DSG DARKWINGS: “I learned how to play better because of Toast’s Among Us content.”
Q: That must’ve been such a satisfying win. How hype are you feeling right now?
DARKWINGS: Yeah, it feels good. Like, I definitely feel good.
Q: It’s pretty risky to join a last place team mid-year as a rookie — did it feel that way to you?
DARKWINGS: Yeah. I mean, to be honest, I wasn’t really … Me accepting this was kinda just like, “I just have to accept it.” I don’t really think I had [many more] chances in the future if I didn’t.
Or… it was more like, “This was my goal, so I’m taking the first chance, the first [step].”
But, yeah, [after finally] winning I feel really good. […]
Coming into this team, I knew it wasn’t gonna be an easy road, but I did feel a lot of confidence with my teammates. Like, I’ve worked with Lawrence before, eXyu, and I think we can definitely become a good team. We just need to keep working on ourselves and making sure that we’re playing League of Legends.
Q: Toast watched you guys win today — did you know him before you joined the team?
DARKWINGS: Yeah. I watched some of his Hearthstone stuff and then some of his Among Us stuff, which — a lot of people know him through that, I think.
Q: Did Toast’s Among Us content help you become a pro league player?
DARKWINGS: Yes.
Q: Tell me more.
DARKWINGS: Yeah — I learned how to play better because of Toast’s Among Us content.
Q: Did you get to meet him?
DARKWINGS: I think, on our first week match, I saw him outside, [and] he went up to talk to me. So it was really cool seeing him, and [that] he wanted to talk to me.
Q: Have you been picking the Malzahar/Hwei in scrims to play for your comfort champs?
DARKWINGS: Honestly, our scrims haven’t been me picking these champs that often. It’s just occasionally, in Fearless Game 4 or 5, it’ll come out, and then we have some success on it.
The Malzahar, we did have success in scrim, but, it was also a different scenario because this was Game 2, and I was picking Malzahar in 1-2 […]
I was like, “Oh, maybe there’s a Malzahar angle if I pick a bit later on 3,” and then we’re like, “Oh maybe you can just pick it on 2.”
I was like, “… Maybe? Uhh, it’s not too bad?” But, yeah, then I learned — not good.
Q: How has working with Ido been? He’s gotten a lot of praise from outside of the team.
DARKWINGS: I think Ido is good at because he has a pretty good understanding of how the game [should be played] in micro ways and macro ways; he’s helped me a lot individually with just laning and stuff like that. And [he doesn’t just go] into the review and say, “Oh, we should do this, we should do that.” He kinda does a bit more guidance, for me at least. It’s been helpful.
Q: Do you feel like you’re mostly sitting back/absorbing as the rookie on the team?
DARKWINGS: I think that’s definitely most of it. It’s me kind of absorbing, trying to learn. I think that I have things that I bring to the to the team as well; there’s certain micro things that I feel like we’re not doing.
But, yeah, most most of the time, it ‘ kinda just me trying to absorb and trying to play as a team. And just making sure we’re not doing random things individually.
Q: Favorite things about each teammate?
DARKWINGS: Yeah. Castle, to me, is just a really funny guy, but he’s also very emotionally intelligent. When there’s drama and stuff he’s the one that knows how to handle it with the team, stuff like that. Castle’s a really cool person.
Lawrence is a funny, funny guy. Like, I guess, a funny guy.
Q: So everyone’s just funny?
DARKWINGS: He’s a bit funnier.
Rahel is quiet, but he’s nice. And he also is very mentally strong, [and] that’s good for our team.
And then Jae kind of controls the team environment, but he’s a very nice person, if that makes sense — like, you don’t wanna get on the bad side of him.
Q: Who gets scolded for dumb stuff the most?
DARKWINGS: I think it’s probably me and Lawrence [in game] *laughs*.
Q: What about out of game?
DARKWINGS: In real life, we don’t really … I mean, honestly, we haven’t really had any problems [living together]. Well, we talked about it at the beginning, like “Oh, if you see something you don’t like, just let the other person know.”
But we haven’t really done that, if that makes sense; we’ve been pretty chill. We’ve been eating together. And sometimes Jay cooks for us, as a five man. Castle sometimes cooks for us.
Q: What’s your favorite thing that they make?
DARKWINGS: They made, Kimchi Jjigae, or Korean Army Stew. […] That was very good.
Q: So what are you getting in trouble for in-game?
DARKWINGS: Just sometimes we’re kinda doing stuff too individually. Like, we’re going off and doing this random play [and] we fuck up our tempo.
Q: Does huhi feel like the older dad of the team? Does he get confused by Zoomer terms or anything?
DARKWINGS: I feel like huhi is actually pretty [tapped in], like he kinda understands the Zoomer terms. He’s kinda just, you know, a slightly older person [but] he’s actually in the know.
Q: So looking at the DIG rivalry rematch, do you wanna call out anyone specifically that you dislike at the organization?
DARKWINGS: *laughs* I like Toby, the manager, but …. outside of that…
I mean […] I have no grudge against the players or anything. It’s just like [the organization].
Q: With Keine, most people would’ve expected him to destroy you in the 1:1 on paper — was he underperforming, or is your strength a lot higher than people think even in your rookie split?
DARKWINGS: I think, my strength is when I understand a matchup pretty well, I play it pretty [well] — like, I’ll play it to almost to what it should be. Maybe I would go down an extra 5-10 CS than what it should be. But today, I think I played pretty well, and Keine played a bit under what I think he should have played.
Q: Since you picked them, you think DIG is the worst team in the league, right?
DARKWINGS: Yep. And we do believe that just because we think that their map play and their fighting isn’t as good as the other teams. […] I think because 100T’s most powerful players are their mid-jungle Quid and River, [and] I don’t know why, but they don’t seem to be playing that well or they’re making weird decisions, which kinda causes them to suffer.
So we’re a bit unsure — or at least I’m a bit unsure — if we did pick 100T how the matchup would [go].
Q: Any final message for DSG fans?
DARKWINGS: Keep supporting DSG, and we love Toast.
