Listen up retards. Do you happen to feel regret because you always think “ohhh if I yoloed my savings on TSLA/AMD/NVDA 🚀 leaps years ago I could be rich by now!!!”
Well if you didn't know already, it doesn’t really matter what happened in the past. Hindsight will always be 20/20. You shouldn’t be harsh on yourself on your past self that your past self wasn’t retarded enough to yolo their savings into AMD/TSLA/.... Your past self doesn’t have the same knowledge that your current self has. It’s fine. If you judged those stocks with the best DD you could do at the time and didn’t think they were worth it, then you did a good job.
If you always think about what you could/should have done in the past, then you don't have the right attitude to play the stock market casino imho.
The single most important thing is to be able to look ahead. There are always plenty of opportunities around. There are thousands of rockets that are still on earth right now. Some may depart this year, others will stay a little longer on earth. The true strength lies in being able to identify those rockets with the knowledge you have right now. And if you still miss most rockets that will take-off this year that's fine, maybe you'll learn, get better and you'll do better next year.
Now, what if I told you there’s a big rocket that’s parked right right here on earth and it has decent chance for take-off this year? Maybe it won't quite reach the moon this year yet, but hey leaving the exosphere should already be a cool milestone.
It has rock-solid fundamentals and will see lots of growth in the following years/decade.
It’s a company that has the fundamental technology to power all the computer vision tech, which is bound to boom this decade.
The company we’re talking about is of course Sony, and it is extremely undervalued right now.
Its P/E is only 14. They have a P/S of 1.65, a PEG of 0.92 (< 2 is already somewhat exceptional for a company/conglomerate of Sony’s size, under 1 is a steal)
Much lower than all of its same-sector peers. This indicates significant undervaluation.
Next up Sony has a P/CF 13.2, ROE of 20% (S&P 500 average is 14% which would already be considered pretty good. 20% ROE is excellent), PEGY of 0.89, P/B of 2.65 and finally Sony has $41.6B in cash on hand. This makes Sony one of the cheapest tech/entertainment/EV/semiconductor growth stocks you will find on the market.
(ROE of 20% + PEGY of 0.89 + PEG of 0.92 means this company is a growth stock based on the numbers alone, but we’ll dig into the actual company and overall outlook in a moment)
I challenge all retards to find a company with similar benchmarks in one of the mentioned sectors, seriously.
Quite frankly doing this DD honestly blew my mind. I kept looking everywhere for reasons why the company could be so undervalued and why they may struggle in the future. Very important to look at all the challenges the company faces to make sure I’m not just doing confirmation bias DD. But all I could find was the opposite. After several weeks and months of working on this DD, I can only conclude that it is overall a very solid company for a bargain price. The new CEO is taking the company in a great direction imho and I'm begin to think he could be Sony's Satya Nadella.
So if you want some easy tendies, maybe consider $SNE while it is still cheap, I’d say.
For the autists out there who care about analyst ratings, SONY ($SNE) currently has 18 BUY ratings, 2 OVERWEIGHT, 4 HOLD and 0 SELL. (= analyst consensus is a STRONG BUY). Very little analysts cover this stock compared to other entertainment/tech companies, so this adds to my assertion that the stock is very much under the radar. Which means you have time to get in before it gets noticed by the larger investing world and before it starts to get a more fair valuation (P/E of around 30 would be more fair for this company I think, but still cheaper than many same sector peers). But, anyway the few analysts who do happen to cover this company are basically all saying it’s an instant-buy at its current price.
Most boomer investors still think big Japanese tech companies are dinosaurs that have long been surpassed by China, South Korea and Apple etc ages ago. Young boomers may think Sony = PlayStation and that it's it. But the truth is that PlayStation, while very important (about 24% of Sony's total revenue last year), is a part of a larger story.
Lots of investors in general associate Sony with the passé Japanese electronics companies from the 80’s and the 90’s. Just like a lot people may think BlackBerry is a struggling phone company.
While Sony may not be the powerhouse in consumer electronics it was in the 80’s and the 90’s, in a lot of ways they are more relevant than ever before. Despite being a well-known brand and being known as the company behind PlayStation, for some reason its stock still seems to be under the radar among both retail and institutional investors. And boy, are they mind-blowingly undervalued. Even if a big part of its business would collapse tomorrow, they would still be slightly undervalued. And I am about to tell you why.
(& btw compared to Japanese tech/entertainment stocks $SNE is still super cheap (Canon, Nikon, Toshiba, Sharp, Panasonic, Square Enix, Capcom, Nintendo, Fujitsu all have P/E ratios ranging from 18 to 77 and none of them have the combination of global clout, fundamentals & growth prospects that Sony has))
2021 Sony as a corparation is not the fucking Sony from 2005-2015’s, just like BlackBerry in 2021 is not the fucking Blackberry from 2012. Just like Garmin in 2021 is not Garmin from 2011. Just like AMD in 2021 is not AMD from 2012.
No, in 2021, Sony is the global leader in imaging technology and people do not fucking realize it. Sony has 50% marketshare in the CMOS image sensor market. There’s a very good chance the smartphone in your pocket has Sony image sensors (unless it’s a Samsung phone). Sony image sensors are powering a big part of today's vision/camera technology. And they will power even more of tomorrow's computer vision tech.
In 2021, Sony is a behemoth in video games, music, anime, movies and TV show production. Sony is present in every segment of entertainment. Sony’s entertainment branches have been doing great business over the past 5 years, especially music and PlayStation. Additionally, Sony Pictures has completely turned around.
In 2021, Sony is the world’s biggest music publisher (and second biggest music company overall). Music streaming has been a boon for Sony Music and will continue to be.
In 2021, Sony is among the biggest mobile gaming companies in the world (yes, you read that right). And it’s mainly thanks to one game (Fate/Grand Order) that nets them over $1B revenue each year. One of the biggest mobile gaming companies + arguably biggest gaming brand in the world (PlayStation).
In 2021, Sony is an EV company. They surprised the world when they revealed their “Vision-S” at CES 2020. At the reception was fantastic. It is seriously one of the best looking EV’s. They already sell sensors to Toyota. Sony will most like sell the Vision-S's tech to other car manufacturers (sensors for driving assistence / autonomous driving, LiDAR tech, infotainment system).

40 sensors in the Sony Vision-S
Considering the overwhelmingly good reception of the Vision-S so far, I suspect the Vision-S could be another catalyst that will put Sony as a company on the radar of investors and consumers.
We've seen insane investment hype for anything even remotely related to EV over the past year. We've seen a company that barely had a few EV design concepts (oh wait, they had a gravity-powered truck though) even get a $30B market cap at some point lmao.
But somehow a profitable company ($SNE) that has an EV that you can actually drive, doesn't even have a fair valuation?
In 2020’s Sony’s brand value is at their highest point since 12 years. In 2021, it is projected to be a its highest point since 2001 assuming same growth as average yearly growth from 2015 to 2020. Keep in mind brand valuation is a bit bullshitty as there’s no standardization to compare brands from different sectors, let alone non-consumer-facing brands with consumer-facing brands. But one thing we can note is that Sony both as B2C brand and as a B2B company is on a big upwards trend.
https://interbrand.com/best-global-brands/sony/
https://careers.uw.edu/blog/2020/03/17/these-are-the-10-biggest-video-game-companies-in-north-america-shared-article-from-zippia/
In 2021, Sony is an entertainment behemoth. They have grown their entertainment branches by a huge amount over the past 5 to 10 years (they made some big acquisitions in the music space especially and they’re now also all-in in anime). I don’t think people realize how big Sony is as an entertainment company. I dug up the numbers and as of Q3 2020, PlayStation is the second biggest video game company in the world (Tencent is #1) in revenue (I suspect Sony might dethrone Tencent after Sony’s FY Q3 2020 is released). But Sony already comes very close to Tencent especially if you add Fate/Grand Order (which is under Sony Music and not under PlayStation) under PlayStation.
There’s no single other company that has this unique combination of a dominant/important position in all entertainment segments. (video games + music + movies + TV series + anime + TV networks). I guess Tencent maybe?
In 2021, Sony has amazing momentum in the camera space. If you’re familiar with the enthusiast photography space, you should know this. Basically, the market is slowly shifting from SLR to mirrorless cameras. This is because mirrorless cameras tend to smallelighter, have faster AF, better low light performance, better battery life and better video performance. Sony is the company that has been specializing in the development for mirrorless cameras for over a decade while Canon’s bread and butter has always been SLR cameras. Sony is in the lead when it comes to mirrorless cameras and that’s where the market is shifting towards. Because the advantages of mirrorless have become more and more apparent and Sony’s cameras have become technically superior, Sony has gained quite a bit of market share over Canon and Nikon in the last few years. In 2019, Sony overtook Nikon as the #2 camera manufacturer. Sony is in an upwards trend here. (they have the ambition to become the world’s #1 camera brand) Sony also has very good marketing for their cameras. (Sony has a lot of YouTubers / influencers / brand ambassadors for their cameras despite being a smaller brand than Canon)
(just search on YouTube and/or Google “switching to Sony from Canon” just to give you an idea that they do have amazing brand momentum in the camera space. You won’t get as many hits for the opposite)
A huge portion of Sony’s profit comes from image sensors in addition to music and video games. This is in addition to their highly profitable financial holdings division & their more moderately profitable electronics division.
Sony’s electronics division, unlike other Japanese brands, has shown great resilience against the very strong competition from China & South Korea. They have been able to maintain their position in the audio space and as of 2020 are still the global market leader in high-end TV’s (a position they have been holding for decades) and it seems they will continue to be able to maintain that.
But seriously this company is dirt-cheap compared to any of its peers in any segment and there’s various huge growth prospects for Sony:

CMOS image sensors & Sony’s overall imaging prowess will boom due to increased demand from automotive sector, security & surveillance industry, manufacturing industry, medical sector and finally from the aerospace & defence industry. On the longer term, image sensors will continue to boom due to increased demand for computer vision & AI + robotics. And for consumer electronics demand will remain very high obviously.
Sony is aiming for 60% market share in the CMOS image sensor market by 2026. Biggest threat here is Samsung here who have recently started to aggressively invest in image sensors and are challenging Sony. Sony has technological lead + higher production capacity (and Sony will soon open a new plant in Nagasaki), so Sony should be able to hold off Samsung.
The iPhone 12 Pro has 3 cameras + a lidar sensor. Apple now buys 3 image sensors (from Sony) + LiDAR sensor (from Sony) per iPhone 12 Pro they manufacture. Remember the iPhone X and iPhone XS? That one had “only” 2 rear cameras (with image sensos from Sony of course). Basically, Sony will be selling exponentially more image sensors as more smartphones get equipped with more and more cameras.
Now think about how many image sensors Sony can sell to Apple if the iPhone 13 will have 5 cameras + LiDAR sensor (I mean the number of cameras on smartphones certainly won’t decrease)
Gaming (PS5 hype, PSN game sales are booming, add-on content is booming, PS+ subscribers count is booming and finally PSNow & first-party games sales are trending upwards as well). Very consistent year-on-year profit & revenue growth here. They have a history of beating earnings expectations here. The number of PS+ subscribers went from 4M to 48M in just 6-7 years. Investors love to hype up recurring revenue and subscription services such as Disney+ and Netflix. Let’s apply the same logic to PS+? PS+ already has more subscribers than HBO Max in the USA.
PlayStation (video games in general) has not even scratched the fucking surface. Most people who play video games now are millennials and kids. Do you think those millennials will stop playing video games when they grow older? No, of course not. Boomers today also still watch movies and TV. Those millennials have kids and those kids are now also playing video games. The kids of those kids will also play video games etc. Basically the total addressable audience for video games will by HUGE by the end of the decade (and the decades after that) because video games will have penetrated all age ranges of the population. Gaming is the fastest growing segment of the whole entertainment business. By a large margin. PlayStation is obviously in a great position here as you can guess from the PS5 hype, but more importantly imho, the growth of PS+ subscribers (currently a bit under 50 million) and PSN users (>100 million MAU) over the past 5 years shows that PlayStation is primed to profit from the audience growth.
On top of that you have huge video game growth in the China where Sony & PlayStation is already much better established than Xbox (but still super small compared to mobile games and PC gaming in China). Within the console market, Xbox only competes with PlayStation in North America. In the rest of the world, PlayStation has an enormous lead over Xbox. Xbox is simply a lesser known and lesser desirable brand in the rest of the world
Anime streaming (basically they have a monopoly already + vertical integration, it might still be somewhat niche right now, but it will be big within 5 years. Acquiring Crunchyroll was a very good move)
Music streaming (no, they don’t have a music streaming service, but as music streaming grows, Sony Music also gets a piece of the growing pie through licensing/royalties, and they also still have a little 2.8% stake in Spotify)
Apple, Amazon, Netflix, AT&T and Disney are currently battling it out in the streaming wars. When there’s a war you have little chances of winning, you shouldn’t be the one waging the war. You should be the one selling the ammo. Basically Sony Pictures (tv shows + movies) is in that position. Sony Pictures can negotiate good prices for their content because Apple, Amazon, Netflix, AT&T are thirsty for content and they all want their own exclusive content. Sony Pictures does not need to prop up their own streaming service just like Sony Music doesn’t need their own music streaming service when they can just license out their content and turn a profit. There will always be demand for TV & movies content, so Sony Pictures is well positioned is as an independent content provider. And while Apple, Amazon, Netflix, AT&T and Disney are battling it out on the forefront, Sony is quietly building their anime empire in the background. Genius business move from Sony here, seriously. They now have anime production & distribution.
Netflix has 200M subscribers and they currently have a 250M market cap. Think about what Sony will have in 5 years? >30M Crunchyroll subscribers (assuming all anime will be consolidated into Crunhyroll) & >100M PS+ & PSNow subscribers? Anime and gaming is growing faster than movies and TV shows. (9% CAGR for anime, 12% CAGR for gaming vs. 5% CAGR for the whole movies & TV show entertainment segment which includes PVOD, SVOD, box office, TV etc etc). And gaming as a whole is MUCH bigger than SVOD streaming. Netflix gets 99% of their revenue & profit through subscriptions. For the whole Sony Group Corporation, their subscription services (games + anime) it’s currently only 4.5% of their total revenue. And somehow Sony currently has a meagre $128B market cap?
PlayStation alone is bigger than Netflix in terms of operating profit. PlayStation has a MUCH higher profit margin than Netflix. For Q3 2020 Netflix posted $790M operating profit and PlayStation posted $988M operating profit. Revenue was was $6.44B for Netflix vs. $4.77B for PlayStation. (and btw Sony’s mobile gaming revenue (~$1B / year) is under Sony Music, it is not even in those PlayStation numbers!!!)
Think about it. PlayStation alone posts bigger operating profit than Netflix (yes revenue is bit smaller, but it’s the operating profit that matters most). And gaming is growing faster than movies. And PlayStation is about 24% of Sony’s total revenue. And yet Netflix has a market cap that is equal to the double of Sony's market cap? Basically If you apply Netflix’ valuation to PlayStation then PlayStation alone should have a bigger market cap than Netflix' market cap.

PS+ growth and software digital ratio growth

Sony Vision-S & autonomous driving tech (selling sensors + infotainment system to other car manufacturers). Sony surprised everyone when they revealed their Sony Vision-S electric vehicle last year at CES 2020 (in-house design and made in cooperation with Magna Steyr). And it’s currently being tested on public roads. Over the past year we have seen absurdly big investment hype into anything even remotely related to EV’s (including a few questionable companies). We’ve even seen an EV company with a gravity-powered truck get a $30B market cap in June last year. Meanwhile Sony, out of nowhere, revealed what is arguably (subjectively) one of the best looking EV’s. It got very positive reception at CES 2020. An EV that you can actually drive. But somehow their stock is still dirt-cheap based on their current fundamentals alone? Yet some companies that had pretty much nothing but some EV design concepts got insane valuations purely due to hype?
LTE chips for IoT & Industry 4.0 (Altair Semiconductors)
Cross-media IP (The Last of Us show on HBO, Uncharted movie etc). Huge unrealized potential synergy here (it’s about to change). We have seen that it can turn out super well when you look at The Witcher, Sonic the Hedgehog and Detective Pikachu. When The Witcher released on Netflix, sales of The Witcher 3 significantly increased again. Imagine the same thing, but with Sony IP’s. Sony Pictures is currently working on 7 video game IP based TV shows and 3 movies. We know The Last of Us tv series is currently in production for HBO. And then the Uncharted is currently in post-production and scheduled to be released in July this year currently. If Uncharted turns out to be successful, it will mark a big, new milestone for Sony as an entertainment company imho.
Aniplex (Sony Music Entertainment Japan subsidiary for anime production, distribution & mobile games) had a fantastic year in 2020. (more on this later) There is a lot of room for mobile games growth with Aniplex. Thanks to Aniplex, Sony might beat their earnings forecast.
Drones. DJI just got put on Entity List in USA and Sony started developing drones for prosumer / professional a few years ago. Big opportunity for Sony here to take a bit from DJI’s dominance. It only makes sense for Sony to enter the drone market targeting the professional & prosumer video market, considering Sony’s established position in the professional audio/video/photography space
Currently Sony also has several ventures & investments in AI & robotics
Over the past decade, Sony has also carefully expanded into medical equipment tech & biotechnology. Worth noting that Sony also has an important 33% stake in M3 inc (a medical services through-the-internet company with a market cap of $65.5B) (= just their stake in M3 Inc is worth $22B alone, remember Sony, with their large, diversified revenue streams & assets only has a market cap of $128B?)
Sony Pictures has a great upcoming movie slate (MCU Spider-Man, Uncharted, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Venom 2, Morbius, Spider-Verse sequel, Hotel Transylvania 4, Peter Rabbit 2, Vivo, The Nightingale). They will profit from the theatre reopening and covid recovery. They may even become more favourable among movie theatre chains because they won’t release their movies on the same day on streaming services like Warner (and yeah movie theatres are here to stay, at least for a while imho)
All the above comes on top of established, mature markets (Financial Holdings & Electronic Products)
Oh yeah, btw though TV’s are a cyclical and mature market and are not that important for Sony Group Corporation’s bottomline*, Sony TV’s will continue to do well for the following successive years: o 2020: continued pandemic boost

2020-2021: PS5 / Xbox Series X/S
2021 Summer Olympics (tv sales ALWAYS spike during the olympics) (& the effect is more pronounced for high-end TV’s, = good for Sony because Sony’s market share is concentrated in the high-end range (they are market leader in the high-end range)
2022 FIFA world cup (exact same thing as for the olympics)
You could say it’s already priced in, but the stock is already ridiculously undervalued so idk…

You would think this company somehow has a bad outlook, but that could not be further from the true, let me explain and go over some of the different divisions and explain why they will moon:
Sony Entertainment
While Netflix, Disney, AT&T, Amazon, and Apple are waging the great streaming war, Sony has been quietly building its anime streaming empire over the past years.

Sony recently acquired Crunchyroll for $1.175B (it is a great deal for Sony imho and will immediately be more valuable under Sony. Considering the growing appetite for anime I honestly do not even understand why AT&T sold it, they could have integrated it with their other streaming service (HBO Max) but ok)
With Crunchyroll Sony now has the following anime empire:
Aniplex (anime production & distribution, subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment Japan) F
Funimation
Manga Entertainment UK (production, licensing, and distribution, UK)
Wakanam (licensing and distribution in Europe)
AnimeLab (licensing and distribution in Australia & New Zealand)
Crunchyroll (3 million paying subcribers, 90 million registered users and 50 million social media followers)

* Why anime matters:

Anime growth
“The global size is expected to reach USD 36.26 billion by 2025, registering a CAGR of 8.8% over the forecast period, according to a study conducted by Grand View Research, Inc. Growing popularity and sales of Japanese anime content across the globe apart from Japan is driving the growth”
(tl;dr anime 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀, Sony is all in on anime and they have pretty much no competition)
Anime is the fastest growing subsegment of movies/video entertainment worldwide.

Sony also has a partnership with Bilibili for anime distribution in China:

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201903/26/WS5c990d93a3104842260b2737.html

Bilibili already partnered with Sony Music Entertainment Japan to bring Aniplex’s hugely successful Aniplex’s Fate/Grand Order mobile game in China.
Sony acquired a 5% stake in Bilibili for $400M in March 2020 (that 5% stake is now already worth $2.33B at Bilibili’s current share price ($BILI) and imho $BILI still has lots of upside potential considering it is the de facto video creation/sharing/viewing à la YouTube/Twitch for GenZ in China)

https://ir.bilibili.com/news-releases/news-release-details/bilibili-announces-equity-investment-sony

Sony Music Entertainment Japan
Aniplex

Sony Music (mobile games) generated $400M revenue from its mobile games in Q2 FY2020, published through Aniplex (Sony Music Entertainment Japan, “SMEJ”) subsidiary
They are the publisher of Fate/Grand Order, one of the most profitable mobile video games of the past 5 years (has generated $4B in revenue (!!) by the end of 2019 and is still as popular as ever). Fate/Grand order is the 7th most profitable mobile game in revenue worldwide as of 2020 (!)

Fate/Grand Order #9 game by revenue last year as of Q3 2020

Aniplex launched Disney: Twisted Wonderland in March this year. In Q3, it was the #10 most downloaded mobile game in Japan. (Aniplex now has two top ten games in Japan)
Fate/Grand Order was the #2 most tweeted game in 2020 and #3 was Disney: Twisted Wonderland. You can see that Aniplex has two hugely successful mobile games. (we are talking close to $1B of revenue a year here). It is the #2 game in Japan by total revenue from Q1 2016 to Q3 2020 and the #9 game in worldwide revenue from Q1 2020 to Q3 2020.

Aniplex has two very popular mobile games

SMEJ earns about > $1B from mobile games in revenue from mobile games and there is still a lot of future growth potential here considering Japan’s mobile game market grew a whopping 32% yoy from Q3 2019 to Q3 2020.
Aniplex recently co-distrubuted the movie Demon Slayer: Mugen Train in Japan in October 2020. It became the highest grossing film of all time in Japan with a total gross box office revenue of $380M. In the middle of a pandemic. It still needs to release in South Korea, China and USA where it will most likely do great as well.

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) (Game & Netwerk Services business unit):

We all know 2020 was a huge year for video games with the stay-at-home pandemic boost. The whole video game sector brought in $180B of revenue in 2020, a whopping 20% increase yoy.
But 2020 will not be just a one-off temporary exceptional year for video games. The video game market has a CAGR of 13% which means it will be worth $291B in 2027. Video games is by far the segment with the highest growth rate in the whole entertainment industry.

US video game market growth (worldwide growth has a 13% CAGR)

PlayStation revenue and operating profit growth

PlayStation obviously has a huge piece of this pie and over the past years has seen consistent yoy revenue and profit growth. Think about it, for every FIFA/Call of Duty/Assassin’s Creed sold on PS4/PS5, Sony gets a 30% cut. There have been sold a billion PS4 games so far.
5 years ago 20 to 30% of PS4 games were purchased digitally. Flashforward to 2020 and it’s 60-75% and the digital ratio looks set to still increase a bit. This means higher profit margin for game publishers and for Sony at the expense of retailers
SIE has seen huge success in its first-party games over the past 5 years. Spider-Man, God of War, Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Last of Us Part 2, Uncharted 4, Ghost of Tsushima, Days Gone, Ratchet & Clank have all been huge successes. This is really big and represents a big change compared to the previous generations where Sony never really hit it big as a games publisher even though most of their games were considered quality games.
SIE is now not only a powerful platform holdeprovider, but also a very successful games publisher with popular IP’s (Uncharted, God of War, The Last of Us, Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima, Ratchet & Clank). This is an enormous asset, because firstly it increases the chances of success for cross-media opportunities (Sony Pictures can make TV shows and movies out of it to expand the popularity of those IP’s even more). And secondly, it is an obvious selling point for PS5. The more popular and bigger their exclusive content, the more they can draw people to their platform/service. This should increases PS5 total marketshare over its competitor.
The hype for God of War: Ragnarok will be absolutely through the roof. Hype for Horizon: Forbidden West is also very good already (10 million yt views, 273K likes which is very good). Gran Turismo 7 and Ratchet & Clank will also do very well in 2021. (I suspect that GoW oand Horizon might be delayed to 2022)
PS5 reception has been extremely good. Demand is through the roof as well all know. The only problem is that they cannot quite capitalize on the demand due to lack of supply, but overall, it is a very good thing that demand is very high, and that reception has been very positive. The challenge will primarily supply and production-related for the following 6 months and to be able to maintain brand momentum. Hopefully, they won’t push disappointed/inpatient customers to competitors.
Considering there’s backwards compatibility from PS4 to PS5, users will want all their PSN content to transition with them as well, so I expect them to lose very little marketshare to Xbox. Also, I do not know if Americans realize it, but Xbox is not nearly as big as PlayStation in the rest of the world as it is in the USA. PlayStation just has global brand power that Xbox just doesn’t have, so Xbox isn’t much of threat at all I’d say. Where I live, in Belgium, In Europe everyone is talking about the PS5, nobody really seems to care about Xbox Series S/X that much. Comparing PlayStation to Xbox in terms of mindshare is like comparing Apple to Motorola (not meant to be a diss to Motorola, I have a Motorola phone myself, just saying that Xbox has significantly less mindshare / brand power in Europe).
SIE is likely working on PSVR 2, this could be big.
Sony has a small stake in Epic Games (1.4%) and they have a good business relationship with them, so this might also make them open to release first-party games on Epic Games Store after exclusivity period on PS5.
Remember the Travis Scott concert in Fortnite? I believe that was one of the reasons why Sony invested in Epic Games. It serves as an example how music can sometimes converge with video games, and this can play to Sony’s strengths.
PlayStation also has way superior presence in Asia compared to Xbox. Have been expanding into China as well. Another great opportunity for revenue growth.
PS+ subscribers grew from 5.7 million by the end of 2013 to 46 million by October 30th, 2020. This is an average growth rate of 28% over the past 5 years. Considering most of the growth was early on, it will slow down, but I predict that they will have about 70 million PS+ subscribers by the end of 2023. This is huge and represents a stable, recurring source of income. Investors who keep hyping Netflix/Disney+ will love this, but it seems they have yet to discover $SNE.
There is a reason why Amazon, Google, Nvidia have been aggressively investing in video games & games streaming. They know the business is huge and is about to get even bigger. But considering the established, loyal PlayStation userbase, the established global brand of PlayStation and the exclusive games, PlayStation should be able to easily standoff competition from Amazon, Google and Nvidia (GeForce Now) in the next few years. So far, Amazon’s venture into game development, publishing & streaming has completely failed. Stadia and GeForceNow seem to have a bit more success, but still relatively niche. Therefore, I think PlayStation is well-positioned to remain one of the leaders in the industry for the following decade.

I'll get to the other divisions later, I figured this is a good first step.
But so far the tl;dr
Image sensors: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
IoT/Industry 4.0 chipsets: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
PS5/PSN/PS+: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Online medical services (M3 inc.): 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Anime: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Fate/Grand Order: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Demon Slayer: Mugen Train 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Sony Music / music streaming (the performance of Sony Music’s in Sony’s business is seriously understated. The numbers speak for themselves): 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Sony Electronics 🚀
Sony Financial Holdings (very stable & profitable business, even managed to grow slightly during pandemic when most insurance companies performed more poorly): 🚀🚀🚀
Still have to cover Sony Pictures, but their upcoming movie slate looks pretty good honestly (Spider-Man sequel, Venom: Let There Be Darkness, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Uncharted, Morbius, Hotel Transylvania 4 so that's worth one rocket as well imho 🚀
tl;dr of tl;dr:
🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. I am an idiot that's trying to understand why $SNE stock is so cheap.
Positions: SNE 105C 21st January 22

What's up dingleberry danglers! It's ya boy, Agent00Funk, here to welcome you back to another edition of the TendieDome! That's right, its time for another wall of text for your literary entertainment, definitely not for your financial advice. By popular request, I even figured out how to add pictures. Keanu help us.
If you're as illiterate as a Mississippi high school drop-out, go ahead and skip to the bottom for the TL;DR and my positions. I don't wanna hear no bitching about your lack of attention span, alright, because I will call you a slack-jawed cousin-fucker. Bet. So staple your eye shades open, Clockwork Orange style, and get ready to be blown away by how one of America's worst companies is gonna make you tendies. Those of you that have been following my DDs know that I'm not about rocket ships, I'm not gonna send you to the moon or Mars (but Uranus is in the cards). No, no, no, my sweet little summer autists, my plays are are all about steady accumulation of tendies. The goal? Acquire enough tendies so you can buy a first class ticket on whatever rocket a superior autist says is launching. Most of my plays are LONG term HOLDs, today's is a slight exception as we're looking for a Q3 or Q4 pay out. Maybe one day I'll grace you with my casino plays, but before I do that, we gotta make sure you're bringing enough dough to the paste-eating competition. And I sure as shit don't want y'all dick whistlers to blame me when the casino play doesn't pan out, so we're sticking with safe territory for now.
Alright, now that I've masturbated enough and have that post-nut clarity to tell you why you should be putting money in CMCSA. That's right you little chode yodlers, muthafucking Comcast. Lots of you are probably already their customer, and have evolved to instantly wanna shit on Comcast. I don't blame you, they seriously suck, bunch of fucking assholes. But you know what sucky fucky assholes do? Make stacks on stacks on stacks. They're fucking you, AND taking your money. These guys have prostitution really figured out....you don't even know that you their ho.
So, let's channel our inner Charlie, and do some Pepe Silivia deep dive due diligence. That's right, it's not just a DD like your wife's bra, we're going for the DDDD!

This is us rn. Would you take financial advice from this guy?
So, CMCSA....where do even start? The highway-robbery pricing (tendies)? The understaffed and overworked employees (tendies)? The geographical monopolies they hold? (tendies). The reliance on dumbfuck Boomers as a customer base (I wanna hear the choir sing it with me now:...tendies)? No, no, no....you may be retarded, but you know when you're getting fucked, and you know you pay for getting fucked anyway, just like everyone else (tendies).

fr fr
CMCSA basically makes money in two ways: 1.) fucking you. 2.) fucking others. But wait! There's more! They have even more ways of taking money from you and everybody else, and if your goldfish attention span can handle it, you'll see what I'm talking about. Oh and charts. I do have charts. Fuck, me and Billie Eyelash have been spending so much time in the Crayon Room together, those charts have so many colors, most of them green.
Before I bust out these fucking rainbow crayons, let's cover some ground facts. For the Europoors among us, you may be shocked to find out that most Americans have NO CHOICE in who their ISP is. I know, cue the Sarah McLachlan and charity pitch, it's fucking pathetic. Free markets, my ass. But you know what that means? Tendies. That's right, Comcast has the most little fiefdoms of all the ISPs in the land. Only $T can compete, but here's the kicker: people have been ditching $T for CMCSA. Why? Because $T offers DSL in a gigabit world, that's locked inside because of a pandemic, re-discovering what made cyber sex so awkward over AIM, but now with cameras! (All the real Gs were around for that A/S/L/ convo, shit was Catfish City). So, while all you fuckwads are going to work in your Superman pajamas on Zoom, more people signed up for that sweet, sweet broadband., so they too could go to work in their Cookie Monster pajamas. (Mine are camouflaged, my co-workers don't even know I'm there, they just see square burger patties getting flipped on the griddle and are like "woooooooooooooaaah") I know you bell-end ringers don't read, but you can read a little more about subscriber increases here: (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/28/comcast-cmcsa-q4-2020-earnings.html)
Did you notice that link? CNBC? Reputable shit, right? I know some of you motherfuckers pay CMCSA like $200/month just to watch that shit, along with 400 other channels of garbage. That's right Europoors, CMCSA isn't just an ISP with a monopoly, it's a cable TV provider with a monopoly (tendies). And you know what else? They own CNBC. Fuck, they own ALL of NBC. Now, I know, some of you more erudite ballsack gargglers already know this, but let's let the retards catch up. Because, guess what you molasses racers, CMCSA also owns Universal Studios. For the nerds in the front row, shut the fuck up, we already know you're smart.
Are you seeing this shit? Like, seriously, are you piecing this shit together? CMCSA owns the pipes, CMCSA owns the shit in them, large swatches of America have no choice except CMCSA, and more people need those shitty ass pipes, because it's way fucking better than the old ass copper $T is selling. "Alright," you say, "CMCSA would've been a good pandemic play, what's the bull case looking forward?" Well tug my dick and call me Rick, that's why we're here. I can already tell this is going become a damn book of retardation, so I'm going to add some chapters.
TV Subscriptions.

We've got the finest stock art, just for you
This is the weakest part of CMCSA, everyone is cutting the cord, they're sticking to streaming, but if you check that link above, you'll see that they actually managed to add over 400k new subscribers. Sure, some of that can be attributed to people being bored as fuck at home during the pandemic and figuring they'll get 400 channels of dog vomit to help ease their soul-crushing ennui. There aren't a lot of reasons to expect these growth figures to continue, except one, which I will get to in a bit, but I do think they'll be a bit sticky. Why? Fucking Boomers man. Boomers have this very strange addiction to channel surfing. I don't get it. They just sit there and flip through 400 channels at 10 channels/second for hours on hours on hours. They aren't even watching anything, just surfing. Don't believe me? Go ask a Boomer near you how much time they spend channel surfing and why they won't give it up. They love complaining about it too: "all these fucking channels, and nothing to watch." If you point out that they could just STREAM something they want to watch, they just go right back to surfing, because they don't actually know what they want to watch. TV may be going the way of the dinosaur, but there are still lots of dinosaurs surfing channels for now, hell, they even picked up more. How? Is it all just bored people signing up for TV during the pandemic? Maybe, but I've got another theory about geography!
Internet Subscriptions

Yup.
So, even though people may be cutting the cord, they can't do that without internet, and...well....yeah, CMCSA may see declines from TV subscriptions, but definitely not internet subscriptions, not this year anyway. Again, I refer to the earnings report to show you jello heads the subscription numbers. I'm not going to belabor this point much, surely you know people need broadband, and CMCSA is the only game in town in many places.
Geographic Monopolies in Growth Markets

Awwww yiiissss gimme Park Place
If you've been reading along thus far, congratulations, you'll remember that we talked about the little fiefdom monopolies these guys have across the country. So, where are those fiefdoms located? Right here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communities_served_by_Comcast Now, I won't bust out the charts for population growth in all of these, because there is a fuck ton, but even just looking at Alabama (Roll Tide), you see that 80% of their markets in that state are growth markets, and only 1 is showing population decline.... and they're only in 6 markets there! Now, they don't hold 80% of growth markets in every state, but they hold a lot. This means that as these cities attract more people and grow, those poor saps will have no choice but to sign up for CMCSA if they want TV and/or internet. Yes, goons and goblins, CMCSA doesn't just have a captive audience, it has a captive audience in places where the audience is growing. Do I really need to spell out how these equates to tendies? Want to know something even better? Biden's infrastructure plan includes heaps of money for increasing broadband access to underserved and rural communities, communities that will then become part of CMCSA's growing fiefdoms.
Streaming

Trying to catch my shows fresh from the stream with my bare hands
CMCSA has also launched its own streaming service, Peacock, and if you look at the CNBC link, you can see subscriber numbers for that as well. Seeing the writing on the wall, CMCSA has gotten in on making money from cord-cutters. Again, CMCSA owns the entire NBC and Universal Studios catalog, but it really doesn't matter because just like a bunch of people signed up for Disney+ just to watch The Mandalorian, a bunch of people have and will sign up for Peacock just to watch The Office. And yeah, it fucking sucks that before you could have Hulu and Netflix and not need any more streaming services, that they are Balkanizing the streaming space just like they did with cable, and now you need like 20 different apps, but go look at the Universal/NBC catalog and tell me that you wouldn't pay $5/month for access to it if you couldn't get it anywhere else. I mean shit. WWE is exclusive to Peacock...do I need to say more? Do you smell-l-l-l-l-l what The Funk is cooking?
Theme Parks and the Recovery

Who else re-installing RCT2?
Here's a kick in the pants that you didn't expect. Universal studios. That's right, these motherfuckers got their own janky-ass wannabe Disney World. Hell, if anyone ever does open a Jurassic Park, it'll be CMCSA because they've got the rights to it and know how to run a theme park. How much do they add? About $6 billion/year (pre 2020). How much did they make in 2020? $1.8 billion. There's $4 billion set to come back into the pot. But wait, there's more! They're going to open their largest park ever this year, been building it since 2016, and the opening has been confirmed despite the Rona. Where? In Beijing, so you know the place is gonna be huge and full. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Studios_Beijing So as the vaccine gets out there, the world returns to "normal" and people go spend absurd amounts of money to slide across bits of metal, not only will missing revenue return, but CMCSA is ready to make the pot bigger. When is it opening? May. This is important because we're not looking for a pay-out until after the park has opened.

If you feel more retarded after having read this far, imagine how retarded I am for having written all that linguistic linguini. So, now that we know what the bull case for CMCSA is, let's bust out those crayons and look at some charts to get the full confirmation-bias effect and look at possible entry and exit points.
CRAYON ROOM TIME!

I don't know if this will be mo bigga when you fumble fucks look at it, I'm too retarded to figure out formatting.
I really don't know fuck about shit when it comes to numbers, but I do know the lines look pretty. So, let's run this down real fast. This is a weekly chart going back to 2018. I wanted to go that far back to show you two things. 1.) CMCSA recovered from a dip in 2018 much like it has from the COVID dip, and is on pace to match or exceed it's growth average since 2018. 2.) Annual dividend increases of around 10%. Looking at the chart, there is no reason not to expect the same announcement towards the end of the year, and in fact the next quarterly dividend has already received the increase. I've got a few other lines in there, but what I want to point out is how much the price rises above the moving price average, weather measured as a simple moving price average or within Bollinger Bands. Dips below the average tend to recover and be above the average again within 2-3 weeks.

Crayons are awesome. I should invest in Crayola.
Now let's look a little at demand. Again, this is a weekly chart, but this time we're mostly going to be focusing on the right side of the chart. The top chart is a Stochastic Full measurement, the two horizontal blue lines represent oversold (top) and overbought (bottom). Generally speaking, if a stock is oversold, the price goes down, people buy, and the price goes up, leading to a position of it being overbought where people sell for profit, price goes down, and rinse and repeat. The squiggly lines are the two measurements of where the stock is in relation to being oversold or overbought. So what is it showing us? That the stock was recently oversold, and is heading towards being overbought. Best time to get in would've been 2 weeks ago, but try posting a DD on WSB back then that wasn't about the holy trinity cult. So what does this mean? Well, buying now could lead to a little rise followed by a little dip as it fluctuates between oversold and overbought.
The second graphs is the MACD (Moving Average Convergence Divergence) this chart essentially measures sentiment, if it's up, it's bullish, if it's down, its bearish. I know some of you eggheads will correct me with finer points, but I don't have time to write a textbook that I'm incapable of understanding. As you can see, it has leveled off, which makes me believe it will dip, this also corresponds to it's movements in the Stochastic measurements. So don't buy at open, watch it for a bit, it might dip.
The third graph...I have no fucking clue y'all. It had the word "projection" in it, and the line is pointing up, and that was good enough for me.
Timing and Prices
If you can get in for under $50, do it. I'm not sure if it will dip that low again soon, but it's within possibility. Calls aren't terribly priced, they're not the value they were 2 weeks ago when I first wanted to write this, but they're still a good value, especially for July and beyond, which is the timeframe we're looking at for an exit. Or not. I mean, you could sit on this shit forever and not really have to worry, which is another thing I like about it. But I have calls for July and October and may even pick up the 2022 LEAPs. We're looking for two events to provide a nice pop for our exits; the new park opening and Q3 earnings report that should include initial earnings from the parks, both new and re-opened. We want to see if the customers are going back to the parks, and returning that missing money into the pot, and we want to see how growth of broadband customers has increased. But again, don't sweat too much about timing and prices, this thing just keeps marching upwards.
Positions
CMCSA Shares
CMCSA 16 July $50c
CMCSA 15 Oct $52.5c
Tl;dr
CMCSA. No rockets, but good value. 7/10 Would buy again.
DISCLAIMER: I don't know what I'm doing, you listen to me at your own peril, please leave me alone SEC.

Hey guys, it’s Coooolin!! Wow! The first month of 2021 is ALMOST over!!! How’s everyone’s January comin along!? Let me know, doown beloww!
(Pumpin this out, will update with syns in 5-10 min!)
Here’s the new cards for today!!! Thank you , EA!

NHL 2030 - Event Cards

Bowen Byram - 90 OVR - COL / LD - DIS² ... woah
Quinton Byfield - 90 OVR - SUD / C - SPA²
Filip Zadina - 89 OVR - DET / LW - BAR²
Jamie Drysdale - 89 OVR - EER / RD - SWA²
Michael Rasmussen - 88 OVR - DET / C - H and S²
Owen Tippett - 87 OVR - FLA / RW - SPA²
Gabe Vilardi - 87 OVR - LAK / C - H and S²
Jakub Zboril - 87 OVR - BOS / LD - BAR²
Ty Smith - 86 OVR - NJD / LD - DIS²
Keffer Bellows - 86 OVR - TIM / LW - BAL²
Brandt Clarke - 85 OVR - COL / RD - SWA²
Sebastian Cossa - 82 OVR - OIL / G - 6’4” / 212 lbs - H and S²

Primetimes

NHL

(NO PLD OR LAINE)
Brad Marchand - 89 OVR - BOS / LW - LTL¹ , MAG¹
Alexander Radulov - 88 OVR - DAL / RW - WM¹ , WH¹
John Klingberg - 88 OVR - DAL / RD - PP¹ , SH¹
Joe Pavelski - 87 OVR - DAL / C - GLA¹ , T¹ .... 88 FOs w Thief on
Paul Stastny - 83 OVR - WPJ / C - PP¹ , MAG¹
Joel Eriksson EK - 82 OVR - MIN / C - GLA¹ , WM¹
Conor Garland - 81 OVR - ARI / RW - LTL¹ , WH¹
Joel Edmundson - 81 OVR - MTL / LD - HOW¹ , WM¹
Andrew Copp - 81 OVR - WPJ / C - SPE¹ , T¹ ... 83 FOs with Thief on
Kevin Lankinen - 78 OVR - CHI / C - BAR¹ , SPA¹
Eric Robinson - 78 OVR - CBJ / LW - BAL¹ , GLA¹

Other Leagues

Tobias Stephan - 79 OVR - LAU / G - 6’4” / 194 lbs - DIS¹ , H and S¹
Andres Ambühl - 78 OVR - DAV / RW - BAL¹ , HOW¹
Jonas Arntzen - 78 OVR - ORL / G - 6’3” / 190 lbs - SPA¹ , SWA¹
Sandro Zurkirchen - 77 OVR - LUG / G - 5’11” / 172 lbs - BAR¹ , H and S¹
Ahti Oksanen - 77 OVR - KOL / LW - PP¹ , SWA¹
Mason Mctavish - 77 OVR - PET / C - DIS¹ , SPE¹
• • • • • • • • • • - - - - - - - - - • • • • • • • • • • • •

Packs Available

• Jumbo Elite Pack - 50k C / 1k P
20 items, with at least 11 80+ OVR players
• NHL Players Pack - 30k C / 600 P
10 items , all Gold NHL Players with at least 4 80+ OVR players
• Players Pack - 15k C / 300 P
10 items , all Players , at least 5 Gold Players and 1 80+ OVR player

P.S.

• HUT CHAMPS PROCESSING - where did you place?
• More Event Cards!!! - 5pm EST - whos your favourite?!
• Blockbuster Deal ! - PLD for LAINE!
• Where does your team stand?
• Hockey in History
——————

What’s to Come?

• Rivals Resets - Tomorrow at 5pm EST
• SB Season Reset - Wednesday at 5pm EST
• Rivals Rewards - Wednesday at 5pm EST
• HUT Champ Rewards - Wednesday at 6am EST
• SB Rewards !! - Thursday at 5pm EST
—————

Summary of the day

Quick Read
Best Forward of the Day - NHL2030 - is QUUIINTON BYFIELDD OVR 90 with the syn DOUBLEEE SPAARKKK! (SPA²⁾
Best Defence of the Day - NHL2030 - is BOOWENN BYYYRAAM OVR 90 with the syn DOUBLEEE DISTRIBUTORRRR (DIS²⁾
////
Best Forward of the Day - PT - is BRAADD MARCHAND OVR 89 with the syn LIIGHT THE LAAMP , and MAGIICIAAN
Best Defence of the Day - PT - is JOOHNN KLINGBERGG OVR 88 with the syn PAASSSING PLAYYMAKERR and SHUUT DOOWN
• MORE NHL 2030 CARDS OUT!!
• HUT CHAMPS PROCESSING
• LAINE FOR PLD ! WOW!
———— —— ———

Important Notice

Think of your life like a bow and arrow. All your stress, personal problems, world problems, etc., will make the arrow fall back... and the more problems, difficulties, etc., pushing this arrow back is really getting to you... right?
Well not for long.
All those problems will be launched, and a gone ‘er.
You will get through your problems you’re having in life. — the further back this arrow goes? The further you will go into greatness.
I believe , and I pray that your problems will launch into something powerful...
Because you?
You deserve it.
Hope all is going well for you.
——

Interested in Stocks?

EA’s Stock Price, after hours - Jan 25
$ 146.30 (usd) —- Currency Converter
we looked at the stock at $137.54 usd
—— That is a difference of ( $8.76 / 6.37% ) —
Disclaimer - I am not a financial advisor. It is your money, please do your own due diligence. I am not responsible for your money. This is *not** advice. I added this section for an added educational purposes only. Thanks*
—— —— —— —-

NEED A SOUNDTRACK TO LISTEN TO?

I made this for everyone. I sincerely hope you guys enjoy it as much as I do!

ANYONE HAVE ANY SONG SUGGESTIONS??How are you not listening to this playlist already!?
Comment songs to add, and please give feedback! It’s much appreciated!!
I currently have “Joker and the Thief” by “Wolfmother” stuck in my head.... wanna listen to it? It’s on the playlist!
Sidenote - I really want to show my friend his music is worth all the time and effort he puts into it... he hasn’t been getting a ton of listens on his songs... can you please help me out? If you click Here!! it would mean a lot to me!! Please let me know if you like his music, and I’ll direct all the comments to him :) Thank you so much!
———-

Sites To Bookmark!

If you click here you will be redirected to bilasport. Bilasport is the best Online Streaming site for your entertainment needs for all sports! (Not affiliated)
A great streaming source recommended by NHLStreams is SurgeSport. Click on Hockey and you’ll be good to go!
Want to make your dream team, and show others what you’ve been working on, and much more? I will redirect you HERE!.
Here’s a helpful pack guide for you! Click!
Want to know how the market is holding up? With a simple TAP! you will be on the newly fresh made website for the HUT market, made by one of the guys on the sub!
.... what do the stats on a card mean? Is my card I want / pulled good? Click here to find out!!
When is my favourite team playing? When do they play!? Here you can click on this link, and tap on your favourite team. From there, tap “Schedule” . You can add this to your homescreen on iPhone by clicking the square with the upwards arrow, scrolling down, and tapping “Add to Home Screen”
——- —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —- —— —-

Fighting a Gambling Addiction?

Don’t feel scared to click here. Winning is SO much louder than losing. Know that you are NEVER alone. We are all here for eachother, and it is never too late to get help. I am here for you.
This is a VERY important thread, especially if you are new to HUT. Here!
————— —————— —————

Story Time!

An old Cherokee chief teaching his grandson about life ....
“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.
One is evil, he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt and ego.
The other is good, he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
The same fight is going on inside you and inside every other person too.”
The grandson then asked his grandfather, “which wolf will win?”
The old chief simply replied “The one you feed.”
What wolf are you feeding? You can let me know down below in the comments if you wish!
——-
25 / 365
—— —— —— —- —- ——- —- —— ——
Thanks for reading.
I’m always welcome to feedback, please let me know what I can improve on.
If there’s anything missing, please let me know!
Take care, happy gaming! TODAY IS NATIONAL BUBBLE WRAP DAY!
• Coolin Killin It
(Life is like a puzzle, you just have to find the right piece.)

My players are going to be visiting the palace of a demon lord of pleasure who's more CN than CE. I want to show that despite his title, he represents all forms of pleasure and good feelings, not just sex. Also space in his realm doesn't work the same way as it does in the mortal plane. He essentially has an infinite amount of space to work with and can customize it as he pleases, so there are no size constraints.

A casino to feel the thrill of gambling.
A dining hall with an endless buffet that visitors are allowed to eat as much as they wish.
An idyllic beach with perfectly white sand to relax or play on.
An arena where gladiators brawl it out against each other. The point of it isn't to kill each other as much as make the battles look stunning to the audience.
A hotel with the most comfortable beds possible. Here anyone with enough money can enjoy a good rest after all the excitement.
A beautiful and well tended garden filled with aromatic flowers and sweet fruits.
A vineyard where exquisitely-aged wine can be produced just by pressing the grapes. (u/_SovietMudkip_)
A petting zoo full of the babies of dangerous creatures. (u/_SovietMudkip_)
An opulent concert hall where the best musicians of the realms perform (u/_SovietMudkip_)
A small, cozy looking wooden library, with a cushioned bay window where rain gently scatters against the glass and a cup of some hot liquid gently rising with steam. (u/QuietOracle)
An owl-bear hugging zoo. Go to sleep in the embrace of their soft down. (u/QuietOracle)
The room of sensory experiences. The room itself is fairly plain, with the main feature being long tables running the length of the room. On closer inspection there are fist-sized carved holes, each one holding a small round crystal... (u/QuietOracle)
A room with dozens of sacks filled with beans, lentils and grains where visitors can put their hands in and let the contents run through their fingers. (u/_WhiteCubeCat_)
A hag (or any other long nailed creature) giving visitors a scalp massage. (u/_WhiteCubeCat_)
A museum of little-known or long-forgotten art pieces, sculptures, and history. (u/MoonlightMancer)
A festival full of colors, music, and drinks. Everyone seems to love you, and you can’t stop laughing. (u/MoonlightMancer)
A hallway of endless doors. In each room is someone you know, complimenting you endlessly, sharing every positive, even begrudgingly jealous thought they ever had about you. (u/MoonlightMancer)
A room full of bubble wrap. (u/EmmaDrake)
A hot spring/spa, with fluffy towels, those showers that are like rain with perfect water pressure, mud baths, and refreshing food and drink. (u/lionesslindsey)
A room full of people that constantly give you validation and laugh at all your jokes. (u/CountryJeff)
Never-ending line of gold chalices, crystal vases, silver artwork, and other valuables. (u/PutridMeatPuppet)
People who are “better” than you are marched in a stripped of their superior qualities. Beautiful people are disfigured and turned ugly. Wealthy powerful people are ruined and made to beg you for pennies. (u/PutridMeatPuppet)
Mass groups of people enter the room and tell you how they admire you and how wonderful you are. They stroke your ego and inflate your pride. (u/PutridMeatPuppet)
Servants do everything for you. Feed you, give you drinks, wash you, wipe your arse, etc. (u/PutridMeatPuppet)
You are given a wickedly barbed leather whip. A slave creature is bound to a post and you can whip this creature to inflict your wrath upon them as much as you desire. If the poor soul dies, another is brought in to replace them. (u/PutridMeatPuppet)
'Knight for a day'. The full experience; lance, shiny outfit, a squire, a trusty stead, a dragon and a princess/prince to rescue. (u/mr_earthman)
The magical equivalent of a holo deck (u/cyber-viper)
Wide, flat plain with the fastest vehicles in the multiverse (a good place to use the Avernus vehicles) (u/Clickclacktheblueguy)
A selection of cities and villages for you to destroy with war machines or your own magic. (u/Clickclacktheblueguy)
A collection of wand that allow you to test out powerful magic. (u/Clickclacktheblueguy)
A magical version of a movie theatre, allowing you to watch all manner of stories, true and legendary. (u/Clickclacktheblueguy)
A moderately large pool where small battleships with tiny animated crewmen can be deployed in teams to shell and board each other for the audience's amusement. Honored guests can put their strategic abilities to a test against other players by directly giving orders to their ships, and in certain hours guests may even swim in the pool to live out the power fantasy of being a sea monster. (u/VIixIXine)
A colorizer-device that transforms any clothes/armoweapons/other gear to any desired hue you wish (as long as it doesn’t affect the workings of the gear) (u/PaigeOrion)
A grand screen, showing a nearly infinite number of (screen)plays from all space and time, including the show with the disgraced human paladin delivering a green baby gnome back to his home land through incredible odds. (u/PaigeOrion)
A tiara that allows you to experience the sensory experience of a black cat as long as you wear it and close your eyes. (u/PaigeOrion)
A plethora of small, multicolored blocks that will magically interlock with one another to render almost any architectural structure imaginable. (But don’t step on them barefoot!) (u/PaigeOrion)
A band of musicians who are the perfect musical backup for any performances. Alone, they are more low key, but no less skilled, playing haunting melodies of unknown origin. (u/PaigeOrion)
A massive walk-in closet where you can try in any clothes in any fashion you like. (u/Tezla44)
A "schadenfreude" theatre, with shows that rely on slapstick and cringe comedy. (u/Martinus_XIV)
A REALLY good chocolate fountain (u/BrokenBanette)
A room designed to give you closure. When you enter this room, someone you loved and lost is there, sitting in a couch. The room feels vaguely familiar, but you can't place why. If Detect Magic is used, the room is full of magic (divination, transmutation, illusion) but the person seems like a normal person. You can chat with them for as long as you like. They behave just as you remember them, with the good and the bad. (u/ohsurenerd)
A theatre performing the most magnificent tragedies. When you watch the performance, you find yourself completely enraptured: you cheer when things go right, scream when something terrifying happens, and moan and weep at the inevitable horrible ending. When you leave, it feels like removing a backpack full of lead that you'd been carrying for so long you'd forgotten it was there. (u/ohsurenerd)
A room where there's a button, there's someone outside and it explains that if you enter there's a 50/50 chance of you dying or not, the room won't actually kill you and it's there just to make you feel the pleasure of near death experience. (u/SupremeGodDictator)
A massage parlor with the universes best staff pampering your every need as you receive the most relaxing massage of your life whether it be scalp, back, foot, full body, etc. Has the worlds fluffiest towels and robes to luxuriate in while you wait or if you simply want to sit in a comfy chair and enjoy your ache free muscles. (u/Blue_Mando)
An arena where you and your opponents heal near instantly, and you can fight endlessly (u/ellen-the-educator)
A reenactment of your greatest failures in life, but this time they turn into your greatest achievements. (u/CountryJeff)
A room with the world's finest works of art.... and a myriad of implements you can use to destroy them. (u/redrosebeetle)
A torture chamber with mages on hand to create illusions of the people you wish to torture. Or increasingly realistic versions of them, depending on the level of magic you wish to implement. (u/redrosebeetle)
A room full of gold and jewels you can roll around in, ala Scrooge McDuck. But woe betide anyone who tries to take a souvenir.... (u/redrosebeetle)
As you're walking through the gardens, a person comes up to you. They introduce themselves as an adventurer who's also here on a quest. They seem to be the same class as you, and they're incredibly attractive-- almost exactly your type. You immediately click and end up spending the day together, talking about everything and anything. You tell them things you've never told anyone else before. They understand everything you tell them, almost innately, but they're still impressed by your feats and your stories. The two of you find an empty bedroom and close the door behind you. It's perfect in its imperfections. In the morning they're gone. No matter where you look, you can't find them. (u/ohsurenerd)
A room lined with shelves and shelves of bottles and vials containing a crimson liquid flowing slowly (like a syrup), all with small labels on them. As you inspect the labels, you realize they've all got names on them: famous adventurers, kings and queens, great sages. If you drink one, you experience a selection of their memories as they experienced them: battles won, discoveries made, historical alliances and friendships being forged or broken... (u/ohsurenerd)
A room that turns anyone that enters it into a child. It is full of every toy imaginable (u/arual_x)
A tour of a chocolate factory. Kobolds work there, and the owner, who gives the tour, is a Metallic Dragon in Humanoid form. (u/arual_x)
A fortune teller who has a Deck of Many Things with only the good cards. If you in any way offend them, they will sleight of hand vs perception check slip you a bad card instead. (u/arual_x)
An island theme park of reanimated dinosaurs. The owner is a level 20 Necromancer called Hamm Johnand. (u/arual_x)
A Virtual Reality style game that allows you to battle horrible monsters over and over again without risk of injury physical. But still allows you to gain XP... (u/arual_x)
A perfect expanse of thick snowy ground. There is constantly a snowball fight going on. (u/arual_x)
A giant room full of mattresses where everyone immediately gets a wonderful massage. (u/Revanclaw-and-memes)
A room where you get to torture all of your worst enemies (u/Revanclaw-and-memes)
A room where people applaud you, give you a trophy, etc (u/Revanclaw-and-memes)
A room where you get something that was denied to you (u/Revanclaw-and-memes)
A room full of gold and exquisite things, from beautiful furniture to magic weapons (u/Revanclaw-and-memes)
A seemingly endless room where adventurers can drink a potion to grow wings and flit about to their hearts' delight (u/iriedashur)
An ordinary classroom containing the adventurer's childhood friends, enemies, and their most hated teacher. Upon entering the room, the adventurer discovers that they are invisible, and free to pull pranks as they wish (u/iriedashur)
A brightly colored room piled high with wrapped gifts, large and small, for the adventurers to open endlessly (u/iriedashur)
A purple and black dragon named Ace who cooks you garlic bread and cake. (u/sanorace)
A magic pair of goggles/glasses that simulate any “What if” question you pose to them. (u/lewiscann)
A magical weather room where you can ask for any weather for your pleasure (I love listening to rain) (u/lewiscann)
A room full of lounges with a floating slow burning piece of wood that warms the whole area, the piece of wood is so large you can see the flame spread through this piece of wood forever (u/lewiscann)
A room where you can bite your fingernails and they grow back instantly ( so you can bite them some more )(u/razenastie)
A room with incredibly weakened versions of powerful monsters. (u/Your_InsideMan)
A vast room on wooden sculptures, oil, and torches. (u/Your_InsideMan)
A zoo of sentient races (u/Paralytica)
A collection of legendary heroes magically transfixed in blocks of ice. (u/Paralytica)
Palanquin rentals (u/Paralytica)
A booth that will remake your face whilst in the palace (ostensibly to make you more beautiful but it could be used for anything) (u/Paralytica)
A magic chair that gives really good back massages (u/TenNinetythree)
A playground where the slides and carousels are for adults (u/TenNinetythree)
A room where you become a giant and can destroy cities and fortresses kaiju style. (u/Paralytica)
Drug Olympics. A room with every drug imaginable to try. Leaving the room cleanses you of their effects. (u/Skitsafrit)
No Pauses. A room that has the effect of making all conversations flow perfectly. No silence stretches too long, no one mishears you, and every topic segways perfectly into the next. (u/Skitsafrit)
Deprivation Room. The room is so absolutely featureless and quiet, that you can meditate magnitudes better here than anywhere else. (u/Skitsafrit)
A games room where you play against your perfect match (u/Nesurame)
Similar to the previous, a games room where you're matched against nothing but weaker opponents (u/Nesurame)
A smoky, dreamweed hookah lounge (u/reallyenjoyscarbs)
A heist simulator where you always get away with the big diamond, chest, etc (thrill of theft) (u/reallyenjoyscarbs)
A sauna room with a central pillar. Inside the pillar is a chamber containing a magic stone which can detect the exact temperature preferences of those inside, and making each person feel said preference. (u/TgagHammerstrike)
An oval-shaped room with countless glass lotion bottles, with each smelling better than the last. If you look for a specific scent (no matter how rare), you'll certainly find it with the help of a goblin near the back of the room. (u/TgagHammerstrike)
A room that consists of A bunch of mortals so utterly jaded from years of plesure seeking that they need the hardest of drugs and the wildest of sensations to feel anything,with lesser demons feeding on their pursuit of euphoria. Think the emperors children from warhammer 40k. (u/TgagHammerstrike)
A buffet of the lids of yogurt/pudding cups to lick. (u/Hunter37594)
An olfactory room that reads your memories and replicates smells that remind you of your most joyous moments. (u/lecorbusianus)
A wildlife reserve for Druids to find new and exotic wild shapes. (u/lecorbusianus)
A room with musical instruments that you're able to master immediately. (u/lecorbusianus)
Zero gravity obstacle course. (u/lecorbusianus)
A cooking class taught by a master chef that always seems to have enough time to guide you one-on-one. (u/lecorbusianus)
An enchanter who allows you to relieve the best moments of your life over and over again. (u/lecorbusianus)
An illusionary room that brings up past experiences and let’s you make different choices to fix mistakes or win arguments. (u/The_Rhibo)
A murder simulator to allow an individual to live out the fantasy of killing that special someone. (u/Brann_The_Kid)
A library full of blackmail and secret knowledge regarding historical and political figures. A conniving, plotting character’s dream! (u/MoonlightMancer)
A room where you can see colors that shouldn't exist. (u/Clickclacktheblueguy)
A room with a creature in a dark robe sitting at a table covered in maps and dice. He helps you play a strange game where you and your party make up characters that go on adventures while the robed creature acts as all of the other characters and determines new events. (u/Clickclacktheblueguy)
...

Throughout its first 25 years, Major League Soccer has seen players from all different corners of the globe, each with their own career story. Whether it be a guy like Tim Melia or Chris Wondolowski who were scrappy guys that came out of nowhere to be stars in this league, or world famous names such as Zlatan, Beckham, and Henry, the league's history of big names is as diverse as they come.
Let's take a look at the best player from each country around the globe. This will be based on national team allegiance. Today, we'll be leading with Europe!
Please note that this is my opinion, and in some cases the decisions were tough; I'll be sure to add in honorable mentions where I can, or add notes.
Albania: Shkëlzen Gashi ( COL 2016-18)
Short list to pick from here, as Gashi's only competition is Jahmir Hyka and Hamdi Salihi. Gashi gets the nod, if nothing else, for his huge 2016 season, where he scored 10 regular season goals (one of which was that year's Goal of the Year) as the Rapids damn near won the Shield. The madlad then went and one-upped that with his absurd equalizer in the playoffs against the Galaxy.
His last two years weren't as fruitful, but man, when he was on he could pull something out of nowhere.
Armenia: Yura Movsisyan ( KC 2006-07, RSL 2007-09 & 2016-18, CHI 2018)
Four choices here, although in the end it's Movsisyan winning out over Harut Karapetyan, who played a couple seasons in the 90s for the Galaxy, San Jose, and Tampa Bay. The fourth pick in a strong 2006 MLS SuperDraft out of Pasadena City College, Movsisyan is mostly associated with RSL, who acquired him in a 2007 trade. With the Claret and Cobalt, he would tally 15 goals in 53 regular season appearances, and in 2009 he'd hoist the club's first MLS Cup. That'd be his last game with RSL until 2016 after some time in Europe with Randers, Krasnodar, and Spartak Moscow (even sharing the Russian PL Golden Boot in 2012/13 with Wanderson). He'd put up a similar clip of 16 in 57 before being waived and finishing his MLS career with four scoreless games with Chicago.
Austria: Daniel Royer ( NYRB 2016-pres.)
The choice here was largely Royer vs. Andreas Ivanschitz, who was a regular starter for Seattle's first MLS Cup, but I can't say no to a man with over 100 MLS matches played and three straight 10-goal seasons. In all comps, the former Austria Vienna man is just two goals behind Thierry Henry for third on the Red Bulls' all time goal scoring list.
Belarus: Sasha Gotsmanov ( COL 2005)
Gotsmanov qualifies by default as the only Belarusian player in MLS history. The Minsk native (and son of former Soviet and Belarusian international Sergei Gotsmanov) played one (1) single game for Colorado in October 2005, against RSL.
Belgium: Laurent Ciman ( MTL 2015-17, LAFC 2018, TFC 2019-pres.)
Shouts to Roland Lamah, who had his moments in Dallas, and Jelle van Damme, who played a season and a half for the Galaxy, but Ciman is the obvious choice. While he's fallen off a cliff as he's gotten older, he's a three-time All-Star and won Defender of the Year in his first MLS season; in his second, he played for Belgium at Euro 2016. At 35, he's lost a step and probably should only be used in emergencies, but at his best he was an elite MLS center back that could also be deployed at right back.
Bosnia & Herzegovina: Haris Medunjanin ( PHI 2017-19, CIN 2020-pres.)
The first one where I'm not totally confident in my pick, as Baggio Hušidić made this tricky (and as a Union fan I'm afraid of bias). But at his best, Haris is an assist machine (30 in four MLS seasons so far), and a threat on set pieces; the madlad even scored an Olimpico this year. His left foot is probably the best the Union have ever had. While his commitment to defense was nonexistent, give him the ball and he could spray a pass anywhere.
Bulgaria: Hristo Stoichkov ( CHI 2000-02, DC 2003)
One of three former Ballon d'Or winners to play in MLS (the others being Lothar Matthaus and Kaka, although "playing" is generous for the former), Stoichkov spent the last four seasons of his career in MLS, scoring 22 goals in 72 regular season matches for Chicago and DC. In his first season, a 9 goal in 18 match outing for the Fire, he also won the US Open Cup, scoring the opening goal of the final, a 2-1 win over Miami. (The winning goal, by the way, was scored by our old friend Owen Goal.)
Croatia: Damir Kreilach ( RSL 2018-pres.)
Mr. Miyagi's favorite MLS player for his crane kick equalizer in the playoffs, the former Rijeka and Union Berlin man has proven to be an excellent utility piece and core part of RSL throughout his time there, scoring 26 goals and chipping in 14 assists in 86 regular season matches and playing all over the damn place (naturally a central midfielder, he's probably still RSL's best forward). At 31, he still has a lot to give.
MLS has seen a huge influx of Croats lately, though; before Kreilach's 2018 signing there had only been four Croatian players in MLS history, two of whom barely played. Currently, there are five on active rosters.
Czechia: Luboš Kubík ( CHI 1998-2001, DAL 2001)
Czech players have had a good hit rate in MLS. In his lone MLS season, Bořek Dočkal led the league in assists, and Zdeněk Ondrášek was a very solid piece for Dallas, albeit one whose MLS time was brief.
But no. We have to go with Kubik. The sweeper was Best XI twice, in 1998 and 1999, and won Defender of the Year in 1998 helping Chicago to a MLS Cup-Open Cup double. He'd win another Open Cup two years later, before being traded to Dallas in 2001 and retiring due to injury.
So many lethal counterattacks started on the foot of this man, and he is rightfully seen as one of the greatest defenders the league has ever seen.
Denmark: Jimmy Nielsen ( KC 2010-13)
I debated going WAYYYYYYY off the board here and throwing out Miklos Molnar. His time in MLS was brief, just the 2000 season before he retired, but the man was the best attacking piece on a Cup winner. He could have balled out if he didn't retire early.
But nah. We're going with Casino Jimmy, one of the keys towards Kansas City's early 2010s turnaround. A two time All-Star, Nielsen was Goalkeeper of the Year in 2012, a year that also saw him win the Open Cup with the Wiz (on penalties, because KC and penalties, name a more iconic duo at this point). In 2013, he capped off his career by winning MLS Cup, again on penalties, while playing with broken ribs.
England: Bradley Wright-Phillips ( 2013-2019, LAFC 2020)
This league, man.
The list of English players to have represented in MLS is a long one, full of iconic names. Ashley Cole. David Beckham. Frank Lampard. Steven Gerrard. Jermain Defoe. Wayne Rooney. Hell, even Bradley's brother Shaun.
But nope. Many of those guys are the butt of many MLS jokes. BWP, on the other hand, is one of the greatest goal scorers the league has ever seen, with two Golden Boots to his name and well over a century of league goals. He was a part of 3 Shield winning teams, and made CONCACAF's Best XI in 2018.
And it all started with a quiet trial in 2013 after Charlton dumped him. This. League.
And This. Man. Even as a fan of Philly who doesn't care much for the Red Bulls, I respect this dude and everything he's done. I hope he gets another year after winning Comeback Player of the Year this year.
Estonia: Joel Lindpere ( NYRB 2010-12, CHI 2013)
The only other option here was Erik Sorga, who could dethrone Lindpere as he came to MLS at a very young age. But it's unlikely, as Lindpere was quietly very solid for the Red Bulls during his time. The Tallinn native was a two-time All-Star, and in 2010 he was named the Red Bulls' team MVP.
Finland: Alex Ring ( NYC 2017-2020, AUS pres.)
T O P I C A L
There's a few fairly talented Finns in MLS right now that could make this interesting (I really like Robin Lod's game, and Lassi Lappelainen would be excellent for Montreal if he'd stop getting hurt). Ring however has proven his worth across 4 seasons, including time as NYC's captain. Over 10,000 MLS minutes, mostly for good teams, as a defensive anchor, he will be a fantastic tone-setter for the new Austin team.
France: Thierry Henry ( NYRB 2010-14)
Oh man, as an Ireland fan I wanted to give this to literally anyone else. I am still bitter, dammit.
His best competition is probably Aurelien Collin, who has a closetful of trophies (including a Best XI and MLS Cup MVP). But no...it's Henry.
When a big name comes to MLS, what people want to see is someone who treats the league with respect. Henry did that. Not only was he dominant on the pitch, a three-time Best XI nomination, he also respected the history of the club he played for and gave 100%, even though he was getting up there in the years. He's a Red Bulls and MLS legend...as much as I curse that godforsaken hand
Georgia: Valeri "Vako" Qazaishvili ( SJ 2017-20)
It looks like the San Jose chapter of Vako's career is done and dusted. While the former Vitesse man struggled for consistency, he did put up 26 goals and 13 assists across four MLS seasons for the Quakes, including 10 while being coached by Mikael Stahre, which should probably get him and Wondo some sort of award.
We'll see what's next for him, if he leaves MLS or goes back to Europe. His only competition was Quakes teammate Guram Kashia.
Germany: Bastian Schweinsteiger ( CHI 2017-19)
I'm...actually not sure about this one. I actually changed this while writing, as I very nearly chose Julian Gressel; the former Rookie of the Year has two 10-assist seasons under his belt, and Kai Wagner has also been one of the league's better fullbacks for Philadelphia; Schweinsteiger was solid enough for Chicago in his advanced age for some very frustrating teams (and even moved positions to center back!)...but man, I don't know.
Germany is weird. For a country with such a great footballing tradition, the pickings are fairly slim. Arne Friedrich had one good year for Chicago before injuries claimed his career. Lottar Matthaus was as committed to this league as Schalke are to winning football matches. Stefan Aigner was stifled by Anthony Hudson going galaxy brain. Torsten Frings...existed.
I dunno.
Greece: Alexandros Tabakis ( ATL 2017)
The only Greek in MLS history...and our second one game wonder. Atlanta's FOURTH string keeper in 2017, he managed to sneak into a game against Minnesota with Brad Guzan on international duty, Alec Kann injured, and Kyle Reynish sent off during the match.
Atlanta lost 3-2. He's now in USL.
Hungary: Nemanja Nikolić ( CHI 2017-19)
Dániel Sallói and Krisztián Németh had their moments, but the winner is Nikolić, who came to MLS from the Ekstraklasa and immediately won the Golden Boot. His totals diminished in the three seasons he spent with Chicago, but 51 goals in 96 appearances isn't too shabby at all - it's second in Fire history behind Ante Razov.
Iceland - Guðmundur Þórarinsson ( NYC 2020-pres.)
Not much choice, 3 guys, all of whom were mostly bench guys. I almost went with Kristinn Steindorsson here on the merits of "he didn't have a penalty saved by Rodrigo Schlegel."
Israel: Gadi Kinda ( SKC 2020-pres.)
It was either him or Dedi Ben Dayan, really. And I nearly went with the former Colorado left back, but nah, Kinda is very much the superior player. The midfielder born in Ethiopia, Kinda shone brightly in his first season in KC, with 6 goals and 4 assists in his debut season. He'll be a DP next season.
Italy: Sebastian Giovinco ( TOR 2015-18)
A signing that changed an entire club.
Before Giovinco, the Reds were a laughingstock. He came in, won a Golden Boot and MVP right away, led the league in assists, made Best XI three years in a row, led them to their first playoff game, their first MLS Cup final, their first MLS Cup win, and a historic treble. And they damn near won CCL too.
The Atomic Ant was must-see from Day 1. It's not just because of him that Toronto is now one of MLS's elite...but he was a huge part of changing that culture. 83 goals in 142 games in all comps. And he dished out his fair share of assists too, with a telepathic partnership with Jozy.
Latvia: Raivis Hščanovičs ( TOR 2010)
Not much to write about here. 14 games for a bad Reds team. Gets in by default with no other Latvian MLS players.
Liechtenstein: Nicholas Hasler ( TOR 2017-18, CHI 2018-19, SKC 2019)
Another one by default. 66 games as a utilityman. Won MLS Cup and the Shield, though.
Lithuania: Vytautas Andriuškevičius ( POR 2016-18, DC 2018)
Only other choice was Edgaras Jankauskas, a forward who played 14 games for the Revs. Vytas played 37 for Portland and zero for DC.
Luxembourg: Maxime Chanot ( NYC 2016-pres.)
Another one by default but this one's an actually really solid player that finished fourth in Defender of the Year voting in 2019. We take those.
Malta: Etienne Barbera ( VAN 2012)
2 games in 2012. Only Maltese player in MLS.
Montenegro: Branko Bošković ( DC 2010-12)
Pretty much every other Montenegrin player played less than 20 games in MLS. Bošković played 43 before returning to Europe for family reasons. 7 assists in his final season though, which is technically something.
Netherlands: Johan Kappelhof ( CHI 2016-pres.)
Much like Germany, bright footballing tradition, very shaky MLS history. Which is weird because the Eredivisie exports a lot of guys to MLS.
Also, I'm excluding Kelvin Leerdam, as he is probably changing his international allegiance to Suriname.
So I'm going with 2017 All-Star Kappelhof, who I think is still fairly solid.
But really the choices aren't great. Dave van den Burgh? Roland Alberg scored a hat trick once I guess? Danny Koevermans was decent but injured all the time?
Maybe it's a hot take. It probably is.
North Macedonia: Oka Nikolov ( PHI 2013)
Never actually played, only in a friendly. Watch this space though as North Macedonia is apparently courting LAFC's Danny Musovski.
Northern Ireland: Johnny Steele ( RSL 2012, NYRB 2013-14)
Another case of shaky opposition, it was either Steele or Steve Morrow, who played 41 games for Dallas in the aughts.
Steele played regularly for a Shield winner, the 2013 Red Bulls. Easy peasy.
Norway: ~~Vadim Demidov~~ Ola Kamara ( CLB 2016-17, LAG 2018, DC 2019-pres.)
Adama Diomande is the main competition here. Kamara's first stint in MLS was a smashing success, scoring 48 goals in 90 regular season matches for Columbus and the Galaxy (he was traded for Gyasi Zardes before 2018). A brief foray to China followed, and while he's back in MLS with DC he hasn't quite been the same.
Still a good player on his day, maybe just the Bennyball effect.
Poland: Piotr Nowak ( CHI 1998-2002)
When I think of early Chicago, Nowak and the earlier-mentioned Kubik are the first two names that come to mind. Kubik held down the back while Nowak was the chief creator in the midfield. Three-time best XI, three-time All-Star, and MLS Cup MVP.
...can I drink my water now?
Portugal: José Gonçalves ( NE 2013-16)
Gonçalves fell off a cliff in his latter years, but in his first MLS season he won Defender of the Year and in his second he was a key part of a team that made the MLS Cup final and damn near won the thing.
Runner up here is Nani who is probably closing in.
EDIT: I also forgot to mention Pedro Santos, thanks to the Crew fans who pointed that one out. I still think Gonçalves pips him for his 2013 if nothing else, but Santos is probably closer than Nani.
Republic of Ireland: Robbie Keane ( LAG 2011-16)
A LOT closer than you think; ~~Time Person of the Century~~ ~~Juventus legend~~ Ronnie O'Brien was two-time best XI himself.
But nonono. This is Robbie freaking Keane. When we see these big name Euro guys interested in MLS, this is the man we want them to be.
Hypercompetitive and holding guys accountable on and off the pitch, and scoring for fun. 83 goals in 125 MLS regular season appearances. Best XI four times. 2014 MVP. MLS Cup MVP in 2014. A closetful of team awards including 3 MLS Cups.
This man was a baller, and frankly his departure was the beginning of the Galaxy decline into irrelevance, but that's a story for another time.
Romania: Alexandru Mitriță ( NYC 2019-pres.?)
Question mark because he's on loan and I have no idea if it'll be permanent, ~~but he was punted out by the Pigeons just as he was really starting to break out~~. He scored 12 goals in his debut season last year but filled in nicely this year while Maxi Moralez was injured. EDIT: NYC fans have informed me he wasn't punted out, but was loaned out to be closer to his pregnant wife. My apologies.
Honorable mention: Alex Zotincă, who played for the Wizards and Chivas USA in the aughts. Brave man.
Russia: Igor Simutenkov ( KC 2002-04)
Not a lot to pick from here either. 49 games, 12 goals for this forward from Moscow, who now serves as an assistant coach at Zenit.
Scotland: John Spencer ( COL, 2001-04)
Give Johnny Russell another few years and he'll pass Spencer, but for now I'm leaning the latter. Spencer as a coach was frustrating as hell, but as a player he was Best XI twice and an MVP finalist once. Dude could score goals despite battling injuries in his time in MLS.
Just don't let him sign Kris Boyd. Then you lose to Cal FC. No one wants that.
Serbia: Aleksandar Katai ( 2018-19, 2020)
FROM A SPORTING PERSPECTIVE.
And mostly due to a weak pool. Runner up was probably someone like Miloš Kocić.
18 goals in 62 games for Chicago before getting yeeted back to Serbia for Bad People Reasons
Slovakia: Albert Rusnák ( RSL 2017-pres.)
He has tenure on Ján Greguš, who's the closest competitor, but Rusnák is also good. He followed up a 14-assist debut season (4th in the league) with back to back 10 goal seasons before struggling this year with injury.
Slovenia: Robert Berić ( CHI 2020-pres.)
Once he got acclimated to MLS, the goals came, and Chicago has its successor to Nikolić up top. He finished with 12 goals in his debut season, tied for second in the league with Ruidiaz and Zardes.
Also, from what I saw early on, seems like he's a dark-arts type of guy that gets in your head. That's fun.
Spain: David Villa ( NYC 2015-18)
I really didn't want to put him here due to recent allegations, and the fact that Pozuelo has already matched his MVP and two Best XI performances....
77 goals in 117 games though, that's tough to pass on.
Sweden: Zlatan Ibrahimović ( LAG 2018-19)
It's Zlatan.
He pretty much dragged a sorry LA organization to something resembling competitiveness.
What the hell did you expect?
(Anton Tinnerholm made this hard, though)
EDIT: Forgot Gustav Svensson as well in my honorable mentions.
Switzerland: Stefan Frei ( TOR 2009-13, SEA 2014-pres.)
Pretty self-explanatory, one of the most accomplished keepers in MLS history and with a closetful of hardware. And all it took Seattle to get him was a late first round pick that pinged around so much that it was eventually traded for a coach.
Turkey: Sercan Güvenışık ( SJ 2012)
5 games that year. No one else has flown the Turkish flag in MLS.
Ukraine: Dema Kovalenko ( CHI 1999-2002, DC 2002-05, NYRB 2006-08, RSL 2008, LAG 2008-10)
I'm afraid he'd break my legs if I didn't. One of the most physical and downright dirty players the league has ever seen. Made nearly 300 appearances though, and has one each of the 3 major US trophies (MLS Cup, USOC, Shield), all with a different team.
Wales: Andy Dorman ( NE 2004-07, 2013-15)
Dorman was a key part of that real good Revs team from the mid-aughts, and just beats out Carl Robinson. He made 112 appearances in his first stint, and played in 3 MLS Cup finals, though they famously lost all three. The Revs brought him back in 2013 after some time in Scotland and England, and was playing semipro in the area as recently as 2018.

Venus and Jupiter placement
Venus is for men. Jupiter is for women. Both or either one preferred for non-binary people. Also, both as you'd like but the theme only applies to either placement. Your spouse will have the qualities of the planet's placement sign, house of location's original ruling sign and the house cusp sign, they are all shown in their natal chart.
Place (house)

1st house: anywhere
2nd house: nature, a place you own, a beautiful and tidy place, bank, a clean and fragrant place, food establishment, garden, florist shop, boutique, retail establishment, a place with presence of food etc.
3rd house: elementary school, neighbourhood area, a town or city where you live nearby, vehicle, a small place, shopping complex, sibling's home, neighbour's home, relative's home etc.
4th house: indoors, a familiar place, your home, your hometown, relative's home, a residential place, father-in-law's home, parents-in-law's home, mother's home etc.
5th house: theatre, studio, arena, stadium, amusement park, night-club, bar, yacht, cruise ship, a place where people come to have fun, a bright place, playground, nursery, casino, tennis court, basketball court, badminton court, volleyball court, beach, soccer field, football field, racing circuit, opera house, lover's home etc.
6th house: grocery store, pharmacy, workplace, your home, vehicle, retail establishment, service establishment, a place where routines take place, zoo, wildlife park, pet store, veterinary clinic, farm, uncle's home, aunt's home, museum etc.
7th house: court, a beautiful place, night-club, nature, a place where appointment meetings take place, airport, garden, government building, bank, ballroom, boutique, florist shop, retail establishment, food establishment etc.
8th house: a forbidden place, spouse's home, other's place, airplane, a dark place, an extravagant place, brothel, casino, bar etc.
9th house: a foreign place far from home, foreign country, university, high school, library, sibling-in-law's home, parent-in-law's home, father's home, a huge building, church, temple, field, plain, desert, North Pole, South Pole etc.
10th house: outdoors, a public place, workplace, parents' home, beach, high-rise building, mother-in-law's home, parents-in-law's home, father's home, first cousin's home, downtown, city centre, a place you bought or rented with your own money, a luxurious place, boss's home, superior's home etc.
11th house: neighbourhood area, friend's home, an unusual place, fraternity house, sorority house, a place where a gathering is held, sibling's home etc.
12th house: a secluded place, cinema, beach, cruise ship, yacht, night-club, bar, lake, river, forest, museum, art gallery etc.

Theme (house cusp sign)

Aries: self-drive, directness, initiative, courage, sensation, passion etc.
Taurus: slow and steady, serenity, pleasure, sensuality, love, beauty etc.
Gemini: jitteriness, nervousness, communicative, movements, pragmatic, hectic, intellect etc.
Cancer: familiarity, femininity, tenderness, emotional, familial, shyness, matriarchal etc.
Leo: dramatic, playfulness, romance, pride etc.
Virgo: practicality, communicative, meticulousness etc.
Libra: serenity, peace, balance, courtesy, love, beauty, social etc.
Scorpio: sexual, intensity, profundity, transformation, secretiveness etc.
Sagittarius: flightiness, liberation, enthusiasm, optimism
Capricorn: matter-of-fact, time, maturity, formality, sophistication, masculinity, patriarchal etc.
Aquarius: eccentricity, detachment, friendliness, togetherness, unity, communal etc.
Pisces: dreamy, compassion, intricacy, passivity, kindness, imaginative, selflessness, illusion, art, spirituality etc.

e.g. Justin Bieber, Venus in Pisces in Pisces 4th house cusp & Hailey Bieber, Jupiter in Capricorn in Capricorn 7th house cusp // Justin and Hailey first met in person at a fan event held backstage at The Today Show which was in a commercial building. Not to mention, she was accompanied by her father. The event happened in New York, where Justin"s father-in-law originated. Source 1 | Source 2 | Source 3
e.g. Elvis Presley, Venus in Capricorn in Capricorn 2nd house cusp & Priscilla Presley, Jupiter in Virgo in Virgo 9th house cusp // Elvis was in Germany for his Army career. He held a party at his temporary house where a number of guests were invited. Priscilla had been in Germany with her family as her father was ordered to be there. She travelled to Elvis's residence after she was given permission by her father to go to the party, and it was where Elvis and Priscilla first met in person. Source 1 | Source 2
By the way, you may want to note the placements of the benefic planets being Sun, Venus and The Greater Benefic Jupiter in your natal chart, the areas in which they are placed are dominant in your life.

Ramtidings, dear friends! It is I, your dutiful lord and master, the eternal GM. My sabbatical proved most fruitful, having figured out some depth mechanics for 3 dimensional combat in my pet project, Blood & Thunder, a maritime piracy RPG that has been both a joy and a nerve-wracking nightmare to create. If you want to see what's going on with that, you can swing by patreon.com/BlackFlagPrintingPress to take a look or support my endeavors. But I digress, because I did not come here today to talk about Blood & Thunder, no. I came here with something else in mind, good friends, for while I have been writing my bread and butter, you have gone without your beard and butter, and this is unacceptable! And so, I have trawled the depths of my memory to bring you yet another TAAAAAALE FROM THE TABLETOP, lovingly subtitled A Prologue Into Poverty.
Life is not an easy thing. There was a time when life was very difficult for me. I had far less than most, and I went without frequently, my entire life loaded into a backpack of bare necessities. Joys were few and times were hard, but I made the best of it. I traveled the countryside, mostly alone, making friends where I could amongst the other forgotten souls who haunt the streets of the United States. I met a good number of people, many of them listless drifters in their own right, who became fast friends. We would hang out for a time, but like all drifters, we would eventually part ways, called to different places to do different things. I had just come from North Carolina. I had been in Asheville, playing bluegrass to make money with friends who eventually proved dishonest, and so I parted ways with them. While in Asheville, I had met a girl, also on the road like myself, and I developed a massive crush on her. Fortune would have it that our time together was short lived, as she disappeared on a freighter down the train tracks, and I layed curled up in a bush sick as a dog for the next 3 days.
You can't get a ride from a freighter with 8 people without getting pulled off by johnny law. Our group had fractured, and myself and one other soul continued on our own, until we parted ways in Atlanta. Now, on my own, clueless and green, I wandered aimlessly, until a friend of mine at the time reached out to me by way of the internet. He had work for me, back in California, if I could just make it there. What's 3000 miles? I've got this. I walked out of Atlanta, hitched a series of rides to Arkansas, and then caught a freighter myself, all the way back to the west coast while UP did the driving. I laid on the back of that train for 3 days until I finally ran out of water and decided to get off. I was in Los Angeles. After a bit of panhandling, I got a bus into the central valley, and my friend came and scooped me up. I worked on my friends farm for a bit, building green houses and stacking money until the time came for me to once again depart. During that time, my crush from North Carolina had found me on Facebook. We got to talking.
She told me she had gone back home to Wisconsin and was working in some greasy spoon trying to save up money to afford a bus. She'd been back for awhile now, but wasn't making any headway. Her vices were getting the best of her, and she couldn't seem to get ahead. I told her she needed to knock that shit off and clean up her act. After a long enough time talking, however, things started to get flirty and dirty.
I wanted to see her, and it's actually amazing what a guy will do for love. You're how far away? Piece of cake. Hold my beer. With the work season coming to a close, I took my pay and my leave of my old friend, and he dropped me off in Modesto at the Greyhound. On the way out, he loaded me up with gifts for my travels - a new backpack, socks, a sleeping bag, some snacks for the ride... and naturally, he gave me a gift that I always treasure. He gave me a set of RPG dice. I gave my boy a hug, wished him well in his endeavors, and promised I'd be back in the fall to help him with the harvest and gathering firewood. So I went on my merry way.
I absolutely despise Greyhounds. Have you ever been on one? It's miserable. There's no room to stretch out unless you sit in the back, right by the toilet. Some asshole is always blaring garbage mumble rap on his phone all day long. It doesn't matter who you are - at the end of the trip you exude the pungent aroma of a neckbeard. This didn't bother me too much - personal hygiene suffers when you have no way to bathe regularly, so I was used to being dirty, and my friends from the road were usually very dirty people in their own right at the time, so I could handle a certain degree of grossness... within limits. I did shower at my friend's farm before I boarded that bus, though, and was feeling rather spiffy - clean body, clean clothes. Life was good and I was on my way to see my woman.
I did my best to zone out. I tried to sleep as much as I could and ignore the general atmosphere of the bus, but that was no longer an option after a layover in Las Vegas. We boarded the bus once more after an almost 24 hour delay on our schedules, and finally got moving again. I sat in the back near the toilet, as I was no stranger to this game and wanted that bench seat, and foul smells at the time didn't bother me much... or so I thought. With the bus filling up and the seats reducing to slim pickings, it dawned on me that my coveted back seat bench was going to get shared. Then, I saw him... the Busbeard.
I'm usually a pretty nice person, but I did not want my coveted backseat benchseat getting taken up, let alone by this massive lardass that now lumbered towards me. I did everything in my power to seem as big and hostile as I could. This was all in vain, however, as some people cannot read social cues. I stared at him, dripping hostility, mentally repeating sit somewhere else like it was a Zen mantra. However, nobody wanted him to sit by them either, and so, he made his way, closer and closer, as he asked people if seats were taken until he got to me at the back. He shifted to sit into the seat, angling his ass in the general direction of my face. The smell of soggy feces-laden underwear wafted up as he slid his bulk onto the bench.
Did I mention that personal hygiene suffers on a greyhound bus ride, especially when you've been riding for days? I've taken my fair share of Greyhounds, and it's unlikely that this new arrival had been riding for awhile. He was eastbound, like the rest of us, and we were in Las Vegas. His point of origin was... not very far east. I had only been on the bus for approximately a day so far, minus the extended layover time of course, so I was getting a ittle sweaty myself, but this guy smelled as if he not only lived on this bus, but was born in the blue poop goop of the latrine. It was a question worthy of debate as to whether this man had actually employed the use of a speed stick in his life. His patchy jowels jiggled at me as he said, hi.
I responded with a gruff and monotone hello, and then turned my attentions to the window, watching the bus depot workers loading up suitcases beneath. My fate was sealed. This man was to be my travel companion all the way to Denver. I decided then that maybe it would be best to ignore him. I plugged in my phone, booted up an emulator I had downloaded, and started to play some Pokemon to whittle away the hours. It didn't take long, however, before I could feel his olfactory looming become physical looming as he examined the screen upon which I played from over my shoulder.
Busbeard: Pokemon? I fucking love Pokemon! I didn't know you could play it on a phone. How are you doing that?
His heavy respirations were like an infusion of green spearmint and halitosis.
GM: Emulators.
I went back to my game, trying to angle myself away from him in such a way that he couldn't lean over my shoulder and watch me as I trained my team, but I was effectively sandwiched between him and the wall, forced to sit straight as he leaned over and watched me play. I debated then, what I ought to do. Playing Pokemon would make the time fly, but I would be crushed between the window and a sweaty fat man. Not playing Pokemon would save me the physical agony of being squished, but I would be painfully bored for seemingly endless miles, and he may use it as an opportunity to interact further. A decision needed to be made.
I shut the emulator off and put away my phone, turning my attention back out the window as the bus pulled out of the Las Vegas terminal and began down the freeway. It was not long after we had pulled out of the station, however, when that wheezing, rasping voice chirped up again.
Busbeard: So where are you going?
I ignored him, focusing on the casinos towering in the distance of the skyline, pretending as if I hadn't heard the question, or as if it weren't addressed at me. With insistance, he repeated his question at my turned back again, searching for a response within my stony exterior. I mumbled, the Midwest, and he questioningly grunted, and asked me to repeat myself. I guess we're doing this.
GM: I'm going to the Midwest.
Busbeard: Where in the Midwest?
GM: Wisconsin.
Busbeard: I've never been to Wisconsin before, but I know they got really good cheese! Hyuk hyuk... Is that why you're going there?
Judging by his smell, he must have been an excessively avid connosieur of fine Wisconsinite cheese. However, cheese was the last thing on my mind at the time.I was enamored with my lady love.
GM: I'm going to see an old friend.
Busbeard: Oh, that's cool... who is it?
The odds of this man knowing the person who I was on my way to visit were astronomically low. Your odds of getting struck by lightning, winning the lottery, and becoming president in the same day were probably higher than this cretin knowing the one specific person whom I was going to go visit in some backwater Wisconsin town. Still, I humored him, and in the same flat voice, answered his question, and told him I was on my way to see my sweetheart.
This caught Busbeard's attention. For a grown man in his mid 30s, he let out a loud "oooooooo" like a middle schooler would when he finds out his friend has a crush. I contemplated execution methods and the subjective severity of their barbarism as he excitedly asked me where she was from.
GM: Wisconsin.
Busbeard: Yeah... but, where in Wiconsin?
GM: Fuck off, dude. I'm not going to tell you the town where she lives.
Busbeard: Heh! I'd be terrified of telling a superior male like me where my girlfriend lives, too. A little kid like you wouldn't stand a chance next to a man like me. Her panties would hit the floor from one whiff of my pheromones. It happens all the time, bro, I swear. I could have any woman on this bus. They just can't resist me. They can sense my manhood, I know it.
I shouldn't stir the pot. All common sense tells me that I should just stop myself while I'm ahead, but sometimes... sometimes I just can't help myself. I've always been a pretty reserved and self-contained person for the most part, and I just want to be left alone 90% of the time to do my thing. Apparently, that's a lot to ask, because every now and then, somebody comes and invades my personal space with their protruding belly, bad breath, and self-aggrandizement, and then I find it really hard to resist my inclination to fuck with them. I know, I know, it's wrong of me to do that, but I'm human, damnit, and something good was cooking in the kitchen. What's the harm in dipping a spoon into this self-important concoction of body odor and bravado?
GM: Any woman, huh? Tell ya what, Busbeard, I just got paid, and you seem really confident in the power of your, ahhhhh, pheromones, so... how about a wager.
I laid out the terms of my devil's bargain. With a wager of 100 dollars, I would pick a lady on the bus at the next break. Busbeard would then have to seduce her. He MUST "present" his pheromones to her, naturally. If he recovered her phone number, or anything in excess thereof, like a kiss or a consensual toilet stall consummation, it would suffice to meet my criteria and loose my grasp from the freshly printed Franklin in my wallet. He agreed enthusiastically to my terms, insisting I was going to loose and he was going to get his dick sucked in a Greyhound portajohn "blumpkin style".
We rode along in silence for the next hour or so. The sun was high in the sky when we made our next stop at some gas station in Utah, and everyone filed off the bus to stretch their legs and get their snacks. I wandered around, huffing down my smoke, chatting it up with people and making friends, seeing just who they were, asking them questions - where they were going, who they were going there with. I got to talking with one guy and his girlfriend.
The guy, who we will call Sarge, was built like a brick shithouse and was a former infantry man who served 2 tours of duty in the middle east. He was traveling with his wife, a young and pretty little thing who we will call Alexandra. They were on their way back to the east coast to stay with family. Alexandra's mom was getting old and had asked them to move in to help take care of her. They were on their way out there to steward her aging mother's estate. I remarked that that was awfully kind of them, and sincerely wished them the best on taking care of Alexandra's aging mom. I told them a little bit about myself, as well... that I was effectively living on the road, playing life by ear, and on the way to see a loved one of mine for a bit before the wind blew me somewhere else.
Eventually, the bus driver gave everyone a 5 minute warning before departure, and we all filed on board. I moved back to my seat and waited for Busbeard to arrive. He came back, cradling piles of gas station sandwiches, bags of chips, and a couple of sodas in his massive paws. He sat down beside me with a loud "oof" and offered me a drink, saying that it's the least he could do before he took my money. I took that beverage. It was both cold and delicious.
GM: Well, Busbeard, I've done my rounds, and I've come to a decision.
Busbeard: Who is it? She better be hot. I swear to God, if you make me waste my time on some dried up roastie, I'm gonna be so fucking pissed at you dude.
GM: Why would I do that dude? Naturally, I only want the best for you. No, she's very pretty. You see that girl over there, in the aisle seat? That's the one. Make your move whenever you're ready.
I pointed out Alexandra to him. I already knew this was going to end very poorly. There was no way in Hell that Alexandra would express any interest in this disgusting lardass whatsoever when she had a stable and solid man like Sarge, and Sarge wasn't about to take guff from anyone. Add on to it that Sarge was easily the size of, if not bigger than, the prodigious Busbeard himself. Sarge was also trained to kill and hardened by years of combat in the graveyard of empires. I can fight - I've fought a lot - and I would not want to square up against him under any circumstances. Busbeard was going to get the snot beat out of him and pay me 100 dollars for that privilege.
The bus took off and I listened to the disgusting sounds of Busbeard inhaling the equivalent of 5 pounds of gas station food. I was only halfway through my soda, when Busbeard emitted a satisfied belch that rumbled the seats, and the feeding frenzy had ended in an effervesence of curdling bile and preservatives just as fast as it had begun. He then started to pump himself up for the task at hand. He started to sweat with excitement and latent cardiac arrest as he prepared his pheromonal aura about himself, and then with a gruff, alright, let's do this, he stood up from his seat and waddled down the aisle, his greasy belly bumping into everybody who had chosen an aisle seat.
He approached Alexandra. They were near the front end of the bus, and so I couldn't hear a word that they were saying. I watched Busbeard as he extended an arm and held on to the overhead luggage rack, exposing the damp miasma of corn-syrup infused armpit sweat to his unsuspecting victim. His pheromones were beginning to work their magic over the unsuspecting Alexandra who would soon be enraptured by its juicy spell. I waited, leaning forward intently, when a loud shout broke the silence.
Sarge: BACK THE FUCK UP.
Alexandra started to shout, too, yelling "get the fuck away from me!"
The driver turned back and yelled for everyone to sit down and shut the hell up or he would pull the bus over.
Sarge: Please do! I'm gonna beat this fucking lardass into the pavement! Saying shit like that to my wife? Who the fuck do you think you are?
The bus driver repeated his warning, and Busbeard began to shout his protests, insisting upon his innocence.
Busbeard: B-but, I was put up to it! It was that guy, in the back seat! He said---
He pointed back at me. I yelled back, I don't fucking know that guy.
The bus driver meant his threat, and pulled the bus over. We were on a long and empty stretch on the I-15 somewhere in rural Utah. The last town I had seen was about 20 miles back. It was late spring, and it was getting hot outside that afternoon. The bus driver got out of his seat, walked up to Busbeard, and told him to get the Hell off of his bus. Busbeard kept protesting, when Sarge moved past his wife, and started forcing Busbeard towards the front door.
I've heard the threat of getting kicked off maybe a thousand times on a Greyhound, but I had never seen it play out before. Busbeard was thrown off the bus. Sarge did not join him outside and pummel him into the asphalt, regrettably, as I would have loved to have watched it. Busbeard kept pleading with the bus driver as the driver shut the door on him, sealing him out on the shoulder of a lonely stretch of highway. I breathed a sigh of relief, and stretched out my legs. It was another 15 miles before we saw signs of civilization. A part of me felt bad for Busbeard, but the other part of me said, "if I can walk 20 miles in a day with 60 lbs of shit on my back, he can do an unencumbered 15 and be fine."
The ride continued on in sweet, reclined silence for me until we reached Denver, werein there was another changeover, and this bus was much, much more desolate. The rest of the Greyhound voyage passed without incident, and I spent my time flirting with my lady love and training some Pokemons. At long last, I finally arrived in Wisconsin. She came to pick me up at the bus station, and when we approached each other, we made out like long lost lovers for a good 5 minutes before we finally caught our breath enough to say hello. I got in her car, and spent maybe a week or so with her, before it was time to take my leave. I couldn't live there forever, and so, as fast as I had drifted into her life, once again, it was time for me to disappear. We said goodbye, and she dropped me off at a lonely interstate overpass on the edge of town. I put my thumb out to catch a ride to Anywhere But Here USA.
I planned my next move, and I figured that there were some friends of hers and mine that lived not too far away in the Dakotas, and maybe I would pay them a visit next. I was in the neighborhood, and figured that I might as well say hello. I reached out to them online, and then made my way west again. They were excited for me to come see them. It was only a day into the voyage when I received a message from Janet. It said, "wait for me, I'm catching up." She had packed her backpack again, and was coming after me, hot on my tail. I told her we could meet up at our mutual friend's house.
I dialed ahead to our friends, who we shall call Sarah and Queenie. Sarah used to travel together with Janet for many months before she stabilized, and then settled down. Queenie was one of my friends from North Carolina. He was a loveable chucklefuck of a drifter, missing a few teeth, wore a skirt, and spoke in the most haggard voice you could imagine. Still... he insisted on being called Queenie. He had settled down with Sarah after they hooked up, and they were living at Sarah's house. He was on thin ice there, however, and she was threatening to kick him out.
I arrived at Sarah's and Queenie's, and spent the next few days waiting for Janet to come up on my heels. During that time, Queenie and I played a lot of Magic (he had just gotten into it), and I remembered the dice that my friend in California had given me that were laying unusued in my backpack. I asked him if he had ever played tabletop RPG's before, to which he answered no. I told him that, maybe next time I see him and I'm in a better spot, we could run a game. Eventually Janet caught up, and we prepared to leave Sarah's for good towards our own new horizons. Queenie, however, had finally broken through the thin ice upon which he skated, and was getting thrown out. On the day of our departure, we asked him if he wanted to join us in our travels so he wouldn't have to go it alone.
Thus we began from Sarah's house out into the unknown once again, a cheerful trio, and true to my word, I began to teach not only Queenie, but Janet as well, the joys of tabletop RPGs.
As I'm sure you can surmise, dear friends, that this is not the end of our story, but only the beginning of another chapter. Is Busbeard still alive? What does the future hold for Ramtide's love life? How do a gaggle of vagabond drifters play tabetop games without a table? Some of these questions will be answered, my dear friends, in our next installment of TAAAAAALES FROM THE TABLETOP.
A shoutout to my lovely patrons, Tatoferret and Sillibits. You guys are wonderful. Thank you for believing in the dream.

Quick note: This post took me a long time to write, many hours between conception, editing, and execution. If you would be so kind as to not downvote it strictly because you disagree with me, I’d appreciate it. If you think this is a low effort post, or doesn’t contribute to discussion, then please do. This started out as more of a bullet point list of reasons but as I rewrote it became more of a story of my experiences as they relate to Goons. I hope you all enjoy it more this way.
One of the conceits of the war from the PAPI front is that “Goons are the bad guys of Eve”. I’ve found this narrative vexing, because over the last five years I think Goons have swung from comical Eve bad guys to the best of the large alliances in Eve. I’ll explain why I believe this is so.
But first let’s address some things: One of the disadvantages of being around for so long is that we have to carry around all of the bad baggage from years past. There are a lot of “old twitter posts” some of which are pretty awful. Bad people, bad memes, and the like. Some of it is just stupid in retrospect, some of it deeply embarrassing.
The positive news is that I think the alliance has become the leading example of what a large alliance should be in the game. Good to its members and a fun adversary to an outsider. Going back to 2015 Goons had gone through 1 “cultural revolution” which had defanged a lot of the casually terrible stuff that was common in Eve back then (ie: jewing was a common term for ratting/krabbing) but still had a lot of vestiges that wouldn’t be fully swept away until cultural revolution 2 (where we probably landed on the side of too heavy handed, but that’s a story for another day). However it was, in my opinion, peak “bad Goon” in terms of gameplay philosophy. Sion had just pushed the Viceroy plan - something I considered one of the most ill-conceived efforts to get content in quite a while. “Helldunks or blueballs” was the byword, and Reagalan snapping the phrase at some unremembered skirmish commander saying just that was the talk of the Eve subreddit. Spin was, in the most generous terms, pretty far-fetched. Line members were considered pretty dumb and the apparatchik were fairly devoted to passing down the party line.
At the time I was an up-and-coming FC. I had already formed my Reavers SIG about a year before in Oct. 2014 and had won some heavily outnumbered fights against most expectations. I was getting a big push from alliance leadership and kept winning fights as I got sent out on mainfleets I was quickly got promoted into bigger roles to the point where I was running main fleets as the main FC. Laz was mostly AFK after winning B-R5 and trying to do the streamer thing, but still around for big fights. Not long after Vily left Goons. A few months later Endie, Elise and others would start aggressively lobbying me pretty hard to leave Goons and I started getting BIG CASH OFFERS on the table from other people as well. This was the start of the Casino War. At this point I think Mittens started sensing the sharks circling and promoted me to ‘skymarshal’. This is a mostly tongue in cheek position but one that meant you were in charge of the Goon military.
At this point I had a lot of problems with the way some things were being handled in the alliance military, but I was fully committed to making change from inside rather than leaving my group behind (I had only been playing Eve seriously since 2013, but I’ve been a Goon since the early 2000s). One of my biggest problems was the “helldunks or blueballs” philosophy. I thought it was a great way to win one war but a terrible way to retain members. During much of 2015 I had the feeling that we were rotten to the core, that our strength was mostly fleeting. Although there were some specific moments that I felt could have stopped the Casino War before it started, (mostly by counteracting SMA’s mind boggingly bad decisions) I felt that theViceroy program and the disasterous lowsec campaign had already exposed a lot of our weakness to the whole galaxy.
Despite the losses, the Casino War turned out to be a huge boon to Goonswarm and our allies that stuck with us. It got us out of Deklein into Delve which was (at the time) much better space. We would have never got rid of Deklein otherwise. It taught us a lot of lessons about sprawl and not fighting over-extended. It showed us the flaws in our organizational structure. But most importantly it opened minds to re-evaluating certain dearly held doctrinal beliefs. One that I wanted to challenge almost immediately was helldunks and blueballs. I felt that our guys being generally unchallenged lead to us having great numbers of fair weather friends who could be relied on for dunks but would split when the going got tough, both in Goons and throughout the other alliances in the CFC. In our exile to Saranen, we saw exactly that.
My doctrinal belief was, and still is, that regularly placing your guys in tough positions results in better pilots and in people who are happier overall. We grow personally and as a group by overcoming challenges. A helldunk is a Pepsi Cola. A struggle overcome is a 14 year old scotch.
After the Casino war we moved to Delve and were in pretty bad shape resource wise but you knew every person who stuck with you was true blue. I’ve never had more fun than my days in Saranen as the war wended its course to an end, and part of that reason was you knew that every person who was with you in Saranen would ride with you against all odds. I was determined to capture the ‘Saranen Spirit’ for people who were there and for those who would start playing or join us later.
It took a while though. When we first arrived in Delve PGL followed us there with the goal of destroying us once and for all, but by this point there was no fat left. Every single person was battle hardened and the money and will to follow us had run out. We stopped his campaign pretty quickly.
Change came slowly at first. We had a lot of wounds to lick, a lot of data to process and people were just tired. The first turning point against helldunks/blueballs came with our Hakonen deployment. We took a shot at Tribute with just carriers and dreads versus an enemy supercap force that clearly outnumbered us. It was a very fun deployment for us but we did eat a ton of negative publicity about how “bad” we were. I think it bothered Mittens a bit (maybe a lot) and I don’t think he had yet realized the value we gained out of it.
After seeing GOTG’s impressive subcapital and supercapital contributions during the Hakonen deployment, we decided to deploy some of our combat SIGs to Pure Blind to begin harassing our enemies on that front, once again committing to an offensive in a deliberately handicapped fashion. For almost a year, we whittled down multiple alliances with relatively tiny subcapital fleets and the odd dreadbomb. All of this built up to a climax in 2017.
X-47 was one of the most consequential fights in recent memory, and once again we put ourselves in a rough spot to get it. We started the titan fight with dead-even numbers against an enemy with Keepstar advantage and all that entails. Less remembered but even more significant was the oppressive tether doomsday bug/feature, which put our super fleet at a significant disadvantage. In the armor timer, we gave them the opening volley and it started off really poorly for us, but we ended up pulling out a victory. The hull timer was a much more lopsided victory in terms of Titan kills, , and the Keepstar death all but ended serious resistance in the war. Still, I remember the anxiety going into the fight, I don’t want to sound over-dramatic but I spent the whole night before prowling my house, unable to sleep. I had figured out the value of the Imperium supercapital fleet and it was in the millions of dollars if you converted it to plex. It’s a huge amount of pressure on the shoulders of the FC to know that if you mess up you could lose that for the people who put their trust in you. It’s also a very small group of people in video game history who can make a statement like that so it’s a fun and unique cadre to belong to and my respect to those of you who have shouldered that burden before.
Throughout all of these campaigns, I think it became more and more clear that this new military philosophy was the superior one, and ditching the ‘helldunk’ strategy was the correct move. Over time I slowly pulled Mittens towards my view point on this - that there is something of more value than just numbers. Our doctrines started evolving too. This might sound comical, but for a long time Goons had avoided cap chains. It was thought that the Goon line member couldn’t handle it. Now when I see our fleet spreading ewar really effectively, and our very effective cap chaining logi, and multiple FCs all doing different tasks, I can’t help but smile. Hard work pays off.
After X-47 we wrapped up that war and went home. We would come back in the not too distant future to finish the work we had started. We expected a stronger response in Tribute, but after an initial hard fight the regions were vacated and we glassed it. Unlike every other group in the game, we didn’t immediately find some renters or delegate an underling to occupy the space. We left it fallow and a really healthy ecosystem of small alliances has flourished. We didn’t know exactly what would happen in this space, but since we left Deklein we have very conspicuously and openly avoided taking space and sprawling out. And I was very satisfied to see what can happen when you leave some space open for anyone to use.
After that last northern campaign, we went home again during the chaos era before we started our GEF campaigns the following year. Once again, we deployed against superior enemy numbers with capital superiority and fought outnumbered in two separate campaigns. At this point it felt like we had burnt away all vestiges of helldunks or blueballs.
Coming into July I had this short convo with Mittens, and I think it illustrates how our relationship has grown and the trust that you can build even with people who initially had vastly opposing views on how things should be run: https://i.imgur.com/YyIE1bs.png
I’d like to address a few more points that I think lie strongly in our favour: Supercaps – Goons have been opposed to them for as long as I can recall. All our CSMs have publicly come out in favour of them being nerfed, even though it’s long been to our strategic benefit for them to be strong. Over the last few years we’ve lost people in comparison relative to other alliances. Some people have aged out, some didn’t like the way we fought wars and went to climes that agreed with them more, but we’ve always had the most supers and we’ve constantly argued that they are unhealthy for the game. I have personally lobbied for them to be nerfed, in public and in focus groups with Devs, because it’s our belief that they are unhealthy for the game. Part of why we are being attacked is because our enemies believe that dreads can be used against titans much more effectively than in the past, and they can flex their numbers advantage in that area on us. If we end up losing because of this, we’ll have lobbied ourselves into that position.
I think part of the gulf in perspective between us and our enemies, especially the TAPI FCs is that they just fundamentally view the game differently than we do. But at one point we were much closer. Vily left in 2015 in the middle of helldunk/blueball and copious spin and he’s brought the Goons culture of 2015 to Test. There’s a Test poster – who I won’t name because I’m pretty sure he gets off on being recognized – who has been making the argument that Test are more Goonie than Goons. And to him I say: I agree with you. Test have inherited the mantle of Goons and we became something else. Vily is Goons without the growth. PGL tried to destroy us in 2016 and thought we’d cave in like a rotten pumpkin because that’s what happened with his alliance. When we didn’t I believe he was shocked but he thinks it will be different this time. Well, I’m going to be the bearer of bad news for him because this group has been through much worse than we had in 2015. We have a lot of people who have been fighting consistently against people who had every advantage over them and they’ve come out the other end stronger. Will it be enough to beat 3x our numbers? Who knows, but I know these guys will be with me no matter what happens.
I’ve been hearing the same story over and over in my fleets, I have pretty open comms (sorry Euros that I annoy with this policy) and people have been more reflective as of late. And I kept hearing the story from one guy after another about how they thought that Goons were the bad guys until they joined them. So tonight I asked my fleet to X up if they thought or had heard that Goons were the bad guys before they joined, this was the result: https://i.imgur.com/mJCEiS7.gif
I’ve been pondering this, and wondering why people would join the bad guys. Every story varied but often people had tried other things and were unhappy and Goons were an unhappy choice initially but once they were in they saw how things actually worked and were happy with it. Some ended up by chance through a corp moving or just a friend invited them and that overcame their doubts. The point was that even though they heard we were the bad guys once they were here and got to experience our culture they saw it was different than what they had elsewhere. That’s partly why I think a lot of our guys are really passionate, they feel unfairly attacked.
Now I’ve come a long way, but I want to address the 5 ton elephant in the room: The Mittani. I’m very aware that he said something stupid almost a decade ago. I addressed my thoughts in much more depth here. I don’t believe it was said with malice, but it still was an awful thing to say. However in my time interacting with him he’s always been a very passionate guy but I’ve never seen him suggest an untoward thing. He wants to win, he wants to use whatever legal way possible to do it and he’s a guy who’s shown a lot of growth personally. If he wanted to do something I thought was immoral I would hear about it and I wouldn’t support it, but I’ve never once been put in that position.
I think a lot of you don’t understand that he’s a wrestling promoter. He can’t help but play a heel. He’s fantastic at it. And he’s fantastic for the game, lots of you guys on the other side want to win so you can wipe the smug smile off his face. This is awesome. More leaders should be like this, there are a few I really would like to do the same to (or have done in the past) and it’s great to have people that motivate you to fight them. The worst thing for this game would be a bunch of staid boring diplomats who didn’t inspire any vitriol. This game is about fighting after all.
Another good thing about Goons and the Imperium is our diplomatic stance, although I don’t want a bunch of diplomats running the game I am very keen on keeping our words and Goons have done this more than any other group. Sister Bliss was talking with me about why Init has stuck with Goons and he said something about how every other group in the game had promised Init the world then screwed them when it was convenient and Goons were the only one who stuck to what they said and he values that.
A few quick more bullet points:

Goons do not like renting. Of all the big alliances we’ve had the smallest rental program, we only reluctantly got into it when OTEC was broken and had to secure some income. We closed our rental program, but we kept out word and grandfathered our old renters so that they could stay and not lose what they’d agreed to. I think renting is a net bad thing for the game, actually very bad so I’m proud of this one. Culturally Goons have always opposed rental programs.
We forced the game into taking on all players regardless of skill point level. Groups like Brave, Horde, etc followed in our footsteps on this one. I firmly believe that getting players into groups that have the bandwidth to teach them the game with proven programs that know how to retain people is the best way to do it, rather than just hoping they join random highsec corp #1850 and hoping they aren’t run by toxic incompetent people.
Goons don’t sprawl. We’ve held 4 regions but 2 of those were more out of necessity than any desire to hold them. In one region we did the Querious Fight Club which has launched over 20 corps into nullsec alliances around the game or independently. Right now Pandafam covers 12 or 13 regions and is renting out many of them to aggressively botted alliances. If you look at the MER Frat is making more money than any other nullsec group and it’s not even close. Because of how densely packed we are our space is terrible for botting, probably the worst space in the game for it, which is another tick for us.
This is a personal one but Goon doctrines are more interesting. Screw Munnins, down with boring arty doctrines. I’m really happy we’ve been iconoclastic in our doctrinal decisions and have seen success with those choices.

So, that about wraps up my voluminous tome. What should you do with this information? Well, I hope no matter what side you were on you found it an interesting read. I’m not trying to convince anyone to not fight us. Jay and I were talking right as the war was starting about how we were in the perfect spot, no one expects us to win so if we do it’s more credit to us but if we lose it’s to be expected. If we end up back in an NPC station then I get to just replay my favorite time in Eve ever. But I hope I have shown you a little bit about why I believe Goons are one of the best alliances in the game right now, thanks for reading.

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