do u know how to operate paper towels
I wouldn't call myself an expert but my knowledge and technique has improved since I first asked this question.
what is something you’d like to accomplish before(if) you leave smogon?
400 wins in RoA tour nights. I think I'm at 388 currently. I don't really have any other goals at the moment. I was pretty happy to get this ribbon out of nowhere though. It would also be nice to get all the GSC analyses into a modern state but I don't see that as a realistically possible goal unless I plan to stick around forever (I don't).
Favourite team you've ever used?
First team that comes to mind right now is the classic GSC Raikou / Snorlax / Marowak / Skarmory / Miltank / Starmie squad, although I rarely use that team these days. I was also fond of the Hippowdon / Rotom-H / Blissey / Forretress / Gyarados / Heatran DPP team I used all the time.
Are you a believer in RBY Thunderbolt Tauros?
Yeah, I don't believe the standard four moves are all mandatory all the time, and it has a clear edge over the other moves in the Cloyster matchup.
I don't really enjoy it compared to other tiers. The top Pokemon can be very smothering and there is an enormous drop off in power and viability after the top few Pokemon. But it is what it is and some people enjoy it, so I'm not going to campaign for changes or anything.
What led you to stick around for such a long time?
I have always enjoyed the game and especially tournaments quite a lot, and I was very heavily involved with parts of the IRC community (#fluodome, #warau, #space, and lots of subsplinters of those) for a long time. That social aspect was key to my sticking around for sure. My attitude towards the game is also quite positive and down to earth so the usual rage quitting / tilting hasn't applied to me like it has to many others, and I seem to care more about my hobbies than my career for better or worse. So I would say the combination of things has kept me around.
Any tournaments that stick in your mind when looking back?
Many. The SPL I managed or co-managed was one of the best experiences I have had in a tournament. Our team was all great at the game and had positive attitudes, and I was happy to see the somewhat unproven players I knew were good show up on the biggest stage in Internet competitive Pokemon. As for individuals, I of course remember losing OST 6 in the finals to hanke because I never changed teams, and my run in OST 4 which was my emergence onto the Smogon tournament scene. I have great memories from playing a lot of very fun formats in unofficials, like the reverse tournament, the mirror match tournament (where I submitted a very confusing team that I was hoping the opponent wouldn't be able to figure out), RPT (which I still think is an excellent format), and the tour where you have to announce your moves in advance and get a limited number of lies (Liar's Rule). And of course I still remember losing to Jabba in the finals of the first Terrorist Cup despite my firm belief that I had the better team due to terrible misplays. I could probably go on for a long time.
what is your favorite dance move
I don't know any dance moves... I can roll my arms continuously if that counts.
Hey Earthworm,
I see you doing a lot in the RoA subforum on smogon, especially the GSC NU analysis recently, I'm happy you guys makin' such a good progress there! Now onto my Questions:
1. what's your favorite food? do you prefer mcdonalds or burger king?
Recently I've been enjoying spicy Chinese and Korean food like malatang, sichuan pepper dishes, tofu stew, etc. I do also enjoy burgers (I used to eat the weekly burger every week
here) but I find McDonalds and Burger King food gross. I do like the coffees at McDonalds here in Australia though, so I guess McDonalds wins.
2. what is your favorite pokemon to use competetively, and what is your favorite pokemon designwise?
Maybe Marowak competitively (one of the most satisfying Pokemon to set up), Espeon designwise. Mewtwo is also fun to use competitively since there's so much you can do with it in gen 2/3.
3. least favorite pokemon to use competetively and why?
Smeargle, don't like how easily it can become useless.
4. what music do you listen to? and can you recommend something, we should give a try to listen to?
Explaining this seems pretty difficult so I will just leave my last.fm here:
https://www.last.fm/user/lotuspirate
I've been through numerous phases and they're nearly all recorded there to some extent.
As for recommendations, maybe The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars by David Bowie or Marquee Moon by Television. They're very popular and famous albums but if you haven't heard them then you should listen to them.
5. favorite battle you have had? could be any tournament tho
My favourite of those that I can remember is probably
this one. It was very memorable because it was so tricky to think about and was therefore very fun, even though I lost.
6. a lot of people have their own personal favorite team(s), do you have a favorite team too?
Already answered.
hey ew coupla qs for you
1. what kinda programming do you do? eg languages and problems
2. what's your process for foreign language learning?
1. My main programming language is C++ but I only really use it when I'm solving problems for fun on the various programming challenge sites and apps. Most "programming" I do is with Excel formulas and regular expressions to manipulate and analyse text and data. As part of my job I receive data in very crappy forms and need to manipulate it into a usable format.
2:
- Buy a textbook and go through it for a while.
- Watch video courses on YouTube.
- Make and review flash cards (repeat daily for a few years). Constantly update them if you can improve the content. Look up any new or forgotten words in the dictionary and read and understand sample sentences.
- Talk with native speakers and try to understand a variety of different types of content for natives (ranging from children's content to completely normal content).
are you and jumpluff still friends
We aren't really in touch but otherwise yes.
what is your opinion of hp grass on cb fearow to nail golem/omastar
Seems like a sensible option. You're in trouble against Aggron though.
what is the most gimmicky thing you've used in adv uu
I haven't used that many gimmicks that I can remember. I like PSong Misdreavus (which is crazily underutilised) and I use full BP chains. Compared to RSE Ubers and RSE NU, I haven't played RSE UU that much though.
what's your favourite gen + tier to play in at the moment?
I'd say GSC OU currently, which is kinda odd. I've been experimenting quite a bit and have come up with some fun teams so I'm enjoying it, and I also just won the past gens championship for GSC OU. I still enjoy GSC and RSE lower tiers a lot though.
I don't have enough information about this to make a decision. I will say no as a risk averse default position.
Greetings Mr. Pirate,
What was your favorite battle to take in as a spectator ever and why?
Does it have to be a live battle? I really enjoyed watching (or reading) the
finals of the liar's game tournament a while ago, it was very intense and the winner made some incredible prediction and/or induced a misplay through a lie.
If you could go back to the start of your time dedicating yourself to Smogon and do it all over again, knowing how much time you have put in over the years, would you still do it all?
Do I get to keep the 29yo mind or do I go back to being a teenager? If the former, probably not.
Do you believe Eo is making up for his own poor self esteem by angry reacting posts of those he is friendly with? If so, do you believe he should seek professional help?
Nope, I think he's just messing with us. How does it make you feel?
What is your favorite Mario Kart game?
Mario Kart DS by far, snaking made the game very fun and challenging. And PRB took it to another level.
hello
Earthworm. you have always had a special place in my heart as believe it or not you were my first tournament match. we played a r1 ubers smogon tour match back in 2007 or so when it used to be held at 8 PM EST. i didn't know who i was up against until a bunch of people joined the game. i soon realized they did not join to watch me, XxFaintxX.
anyway here are my questions:
if today was your last day, and tomorrow was too late, could you say "goodbye" to yesterday?
That is a very good question. At this stage I am hoping the answer is yes.
would you live each moment like your last?
I think this is a very challenging mindset to have.
leave old pictures in the past?
donate every dime you had?
would you call old friends you never see?
reminisce old memories?
would you forgive your enemies? (like me during that smogon tour match)
Yes, no, some of them maybe, yes, yes (although I don't know what I am forgiving them for).
would you find that one you're dreamin' of?
I don't really understand this question properly but... hopefully?
swear up and down to God above? (i expect a no from this one as you do not take me as a particularly religious person)
I could try but I am not sure if I could be earnest about it. I'm not sure that it makes a difference if you aren't earnest about it in some way.
have you used julia at all?
No. In fact I didn't even know it existed until I looked it up a few seconds ago.
If the starter Pokemon for each gen was the legendary trio, which ones would you pick?
Zapdos, Raikou, Regice, don't care about the rest of the gens.
if you could rewind the internet to the old days of irc and your channel #warau, would you?
Just the Internet? The entire Internet? Would people know that I was the one that was responsible? Probably not, though.
lol what a flex. What's your 5K time m8
I haven't tried to achieve any particular times for any particular distances but strava says my best time for 5k is 22:14.
you've been on smogon for quite some time now; how's the culture evolved?
It was much more cliquey when it was smaller, then it separated into a lot of smaller sub-cliques (which I think still persists now) but the site overall is much less so. In terms of tournament culture, things have changed a lot, probably in part due to the introduction of likes, although I'm sure there is more to it than that. Team sharing and methods of evaluating effectiveness have also changed significantly. These are all different kinds of cultures specific to different areas though. I can't really compare entirely now because I deliberately seclude myself and only join particular chats (e.g. I'm not in the tours discord and don't participate in the smogon discord server or smogtours chat).
worst tier of all time? (any gen)
I don't like playing LC so I guess I will choose that in general. Feels like I am using a lot of weaker Pokemon that all have fairly similar strategies and have little choice but to put myself through speed ties.
what would you say the best way to learn gsc would be for a relative newcomer to the tier?
Play and watch games and think about why people chose particular Pokemon or made particular moves. Read the Smogon analyses. Look at the VR and sample teams. These probably apply to most tiers and gens.
how would you respond to those critics of gsc who say it's the most boring/stally gen?
Well, some people that say this have the attention span of a goldfish and no patience at all. They should probably not play GSC and instead install one of those slot machine apps or something. Others probably just don't understand the metagame. I will admit it can be challenging to figure out how to break stall if you don't know what you are doing. It is quite easy to win as a stall player if the opponent is making mistakes. To these people I would say to watch how good players break stall and try to consider the stallier mechanics as a part of the game that can have a positive effect, e.g. Sleep Talk mechanics creating more defensive reliability and introducing interesting tradeoffs.
What do Australian people eat?
Well, most Australian people are concentrated in the big cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane) and these cities have huge populations of people whose ancestors are from other countries (within 1-3 generations). But they're Australians. So it is very hard to name particular foods Australians eat. We eat pretty much everything. If you mean white Australians for some reason, we probably eat similarly to people in the UK, but there's a possibility we branch out more often into other cultures' foods since we have such a great selection available thanks to how many people have come from other countries to Australia over the past half century or so.
Ahoy, the pirate
What is the origin story behind the lotuspirate?
Lotus is from MTG, pirate was just a name I used on MSN Messenger (many people probably won't even know what this is now...). Then at some stage I combined them for some reason.
What are your top 5 curries?
I'm not a curry expert at all, so please forgive me. But I like vindaloo, lentil dhal, and chicken tikka masala from the "Indian" curries that are commonly sold here, thai green chicken curry, and Japanese curry.
Is it true that the lowcostparrot is as handsome, talented and intelligent as the rumours suggest?
His potential is clearly a mismatch with his low price tag.
See above
Have you been up to anything interesting during lockdown?
We haven't been in lockdown consistently in Australia. I started running more during lockdown since I wasn't spending as much time outside walking places as usual.
Top 5 alcoholic beverages?
I am not much of a drinker. But I like various beers (e.g. Corona, Young Henrys Newtowner, One Fifty Lashes), espresso martinis, soju, cider, and various red wines.
Do you have any crazy real life stories?
I can't think of anything that I would call crazy right now unfortunately. I did make a bet with my IT teacher in primary school that I would be able to remember like fifty digits of pi by the end of term then proceeded to memorise 250 digits, which I retained for about 10 years. I just tested myself on this recently though and I can no longer remember them.
Have you met anyone from Smogon/PS in real life? If so, who and what was it like?
I have met a lot of people from Smogon. Thorns, the pugilist, jumpluff, Bluewind, panamaxis, The_Chaser, KnightoftheWind, playa, ILoveLiza, and possibly others I am forgetting. It was fun meeting pretty much everyone and chatting with them. I got along with everyone pretty well. Sometimes it got a bit awkward though because I didn't have a lot in common with people outside of Smogon and competitive Pokemon.
Which sports are you into? Do you participate any? What's your involvement with them?
I play table tennis and tennis. I play table tennis in competitions and regular seasons and I have been winning a lot this year so I am going to go up a grade. I play tennis casually with my family and friends. I also somewhat keep up with professional Men's Singles tennis but I am not a diehard fan.
What's your favorite thing about GSC?
Residual damage is a positive for the game and GSC does it in the most balanced way. There is a lot of RNG in GSC as with all gens, but it is more easily controlled in GSC and many of the metagames are quite well balanced and enjoyable.
