Kirzi

Chapter 1: Beginnings

It started with 4 Pokemon cards. I don't remember which ones, aside from original fat Pikachu. I think two were trainers. A friend of mine showed them to me, and I guess I thought they were cool because I started collecting cards.

I later managed to get a Game Boy Color and Silver. That game had a lot of memories. Soloing the game with Typhlosion, trying to clone my Lugia but watching it get deleted instead, and getting so lost in Dark Cave (because I tried to walk around without Flash) that I had to start my game over.

I played the originals as well, and grabbed Sapphire, Emerald, and Firered later on. I also got most of the N64 games and Gamecube games (XD/Colo), and spinoff GB/GBA games. Pokemon Puzzle Challenge was by far my favorite. Pinball and TCG were fun too. I still liked cards too. My friend had moved away, but I was long hooked. I even took my Firered to the Nintendo Rocks America event distributing the Deoxys ticket.

Chapter 2: The replay era

I hated the Nintendo DS. I thought the idea of a system with two screens was the dumbest thing ever. So, I didn't get one, and didn't pick up Diamond/Pearl/Platinum.

I still liked Pokemon, though. I replayed my old games loads of times. I discovered emulators, and played the games that way. I played ROM hacks. I tried to make a shitty ROM hack. I played challenge runs, like Nuzlockes, and a solo Magikarp run. I played the spinoffs. I played the normal games so many times I got tired of picking Charmander for the zillionth time.

Emulators were good enough for me so I started selling my physical games, and a lot of my cards too. Needed money. This is why I no longer have my Birth Island Deoxys. Some kid somewhere has a legit untouched Deoxys sitting on my Pokemon Box memory card.

HGSS came out. Black/White came out. I was vaguely aware of these, but intentionally tried to avoid news of these games. I didn't want a DS, so there was no point. I even remember avoiding ROM hacks where people hacked gen 4 Pokemon into gen 3 games.

Chapter 3: Revival

HGSS was tempting, though. I loved Silver. I couldn't avoid it forever. Emulators didn't really like it, though. So I gave up, and tried again at least a few months later. It still didn't work. Well, okay. Eventually I got so frustrated that I got the game. Just the game - I didn't get a DS. I just borrowed my sister's. 

At least, that was the plan. I was hooked again. I got my own DS Lite. I completed Soulsilver's pokedex (aside from mythicals). I bred a couple Pokemon for IVs to try to beat the battle thingy. I picked up Platinum and White eventually. And I got Black 2 the day it came out. I started paying attention to events again, and grabbed most of the wifi/Gamestop ones during the BW2 era. I was never able to trade due to internet issues, though, so I was on my own.

Chapter 4: Trading and breeding

I was extremely hyped for XY. I got a 3DS with the game. I beat the game in a couple weeks, taking my time. Part of that was a pitstop at the breeding center, because I wanted to get some Eeveelutions for my team. I came back to this after I beat the game. I'd learned about egg moves, and the destiny knot, and really liked the idea of having perfect competitive versions of my favorites. So I started breeding.

Eevees were first, of course. And I knew I needed them to have Wish and Yawn as egg moves. But these egg moves were a bit annoying to get, and I was still new to breeding, so I figured it'd be easier to trade.

I thought I was just going to get what I needed and go, but turns out, breeding and trading is addictive. Once I got what I wanted, I wanted more. And more. Collecting competitive versions of my favorites turned into collecting competitive Pokemon of every Pokemon I liked, turned into collecting every single Pokemon with HA and 4 egg moves. I was addicted to breeding, and addicted to trading in online communities (Reddit's /r/pokemontrades, and 4chan's /wfg/). I made friends and had a great time. And logged thousands of hours in playtime. I was truly obsessed all over again.

Chapter 5: The elusive events

I had a stockpile of breedables and items - but there were some things I couldn't get. Events. I wanted that pokeball Vivillon from Paris. I wanted to try to get my friend a German VGC Mamoswine. I wanted a Sylveon event. But these weren't wifi events or Gamestop events. These were rare, and very, very, far out of reach.

Well, to get events, you mostly need other events. So I started grabbing extra events when we got events. I dug up my extra events from BW2. I convinced my friends who didn't care about events to trade me theirs. And I just traded those for more and better events. Eventually, after loads of trades and some lucky breaks, I finally managed to convince someone to trade me the Mamoswine. Problem is, I worked so hard to get it that I wanted to keep it myself. Sorry, friend. I got a Paris Vivillon in another lucky deal too.

After collecting all the breedables I wanted, I really didn't have much else to collect. I wanted to keep trading. Events were the only way up. There were still events I wanted, and they were fun to trade and collect, so I kept collecting. Most trades were just smart deals as opposed to trading only for what I wanted. I figured, the bigger and more diverse collection I had, the better chance I had of being able to secure a good deal when something I wanted came along. It was really hard, though. "Trading up" requires someone else who's willing to trade down, and at a certain point, a lot of people weren't willing to. Boxes of Bank Celebis, Fancy Vivillons, and Charizards everyone was sick of only got you so far.

One series of trades in particular stands out. One day, I got lucky enough to find someone who wanted to trade a shiny Tanabata Jirachi with my chosen nature for 150 breedables with 4EM, HA, and in pokeballs - my specialty. She agreed to trade me the Jirachi once I was about halfway through. Coincidentally, around that time, an older trader appeared out of nowhere whose life goal was to get a shiny Jirachi - and he had something really cool: an RNG'd Ray's Metagross that the entire subreddit was clamoring over. He decided to trade with me, and now I had something super cool. I didn't care for it myself, though, so I turned around and flipped it for several high tier events.

With those, I was able to really start building my collection. I picked up some cool stuff for myself along the way, like a Korean Sylveon event. I kept trading and trading. At some point, I also started using /r/pokemonexchange to buy and sell events - I'd sell some of my events to buy other events, always aiming to break even, roughly. That kicked it up another notch. Eventually, I found my old RNG'd Ray's Metagross up for sale for pretty cheap, and I had some spare money from selling other events, so I grabbed it back, just because now it meant something to me. I still have it to this day. Same with the German Mamoswine.

But as much as I had, it wasn't enough - see, I wanted all Eeveelution events. I had a lot, but not all. I kept trading. Kept building a large, diverse collection. Eventually I had so much stuff that I decided, fuck it, might as well try to collect one of every gen 6 (and later, gen 7) event too. So that kept me occupied. I never expected to accomplish it - it just gave me something to do.

Chapter 6: Moderating /r/pokemontrades

One thing about collecting events is, you need the community. You can't collect events in Japan without trading with people in Japan, or people who traded with people in Japan. So as I collected, I got to know other event traders, and quickly became friends with others in the /r/pokemontrades community. And the more invested you are with the community and its members, the more you start to want to make a bigger difference.

Mod apps for /r/pokemontrades went up. I applied. I got in. A totally new adventure began. I didn't know it at the time, but when I joined the mod team, I joined a family. 

The other mods threw documentation of internal policies and procedures at me. I made a Zygarde core sprite for another mod. I asked questions. I learned stuff. I was already good at investigating suspicious traders - collecting legit/uncloned events is ultimately down to trust, after all. I learned more and more about Pokemon legality. Learned tricks to catch scammers in lies. Got obsessed with trying to catch every scammer, every rulebreaker. Learned how to chill out. Taught myself to RNG, and how to use RNG reporter to catch illegal gen 4 shinies. Taught myself CSS to build a better subreddit design. And later, git and some Javascript/Node.js to try to help with the tech side of moderation, like Porybox development. And so on and so forth.

Chapter 7: /r/pokemontrades + Project Pokemon

In the process of "helping" with (read: getting in the way of) Porybox development, I got to talking with Sabresite. He wanted to help build legality features into Porybox. To do that, we'd need wondercards. Project Pokemon had a lot, but not all. But they were in luck: thanks to my obsessive event collecting, I had legitimate Pokemon PP had no data for, and even some missing wondercards. I didn't have everything - but I did know a lot of other event collectors. Between all of us working together, we were able to fill in a lot of gaps. We were also able to stay on top of new local/infrared gen 7 events.

Chapter 8: Present day

These days, I'm still event collecting, and moderating /r/pokemontrades. Collecting wondercards isn't as necessary anymore since most come straight from the server, and the rest come from volunteers on PP. So instead, I use wcparse and scrape the servers for upcoming events and share the news. Also, I counted my events earlier today, and I have about 540 different events.

The end.