Twitch Plays Pokémon has just beaten Cynthia, who is stated to be the hardest Champion in the entire series. That's Pokémon Platinum completed!

The best part? The entire run didn't use Democracy mode even once.

I think I've stumbled upon a half-here/half-there situation with this post. Some of it belongs to that topic, and some seem to belong here.

Musashi's post has inspired me greatly


I'm going to do something with all my characters too... eventually

Since joining this forum, how do you think you've changed? Not necessarily as an effect of this forum, but in general since you joined.

I am tempted to simply show a screenshot of my first map and compare it to a screenshot of one of my latest maps. But that's a terribly shallow response.

I joined Cutstuff 3 years ago, having just abandoned sprite comics. I originally did this with the intention of moving on to some other medium (writing or original art), but inevitably fell short due to lack of skill, time and motivation. Over the years my creative ideas have developed immensely, emerging in notebooks, sketchbooks and audio recordings (I'm interested in music composition now, too), but I still have hardly anything concrete. I'd like to think I'm closer to doing something worthwhile (read: profitable) with my creative ideas than I was 3 years ago, but I'm not there just yet.
In these 3 years on Cutstuff I have met dozens of people, most of which I communicate with on a near-daily basis, and I'd like to think I've befriended a few, too. And yet I hardly know anything about anyone here unrelated to MM8BDM. Perhaps I should rectify this, but at the same time I have little time for it currently.
Outside of Cutstuff, I have started to enjoy personal reflection (as evident in this post), but I doubt I can come up with any conclusive ideas about myself yet. I at least believe my sociability has increased significantly (particularly in this last year), but at the same time I have become more isolated in my home. I wonder if this has reflected on how I present myself here.
My skills of critical evaluation (being able to articulate my criticisms in particular) have definitely increased through being involved with several facets of content creation for MM8BDM. I suppose these skills develop regardless through regular education, but I'd like to think it helped.

I learned what love and friendship are.
And had the best times of my life with someone from this community who isn't here anymore.
And I had a depression and some of the worst times of my life, too.
And I have friends now. I never had any before last year.

... And I became a better person. But ... I have become sort of disconnected from myself and a lot less happy than before I first played the game.

Obviously I got off to a rocky start back in 2011 and early parts of 2012. I was a whiny sack back then, and I really didn't put much thought or effort into my ideas and posts. I'm certainly not proud of it. I suppose now I can say, thanks to my three years on the board, I've dealt with a lot of the sensitivity issues I bore upon joining, as well as become noticeably more articulate. My spriting capacity is also largely better than what it was when I joined, and I'm rather proud of the few things I've put out. Needless to say, Cutstuff has been instrumental in shaping the person I'm becoming.

In fact, some of my best friends are on the board, and I'm proud to associate with them. These past three years have been some of the most stressful years of my life, but also the most fun.

I'm so glad to hear so many of you are doing so well!

Alright, so I guess I'm going to get down to the nitty-gritty of my own tale now. Mind you, I can be a bit... wordy, so I might wall of text you guys here. Well, it'll probably only be a paragraph or so, honestly.

So, I first joined in... October 2010, it appears. Around that time, the game had just come out. A group of really good friends invited me to playing the Demo with them a few months prior. Being a massive Megaman fan, and the fact that I've completed Doom several times... well, to be brief, I was obsessed. I checked the Cutstuff blog every couple days to see when the game would come out. When it finally did, I hopped onto the servers, and started to play. I remember, I was on Toadman's stage for the first time, when a player was talking about these cool new custom skins. I asked them what they were talking about, and they directed me here.

Around this time, I was starting out as a Junior in High School. I had grown very distant from many of my friends, both online and off, and I became very reclusive. I was constantly worried about the future, quite a pessimist, extremely naive, and quite gullible- that's without even mentioning my anger issues. I ended up meeting friends that I still have that year however, but I still remained a quiet and closed off individual. I didn't really change much until senior year. During Senior year, I joined the drama club, as well as the journalism team. Basically, Senior year was looking incredibly promising. By now, I've started to come out of my shell a little, and I actually began to smile, however I still kept much of myself away from others. Around the middle of the year, I ended up getting myself into a really bad situation both in and out of school- stuff that I much rather not elaborate on. I had to work my excuse my language ass off to graduate due to the circumstances, but after everything was said and done, I was truly a different person. That said, I still had one last hurdle before I was allowed to grow up.

After graduating, I began my search for a job. After nearly a year of getting no more than one interview that never went anyway, I considered leaving home to find a job elsewhere. This caused a lot of stuff at home, and became a several month long ordeal. I think this was around the time I left the forum last. After some stuff happened, things calmed down, and I hit a deep depression for a while. In October of 2013 however, I found a job.

I think now's a good time to say what I've become. Since I first joined, I've become much more bold, outgoing, optimistic, driven, and all around... well, grown. I wouldn't call myself mature. I don't think anybodies ever truly mature. Maturity implies you're done growing, but we never really are. Since I joined, I've lost most of my friends, but in their place, I've gained a few irreplaceable people who earned a place in my heart.

Now then, why am I telling you guys all this? Well... I've been a member since the very first iteration of this game, and I have some really good memories of you guys. One in specific is my match with Shadeguy back in the tournament last year. I remember that being incredibly close, and really really fun. I also remember running around in Knux's stages as he was planning out new additions. I have memories of just about everyone here actually, and I'm actually very fond of them.

That being said... I don't know any of you, and none of you know me. I know some of you attempted to get to know me on Skype, but I never really opened up... and well, I don't know. Recently I've felt like opening up a lot more, and I want to give you guys a chance. I want to get to know everyone! So that's why I've returned, and that's why I'm spillin' my guts here. I figure it'd be a good start, non?

EDIT: Good god, this post is horribly formatted... and here I wanted to be a writer? Haha, I've gotta step my game up!

Well, this got deep and emotional fast. I feel really shallow now.

I probably became a lot less excitable and naive over the almost 4 years I've spent on and off here.

When I joined I was very loud, frequently posted, often had a say in pretty much every topic regardless of content because I was very extroverted and kind of immature, despite being, well... a 22 year old woman when I joined. Looking back at my old posts is often incredibly embarrassing, I often think I would've just told my past self to shut up and not comment because in reality nobody actually cared, and I think a lot of people probably got very annoyed at the frequency of my posts and my constant attempts to get recognised.

I was always making something to try and get people's attention, since admittedly I was kind of used to being the centre of attention and I just wanted to stand out and have a lot of people care about me... I found that 'breakthrough' mod with Classes-v1a, which wasn't exactly great but since I was the first one to jump on the idea people really started to notice me and that's probably when I developed a name after classes picked up and became frequently used from v2 all the way up to v5 or so, which were actually released very quickly because it took me maybe, 40 minutes to make a class at that point and they were incredibly low quality (see v4). This is also when I developed an ego, I finally got the limelight that I thought I deserved, I acted very stuck up on all matters regarding classes etc.

That was probably when I was acting pretty lively and girly for the last time, really... After King Yamato's mod and Roc's pretty much full on verbal harassment of me (he called me a parasite, Smashbro joined in and everyone acted like KY was the hottest shit in the world) I got pretty disconnected and that's when I started being a full on jerk with little of my enthusiasm or happiness left, which sounds incredibly depressing.

Nobody noticed how girly my enthusiasm and naivety was, though, which I find somewhat funny... I was finally open with you all last year and it wasn't exactly pretty in the aftermath.

Nowadays I just keep to myself and post porn and talk to my cute hon' because the sad truth is I'm too jaded and bitter to actually like many of the people here