Interview with Treecko

My occupation is currently bum. Within the past six months, I've had a lot of family issues that I've needed to sort out, preventing me from working/going to school, but they've been mostly handled. I'm looking for a new job right now (if anyone is hiring, lmk...). And I'm a 21-year-old guy from Illinois.

I'm a pretty outgoing guy. I go out a lot (and drink vodka like it's water). I like to chill and listen to music. I used to write a lot, but I haven't done as much lately. I do still write from time to time, though. I actually don't play video games much outside of Pokémon because most of my free time is spent just hanging out with friends.

None of this is to say that people never made fun of me, though. I was pretty quiet as a kid, and I came out to everyone I knew as gay when I was 14, which led to a lot of backlash because I grew up in a small town. But, I grew to embrace it at a relatively young age, and I'd be lying if I said none of that shaped me into the person I am today.

We mostly just find our own ways to have fun. We go out to parties and bars and stuff pretty frequently, but mostly we just bum around. Sometimes we go out to concerts (a friend of mine is in a band, so it's easy to find cheap local shows to go to), sometimes we just drive around and blast music in the car. Usually, it depends on the size of our wallets at the time.

ugh yes. I've always wanted to go to Australia because Illinois is stupidly cold in the winter, and it'd be so nice to not have to deal with -50 degree weather (I kid you not, we got down to -50 with the windchill here a few weeks ago). I'd love to travel pretty much anywhere, though, just for the sake of traveling and seeing the world. As for places I've been, I've managed to find my way to most of the eastern US barring New York. My grandma used to live in so I've been all over southeastern US, and I've gone to Dayton Ohio, Indianapolis, Washington D.C., Memphis, and a few places in Kentucky on vacations/school trips etc.

I actually started out on PO some time before I came to Smogon. I knew Smogon was a thing, but I actually wanted to start to get involved around the same time when the Smogon PO server was constantly crashing and ended up going to PO Main instead because I couldn't connect. From there, I just figured I'd stay with PO because I got to know a lot of people and really enjoyed it there.

Eventually, most of my friends from PO quit, and I hadn't moved up on the site at all. I'd been going to PS! at this point from time to time when I was drunk so that I could play randbats, and then I found out about the randbats voice challenge, got voice, decided to make the switch, and the rest is history. Basically, if drunken randbats wasn't a thing, I might still be on PO.

Oh god. Uh, well, like I said, I started out as a simple voice on PS!. Eventually, PS! staff noticed me, and I got promoted to driver. At this point I was posting a bit in the NU subforums as well because NU was the metagame I played the most on PO. About a month after that, I was promoted to mods on PS! and earned my first badge, but I can't for the life of me remember when that was. Some time passed, and I kept doing my thing and got CC for my posting in the NU subforum.

After that, I kind of just immersed myself all over the site. This was about when my previously mentioned family issues came about, and I'd just moved back to my hometown after living on my own for about three years, so it was a pretty rough time for me. I spent most of my free time on Smogon (AND WITH MY DOG) because most of my friends from the area had moved on and gone to college (as had I up until that point). So I got really involved with the site, got IRC AOps and some other badges. Then I got my first mod position from Raseri in NU C&C alongside ebeast, and we whipped the subforum into shape for a good while.

I got mods all over after that in places I can't even remember as well as SOps on IRC and leaders on PS!, and apparently people noticed because I was appointed to smods about a month or two ago. Sounds pretty tacky, but I had Smogon to fill in while I rebuilt relationships with old friends and got back on my feet. It's pretty cool though, because now that I've done/am doing that, I've still got Smogon, and I can help out without dedicating so much time to everything, only this time in a more advisory role, which is the kind of position I like to be in. Not to say that I don't still do stuff, but most of the stuff I do these days is behind-the-scenes rather than in the forefront.

Uhh, probably Other Metas. I was never ~officially~ nommed for OM mods, but when I was given OU mods, it gave me full UT mods, and when they fixed the permissions to make it so I only modded OU, Arcticblast told me I could go ahead and stay on as an OM mod. Modding OM is chill because you get to see all the different ideas people have for metagames and help them develop them into something that people will really enjoy playing. Plus, I get to work with Arcticblast, and we get along famously. DTC, The Immortal, and Joim (honorary mention to Ace Emerald) too, I guess, but they smell kinda funny. Shoutouts to Mentorship Program too. I'd have picked it, but it's a pretty low-maintenance forum, so there's not a lot of actual moderating.

Yeah, everywhere on the site pretty much could use some improving, but that just boils down to how much work the players want to put into making those places better. As a QC member in BW NU and XY LC and a contributor in those places as well as OU C&C, I wish it was a lot more lax than it is. Specifically, I don't like how much the QC and GP processes deter some people from contributing to analyses and such, but I realize with the large userbase that we've got, it's a pretty necessary evil.

That's pretty much it, yeah. I stopped playing NU for a while back towards the end of BW because it was getting boring and Scolipede was ruining the metagame, but we thankfully banned it recently, so I've been toying around with it a bit again. I just got into OU and LC (and when it came around, UU) when XY started, as they were fresh metas and I really wanted to use Bunnelby because it is incredibly adorable. And now I play them pretty much whenever I feel like it. Usually I get burnt out on one for a while and then pick up another when I want to try something new.

Competitive Pokémon is just something I enjoy playing around with in my free time more than anything else. For a while, I wanted to get really great at the game and maybe win a trophy or something, but I don't care so much about that anymore. Now I just want to use fun sets and teams and just play to have fun. I still participate in tournaments from time to time, but I try not to put too much pressure on myself when I do because that's when I stop having fun. I'll definitely keep playing the game until I lose interest, which could be a few months down the line or even a few years. Who knows?

Nothing extra special that the other leaders/admins don't do, but I handle policy stuff, promotions and demotions, room suggestions and other room issues, weigh in on various issues when I'm needed, and help with some clerical work for Zarel on occasion. A lot of what I do is stuff that's never seen, so it's kind of hard to answer that question without spilling things haha.

I honestly don't love food that much, and most of my favorite foods are boring, but my absolute favorite would be a tie between tomatoes and blueberries. Like pretty much anything with those is guaranteed to be good in my book.

Any of RSE. It's funny because my favorite Pokémon isn't even Treecko, and it's honestly not even in my top five favorite Pokémon. But I love gen 3 so much, and Treecko is by far the best starter in RSE which I guess is where the inspiration for the username comes from lol. But yeah, I played the shit out of Sapphire and Emerald when I was in like 6th grade, I think, because I loved almost all of the new Pokémon, the storyline, the legends (barring Zapdos, Kyogre/Groudon/Rayquaza are the coolest legends), the starters, and your rival. It was the perfect set of games, and I'm among those who desperately want a remake soon. :(

ugh I blame senior staff for me not having Bunnelby now. I asked Hugendugen to change my username for me, and he wouldn't. Then, I asked chaos, and he was like, "nigga no one's gonna call you that." And, I asked a couple other people, and no one would do it for me. Then, by the time I could change it myself, I figured I probably should just stay as Treecko now. Still, if you ever see that user as "Bunnelby." then you should probably check to see if I'm still Treecko or not.

Thanks!! It's been fun. Shoutout to Sephirona for the sick avatar.