ZEL

this image matters more than life itself and my respect for you is immense thanks for blessing the thread with this and have a wonderful day thats an order btw

Look I'm sure I'll accidentally nom someone who's already been nom'd but I'm very sleepy The Sugarpop Sunbeam Award: Nicki For being such a blessed force of positivity towards everyone she interacts with! Nicki easily stands out as one of those people who will always take the time out of their days to make someone feel a little more cheerful, I know she's put many smiles on my face this year for sure. Supportive Cinnamon Roll: Azzie Another one! Azzie is just such a sweet dear, always has the time to lift someone's spirits with a comforting word or two, and always very thoughtful about how to best approach someone's woes. Can't be upset for long with this sunshine around! Cna't Spel Awrad: Wendel With absolute icons like Lía and Njab for competition it falls under the radar sometimes, but c'mon, Wendel's typos get wild. Rookie of the Year: Ceri My life has been enriched drastically by having Ceri in it, and I know so has everyone else's because Ceri is wonderful, outstanding, blessed; Just sayin' xe has been easily the most notable new addition to the community for me this year, with an all-round lovable and quirky personality. And exzellent taste in characters. The Pointedest Poindexter Award: Adrian / A11 aka Best Birdnerd Buddy I know this award is like, technically for making fun of Marcello every year, but BOI am I glad to have this excellent specimen of a human* amidst our ranks, to aid in the most important quest of our time: make everyone learn about birds and make everyone love birds. And other animals. Point is, Adrian has displayed tremendous amounts of expertise about animals this year, which is science, which is for NERDS lol Seriously, like 90% of my fav conversations this year on Reborn have had Adrian in it, which is also why I will do a double nom right here and now for (*allegedly, debatable) Member of the Year: Adrian / A11 Cuz they deserve it! I! Love! Talking! To! Adrian! Coolest Clown in Town: Posty I know for a fact without checking that someone's got to have nominated him already but I don't care any more. Posty, besides being a clown by his very nature, has provided endless entertainment to lobby this year, both because he's just genuinely a very cool and fun person to begin with, but also many, many times completely by accident, and that's why he gets this nom. Because other than Bibs, I honestly can't think of anyone else who causes so much hilarity without intending to ndgfvdsn Member Most Likely to Never Give You Up: Bibs Yeah, Bibs actually. Both because this award DOES have a meme name, and because it's true. Bibs has been a wonderful friend to me throughout the years, and I can't express how much i appreciate that. He's the type of person who demonstrates a lot of care about others and just doesn't Realize sometimes how much we treasure him beyond the memery, but we do. Bibs would never give me up, neither as a friend nor as a meme dispenser. Thanks for all the horrifying Lorenz memes Most Likely to Have Just Been A Dream All Along: Ice Granted, that'd be a very long dream for me, like 5 1/2 years and counting. But Ice is a cryptid on chat if I've ever seen one, both because his presence is sparse and because when he does appear, we're all not quite sure what curse he will put on us this time. I, for one, think he's the best dream I've ever had, and I don't wanna wake up. But I'm mostly nomming him because I do think he Be Having That Energy.

Realizing we can no longer nominate Azery for smelliest auth was one of the most earth shattering turning points in my entire life and I'm not yet sure how to emotionally respond to it. Might actually join in on the secret santa this year, though!

Thanks for the response, Abyss! ♥ I'll be glad to see some guidelines, so thanks for considering it! I think the thread we currently have for how R4 works is a pretty good framework to go off, and I personally really like having quotable sections to refer to when people seem to misunderstand or not know a rule. For the channel description, the pop-up upon joining the server is very neat, and the welcome channel covers the game related channels, but as far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong) the only way to get it to pop back up is to leave and rejoin the server, and I'd love to additionally have something more permanent that also covers general channels. It never hurts to have a linkable source in another location, and I don't think it'll be terribly much work to provide, since most channels don't need much explanation. For the second post and your responses to it - I am glad to hear that there's self-reflection going on. Like I already said yesterday, I honestly don't enjoy taking the matter to this thread, and in the past years I have always taken my concerns with staff behavior to an auth member of my choice. I've always felt that they did a good job reacting to it. But within this past year I've simply felt like certain patterns of behavior have surfaced too frequently, I really couldn't keep sliding into someone's DMs every time - and I for one have not felt like the situation improved in the past months. I just do not like seeing people receive passive-aggression, mockery or scorn for simple non-malicious mistakes, and it's a real downer when it comes from auth members. Again, higher standards and all that. We're in a chat, not facing each other in real life. There's always time to take a deep breath and swallow the exasperation and the impulse to make a snarky remark. There's always time to ask someone nicely to do/not do something. And it's always better to express a concern openly instead of vagueing in the hopes that people will catch on. But thanks for the acknowledgement, and thanks to everyone who's taking it into consideration.

So like, not to double post on main or whatever But I have a second concern and I've been kinda iffy on whether or not I should bring it up because I hate being the bitch to stir up DiscourseTM Think it's time tho because it's gotten to a point where I'm actually genuinely uncomfortable with the situation I would like to ask for R5 to include some kind of guideline or instruction for how to proceed in case someone feels like an auth member's action hasn't been justified. A way to raise objections, if you will. Two reasons for that: One, obvious, while auth naturally get the final say in someone's reprimands or punishments, auth aren't infallible, and I think if people have good reasons or proof to object to a given warning or reprimand, they should have a chance to appeal to the auth team to review the case. I don't think it's intuitive to everyone to assume that you can do this, or know who to contact about it, so a rundown a la "if you have reason to believe x, please contact us in y way" blah blah Second, because I keep seeing instances in which I genuinely consider the actions showcased by auth members to be unprofessional, and I believe people should have a way of informing themselves on how to address such concerns 1) discreetly and 2) in a way that ensures that the team will review/discuss the matter. I've noticed, within the past year especially, a rise in occasions on which I've seen several! members of the auth team be passive-aggressive and snappy with people for little to no reason, in addition to that I've seen people reinforce this behavior by cheering it on. I firmly believe that if someone chooses to accept a position as auth, they have to resign themselves to the fact that they will be interacting with people who require patience, and that if they have a short temper or consider themselves a "cant stand idiots" kinda person, they ought to reconsider if they're fit for that job. It's one thing to get exasperated when one person repeatedly tests your patience, but another when you snap at people on their first mistake, especially when it's not a rulebreak and merely etiquette. It's understandable if one gets tired of seeing people make the same mistakes that are easy to avoid, but I believe that if you're a rolemodel for the community, you have to be able to either get past that, vent it out in private if you must, or hand off situations to another staff member instead. You should certainly be able to word your grievances in a non-antagonizing matter, at least. I really, really didn't want to have to bring this up because I know I'm gonna have many people roll their eyes at me, but it makes me uncomfortable to see these situations happen repeatedly and I worry that newbies or people who only visit the server infrequently won't have the confidence to speak up, because it's a hell lot harder to speak up when you're not in the "core" of the community. A rando, as you'd say. Also because R1 applies to auth, too.

Honestly, I'd just recommend in general to try and complete as many sidequests as you can. Just go through the game location for location, talk to everyone. (Or check out forum guides if you don't want to do it blind.) You can get some pretty great items and mons out of it, and you'll never know when even the most niche moves or held items can come into handy. Kudos to you for having an easy time with Charlotte and Hardy, they're actually considered pretty tough by most! My personal weakness seems to be Shade's gym, consistently so. I don't even know why they always give me trouble, considering I've played the game so many times that I know perfectly well what's coming, but I've yet to beat that one first try lmao. Titania wasn't much of an obstacle on my regular run, but she's been quite the challenge on most of my monos. I lowkey dread her every time. Easiest for me were Terra, Samson and Adrienn. I'd almost feel sorry for Terra for solo'ing her with a single psychic type like, every time, if I didn't despise her existence so much. But yeah honestly? The quest Jace recommended is actually a nice filler if you wanna kill some time. I personally quite enjoyed working on filling the dex. It also makes you explore the region more thoroughly as you try to get the event-exclusive mons, So who knows, you might yet find some corners unexplored. But it's just overall a very chill task, if you're the type who feels satisfied over hitting milestones.

It's the year of our lord 2020 and the phrase "horny on main" has made it into the community rules. Incredible. Anyway! Three things! One, I think it would be useful if we could have a linked "clarification" post for more of the rules. The one we have for R4/derogatory language is great, but IMO R7/overtly sexual content and R5/minimodding deserve the same treatment, because it's not entirely intuitive to everyone where the line is drawn. R7 is probably the bigger of the two, because at times it seems that even auth aren't in complete agreement over what's okay to discuss and what not, and thus far it's seemed like the line of what is considered overtly sexual has been decided more based on situational feelings than clear guidelines in the majority of cases. Which is to say that beyond the obvious "don't creep people out with your bedroom fantasies and stories", sometimes the chat's been discussing topics related to reproductive health, advice on sexual safety, or sexual orientation, and I think there is a need for space to talk about these. I'm aware you're trying to cover this with the "mature discussion is fine" subpoint, but the problem here is that it's very vague and leaves things up to reader interpretation. If you're going to allow some discussion related to sexuality, you'll need to outline what, so that there's a clear guide to refer to. Also: these discussions often can't stay long in lobby, because understandably there's people who do get uncomfortable with them. I would like to know, as an official rule/recommendation, if it would be alright to keep discussions of this nature in #atrium. As long as it stays informative, and as long as people's anecdotes don't veer into detailing their sex life, I believe this should work out. (I would rather not move any of this into the emotional support channel, because the verification hurdle means it is not a free-for-all.) R5 and the subpoint of not minimodding is another that I think needs some level of clarification. Firstly because not everyone who's gonna join our community will know the term, so a definition would be bueno. Second because I think that as a community geared towards a more mature audience, we've always relied on some level of self-moderation between users. I trust most people to have a sensible opinion of what constitutes as minimodding, but from a rule-writing standpoint, you can't. One person may think it's fine for a regular user to remind another "hey, please don't do x, it counts as y which falls under rule z" or "guys, please take this to PMs, we're not allowing this thing on our server", another might already think that's trying to mod. I think self-moderation is necessary and fine, as long as non-auth don't go around threatening people that they're certainly about to be warned, or anything in that vein, or being bossy about their concerns. So it'd be neat to just have a couple of examples of how to correctly handle a situation vs how not to. Even just a small guide of "say it like this, not like this". Laaaastly! I think it would be really neat to have a page dedicated to explanations for our channels, or at least some of them. For example, the difference between #lobby and #atrium, and at which point you should consider switching from one to the other. From what I gathered, initially the atrium was made as a refuge for if lobby got into one of our good ol' debates, so that people who just wanted to chat could have a place to do so while the rest of us go wild. At other times I've seen it said that it should be the other way round - that people should switch to the atrium if they notice their conversation is turning into an in-depth debate, or just generally dominating the chat. The atrium channel description itself notes that it is indeed where politics talk should go, but it's not quite realistic to expect everyone to have actively checked that before they manage to start politics debates in the lobby. Tl;dr if someone wants to take the time, I'd love ya for a small channel guide on not-self-explanatory channels. Merci! PS: Azzie is a cinnamon roll uwu

damn how'd i miss out on epic mael beard pics looks good, man! anyway hi espeon's still the best eevee tho

Nominating @Cerise as my noble successor for Sunlit Sovereign and @Azzie for Midsummer Queen uwu

Oh fuck yeah man, it's time

well you know what that means, lads we can nominate azery again that aside, reborn risk sounds lit, count me in

I went thru the struggle of remembering my password for the forums just so I could log on and tell you that I'ma kick your ass ...Which actually is to say ily and fully understand what you mean about feeling the need to detach from this place, so you do you, I respect your choice, whether it'll end temporary or permanent. You're one of a kind in the best (but also slightly cursed) way possible - I'll sorely miss the frequent interactions with you on lobby. But for what it's worth, I know where to find you. That's a threat and a promise.

It must feel anxiety inducing to work on the episode for so long and knowing that people are waiting without really seeing as much of the work as you do. But bar the odd person out, I'm sure most of us are perfectly patient waiting for the release ♥ There's a lot of content to be done and we know it's gonna be worth the wait - especially if it means you guys can do it at a reasonable pace. Game's been in development for a long time, we can take whatever time is left. Thanks for y'alls hard work, really~ gib magnezone next