empathy: "I am going to have no choice but to look for a European team"

It's not been a good week for Shimmer. Lynn "Lx" Clarke had her passport rejected at first, delaying her arrival in Spain, Abigail "abby" Deters fractured her wrist the night before the LAN Finals started, and the team has been subject to harassment and hate speech for having transgender members of the team.

Despite all this, Lucy "empathy" Verkaik and Shimmer gave everything they had and showed a lot of maturity, taking the stage and never shying away from a fight. Dust2.us Gonçalo "GoncOak" Carvalho talked with the team leader about the games, the stand-in situation, the ESL Impact changes, and empathy's mental state after a week in the crosshairs.

Despite the circumstances, you still had a solid map to start the day and now you have had a series against FURIA where you couldn't produce as much as you did earlier. How do you evaluate the team's performance overall?

Honestly, terrible. We played awfully compared to what we have been playing the last months but I think the circumstances just couldn't be more awful. It was all so hectic with everything that went on, Lx's passport not getting accepted and then her having to come way later, abby breaking her wrist the day before the finals, and me having to stay up all night long trying to find a substitute that is eligible by ESL. It's the worst possible circumstances, so stressful. Going into the finals with no practice, a substitute we had never played with before and no sleep, it's about as bad as it could be, as well as basically everyone online hating us. We felt dead from the start, although we tried our best, we put in all the effort we could, there was nothing we could do.

Regarding the stand-in situation, we saw Kionetta in the crowd and I have to ask you, why wasn't she the stand-in?

We honestly just wanted someone that had played European CS, just because we thought they would have a better time understanding the other team. Originally, we tried to get Zana from BIG Equipa, but ESL declined since she had played this season, which is understandable. Aidy was our next best option, and she was good. It's definitely not her fault for how we performed.

Shimmer is the only team to reach this stage of the ESL Impact league twice without organizational support. We are seeing new organizations representing North American teams. How do you feel seeing other teams being picked up while you are the second-best team in NA and you don't have an organization? Have any organizations reached out to you?

No organization that can give the support that we can live off of has reached out to us, which we need, because all five of us are playing CS full-time and we need visa for Phoebe to play in North America, and there's no organization we think can provide that easily that has reached out. I think most of the teams getting picked up are not getting liveable salaries. It's just a terrible situation, especially with them taking away the spots from North America. I don't think there will be another big org like FlyQuest entering the NA impact scene unless a team consistently is better than FlyQuest RED, and that's the only way, because, genuinely, why would they, there's no event they can't qualify and it's just looking like it's going to be FlyQuest RED all the time, especially since EG is dead and a lot of the other teams that are expected to be really good, like Karma, didn't even stay in the league. It's really unfortunate for North America.

In a recent interview, you talked about the spots distribution being bad for NA, and you even talked about playing in Europe. Is that in your mind, coming to Europe full-time to play Counter-Strike?

Honestly, the number one thing in mind right now is trying to find a European team. As much as I love everyone in Shimmer, I absolutely love the team and building it has been a big part of the last year for me and really important to me, it's just that there's no money and it's hard for me to survive currently. I literally am going into debt just living off of nothing, playing CS and I just don't have the option anymore to play without an organization's support, and if there's no organizations in North America, I am going to have no choice but to look for a European team, unless Shimmer can somehow all go to Europe, I think that's what most likely going to happen [look for a EU team], although I am playing next season with Shimmer because they are my team and I have no hard feeling towards any of them. It's just the financial situation.

With ill-fated comments from members outside of the community, losing abby recently, and everything happening at the same time, how do you cope with that? Do you feel like playing Counter-Strike when you go on that stage?

No. It was pretty miserable today and I spent the first half of the day crying. We even had to postpone this interview because I was crying and couldn't do it. There is just so much going on and awful situations and hate going around, it's definitely unmotivating to play, at all.