Approved by 5gen & S1nn0hC0nfirm3d | Amazing Art by Albatr0ss and butchered by me. Thread formatting stolen from Jett
(Interview Date: 30th of October, 2021)
Hey friends and welcome to ZU
Procrastinasian !!
Favorite Pokémon:
(thwackey hasn't been on the anime yet rip)(DPP ZU Tier Leader, ZUPL III Champion, The very best Thwackey user like no one ever was)
Ditto used Transform!
Ditto transformed into Thwackey!
*monkeeeeee*
Hey Procras, how are you today?
Hey czim, I'm doing well, just woke up from a midday nap after watching one of the most pivotal series in League of Legends World Championship history, and am excited to start my interview! Very happy it's the weekend lol. How are you doing yourself?
I'm doing fine today, thanks for asking! Just starting a 4-day weekend here because of a holiday! I'm very happy to have you here in Player of the Week! As usual, how about we start the interview with you telling us a bit about yourself outside of Pokémon?
Yeah, sure thing czim. I am a 21 year old university student in California, USA whose looking to graduate and join the Computer Science workforce at the end of the year. As to what companies I'm looking to work for, I have not fully decided yet, but I am excited to spend this last year of college with my friends, hopefully able to do some international traveling towards the tail end, before settling down at a full-time job post-graduation. As to what hobbies I have, generally I enjoy playing sports, such as basketball and golf, as well as playing board games (or sometimes casual games of poker) with my friends, and of course, gaming is a huge part of my daily life too, with Pokemon and League of Legends being my two biggest pastimes.
Nice, that's a lot of interesting topics for us to tackle. Let's start with your field of work then! Why Computer Science? Did you consider any other career path?
Well, I wish I could give you a whole spiel on how I fell in love with coding, but, yeah... uh... that, totally didn't happen. It was more like, oh hey, I'm in college now, what do I do? Oh, everyone does CS here? The program here is probably top in the world? And it pays well, and every company wants more of them? Okay, guess this is what I'm doing now, haha.
I did briefly consider double majoring in Economics as well, but one day I was playing poker online and randomly ended up talking to some dude at my table and turns out he worked for a trading firm, and he told me, yeah, your Economics degree is completely useless for getting a job, and that is the story of how I ended up minoring in Economics : P
That's fair, not everyone has that moment where they just randomly fall in love with a career. To be honest, most of us don't. You said you want to do some travelling by the end of your graduation. Any specific places you wanna go? Which places did you travel to already?
Yeah! Travel! So, as far as traveling I've done this year, for my friend's birthday, I was peer pressured to book tickets to and back from New York (literally the other side of the country) for a weekend, even though we all had classes on Monday. Was such a great time though, had some of the best food I've had in ages there, and it was really nice to have some spontaneity in my life, makes things way more exciting than just the normal mundane tasks that happen on average days. As to where I'd want to go/planning to go to...
I would love to potentially go to Europe around March, personally thinking Austria/Hungary or Italy, but my friends all want to go to Greece for some reason. Which is fine, I guess, since my only experience in Europe so far in my life has been in France and we all know how France is... rather go searching for the lost city of Atlantis
LOL, our French ZUers won't be too happy about this! Now let's get into your hobbies. Which board games are you favorites? Any similarities between them and Pokémon?
My favorite board games are Secret Hitler, which is a game all about strategy and deceit, where you are either assigned to be a liberal or a fascist. Every turn, policies are enacted, and whichever side enacts 6 fascist policies or 5 liberal policies first wins. Catch is, every turn you have a president, who elects a chancellor, who is responsible for enacting 1 of 2 policies that he/she is given. After 3 fascist policies are enacted, if Hitler is ever elected chancellor, the fascists also win. No one knows who Hitler is, and fascist policies are twice as common as liberal ones, so things can get really tense fast! Another game I really enjoy is Exploding Kittens, a card game where you take turns drawing cards with different effects until someone draws an exploding kitten card. If that is drawn, the person who drew it has to use a defuse card to prevent instant death. This game has some similarities to Pokemon, in the sense that you have to mentally outplay your opponent(s) with the cards(team) you accumulate(have) to win. I could go on, but those two are my go to ones for most situations.
They seem like very unique games, personally I didn't know them before but if ever given the chance I'll play them. Now let's get into something you're really known for in the community, League of Legends. How did you get into it and how long have you been playing it? Also, who are the best and worst teammates in the ZU chat?
I honestly got into it because, again, my friends all suck at FPS games (including me), and they wanted to try something different. Before that, I thought I hated MOBAs, but everything changed when I realized it enabled me to be super toxic to people without repercussions (jk I'm honor level 5/5 I would never). I've been playing it for just over a year now, which is actually kind of an achievement since I just checked and I have 57 days time of having the client open. Which means, 15% of the entire past year I've had League opened up at least in the background (thanks COVID). As for best and worst teammates? Filthy Cubone is a pretty good teammate, and so is CashKP . Lugia is fine, kay when he plays is really good at the game. Mute All DurzaOffTopic is a pretty great teammate too I have to say. So in reality, I can't really think of a bad teammate, love all my ZU friends!
Bit of a cop out there lol. What kind of media do you like to watch? (Movies/Shows/Anime/Youtube...)
As for media, like I briefly mentioned, I love isekai anime, particularly the shows "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime", "Overlord", and "Mushoku Tensei". "Re:Zero is a pretty good one too, as well as well as "KonoSuba", although these two aren't for everyone's tastes (looking at you durza). As for super basic mainstream anime, "Attack on Titan" is a great anime for most people, and the final part of the final season is just right around the corner! Recommend all of these anime for people looking for the next anime to add to their list. Other shows that aren't anime that I would recommend, off the top of my mind, are Squid Game (currently watching it, really good), Rick and Morty, and the Boys(a tv series where superheroes are morally corrupt bad guys that most people still assume are good, and it's up to a few normies to try and and stop them from taking over the entire world). Would also highly recommend giving these three shows a shot!
Good picks! I still need to watch Attack on Titan! Now let's change the topic a bit. How did you first get started in PS/Smogon? How did you end up in ZU of all tiers?
I got started back in 7th or 8th grade, when gen 4 or gen 5 were the prominent gens on Showdown. For years, I was a super big random battles player, capping at 3rd overall on the randbats ladder for gen 7. Until last year, I had never really understood anything beyond random battles, i.e. Smogon forums and actual official metagames. During quarantine, I figured I would try to be more involved as well as improve my skills from only random battles to learning teambuilding because I thought it would change how I played and understood the game, making me a better overall player. I chose ZU, because, well, I thought that it was the smallest playerbase, and I would quickly establish myself as one of the best players in the tier. Not only that, at the time, it had the smallest variety of Pokemon, so I felt like I could gain the most overall knowledge with teambuilding while minimizing factors such as surprise Pokemon that I hadn't seen before when climbing the ladder. Overall, I think my skills as a Pokemon player have improved, and I think of matches in a completely different way than I did over a year and a half ago. Although my goal of being the best ZU player have not nearly been met, I think I know my weaknesses a lot better now, and next year will be the year I hopefully break out with a win in an official tournament.
Well, you won ZUPL, that's an official tournament! That's one of my favorite things about ZU as well, where you actually have fewer tools to adapt to threats so you get to be more creative with that reduced pool of mons. Now that we're into the mons topic, you've been recently appointed as the new tier leader for DPP ZU, one of our most popular old gens. That's a huge jump for someone who wasn't even council at the time. So, how's your experience at the helm so far? what are your plans for DPP ZU? Anything you think could potentially need a suspect in the future?
I love DPP, Platinum was my first game, and I started off in Showdown in gen 4. Although there are some wacky mechanics, I genuinely love this generation of Pokemon. I did the entire spreadsheet (link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...FleVTEiQ4xp2IWnxBgTOOy7ak/edit#gid=1120138711) because I felt like the tier was genuinely enjoyable, but it felt a bit neglected. I think this tier has by far the most potential out of any of the pre-gen 6 tiers (sorry czim), and I do definitely have a lot of plans for the tier, starting with a surprise at the top of the month. Stay tuned for that! Anyways, I am very blessed that my council is incredibly willing to put in the work and do whatever needs to be done. They've helped steer me in the right direction when I haven't been 100% sure, and I love working with them to improve the metagame. There's still a lot to do in the meantime though, and one of my biggest goals is to establish a more dedicated playerbase for the tier. If you haven't already, please please please give this metagame a shot! It's quite balanced atm, and it's pretty fast paced and easy to get into for an old gen.
That's very nice to hear and I'm also looking forward to what DPP ZU has in store for us in the future (even if it is not as good as GSC or ADV). Back into SS ZU now, what are your thoughts on the current metagame and on the incoming Rotom suspect?
Personally, I think SS ZU is in a really weird state where the metagame is super volatile (too many things to check, limits playstyles, or overall makes everything super MU dependent), and I don't know what the best solution is. I think the rotom suspect is fine, but as for whether it should be banned or not, I think it would be close, and I'm not sure I have a strong opinion either way. I'd always rather have a rotom than not have one, but I don't think that necessarily makes it banworthy.
I'm not sure on what my stance is on Rotom yet either, I think this will probably be a close suspect. Now a less serious question. If you had the chance of meeting a famous person in real life, who would it be and why?
Well, I think there are two answers to that for me. One obvious one would be Chris Paul, my favorite NBA player. I've been a fan of his for 6+ years, ever since I started watchign basketball. He's good at ball, smart, and also a good businessman, all traits I want to attain irl. However, I don't know how my interaction would actually go with him tho, so if we're being down to earth, I'd love to maybe meet a content creator. Jschlatt comes to mind, he's funny, and he's smart, and he gives zero fucks, all personality traits I want too. Working on a coding project with him sounds fun too, and maybe letting him help me start a twitch stream/YT channel would be fantastic, since I've always wanted to do content creation but never really felt like it would be a good use of my time.
Well, I don't really know any of the two lol, but they seem interesting! Do you have a team you'd like to share with us? Could be from any gen!
yeah, this is the first dpp team I ever made, and it's withstood the test of time (so far), I like it a lot, and it's been one of my most favorite teams I've made:
this team combines two of the biggest speedy threats in the metagame in Persian and Magmar, and rounds it out with 3 utility mons and a scarf glaceon for additional speed control. The wallbreaking threats in Persian and Magmar can easily be swapped with other sweepers if need be because the pokemon that sets the team up is cm baton pass reflect girafarig, who can easily change the entire outlook of a game for you with its simultaneous utility and setup potential. Double Paralysis deals with other speed control quite well, and makes it so that the rest of the team can more easily do its job.
Thanks, it's always nice to get old gen teams in here, I'm already stealing it lol! We're starting to wrap this up so, is there anyone you want to shout out? Anything else you want to say?
I want to shout out my og friends in zu, Toto, OranBerryBlissey10, Tuthur and czim , who helped make my early ZU experience enjoyable. I also want to shout out my new friends thebtboy, who always has my back, Drud, who always converses with me about basketball and music and DPP ZU, Ekats2, who was one of the first people to help me with my dpp zu spreadsheet, and beauts, who is really chill and who also likes some of my favorite non-league/pokemon games in EU4 and Vicky2. I want to shout out 5gen and zu staff for giving me a job and being chill with me for over a year now, and finally, I want to thank DurzaOffTopic for being reformed and being a real one for my entire time since I joined, and changing my discord experience for the better (mostly). You guys are all awesome.
Thank you for the shoutouts, for being a part of our community and, finally, for letting me interview you! Hope you had as much fun as I did here!
Yeah! Was a pleasure!
Feel free to ask to Procrastinasian any questions you want!
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