This is Auckland, where new money meets old. Alex Casey is going to try and laugh at The Real Housewives of Auckland through her weekly power rankings – because if we can’t laugh then all we have is the void. Click here for previous instalments.
1) Angela Stone
Hell has frozen over, the pigs are flying through the air and the chakras are all aligned: turns out Angela is an actual human being. And when I say a human being I of course mean, a marshmallow.
Angela has long tried to hammer home that she puts the real in cereal and the tru in strudel, but it wasn’t until this week that we got to see exactly why. Let us peek beneath the bold ponchos and the crashed VW bonnets to see the real Angela Stone, who made herself more vulnerable and exposed than a life model named Ben (I’ll get to him later).
Who would have thought this revelation would all begin with this chilled-out conversation starter?
The navel gazing continued as Angela was forced to Google what navel gazing meant…
With Angela’s eyes firmly fixed on her own bellybutton, Louise went full 20/20 on her ass and extracted the sword of truth from the Stone. Turns out that Angela and her twin brother were raised by their grandparents from the age of two, and she now doesn’t know where he is. Because she can’t help him, Angela tries to help as many other people as possible.
Just as the scary old man with the shovel in Home Alone turns out to be good, we’ve seen beneath the layers of Angie Stone, human marshmallow, serial lethargic, and queen of hand eye ball co-ordination. Namaste.
2) Rohan Clooney
Anne’s nephew Rohan returned this week for a tense blind date with Julia Sloane’s daughter. Anne decided this week that he is like “a young George Clooney” which seems bonkers until you remember what young George Clooney actually looked like and realise that this is kind of a sick neg by Anne BB.
For all his charm, Rohan still has the zingers and told Anne across the table, “from what I gather from my father, there have been a lot of boys you’ve liked.” Loony young Clooney how dare you judge Anne for her 5000 husbands! Focus on your own relationship for once in your life, mate.
Needs more love hearts imo.
3) Michelle Blanchard
There were two exceptionally good things that Michelle pioneered this week. Number one was this reaction to Gilda’s sweet Angela impression:
The second is this advice that Michelle gave to Angela about her scummy boyfriend. Please print this out and nail it to the door of all your good mates stuck in rancid rat king relationships imo.
4) Gilda Kirkpatrick
Gilda met up with her “bullshit-free friend” Michelle this week to talk about all the things that can kill people:
Homicidal plots aside, Gilda was a real Holly Hobby this week, organising everything from a fun day at the race track to a life drawing class with Anne Batley-Burton and a very low rent naked man. Her gaze was very much making a bee-line for the pee-line if you get what I mean. His eyes are up here Gilds.
5) This amazing flower arrangement
Now THAT is mise en scène.
6) Anne Batley Burton
Anne continues to lament the yesteryear of yore, back when you could trade mandarins for kisses and spend your teenage years playing Monopoly, Scrabble and 500 instead of awkwardly txting under the table whilst being filmed for a reality television show.
Rohan’s etiquette disaster aside, Anne definitely had a good time at the life drawing class. It was sophisticated, it was nude, it would have been raunchy if Anne had actually drawn a schlong instead of this ENORMOUS singular nipple. Where’s my rescue remedy because I need to be brought back from the dead via what is basically fresco Jesus:
7) Louise Wallace
All hail the queen of the reaction face:
Louise proved herself to still have her journalism chops this week, probing for answers from Angela like a frenzied Cuddly Bear looking for a tasty chicken leg. She calmed Angela down, heard her sob story without even whispering about being the weakest link once, and then won the car racing challenge whilst look like a total cool guy.
And who can forget her sage piece of advice for OK Go impersonators the world over: “If you take one foot off the treadmill, you’re going to fly backwards and hit your head.”
111) Baddie Kirk
How dare you walk out on a little marshmallow called Angie TWELVE TIMES?! Boy bye, enjoy your bowl of lettuce from Clooney.
If you love devouring reality television as much as we do, be sure to check out UnREAL on Lightbox below. Trust us, you’ll never see reality the same again.
This month planet Earth will shake as the League of Legends World Championships thunder across the globe. It’s the esports Superbowl and for the teams taking part there’s big cheddar to be made. Our LoL correspondent Eugenia Woo is covering the event all month with weekly round ups and standings, but first here’s a in-depth primer for anyone new to the sport.
(Click on over here for Eugenia’s team standings for week 1 of this mayhem.)
Okay. You’ve probably heard of League of Legends. Even if you haven’t heard of it, then you’ve probably been at an internet cafe at one point and witnessed a lot of dudes playing a videogame where a bunch of characters kill each other in a forest. Those dudes probably yelled “ULT” a lot (pronounced: alt) and complained loudly about someone called Teemo. If nothing I’ve said so far makes sense to you, that’s alright. I’m here to make all that confusion go away. I’m going to tell you more about what League of Legends is and how one lucky international team is going to pocket $1 million by the end of the month.
Photo by Riot Esports
What is League of Legends?
League of Legends is often colloquially referred to as ‘LoL’, or ‘League’, or ‘the game that ruined my life’. It’s a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) game created by Riot Games that is played five-a-side with two competing teams in any given session.
How does the game work?
Each team has a base that they have to defend, and the primary objective of the game is to kill the enemy’s base. The secondary objective is just straight up killing the enemy team.
You accomplish both the primary and secondary objectives in spectacular fashion if you do tons of damage. And in order to do tons of damage, your character is going to need to buy things like daggers, guns, and spellbooks. In order to get your hands on those bad boys, you’re going to need tons of money – you get rich by killing various NPCs (Non-Player Characters) and looting their corpses for gold.
Photo from playbuzz.com
As you can see above, there’s 3 distinct lanes connecting one team’s base to the other, and then there’s shadowy places in-between that the light doesn’t touch. Generally, players stay within their particular lanes for most of the game depending on their assigned role (ADC, Support, Mid, Top or Jungle), with the exception of all-out teamfights that could give Smash Bros a run for its money. Not sure what these roles are or what the point of them is? Here’s a helpful not-quite-infographic:
In competitive LoL, each game starts with a drafting phase. It’s a bit like a football draft where your team picks up players – here, each team’s players get to pick the characters (champions) that they want for this game, and they also get to ban the other team from picking certain champions. There’s an incredible amount of champions in LoL for a team to choose from, and each one has its own kit of abilities that synergises with those of other champions to make up an effective team composition. Teams will pick champions that fit different types of compositions in order to combat their opponents, and will often try and trick other teams into not banning these champions.
The pick-and-ban phase is about mind games, and more often than not, teams will either lock themselves into a loss or a win depending on whether they’re the mindfucker or the mindfuckeree.
Like with any other sport, some strategies almost never let you down. In LoL, that’s referred to as the Meta – champions and tactics that are currently the strongest in competitive play. Naturally, teams will gravitate towards these compositions. You’ll never see all the champions ever created being played on the Worlds stage, but there will be a few fan favourites. To familiarise yourself with all the champions, you can watch some videos created by Riot Games explaining what they do, and why they’re each amazing in their own way.
So, where does the $1 million come in?
Every year since 2011, there’s been a LoL World Championship (Worlds) However, we’ve definitely come a long way from the original prize pool of $99,500. This year’s winner of Worlds walks away with a cool $1 million and with the Summoner’s Cup – indelible proof that your team deserves to be crowned the best in the world. Worlds gets more extravagant each year. They even got Zedd (aka dude that made this annoying popular song) to compose the theme for 2016, and a few years ago it was Imagine Dragons (who have now gone on to bigger things like the Suicide Squad soundtrack) and they had a hell of a live show with a full orchestra at the opening ceremony.
This year’s Worlds has 16 teams participating – 14 from the major regions, and 2 wild card teams from outside those regions. These teams are split into 4 different groups where they’ll play against everyone from their group twice. The 2 teams from each group with the highest scores after that will progress to a knockout bracket aka the Quarterfinals.
At this stage, we’ve just wrapped up Week 1 of Worlds. If you’ve been wondering how to get a piece of the action and where to go from here, I’ve got you covered!
Where do you watch the games?
Unless you’re reading this article from San Francisco, you probably aren’t going to be able to see the games in person. You might get lucky with some tickets for the other stages, but those would also, regrettably, be in the US. A much more realistic (cheaper) option is to watch the games online. The 2015 Worlds had people glued to online streams of the event for 60 million hours, so you definitely won’t be alone.
Photo by Riot Esports
On game days (Fridays – Mondays so far), Worlds usually starts around 12PM NZDT, and goes until 6PM. For those who are stuck in the office, there are rebroadcasts done at friendlier times.
For a full schedule of all the games and when they’ll be on (it’s all in local time, one of the good things about letting your browser access your location), check this out.
Things you’re going to hear that might confuse you
There’s an extremely helpful guide compiled by Reddit user SimplifyEUW that deals with popular terminology that will be used by the shoutcasters and analysts during the games. Yup, that’s right. Like with soccer and basketball, there’s continuous live commentary. If you watch the online streams, then you have the added benefit of being able to access an Alternative stream to the main game that deals specifically with the featured player match-up for that game and has former/ current pros weighing in on the technical stuff.
If you want to make sense of anything going on during the game, here’s some key phrases and words that you’ll need to know.
1. Shotcalling – As the word implies, this refers to players calling the shots, or making decisions. It can range from shit to god-tier depending on the team.
2. Minions – The tiny blobs that walk towards enemy towers in the various lanes. They only exist to be killed for gold and EXP.
3. Wards – These are like lightbulbs that grant vision of the dark and shadowy places on the map when placed down in-game. They time out after a while.
4. CS – Creep Score. The act of ‘CS-ing’ is racking up kills on minions.
5. EXP – Experience. This is gained from killing NPCs, enemy champions, and from destroying base defenses.
6. Farming – Staying in the lanes and killing the NPCs in order to get gold and EXP, usually because a player is trying to save up to get an important item.
7. Gank – When a player (usually the jungler) goes into a lane where one of their teammates is and tries to help them kill their opponent.
8. Turret – These are present on both sides of the map and they act as the first line of defense for each base. You have to get rid of them to advance to the centre of a base.
9. Nexus – The core of a base. It must be protected at all costs.
10. Teleport – Also referred to as TP. This is when laners use a spell called Teleport to magically move to a different place on the map that their allies have vision of. You can only TP to a structure, a minion, or a ward.
11. Flash – When a player travels a short distance instantaneously, sometimes over walls. This is usually used defensively, but can be used to get closer to an enemy that’s on the brink of death.
12. Flame Horizon – This is when a laner has dominated lane to the point where he’s 100 CS up on his opponent. It was coined because of Lee “Flame” Ho-Jong, a famous top laner who would do that consistently.
13. Clown Fiesta – e.g. “That last fight was a total clown fiesta.” This is used to describe a game or fight where everything was sickeningly bad and disorganised.
14.YEEAAAH BOI – This is shouted every time an item called Zz’rot Portal is put down in a game, so long as it’s being casted by Trevor “Quickshot” Henry.
Where to from here?
I spent most of last weekend drinking cheap Sav and live-tweeting the games, so if any of you were following that, you already know how destroyed I was by the sheer madness of this week, and that I’m going to continue covering Worlds for the next month.
After every week of games, I’m going to put out some hot takes and a ranking of which players triumphed and slumped. There’s also going to be a round-up of tweets from casters, players, and people like me and you re: the highlights of the games and the spiciest memes. Tweet me @ginnywoes on game day for some cheeky banter and amateur analysis, and I’ll catch you later on the Rift!
Let those grunty laners at Bigpipe do the shotcalling, for it is they who have made this post possible.
