A Farewell to CAPs: My Final Contribution.

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Additionally, I have nothing but negative things to say to the CAP artists I have worked alongside, which I will withhold for the sake of maintaining neutrality. My time spent with the project has been one fraught with nothing but failure, disappointment and sadness, with every loss only serving to damage my already fragile ego and waning self-esteem, every victory feeling hollow or bittersweet due to my treachery, and every sketch only serving to impede my ability to generate a more immediate source of income. While I have quite a bit to say about them and the matter at hand, including the fact that I had to resort to underhanded tactics to even have a shot at winning against the more notable CAP artists and contributors, it is NOT my intent to create drama with this thread. Regardless of my thoughts, I no longer have any say in the outcome of the process, and I am only posting this in order to ensure that only the spirit of fairness that CAP has striven to achieve over the years is once again preserved in my absence.
my biggest pet peeve is people who pretend to not like drama but then immediately try to cause drama

seriously, this whole post made me feel very uneasy tbh but this paragraph in particular is a massive yikes
 
[Note to mods: I was unsure of where to post this, since non-moderators aren't able to post threads in the CAP forums, but if this thread could be moved to a more relevant subforum, assuming there is one, and the first paragraph altered accordingly, I would appreciate it.]

Hey there everyone, I know you're probably expecting to see some more haha funnies here today in a Smogoff thread, but I'm sorry to say, this isn't one of those threads. If you're looking for a good time, I urge you to back out of this thread and check out the rest of the subforum.

But for those of you who are still reading, and/or simply don't know who I am, my name is Nicholas, and I'm an ex-CAP contributor.

I originally lurked the Smogon forums back during Gen 5, but the vast majority of my time spent here has been with the Create-A-Pokemon Project, riding across a bumpy and sometimes dangerous road. While my first CAP art submissions were for 19 and 20, I was relatively new to the whole process, and was not aware at the time that WIP submissions required a final submission to be accounted for and voted on. CAP 21 was my first big break into the project, where I placed a staggering ninth in the art polls. A handful of CAPs have come and gone since then, and despite submitting art for CAP 22, 26, 27 and 28, I had yet to place any higher in a primary art poll since, feeling incresingly disheartened as I wallowed dead center in every poll, knowing that my submissions never truly caught the public's attention as much as others. But after the results of the first CAP 27 Prevo art poll dropped, seeing where my design placed in the polls this time, I once again fell into an immense and immediate void of depression, but this time, things were different. This time I decided to announce my retirement from the project on the CAP Discord, while temporarily removing my presence from the internet in the process.

This, of course, was short-lived, and I thankfully bounced back before CAP 28 began. But during that small span of time, I had created an alternate account both here on the Smogon CAP Forums and on Discord. I did so as a means of "spying" on my fellow forumgoers to get their thoughts on myself, my work, and my behavior in the aftermath of my resignation, all while maintaining the identity of someone who had been there just as long. I had never used it to post anything on the forum, and nobody had even known it was an alternate account, at least to my knowledge.

Fast forward to three weeks ago, where everything in life and the CAP community was going along just great, when I was suddenly and unceremoniously fired from the job I had been working at since last July. Apparently, I was terminated from my job for a number of reasons, one being the frequency of how much I was drawing at work, which cut into my productivity. A good majority of these sketches were for the Create-A-Pokemon Project or other fakemon-related potential projects inspired by my work with CAP. Overcome with grief and unable to receive unemployment or any form of income until the past few days, what followed was a string of understandably poor decisions, including an overall permanent removal of my presence from the internet as a whole under the Slapperfish alias, cancelling or not showing up to several key doctor's appointments, pulling the plug on my subscriptions to various games and services, and the single action I took on this website that has led to very post you are reading.

Two weeks ago, in the CAP 29 Shiny Palette Submissions thread, in addition to the shiny submission I made under this account, as had been the case, I submitted a second shiny submission under my alternate account name "saussagus," but this was merely in jest - primarily at the expense of the way Game Freak has been making shiny palettes for most legendary and mythical Pokemon in recent years - and I had intended to delete long it before the thread was locked and the polls began. At this point, moderators had already detected the second post being made from the same IP address as this one. Despite my completely transparent, up-front admittance to the account's ownership and subsequent personal deletion of the post over DMs, this was a clear violation of the rules, and as a result, my primary account was banned from contributing to the Create-A-Pokemon Project indefinitely, and the alternate account banned from the forums entirely.

However, unbeknownst to anyone but myself, and sown by my fears of losing another art poll after both 26 and its prevo, I had actually created a completely different alternate account some time between the CAP 27 and 28 processes. Among other things, I had occasionally been using this account to bolster my own poll results (as well as others) by a single, undetectable false vote, all while masquerading as a completely different person. And since then, I have had more successes with the project in the span of several months than I have had with any other vote-based system in my entire life, even going on to win my first-ever art submission in the form of Colossoil's prevo, now known as Dorsoil. An alternate account unbeknownst to anyone... until now.

As I have now come forward with these confessions, this means nearly every single winning submission of mine up to this point is technically illegitimate. But I am a person that repays their debts and makes up for their mistakes. In the spirit of true competitive fairness, and in light of recent events, I would like to request that my contributions to the Create-A-Pokemon Project be expunged in their entirety. I have compiled a list of my prior contributions to the project, along with the actions that need to be taken, and they are as follows:
  • My winning Colossoil prevo art submission (aka Dorsoil), to either have its win given to second place, or the art polls re-run without its inclusion. I have no intention of using the design for any future projects, as it was designed solely for CAP.
    • Additionally, all aspects linked to the prevo process and its inclusion (including sprites, shiny, typing, stats, name, and height/weight) will need to be redone for the replacement submission.
  • All winning CAP Prevo art submissions for non-original designs, to either be given to second place or have the art polls re-run without their inclusion (Duohm and Protowatt).
  • All winning Pokedex entries, including their presence on Smogon's social media platforms, to either be given to second place or have the dex polls re-run without their inclusions (Colossoil and Miasmaw).
  • All winning CAP sprite shiny palettes, to either be given to second place or have the art polls re-run without their inclusions (Solotl and Miasmite)
  • All submissions to non-process-related art contests held on the CAP Discord and posted in the Fanworks Thread (CAP G-Max Contest, Gijinka Contest, etc.).
  • My emojis for the CAP Discord, to be removed from use on the server and beyond via Nitro (smogchamp, pogsoil and smokohype).
  • My proof-of-concept trailer originally made to collaborate with the CAP 3-D team, to be scrapped and unused in any future capacity. While the video was unlisted on - and is now deleted from - my now-defunct Youtube channel, any attempt to reuse the concept for this or future projects would technically fall under my contribution ban, even if indirectly.
  • Any other documented winning submissions, entries or pieces of fanart that I have forgotten to mention.
My placement in the first CAP 21 poll and subsequent inclusion in the CAP 21 Art Gallery were achieved long before these events ever took place, and as such, is the only legitimate CAP contribution to my name. I leave it to the moderators to decide whether or not to preserve its inclusion given recent events.

Once the contributions listed above have been removed, replaced, or have begun their respective mulligans and do-overs, I give the mods full permission to either lock or delete this thread, and place a permanent ban upon this and all other forum accounts involved in this web of deceit.

In order to get this "un-process" started as quickly and efficiently as possible, I am pinging Quanyails, Mx, Birkal, DougJustDoug, and QxC4eva (who I am assuming is Tomomon on Discord) and requesting that they bring this to the attention of any other relevant CAP mods I may have failed to mention here. I know that undoing all I have accomplished here and knowing that it was never achieved fairly will have permanently damaged my reputation and trust with all of you by the time you read this, but I have always felt some degree of contempt for Smogon as a whole, and the ones in charge of its more creative aspects have been no different in my eyes, in particular one of these individuals who I will not be specifying by name.

Additionally, I have nothing but negative things to say to the CAP artists I have worked alongside, which I will withhold for the sake of maintaining neutrality. My time spent with the project has been one fraught with nothing but failure, disappointment and sadness, with every loss only serving to damage my already fragile ego and waning self-esteem, every victory feeling hollow or bittersweet due to my treachery, and every sketch only serving to impede my ability to generate a more immediate source of income. While I have quite a bit to say about them and the matter at hand, including the fact that I had to resort to underhanded tactics to even have a shot at winning against the more notable CAP artists and contributors, it is NOT my intent to create drama with this thread. Regardless of my thoughts, I no longer have any say in the outcome of the process, and I am only posting this in order to ensure that only the spirit of fairness that CAP has striven to achieve over the years is once again preserved in my absence.

TL;DR - It was fun while it lasted, but the real world ain't fun, and nice guys always finish last.

View attachment 339652

Sincerely,
The artist formerly known as Slapperfish
Please tell me this is a joke, I refuse to believe that lowencraft is an alt
 
okay, this isn't funny anymore. the OP self reported his alt and admitted to cheating and mods dgaf but when I make a harmless alt to spread lols and happiness across this forum i get a +2 infraction. this is disgusting behavior and a clear double standard by those in power. i can almost guarantee this would not happen if i were anything but a cisgender millennial diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder.

tired of you fake leftists preaching equality while wearing ur microaggressions on your damn shoulders.
 

Lumari

empty spaces
is a Site Content Manageris a Top Social Media Contributoris a Member of Senior Staffis a Community Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributoris an Administrator Alumnus
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Fwiw this thread has been infracted (which in tandem with his active alting infraction has banned the user) because Lowencraft is actually very obviously not his alt, so this seems like a poor attempt to take another user down with him which is super obviously not okay.

Figured I should post quick so that it's clear what's going on and people can get off Lowencraft's back.
 

phoopes

I did it again
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Now that this thread hit CAPacity, I will CAP off this thread by putting on my moderation CAP and locking the thread with a reminder:

4. Respect: Part of having fun is building a respectful community. Calling out other users for not “getting it”/telling them to “lurk more,” or anything that makes community members new or old feel unwelcome will not be tolerated. In addition, do not use Smogoff to bring up drama from other areas of the forums.
 
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