In short, I think the whole thing is fucking bullshit. We've had a single season in Steel. We proved that once we got our game together, we could do very well, but I think that it's unfair to expect that we could go up against Silver teams. From what I've seen, we've been doing so badly just because, right after a summer of not playing with each other (and some of us not even playing that much) as well as three or four new players, we don't have the same amount of teamwork that we did at the end of last season, after scrimming and playing as a team 4+ times a week. Even at the end of last season, we were barely high steel and really not even winning by that much (remember that Sunshine game?). We've only had a _single_ season in steel as a team, which, yes, we did reasonably well in, and now we're being asked to play at a low to mid Silver level after a roster change (Emily, Rusty, Holiday, etc.), which at least I don't think is a reasonable thing to ask. Now, if we had stayed even one more season in steel, proven that we could do consistantly well, and sort of ironed out some of the problems that we as a team had, I would 100% support, and probably push for moving to silver. But I can't 100% get behind doing that quite yet.

Now, in your own words, "This season is a joke. No playoffs, random maps, hardly any legitimate teams are going to do their very best or play at all. " Why should we care so much and be trying so hard about the roster then? Wouldn't this be the _perfect_ season to figure out and solve the coordination problems we've been having? Just treating it as a bunch of scrims aimed at us getting better, not a season that actually matters for anything other than self-improvement.

The whole roster thing is actually pretty disappointing. I've actually been trying my ass off trying to get better and to hold myself to a Silver standard, as I'm sure many of the other players have been doing. But all of a sudden, after literally four scrims with a few new players, I, and the rest of the team (at this point, I don't even feel like either Retro or you cares about the team members' opinions), were moved to the sub position because we weren't deemed "good enough." After four scrims. With new players with us. After an entire summer of not playing together. Against Silver teams. Now, I wholeheartedly agree that some of us need to be replaced (confidentially, Cheers and Kso), but only with players who we are going to mesh with and can improve with.

A few months ago, I talked to you about Pissy vs. Rusty. I said that fostering an unhealthy amount of competition between players/candidates is just dumb. Literally the exact same thing I'm seeing now happened to my old 6's team, which is pretty saddening. A team isn't supposed to just drop players for the inability to play beyond their skill set, it's supposed to work with them to make them better --- or not set unrealistic, inflexible expectations in the first place. I understand that you and Retro want to win, but what you're doing is just fucking making a new team while giving the old one, I dunno, unemployment benefits or something. It's pretty much bullshit. You said that you don't want to hear whining? Okay.

You have said multiple times that you want us to prove that we're so much better. I can't fucking do that. Maybe other people can. Maybe Rusty can. The person replacing him isn't incredibly more skilled. But applying to me? Absolutely fucking unrealistic. The person chosen to replace me, Tury, has 2.5x the hours in TF2 as I do. Well, hours in a game aren't a good measure of skill, right? Fine. He has 2x the hours on Demoman as I do. Well, hours in a class aren't a good measure of skill, right? Fine. He has 16x the lobbies as I do. Well, number of lobbies aren't a good measure of skill, right? Fine. He is ranked nearly twice as high as I am in Tf2PlayerRankings, a cumulative ranking from every game log ever uploaded to logs.tf. If that's not an adequet measure of skill, I don't know what to say. This is expecting me to more than double my skill as Demoman. It's taken me 1.5k hours, 200 lobbies, and a total of 2 seasons of playing competitive on a team to get where I am right now. If I have to put all that in again simply to play on a team that I now know will replace me the very moment that one of the leaders decide that we're not good enough after four scrims, then replaces us all with completely new, much better players, as opposed to working with us to figure something out, I don't think I'm going to want or care enough to do so.

I've heard that Cheers is possibly going to start his own team. I have no intentions of joining him, as I do not believe he can manage a team well, but I'm starting to see why he wants to start his own.

I've been doing my best to make sure I'm not whining. I'm just trying to share my honest opinions about what's happening.

Rusty found a pretty good summation of what it felt like to play with Retro and you the past few times I've played with whatever you'd call this. Don't really feel like it's a team anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwfYTSdJ7kY