Interview with macle
| Home Page | Articles Index |
I text macle back "sure give me a minute", in response to his "ill be over in a sec just gotta finish something". After a week of putting it off, he was finally going to come over to The Competitor's offices to finally get this silly interview over with. He had been over earlier that week, but wimped out, claiming he had a brunch to attend. When he left, I had discovered he had left a frog SOMEWHERE in the office, and I had spent the last few days searching for it on and off, working out of The Smog HQ for some peace and quiet. Eventually, he knocked on the door, and I gave up my frog-searching efforts, and welcomed him in.
Hello, macle! Thanks for doing this interview with us! Can you tell us a bit about your history regarding joining the Smog Frogs roster? As a manager, that is.
Well, its kinda a boring story. Basically I heard there was a SMOG Frog team and that LN was the manager. As someone who loves frogs, I had to be a part of it. LN and I have history together, he was my tutor in DP UU a thousand years ago, so I asked if I could be an assman and he said yes.
What team got renamed to such a horrible name?
macle stared at me, biting back an insult.
The Dragonspiral Tyrants, if I recall correctly.
Ah, alright. How IS LonelyNess, anyway?
As a manager, or in general?
In general.
A lot of people don't really like LN for some reason. I don't really understand why. He's a nice guy and really cares about the team. He is dumb sometimes, like at VGC Nationals last year, he didn't pack a swimming suit or even shorts that he could wear to swim.
Interesting. OK, regarding the team as a whole: You're currently in 5th place, 1 slot away from going to semi-finals, after being a team jeered during the auction (Hi, Funkasaurus). What did you do right?
Well, we drafted really well for the most part. We picked up good players at reasonable prices. We also prepare really hard for our opponents each week.
Speaking of reasonable priced, what do you think of the insane upbidding LN pulled off during the auction, especially when it comes to Bloo?
macle laughs, and his eyes sparkle.
LN's aggressive bidding is hilarious. It works most of the times but if you remember last SPL, he upbid Evan. Evan HATES LN which really hurt our team. Also the bloo upbidding was hilarious as hell. I knew LN didn't want Bloo (and Bloo didn't want to be a frog). I wouldn't have started the auction over but who cares.
There were some people who cared about the auction restart, but OK! Were there any players you could have gotten during the auction that you missed out on?
Pwnemon. We settled for Joim (who, at the beginning of the season, we didn't know how good he was). Also, I really wanted Raichy, but the Tigers stole him from us.
That'll do to segway to my next question. What are your thoughts about the way the tier lineup was decided?
As an LC mod and long time player, I was happy about the addition of LC. I've been trying to get it in SPL for a long time (ask Fabbles how happy I was when it wasn't in last year). At first I was upset that VGC was dropped for Doubles, since I have gone to VGC events and have tons of friends that play it, but I picked up playing the tier, and I actually enjoy it more than current VGC '14. RBY is kinda interesting since there was barely even 15 players that even played it and you had to resurrect half of them from the dead.
macle quickly tacks on that he meant no offense to RBY as a meta, but its playerbase just died.
Jumping to the other pre-season drama, what is your thoughts on the accusations of dynasty creation in SPL? Good, bad, what?
I don't really like that teams are basically picked before the auction. The auction is one of the best parts of SPL. We already have a team tournament that is dynasty filled so having diversity in tournaments is important in my opinion.
Cool! What players would you retain if a 3-player retain limit is put in play?
Heysup and Tesung. Those are the users worth the retain price. Maybe Furai.
OK. Your team has a fair amount of "spotlight" users—aa40, rey, sogeking, and Dezkeh, off the top of my head. How's your IRC channel look like?
Well, it's a lot better than last spl when 90% of the chat was in Spanish or Portuguese. We get along fairly well (except for rey and soge but soge has learned not to annoy rey that much). Its lonely in there when LN is in jail.
My eyes widen. I had heard rumors, but...
Did he really go to jail?
I'm pretty sure he went to jail. We tried to message him on facebook and stuff but he never responded. We actually thought he was dead.
What would happen if he actually did die?
Celebrate.
Between this, and the sogeking/rey combination you mentioned earlier, your team clearly likes each other!
We just love to give him shit 24/7, it's all for fun!
Speaking of... I'm gonna ask you about some of the more ubiquitous users this SPL (General Talk Thread), if you don't mind?
macle nods, slightly distracted by some IRC channel. On looking at my IRC client open, I look back at macle, who now has a devilish grin on his face. I type out a retort quickly, only to have an obscene bot ruin the retort by mimicking it, and adding an obscene word. I look back at macle.
Laurel, WhiteQueen, and MasterClass.
WhiteQeen just needs to STFU. Masterclass is hilarious, and I love his trolling. I've yelled at him a few times when he crosses the line, but he's learned. Laurel also needs to learn to STFU. He gets a lot of shit, but he also talks a lot of shit. Better to keep quiet and look like a fool, as opposed to speaking to confirm it.
Alright, two more high quality users to ask about, both on your team. The first being yan[sogeking], and the second being aerialace TM40.
yan[sogeking] is a genius, through and through. He's just too smart, he doesn't know how to act properly. AA gets drunk too often, and you can see that in his posts.
That's the effect of being drunk?
No, it's brain damage from excessive drinking. At least, that's my guess. As long as he can play Pokémon, I'm happy.
I make a mental note to never drink, ever.
OK, let's start wrapping up. Will reyscarface ever win a match?
I hope, but I really don't know. He is a hax magnet: he gets into a winning position, and then something bullshit happens, and he can't recover. Someone should just let him win a match.
So all that complaining is real?
At least for this SPL, yes.
Nice to know. One final question: what is ur fav frog mon?
Poliwag.
But that's a tadpole...
Is a kitten not a cat?
As I try to make heads or tails of that retort, macle packs his stuff up, leaving the building. I go back to working on my various projects for a couple of minutes, only to hear a distinctive *ribbit* from somewhere behind me. I immediately packed up my stuff, and walked out of the office, leaving a sticky note for Jellicent when he would stumble in later tonight, promising him some beer money if he found the frog.