Approved by UU Moderation / Amazing Art by Moutemoute
Hello and welcome to.. "Player Interview"! This project will allow you to discover or re-discover some well known players of the UU community. Those people may be known thanks to their high-skilled level, their achievements on the strategic scene, or thanks to their dedication to the tier or within the community. Let me first say that I am honored to be following in the footsteps of an esteemed and accomplished list of interviewers: Moutemoute, Feliburn, Kink, and Cynde (also Pokemonisfun and Aqua Jet). Thank you are very much for your work!
Hello again! I am temporarily taking the reins from Aqua Jet as they step away for a little while. I would like to apologize for dropping this project; life got the better of me and I had to step away from Pokemon. I am part of the reason why this project has gone through 3 versions and interviews have been held by 5 separate people. That being said, I am back and the show must go on! With UUPL in full swing it's the best time for this project to be active because it truly is fun to interview UU's best and brightest battlers, contributors, and personalities. And today we have none other than one of UUPL's finest managers with us! Let us begin!
Bom dia Askov! How are you?
Bom dia Drew! I'm fine, how about you?
I'm pretty good myself! Thank you for asking.
So, tell me and the community a bit about yourself via a brief introduction. Name, age, favorite color, how many times you've cried since hs has been gone, whatever you would like to say!
Hi, my name is George, i'm 24 yo, currently studying math and as most of you know i'm from Brazil, my favorite color is black and like everyone else i cried countless times with our uu resident hydreigon specs being gone
Same here. How long have you been a member of this community and what brought you to Smogon and Showdown?
i've lurked around in uu room for a bit in the past around 2017 but i didn't really got more into the UU community until the end of 2020 when i had a good run in UU Open and played UU in SSD, since then i started to be more active in UU and ended up becoming a UUer
About joining Smogon and Showdown it's kind of a long story. A bit after Platinum came out, a friend taught me about EVs and IVs and i got curious to know more about it so i searched for it on the Internet and ended up on Serebii.net where i got to learn the basics about competitive but at the time i'd only use those informations to play online on DS.
Searching through stuff on Serebii, i found out about Shoddy Battle which was the Pokemon simulator at the time and being able to just put your EVs, IVs, natures and stuff instead of having to breed perfect IVs and EV training was amazing so i decided to give it a try. I just laddered casually there and on PO (which i found out about later) whenever i was bored until around 2013-2014 when i found out about PS and it looked better than Shoddy and PO.
I just kept playing casually until 2016-2017 when i joined the Portuguese Room on PS and met some friends like Highways and gustavoyay who introduced me to Smogon
That's quite a story. You've certainly accomplished a lot in such little time!
The Brazilian community on Showdown in my experience is one the friendlier and more eccentric communities on Smogon. What are your favorite parts about it?
It really is lmao. I really like how for the most part we're a united community and will always have fun either playing games/tours with our friends or just talking about casual stuff and memeing around
Absolutely! Talk a little about your tournament experience and success (or lack thereof). What is your proudest competitive accomplishment?
So, I never really had a big result early on but i think i was decent enough to get some smaller results (like getting into DPP NU cup finals and NU Classic Playoffs back in 2018), had some good/decent records in brazilian tours in SM NU/SM RU but my ''breakout'' in the brazilian scene was doing well in the tryouts for POWC Brazil team which gave me an opportunity to play this tour and then i got a spot on team Brazil for WCOP as a sub.
With Rewer and Hantsuki knowing me from WCOP i got a spot as a sub for SPL and ended up being part of the team in the year that Ruiners got its back-to-back trophy.
While I still have stuff to improve i learned a lot and got some experience from all of this which made me a bit more consistent as a player which led me to some better results individually like doing decently fine in last year's OST where i got top 32 and in the same year i got into UU Open semifinals which despite not winning it, it's probably the one individual accomplishment that i'm proudest of.
Regarding teamtours (and lack of success) i've never had good records in officials aside from a decent SSD and last WCOP so there's still a decent gap to solidify myself as a player but nonetheless i've had a good tournament experience overall so far.
You've definitely accomplished a lot. The lack thereof wasn't a jab at you btw lol, I just personally don't know a lot about your competitive accomplishments.
You are a UUPL manager which is a great accomplishment. You started off Week 1 with a tie against the Monsters which is commendable. How are you feeling generally so far? Did you have a good draft in your opinion? Are you confident about the season moving forward?
it's fine lmao, i just think that it's fair to talk about the negative aspects as well.
Thanks! The Jerk team as the public call it is always one of the most scariest teams to face so even if we got a tie it's motivating that we could go toe-to-toe with one of the strongest teams in the tour. Despite some mistakes on planning the draft (Since both me and Juno are still relatively new to managing), we did a nice draft and got players that we're sure that will do well and I feel that my team can get playoffs for sure while also having a good team atmosphere.
It's not always about winning, especially with team tours. A good team environment is everything in UUPL.
Thoughts on 'yasskov'?
LOL it's funny how it has spread a decent amount by now between some friends but im fine with it and it's creative
Yass it is. What about TV, movie, and music interests? Do you have a favorite song, movie, or TV show?
i havent been watching much stuff lately on TV but sometimes i check on some series on Netflix (sometimes i watch animes too if that counts as TV stuff lol).
About music interests i tend to be kinda eclectic but for the most part i like to listen to pop and brazilian music.
I dont really have a favorite song since i'm always listening to new stuff so it's hard to have a favorite one, i barely watch movies so i don't really have a favorite one as well lmao and my recent favorite TV show is probably ''You'' because i like watching series/documentaries about psychological stuff and related subjects.
Interesting. I've never watched "You" but I know it's popular.
Could you perhaps share a team of your own design that you are especially proud of? Your choice of team week 1 of UUPL was interesting if you'd like to speak about that.
that's the import of my week 1 UUPL team:
so i initially started building around our current suspect target Aegislash because i didn't have much recent information about what kind of team Cam has been using so i just wanted to use a good poke overall. My first draft of the team looked way more like your usual team with Helmet Coba, AV Tang, Crobat, Slowking and Diggersby but after testing it i noticed that I just couldn't make progress vs Amoonguss and absorbing status in general was really difficult.
This is where the first interesting poke enters: Scrafty. It's a poke that me and Celebii were trying to give some viability in the VR discussion channel and i felt like it could fit really well for the team's needs: Absorbing status, overall lower usage of fairies, Knock support, ghost resist. I considered RestTalk Moltres-Galar but while Scrafty also has to rely on chances (Shed Skin activating) i felt like i could be more reckless about throwing it on weaker Knock Off users unlike Moltres-Galar which has issues switching on stuff w/o boots and rocks up.
Later on, Aegislash was replaced by Chandelure because considering they had KSteve on their team it was possible that i could face either sun or double dance regi which my team just couldn't handle at all. Chandelure works as a fine check to both of those threats and felt like a perfect pick here and also covered my lack of good progress maker and Celesteela check.
The last one was Gastrodon, which at that time i already replaced Slowking for Swampert for rocks because i wanted one more check to Thund and Nihi but i was ironically having trouble dealing with RestTalk Galar-Moltres so i put Rocks on Cobalion and replaced Swampert with Gastrodon since it actually has reliable recovery while also giving me a sturdier check to non-grass move Thund and Nihi and i could at least stall out Galar-Moltres with it as long as i don't get badly unlucky with confuse/flinch
I didn't talk much about Crobat but it's just such a good ''glue'' for teams at the moment, outspeeding your fast threats in the tier like zygarde, azelf, salazzle and starmie is amazing while also having access to good moves like uturn and defog, the former allowing you to check stuff more proactively alongside it's good typing and decent bulk and brave bird is surprisingly a move that more offensive teams might have trouble to switch into in the long run.
It's a cool team for sure. Good usage of Crobat and Chandelure.
Would you like to shout out anyone or give some final remarks?
i'd like to thank everyone that made my ''journey'' playing this game much more enjoyable but specially:
EQ (''brerk''): I love y'all and cant be grateful enough about how you people made playing this game such a fun experience and being the only chat in the world where we can have at least three parallel conversations going on at the same time and being functional LOL
Golducks and ff: ig i could include it in UU Community because i only met y'all through it but i think a separated mention is deserved because you're for the most part the non-br people that i talk to the most and it's always a good time talking with you all
UU Community: Thanks for being really welcoming to me and being such a fun and chill community for the most part, i've been around in some communities but none of them made me stuck to it like the UU community did so im grateful for all the friends i made here as well (wont mention everyone but y'all know who you are and i love you all).
Also thanks for having me and keep the good work with the interviews!
No problem thanks for making this a great interview. Best of luck in the rest of UUPL and all your future endeavors!
