Announcement A Farewell to Berks

Berks

has a Calm Mind
is a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
approved by Quote and even if it wasn't, I'm leaving, so eat one

In the Beginning
I first joined Smogon on May 4, 2014.

"But Berks, your join date says you joined January 9, 2015!"

Okay listen here: I didn't know you could change usernames because I was dumb and also 14 years old. I'm hoping you can give me a break for my crippling inability to pick a decent username. I started out as Tileboom, which alt is now called Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, and posted what has to be the absolute worst RMT in the forum's history.

"But Berks, how could you have possibly posted the worst RMT? So many of them are bad!"

Here's an itemized list of why it was bad:
  • It's based on a bad pun on the book Mein Kampf! AHHHH
  • Not only is it based on that pun, it was also based on a misreading of Mienfoo's name.
  • Seriously, I was reading it as "mine-foo". Seriously.
  • The team is garbage, big surprise!
  • I thought at that time that a team with Pawniard, Spritzee, and Koffing was weak to Fletch.
  • The whole thing is written just as presumptuously as I write now and it's super obnoxious!
  • Just see it for yourselves.
Now obviously I moved on from there. After another alt which had a brief stint in Doubles OU, I created Good Morgan, on which I finally began to understand Smogon as a whole and especially Little Cup. Now, I was by no means good, but I was the next best thing: a tryhard! The first decent RMT I ever posted was Pleasure in the Pathless Woods; its tryhard format is heavily based on (read: copied directly from) KyleCole's XY Doubles RMT Stepping on Shadows. It was a good RMT! It got into the Team Showcase! I was so proud of it! And hey, after you do one thing everyone likes, you have to put out a sequel of significantly lower quality, right? Well, I definitely did that with Dreamers of the Day. It was fine, but it wasn't anything special. Then, I didn't get drafted for SPLC, and I got a little upset by that, and I had a little spat with some idiot named leremyju. Fearing that my public image had been tarnished beyond repair, I determined it was time to create one final alt.


Do You Shop at the H&M in Berkeley?
It was on January 9, 2015 that the era of Berkeley began. I felt I had finally gained enough experience to find a way into the community without looking like a complete buffon - mostly because I had gotten most of it out of my system. However, I needed a way to get my new alt into the community I had grown to so enjoy. Enter the Battling 101 system and Mambo. As one of the LC community's then-most popular and prominent players, getting Mambo as my tutor was an absolute godsend. He taught me a few things about teambuilding, introduced me to C&C, and integrated me into the community via introduction to the Lego Fan Club and voicing, de-voicing, and re-voicing me in the PS chat room. These were the glory days of late night community Skype calls, TagPro, and generally having a good community!

I've survived on Smogon through various periods of activity, inactivity, and community shifts, be them between chat platforms, game generations, and tier leadership. This place has grown to become a place that I love greatly and I've made some excellent friends here in my four-year stay.

Why do I bring this up? Because, like Caledrith before me, I'm going on a two-year hiatus as a result of my LDS Church service mission. I'll be getting on a 9AM flight to Mexico City this Tuesday, and then on December 19 I'll get on a flight to LAX and then finally to my mission, the California San Jose Spanish-speaking Mission. I'm very excited to go out and serve, and it would've come sooner had I not had brain surgery early this summer! Anyways, I wanted to put this post together to look back on what I've accomplished here (and gloat just a little) and also to put together some shoutouts and share some teams and so on.


The Progression of Berks
A compendium of every project, analysis, and article I've put out for this site.

=========

Contributions and Corrections
Member of the LC C&C QC Team
Author of The Little Cup C&C Process [ORAS]

ORAS LC Analyses

a
SuMo LC Analyses


=========

The Flying Press
Member of the LC TFP QC Team
LC Spotlight: Snivy
LC Suspect Coverage: Drifloon

The Little Cup Handbook™ Chapter One: Underused Pokémon
The Little Cup Handbook™ Chapter Two: The S-Ranks
The Little Cup Handbook™ Chapter Three: Smashing!
The Little Cup Handbook™ Chapter Four: The Perfect Pivot

=========

Little Cup Subforum Threads
[ORAS] Insert Innovation Here - Creative Movesets 2.0
[ORAS] LC Other Metagames Hub
[ORAS] LCPL 5 Replays & Records
[ORAS] Know Your Niche
[SuMo] LC Roles Compendium
[SuMo] SM LC Really Good Cores

=========

RMTs
Disclaimer: The first two RMTs were posted under a different username, Good Morgan. Long story short, I have a really hard time picking usernames online, and I didn't know the name change thread existed. I sorted it out with some mods, and now I'm the one, the only, H&MBerkeley Berks.
s


XY LC - Pleasure in the Pathless Woods
This team showcased two threats introduced in XY and somehow was picked for Team Showcase. You would not believe the amount of time I put into this one! Overall, I'm especially proud of this as my first RMT on the site, and I think it looks especially aesthetically sound.


ORAS LC - Dreamers of the Day
The sequel is never really as good as the original. Take Two™ in the tryhard department came with a less original, less sound team that ultimately failed to do anything significant.


ORAS LC - American Beauty/American Psycho
Good heavens, this RMT has Mambo written all over it. No disrespect to Mambo, but I sure am glad I got out of that phase! Anyway, this team is incredibly poor, but it's the first thread I created as H&MBerkeley and it was a fun RMT to put together. My building has definitely come a long way since then!


ORAS LC - Strawberry Stall
This is a team I tried to put together for Week Two of the first LCPL I ever played in! Unfortunately, I wasn't that good at battling yet, and the team is a stall team; essentially, I was doomed to fail. I like the team though, mostly because it signifies a step forward in my development as a player - but, also, because it's very cute.


ORAS LC - Kit BoltBody and the Tough Boy Squad
This is the best team I had built by myself at this point (the next RMT was already built with Shrug) and I feel it's the first really solid team I RMT'd. Granted, I had to ask PS chat what I should do ("just add Gothita and hazard stack" - Fiend), but I still feel really good about this one. It won an LC Open match and a bunch of roomtours and it has fun nicknames and I love it.


ORAS LC - Berkeley Shrugged
This is by far the best, most successful team I've ever had a hand in creating; even better is that I made it with my good friend Shrug. It carried me through an entire LC Suspect Tour, and Shrug has gotten his fair share out of it as well. That success got the team into the Team Showcase, which was absolutely deserved in my opinion! Rock Polish Cranidos is my starchild; it's so good in ORAS! If you're gonna steal a single team from me in your Smogon career, make sure it's this one. Hell, it even still works in SuMo!


ORAS LC - ★GOAO: are you ★GOAO: double scarf
My favorite item is the Choice Scarf. I like it so much, I decided to create an entire team of Pokemon that I thought used the Choice Scarf to its fullest. Turns out, this meme of a team is actually pretty solid, and it's really fun to ladder with! Somehow, this disesteemed scheme to create a supreme themed meme team seemed to redeem into a gleaming dream!


ORAS LC - for my fisted friends.
I made this team for an important game I played against Kingler12345 in LCPL 5. I lost (big surprise) but the team was okay. I mostly put this RMT up because the badged LC Team Raters need sustenance every once in a while, and I was bored. It's nothing special!


SM LC - LIFE
Guys, this is actually a good team too! Or, at least, that's what Fiend says! Rufflet got buffed and Vullaby is really good, so I wanted to use them in my first team of the new generation! Since I also am known for my RMTs (according to Nineage) I also decided to be the first person to post an SM LC RMT. It ended up becoming a sample team, which I am actually really really proud of! Let's just hope we don't end up banning Diglett or Vullaby!


SM LC - Have You Ever Seen The Rain?
I had wanted to build a real rain team ever since Mambo posted a thread about it in late ORAS. My best effort is this team, a crazy conglomeration that includes Rain Dance Damp Rock Pawniard. Rain really struggles with being matchup-based, especially in SM LC. As a result, the team isn't very solid. It is, however, incredibly fun to use, so I would highly suggest you try it out!

=========

Shout, Shout, Let It All Out
First and foremost, I'd like to thank everyone in the community for providing such a good place to exist for me, even though I never was phenomenal at battling or teambuilding or really anything outside of writing overly-long analyses and threads. Now commences the best part of any long goodbye post, the shoutouts:
  • First off, s/o to Cheek Pouch, lord of shitty namechanges and ultimate frisbee. He's irl chill, or at least online but not via online Pokemon. Shame my folks wouldn't let you come crash here in O-town, but hey, c'est la vie. Maybe in two!
  • Mambo has vowed to never return to this site but I just want you all to know how much he helped me to "git gud" here on Smogon. He's a super cool guy and I wish him only the best!
  • Shrug, I'll never get over the fact that you can take a joke or a bad VR post or really anything and effortlessly spin it into a 6000 word essay on communist leanings and cucking that would make any autistic 4chan user proud. Your writing is the only writing on this site I believe is directly superior to mine, and you're chill af, so good shit to you my dude.
  • Nineage is gonna be a great mod and he definitely deserves it, what an awesome dude! So proud of my former clone and so excited to see where you're at in two years!
  • My first friend here on Smogon was actually SilentMango, from way back in the Good Morgan days! I legitimately cannot believe how incredibly far you've come as a battler since then, and I'm really proud! You're killing the game!
  • Jac, you drafted me for my first LCPL, and even though I went to shit in that horrendous garbage pile of a metagame we called LC UU, you still didn't tear me to pieces. Much love, vamos Snivys!
  • Of the many TLs that have had reign over Little Cup over the course of my tenure here, the most stabilizing and also most rational was, is, and likely will always be Quote. You run my favorite tier on this godforsaken site so many blessings to you!
  • Coconut drafted me for my second LCPL and idk the whole scenario with the tournament ban but she's still cool so rip in pieces I guess
  • Oma and Melon are two more names I rememeber, they're really cool dudes as well and both are solid at best at TagPro!
  • Vileman, the man, the myth, the meme; may VILEMEME and SLAM CLAM live forever in the hearts and souls of this playerbase.
  • dundies is the only newer player I recall ever really getting around to talkin' to a bit and is one of five LCers I have on Snapchat so I suppose he deserves a shoutout. An additional shoutout to the 16 Def Water-types that keep his battling career afloat is also warranted here.
  • @ everyone else, don't worry if I didn't mention you specifically, the only person I really dislike around here is macle so y'all are all cool in my book!

Announcements
The following are two important announcements:
  1. I have a YouTube channel called Wonder Motion Pictures, and a lot of my inactivity these past months has been a result of my focus on a large-scale two-year scheduled video project for the channel. This is a shameless plug for you to go check it out; in any given month, there's a video every Friday, every first and third Wednesday, and every second Monday, with various memes scattered in between. It'd mean the world if you'd head over and SMASH THAT SUBSCRIBE BUTTON.
  2. Nineage is now responsible for finishing both my unfinished LC Handbook article (Chapter 5, Birds of Prey) and for getting my Sub Snubbull analysis through GP (because, in a very out of character move for me, I forgot to post it in the GP queue). This delegation is being made without his consent, but because for a period he determined himself worthy of calling himself a Berks clone it is only natural that these duties should fall to him. He will do well, I'm sure, in both of these his assignments.
  3. If you want to get my weekly update emails (which, considering the way I write on here as a reference point, will be pretty good) then just drop your email address in a VM or PM and I'll add you to the list!

The Dying Wish
Quote requested that, if I were to make this thread, I drop some heat teams. Unfortunately, I junked all my teams resetting my cache for some ridiculous reason about a week or so ago. While I must unfortunately default on Quote's request, I'll remind you all that I innovated Substitute Snubbull, so I'll call that payment enough.

Once again I'd just like to thank you all for helping to make the Little Cup community here on Smogon dot com such a cool place for me over the years; I'm sad to leave but I know I'll be even happier to return! It'll be interesting to see who dies off Smogon while I'm gone, but I hope that most of you will stick around in LC!

please alum my badges
 
Agghhh.. you will be missed friend.
It was nice knowing you throughout lc community and lcpl.
Your contributions to this site, to LC, and to everyone you've ever made smile will continue to linger after your departure.
Love you man and safe travels
 

Fille

Afk
is a Pre-Contributor
LCPL Champion
Barely knew you, yet I'm sad to see you go :( . Have a good journey fam

Name changes are hard igi
I thought you were like 20
 

Xayah

San Bwanna
is a Community Contributoris a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
You were one hell of a positive presence man. Even though we didn’t talk a lot, I’ll still miss you a lot.
 

Merritt

no comment
is a Tournament Directoris a Site Content Manageris a Member of Senior Staffis a Community Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis a Top Dedicated Tournament Host
Head TD
See you in a couple years H&MBerkeley. I hope your mission goes well!

The following are two important announcements:
  1. I have a YouTube channel called Wonder Motion Pictures, and a lot of my inactivity these past months has been a result of my focus on a large-scale two-year scheduled video project for the channel. This is a shameless plug for you to go check it out; in any given month, there's a video every Friday, every first and third Wednesday, and every second Monday, with various memes scattered in between. It'd mean the world if you'd head over and SMASH THAT SUBSCRIBE BUTTON.
  2. Nineage is now responsible for finishing both my unfinished LC Handbook article (Chapter 5, Birds of Prey) and for getting my Sub Snubbull analysis through GP (because, in a very out of character move for me, I forgot to post it in the GP queue). This delegation is being made without his consent, but because for a period he determined himself worthy of calling himself a Berks clone it is only natural that these duties should fall to him. He will do well, I'm sure, in both of these his assignments.
  3. If you want to get my weekly update emails (which, considering the way I write on here as a reference point, will be pretty good) then just drop your email address in a VM or PM and I'll add you to the list!
So which of these is the unimportant announcement by the way?
 

Holiday

on my best behavior
is a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
Your anthrax laced letter is coming in the mail. I'm gonna miss you bud, thanks for everything <3

e: mans didn't even tag my current name w/e zzz
 

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