Boo! You have been blessed by the presence of this interview article with thebobghost of the Adelaide Revenge. His equally spooky teammates in the league are Biskit, Kozi, Latias, [L]iam and Yoshiko. Member of Positive Inking, he has found reasonable success playing for the first time in Division 1 of the Oceanink Series. A long-time support player and arguably one of the top players of Splattershot Jr. variants in the region, he’s looking to make the most of his opportunity to play with and against some of the best. For that little bit extra thebobghost flair as you’re reading through, I recommend trying to read his answers out aloud in his voice.
On a scale of one to winning a game 9 how excited are you for the league?
On the scale I would say I’m a “waiting for my next opponents to be announced in a swiss bracket, knowing that all the teams that are left to play against are the super strong teams” kind of excited. So I’m ready to splat some squids but also I’m a bit nervous as well. I suppose everyone will be nervous when the league starts.
What are you looking forward to the most when the league begins in June?
I’m really looking forward to the hustle and activity of the community, and like people having fun watching and taking part in all of the Firetail’s streams, polls and discussion, and all the memes and copypastas too. I’m excited to play against everyone as well, and see how everyone has progressed and such. Even though I’m a bit nervous as stated above, I’m sure the nerves will come to pass since when you’re versing incredible teams that are filled with amazing players that push you to the limit, you can’t help but feel a bit giddy. Victory will be super tough to grasp with every team being seriously stacked but it’ll make the games played and won so much sweeter. It’ll be a lotta fun I’m sure.
I’m now just going to undermine everything I said, cause the thing I’m most looking forward to is FLC commentating and analysing each and every game of the league!1!!!!111!!! This once in a blue moon event where FLC directly graces Australia with his knowledge from the divine, it’ll be the closest thing to a FLC podcast aahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ah I should control myself a bit here…
RIght now what do you feel are the team’s strengths and what aspects of the team need significant improvement? (e.g. regarding weapon comps, push timings, communication, managing egos)
Honestly I’m not sure what I can say without being overly negative and only focusing on the things that we need a lot of fixing on… I’m not particularly an optimistic person haha. I think individually we’re all great players, and the times that we’ve worked together and connected with each other have turned us into a really dangerous group of squids and made us a clear contender for first place. But the times when we’ve tried to connect with each other and encouraged the rapport that is needed in a team, it is few and far between. It feels like we’re all in our own little worlds, unable or unwilling to branch out, like if this was all happening in real life, I feel we wouldn’t really look at each in the eyes. Though I guess it doesn’t help that a few of us are a bit shy and non-confrontational. So I guess communication would need significant improvement. Though I’m a major hypocrite in all of this, as this is a really indirect way of telling the team all of this… Hi Adelaide team!
Has the team been playing together in scrims or tournaments such as Training Tuesdays and what have the results been like?
We’ve played in a few TTs and scrims and results have been… Well the less known information about our team, the better for us right? Though I’m pretty sure you can find out the results by going through Challonge’s link of past tourneys…
How do you think the team is going to use substitutions within sets? Do you have certain players that are strong in particular modes that can be super-subs or just play out sets with the same 4 players?
Nup nup nup my lips are sealed, can’t be revealing our secrets strats now can we 😉
Which team in the league do you feel will be the hardest to face and why?
Oh I guess I can’t pull off being secretive for a third time now I guess. Well I think… This tourney is like a bunch of pick up teams, with players coming from different experience and knowledge right? So I feel like basically the team that has the most players with the same strong understanding of how the game is and is able to implement that understanding with the team will be hardest to face. Things like how the game should be played, knowing how to achieve success on each map/mode and adapting to quirks and differences of everyone’s role fulfilment. Saying that, my pick would be Sydney Endeavour. I feel Sydney has most of these traits and is only strengthened by Geo and especially Skitter’s ability to guide and assist their teammates throughout the league and making sure everyone is on the same page. Provided that Geo and Skitter don’t have clashing ideals, but I don’t really see that happening. Definitely a team to watch out for.
Do you or the team have a favourite Splatoon-related meme?
Unrelated to my answer, I had to resort to Google search, and go through TV tropes for Splatoon memes at first haha. I wasn’t in the community for this but my favourite meme would be the Splatoon 1 Rhubarb meme. For anyone who doesn’t know, basically in a Splatoon 1 Japanese tourney, an Australian team called Double D, got called out on Twitter for laggy players (of course). And due to the Twitter translation bot being not the greatest, it turned Kraken into rhubarb which resulted in the phrases ‘hairy brush rhubarb’ and ‘long ranged rhubarb’ being used. The next thing you know, a fountain of jokes, photoshop images and emotes spouts out, with the Australian community just accepting the badge of lag and just running with it. They even named the annual Splatoon 1 tourney after it! I love the fact that it’s very Australian, with people taking the mickey out of the famous overseas lag and creating trees (do rhubarbs grow on trees?) of positivity with it. It’s something I wish people in the Splatoon community nowadays do more often. Also Double D? Really?
For the next balance patch, what weapon would you like to see get buffed and what weapon would you like to see get nerfed?
I would love weapons that don’t get much spotlight and are hard to choose over other weapons, so things like Gloogas, Undercover and Flingza. Give them buffs that’ll make the player’s life a bit easier when trying to main it while also highlighting their strengths to make the weapons stand out more from other weapons.
That being said if you’re gonna create the Goo Tuber, a weapon that hasn’t been picked up at all in any top level splatoon, the embodiment of inferiority and the first weapon you go to for a meme PB, you might as well commit to the joke that is the Goo Tuber, and nerf it into the ground. Make it a heavy weight weapon, slap it with weapon RNG or have the ink just schloop out of the tube like some kind of defeated slug, similar to what the weapon name suggests. Fight me if you disagree >:)
What’s one misconception about AUNZ/OCE Splatoon 2 players you’d like cleared up?
Something that I like to bring up and I know this seems like a no brainer, is that a community encompasses a group of individuals that come from different backgrounds and experiences so any actions and words that are addressed to a community will impact the people in it. Sometimes the things I read and hear from people outside of the Oceania community feels like that they’re addressing a punching bag, like a weirdly pointed, shark bitten bottom punching bag, that has nothing but sand in the middle of it. As if it’s only for satisfying people to hurl their anger and frustration when blaming the game isn’t enough, not caring for the impact that has on the inside. The impact on the tiny grains of sand that fill up everything. Alright I’m clearly sleep deprived, this analogy has gone way off into the deep end and I’m just yammering here. But I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are a lot of awesome people in the AUNZ + SEA community, who are amazing and kind and just incredibly dedicated to the game and community behind it. Like the people behind Firetail Events, Rambo, Checkers and Hess and the many others who have contributed, who are hosting this incredibly high production league that I’ve never seen before in like any Splatoon tourney. Like the TO’s of the Oceanink Series who for a couple of years now, have hosted this amazing safe space for Oceania to play in, committing so much time and effort for the competitive scene. And of course the players who play in these events who are amazing, hilarious, compassionate and incredibly strong players who are like the coolest people I’ve ever met. So when people decide to have a go at us, just because of an uncontrollable factor in everything, the effect ripples through all of us. It hurts motivation and dedication and it spits on the time and effort these people have put into the community. It’s not great. It’s not great at all seeing people get hurt.
I don’t think I really answered the question did I? Haha I guess if there’s one thing I like people to take away from this and something that they can actively do is to try to get to know us. I’ve already said my praise about the community. Most of us are on Twitter and pretty much everyone’s on Discord, so if time zones aren’t too much of a pain, build a bridge. Build a bridge between communities, I’m sure there’ll be nothing but good that comes out of it.
What originally drew you into the competitive Splatoon 2 scene and what do you enjoy most about playing competitively?
I was lonely and had no friends haha, and I’m only being half serious here. None of my friends at that time were really Nintendo kids or played many of their games. One time I tried to introduce Splatoon 1 to a friend, saying things like ‘the game is really fun, and the motion controls is kinda like using the mouse’ as I handed him the gamepad to give him a go. And so the next day after, at lunch he was mockingly waving his arms around, mimicking the motion controls as he told them about how ridiculous it was to the rest of my friends. So I guess you could say I kinda had a hard time connecting with people with my hobbies.
The Oceanink server was my first ever online community that I’ve been involved with so finding a circle of people who liked the same thing as me was mind boggling. I could actually talk about the things I love and play Splatoon with people who also loved the game, and I think competitive Splatoon was just another environment that I could do all of that and more. It really was a mine full of gold to me.
The thing I most enjoy about playing competitively is probably… winning haha, that’s right, I’ve burnt away all that sappy BS and the only thing that’s important to me now is the inky blood of my enemies dripping down my face as the victory track plays. I’m kidding… sort of. My enjoyment of competitive Splatoon has waned a bit in recent times, with motivation and reason for playing being real volatile. Of course a lot has changed for me and the community from the beginning when I joined to now. A lot of good times with friends and the game but also a lot of bad times when things were distressing and not the greatest, in and out of the competitive scene, so I’m not entirely sure what my answer would be… I’ll just say the fact that enemy blood does wonders for your skin.