This is the Nebula deck I piloted to 3rd place at the Milwaukee Megacity Championship. It's a kill Nebula inspired by Ghost Meat's recent Nebula kill list, but frankly, I don't want to use this space to talk about that right now. First, I want to talk about SOPHIE.

We were young and outta control

I haven't seen you since I was about, mm, sixteen years old

But then you called me up the other day

I was shocked, but what could I say?

And your voice exactly the same

And it makes me feel, makes me feel

It's hard to know where to start in talking about SOPHIE, so I suppose I'll try to start at the beginning. In 2014, a song by an artist named QT called "Hey QT" was released on XL Recordings. This was notable because literally no one had ever heard of QT before, yet they got a release on a notable indie label. XL was home to massive artists like Jack White, Adele, and Radiohead, along with indie darlings like Jai Paul and Burial, so "Hey QT" received instant attention from the indie music fans of the time. The reaction was immediately polarizing. About half of the audience saw "Hey QT" as a troll, a work, a joke. To naysayers, it was a piece of pop music detritus designed to be as disposable and annoying as possible. The other half were instant fans, seeing "Hey QT" as the future of pop music. Hearing genre tropes of synthpop, happy hardcore, and bubblegum bass pushed to their logical extremes created something so ahead of its time that average music listeners simply weren't ready to hear yet, and amongst fans, "Hey QT" was the hottest electronic music around.

I fell into the latter camp. I recall showing "Hey QT" to two of my closest friends shortly after its release, and they both looked at me like I was psychotic for liking it. I loved "Hey QT" from the first second, and I needed more.

Eventually, it was revealed that QT was actually a group comprised of two individuals: A. G. Cook and SOPHIE, both producers involved with the label known as PC Music which was starting to gather a lot of attention. PC Music's modus operandi was pop music maximalism, embracing the inherently commercial nature of pop music in an ironic manner. Sonically, PC Music and its cohorts blew up the traditional features of pop music to a cartoonish level, the bubbly synths and sparse drum programming trapped firmly in an uncanny valley like pop stars photographed in a hall of mirrors. Artists affiliated with PC Music were immediately recognizable no matter who was involved in the production, be it the layered synths and rumbling sub bass tones of A. G. Cook, the comparatively traditional UK house sound of Danny L Harle, or the sugary ringtone synthpop of Hannah Diamond. But it was SOPHIE that immediately stood out from the pack.

SOPHIE's production skills were incredible. Every detail and note of her songs and productions were immaculate - she made all of her tones by hand, after all. Her songs buzzed with life, with tracks like "Lemonade" fizzing like a freshly shaken soda can and the percussion on "Hard" oscillating between thumping bass hits and metallic clanging. Electronic music is a genre that can often be described as cold and calculated, but SOPHIE's tracks were distinctly human in a way that set her aside from her contemporaries.

At this point in her career, SOPHIE could be best described as enigmatic. She didn't give a lot of interviews. She didn't play live often, and when she did, she sometimes wasn't even the one actually on stage - for her 2014 Boiler Room set, she famously recruited a drag queen to pretend to DJ her set while SOPHIE herself posed as a bodyguard at the front of the stage. But in 2017, SOPHIE released the track "It's Okay to Cry" as the opening single off of her upcoming album Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides. In the music video, SOPHIE appears on camera, naked from the chest up, in a move that was speculated to be a form of coming out. Soon after, SOPHIE confirmed her identity as trans. As a cis man, I don't feel comfortable speaking to the level of influence SOPHIE had on the trans community. But for me, seeing somebody that I respected so much finally living their truth was beautiful and inspiring, and my anticipation for the album grew and grew until it was finally released. And goddamn it, Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides was a masterpiece. It still is.

I don't know that Oil is my favorite SOPHIE project - if I had to choose one, it's probably either her debut LP PRODUCT or her work with Charli XCX on the Vroom Vroom EP. But I think that Oil is SOPHIE at her most human, her most authentic, and her most vulnerable. Oil sees SOPHIE playing with texture, juxtaposing hyperaggressive, borderline noise music like "Faceshopping" and "Ponyboy" (one of the heaviest songs of all time) against sugary-sweet hyperpop bangers like the instant classic "Immaterial" and "It's Okay to Cry". But Oil is as sonically adventurous as it is thematically experimental for SOPHIE as well. Tracks like the aforementioned "Faceshopping" and "Immaterial" directly discuss themes of the trans experience and transhumanism, while "Is It Cold in the Water?" sees SOPHIE adrift in a vast ocean, burning yet freezing, sinking while swimming. The album isn't always an easy listen, but when the final droning chords of "Whole New World/Pretend World" wash over you at the end of the album, the catharsis is overwhelming. It's hard to finish listening to Oil and not feel like you've learned something about SOPHIE, even if she never quite tells you what that something is.

On January 30th, 2021, SOPHIE fell three stories from a rooftop while trying to take a picture of the full moon in Athens, Greece. She was pronounced dead a few hours later. The morning that the news broke, my girlfriend shook me awake to tell me. I was already in a frail state of mind from the intense stress of living in America during a global pandemic, and the news that one of my musical heroes had died in a random freak accident was too much. I broke down crying and couldn't stop. To me, this is the argument against a benevolent god: SOPHIE had found fame, success, and happiness in a world that is so unflinchingly cruel, particularly to the transgender community. It's not fair. It's not fucking fair.

Thankfully, I was not alone in my grief. The outpouring of sympathy and respect from both musicians and fans for SOPHIE was deeply moving, and it was quickly evident that SOPHIE's music had touched the lives of countless people. Thinking about her still makes me emotional. To this day, it's for me to look at photographs of SOPHIE without crying. Hell, I'm getting verklempt while writing this. She was an icon. Fuck it: she still is. She always will be.

Oh, just like we never said goodbye

When you spoke to me in that way

Oh, just like we never said goodbye

And it makes me feel, makes me feel

Why did I just write over 1000 words about SOPHIE for a Netrunner deck writeup? Because the only thing I had been listening to for the week leading up to the Milwaukee Megacity had been SOPHIE. She was my North Star, my guiding light before, during, and after the event. I listened to her discography on the way to and from the tournament. I listened to her songs between rounds. Even during games, her songs played on a loop in my head, soundtracking my cut games to the instantly addictive tones of "OOH" and "Nothing More to Say". But it's the track "Just Like We Never Said Goodbye" that was the most inspirational to me, particularly when playing this Nebula deck.

For as long as I've been playing Netrunner, I've had a fascination with NBN kill decks. I always thought that the theming behind them was great: the news corp that makes people famous and then offed them. I recall seeing people like Team Covenant's Steven Wooley pilot Making News kill decks to great success in my early days of Netrunner, so I knew the deck had competitive legs, too. In fact, his Making News kill deck was the first deck I ever registered in a tournament setting, and from that moment on, I knew that this was the strategy for me.

NBN kill has acted as my Netrunner North Star, the lover that I will always return to. Tagging runners and putting the fear of god into them is endlessly entertaining to me, and decks like these are a shot of pure adrenaline, providing the greatest thrills regardless of whether I win or lose.

SOPHIE's debut album PRODUCT closes with the track "Just Like We Never Said Goodbye", a minimalistic, skeletal bubblegum bass track. The synths are major-key and bouncy despite the lack of any form of traditional percussion. Instead, the instrumentation is just a few layers of synthesizers and a vocal track, pitched up to create a youthful feel as the synths build and build to a dazzling crescendo. The lyrics describe reconnecting with a former lover after a long time apart, rekindling a form of pure, innocent love as if the two lovers had never said goodbye to each other. It wasn't until I was driving home from Milwaukee after the conclusion of the tournament that I realized that this was how I felt about NBN kill decks: no matter how much time I spend playing other decks, I will always be at home with NBN kill.

Wenjong talked about playing what makes you happy in his recent Issuaq writeup, and this is what makes me happy. I hope one day that you too can find the particular deck or strategy that brings you joy, too.

Still got that glint in your eye

Like you did the very first time

Oh, it's like we never said goodbye

And it makes me feel, makes me feel, like everything that I could ever need

And it makes me feel, and it makes me feel, like I don't ever wanna say goodbye

If you're thinking of trying this list, I would suggest cutting the Business As Usuals, they were extremely mediocre on the day and were often pitched to handsize. I had been playing Simulation Reset with the last three influence and that card is verifiably cracked in this type of strategy, so I would cut the BAUs to add a Sim Reset and the 2nd and 3rd copies of Sudden Commandment back in. Alternatively, instead of the 3rd Commandment, you can experiment with an 11th ice such as the 2nd Ping or a Klevetnik or even adding a cheeky 1x Behold!.

RIP SOPHIE

1986 - 2021

An eternal icon taken too soon who will never be forgotten.