here I come with my mini essay/yap session... RPF warning (and an RPS aside at the very bottom because I have a lot of opinions about these things too and I couldn't help myself—Guke and Bengifaker and mentions of Deft's shenanigans)
Let's start with Faker, because I've predominantly only liked the pre-2017 SKT rosters for several months now. I've always seen OGN as very fundamentally different in how they treated not just the players, but all of the people in the esports space, especially those working for a team and appearing on stage (which is to say—this includes the coaches). One part of this was that OGN, especially compared to modern LCK, was absolutely unfiltered. Banter everywhere, flame, and yes, a good chunk of it was mostly light-hearted, but people were taking potshots at each other and people were having lowkey genuine beef (looking at you, Imp and Piglet). PR and media training were debatable at best, though players were often saved just by the virtue of being socially awkward teenage boys who really just wanted to play video games and thus could not come up with a lot of Words to say when put under the spotlight. Faker back then was...decent, in at least that he did know how to filter himself somewhat in public. However, any of his (metaphorical) dirty laundry was quickly and rather gleefully aired out by his teammates, and so this is how we know that Faker, back then, was a very angry kid.
So: SKT Faker. He's young and he's a genius at League of Legends, and so understandably, he gets frustrated, he gets angry. And because he's young and frustrated and nowhere near as mature as he is now, it would be understandable for this anger to spill out and onto things and people that don't deserve it. Not to say that it's fair or good of him to do so, but it is understandable and it is realistic to some degree, at least to me, because again, Faker is a teenager here. He's seventeen, eighteen, brilliant but socially awkward, and plays video games for a living and gamers, teenage or not, have a reputation or stereotype for being toxic assholes for a reason (though usually, most people aren't actually that bad).
Actually, let's try and back this up with some stuff (I won't really say proof, because that feels wrong to me to say), shall we? Time for a bit of a history lesson.
Judgement Day was not a perfect roster. You had Faker, first of all, the star and main carry and the baby of the team, who was and still is heavily opinionated on the game because he does it for a living! He loves this game! Of course he'd have strong opinions about the games. But aside from Faker, who despite his appearance (especially nowadays, where he does have media training), does have a big and space-taking personality, you also have Poohmandu and Piglet at least. Poohmandu was the oldest, the self proclaimed mother of the team, and, probably most importantly, was, of the five members of Judgement Day, the one with the most experience in esports, since he'd been a relatively successful CHAOS pro before he went off to military service and joined OGN LoL. Piglet was an ADC, and I honestly think that's rather self-explanatory. So we have at least three people with strong opinions and egos and the willingness to speak up about these things. This is all at least somewhat manageable when the team wins, as Judgement Day does in 2013, because the opinions are proven correct, the egos are satisfied, etc. But what happens, like in 2014, when the team doesn't win?
(Do forgive me if I'm being a bit Bengi-pilled here, I might not be able to help it lol)
From all of this, we can establish fairly easily that SKT Faker is a Person. Not a saint and a paragon of patience or an unexpectedly mature genius kid, but an ambitious and easily frustrated teenager who likely will not deal with all of these negative emotions perfectly in every single instance. And yet, despite all of this anger Faker had (and if we want to talk about post 2014 Faker, we can very easily move onto those infamously explosive Faker-Marin fights in 2015), I rarely ever see people write about it. To be fair, I rarely see people write about Judgement Day in general (because a good chunk of the fanfics on Ao3 about them belong to me lmao), but I've rarely seen people write and or talk (not just on Ao3) about Faker's anger as something that could be ugly.
Anger can be ugly. Anger is often ugly and it is often unfair in who it burns and the person who wields it is usually a fucking asshole for doing so, but despite how ugly it is, it does not necessarily mean the person who experiences this anger and lashes out because of it is a bad person because it is an emotion that is common. People in real life often experience this and have been on the opposite end of such anger. Sometimes the resolution is easy—calming down, talking it out, "I shouldn't have said those things, I'm sorry"—and sometimes it isn't, but it's something that happens naturally. Growing past this anger can give a lot of wisdom and insight that I think other life experiences might not grant, which is where Faker is now, and I think this is also partially why he's managed to last for so long. Running on just plain ambition and thus anger and frustration and the drive to be better cannot be sustainable for forever. You can see it in the way Faker breaks down after Worlds 2017, and to me, it's obvious how he starts to change after that. Even Faker himself has said that his goal within the game and what he looks to gain from playing still is different from back then. He no longer plays solely to win and to prove himself to be the best, but also because he wants to learn. This is an important part of who he is now, and the fandom often gets this new version of his personality correct, but if the anger all of this grew from isn't acknowledged, it always feels like there's something missing to me.
And the thing is—Faker still gets angry. He still gets frustrated and he's still human. But while the fandom space loves exploring certain negative emotions that come out of esports and the ups and downs of it—grief, for example, is the most popular in my opinion—anger often feels toned down, neglected. The fandom version of Faker, the one who's missing that deep burning anger and vicious ambition, who's missing the part of his personality that once drove him to clash with his teammates so often that him being angry wasn't even a surprising state anymore and thus made him a dick and an asshole at times in the past, isn't as interesting or complex to me. This kind of defeats the purpose of an RPF/RPS fandom, in my opinion, because in an RPF/RPS fandom, where the characters are all based off of Actually Real People, you automatically have layers upon layers of complexities to these characters that other media may struggle to achieve.
As I've gotten deeper into the old SKT and OGN content, I've gotten rapidly pickier about Faker's characterization in the fandom space. While I understand that most people are not in the fandom for the same reasons as me and do not create, talk about, or consume the content in the same way I do. So I can kind of understand why there is so much Faker (and Keria) content + ships that make him more delicate, more gentle (a yaoi bottom, if you will), or a most a brat to be tamed. In these, if he's angry, it's usually portrayed as something brief, easily calm-able, or even something cute, in the way that some older (and modern) media sometimes portray women (though if I go on a tangent about the strange urge in this fandom—or most, if not all fandoms, to be fair to LoLRPF—to make one half of a ship effectively a woman and how this almost always ends up with a work that reads as something very spiritually misogynistic to me, this yap session will end up FAR longer than it already is). But I personally have a distaste for it, because to me, all of that excises something important to Faker's personality and therefore his RPF character—that anger, that could and probably did drive him to be at least a bit of an asshole, that he had at least when he was younger. This version of Faker feels fundamentally Wrong to me, and in my opinion, it's a disservice to both Faker's actual personality and to the fandom in general. And again, to be clear: I'm not saying that SKT Faker was ever evil or intentionally cruel—he really wasn't I think, he was just a teenager—but I am saying that he was a hot-headed ambitious kid who was eventually told constantly that he's essentially God but who still had to suffer through losses—he will be angry, he will be mean, and he will be a fucking asshole sometimes, and even if he's outgrown this, that anger still helped shape him into who he is now.
Now, onto Keria. This section will hopefully be shorter, because oh my fucking God, I've typed over 1.5k words already. I honestly see Keria as very, very similar to Faker (if you've seen my Faker "Viva La Vida" birthday edit, I put Keria over the "be my mirror" lyric because that is how I see them lol). There are differences, of course, but as time has gone by, Keria, to me, has gotten closer and closer to SKT Faker's personality—kind of by running Faker's path of growth in reverse. In 2021 and 2022, he was a lot bubblier, open, and he was very markedly younger. Not immature or naïve, because by 2022, he still had gone through losses and roster breakups, but still young. I hesitate to say this, but in some ways, he was kinder back then. Then 2022 World Finals rolls around and this is the Big Shock. The Big Loss, and I won't spend time pointing out the Faker and Keria similarity there because that is a horse beaten to dust by the fandom already. Instead, I'll move on to 2023 and beyond.
There was a marked shift in how Keria interacted with his teammates (particularly Gumayusi, but we'll get to that) in 2023, especially after Bengi left (which, again, sorry for being Bengi pilled, but I really do think summer 2023 was when ZOFGK really started decaying, even if it only started truly completely falling apart in 2024 and 2025). We see the results of this, of water hitting the stone until there's an undeniable and un-missable crater in the surface, extremely clearly in 2025. Where he started as a relatively kind and bubbly young player, he's grown into someone angrier, more ambitious. He is focused much less on parts of his life and people he once cared for in favor of winning, and in this way, he is walking backwards along Faker's path. Instead of learning that his anger won't keep him afloat, he's learnt that being angry makes him win. After all, he's won three times now, hasn't he?
I trust you can follow where I could go with this—about Keria and this anger he holds, and yes, just like Faker, I think his fandom character/image would benefit from the fans both recognizing and writing him as a bit of a dick. He's not a teenager like SKT Faker, but he is someone who tried being kind and who tried winning through being gentle and loving and buying into this kind of "found family" esports roster myth (and really, what else do you call the myth DRX'20 and T1'22 tried and succeeded to sell?) only to be given nothing but heartbreak. Of course he'd be angry, and when that anger paid off in winning Worlds of all tournaments, of course he'd keep that anger and feed his ambition with it. This makes him more interesting and this makes him a dynamic character, if he's written like this in RPF spaces. To continue insisting that and writing Keria based off of how he was pre-2024 or even pre-2023 is a disservice to how he's changed, for better and for worse. Calling him more mature is something I kind of hesitate to do, because this kind of anger certainly isn't mature mature, but on the other hand, he still is more mature than he was back then.
I've been trying very hard not to jump onto Guke dynamics for the last three paragraphs, so I'll do it here. To me (because I have a few Guke mutuals in the fandom, and because in truth, I stopped bothering to watch and catch up with T1 content the way I did up to 2023 in 2024) the easiest way to track Keria's changes is his relationship with Gumayusi. 2021 and 2022 was a kind of almost honeymoon phase for them. Despite the losses, everything was still nice, kind, and Keria, for the lack of a better way to phrase this, loved Gumayusi. The two of them were damn near inseparable. Then 2022 World Finals barges in with a shrieking airhorn and things Change. I've seen other people point out that Guke in 2023 was a "drought" compared to 2021 and 2022 and I agree with this, to be honest. Keria does start to distance himself, while Gumayusi does not become any less obsessed with Keria, and this slow drifting continues to 2025. Here, we see the big fractures between these two begin to grow. Between Keria smack talking Gumayusi in DMs, more or less just completely ignoring him, or even going so far as to bother Viper to play with him.
Up to this point, Gumayusi had largely remained stagnant when it came to his relationship with Keria, but clearly, as we can see, something finally shifted for him too, because he left. "Guke divorce" had, however, already been kind of a Thing before this, and it's due to people realizing that "wait, there is this big rift between Gumayusi and Keria. What happened?" and so for people to discuss this Guke divorce (both during the year or the event where Gumayusi straight up leaves) and for them to interact with this without considering the fact this is all due to Keria being highkey an asshole—is again, disingenuous to me. It's looking at Guke divorce as if this is still the same Guke from 2021 and 2022, as if Gumayusi hadn't left because he decided he wasn't going to take the short end of the stick from T1 and Keria anymore, as if Keria would cry about it like he hadn't been almost actively pushing Gumayusi away for the last two and a half or even three years. And to be frank—I find that portrayal exceedingly boring. I don't care and I won't harass anyone who does read it like that and who does make and consume Guke content like this, but I personally steer clear of it because that's boring and it is, again, completely disregarding how Keria and Gumayusi have changed over the years. Keria is not necessarily a bad person, but if we look at how and why Guke have fractured to this point? It's because Keria has been at least a little bit of an asshole. He wants to win and he has these ambitions that he wants to satisfy deeply, but he is going about doing it by tearing his heart out to feed the fire, and when handed Gumayusi's heart, is throwing it in too.
Similarly, the foundation of Bengifaker is very similar. I've talked about this before to some degree, but how Bengifaker works is again this lopsided flow of sacrifice. (SKT) Faker would rip out his heart to feed and fulfill his ambition and when Bengi hands him his, Faker would throw it in too. No matter where this ship has since gone from those first four years where Bengi was a player (because, again, T1 Faker has learned to be gentle, to be kind), this will always be the dynamic upon which this ship is built, and this is the big reason I think I see so much mischaracterization of Bengifaker and Bengi in the fandom space (for the sake of not going on a tangent, the TLDR is that the fandom reverses the flow of the sacrifice in this relationship because people look at 2023 summer and mix their own feelings of betrayal in, despite the fact that Faker feeling betrayed or overtly surprised that Bengi would do this—would run away to try and protect himself—would be a disservice to how he's grown emotionally).
It can be hard to recognize that your favorite/the fandom favorite is or had been an asshole, but for modern Guke and for Bengifaker in general, this is the truth. Modern Guke is where they are right now because Keria was a bit of a dick, and Bengifaker's relationship will always be built off of that initial dynamic of Faker taking for his ambitions and Bengi giving Faker what he wants, even at the cost of himself. It's certainly not fair to Gumayusi or Bengi, that their biggest ship is one where they are stuck in an unbalanced power dynamic, but personally, that's what makes these two ships interesting. Of course, this is for me, and take this with a grain of salt because Bengifaker is my personal OTP, but Guke (a ship I've been absolutely neutral about for at least a year, if not more) is more interesting to me if the content I'm seeing about them recognizes that Keria is a bit of an asshole. And despite Bengifaker being my OTP, I'm still rather selective about who and what I interact with, since I disagree with a large portion of the fandom (mainly the chinese side, because the english side of Bengifaker shippers who create content consist largely of people who are Bengi fans, first and foremost, instead of Faker fans, and so they tend to get the power dynamic between the two correct because SKT Faker is an extremely unreliable narrator about this) does commit this sin of flipping the power dynamic between the two.
Now, for a slight tangent, because people have also asked on Twitter, but the main differences between Guke and Bengifaker is that Guke had the period of time where they were truly happy together outside of the game (this being 2021/2022), and that while SKT Faker and current Keria are exceedingly similar, Gumayusi and Bengi differ slightly. Gumayusi has more pride, more self-esteem, than Bengi does. This is why Gumayusi leaves T1 knowing he deserves better and without an absolutely shattered mental, while Bengi leaves first—because he thought that SKT finally didn't want him—and second—most likely because his mental health had taken a nose dive into the gutter again. Guke's tragedy will possibly always be that Keria had something and threw it away for his ambition, and it's something he might not get back again, if Gumayusi is proud enough (and I think he might be), while Bengifaker's tragedy is that Faker has since turned into someone that Bengi could stay with without having to run away to save himself, but neither of them know how to or are willing to reach back out to reconnect, either because they don't know how to (Faker) or because they don't want to risk it (Bengi).
Okay, wow, this got really long. I tried to keep it short and I failed miserably, and I still have a final aside. A while ago, I said "I think faker and deft (and peanut, to an extent) would benefit greatly from being written more feral than the general fandom likes to write them" on Twitter, which is rather similar to what I said here, and I still do kind of stand by this.
I won't go in depth about this, but it takes a very specific personality and kind of person to survive in esports for so long. We've already talked about Faker, and a lot of the issues I have with Faker's portrayal in the fandom space extend to Deft (and sometimes Peanut). Deft, for example, had a fragile mental, yes. He was known for tilting and breaking down and crying back in OGN after losses or even games where he just did poorly, but I don't see him as a delicate person. He's a heartbreaker, to be frank. There is a reason Deft is known for having a harem in the fandom, and it's because he'll attract all of these people—imp; really, all of Samsung (White and Blue); Rekkles; Meiko; etc.—and he'll leave them. He'll do it with people he has a mentor relationship with too, and he'll do it without blinking because he still wanted to win. He's not Faker, with his three-four-five-and now six Worlds trophies. He's Deft, Unbreakable Heart, one time Worlds winner, and he was still driven by this need to win—a need Faker might still have, but is no longer primarily driven by. Peanut, similarly, after ROX breaks up, starts doing something similar to Deft, I think, but I really do need to end this yap session somewhere and this is already starting to diverge from my main point.
So yes, anyway. This was my essay. Sorry for the length. I hope it makes sense because I do not proofread, even though I should. If you're seeing this, thank you for reading, and I hope I gave you something interesting to think about :)
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