How Heroes of the Storm taught me that Charli is an idiot. Also that I'm a bad person

One of the joys of Heroes of the Storm is how a game can swing dramatically. You can be sure that your team is doomed, and start getting down to assigning blame and denying all responsibility, when suddenly a dramatic team fight goes badly for the opposing team and the ball starts rolling in your direction.

So it’s important not to give up (or wait, isn’t it also important to give up?). If you hold out and play carefully an opportunity might open up and allow you to steal victory from the jaws of mutual acrimony.

Sadly, the obverse is also true. You might be riding high, dominating the other team and confident of victory. And then Charli happens.

Charli is one of my regular team mates who I tolerate because he makes me feel good about myself. I also see him in Real Life relatively often, so I have no doubt about exactly what kind of person he is.

Here I am in Real Life with Charli and my brother. Charli is the ugly one.

He’s pretty adept at playing Tassadar, an interesting and versatile character who can control the enemy team while providing support and protection to his team mates. He’s also sneaky and can get away from seemingly impossible situations.

Tassadar. A space alien who can manipulate psionic energy. A VERY SERIOUS CHARACTER!

Charli revels in getting frighteningly close to death yet somehow avoiding it. The problem is that he doesn’t always avoid it.

In a recent game, I felt we were comfortably winning. We had the upper hand with regards to destroying their defences as well as having more kills.

The game had been going on for a while, which is problematic because if you die at higher levels, you’re out of the game for longer. Charli, bless him, was prancing around like an idiot near the enemy, perilously close to death.

Charli has got himself into trouble

So we all had to come up to support him, and we started something of a controlled retreat.

Here comes the cavalry. Notice how close to death Charli is

At this point Charli was laughing maniacally. “No one can defeat Tassadar!” He decided that he could separate one of the enemy heroes with tassadar’s ultimate ability, which is to create a sort of energy wall. In the meantime, all our team mates were saying that no, it was time to retreat.

We're back at our gates. Phew, fight's done, right?

But Charli wasn’t having any of it. He plunged, and was immediately picked off.

Charli goes in for the kill

He puts up his stupid wall, but they're all on him like flies on Charli.

Bye bye Charli

The problem is you don’t want to leave a team mate behind, so the rest of us were hanging around
too, and when he plunged, we followed, and only two of us made it out alive.

The team hero, Awoogamuffin, and some other guy called Nomada, make a valiant attempt to protect the core...

Now it was five against two, and they just steamrolled into our base and won the game.

...to no avail

I blame Charli.

The thing is, my reaction goes against a personal rule of mine. I think that when in cooperative venture which is intended for fun, there’s nothing to be gained from turning on your partner. Be it computer games, tennis, or dancing.

I enjoy salsa from time to time, and there’s an unpleasant tendency among people, both leaders and followers, to criticise their partner during the dance. That just strikes me as ridiculous. We’re here to have fun, aren’t we?

It's simple: don't blame your partner.

Besides, I feel that the best dancers are able to adapt to their partner, and no matter what, they’re able to come out of the song having had a good time. No, it’s those dancers who are less sure of what they’re doing who require that their partner comply with the specific style that they have studied and perfected. These dancers don’t look at their partners, focused as they are on the specific sequence of movements required to pull off what they think they’re doing.

At least in Heroes of the Storm and tennis, you have a goal in mind; you want to win the game. Even in this case, I think putting your partner down is likely to make them play worse. How do you “win” at dancing, though? Surely by pleasing your partner, right?

I would even extend this to business and romantic relationships, though of course in those contexts it’s important to let others know when something isn’t sitting right with you. It’s when you feel the need to hurt the other person that you’ve lost the plot. In the end, turning on your colleagues and trying to make them feel bad about themselves is almost never a good idea.

There is, however, one exception to this rule, and that exception is Charli. Stupid Charli.

Tassaduuuuuuuuuuh!