Project Player of the Week - plznostep

czim · 2025-11-11T07:59:27-0500

Approved by sleid and Tuthur | Amazing Art by Albatross and butchered by me | Thread formatting stolen from Jett, who I thank for starting this project in the first place
(Interview Date: 10th of November, 2025)

Hey friends and welcome to this edition of ZU ~~Palpitoad~~ Player of the Week. I'm very excited to be doing these again and I hope you enjoy reading these interviews as much as I enjoy making them! This is the project where we learn about some of ZU's finest community members in the form of interviews. In this week's edition, we are interviewing someone who is not only one of our Room Moderators, but also loves ADV ZU as much as me (and denied me my 7-0 in ZUPL), and loves Flittle for some reason. Without further ado,

a video game screen with the words here is a pipe bomb

a stuffed dragonfly with red and green wings is sitting on a white surface

plznostep !!
Favorite Pokémon: :flittle:

(Room Moderator and ZUPL player for the Cramorants)

Ditto used Transform!
Ditto transformed into Flittle!

*fliiiiiittlee*

Hey plznostep and welcome to another edition of everyone's favorite project, ZU Player of the Week! To start things off, a simple question, how are you doing today?

I'm doing pretty good thanks! It's been a bit busy since I've been out for groceries and im in education, but home now so I can relax. How about you?

I've been fine, thanks for asking! Been a chill monday here! Good to know you've doing well. What groceries did you buy? And what do you mean by "in education"?

Good to hear, I've been on a bit of a baking streak lately to kill time, so a lot of it was baking ingredients; for example, I ran out of sugar since I made brownies the other week and I go through butter very quickly in loads of stuff. For education, I go to university! I do English Language as my subject but im on a foundation year right now so it's quite chill to be honest.

Oh, that's very cool! What are some stuff you usually like to bake? Do you also cook other food or is it mostly just sweets?

Well, it's something i started more recently because in my first year of university, i've moved away from a lot of people I knew and it can get boring pretty quickly. So far, i've liked making simple stuff like Cookies, Brownies and Banana Bread. I'm planning on making some other stuff too though, like Cinnamon Rolls and a Lemon Meringue Pie as my first pie. I have a massive sweet tooth and find it fun to prepare everything so its a win win really. I don't really cook that often though, but it might be something that i'll do more of as the year progresses.

We all have to learn to survive lol, and it's definitely better to do it with Cookies and Brownies! Cooking is an important skill though, we should all learn it. What else can you tell us about the real life plznostep other than that you're going to university to study English Language?

I'm pretty normal all things considered, im 18 years old, turning 19 in February (yay), and I live in the UK, based in Wales. I'm quite musically inclined; I play saxophone and also sing sometimes, im a tenor in voice range if anyone is wondering, but I haven't performed in a while. I played Pokemon growing up which started my interest in the series which leads up to where we are now!

A lot for me to work with here, good stuff! First let's go back to the college thing, why did you choose to go for that major? Do you have any other options in mind?

To be perfectly honest, I was more looking for something to do. I don't have much of a career planned out so I thought pursue something that I got a good grade in and enjoy and see where it goes. I could have done something related to Music, but while I love it, it can be so brutal at times, especially with performances which can be very tiring. So English as subject fit me better as I'm more laidback as a person.

That's cool, it's ok to not have it all figured out, to be honest. I was going to ask about the Music stuff now, and since you brought it up it is even more fitting! How long have you played the saxophone for? Did you ever play in a band or anything of the sort?

I've played saxophone for about 6 years now. It's something that's been steadily progressing on the side, so even though that's a long time, i'm not super good at it but good enough. I played in my high schools bands but nothing outside of that, and I used to also play in some of the school productions but later on they cast me in them so I couldn't do that anymore. It would be fun to at some point though so I'm always on the look out to see if that could be on the table.

You also mentioned you like to sing, what are some of your favorite songs and genres to sing? Also I am already doing one of the fun questions right now, what is your favorite song to sing in the shower?

My music taste is pretty standard I would say. I love pop music a lot, but it is a lot of female singers. And that's fine, I still like to sing a lot of Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, and etc. But we don't share a voice range. As a result, if I wanna properly sing, then artists like Conan Gray are what I go to since we share the same voice range. Infact, his Chappell Roan cover of Subway is something that I can't help singing, and yes, its something I sing a lot in the shower.

I like a bit of pop music myself too, it is popular for a reason. You also mentioned you were from Wales. Do you like living there? I don't know much about it other than it being a tiny part of the UK and Gareth Bale, to be honest.

Haha, I do like Wales a lot actually. It might be because I lived there my entire life but to me it seems nice; it's a quiet place and the people are quite friendly, and that's how I like it. There are also some other cultural stuff I like about it. The language is pretty neat, I'm not fluent but can speak enough of it. And my sweet tooth is talking again, but there are some cool foods around that Wales has, like Welsh Cakes and Bara Brith which I always loved growing up.

I love hearing about stuff like this! I didn't know the language was still spoken, but is it used in the country? Do you guys learn it in school or something? And the sweets you talked about seem interesting, I also have a sweet tooth personally!

Welsh is still used in Wales yes. It is mandatory to learn the language in the country, but most places down south still speak a lot of English. If you go further north, then people will start to speak a lot more Welsh. It used to be a lot more common, but the English made a "Welsh not" rule in the 19th century in schools. They hung a sign around a kids neck which said "Welsh not" if they spoke Welsh in class. As a result, it died off a bit and now they are trying to repair the damage done by making it mandatory in schools. It's pretty interesting history and I think it's cool they promote the language these days. To describe what the sweets are like by the way, Welsh Cakes are like, pancakes and cookies combined with raisins and sugar on top, and Bara Brith is more like a fruit cake.

It is cool they're trying to save the language, it's part of people's culture! A lot of history was erased around the world when other languages vanished. Let's change the topic a bit. Other than playing Pokémon, what do you like doing in your free time?

Alrighty, I do play a lot of other games in my free time, mainly I love Fire Emblem as well and have played just about every entry in the series, and will eventually beat every one on the highest difficulty. I play a lot of older games from my childhood if I can as well. One example, I have been playing a game called Black & White 2 lately that I played when I was younger. It's an old abandonware real time strategy game where you play as a God. I think it holds up shockingly well for how old it is and can't help coming back to it every few years or so.

I never played a Fire Emblem game to be honest, but I was never much of a Nintendo guy! Which one of them is your favorite? I also thought you were talking about Pokémon B2W2 there for a second lol. Do you like watching movies, anime or tv shows? Do you have any favorites?

My favourite Fire Emblem is probably Awakening. I think all of them are really good though and a lot have objectively better elements. I just love how customizable a lot of the units are in that game and I love a difficult Fire Emblem too. I like to watch Studio Ghibli movies. They are probably my favourite studio, all of their movies have a really calming and whimisical vibe about all of them. I don't watch anime often, but my favourite one Ouran Highschool Host Club since I love the characters and I watched it when I was younger. I also really liked The Summer Hikaru Died and I was looking out for it anyway since I read the manga of that a while ago.

I also rate Studio Ghibli movies fairly highly, Grave of the Fireflies and Spirited Away are some of my favorite movies. I don't know the anime titles you mentioned but I'll check them out! I know Awakening is one of the most famous ones. Do you have a favorite Pokémon game outside of Showdown? You seem to like Japanese stuff in general, am I correct?

I never realised, but yeah I do like a lot of Japanese stuff. Some of my favourite games like FE6, which is probably my second favourite Fire Emblem, and Mother 3 are Japanese exclusive games. Also Good picks for Studio Ghibli, Grave of the Fireflies ruined me and I refuse to watch it and be emotionally devastated again.
I think my favourite Pokémon game is Heartgold, Gen 2 just has my heart since I absolutely love a lot of the Pokemon in that generation and Heartgold has a lot of loveable mechanics, like Pokemon following you around that I can't help but have it at my favourite despite some problems that Gen 2 games have, such as the level curve.

Yep, Grave of the fireflies hits hard. I also love Gen 2 designs, Heracross, Umbreon, Phanpy, Teddiursa, Ampharos, Wooper, lot of my favorites there! Nowadays we only have bad designs like Flittle unfortunately. Heart Gold/Soul Silver are some of my favorites as well alongside Emerald and Platinum. Did you play any of the more recent games?

True, but Flittle will never be bad... anyway, I also agree with Emerald and Platinum, I think those would be my 2nd and 3rd favourite games if it weren't for HeartGold. I have played Gen 8, I think it was Shield. I thought it was an okay Pokemon game, and it had some quality of life changes that i liked, with the whole party leveling stuff. I do also like then Gen 8 cast so that helps a lot. I have not played Gen 9 though because Nintendo games are getting a bit too expensive to spend money lately. Which means yes I have not gotten Flittle in game but one day I will.

I played only Legends Arceus of the more recent ones, and I had some fun with it, good game! Before we move into the next part of the interview, it is time for the fan favorite pet tax™, one of our most popular questions! Do you have a pet? And if yes, would you be willing to share a picture with us?

I do! Unfortunately, because my University doesn't allow pets, they live with my parents, but I still go down to see them frequently. Here are pictures of my two Green Cheek Conures!

Cute pictures of plznostep's birds - Charlie and Peaches

Ohh, they're so cute!!! What are their names? How old are them? Who wanted to get the birds, you or your parents? I have to know everything

Their names are Charlie and Peaches; there wasn't really any theming to the names, I just thought it would be cute. In the photos, Peaches is the one on the left, and Charlie is on the right; you can tell them apart by the red colour around the beak and eyes; if there is red, then that is Peaches. If they do not, that is Charlie. They are 5 years old by now. Ever since I was younger, I wanted birds, inspired by Jaiden Animations, who also has the same kind of bird, but a different breed. I was always scared of dogs and while I like cats, I am allergic. But I always loved birds and wanted to take care of one for a while.

I love them, pet tax keeps getting better and better, cats, dogs and now birds! Hoping we get a pet turtle next! Do they stay outside their cages? How does it work? Are they trained?

They do stay outside their cage for a while. Birds are very social, intelligent, and curious pets and love to fly around so we just close every window/escape route in the house and supervise them as they play, or just sit on your shoulder and cuddle. Of course, they still live inside their cage though, so we make sure that the cage is big enough and has enough toys to keep them happy. They are not trained, it's pretty difficult to train birds the same way you would train a dog from experience, and not super necessary anyway. This does mean a lot of pooping, but that's what you sign up for when you get a bird. They will poo a lot and even if you try to potty train them, I bet you will probably find a lot of poop around your house.

Ah, makes sense. They seem like very majestic animals though, despite the poop lol! let's change the topic to Pokémon now! How did you first end up on Showdown and in ZU of all places?

I don't remember the first time I started using Showdown to be honest, it was a longgg time ago, when like SM was around I think. I do remember I started actually getting involved when BDSP came around, and I was actually a BDSP person before that. But I wanted to branch out and see some other communities, and I started with ZU since I noticed from BDSP that I really enjoyed metagames with a low power level, since I had actually played the theoretical BDSP ZU metagame the most in that community. Ever since then, it just stuck and now I'm a ZUer for life.

We are glad you ended up sticking around and contributing so much to ZU! What are your favorite ZU metagames? How would you rank all of them? From your favorite to your least favorite

Well to start, I think most ZU metagames are pretty good, so I think this is more opinionated and just what clicks with me most. I would say ADV > SV > SS > DPP > RBY > GSC > BW > ORAS > SM. I know SV is really high but its mainly because I can use so much degenerate jank in SV and it's such a guilty pleasure honestly.

Well, since I know you're an ADV ZU enjoyer (like me) its placement is not a surprise! Since we are discussing ADV ZU, how do you feel about the new drops, Ivysaur and Grovyle? Which sets do you think have the most potential?

I like the new drops personally. Grovyle is really nice for speed tiers, Abra really needed something else that could outspeed it. And thankfully, its not actually that strong due to weak STAB and its coverage is mediocre. It's best set will probably be SubSeed or SubPetaya, being a cleaner or disruption mon to rack up chip damage. Ivysaur is also nice, I think it's more of a sidegrade to Gloom but fits more as a bulky wincon with Curse or the more uncommon Growth. It's nice that it dropped with Grovyle since it's probably one of the better checks to it as well.

I like the new mons too, especially Grovyle. You also ranked SV quite highly, so I am going to ask. What do you think of the current SV ZU metagame? Are you enjoying using Braviary, Grafaiai and Venusaur?

I think the current SV ZU metagame is at least interesting. It seems to still be developing, but firmly a bulky offense metagame to me, which is fun. I like Venusaur, the other two are just okay to me, they do their job fine. I honestly enjoy more using stuff like Snow since that feels really good to use, and also I've been running some Trick Room teams which have felt pretty okay, not the worst thing to use since we got some good users and abusers

I've been liking playing it too. There have been some talks about potentially retesting something from ZUBL back into the tier, what do you think of that? Would you like to see anything being retested into the metagame?

I don't think anything should be retested, but on my bias, I would want Porygon2 to be tested again since honestly it felt bad to use due to Eviolite in that hazard centric metagame. Maybe Electrode-Hisui since Rotom-Mow feels mid and everything is quite bulky so that SpA might not get by, even though Electrode-Hisui is so fast it can run HDB and pivot on everything at the same time.

I feel like those 2 are the most possible retests for sure. I love Porygon2 personally so I'd love to see it back in! Do you play any other formats outside of ZU? What are your favorite non-ZU metagames?

I have been playing a lot of ADV NU. That tier is fire now, and I love it more now Glalie is gone. It has a lot of birds ruling over that tier now, with Pidgeot and Golbat being the main ones. ADV PU is also a great tier ruled by Minun as a 100% usage mon. ADV lower tiers in general just feel very diverse in playstyle and a lot of fun mons so its no surprise that I love them all.

None of them is as good as ADV ZU though, right? You better agree with me. Since you're experienced on both formats, if you could bring a Pokémon from ADV PU into ADV ZU, which one would it be and why?

I cannot comment or either you or Aurist will gut me... I think I would either introduce Vibrava, a pretty cool Dragon-type and rare offensive fast-ish ground-type or I would introduce Omanyte, a Spiker who isn't Snorunt so probably better. Both aren't doing so hot in PU so would be good. If I neglected viability though, I think Duskull would be cool for ZU as a Ghost-type not named Shuppet. Either that or Gastly.

Shuppet is completely viable though, we don't need another Ghost-type. Time for a fun question now, aaaand since you're a musician, you've been tasked with creating a band consisting of ZU players. Who would be in your band and who would play each instrument? You can be the singer or put someone else to be the singer, up to you!

Haha, interesting! I think I would be saxophone and have Tuthur be the main singer. He likes Kobo so much, she's probably done music or two or something so he would be very motivated to impress them with the music. I think diegoyuhhi gives drummer, something just clicks in that role. I would give zause the electric guitar since I think it matches their outspoken nature and they also just need a break lately in general so they can get a cool instrument. I think Zpice would round out the band as a bassist, it just makes sense to me.

Cool picks, except for Tuthur and whatever Kobo is! You have one more task now, and that is naming the band! What name would you choose for it?

hmmm, I think it would have to be related to some kind of ZU mon if it originates in ZU. Maybe The Rolling Stonjourners or something like that.

I like it! Maybe The Orbeetles or (Vespi)Queen would be good picks too following that logic lol! Do you have a team you would like to share with us? Add a description if you can!

Absolutely! Following the talk on all the ADV ZU shifts, here is a team based around Ivysaur; specifically, Growth Ivysaur. I wanted to try this set out because I thought while Curse is good on Ivysaur, it can be vulnerable to Will O Wisp from Koffing. So why not try Growth instead for the bulky wincon as a switch up? It has some fairly standard elements for an ADV team. Howl Mightyena is the standard, helping versus Abra and the usual Ponyta set which helps versus Fire-types. I wanted to try out Magnemite since it should have improved quite a bit from all the new Grass-types around, especially Ivysaur. Seaking helps the team versus Ground-types and other physical threats. Nosepass helps with other Ponyta, Normal-types, and also Quilava. Paralysis spam was something I wanted a tiny bit of for Ivysaur as well so it can try hit something first after boosting to +1 after Growth, so Nosepass and Magnemite help with that as well.

ADV ZU and with the new drops? Perfect team for me, thanks for sharing! We are nearing the end of the interview now and, as usual, is there anything you want to say? Is there anyone you want to shout out?

I'm pretty proud of how ZU has managed to evolve over time. I haven't been there for all of it but sometimes it feels like the odds are rigged against us, yet the community bounces back each time. It really shows the character of everyone involved in ZU; the staff, the players, and people who run the community projects, such as yourself! Thank you to everyone who has made me feel welcome here, and hopefully I'll be here to see the community grow even further.

That's really nice of you to say! This concludes another edition of ZU Player of the Week, and I want to thank you for being here! See you all next week for another interview!

yayyyyyy

Feel free to ask plznostep any questions you want!

Mirbro · 2025-11-11T08:09:30-0500

Next ZUOL we need all these crazy names for teams lol orbeetles Vespi(quen) and the Rolling Stonjourners

Why the nickname plznostep?

Apagogie · 2025-11-11T08:37:19-0500

Really happy you got an interview :3 You deserve it so much. It was so interesting too
~~~
:Mesprit:

Competitive Pokemon :Mesprit:

How is SM your less favorite metagame my dear hipster? Is there anything you dislike about the tier? What would you improve to make it better?

What are the three Pokemon types that you prefer using in competitive Pokemon?
~~~
:Flittle:

Personal :Flittle:

For my pleasure only, can you make a simple competitive Pokemon sentence in Welsh? I find it so cool that you are one of the last speakers of Celtic languages

What measures do you think governments ideally should take to preserve Welsh/Celtic languages in general? Do you think Wales should be independant?

Oofhixd · 2025-11-11T08:39:11-0500

Can you say llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychgyrndrobwllllantisiliogogogoch (idk the spelling that well off the top of my head)

lettuce · 2025-11-11T15:03:05-0500

We have a very similar taste in music. As a swiftie, I am curious what your favorite Taylor Swift song is

plznostep · 2025-11-11T15:52:25-0500

Mirbro said:
Next ZUOL we need all these crazy names for teams lol orbeetles Vespi(quen) and the Rolling Stonjourners

Why the nickname plznostep?

There isn't too much of an origin to it. I think i wanted to go for something like "don't step on snakes" but it was too long so that got shortened to "plznostep." Why don't step on snakes? I don't know, it was something random I heard at the time. If I were to do a name change, Steppers would probably be the change since I do quite like the sound of it, but I can't be bothered to ever do it most times.

Apagogie said:
How is SM your less favorite metagame my dear hipster? Is there anything you dislike about the tier? What would you improve to make it better?

It's nothing really to do with SM ZU itself, I just don't vibe well with Gen 6 or 7 personally. I can't really even pin point something I dislike and I think its fine in its current state, but it's not for me

Apagogie said:
What are the three Pokemon types that you prefer using in competitive Pokemon?

I love Bug-types so if I get an excuse to use one competitively I'll do it. Otherwise, I do like how Poison-types generally work on teams so I do love when I get to put one on my team as well. For my last one, I'll probably go Ground-type; the immunity is fun and offensively the typing also feels fun to use with a strong base power move in Earthquake, which is in basically everyone's movepool, instead of like, a Rock-type using Stone Edge and missing all the time.

Apagogie said:
For my pleasure only, can you make a simple competitive Pokemon sentence in Welsh? I find it so cool that you are one of the last speakers of Celtic languages

I can try. I did say I wasn't fluent; In Wales everyone just has classes until you finish school so you do pick up a bit, but I have to try really hard to do it. I can do something like "Fy hoff metagame ydy ADV ZU" (I don't think metagame has a welsh word associated with it because its too recent), you can guess what that means I imagine, and "Dw i'n dwlu ar eira yn SV ZU achos dw i'n meddwl bod chwarae eira yn hwyl iawn" which should approximately mean "I love snow in SV ZU because I think that playing snow is very fun." If I have butchered that then oops.

Apagogie said:
What measures do you think governments ideally should take to preserve Welsh/Celtic languages in general? Do you think Wales should be independant?

I'm not too well versed in Welsh politics, but for preserving the language, they already do a fairly good job. It's pretty common to find schools around Wales that entirely speak Welsh. You are not allowed to speak English at those schools. I didn't end up going to one so my Welsh skills are passable at best, but I'd imagine if I went to one of them, my Welsh skills would be a lot better. Businesses usually have Welsh translators, infact, there is a free Welsh translated service provided by the government for schools and companies called "Helo Blod" (that means "hello flower", although I know they use the short version of flower, the longer one being "blodiau") so that's cool. But yeah, they encourage the language around. There is always Welsh on the street signs alongside the English version for people who can't speak it. I'll admit also that many people growing up including me weren't super happy to learn Welsh since growing up and being forced to learn a language without knowing why can feel really boring, but now I wish I appreciated it a bit more.

As for independence, whenever its been brought up randomly in conversation, people always get skeptical on the logistics, and I have no clue about that at all. The political party that backs that here is called "Plaid Cymru" which literally means "Welsh Party." As far as I'm aware, they are left leaning and are surging in popularity lately in Wales so who knows where that will go. I do think they generally care about the Welsh population at least from what i've seen, but I don't know much else about them.

Oofhixd said:
Can you say llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychgyrndrobwllllantisiliogogogoch (idk the spelling that well off the top of my head)

If I read it, then yes I can, but I can't off by heart since word is really long to remember every syllable, but I can sound it out.

lettuce said:
We have a very similar taste in music. As a swiftie, I am curious what your favorite Taylor Swift song is

My favourite song is probably "State of Grace" on Red, but I do also really like "Sparks Fly" off Speak Now. I will say I don't consider myself a hardcore swiftie or really swiftie at all since I have not listened to every Taylor Swift song but I do like a lot of her music.

zause · 2025-11-11T16:03:26-0500

Will we be seeing the Ferocious Flattutus in ZUOL

Project Player of the Week - plznostep

czim

Mirbro

Apagogie

Zee you later

Oofhixd

lettuce

romaine emperor

plznostep

Flittle Fanatic

zause

Sigma Gamer