TRAINER'S EYE #31 - "Pallet Town Royal Flush" ft. FishOnAHeater from GOCast PVP Corner

In this Pokemon interview, we have FishonaHeater, a Pokemon GO player and PVP enthusiast who is passionate about building communities. He also is the founder of Pallet Town PVP and Co-Host of the PVP Corner at GoCast Podcast.

FishonaHeater shares his experience playing Pokemon GO and how he got into PVP. He talks about the PVP Corner on the GoCast podcast, which he co-hosts, and the reasons behind starting Pallet Town PVP. He hopes to create a community that encourages healthy competition and welcomes players of all skill levels.

FishonaHeater also shares tips on how to get started with PVP and what makes it such an exciting aspect of the game. Through his love for PVP, FishonaHeater has found a way to connect with other players and build a community. He talks about the importance of community in Pokemon GO and how it has helped him enjoy the game even more.

Trainer's Eye is a series where the stories are real and people still play this game. From PVP to Shiny Hunting, each person's Pokemon GO journey is unique and we dive into each journey here on As The Pokeball Turns!

Sources
Opening Song: "Forget You" by Alex_MakeMusic from Pixabay

Connect with FishOnAHeater: Twitter | Discord |  Youtube | Twitch | Tiktok | Facebook | Pallet Town PVP Twitter | GoCast

Transcript

David Hernandez: 0:00

My name is David Hernandez and you're listening to As The Pokeball Turns! Welcome to as the Pokemon Ball Turns, where we interview people around the community on how their Pokemon Go journey started, where it has been, and where it is currently going. When it comes to Pokemon Go PVP, one can easily start battling by a simple push of the button. However, to win by understanding metas, creating teams and learning move counts is an entirely different matter and has a steep learning curve. Thankfully, there are some within the community who have taken the call to action and develop ways to educate the player base and help improve their skills in PVP. Places like B.T.W Podcast, PVP Corner, and we can't forget PVPoke are invaluable to both the growth and longevity of PVP. Another resource is a group known as Pallet Town PVP, whose slogan is,"this is where the journey of many future champions begin." There are three pillars of education, entertainment, and growth drive their mission statement every day. With education, they hope to improve everyone's collective skills. With entertainment, they make engaging content centered around PVP. And with growth, they focus on getting more people into PVP and getting them excited about what can be done with it outside of GBL. And my guest is more than eager to tell us more about this community. He is the mayor of Pallet Town PVP and one half of the PVP Corner at the Go Cast podcast. From Adelaid, Australia, here's his origin story into the world of Pokemon Go. This is FishonaHeater. Today I'm joined by the mayor of Pallet Town pvp and the co-host of the PVP Corner on Go Cast Fish on a Heater. Fish, welcome to the show.

FishonaHeater: 2:24

Hey man, I'm really excited to be here.

David Hernandez: 2:26

Me too. Now I gotta ask you real quick about your name. At first when I first heard it, I thought like, this guy's just struggling to have a oven, so you makes fish on the heater to be able to cook lunch. But actually it's a poker term, right?

FishonaHeater: 2:38

It's a poker term. Yeah, so before I got on my Pokemon Go PVP journey, I was just starting out studying the game of poker, because like, a lot of things in life, there's just a lot more to it than what the untrained eye would know. So it is actually possible to learn all the mathematics behind the game of poker to a point where you are able to do it professionally. And so I was very new on that journey, hadn't gone real deep into it, but I was already starting to make a little bit of profit on it. Then Pokemon Go PVP kind of caught my eye and it was like I was in a relationship and then the new girl came along.

David Hernandez: 3:19

is it like that meme, you just saw Pokemon Go and then you just see the guy turning back

FishonaHeater: 3:22

Yeah

David Hernandez: 3:22

and saying

FishonaHeater: 3:24

Yeah, exactly. That meme.

David Hernandez: 3:26

Without a doubt. Now, obviously we know you are the mayor and you're part of the Go Cast podcast as the PVP Corner, but everybody has an origin story, everybody has a start point. So I gotta ask the question, when did you first start playing Pokemon Go?

FishonaHeater: 3:38

Well, I was a day one-er. I had seen talks from, Niantic representatives before the game had come out talking about, oh, there's this thing we are working on, like seen promos for it, and I was super excited about it. Then of course, on day one, my friend messages me to say, It's out!" By then it, wasn't even that high up in the Google Play rankings at that stage. I had to actually like scroll through a bit to find Pokemon Go, it was that new. But you know, as soon as it was out, I downloaded it, played it for quite a while then like many, many people I did, get bored of it, eventually fell off the wagon. About a year and a half later, that same friend who was always playing that whole time, said to me, you should pick this game back up again, there's a lot more in it now than when you left. I picked it back up and there were things like raids, there were so many more Pokemon in the game, there were so many more features that weren't in the game at the time, so I did rekindle a bit of an interest. That would've died out again if PVP hadn't become a thing. So once PVP happened, that's when the love affair started.

David Hernandez: 4:38

That's fair. So when you first left the game, do you remember when you left, was it when after gen two came out or was it a little bit later when

FishonaHeater: 4:44

It was close to that, yeah. I don't remember exactly when it was. I know gen two definitely was in game. I think it was after they introduced daily catch and Pokestop streaks

David Hernandez: 4:57

Yeah. So that was around the midway point, with gen two right before raids came, so you left right before raids started, it sounds like.

FishonaHeater: 5:04

Right. Very poor timing,

David Hernandez: 5:06

And it worked out cause you eventually came back to the game.

FishonaHeater: 5:08

Yeah, and eventually caught up on all the things that I missed. When I did come back, it was during I wanna say second run of Mewtwo raids. And so I was there trying to solo Mewtwos like not understanding that you've got a team up with. Oh yeah. This like level 25 guy trying to solo Mewtwo.

David Hernandez: 5:25

Hey, least you tried, man, least you tried.

FishonaHeater: 5:27

That's right.

David Hernandez: 5:29

So going back to first day, right? What was it like in the area that you were at when Pokemon Go was released? Where did you go to play?

FishonaHeater: 5:37

So I live in a city called Adelaide. It's a good sized city. So we've got like, one and a half million people, but, it feels like a country town. There's only three or four places you can go around the city that are densely populated enough to really make grinding worthwhile. Otherwise, you know, if you're not part of those particular communities, then it's pretty hard to play anything other than just solo play.

David Hernandez: 6:04

So it's not like a downtown area, but it's more like here in America we'd probably call it maybe suburbs or town outside of downtown. Is that kind of best way to describe it?

FishonaHeater: 6:12

Yeah, there is town that's one of the places that's probably the easiest place for me to play, but then there's a couple of other, like, suburban areas. There's one area called Glenelg, which is a Beachside location, which is a beautiful, beautiful place like I encourage you to look it up. It's like one of the most beautiful places you'll see on Google. And then Morrison Lakes is another one that there's a reasonably healthy community at.

David Hernandez: 6:34

Before PokemonGo came out, did you have any experience with Pokemon at all?

FishonaHeater: 6:36

Yes. The first two generations on the Game Boy games. I had played Yellow version. My mum got it for me for Christmas after I saw all my friends playing it. In the first generation of games, the doors were represented by just that little rectangle. So I didn't know that that was a door, so I spent the first couple of hours of my Pokemon experience trying to work out how to get outta my house.

David Hernandez: 7:02

I remember that, yeah, cause it was just an outline. I think it was just like a rug almost.

FishonaHeater: 7:07

Yeah, exactly. So eventually I just accidentally pressed the right button that allowed me to get out of the house, I'm like,"oh," and then my Pokemon journey began. it's just like, you feel so dumb in the moment...

David Hernandez: 7:18

yeah!

FishonaHeater: 7:18

But also like relief that done now, you don't have to worry about it anymore.

David Hernandez: 7:22

So you come to Pokemon Go, you've only played the first two generations, you never played any of the other ones, right?

FishonaHeater: 7:26

No.

David Hernandez: 7:27

So when you come back to Pokemon Go, how did you like, catch up with all the Pokemon? Did you just kinda learn it from experience or did you like go online to find out the new Pokemon? I'm talking like gen three, gen four, and all that data been already released.

FishonaHeater: 7:37

I started playing, gens three, four, and five on emulators, after I picked Pokemon go back up. So I was kind of doing that at the same time. So I learned it all together, basically the world of Pokemon Go and the world of the main series games that all just experienced it all at once. Seeing something in Pokemon Go and then seeing it in the main series game, like, okay, now I understand what that Pokemon is.

David Hernandez: 7:58

Do you have a particular favorite Pokemon at all?

FishonaHeater: 8:00

So I, I have been telling people Umbreon. I'll probably stick with that. I'm really liking Dratini at the moment as well. Umbreon and Dratini are Pokemon that are really, really cute, but also very badass. And I'm talking about mainly in the Pokemon Go PVP sense like Dragonite and Umbreon are both incredibly good for PVP, so I love how they both combine their bad assness with extreme cuteness.

David Hernandez: 8:24

So you mentioned how PVPs what really got you reengaged with the game. Mm-hmm. What was it about PVP that really motivates you to play Pokemon Go more?

FishonaHeater: 8:33

I've always appreciated the thing about PVP, that it makes a lot more of the Pokemon Go world exciting. So, for example, one particular memory that stands out is when they first introduced Spotlight Hours and the first one was like Onix. I was the only person I knew that was excited about that because I knew how good Steelix was and I was excited to try and get, a high iv, Onix or Steelix for Ultra League or a just a better one for Great League. The fact that so many Pokemon can be viable means that you, tend to get excited about more things like if there's a recycled shiny in a Community Day, I don't care cuz it's getting a new move. I've always thought that PVP allows you to get more out of the game than just the shiny hunt would.

David Hernandez: 9:22

That makes sense because the shiny hunt, of course it's odds depending on mm-hmm. how many you find, but once you get the shiny, you don't really have much to go after once it comes back.

FishonaHeater: 9:31

Right. And I think Niantic do a good job with releasing Shinies into the game at the right rate so that people like the hardcore grinders still have some carrot to go for. The casual players, of course, are never gonna complete the whole thing. I think PVP just naturally has a bit more of a dynamic ecosystem to it where there's always something fresh.

David Hernandez: 9:54

Did you start PVP right when it first came out or was there a little bit of a buffer after it debuted?

FishonaHeater: 9:59

Yeah, immediately. This was even before Go Battle League was a thing. So, originally one year before Go Battle League came out, there was the Silph Arena. The Silph Arena is a fan run, community run, organization. They're basically like the Pokemon Go version of Smogon. They had been around since like the start of Pokemon Go, they were originally the Silph Road and the Silph Arena was just like an offshoot of that, which was focused just on P V P. I was actually at a poker game and, uh, a friend of mine who also played the game said,"oh, you going to this PVP tournament in Morrison Lakes?" And I'm like, what PVP tournament? And he shows me this poster that the guy running it had knocked up and I decided to give it a go and absolutely loved it and played in every cup since then. And so I was doing that since the beginning. then of course a year later, go Battle League comes out, a few months after that COVID happens and everything changes.

David Hernandez: 10:51

Real quick, how good were you on your first tournament for Silph? Like, were you pretty decent or were you kind look back in its cringeworthy

FishonaHeater: 10:58

I was decent compared to people because like we were all learning this at the same time, right? So none of us knew anything. the whole idea of Great League and Ultra League, you generally want Pokemon with a low attack IV and high defense and, stamina. Nobody knew that back then.

David Hernandez: 11:12

With a few exceptions, but usually, yes.

FishonaHeater: 11:14

Exactly. Yeah. So nobody knew that back then. So after a few months, someone makes this discovery and we're all looking at our storage going, oh no, what have we done like deleting all these Pokemon, right? But yeah, in that first year, we were all discovering these things together. Things like discovering how good Vigoroth and Medicham. The idea of farming, like that's something that we didn't know how to do at the beginning and we collectively discovered that as a group. Was I good at that first tournament? So I, got two wins and one loss, so I was reasonable. But compared to what even a casual battler could do now. I couldn't even compete

David Hernandez: 11:53

It's gotta be fun to see how PVP has grown over the years. From Silph Road to when you were discovering everything. Since you've grown with PVP from here to now, what's been the biggest surprise to you for pvp overall?

FishonaHeater: 12:06

I think the biggest surprise to me has been seeing the drive and passion people can have for this game. I remember one of the first continental championships for the Silph Arena, they had a room packed out with hundreds of people. It went on so long that the venue had to kick them all out cuz of licensing issues and so the final battles were filmed on people's, like phones and shared to the internet. So that's how underground it was, right? But I also remember hearing there was some kind of development manager for Pokemon Go in attendance there. And they saw in that moment the passion that these hundreds of people had for this game and that's what gave them this idea to create, uh, competitive system with their, with pvp to make it more than just an extra fun little thing that you could do on the side with your friends.

David Hernandez: 12:58

It's unfortunate that the pandemic did happen because I think it did kind of slow and affect how PVP grew And now we're finally, you know, with recent additions of the regional tournaments, you're seeing more the people come out, people who maybe never gone to in-person events. And it's kind of fun to see just how the potential PVP really does have for the community.

FishonaHeater: 13:18

Totally. I would actually push back a little on the effects of Covid on PVP because it made Silph have to like adapt and struggle, but GO Battle League, that was also the time that Niantic adapted to that by removing the walking requirements that were originally in place for Go Battle League and so suddenly you've got, the birth of Pokemon PVP streamers. It made it so much easier to make content around this stuff that wasn't just the underground Silph stuff. You could actually make official Pokemon Go PVP content and so that caused, I believe a huge boom in the numbers of people actually participating in the PVP feature of the Pokemon Game. Silph Arena, I don't know exactly how much it affected them, but of course, you know, it killed in-person tournaments, they're really fighting to bring that back at the moment and I do have high hopes for them looking forward. But yeah, I think COVID did do some good things for the PVP scene.

David Hernandez: 14:14

So do you think that if we still had that requirement, that PVP wouldn't be as big as it is now?

FishonaHeater: 14:20

I wholeheartedly believe that. Yeah. So few people would be getting all their battles done. We wouldn't have the content machine behind it. I will also say though that, the problems that Niantic have had, like mechanically with their coding and stuff, that has also done a lot of damage to the overall ecosystem, a lot of people, a lot of people have lost patience and lost interest in the game and again, it is something that like a lot of people weren't making a living off of, so like they, saw no reason to keep on going with this thing that was just causing them frustration.

David Hernandez: 14:55

Well, now that you say that, what's your biggest concern with PVP moving forward?

FishonaHeater: 14:59

The biggest concern I have is actually the attitude around it, because it seems to be accepted that if anything goes wrong, it's cuz Niantic a shit. Um, like if you stub your toe, it, it's Niantic fault, like, um, and of course like the natural thing to blame them for everything that's going wrong. Whether it is a valid concern or not, I obviously don't wanna discount the actual valid concerns like there are things that they do wrong, but I think there's also a lot of things that they do right that doesn't get enough recognition. And also a lot of the things that we say that they're doing wrong can come from not knowing the full story. They'll be doing things, they'll have reasons for doing things and we don't know what those reasons are.

David Hernandez: 15:47

So eventually you became part of the PVP Corner at Go Cast.

FishonaHeater: 15:50

Yes.

David Hernandez: 15:51

how did that all happen?

FishonaHeater: 15:53

I was a patron of the Go Cast community. I had been listening to the podcast, I really like Chris and Kyle's aesthetic as a team. I loved their positivity about the game, even when they were complaining about stuff, which they do call things out when they disagree with something or think there's something that needs to be called out. But no matter if what they're saying is a positive or negative thing, it's always, you can hear it in their voices that it's always with an overtone or an undertone of we do like this game.

David Hernandez: 16:23

It's with good intention it sounds like.

FishonaHeater: 16:25

Yeah, it's with good intention, yeah, that's a great way of putting it so, that really spoke to me. I've, I've always been drawn to positivity. I used to listen to a podcast where they broke down every episode of The Simpsons and after they got past, like season 12, I just became so fed up with them complaining about how bad the show was getting that I was like, nah, I'm done with this and then stop listening and it's why I might or might not listen to a lot of podcasts or consume a lot of content is I like to share it with people who are also having fun with this thing that I like. I don't want to hear about why this thing that I like is so shit. So I was part of their community. They used to do weekly live streams themselves. Every Thursday night they would do a play through of a main series Pokemon game and Dphi would also hang out in those streams as well. One of these streams, we were talking about the latest episode and I brought up the idea of like, I literally was in their Twitch chat and said DPhi and I should do like a regular PVP segment on the podcast and Chris was like, yeah, you absolutely should. And like, I was kind of joking, it was the kind of joke where it's like, if you think I'm joking, yeah, I was absolutely joking, if you think I'm serious, then yeah. Oh yeah. I meant that!

David Hernandez: 17:36

You're just testing out the waters.

FishonaHeater: 17:37

Yeah, yeah, exactly like I'm just putting it out there in the universe and he had just immediately took to the idea. And I was so taken aback, thrown away, uh, blown away his, the word I was looking for, so blown away by how readily he was able to hand us the keys to the studio because I know if I were doing something like that, I'd be very, very protective of the product. Something that I'd built like they've built an amazing community, an amazing product, and I would be very, apprehensive of just letting someone else that I hadn't ever met in person to be such a huge part of that. Obviously, we'd been in that community enough that, they had gotten a good sense of who we were, so they were, all on board with the idea. I had to check with Chris a couple of times during the process of planning to be like, and you're sure you're okay with this?" And it was like,"yeah, man. Absolutely." And then, yeah, we did our first segment, it was well received and away we went.

David Hernandez: 18:32

It sounds like you chose DPhi to be kind of your co-host. Why'd you choose her?

FishonaHeater: 18:37

I don't even think to say that I chose her, implies like a kind of intentionality behind it, I think it just happened, So like I said, yeah, defi and I should do this, it was more because, you know, she was chatting there at the time, we were both talking about pvp, we'd both been, communicating with each other about content, like we were friends already and it just seemed so natural.

David Hernandez: 18:57

So y'all go to y'all first episode, it was actually in October of 2020. Was it awkward for y'all to kind of figure out how to work together or did it kind of flow together?

FishonaHeater: 19:07

I don't think it was awkward, but the process has definitely evolved. So, for example, and Chris and Kyle used to laugh hysterically about this. We used to do an entire run through of the segment before hitting the record button, so

David Hernandez: 19:22

Oh, wow.

FishonaHeater: 19:22

We'd ba yeah, we'd basically do everything twice. We'd start again like we'd run through the whole segment and then make any kind of changes that we needed, and then we'd hit the record button and just do everything again. It was good for like avoiding all the stuttering and the ums and all that, but it also meant that any time we made each other laugh in the rehearsal, that moment was kind of lost if we tried to recreate it. So eventually we made that decision to just do the one run through and then just fix any problems in editing.

David Hernandez: 19:52

Did you ever consider it like branching off and becoming your own podcast at any point?

FishonaHeater: 19:55

No. No. There's a few reasons for that, one is that, we both wouldn't have the time to promote that kind of thing ourselves and secondly like we enjoy being part of this thing that's already success like that. It sounds selfish to say it like they're already doing all the work of, of, uh, promoting the show, but, that is a part of it like, to put in the work of starting from scratch, so to speak. and yeah, making it just our own thing, I don't think either of us are particularly interested in that.

David Hernandez: 20:22

So, last question about between y'all two. So if you and DPhiE faced off in a show six, pick three, best of three, who wins between you two?

FishonaHeater: 20:30

That has happened a few times. I believe I've won more than she has, but just barely.

David Hernandez: 20:36

Okay. Just for casually or just outta just tournament Y'all participate together?

FishonaHeater: 20:39

Uh, in tournaments, mainly in tournaments we've participated in and I think we might have faced each other in factions one time or something like that I know I played against her factions team. Might not have been against her specifically, but yeah, we have come across each other in like tournament play a couple times.

David Hernandez: 20:53

Do y'all like trash talk or anything like that before the matchup happens by chance? Like or do y'all just treat it as business as usual?

FishonaHeater: 21:00

We're both super supportive but also super competitive at the same time, so we are like, we're very polite to each other, but then whichever one of us loses, you can hear it in the other one's voice, how shitty they are about it.

David Hernandez: 21:13

Oh, I bet.

FishonaHeater: 21:14

You've gotta tip toe around the other person for a, for a day or so.

David Hernandez: 21:17

It's like you gotta let'em, uh, clean their wound a little bit.

FishonaHeater: 21:20

Yeah. Yep. Totally.

David Hernandez: 21:21

Was the PVP Corner your first dip into content creation, or did you used to do stuff before that?

FishonaHeater: 21:26

No, actually, before Go Battle League was a thing, i started with YouTube content.

David Hernandez: 21:30

Mm-hmm.

FishonaHeater: 21:31

I used to do a thing that I still do occasionally do and I think this is great content, I'm sad I don't still do it like on the reg, It was basically a battle breakdown where I would take just one battle. This was something that I don't think anyone was doing at the time, and I still think they don't do it. Most content these days will be featuring a team and just running through a whole bunch of battles at two times speed, showing this is how this did in this situation, this is how this did in this situation. What I would do is I would take just a single battle and I would run through it for a bit and then anything I thought was interesting, I would pause the video and then talk about this is what's happening, these are the fundamentals that are at play here, this is what I have to think about, this is my win condition, this is what we are learning from this moment. So it would mean one battle could take like 20, 25 minutes to break down, but I got a lot of good feedback about how educational it was.

David Hernandez: 22:23

Is it just cuz of time, you can't go back to it, is that the main reason cuz you seem like a busy dude? I'll be honest. Uh,

FishonaHeater: 22:28

Yeah. There's two possible answers to this like it never got a lot of views for a start and that something I've always really struggled with as a creator is I don't want to put all this effort into something that's gonna get seen by 12 people. The reason I hesitate so much is because I also didn't know as much as a content creator about how to get my stuff seen, so I didn't know about the importance of a good thumbnail or a good title. I didn't know about how to get stuff shared by people, I didn't know the value of a call to action, you know, hit the subscribe button, hit the like button, that kind of thing.

David Hernandez: 23:05

Especially for this show, please do.

FishonaHeater: 23:07

Yeah. Subscribes trainer's eyes. Yeah. So maybe if I tried to take it back up again, maybe it would catch on again, but it could also just be that the audience that is already very, very small, is accustomed to a certain type of content and they aren't looking to explore to other avenues.

David Hernandez: 23:27

And it takes a lot of time to be able to edit the video and do all that other stuff, so

FishonaHeater: 23:32

I've done away with that. I just do everything in one take like literally, so I've got these, um, like five minute breakdowns of all the upcoming GBL metas that I do every week. I will do all of them in one take and sometimes it can take me, I think one time it took me like 55 takes to get it all right. Yeah. I'll be a bit too perfectionist about it cuz like I'll mess up one Pokemon's name and I'll be like, well, gotta start again.

David Hernandez: 24:00

What is it about content creation that's got you into it?

FishonaHeater: 24:04

It's a good question. I have always, this was actually a realization I came to pretty recently where I've always wanted to be a storyteller of some kind. So when I was in grade school, I was telling people I wanted to be an actor. Post schooling years, I would go through phases of, doing like standup comedy, doing like blogging, I did have a podcast which lasted a few episodes, which I think it had a lot of potential, but circumstances stopped to that from happening, but yeah, I've always really enjoyed being in that world. And it was only recently that I realized the connective tissue between all of those things, which was the storytelling aspect of it.

David Hernandez: 24:43

I gotcha. Now you get to share the story through Pallet Town pvp and through PVP in general.

FishonaHeater: 24:48

Yeah! In this modern age of, where content is king, everyone wants to be a content creator, i, I don't know if you have heard this stat that like for the first time ever content creator has become the most desired job among American school kids. So it used to be like astronaut or something like that, but now it's, yeah, now it's content creator. But in this day and age, everyone needs a niche. Vlogging isn't really a thing as much these days and as it used to be, just like documenting your life. So anyone, if you're thinking about becoming a content creator in some capacity, it's most helpful to pick a specific thing that you are knowledgeable about, that you are passionate about. Passionate is probably the most important one and focus on that thing.

David Hernandez: 25:29

It is because if you try to be too broad, you don't attract anybody, you gotta really be specific on this type of stuff you wanna make, and like you said, have, be genuinely interested throughout the entire process cause if you don't like it, it's gonna show.

FishonaHeater: 25:40

Yeah, totally and to bring it to Pokemon Go pvp, there's like six people that play. So like, it's a small niche.

David Hernandez: 25:49

Y'all aren't that small. Come on

FishonaHeater: 25:51

It's a, yeah. Yeah.

David Hernandez: 25:52

Wayfarer is that small, y'all aren't that small. Y'all have at least 12.

FishonaHeater: 25:57

What, like the, the measuring stick, like the biggest content creator in the Pokemon Go in the, or the English speaking, Pokemon Go PVP space is ZyoniK and he gets like 30,000 hits on the average. That's good like I'd love to get seen by 30,000 people, but if you wanna make a career outta that kind of thing like it's gonna be pretty difficult.

David Hernandez: 26:19

Especially when you think about the YouTubers, you think of Trainer Tips, Mystic7, they sneeze that within the first minute or two?

FishonaHeater: 26:27

Yeah literally like, they could upload a video of them sneezing, it would get 30 hits, 30,000 hits.

David Hernandez: 26:33

Moving on, so eventually you decide to create Pallet Town PVP. How about you tell us like, what is Pallet Town PVP about?

FishonaHeater: 26:41

Pallet Town PVP is a community that, in my eyes, is as free from the toxicity that can surround the game as possible. We focus on three things, and that is education, entertainment, and growth around Pokemon Go pvp and kind of everything we do is in service of one of those three goals.

David Hernandez: 27:04

And why those three words or pillars to describe your community or to have your community be built upon?

FishonaHeater: 27:11

I don't know. I guess I just held those truths to be self-evident if that makes sense. Like I thought that those.

David Hernandez: 27:16

Okay. Abraham Lincoln.

FishonaHeater: 27:19

I hope I'm using that phrase right. It's, like, you know, when a, a kid's asking like, why, why, why to every question and you try and get more and more granular. I don't think I can get more granular than that.

David Hernandez: 27:29

So somebody New joins your Discord or joins your community. What's your ideal experience that you want them to have when they join Pallet Town PVP?

FishonaHeater: 27:37

In a perfect world, would love for members to be able to give as much as they take from the server. I want people to come in and learn and grow, get, you know, increase their G B O rating, get better at Silph, et cetera, et cetera. But then I also would like them to be able to drop in and give their advice on someone's team or you know, contribute to the server in some other way. It's like a monastery where people are staying with the monks and learning their ways, but they've also gotta, you know, pitch in and work, you know, you know, sweep the kitchens, that kind of thing. That's kind of the ideal experience, now, of course, like no judgment if people just want to lurk and read what's going on in the channels and that's it. We are absolutely fine with that. When I started Pallet Town pvp, the idea I had in mind was for it to be this thing where it's not my community, it's everyone's community. In fact, I actually sometimes get a little bit annoyed when people refer to it as my community, because like I, I'm trying so hard for it to not be my thing, I want people to have ownership of it. One of our members made an infographic for Silph's Ember Cup and it was actually picked up by the Silph Arena website, which yeah, fantastic moment. And when I found out, I was like, oh fuck, that's amazing. But then I saw that they attributed it to FishonaHeater and that actually genuinely annoyed me because I had very little to do with it, it was all, I'm gonna give a shout out to lili_bear26, she makes most of our infographics and then has to deal with us going,"oh, I think we should put that there, but put that there, put that there." um, like, it's, it's all her work and like I'm trying to get in touch with the arena to correct that cuz Yeah, I don't want it to be about me.

David Hernandez: 29:17

No, that makes sense, you want it to be about everybody else and it sounds like it's built about your idea of how you said, going back to being positive. You want people to come in, be positive, learn, and then that's how we kind of learn from each other iron sharpens iron or pick up one another and stuff like that.

FishonaHeater: 29:31

Yeah. I'm so passionate about self-empowerment and mm-hmm. like that, that can take forms within the PVP space, it also takes many forms outside of the PVP space as well. But yeah, like helping someone to feel self-empowered is such a big deal to me.

David Hernandez: 29:48

Well, that's very insightful Fish. Thank you for coming on the show, I do have one last question before you take off. So with everything you've done with Pallet Town PVP, with the PVP Corner for Go Cast, for you doing stuff on Twitch and everything else you're involved with, what do you consider your biggest accomplishment when it comes to Pokemon Go?

FishonaHeater: 30:06

There was something that I was thinking about a while back that I remember specifically saying, I think this is my proudest achievement in Pokemon Go and for the life of me, I can't remember what that was. You know, there's been some amazing accomplishments. Pallet Town PVP was asked to host one of the qualifying streams of The Silph World Championships. That was a big, big deal. Every time I hit legend in GBL, cuz I don't wanna leave Gbl out. I guess it's a, a whole story we haven't even covered yet, but I like when GBL was first a thing and everyone was paying attention to that, I had like a whole process of being very like bitter and jaded. I wanted people to see that Silph was the real pvp and Go Battle league was just this like way stripped down kind of PVP lite. But, um, oh, oh my gosh. Yeah. Uh,

David Hernandez: 30:54

Why were you bitter? I'm curious.

FishonaHeater: 30:55

Okay, so um, in those Pre-GO battle league days, I refer to myself as a Jehovah's Witness of Silph say it was like I was knocking on every door going, have you heard about Silph?

David Hernandez: 31:07

Have you accepted Dronpes as your savior?

FishonaHeater: 31:10

Yeah, that's right. Um, and so I spent so much time and effort, trying to grow the in-person tournament scene in my city and then Go Battle League came around and it, like I said, it stripped back a, a lot of those things that I thought made Silph so good. It was one battle instead of three, which meant you didn't have a chance to adjust your opponent strategies. The fact that it was blind battles rather than, pick six and being able to see your team beforehand. The ELO system rather than the ranking system that Silph had, you know, there were a lot of things that I just thought were so much worse than Silph and yet because it was the official in-game thing, everyone was paying attention to go Battle league. There were people in my area that I heard talking about like,"oh, have you tried Go Battle League? It's really cool." And I'm, I'm over here like,"ah, I've been trying to get through to you people for so long!" and so that caused a lot of, bitterness and it's a time where I was susceptible to toxicity of my own and it's taken me a very long time to grow enough to accept Go Battle League as being just as much, you know, just as important as to be honest, more important than Silph in the ecosystem and the health of PVP as a community.

David Hernandez: 32:27

Was that like something that you just had to gradually learn or was it like a significant moment that kind of helped you change your mind?

FishonaHeater: 32:33

It was just a gradual thing. There wasn't one specific, probably just a whole bunch of like hundreds of little moments.

David Hernandez: 32:38

Awesome, man. Well thank you Fish for coming on the show. If people wanted to connect with you or check out your content, where can they go? Please, by all means, plug away.

FishonaHeater: 32:47

So it's just Pallet Town PVP on everything. So YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, we're on TikTok as well. We do have a Facebook page, but like GoCast, it's a ghost town with just tumbleweeds going through it. You can, like that page if you want and if enough people do that, then maybe we'll start putting some attention into that again. But yeah, pallet Town, PVP. And oh, and GoCast, I always forget to plug GoCast. GoCast podcast

David Hernandez: 33:11

And I'll make sure to include links to everything he said in the description of today's episode. Thank you for listening to another episode of As The Pokeball Turns. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. If you wanna support the show, consider becoming a Patreon by going to patreon.com/asthepokeballturns or by sharing the podcast with your friends and family. And I'll see you next time. Here's the sneak peek for the next episode of As The Pokeball Turns.