I've been on smogon, playing different tiers and reading analyses since gen 3, but I never really felt like I could join any of those communities for how cliquish they were. So, I basically just stayed on the ladder, using various sims like shoddy battle until I stumbled upon PU's room on PS. If it had not been for the close-knit community that you helped create, I'd probably just be killing time in Hawaii, playing random games without having become this invested. I'm thankful for your presence, as it's been a real pleasure watching you help lead the tier from some OM with a ladder toward it becoming official. Not only that, you offered a unique perspective on the meta that I really valued - you didn't just use the same cookie cutter builds with the same 12 Pokemon, nor did you chide others for not using standard builds. At the same time, I don't think you ever really made a team so irredeemably bad that it could only be passed off as a meme. It was always refreshing seeing some of the squads you built in action, knowing that these new configurations were possible and viable.
You also helped cultivate a number of talents in your time here, which to me is a hallmark of a great tier leader - there are some people on smogon who kind of just spam that like button, and you can't really tell if they're clicking it because they like the person posting, because they happened to click like on the post above and so now they have to like the person's below, or simply because they're enthusiastic about the tier in general. For you though, I felt like there was always more meaning when you'd click it; a like from you almost always indicated high quality (or maybe you were being ironic, who knows), and so when a team or set I posted got that like from you, it made writing those phat walls of text that much more reinforcing. You had a hand in every promotion or badge I received here, so I'm still really grateful to have had your support over these last 4 years (has it been that long already?). And even if it was infrequent, I enjoyed getting to know you when we'd talk about something other than PU, whether it was about film, music, language or whatever.
Hopefully this read less like a eulogy, but I really am sad to see you go, even if it's the best choice for you in doing well at university and starting that new chapter of your life without distractions taking away from that experience.