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The start of The International 2019 isn't far away. Soon hundreds of nerds, taking a well deserved break from telling friends and relatives that DOTA actually has the biggest prize pool and Fortnite is barely watchable as an Esport anyway, will descend upon Shanghai.With them will be the 18 top teams in the world and a hoard of casters and analysts. Who will talk over every pick, match-up and item choice in excruciating detail. Kaci will weave beautiful content that tells the stories of how the players made to the top of their professions, highlighting storylines and brining out emergent personality – so that we feel that we know every one of the 90 players present as if they were close friends.Well reasoned and researched content like that is all very well, but I've interviewed a good portion of the DOTA 2 scene and I reckon I can sum up each of the 18 teams attending the international through the medium of exaggerated metaphors, stupid jokes and overworked prose.The below does not represent the opinion of joinDOTA, or even really, myself.Clement ' Puppey ' Ivanov has attended every International, growing up on the biggest stage in Dota. Year by year we’ve watched the youth, hope and idealism slip from his eyes as he’s tried again and again to win his second International. The young man we once knew is still there within him, he’s just hardened. He’s covered up the cheeky smile that hinted of saved strats and naughty pauses with the beard of a mid-40s IT professional.In his quest to claim a second Aegis with Team Secret Puppey his tried everything. He’s tried the power of friendship, with himself and Kuro S. ' KuroKy ' Takhasomi alongside Johan ' BigDaddyN0tail ' Sundstein and Tal ' Fly ' Aizik, while Gustav ' s4 ' Magnusson stood at the side awkwardly sharing a two person fudge Sunday with himself. He’s tried sacrificial supports and wild, flamboyant carries. He’s tried Artour ' Arteezy ' Babaev, twice.Team Secret’s new carry, and Barry Keoghan look alike, Michał ' Nisha ' Jankowski was ten years old when Puppey won his first International and only 13 when Team Secret was formed. Puppey has been chasing his second Aegis for longer than Nisha has been mass producing hormones. I’m sure Puppey, Tywin Lannister-esque, has more than enough tricks in his bag but this season, to quote Churchill, it appears that the New World, with all its power and might, has stept forth to the rescue of the old.This will be Solo ’s third attempt to win the International with his handcrafted team of CIS superstars, and the word from the Virtus.pro camp is that this season he’s tried a different approach. In previous seasons, Solo and his band of merciless men have competed with such ferocity that they arrived at The International as withered husks. Battered and bruised, RAMZES666 ’s hair having lost its natural fluorescent green colour from the stress of winning every tournament. As a result their rocket has only enough fuel left it in to reach the undazzling heights of 5-6th.This season, they’ve committed to a different tactic: arriving at tournaments with only a cursory knowledge of the meta and learning the game through the group stages like Peter Parker discovering his powers in any of the three “first” Spiderman movies.Not that this has led to them being noticeably less successful, they’ve only finished below 3rd in one Major, but they’ve arrived at this TI fresher and with less expectations on their shoulders weighing them down. Also, frequently it’s seems like they’ve entered tournaments barely aware of their own playstyle, the rest of the field should be less prepared for them. How can you prepare for a team that’s barely prepared themselves? Vici Gaming are huddled in a dark dormitory room whispering to each other, crowded round a Nintendo DS held close to Dy 's chest with the brightness turned way down. Their excitement bubbles over as he makes an exciting play in Pokemon, but then grows silent as heavy footsteps appear outside their door – which suddenly bursts open revealing a towering backlit figure. They scuttle back into bed as fast the light entering the room.“I thought I said lights out!” booms rOtK Fade whimpers, “Sorry dad… I mean Coach.”The other boys giggle, “haha”, says Paparazi “you called Coach Dad!”“Quiet!” ROTK commands, his voice loud enough to be heard by all the other DOTA teams who are trying to get some sleep before the Dreamleague major group stages, “Or I won’t let you even touch the trophy when we win”.“If we win…” says Yang, in a small voice.“What was that?” ROTK turned his glance onto the young offlaner like the Eye of Sauron on a hobbit.“Nothing Sir.”If you were to make a robot read /r/dota2 for 10,000 hours when you switched it on it would say “ Evil Geniuses have had a lot of third places and Arteezy has been stuck on a number of cliffs”, and it would receive 10,000 upvotes and be gilded 20 times.Evil Geniuses are more, though, than a team that have achieved a number of third places and who have a player who often has found himself on stuck a cliff. To me they are a team that represent America at its best. The Americans that travel to Shanghai for TI9 will find themselves in a very foreign country, in an arena surrounded by people with a different language, lives, teams and outlook. When EG play in the lower-bracket finals from a small corner of the room they will start a “USA USA USA” chant, and some Europeans, in our ivory towers, will call them obnoxious.But they will be cheering for an American team. An American team that only contains one American citizen, who moved to the country when he was 11 – and four people who have made the country their temporary home. And that unity, shattered only when EG lose the series 2-1, is stronger than even Fly’s biceps. In a world of international division and strife, it will be almost beautiful to see.Kuroky looks exactly like Nacho Varga from Breaking Bad and as such I see all of his actions as the captain of a very good DOTA 2 team as being those of a hardened career criminal, with a good heart.Matumbaman has the looks and vibe of a floppy eared sheep dog, shuffling around your grandparents home, dreaming of herding sheep - beloved by all the children for his hugs and snuffles. Kuroky, eyes hard but still mournful, took him out the back and shot him in face. A single tear rolled down his cheek but the world was too cruel and dark for a man as soft and fluffy as Matumbaman , and Kuroky knew his time was up.Back at the safehouse, Maroun ' Gh ' Merhej, Amer ' Miracle- ' Al-Barkawi and Ivan ' MinD_ContRoL ' Borislavov sit mostly silently waiting, GH stifflying sobs but not daring to speak up knowing that he himself had arrived after the same thing was done to the adorable Sam ' Bulba ' Sosale. When Kuroky come back, sitting at the table away from the other drowning his sorrows, the others daren’t ask if the deed is done. When the new player, a harder, scarier, unpredictable man with a name spelt entirely differently to how it’s pronounced arrives they know their old friend is gone forever.And they know that Kuroky was right to be ruthless – they just can’t help but feel that in being so he’s lost another bit of his heart.After two last placed finishes at the two final majors, Fnatic are generally believed to be in a crisis and all word from their camp is that of low mood and diminished expectations. Daryl ' iceiceice ' Koh’s merry pranks, such as pretending to be somebody else when naive interviewers try to talk to him or using racial slurs, have become more half-hearted. Now he can barely bring himself to put a whoopie cushion on Kim ' DuBu ' Duyoung’s chair, and when he does manage to rather than cackling with laughter Dubu just looks sad, as if losing control of his bowels is all that can be expected from the captain of a team like Fnatic.Tae Won ' March ' Park watches on, his military training having left him unprepared for such low morale. He’d been stationed in the South Korean navy during a time of rising tensions with North Korea and increasing anxiety but now he wishes he was back there. Sorting out the geopolitical mess in Korea seems an easier task than turning this ship around.