in his passions changed like any normal person would with life.  

Tashi represents the most balanced approach in contrast to both Art and Patrick’s wildly different sides. She indulges in her passion but makes sure to put stability and safety first whether or not it involves her passion. This mostly stems from her background where she’s the one putting the money on her family’s table. Early on, we see that she’s able to get massive brand deals, scholarships, and even stablish her own tennis foundation for girls. 

This speaks volumes to her priorities and passions which are really just one combined entity. Tashi has been brought up in a much lesser fortunate background than Art or Patrick and takes a lot of responsibility upon herself to take care of her family, her future, and her legacy.  

Tashi’s passion goes beyond the temporal now (which Patrick desperately seeks) and rather focuses on her wanting to make things better for her future family line. Honestly, this could play a lot into why Tashi ends up choosing Art over Patrick to marry. He’s safe and reliable, unlike Patrick. But they both have a place in her life that she cannot get rid of because without one, the other will always fail. 

Deuce 

Like fire and ice, Art and Patrick’s original duo name, the three of them need each other to survive and keep fueling each other. Before Tashi came along, Art and Patrick always balanced each other and had a good way of keeping passion and success together but as soon as another element was added, they lost that immediately. 

Art’s passion changed from tennis to Tashi, doing anything she wanted so long as she would want him - including tennis. Again, Art realized that tennis was no this endgame – a life with Tashi was.  

However now Art lives as Tashi’s avatar, competing and getting sponsorships, and having this massive team behind him - something that should have been Tashi’s had it not been for her life-changing injury in college. He feels party responsible for this after knowing that Tashi and Patrick’s relationship has been fairly unhealthy for quite some time. 

Art clearly struggles with this feeling of survivor’s guilt and does anything and everything Tashi wants to help maintain her dreams and create a better life and foundation for their daughter. 

On the opposite side, Patrick loves the struggle. Despite him barely making money to afford food, he still prefers this struggle of a life because this still feels like he’s doing things right per his ego. He truly believes that the struggle means you’re on the path to success. He’s self-made and has not had any handouts or help and he takes pride in that, even if he has to manipulate other people to find a place to sleep that night. 

Art has what Patrick wants - fame and money but Patrick has what Art needs – passion and drive. 

The difference between Art’s safe corporate route versus Patrick’s struggle is stark. We see Art’s health metrics being carefully tracked and his food and drink intake being monitored while Patrick subsists off of whatever he can get his hands on.  

Art is given fresh competition clothing from his sponsors while Patrick has to wear his second unlaundered shirt halfway through a match. The numerous differences in their lifestyles really speak for themselves. 

However, Patrick and Art have so much in common and are clearly more connected than just friends. Even when they’re shown in their older years when they don’t identify as friendly, there’s still a particular tension there that’s inexplicable chemistry. Obviously, we don’t have to talk about that one scene with the two of them with Tashi, but it helps my argument quite a bit. 

We know that Patrick is attracted to men and women, as he’s seen swiping right on men and women on his dating app, which could partly explain his connection to Art. Art is also Patrick’s safety. He’s comfortable with him and Patrick knows what to expect with Art, something that Tashi also appreciates. 

It’s interesting that there’s a parallel we see with Art spitting his gum in Patrick’s hand later in the movie that follows an earlier scene of Art spitting his gum in Tashi’s hand before playing tennis. Art is their anchor. 

Art seems to understand this as well but is mostly concerned with not wanting to be left out with either of these people he loves and cares for. Art actually specifically states that he doesn’t want to be left out when Patrick and Tashi begin dating and asks for details. 

Art would be losing both Patrick and Tashi when they started dating, so his jealousy and feeling of being left out goes both ways - between the woman he loves and the man he loves. 

Tiebreak Set 

However, Patrick isn’t in love with Tashi but rather is in love with Tashi’s talent and her potential because that’s everything he wants in his own life. Art is in love with Tashi, not even just due to her talent or passion but rather with just who she is as a whole.  

Tashi is not in love with anyone but tennis and herself. She claims she doesn’t want anyone to be in love with her but she does want to be worshipped and craves that audience she used to have and that presence she held. 

Art fulfills that need and offers safety for Tashi to lean on, knowing he is fully malleable to anything she will request of him, unlike Patrick who will do anything he wants when he wants and can’t be controlled. 

All Art has ever cared for is Tashi’s happiness since the day he met her. All Patrick has cared for is what Tashi brings outwardly immediately – her status, outward beauty, and fame. Patrick doesn’t truly respect Tashi, not even her tennis game. 

The only time we see Tashi truly rattled is during the argument she has with Patrick in her dorm room where he claims she just wants him to be part of her fan club. We see Tashi bristle and reply, "You're not a member of my fan club?” Patrick retorts with, “I’m your peer and I’m certainly not going to be your student.” 

As much as Tashi tried to hide it, this argument hit her to her core and she was thrown off her normal pre-game routine and ended up injuring herself due to it. The injury, of course, wasn’t anyone’s fault, but we know that Art and Tashi despise Patrick for it anyway. 

This does make Patrick deciding to beg Tashi for assistance later on pretty satisfying. Unfortunately, even at this point, it may be too late for anyone to save Patrick’s career. Of course, he seems to know this already but refuses to actually admit it. He may also have just wanted to crawl back into Tashi’s pants (which we know he was successful with) but either way, we did see that he had gained a sliver of perspective during his lone struggle.  

Mixed Doubles 

Each character has a play style that is indicative of their personalities: Tashi is calculated and precise, Art is incredibly textbook and can’t break out of habits he’s learned over time, and Patrick is wild but able to adapt in each match he plays. 

Art mentions that Patrick has never beaten him but tells him he feels no need to prove he can. While this is the lie he gives Patrick, Art is desperate for the win because he knows his life with Tashi is on the line. 

The night before, the night Tashi and Patrick have an affair, we see Art in his most vulnerable form fidgeting before approaching Tashi to tell her he wants to be done with tennis and retire to spend time with her and their daughter. 

Even though Tashi tells him that’s fine, he knows it’s not and comes back to her and asks her to tell him what to do. He literally gets on his knees to tell her to just tell him what she wants. Tashi replies saying if he doesn’t beat Patrick that she would leave him. Art drops his head and Tashi gently says “Does this help you?” as if to play it off as a harsh form of motivation rather than the true statement both her and Art know it to be. 

Of course, Tashi does care for Art, but no more than a mother for her child by obligation. Art is such a pure-hearted person, and Tashi and Patrick both know he’s the best of them all. So, they do their best to maintain Art’s innocence and love. 

After she puts Art to sleep, she goes to meet Patrick. In this moment she’s feeling panic and anxiety knowing that her world with tennis may be ending. Art's career was really her career which was now on its last legs. This brings her to Patrick’s car where she begs him to lose in the tournament tomorrow.  

While this could have been due to her not wanting to leave Art if he lost, it’s fairly obvious she was more concerned with the loss of a match against Patrick demoralizing Art into retirement, which would be kissing her tennis career with him goodbye.  

Tashi feels trapped, knowing her relationship with Art would now not just be coach and player but wife and husband and she can’t necessarily handle that. She knows no love for another person but rather for tennis. Without tennis, she doesn’t have a relationship with Art. 

In meeting Patrick that night, Tashi sees reflected in him what she wishes she could be - wild and free with no need to play safe. But again, due to wanting to provide for her family and have a partner she knows she can control and thus coach properly to play like herself, she can’t be with Patrick. 

Game and Set 

At the New Rochelle Challenger, everyone’s emotions and nerves are at an all-time high. Art feels that his life is about to be turned upside down if he doesn’t win this game, Patrick just wants to make his next paycheck with a win, and Tashi desperately needs Art to win and is anticipating Patrick throwing the game intentionally. 

We see Patrick’s internal turmoil with wanting to potentially help Tashi and Art but enjoys the game too much and is playing his normal way. At a certain point, with even scoring throughout the day, Patrick has a moment of clarity and understands that he has no idea how this game is going to turn out and either of them could win. 

They’re evenly matched and Patrick just wants to have a little fun and potentially repair his relationship with Art. Patrick initiates his serve with the same pose he copied from Art to confirm that he had slept with Tashi. Art recognizes this, even years after this communication response had been used and is, at first, angry. 

Art has a moment of reflection where he finally seems to accept that Tashi has never truly been his and that he’s fallen out of love with tennis over the last few years just trying to earn the love of a woman who could never return that same love back. 

In looking up at Patrick, Art realizes that the passion he’s been missing, that he’s been desperately hoping Tashi would give him, has actually been with Patrick and the game. 

Then they play tennis. Real tennis. While the winner of the last match isn’t pointedly clear, it doesn’t matter. Everyone has won: Tashi finally got that game of tennis she’d been desperately trying to teach both Art and Patrick to understand and play, and Art and Patrick have reconnected and become one with Fire and Ice. 

The Day Before: Controversy Explained (Snap Aim Podcast)

Just to preface this post, this is the written/readable version of the latest Snap AIm Podcast episode I published!

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Okay so we’ve all heard about The Day Before and how the studio behind it, Fntastic, is now shutting down. But just in case you’re out of the loop, let me catch you up to speed.

People were so excited for the release of The Day Before back when it was releasing teasers that showcased an incredible survival zombie apocalypse game. It was first announced in January 2021 with a five minute trailer that had gamers salivating over how good it looked. For me, it was going to scratch that DayZ type itch that survival gamers wanted. It looked way too good to be true.

And it was.

More footage came out from Fntastic covering gameplay and the release date was announced for June 2022. Then that date came and went and Fntastic focused on showing off it’s Dead by Daylight and Prop Hunt from Garry’s Mod game called Propnight. It was fine. It wasn’t anything special. Certainly not worth delaying The Day Before for.

But the release date got pushed back for March 1st 2023 after the devs said The Day Before was switching over to Unreal Engine 5. That already screamed red flags, the game seemed to be far along in development so the late transition over to a new engine seemed unnecessary.

There was a lot of silence from Fntastic after that delay. Fans started to tear the game trailers apart and dig into Fntastic’s background and question whether or not this game was legit or if it was real at all. Then it came out that Fntastic operated by a volunteering culture where they don’t pay all of their workers.

There was heavy backlash after that discovery and Fntastic tried to defend itself by saying that some of their workers do get paid, the ones who are regular employees, and the others are full-time volunteers who get cool rewards, participation certificates, and free codes.

The next update after that was a new gameplay trailer showing 4k graphics with RTX on but then the removal of The Day Before on Steam. Apparently, Fntastic failed to secure the trademark for the game in the United States and Steam blocked the game page.

They tried to claim that they didn’t know about the trademark issue till January this year, in 2023 so they had to push back the game again to November 2023. Fntastic tried to cover up the fact that they’d always planned to delay the game by pinning the blame on the trademark issue.

This was the last straw for fans and people started looking further into gameplay clips and photos and call out The Day Before as a scam. A lot of people, including me, did not think the game was even real. There were so many curated gameplay clips we’d seen that people genuinely questioned its existence.

It definitely didn’t help that the latest gameplay trailer released was almost the same as Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s trailer. Fntastic vehemently defended itself and told the public to just wait and see when their game releases and that fans would just see for themselves the product they were creating.

Well, another delay hit The Day Before, this time from November to December 7th of this year and with the caveat that only the PC Steam version would launch in Early Access. And Early Access on Steam cost $39 with the full price later billing at $49.

Well, there wouldn’t really be a full price moment for The Day Before. December 7th came and The Day Before was just vaporware. Sure, you could boot it up and enter the game but saying you could “play” the game is a bit generous.

Players loading in couldn’t get past the intro scene and load into the world proper, and once actually in the world the gameplay was nothing like what was advertised and the amount of bugs would put Florida in the summer to shame.

The Day Before immediately became one of the worst reviewed games on Steam and then, not even a week after release, Fntastic announced that it was going to be closing its studio. Players who bought Early Access were furious that they were just shit out of luck with no more post-launch support and no plans for the game to fully release.

The Day Before just lives as it is now, a buggy awful mess of a downloadable series of files. Fntastic has been removing all evidence of what The Day Before was supposed to be with taking down trailers from YouTube, and the game being delisted from Steam.

Also, some players pointed out that Fntastic has rebranded on some Steam listings of games they’ve developed and are now calling the studio as Eight Points. The studio specified that they’re not directly profiting from The Day Before’s launch but the sales from the game are seemingly going towards paying off the studio’s debt before shutting down the game.

If you bought the game and want your money back, your best bet is to go to Steam Help, click on purchases, and click on The Day Before and explain why you want your refund for the game. I’m pretty sure a majority of players who bought its Early Access are doing the same.

The Cost of a Body

I had no idea a body cost so much money.

Recently I went to a plastic surgeon to see about liposuction. I know, just work out and you’ll be fit and happy, Stella. Unfortunately, I’ve been working out and power-lifting and loving it but hating how I’ve been perceived on the camera for my job.

I hated how most comments wanted to just post about my body and how I’d gained weight. No matter how many times I told myself that I literally had to gain mass to lift more and win my previous power-lifting competition, it wasn’t enough to keep me feeling happy with how I looked.

I used to feel so proud of how I looked and felt, being able to lift double my weight but being so front and center in my line of work made me feel so vulnerable and not nearly good enough to be on camera.

I started obsessing over every fold, wrinkle, pimple, whatever. Finally, I decided to take matters into my own hands and look at different options I could take to maybe get some confidence back. I called up a cosmetic surgeon and made a consultation appointment to see what procedures were realistic for me.

$300 gone and two months later I finally got into the doctor’s office. His office was incredibly polished, just sparkling white and pristine. Gold accents lined every desk and bookcase and I walked in feeling very out of place in my street clothes. The receptionist who greeted me matched the office perfectly, dressed so sharply without a single hair out of place.

She led me to a quiet room with a lovely view of downtown. I sat and waited anxiously, very aware of how I was sweating from having walked over in the sun. A few moments later, I heard a knock at the door and the doctor came in, all smiles.

I shook his hand and noticed just how perfect he looked with his symmetrical face and incredible well-groomed hair. If I were to trust anyone with my aesthetics, I’d definitely trust him. He sat down and asked me what I wanted to have done and I told him my concerns about a double chin and how I felt self-conscious on camera.

He asked gently for permission to touch and study my face and I said “of course!” As he looked at the area I was worried about, he lightly pinched and poked and then sat back. I looked at him, anxiously, wondering what he’d say about my appearance.

He just looked at me and smiled and said “There’s really not a lot of fat there. I don’t think liposuction would really do anything for you. I can’t recommend it.”

I felt two things at once: relief and sadness. I felt relieved that maybe it all was in my head. Maybe I was too hard on myself and seeing imperfections that aren’t there. But then I felt frustration and sadness over the fact that I couldn’t have something done to just erase the problem I thought I was seeing. 

I asked if there were any other alternatives and he suggested a non-surgical route if i really wanted it but that again, it really would not be doing much since there wasn’t a lot of fat under my chin.

I tried to focus on his explanation, but was really distracted by how conscious I was of my body just then at that moment. The way my stomach fit in the pants I wore that day, how my arms pressed against my body making them feel bigger, the way I tilted my chin slightly upward to get rid of the double chin feeling.

My heart dropped a little more realizing maybe I had just really become a horrible person towards myself. I asked the doctor if there was an option for liposuction on my midsection. He asked again if he could assess my body and I stood up and let him look at my sides. He said there was some fat he could work with but it would be shrinking it very minimally.

Once he’d answered all my questions and offered me advice on procedures, he left me back in the care of the receptionist who helped me figure out estimations on surgical plans if I chose to do liposuction. I nearly choked reading the number.

$25,000.

$25,000 just for liposuction around my midsection. I asked questions about payment planes and alternatives with the receptionist and left the office stating I’d have to think about it. Even if I had the money for the procedure, I’d have to take a month off camera work at least to recover from the surgery.

On the drive home, my mind raced trying to find ways I could come up with the money. Maybe it would help me feel a little more comfortable with myself. Maybe it could give me the body I really wanted and saw others obtain on Instagram. Maybe this could fix it?

But what if it didn’t? There’s no guarantee the procedure would be able to give me that “dream” body I wanted. There was no guarantee anything we discussed could fix how I feel about myself. 

Meeting with the doctor was more helpful than I’d imagined. A small part of me wanted to shell out the money through a five year payment plan to make it work, but a bigger part of me remembered how the doctor looked at me and told me that there wasn’t much he could work with.

So much of my own hatred towards my body was just built in my head. It’s weird that a potential bill of thousands of dollars was a wake up call but, I’m glad it was. Cosmetic surgery is a fantastic thing for people who want to feel affirmed and more comfortable in their bodies. But I realized I was trying to do it to appease those shitty comments I’d seen over and over again and not because I wanted it for myself. 

I shouldn’t go into debt over people who talk about my body without realizing what this body can do. I can lift so much more than I have before. I’m actually healthy and at a healthy weight after being severely underweight for most of my life due to actively recovering for half my adult life from an eating disorder.

It is much easier said than done to ignore the hateful comments and discourse around my body when so much of my job is to be on camera and at the front of what we do. It gets really tough a lot of the days, I can’t lie. The best thing I can do for myself is to openly admit that it has gotten to me and that I actively stare into the mirror and hate myself.

But no one who comments negatively on my weight or figure deserves to have more space in my head than they’ve already taken. I’m healthy. I’m constantly doing bigger and better things with my career. And I won my last power-lifting meet and am going into my third competition this October.

It’s so hard to keep positive when the negative sticks out so loudly above the rest. If those people want to spend energy and mental capacity just to hate on me, my body, my job, anything about me, that’s fine. It doesn’t have anything to do with me and it changes nothing about who I am or what I’m doing.

I’m worth so much more than that. I owe it to myself to just focus on me and what makes me happy. If that’s the $25,000 procedure, okay! I want to do it. If it’s just continuing to eat, be happy, lift, get stronger, okay! I’m going to do that. But if I find myself wanting to do something just because it might make those negative voices happier? Fuck that.

It’s going to be hard but I’m going to focus on doing things for me. Cutting out the amount of time I spend on social media has helped immensely with quieting the negative majority who just desperately want to hate someone to make themselves feel better.

It’s going to be a slow process but I’m happy to focus on it, on me. 

Gaming is for Everyone but My Patience is Not.

I am exhausted.

I absolutely love my job and love what I do and I’m pretty damn good at it. But every time I publish something, a preview or a review or even just an opinion piece on something I have a lot of passion for, I notice the mix of replies commenting on the same things: my race, gender, or appearance.

Of course it’s not every reply that’s negative, but the negative ones do stick more often than I think I’d like to admit. I’ve recently been in a pretty bad mental state, going through a depressive episode and PTSD flare ups, so the comments have gotten to me more than I expected and realized till today. It’s discouraging and annoying seeing the same things being said about me when all I want to do is just share my love for gaming and express my opinions about the games I’ve been entrusted with providing coverage on.

Finding my space in the FPS genre has been incredible and it really made me find that passion for gaming when I was back in high school with my friends hanging out in their basement playing custom Call of Duty games and just having fun. It’s been such a great experience being given trust from my coworkers to provide news and opinions on FPS games.

I’ve slowly gained my confidence in being able to cover games in general and be a voice that can be trusted with the community and provide good feedback. All I want to do is connect with the community and provide an ongoing discussion and dialogue about games. I don’t feel I’ve ever wanted anything more than that from working in games.

Ever since I started out as a Twitch streamer in 2014, I realized I loved having discussions about games, recommending them, and also just talking about what makes specific games special to me and others. Being able to connect with so many people about a media form is kind of amazing, especially since I grew up in a time where the internet was so new and gaming was definitely nowhere near what it is now.

But since I started streaming in 2014, I also saw a side to the gaming community that I didn’t realize was still a problem. I had a very small community on Twitch that was built around positivity and openness. I wanted it to feel like a little family in a corner of the internet and it grew to become a welcoming group of people. But that took a lot of weeding and curating to do.

I recognize that my first and continued actions of banning people who were being sexist, racist, hateful were the key reasons my community stayed a loving positive group. The rest of the internet can’t really be moderated like that. When I first started at IGN I remember being so eager to check my first on camera appearance comments to see how people would react and remembered being so… disappointed.

The first comment I saw was a racist comment and I remember being taken aback. Another comment was about my appearance and I recall not wearing something that different from what my male coworker was wearing but they didn’t get that same sort of negativity.

In my years of being on Twitch I’d honestly become pretty separated from the hateful comments I’d come across occasionally. It was pretty easy to have moderators ban them before I even saw the comments or even just avoid them altogether due to the community we had created. So seeing this was completely different in this new part of the gaming world. Without fail, each video I was present in with my voice and face, I would see negative comments on either my appearance, race, or gender.

When I started at IGN I was pretty skinny, I was actually slightly underweight but I was very thin. Still on camera that wasn’t good enough for the viewers who would comment negative things about me. Saying things like being flat or whatever. Then, after the pandemic hit, I got into powerlifting and put on some muscle and extra mass (and ass nicely enough) and I’m at a healthy normal weight now with extra curves that I’ve always wanted.

But now I’m “fat” and I need to “lay off the food” according to those same viewers. There is no winning, honestly. I used to fight back against all the comments I’d see. I wanted them to know this was not okay and that I saw them. That the person on screen who they thought was completely separated from their comments, could see their hurtful remarks.

That got exhausting quick. It’s always funny to see people tell me “don’t give them the time of day” when I highlight some particularly negative things I see and choose to blast them. The times I choose to showcase those comments, most times I am actually pulling one out of dozens of comments out to highlight how nasty people can be.

I ignore more than what is seen which is, to repeat, exhausting. When I first started out working in gaming, I wanted to really engage with the viewers and other gamers and talk to them in the comments or wherever else they may see my articles and videos. But as time as gone on, I have found myself checking the comments less and less. And it makes me so sad.

I want to connect with you all. I want to talk to y’all about games and I want to discuss things but getting to the people who do want to have an actual conversation or real feedback is a battle to get to. And I’m finding that I don’t want to wade through the shit to get there. 

I don’t think I’ll ever be “good enough” for the negative, racist, sexist assholes who exist in the space. I’ll never be qualified enough for them, I’ll never be hot enough and I’ll never be thin enough. 

I think they forget though, I don’t live for them. I don’t write for them, I don’t dress for them, and I certainly didn’t start working in games for them. They can leave comments all they want but it does not change who I am, it does not change the fact that I am the head of FPS at IGN, it does not change that I can crush a man’s head between my legs like a watermelon if I wanted to.

It does not change me or my momentum.

But it is exhausting and I am not the only woman, particularly POC woman, in games who deals with this abuse daily. It bothers me when people say “I don’t know why you get so much hate” when the answer is just because I am a POC woman in games covering the games that men thought were so male-dominated. Though it almost is a point of pride to say I make men angry just by existing. It’s an interesting but useless superpower. 

When you’re at the forefront of the games industry, especially with news coverage, and you’re on the camera nearly daily, there will always be a slew of nastiness. You know why I’m getting this much hate, or that someone who looks like me is getting the hate. It’s because we exist and are in the space. 

But we belong here and are not going to be leaving. In fact, things are changing. Slowly but surely. I’m not entirely sure if I will get to an end point here but I wanted to just express my frustration and talk out my passion and reaffirm to myself that this is what I want to do. I love this. I love what I do. I deserve to be here and have earned my spot. I’m here to stay and I’ll keep fighting against the shitheads who throw trash at women in the industry when I have the mental capacity to.

Love you and keep gaming.