"A stranger is being shown around a village that he has just become part of. He is shown a well and his guide says "On any day except Tuesday, you can shout any question down that well and you'll be told the answer." The man seems pretty impressed, and so he shouts down, "Why not on Tuesday?" A voice from in the well shouts back, "Because on Tuesday, it's your day in the well."
Hey, my name is SuperEpicAmpharos, but everybody calls me SEA. I'm a 20 year old dude from Texas, and I've been playing Pokemon competitively since around late 2011. Although I am now an aspiring ADV player, I have floated around a lot on this site and PS for the past 8 years. I started out playing NU way back when, then picked up DOU, then back to NU, then to OU, then back to DOU, before finding myself knee-deep in old gens. Outside of Smogon though, I'm a math major with autism who enjoys good food, playing Tennis, and hanging out with friends. I'm also a euphonium player, but I'm not the best at it.
My start with Pokemon began at a very young age. My brothers both had GBAs and owned of Silver, Sapphire, Ruby, Sapphire, and Leaf Green. One of my earliest memories in life is sitting in a bunk bed in Minnesota erasing my brother's Leaf Green save file. Eventually, around the age of 6, I got my own Purple GBA with a copy of Pokemon Emerald, which I played to death. I basically played hand-me-downs for the next 5-6 years before somehow winding up on PS, and by then I was the only one in my family with even a passing interest in Pokemon. I remember eagerly awaiting the releases of both BW1, BW2, and XY, even saving up my allowance to buy BW2 on its launch date.
My earliest games on PS were about what you would expect from an 11-12 year old, the same stuff you find at 1000 on ladder nowadays. Mono bug, Eeveelutions, etc. You can feel free to look those up as they are public for some "quality" entertainment in battle chat. It wasn't until 2015 that I really began to think about the idea of starting to improve at the game.
Shortly after the release of SM, I took a long break from Pokemon that lasted a year or two. I suppose I was just feeling like I was "too old" for it or something, but nobody can really ever quit Pokemon. I came back and played some draft leagues for a while before coming back to try Smogon formats in around 2019. I made no splash in anything during that time, and just kinda floated around. It was until 2020 when the pandemic hit that I really began to get anywhere. I joined my first tour, BW DOU Cup, which ended with a R1 finish at the hands of MetalGro$$. Shortly after, I took a complete left turn and signed up for Retro Cup of Pokemon, which was really the turning point in my "career".
I don't really know what compelled me to sign up; I had been messing around with old gens for a little while but never played them with much proficiency. I got slotted into ADV by the virtue of US South only having 10 people to choose from, the bare minimum. I still remember all 3 of the games I played vividly: my 2-0 victory against Prinz, 5-0 win against Boat, and my 3-0 loss to Kevin Garrett because I didn't click Rock Slide on Turn 22. I had exceptional team support from fellow US South member Hclat, which is the only reason those games were even remotely close.
Soon after that tour came the Lanturn craze, which you can read up about on the RMT I have in my signature! Something that I suppose I never got rid of from my old days of playing Pokemon is always trying to make niche Pokemon work. I am a very uncreative person, but Pokemon is my one true creative outlet. It's something that isn't great for winning, truthfully, as a lot of my experiments have crashed and burned. I grew tired of the Lanturn Gang thing very quickly, as I received a lot of attention that I really didn't want, but getting Lanturn ranked on the ADV OU VR is still a massive accomplishment of mine.
Around this time, I also got a bit more involved in DOU. With the help of emma, I somehow managed to place top 16 in a DOU seasonal! While it isn't much, it's still something that I held with great pride. But current gen doubles wasn't the only thing I was getting involved in. I began to grow a very real interest for ADV DOU thanks to xzern, which is now my favorite tier to play. Speaking of which, zeefable, xzern, and I all wrote an article on said metagame, which you should all check out and read!
The time following the Summer of Lanturn is all kind of a blur to me. I felt as though people saw me as nothing more than a joke of a player, and I tried my best to use that as motivation to keep improving. It didn't seem to matter how well I performed, that thought was always in the back of my mind. Even after playing some of my best Pokemon in RoAPL and making finals of ADV Ubers Cup (I wrote an RMT with a team from this tour, it's also in my signature!), I never could get that thought out of my mind. I took each of my losses in every tour incredibly hard. Every inch of progress I seemed to make didn't matter when I looked at those, despite the circumstances of the games. I have said before that I am maybe too competitive, and this is what I mean by that. Was it good motivation? Yeah, absolutely. Was it good for my mental health? Absolutely not. At the end of the day, this is a hobby we do for fun, and I was getting consistently depressed over it.
Even now, I still feel a bit like I am working to prove myself as something more than a "meme" player. It is probably the fault of my own for always seeming to use unorthodox sets, Pokemon, or saying some of my more outlandish takes. Perhaps people already see me as a good and proven player, and I am just in my own head with my undying self-consciousness and lack of self-confidence.
Taking a small break from tours recently helped me bolster my control over the mental part of this game, and I'm starting to have more fun with this game again! It let me take a step back and really start to enjoy myself playing Pokemon again instead of dreading each game that comes up. I owe a lot of this due to the help of my friends, which there are WAY too many to credit and list here, but I have a fantastic support group here on this site. You all know who you are, much love
Sorry for talking about myself too much, feel free to ask me any questions though! :D
s/o Holly for helping me write i guess >_>
Hey, my name is SuperEpicAmpharos, but everybody calls me SEA. I'm a 20 year old dude from Texas, and I've been playing Pokemon competitively since around late 2011. Although I am now an aspiring ADV player, I have floated around a lot on this site and PS for the past 8 years. I started out playing NU way back when, then picked up DOU, then back to NU, then to OU, then back to DOU, before finding myself knee-deep in old gens. Outside of Smogon though, I'm a math major with autism who enjoys good food, playing Tennis, and hanging out with friends. I'm also a euphonium player, but I'm not the best at it.
My start with Pokemon began at a very young age. My brothers both had GBAs and owned of Silver, Sapphire, Ruby, Sapphire, and Leaf Green. One of my earliest memories in life is sitting in a bunk bed in Minnesota erasing my brother's Leaf Green save file. Eventually, around the age of 6, I got my own Purple GBA with a copy of Pokemon Emerald, which I played to death. I basically played hand-me-downs for the next 5-6 years before somehow winding up on PS, and by then I was the only one in my family with even a passing interest in Pokemon. I remember eagerly awaiting the releases of both BW1, BW2, and XY, even saving up my allowance to buy BW2 on its launch date.
My earliest games on PS were about what you would expect from an 11-12 year old, the same stuff you find at 1000 on ladder nowadays. Mono bug, Eeveelutions, etc. You can feel free to look those up as they are public for some "quality" entertainment in battle chat. It wasn't until 2015 that I really began to think about the idea of starting to improve at the game.
Shortly after the release of SM, I took a long break from Pokemon that lasted a year or two. I suppose I was just feeling like I was "too old" for it or something, but nobody can really ever quit Pokemon. I came back and played some draft leagues for a while before coming back to try Smogon formats in around 2019. I made no splash in anything during that time, and just kinda floated around. It was until 2020 when the pandemic hit that I really began to get anywhere. I joined my first tour, BW DOU Cup, which ended with a R1 finish at the hands of MetalGro$$. Shortly after, I took a complete left turn and signed up for Retro Cup of Pokemon, which was really the turning point in my "career".
I don't really know what compelled me to sign up; I had been messing around with old gens for a little while but never played them with much proficiency. I got slotted into ADV by the virtue of US South only having 10 people to choose from, the bare minimum. I still remember all 3 of the games I played vividly: my 2-0 victory against Prinz, 5-0 win against Boat, and my 3-0 loss to Kevin Garrett because I didn't click Rock Slide on Turn 22. I had exceptional team support from fellow US South member Hclat, which is the only reason those games were even remotely close.
Soon after that tour came the Lanturn craze, which you can read up about on the RMT I have in my signature! Something that I suppose I never got rid of from my old days of playing Pokemon is always trying to make niche Pokemon work. I am a very uncreative person, but Pokemon is my one true creative outlet. It's something that isn't great for winning, truthfully, as a lot of my experiments have crashed and burned. I grew tired of the Lanturn Gang thing very quickly, as I received a lot of attention that I really didn't want, but getting Lanturn ranked on the ADV OU VR is still a massive accomplishment of mine.
Around this time, I also got a bit more involved in DOU. With the help of emma, I somehow managed to place top 16 in a DOU seasonal! While it isn't much, it's still something that I held with great pride. But current gen doubles wasn't the only thing I was getting involved in. I began to grow a very real interest for ADV DOU thanks to xzern, which is now my favorite tier to play. Speaking of which, zeefable, xzern, and I all wrote an article on said metagame, which you should all check out and read!
The time following the Summer of Lanturn is all kind of a blur to me. I felt as though people saw me as nothing more than a joke of a player, and I tried my best to use that as motivation to keep improving. It didn't seem to matter how well I performed, that thought was always in the back of my mind. Even after playing some of my best Pokemon in RoAPL and making finals of ADV Ubers Cup (I wrote an RMT with a team from this tour, it's also in my signature!), I never could get that thought out of my mind. I took each of my losses in every tour incredibly hard. Every inch of progress I seemed to make didn't matter when I looked at those, despite the circumstances of the games. I have said before that I am maybe too competitive, and this is what I mean by that. Was it good motivation? Yeah, absolutely. Was it good for my mental health? Absolutely not. At the end of the day, this is a hobby we do for fun, and I was getting consistently depressed over it.
Even now, I still feel a bit like I am working to prove myself as something more than a "meme" player. It is probably the fault of my own for always seeming to use unorthodox sets, Pokemon, or saying some of my more outlandish takes. Perhaps people already see me as a good and proven player, and I am just in my own head with my undying self-consciousness and lack of self-confidence.
Taking a small break from tours recently helped me bolster my control over the mental part of this game, and I'm starting to have more fun with this game again! It let me take a step back and really start to enjoy myself playing Pokemon again instead of dreading each game that comes up. I owe a lot of this due to the help of my friends, which there are WAY too many to credit and list here, but I have a fantastic support group here on this site. You all know who you are, much love
Sorry for talking about myself too much, feel free to ask me any questions though! :D
s/o Holly for helping me write i guess >_>
