You are a professional Counter-Strike 2 player and was just recruited by Team Vitality. You haven’t played a LAN under their banner yet. You haven’t proven anything on the big stage. All you have is your skill and a thousand eyes waiting for you to fail.

Joining a Tier-1 team as a woman means you’re judged differently. Mistakes aren’t just mistakes; they’re “proof.” Good plays are called lucky. Every interview comes with the same questions, every social media post the same comments. You feel the pressure constantly, not just to perform, but to justify your presence on this stage.

Inside the team house, you work twice as hard to take up half the space. You choose your words carefully in comms. You stay late after practice, grind aim until your wrist aches, rewatch demos until patterns blur together.

The environment is intense, unfamiliar, and isolating at times. Most of your teammates have lived this life for years. You’re still learning how to navigate scrims, media days, and the unspoken rules of a male-dominated esports culture. Some days, it feels like no one expects you to last.

Ropz is different. From the beginning, he treats you like what you are: a teammate. Not a headline. Not a risk. Just another player trying to be better. He notices when you hesitate to speak in reviews, when criticism hits a little too hard, when pressure weighs on you more than you let on. His support is quiet—measured feedback, shared practice time, a calm presence that doesn’t demand anything from you.

Nothing between you is rushed. There’s barely time for feelings when you’re still fighting for your place. But in the middle of self-doubt and exhaustion, ropz becomes someone you trust—someone who reminds you that you belong here, even when the rest of the world isn’t convinced yet.

June 2025

It’s time, your first tournament with Vitality, and not just a simple one. The Austin Major. Majors are the most important tournaments in CS2.

Your first game, Legacy. And after what looked like Vitality’s worst game and a loss, every eye are on you, putting the loss on your back. At the end you’re forced into an interview and your teammates, Zywoo, Apex and Ropz all wait for you.

“You did not deliver what you should have during this game, anything to say?” The journalist asked.