Today, July 28th 2017, is my 6 year anniversary on the server. Huzzah! In the spirit of this occasion I have yet again written an entry in the chronicles of Shark/Cynder/Synder story time. I was actually going to write 2 stories, with one focusing on my time as a builder but it was kinda also to celebrate the completion of the new map which I thought would be released around about now. :I With the current rate of progress, it'll be perfect for next year.
Anywho, I have written a story about my time as a gym leader. It's a bit short but so is life so here we goooo...
This story starts with my quest to actually become a gym leader which took a little while. It started not long after I joined, as the first big goal I had, on the server. Back in mid to late 2011, to become a gym leader, all you had to do was ask via email, which is what I did, requesting, funnily enough, fuchsia gym (or Mahogany when Johto was finished). My dream was to scrap the current course, built by Nightroado, and have a tunnel going to the area north of the Safari Zone where there would be a giant temple complex, like in the anime, comprising of 5 interconnected golden and stone buildings in a cross shape. This was before the three obstacle limit and parkour ban so I planned for these buildings to contain a large number of different obstacles, such as parkour, arrow dispenser runs, TNT rooms, floors that would tilt and pour water out to knock you out of the window, etc. mostly resulting in the player having to start the ridiculously long course again. Unfortunately, I never got a response to my email so the temples didn't happen. Alas, my dream to become a leader continued and when the 3 badge requirement was introduced I set to work trying to beat gyms. However, due to my slow internet and lack of skill, I failed repeatedly. Whether it was the one-sided Pewter arena or Ichi's tough Cerulean pool parkour (I didn't know about sprint jumping), I kept loosing in the courses and in the final battles. It wasn't until Pricey, leader of Vermilion gym, decided to let people skip his course for a while one day that I got to battle him, in his glowstone sphere arena, and actually won due to his use of a trackpad. I was ecstatic and thanked Pricey profusely...for, I guess, losing. Not even Liquidfired telling me I only won because Pricey was bad at pvp could dampen my spirits. Later I beat Supernoise at Celadon and was well on my way to getting the requirements. During this time I had attempted to defeat Saffron gym quite a bit and had grown to love the course, with its epic glass, ice and dark mazes. While I stood no chance against Tn, when he was leader, GalSrKn ended up taking over and offered to make me his co-leader if I could beat him and get the last badge. This was extra pressing, for me, as Gal was considering remodeling the course, for some reason, and me becoming co would have been the only way to save it. Unfortunately, I failed repeatedly and his brother Megaaquachicken took the spot and they both sadly destroyed the course. I finally got my 3rd badge by defeating Liquid at Cerulean, with him complaining that he was typing when I killed him... With 3 badges I was ready to become a leader but there was one problem...no one would accept me as their co-leader. Due to so many people wanting to become gym leaders back then (perhaps for the extra set homes), most leaders held tournaments for their open co-leader spots. I kept failing at these, with my shitness at pvp, so my friend (and pvp prodigy) Tactic_ninja took me under his tutelage, training me to be better at pvp. He taught me different styles, in the Pewter police arena, such as circling the foe at a safe distance then swiftly running in to stab them before retreating back out. While this technique helped me last for a little bit longer in a pvp tournament, I was still loosing, so Tactic offered to enter a co-leader tournament, with me, and let me kill him so I could progress easier. When it happened, however, he completely forgot and accidentally killed me... (He apologised a lot after.) About a year after I started my quest to become a gym leader, the two co-leaders of Fuchsia gym, Vithrus and Ichikunji, both quit the server and offered up the gym to whomever asked first on the forums. Tactic, now actually wanting to become a leader, asked first and I asked second, though my request was null considering it'd be up to Tactic who he wanted as a co. Fortunately, Tactic accepted me as his co and the two former leaders set everything up for us to move in. I was finally a leader! It only took a year...
As leader of fuchsia gym I no longer wished to convert it into a temple complex but wanted to conserve the historic course, having not been edited since the dawn of the server. The lava ladders, fire path and slow strips all provided for a difficult course for challengers, which helped stop them from getting to the lava bridge arena and defeating me easily. An example of which can be seen here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u2InBzgTDYY We also had an arena that was filled with a cluster of blocks, such as soul sand and magenta wool. Tactic remained, with me, as leader for a while before eventually moving onto bigger and better things (*cough*Champion*cough*). This meant that I got to choose my own co-leader and Z4 took the position upon request. He was a great PvPer, like Tactic, and helped keep Fuchsia's reputation up, before stepping down himself. A user, who's name I forget, requested the new spot and I accepted, waiting for an admin to come online and make it so. During this time, however, LilWaffles adamantly also wanted the position and I ended up caving to a tournament between the two users that Waffles won, resulting in him becoming my next co. During his time, Waffles built a third arena, with a nether theme, that is still in the gym today. I had a couple other co-leaders over the years, such as LilMuffins, and eventually, my irl friend, Snowbro911 became my co. We got up to a lot of shenanigans, such as adding cobwebs into the slow strips (1ce with his Azalea course would be proud). Snowbro managed to uncover some old parts of the course, hidden deep in the complex, that came from the time when multiple obstacles and parkour were allowed. We converted the area into a museum and actually expanded its dark maze, while introducing a few lava pits and dead end traps, and added it to the official course, as an alternative third obstacle.
Eventually came the dark days, where I accidentally timed out, having no co-leaders at the time, and the gym was taken over by Edders and then Weepingangel, who, between them, remodeled a large part of the historic course. This included destroying the lava ladders and digging up all the iron and diamond blocks in the arena, for themselves, while replacing it with blue wool. Weeping unfairly copped a lot of slack for this from the community who shared my preservation ideal, as Edder's tenure was so short that everyone assumed it was just Weeping, though it was all sorted out in the end. Regardless, I eventually got my position back and managed to restore most of course before, after a brief period where I lost the gym again to HoppingFox, adding Cammanduhcool (and later his alt LavaH0t) as my co. Thus began a long age of prosperity, with Camm creating another new arena (though destroying the cluster one in the process (tbf, no one used it)). Whenever one of us timed out, we'd reaccept each other but eventually, due to occupations on the build server, we both timed out at the same time. Mymom101 took over and chose not to have a co-leader, which meant I had lost the gym yet again. Fortunately, Mymom was very respectful of the course and only ever made changes upon my approval, despite me not being leader. This included him not remodeling the lava bridge arena and instead building a new one elsewhere, upping the current arena count to 4. Recently Mymom quit the server and I regained the gym, which I still hold to this day. I most likely intend to keep the gym on the new map as I'm kinda committed now after buying a themed shirt:
https://www.theshirtlist.com/fuchsia-gym-t-shirt/After holding the gym for about 5 years, there are a bunch of other random memories I have such as:
-Making a lengthy page on the wiki that other gyms borrowed the format from for their own.
http://thepokemonserver.wikia.com/wiki/Fuchsia_gym-All the times I had to stop the battle due to challengers not reading the rules and bringing iron weapons, instead of stone. To be fair, it is confusing with the armour level being iron but I kept the rule due to sentimentality and as it provides for a longer battle.
-me challenging Snowbro to get my own badge, as I finally had a co-leader with worse internet then me.
This was a bit rushed due to me being a bit busy so I might add to the list as time progresses. Regardless, thanks for ready my story again. 7 years, here I come!!
