3rd out of 1,000+ at Baltimore. 13-3 with Gengar Perish. From nearly walking away to finding my love for the game again. The team, the run, and what it meant to me. Ride It Through. Hope you enjoy it.

Showdown should create a bot ladder atp. Pandora’s box is already open

Bsmiffy shoutout from the GOAT himself Mr 2x back to back regional champion JoeUX9

I reworked this article and I want to push it. Give it a read. Retweet if you enjoyed reading. Comment what you want me to write-up on next.

Thank you for speaking your truth, I can tell this reply had thought behind it. Not everyone will agree with the way I move but I am doing my best. That said, something I have not been doing my best in the past was doing more given the platform I have. I am currently very deep-rooted in the VGC scene. I should be doing more with what I have and with who I meet along the journey. I will lose followers. I will lose support from people. The very community I’ve dumped nearly my whole life into. This hurts, but it’s what must happen. My goal is not to be the most liked VGC player. Teaching pokemon used to be fun, but what I really enjoy more than anything is winning tournaments. This has always been the chase with me ever since I was a kid. The feeling of all your hard work paying off is worth more than gold. I lost this pursuit a while back. Coaching, chatting with friends, staying good at the game (which does involve secrecy), finding clients, treating clients excellently, staying relevant... these are just some of the hats I have to wear to operate @vgccorner. I think it’s time for bsmiffy to come back. Fuck being a brand name. I need to be myself. No one’s even gonna read this anyways. Everyone attention span is cooked. Some people who should speak will go silent. The challenge going forward will be staying a member of the VGC community, which means listening to criticism like this. In my heart, I still love the community. It’s where I’ve made most of my memories and it’s who I grew up with. My best friends to this day are all Pokemon players. You have to know ball to roll with bsmiffy This challenge was highlighted over the weekend has been balancing asking-vs-demanding my rent-check. When I’m cornered, I have to make a bold play to survive. I refuse to give up. Rent is relatively expensive for my exact situation, but that is where I’m at and what I have to play to. The production actually made more than I thought thanks to some tips and the sheer volume. This came at the cost of some members of the community and I do not like that. I did not know exactly how passionate people were about AI-“art” production. I was unaware of actual harm it does to creatives in its current state. I do hope one day AI can enable creatives as it does programmers but it does not at the moment. I knew it was controversial and I didn’t realize how out-of-touch exactly I was. This was a lesson I learned after people I’ve met at tournaments cut ties. That said, some of those bridges being burnt should stay burnt. That is natural and healthy. Some people outgrow each-other. Other specific bridge-burns did hurt me, a lot. Seeing people you value in walk away can cause a lot of reflection. Seeing many active members of the community unite on one issue made my heart bitter-sweet. Tournament-attendees uniting on an issue was sweet. I also love my brothers who reached out to me throughout the day to check up. You know who you are and your love keeps me going forward. The bitter feeling was that I enabled a lot of hate and burning bridges from my actions. I do not like opportunistic coaches leveraging a situation for their own gain. I gave them an excuse to do that because I took a big piss. I need to do better. Short-term scarcity makes one forget the end-game. I have been applying values to my life and this building process sometimes has mistakes. This is in the pursuit of positive growth. I need to pay rent, and I get it looks lame. I do think the happy ending was plugging a community artist and hopefully enabling a push to their platform. That was only possible thanks to the community. I just got lucky the right person reached out and I’m very blessed from that. At the end of the day, I have a strong intuitive push to get my voice out. So that’s what I’m doing. I need to not break from insults. I must learn from valid and respectful criticism. I need to solve problems. I must think for myself. This is my only intention. -bsmiffy