Art by Kalalokki
TheFranklin
Favorite Pokemon: Noctowl
Most used Pokemon: Flygon
Most known for: Being a very successful player in the RU community, winning multiple tours.
Life had been good for me. I've been amassing a massive wealth claiming stuff that wasn't my own, yet people would believe me.
I no longer had to resort to very cheap travels to make a living, or even having to interview really weird people. So I decided to give myself a trip to the one and only place where I could party all I wanted (according to movies): Amsterdam.
....
Sudden blackout. I woke up in this really weird lab, tied in a cell titled "Stunt Or Die Test Subject #55". I could see a group of people in the distance discuss different types of weather, but I couldn't quite figure out what they were saying, local Europeans perhaps?
Suddenly, one of them walked to my cell and said "Silvally-Ground". His title card said "ARCE-9". I gulped and decided to engage in conversation with this enigmatic individual...
Hey Franklin, how is it going?
Hey Feli, im doing fine how are you?
I'm doing alright
You are known for being the most successful player from the new generation of RU mainers, but does the community really know you? Tell me a bit about yourself
Sure! As you might have guessed my real name is Frank. I'm a 24 year old physics student from Amsterdam. I'm still busy with my masters, and right now im doing an internship. In my free time I like to play and watch football (soccer for the americans), hang and play games with friends and play chess. And mons too obviously
Living the wild life in Amsterdam, I plan on visiting there eventually but moving on..
What do you see yourself doing in the near future related to your studies?
You should visit, feli en Amsterdam sounds hype.
I'm doing climate modelling during my internship, so maybe something related to that but im not really sure...
Not surprised, the europeans and weather...
How did you end up getting into mons in general?
I started playing mons somewhere during ORAS. At first i was just a tryhard randbats ladder noob. Only in SM I moved to other tiers as well and played a lot in the tournaments room. I saw ajna and pokeaim play epic SM RU battles in spl which looked really fun. So I decided to try out RU in blt (tours room teamtour), had a good tour and since then im a RU main
And how has your experience in the tier been? How do you feel about the community?
The community is awesome. A lot of great, chill people with a good mix between old veterans and a new garde of tryharders
Speaking of boomers and zoomers, did you have any player in specific as some sort of model when getting into the tier? Could be both building and playing. And what opinion do you have on the newer players? Does any of them catch your attention for any specific reason?
My model was definitely ajna in the beginning. At the start i mainly just stole teams that i liked, and a lot of them were ajnas. Though there were some feli and evi teams in there too... even a couple from ancient user thewall...
The newer player question is interesting, as I find it hard to distinguish who is "new" and who isnt. A lot of the relatively new people have already proven theirselves in rupl/circuit/scl so at this point i wouldn't really call them new anymore. Of those people floss is probably the newest face joining after his RU open win, im curious to see how he will do in circuit play offs and next year in gen 9.
The influence...
We are connecting a lot in these, but we'll go one tour at a time, starting with SCL
You recently had another dominant record this past SCL, how did you feel about the tour in general? Including your building process, meta development as the tour went on and the competition in general
I was very happy with my performance. My personal goal was to get 6-3 again or better and I got that so I cant complain.
There were a lot of uncommon sets/mons I wanted to try throughout scl. Most weeks I just picked the ones that looked appealing to me from the scout and built some teams arounds those and used the one that felt the best in tests.
As for the meta, three mons stood out to me: vileplume, togekiss and reuni
Plume was dominant from the start, whereas close to 10 different reuni sets were used with great succes. Meanwhile the meta adapted to togekiss with high aero usage and fast haze milotic and articuno
We'll get into your teams later...
But jumping to the final circuit for this gen, how are you feeling about it?
Excited for it to start, almost everyone who deserves to be in there is in (rip mac3). Should be a good tour
RIP mac3 indeed, victim of the btboy heist in that last bo3
Would you mind dropping a team that best represents you? And if you can give a small explanation behind it too then PLEASE
I used this team in week 4 of scl against mac3. I think this team represents me well as it is a BO with an uncommon breaker (kingdra) and offensive sets on most pokemon: CB gon as opposed to scarf/roost, NP 3 attacks celebi instead of np recover and lastly sd incin. The point of the team is to use the abundance of breaking power to break and win before the opponent does. I like to build these kinds of teams as they require a subtle balance between breaking power and the minimal amount of defensive utility between the mons to survive long enough to break through yourself.
Now getting more into the new generation, do you have any thoughts you'd like to share? Do you have any ideas on if you'll stick playing RU?
The meta seems fun and chaotic, as always at the start of a new generation. I think tera might even stay for a while. As long as the RU meta is not incredibly bad I'll definitely keep playing RU
Do you think terastallizing predicting a terastallizing is the next gen feli play?
Reliable sources told me the feli is trying to sleep a garganacl
ROFL
Is there anything you would have changed in terms of tiering about SS RU? Any mon you would have not banned or banned?
Hmm no, I agree with all the bans that happened. Perhaps we could have gotten rid of zarude earlier instead of waiting for it to rise
Why did you guess Silvally-Ground? Did you not care at all about the consequences as long as you were right??
You gotta preach for some good habits (volt immune) when watching capable players. What did it cost? EVERYTHING. However, im finally free again...
What have been your best replays or games played this generation? I can think of a lot of good series I've had, so I was wondering if you have some you'd like to talk about
It can even be just wins you are proud of for different reasons, and if you want to talk about them then that's cool
There are two replays that im most happy with this generation. First is the final game of the ssnl final vs atomicllamas: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ru-595672 This was for sure my best individual RU tour of the generation. I came from losers bracket in the final and managed to pull it back and winning my second ru seasonal. This was probably my best game of the set where all the techs hit, which always feels amazing.
The other game is from the recent scl vs bihi: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ru-653893. I'm definitely proud about my performance in scl and this game was probably my cleanest win in the tour and it shows that spikes were still really good in gen 8, despite what many people think/thought.
Is there anything else you'd like to tell the fans? Any shoutouts you'd like to do?
Thanks for having me and shoutouts to the TLs for making it a fun RU year despite all the shit that went down
Thanks for your time Franklin!
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Feel free to ask TheFranklin any questions you want!
If you have any recommendations, I'll be more than happy to read them, just PM me!
Next time on FeliInterviews...
Feel free to ask TheFranklin any questions you want!
If you have any recommendations, I'll be more than happy to read them, just PM me!
Next time on FeliInterviews...
