Misaka Mikoto: Hello Hula, could you tell us a little bit about yourself? Your interests, hobbies, occupation, etc?
Hulavuta: Sure! Hi everyone, I am Hulavuta. I'm currently a 2nd year college student going for a degree in Social Work, although that may change soon, who knows! I'm a bit of an artist, I am a fiction author and a musician. I enjoy playing the saxophone, trumpet, piano, harmonica...and kazoo, some of them better than others. I am also a big movie guy, and into various animated series, whether they be anime or western. I used to play a lot of video games but don't much anymore...I tried to cut down on games to focus on more creative things, but that didn't go so well. I just found other distractions to waste my time on. But I do play some games, mostly on the 3DS, like Pokemon, Super Smash Bros., Fire Emblem, Etrian Odyssey, etc. I also play StarCraft 2 and Undertale occasionally. I also recently got into figure collecting, it is a lot of fun. Though, it hurts your wallet severely. I find it's money well spent most of the time.
Misaka Mikoto: That's quite a lot of hobbies you have there. How does it feel to be a college student?
Hulavuta: It is definitely a whole hell of a lot better than high school, I can say that for sure. It is honestly pretty good, I definitely feel like I am actually learning things and actually moving toward my goals. It also brings you a lot of freedom, which is nice.
Misaka Mikoto: You mentioned that you play Fire Emblem. I'm a big fan of the series as well. What made you get into the game?
Hulavuta: Yeah, I saw my brother playing Fire Emblem for a long time growing up but was never really into it. I think I got into it through Smash Bros, which is where a lot of people got into it I guess. I played Marth often in Melee because he was a sword user and I could wear that edgy dark cape. In Brawl, back when I played with items we would use the assist trophies and one of the best ones was Lyn. She was kind of interesting to me because it was like this random cute girl that just appears and then OHKOes a player and then leaves. Kinda got me curious. That got me into playing Fire Emblem 7 and I've been a fan of the series ever since.
Misaka Mikoto: How did you learn how to play several instruments btw?
Hulavuta: Hmm, well I started playing the saxophone in 6th grade when I joined band. My dad wanted my brothers and myself to be musical, although I'm the only one who really stuck with it past school. He wasn't really that strict as far as Asian parents go in terms of making you learn instruments. I just messed around with my friends' trumpets in school and that's how I learned how to play it. I'm in the process of acquiring my own trumpet at the moment but it's kind of delayed, hehe. As for piano, I am currently taking piano classes at my college. And I'm learning harmonica online. As for kazoo...well that one's self explanatory. I find it's definitely much easier to learn another instrument once you've already learned one. Most of the skills you develop transfer over very nicely, it's just a matter of adapting. It's kinda funny because I wasn't big on music when I was a kid, it was a subject totally lost on me. When other kids talked about it at school, that was when I took a break from the conversation. But nowadays it's a thing I can talk about for a while and am relatively knowledgeable about.
Misaka Mikoto: Nice! I can already tell you're an awesome piano player. I have been wondering, what was the reason behind you being inactive?
Hulavuta: Because I am Asian I have to be a good piano player??? I kid, I kid. But yeah, I definitely can tangibly see my improvement over the year, so that's good. Hmm as for my inactivity. Well, I don't want to say everything because that's my business, but I was just facing a pretty big issue in my life at the time. To help deal with it I temporarily moved back in with my parents, who unfortunately do not have Wi-Fi, so I wasn't able to play. It's mostly taken care of now though, so that's good. Don't feel too sorry for me, hehe. Things should be back to business as usual for me very soon!
Misaka Mikoto: Where did you get your name from exactly? Every time when I say it to myself, I think of a hula-hoop.
Hulavuta: Back when I was a very little kid, my family and I used to play on our uncle's Nintendo 64. We mostly played Star Fox but we also played Diddy Kong Racing. And one of the stages we played often was Hot Top Volcano, which has this music. It was kinda unusual because as far as I know, the soundtracks for the racetracks did not have any lyrics, but this one did. We were young and kinda ignorant of other languages at this age so we assumed it was English and to us it sounded like "your mama Hulavuta." So we just assumed Hulavuta was a name and a guy name for some reason even though we thought it said mama. I assumed it was the name of one of the dinosaurs in the volcano, because throughout the stages there are various dinosaurs that you can run into. As kids we were really big on Legos and I was a big dinosaur nut so we created this character called Hulavuta and made him out of Legos. He kinda went through different incarnations over the years but the consistent thing was that he was a dinosaur that could shapeshift into other dinosaurs. When the internet started becoming more and more of a thing and more and more people were using it, my family got off dial-up and got more computers in the house, so I naturally started to go online more. I couldn't really think of any other names to use, so I started using Hulavuta as my username, and from then on it just became my go-to username for every site. Sometimes I think it's kinda weird and childish because it's just a made-up word that I got from mishearing something as a child. But it's grown on me recently in the past few months, and it's got a nice story behind it too so I kinda like it again. Haha. I hope that clears up some confusion. It doesn't have anything to actually do with the hula dance, that's just a coincidence. It did make me a fan of hula dancing though, I felt like I had to be just because of my name.
Misaka Mikoto: What's your favorite Pokemon and why?
Hulavuta: Gotta say it's Tyranitar. When I was a kid, I was stuck between Tyranitar and Mewtwo. Mewtwo is definitely one of my favorite
characters, but as for personal favorite Pokemon, Tyranitar all the way! Like I said, I was a dinosaur kid, so Tyranitar was something I was naturally drawn to. I recently got into Godzilla again too, so I can appreciate having Godzilla in Pokemon. Competitively speaking, I also like how extremely versatile it is. It fits on a ton of teams, both in central and supporting roles. Too bad it's not that amazing in Battle Spot, I wish it was!
Misaka Mikoto: Now that brings me to asking you, what got you into Smogon forums?
Hulavuta: I wrote a very nice post about it here:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/what-brought-you-to-smogon.3522711/#post-5875337
Misaka Mikoto: I see I see. Specifically, how did you get into Battle Spot?
Hulavuta: I didn't originally want to be a Battle Spot player. When X and Y came out, I actually wanted to become a UU superstar. A few people I knew such as Age of Kings, Stellar (now known as nerd), cant say, and CoolStoryBrobat played Battle Spot, so that's how I noticed it. It was kinda new so I was interested even though I didn't think I'd ever play it. But after I realized for myself how astronomically easier breeding perfect Pokemon became, I got interested in it, so I started doing some breeding myself. So the main reason I decided to play Battle Spot was because it was in-game. I just tried it out and it seemed pretty fun. I looked around the forum and it seemed pretty dead so I thought it would be a nice place to establish myself and hopefully bring some life to. I thought that it would be pretty hard to stand out as a user in, say, a forum like OU, where there are so many users. Although, I guess I was wrong because there were many users who joined after 2013 who seemed to go on to become well-known members. But that's what happened with me at the time. The reason I stayed with Battle Spot so long, huh. I guess because it was my job, hehe. Just about 3 months after I joined the forum, Stellar approached me about modding it since it wasn't moderated at the time. As for why I haven't retired yet...well I still enjoy the game I guess, even after almost 2 years. I feel like we're finally actually getting a community too and I want to stick around to help it grow. I feel like I still have experience and leadership that can be useful for the community.
Misaka Mikoto: How are you planning to continue growing the community?
Hulavuta: New user retention is the biggest thing. Battle Spot technically has the largest playerbase of any metagame, but when you look at our forum, we're one of the smallest on Smogon. What I want to do is be able to reach out to players new to the forum, and those who haven't joined yet, and get them to become regulars. Another thing I have been interested in doing for a long time is having regular tournaments because I feel that despite our members being pretty close, we actually don't battle each other all that much. Well, we do on Showdown, but as we're the Battle Spot forum, we want to do as much on the 3DS as we possibly can, hehe. That's an important part of a community that I think we really lack.
Misaka Mikoto: Who do you see as an upcoming contributor right now?
Hulavuta: If you asked me a month ago, I would have said bobochan. But it looks like he's already well on his way nowadays, so I won't say him. I'd have to say GateCreeper and 6tennis are two guys that I can see becoming good contributors in the future. They definitely have a lot of enthusiasm for the game; on the other hand they also respect authority and can accept being corrected. So I think they definitely have the right attitude and under the right influence can become fine young men both on Smogon and outside of it.
Misaka Mikoto: If there was anything you could change in Battle Spot, what would it be and why?
Hulavuta: Honestly, what I would change would be to just lower the overall power of the metagame. ORAS introduced a bunch of Mega Pokemon that are stupid levels of strong. There are just a lot of Pokemon that cannot keep up in the meta nowadays, which is quite sad. I'd like to make the metagame more diverse so as to allow more kinds of Pokemon to be used viably without gimmicks.
Misaka Mikoto: What underrated Pokemon do you think deserves more time in Battle Spot and why?
Hulavuta: Hmm, well back in XY, I used to use Sharpedo a lot on almost every team when I was first starting out. cant say liked Sharpedo too, that was kind of our thing. I think it's pretty underrated; with Speed Boost it can outspeed almost every Pokemon and with Sash it is a pretty good "safety net" Pokemon. It gets pretty great coverage with Water / Ice / Dark. Sometimes you can even put Destiny Bond on it to nab that dirty kill later on too.
Misaka Mikoto: Is there any advice you'd like to give to people that are new to Battle Spot?
Hulavuta: Yeah, just play as much as you possibly can and learn from experience. Don't worry about your ladder points because those really don't matter and they'll hold you back from wanting to play. Just play and have fun and make sure you're learning at the same time, and your points will take care of themselves eventually.
Misaka Mikoto: What are some forums you like (besides Battle Spot) and dislike and why?
Hulavuta: Hmm, well Orange Islands is where I started out on this site, so it is a special place for me even though most of the people I knew from there are gone now. And I really like C&C and appreciate all the work they do there. We're kinda part of it now too. And I think Wi-Fi is one of the best communities on Smogon too, everyone there is super helpful and nice, it is a pretty good place. I don't really dislike any forums because I think they all serve a purpose. Maybe I think people should try to be less offensive and disrespectful to each other in Cong but that's it really.
Misaka Mikoto: We have our own forums, analysis, format, etc. Do you expect us to get Battle Spot tutoring added along with the other formats in Battling 101?
Hulavuta: Maybe eventually, but it's not something I am in a hurry to get going. I think we should take things one at a time and slowly build our userbase. For example, we started our C&C section last year, but it's gotten very slow lately, and that's a far more important resource than tutoring, in my opinion. So I have no problem doing the slow and steady route because we don't have the manpower to be doing so many things at once. Our users are very helpful with any questions people have, so it's quite easy for newer users to get the help they need. Though, I find that most new users already play the game anyway.
Misaka Mikoto: Let's wrap this up! Is there anything else you would like to say before we close this off?
Hulavuta: Um, I hope everyone enjoyed this interview, and please let us know what you thought and leave some more questions below. I hope to be getting back to business as usual in the Battle Spot forum very soon.
Misaka Mikoto: Thank you for your time HuHu!!!
Hulavuta: No problem!