The Awakening of the Goddess in Competitive League of Legends

This extended abstract, presented at DiGRA 2019, is an exploratory case study of Athena's E-sport, an all-female League of Legends team formed in Brazil in 2018–2019 as a response to sexism in competitive gaming. Its central aim is to examine how gender dynamics operate within Brazilian competitive e-sports, using the team's player selection process and the public reaction on Facebook and in press coverage as its primary corpus. The author notes that the work is an ongoing project, and the analysis draws on a single week of collected comments following two key announcements: the selection winners and the 2019 lineup.

The findings describe a rapid surge of community attention, with the organization gaining thousands of followers and nearly 600 applicants within ten days, alongside controversies over communication with the press, perceived favoritism by casters, and uneven competitive skill among candidates. The discussion argues that online responses cannot be separated from Brazil's polarized political climate following 2013 and the 2018 election. Recurring gendered insults, including Portuguese slang tied to both political passivity and sexism, are interpreted as expressions of broader ideological conflict, with many critics using players' low Elo rankings and personal social media profiles to dismiss the initiative.

The study is limited by its small, short-term dataset and its acknowledged lack of theoretical and methodological depth. Its later update reports that the official roster ultimately did not compete together, though three of the five players continued in other e-sports projects. The author outlines future steps, including broader observation of women-led initiatives, deeper analysis, outreach to organizers, surveys of participants and viewers, and semi-structured interviews.