Staff Interview: Trickster

Hello, Spy, it's good to see you could make it.

I'm somewhat introverted and usually pretty quiet, especially around people I don't know. Most of the time I like to do my own thing. I suppose I could call myself an otaku, although I don't feel like I emulate that through how I act on PS.

For those who don't know, an otaku is someone who's so interested in computers or popular culture that it overshadows their social life. It has a negative connotation, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't describe me. However, that doesn't mean I have no social life outside of PS.

Yeah, I'm a big anime fan. I also enjoy playing the piano and clarinet, which I play in my school's marching band during the fall. My parents try to get me involved in Jewish youth groups and stuff, but I'm not too interested in those for the most part.

I've always loved Pokémon, starting with the anime back when Hoenn was airing. I also collected the cards for a while without really knowing how to play. I didn't actually play any of the Pokémon games until about four years ago, when I played FireRed on an emulator.

I first heard of PS when I became interested in Wi-Fi battling after playing White 2. I, of course, used Smogon sets and found out about the site that way but didn't join until I went over to my friend's house and saw his friend playing random battles on the sim. The idea of using random Pokémon to battle was exciting, so when I got home that night, I made an account and played a lot of random battles.

The reason I started getting involved in rooms was a bit dumb. At the time, the Trivia room offered room Voice to those who achieved "Hatmor" status, which was getting 150 points through answering questions correctly. I considered myself pretty knowledgeable about Pokémon facts, so when I saw this in the room description, I thought it would be an easy way to get Voice. Back then, I wasn't fully aware of what Voice was or that there was a difference between global and room ranks, but being at the top of the user list with a + next to my name looked good to me.

I actually know the exact date I started going in Lobby. It was January 21st, 2014, the day when Jasmine wreaked havoc on the Lobby through his declares about pineapple pizza. Coronis, one of the ROs of Trivia, was jokingly demoted to Voice, so I went into the Lobby to see what was going on.

I figured if the Lobby was this much fun every day, then I should start going there more often. I also owned a server at the time and had gotten more used to the chaotic environment, so it wasn't quite as overwhelming as it would've been if I hadn't been exposed to it before.

Usually, in the midst of all the unrelated comments and trolling there's some central conversation going on. Just do your best to ignore the dumb stuff that people say and maintain that topic, and the room can be a lot of fun. Lobby is used to talk about a lot of things; it's PS's general room, so it won't always be Pokémon either.

Well, I was originally just going to change it to Comet and that would have been the end of things. However, when I went on IRC to ask Zarel to reset the name's password, the person who had Comet registered was in the IRC chat, so that didn't really work out. So I changed to Sunako because I was hyped over the anime Shiki and had already made a sprite to go along with the name. I also had over 1900 Elo in Random Battles on that account.

However, I quickly became tired of the comments about my sprite, PMs asking if I was a girl, and the "ok anus" jokes. I also stopped caring as much about the anime the name originated from.

I decided to change a second time to a name that matched an entire archetype of anime characters that I liked, such as Izaya Orihara. I also liked the character Loki in the Thor movies, so that played a role in the change. Overall, I thought the name would act as a reminder to myself during moderating to just have fun and not take things too seriously.

Thanks for interviewing me!