Interview with Zebraiken

Interview and flavor by Oglemi, featuring commentary by ium. Art by Furosuto and ium.

I'm walking to class when a big black windowless van pulls up beside me. Expecting the worst, I play it cool and nonchalantly keep walking. It slowly follows beside me for a block. Sufficiently freaked out, I decide to book it down the street. Before I can even get two steps into my sprint I find myself no longer running above ground but instead falling down and down into what was apparently a trap door in the middle of the street.

I wake up in pitch blackness, but after a few moments I can tell I'm in the back of the same black van that was following me earlier. Suddenly, the divider slides open and a deep voice resonates from the driver.

"We're in Nebraska for your next assignment."

"Great... but why did you need to kidnap me this time?"

"Because you're not tackling this assignment alone."

Sure enough, I see another head peer around the passenger seat in the front.

"Who's...?"

I barely get a word out before I recognize who it is.

"Oh great... him."

"Hi Oglemi!"

We're soon dumped onto the street outside a quaint little home in what could only be Nebraska.

Oglemi, is it true that Jacob secretly despises me and has a plot to burn me on a stake?

lol. I don't think so, but I could be wrong.

ium snorts with discontent. We stride up to the home and ring the doorbell. We're met at the door by a towering figure. I hear ium audibly gulp beside me. The towering figure kindly invites us inside and offers us a seat on a couch in the living room. ium is quickly distracted by the family dog and our host escapes to the kitchen to fetch us some refreshments. He returns presently and I begin the interview.

Are we ready yet?

Yea, I'm good I think.

ium, are you ready?

ium is probably too busy playing with his snake. >:|

Jacob is my snake. :o

Alright, let's start then (assuming ium puts his snake away).

Well I can't if you're interviewing him. :\

OK Zeb, tell me about who you are in real life, where do you live, and what do you do apart from playing Pokemon?

Uhhhhhh, OK. My name's Jake, I'm eighteen and I live in a small-ish town in Nebraska, USA. I'm kind of in between schools and I'm not really sure what I want to do with my life as of right now, but I think I'd like to end up being a teacher maybe. :]

Hi I am Jacob, I am a loser, I live in Zebraska, and I do nothing but fap to Django's mullet pix. =]

Zebraiken gives ium a bit of a glare. I can tell he's unsure about my fellow interviewee being here with me, but I assure him that it'll be fine and that ium is normally a butt in nearly any situation, so this is nothing out of the ordinary.

So what do you mean by in between schools? Are you transferring? Also, being a teacher is a good profession to pursue in my opinion. :>

Yea, transferring. And yeah I agree. :] I'm used to working with kids since I have five siblings and have worked for daycares and the like in the past.

Any idea what subject you'd want to teach, or would you rather teach elementary school?

uhh...

Elementary is Jacob's game.

Preferably, second or third grade in elem-

yea...

But I also have thought about teaching English in high school since that's something that comes naturally to me and I like to do it. :) But yeah, definitely not like kindergarten; I don't want to have to deal with soiled shorts. >:|

I see ium get visibly excited and can tell he has a story to share about this particular subject, but I convince him to hold it in until after the interview.

So tell me a little bit about Nebraska. Is it as clichéd boring as everyone makes it out to be?

Yes. It is. There is nothing here, aside from restaurants... and corn... and farms.

Being from Wisconsin, I mumble something along the lines of "you're telling me." ium apparently hears me and says something about "well yeah, you have Birkal there, auto-boring" under his breath.

Anyway, aside from school and Internets, are there any other hobbies/activities that you do?

fapn

No. >:|

Considering how little there is to do here, most of the things I tend to do are pretty much limited to hanging out with friends and playing sports and stuff. :( I have a pretty boring life to be honest.

No you don't, you have Oglemi and me. n_n

OK, onto Smogon. What brought you to Smogon in the first place?

Uhh, I actually was on another Pokemon forum for a few years, and I ended up finding out about competitive Pokemon there and making some really good friends. I got tired of that place though, so I figured I'd finally try to get into Smogon and do something important despite how intimidating it sounded; I just jumped right in and started working on analyses for Contributions and Corrections and stuff. :]

I was actually really nervous about it at first though...

Yea, then he did sexual favors for tennisace and it was just a slippery slope from then on.

..and I specifically remember talking to sirndpt about my first analysis and she was super nice and made me feel like doing stuff here would be worthwhile.

Yea sure iumbum. >:|

Did you jump right into IRC as well or stick to the forums at first?

Forums at first, but when NU was getting established I jumped onto #genvnu with tennis, The Wolf, Ice-eyes, and a few others and got more involved on IRC from there.

What drew you to wanting to help out with NU? Did you play any tiers prior to the formation of NU?

Uhhh, I liked tennisace and the rest of the guys who were getting involved with it, and I saw an opportunity to get more involved so I seized it. I played OU for a bit but really disliked it, so I moved onto RU for a little while, I think after they banned the Bugs, and then jumped right into NU, since it got started very shortly after I joined and haven't really moved since.

What kept you around NU? I remember a lot of players being frustrated after Round 0 and leaving.

Gee sounds like Oglemi...

What about the tier is so much fun?

....uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I dunno, having a relatively stable metagame with no overwhelming things really helps. I was also frustrated after R0 though, losing so many Pokemon was asldfasdfac. Like, it was an entirely new metagame after R0. I don't know what about it is so fun though, there's a load of versatility and despite some Pokemon being very good you can actually use almost any Pokemon you like and be effective with it, barring obviously poor Pokemon like Delibird and Watchog. I got owned by a Wormadam-S the other day. :(

OK, so tell me a little bit about taking a leadership role in NU. What is it like leading a tier?

I don't know Oglemi, you tell us.

It was a bit overwhelming at first. I don't know, I was thrust into doing a few things that I had no idea what I was doing and I asked for help on a few things when I got started. I wasn't really expecting to take a leadership role when I did because tennis is eternal. >:| But yeah, it's been fun since then. I like to think I'm pretty open about how everything works in NU with the guys who play it.

So tell me a little bit about NU tiering. It's been around for a really long time and yet has only ever banned one Pokemon: Jynx. What do you think accounts for that?

The fact that you aren't the one leading it Oglemi, I mean look at RU.

I have trained my council to not be banhappy whores. >:|

Uhh really though, I don't know, nothing has been incredibly broken lol. The only thing that came close to Jynx was Zangoose and there was a lot of heated discussion about it for a while. But we ended up not banning it and it's pretty evidently not broken if you look at it now.

Fuck Musharna. It's not broken but fuck Musharna anyway. :'( Mostly because of "Sock." Have you ever played Black/White 2 and gone to the tall grass in Pinwheel Forest or whatever place it is and encounter double Sawk and be like "wow, I found a pair of socks!"

I hear Zebraiken choke back vomit.

The NU community gets complimented all the time for being such a great crowd of people, what do you think accounts for this?

Well Oglemi, Jacob is adorable.

Uhhh... no.

And everyone likes drunk tennisace at the expense of himself, and we have quite a range of people from ladder bitching CrashinBoomBang to weeaboos like FLCL and EBeast to 12 yr olds like DTC. n_n

Well that's a pretty good summary actually. Though I'd also point out that we don't get people who are incredibly aggressive about Pokemon like most other tiers do, barring cbb of course. Everyone's pretty laid back about mons and we're pretty friendly as a community in general.

As we are slowly entering a new generation of Pokemon (T-minus 8 months), is there anything that you would have done differently in BW? What mistakes if any do you hope to avoid in XY?

Ah, the regret question. Jacob can write an essay for you if you broaden that question to many things in general.

u.u

Uhhh, to be honest, I haven't done an incredible amount as a tiering leader. When the tier came into my hands it was relatively stable and I really only had to lead a few votes on Pokemon. In XY, I'd really like to sort out the best way for voting in the suspect process. I'm not really convinced that this whole council thing is really the right way to go about it, but I haven't thought extensively about the other ways to go about it either. So, I don't know, it's a long-term thing to think about.

Jacob is going to get dethroned anyway. I bet he's being conspired against.

OK, final two questions. What is the meaning behind your username, and what is your favorite Pokemon?

Oh, shet my username... uh, well, it's really not based on Zebstrika, sorry. I just like giving my Pokemon cool names in-game and I picked one that I liked a lot. Zebraiken was the name of a Scizor that I had.

I have a lot of favorite Pokemon, but in general my favorite is probably Heracross. :]

rofl, why would you name a Scizor that? My god.

It's nice to have a name that no one ever uses on other sites. :) And fuk u ium I made them one letter at a time. >:| And picked what I thought ~sounded cool~ Zebraiken has a nice ring to it. :)