The GGFan Experience
1. "what do you think of eb0la"
When Ebola emerged on the scene at the end of 2017, I thought he was very immature and annoying. I once watched a ladder game that he was in; when his opponent made the wrong move, he wrote, "stupid play :)" in the chat. He did this with a couple of alts on the ladder, earning himself a dubious reputation. However, my early interactions with him were actually peaceful and free of conflict. I accept that some people are meant to be annoying--it is what it is.
This thread speaks far more than I ever could about my opinion of him now, however: https://www.pokemonperfect.com/forums/index.php?threads/eb0la-has-been-banned-for-6-months.5567/
He became incredibly abrasive towards others in what was the most relaxed Pokemon organization at the time, cheated in tournaments, and evaded his ban for the sake of trolling with multiple alts. When he was banned the first time I actually tried reaching out to him to see if there was any way I could help diffuse the tension and put in a good name for him, but he called me a "racist nigger" and that sealed his fate. His ban was removed because Egghead adores him for whatever reason.
2. "What are your thoughts on allowing tradebacks?"
I'm OK with it, as I've never been the type to dispute rules in competitive. I give my opinion sometimes, but I don't get too involved in the debates. As for whether or not it would be successful, it depends on a lot of things: the commitment of the playerbase, leadership, and so on. If the organization is presentable and really strives to push itself as the main source for competitive RBY, more people will be inclined to put aside their preference for traditional OU and make the transition to Tradebacks. However, if you want my honest opinion, I think OU and Tradebacks should always be separate metagames because RBY and GSC are separate generations. I'm sure a lot of people would disagree, which is fine.
3. "when did you start disliking LittleLucario AKA Mannat, I remember him on our ppl 3 team. I dont know much about what happens online especially in places like smogon/po"
In general, I find the obnoxious loser who tries desperately to fit in despite everybody around him wishing he would go away quite tiresome. OK, that was harsh, but to elaborate, just before my ban was removed and I came back to his mental institution, I looked at the chat and noticed he made fun of me occasionally. Over time, however, he came to respect me and we ended up getting along so well that I made him my assistant manager in PPL 3. We had a great run, as you know, making it into the finals, and we remained on good terms afterwards. Things started to go south when I decided to play for team Asia instead of team North America in WCOPP 2 (I lived in China at the time and knew more of Asia's roster: eden, Altina, Chillshadow, etc). Without saying anything, he kicked me out of the discord. Then, after that, when staff outright abused their power and banned me (you know that story--don't need to rehash it), he encouraged ABR to make the ban permanent. After that, I accepted him for what he was and moved on; that is, the obnoxious loser who tries desperately to fit in despite everybody around him wishing he would go away.
4. "iyo, who was the best player in every year of RBY, starting from as early as possible?"
This was difficult, but here are the results of my most earnest effort.
2000: Darren. He won the Pokemon World Championship with the OU blueprints, help setting the standard along with winning the "big one."
2001: Honestly, this one is hard. This is the only year I can't give a concrete answer to, mostly because I don't know enough about it.
2002: I guess I would say Nitro because he won the biggest tournament that year (Sneak3), showing mastery of both RBY and GSC in the process. The tournament scene kind of stagnated afterwards, so there isn't much competition here.
2003: Hipmonlee. Unlike his peers, he didn't succumb to elitism and instead played in a lot of tournaments against a wider range of competition. He won the IBT, he won TOS2, he won that Tag Team Tournament, and he went deep in at least a couple of others.
2004: This was a terrible year for RBY: GameFAQs was dying and the rise of ADV put its future into dire straits. I would say myself solely because I won TOS3, which was the biggest tournament that year, and only dropped one tournament set. I also beat IMAP, Yurika, and Fish in succession in those exhibition games. I felt like this was the year when I nearly completed the transition from "good" to "great."
2005-2009: Call it arrogance, call it brutal honestly, call it whatever, but it was me. I had at least an 80% win percentage in 2006 and 2007, won the VBR, TOS6, the 2007 Meisterschaft, the Triple Crown, and something like 20 tournaments. I also did it on two of the biggest competitive organizations at the time; in fact, Pokemonexperte had over 10,000 members in 2006, which made it larger than both Smogon and PokeRealm combined. I won tournaments in OU, BL, UU, and Tradebacks, completing the "RBY Cycle" (winning a tour in every extant metagame). I also contributed a lot towards development of the game, whether it was with the teams I used (popularizing Jynx, for example, who was seen as one of the worst Pokemon in the game at one time), new movesets (I was one of the first to use Reflect Snorlax in tour play), or creating resources (THE Alternative was the first site to have analyses for every fully evolved Pokemon). One more thing--I simply played it far more than anybody else.
2010: RBY2k10's first year, and the only year it tried hosting as many tournaments as possible. I have to say me if only because I had the best overall numbers, even though I was not winning as much as before. I still won its first OU tournament and made the semi finals of the next one, though.
2011: I'd probably go with Crystal here. He went deep in RBY2k10's Anniversary Tour (too bad it got canceled in the finals) and really started to make a name himself as a household name in the tier. I played him in both 2010 and 2011, and easily felt he was two steps above the site's useless founders and four steps above everybody else.
2012: For most of the year RBY was practically nonexistant, so it's impossible for me to give a decent answer.
2013: It was me. I revolutionized the metagame on the ladder, had one of the greatest tournament games of all time, won three OU tournaments, and ended up making it into the least the top 4 in 5 out of the 7 tournaments I played in that year. Lutra also had a great year, but my ladder run as well winning the RBY2k10 Revival Tournament give me the edge here.
2014: Marcoasd, obviously. There is no debate here whatsoever; look at my article on his numbers.
2015: This one is kind of tough because marco fell off a bit, creating some room for debate. I thought Mister Tim improved a lot, putting up some impressive numbers in the process. I even used to say that he was the best player of the year given that he outperformed everybody else for a good six months or so. However, he fell off in the second half of the year whereas marco started to resume his winning ways. I would say it's either marco or Mister Tim, but it's hard for me to make a decision at the moment.
2016: I have to go with Alexander. Marco was more consistent, but Alex beat marco a lot more, and most of their sets were final-round encounters. Add his dominant run of winning four Master Tournaments in a row, a season, and the Indigo Cup into the mix and you get the best player of the year.
2017: Peasounay, no questions asked. Read my article on his numbers.
2018: I'd have to say roudolf. Even though he retired after six months, those six months were insanely dominant.
2019: It's either Lusch or Troller. I'll say it was Lusch because he beat Troller more often, and winning 6-8 tournaments in a row is a legendary achievement that can't be undermined just because Pokemon Perfect was about to close down.
2020: The year isn't over yet.
5. "Would you agree that, in Pokémon, an excellent team HAS to be an anti-meta team?"
No, your typical bog standard team can win games, but analyzing trends and countering them is often conducive to success. It can also give you a mental edge against somebody you aren't sure you could beat by strictly outplaying them.
6. "what's your opinion on wcop and what led to your historic roast of several of smogon's players in the recent wcop thread?"
This year, it looks like most of them are suffering from severe autism. And no, not just the one insulting everybody else. I made that post because I'm a part of team Greece this year, as the Greeks have always been rather fond of me.
7. "What's your favorite WWE plotliine of all time, and how has the WWE in general affected your writings, if at all?"
I really liked it when Randy Orton went insane and punted both Vince and Stephanie McMahon in the head after Vince was about to fire him. Unfortunately, the payoff was a tremendous disappointment. Hector Gold was influenced somewhat by Alberto Del Rio.
8. "GGFan, how did you acquire your extensive vocabulary? I ask this because I do flash cards for learning new English words, yet they never find their way into my natural parlance."
By reading and writing extensively.
9. "thoughts on lavos's speech before he quit smogon"
I didn't know about it until somebody showed me. It seemed like he knew he was burned out and wanted to go out on a bang. I'm sure he'll be back because nobody ever leaves for good, even if it's in their best interests (I'm generally happier when I'm not here).
10. "how do you feel about smogon doing a fundraiser for BLM? seems hypocritical to me given that chaos was known for being racist among other things, but still curious to know how you feel."
Let's ask chaos and his friend, "Nigger Joe's tar soap." Or, let's ask all the people who write the words "nigga," "nigger," "nibba," "ginner," and so on, in chats. For a thin (and I mean) veneer of compassion, they will get hefty publicity and revenue from politically strung sheep who want the entire world to march in the streets with them. Well, why not?