Interview with tennisace

I mean I guess lol. Do you have questions prepared?

Ugh FINE. How does this work even?

um OK. Do I just start whenever? Is this thing on?

I'm a civil engineering student in Rhode Island, which is roughly as exciting as it sounds. And uh I play Pokémon sometimes? Sometimes.

Yeah, when I got to college I stopped caring about that because a lot of my friends did nerdy shit too. And yeah, my gf also plays Pokémon but not nearly as srsly as I do.

Well I have much experience in being the de facto complaints box because of Smogon, so that helps. I'm more interested in the non-road side of civil engineering though. Mainly I chose it because structural engineering is pretty neat; it's mostly practical as opposed to theory-heavy majors, and when you get a job in it, your work is visible for a long time (if you do it right). The other reason I went into it is that yes, our country's infrastructure as a whole blows, so there's a pretty large need for civil engineers.

The joke is that "everybody knows everybody," and from my experience it's true; you can play 2 degrees of separation pretty much with anyone in the state lol. Also Rhode Islanders are absolutely terrible drivers in general, so uh, I guess Family Guy is accurate?

Oh boy, here we go.

Why I came here: DPP came out and I wanted info on the new games, then kinda stuck around. You can still see my wonderful spriting endeavors in Smeargle's Studio.

Why I left: I think the first time I left was like, 2009? I was just kinda burnt out with CAP, a lot of the old regulars were leaving.

Why I came back again: BW NU was starting and I really enjoyed the tier, so I started playing a lot and posting.

Why I left for the second time: I was going through a lot of shit personally; I nearly failed out of college and I was really depressed. I quit cold turkey for about 6 months.

Why I came back AGAIN: Fuck if I know man, I never left IRC and social media on Smogon was just starting to be a thing again with darkie leading it. I really enjoyed interacting with people outside of the site but who were still pkmn fans, so I did that for a while.

Why haven't I stayed away: I've been on here so long that it's hard to leave your friends. I started in 2007 when I was 14, I'm 21 turning 22 by the time this issue goes out now. I grew up with the site in a lot of ways, and I'm pretty happy right now on it.

lol the list is way too long. I've met a ton of Smogoners both on my own and through VGC tournaments. The one thing that's weird is you have to pick which name to call someone by in person, either their irl name or their username.

Probably my favorite "meetup" was at VGC Worlds this year in DC since I was actually of legal age.

Most memorable was when Wildeep got pooped on while we were having lunch in Boston.

Best experience was probably losing in the LCQ at Worlds then immediately going and getting blasted over dinner with JabbaTheGriffin and mingot.

I don't think I've had a worst experience? Everyone I've met has been really nice and fun to hang out with. It's like an extension of IRC.

I think the only parts of the site where I really haven't participated at one time or another are RMT and OI. Obviously, I'm more known for some things than others, being one of the leaders of CAP in DPP, leading BW NU tier and C&C, and now social media. The most "fun" was probably leading NU; it was a good group of people in a really fun tier. Social media is different though. A lot of it is off-Smogon, which means I get to interact with a lot of different kinds of people than just "competitive players" that you find on Smogon. Our ruleset has a lot larger reach than I think people realize.

Yeah it's definitely come a long way. We started our social media endeavors in earnest a lot later than other parts of the site. However, it's a very effective way to disseminate information. I think we have more Facebook likes than users on the forum now, for instance. In the future I'd like to find easier ways for users to contribute to our media outlets, make it more personal. People have responded really well to giveaways and T-shirts and such, there's definitely going to be more of that.

Yeah I'm the only original manager left (makiri started in spl2). The thing I like about managing in SPL is that I get to interact with a bunch of users that I normally wouldn't get a chance to since I've never been big into tournaments. It's also fun for the same reason fantasy football is fun. You can make a team up of great players in each tier and see how they stack up vs other teams. n_n

I think it was like SPL 2. I saw NBA teams were wearing jerseys in Spanish, like los spurs or los suns. Originally it was "el tigres" but that's grammatically incorrect, thus: los tigres. It's handy since the full name of the team is longer than any other team name.

Well at the time of this interview we're 1-2. The first couple of weeks were rough since a lot of luck didn't bounce our way, but last week we won big and lived up to what people expected from our team pre-season.

Ummm, if I had to choose someone I'm really impressed with it's Jabba, and Floppy too. Both have been amazing teammates in testing matches and always supporting other tigres and they've played damn well too lol. Floppy unfortunately got rby'd a couple times, but whatcha gonna do? Really though, I like everyone on my team. If I didn't I wouldn't have drafted them lol.

UGH I HATE THIS QUESTION BECAUSE I HAVE TO CHOOSE JUST ONE. I would say Raikou but I've been SRing it for about a month now, so uh probably Slowbro, because it's slow and a bro, of which I am both.

FRAT