I know I am a very sarcastic person and like to joke around a lot, but I'd like to preface this by saying everything written in this pastebin is 100% honest and it's something I am finally revealing for myself as a form of catharsis. It's a lot to absorb, and maybe it won't make sense towards the beginning, but from the people I've shown this to already prior to making it public, it did by the conclusion. The intention behind revealing anything here will be made clear as you read.

Putting an end to "Bloo" is always something I've wanted to do but was never capable of until now. I've talked a lot about retiring in the past and have tried to hang things up before, but all of those attempts have been unsuccessful. Something always kept bringing me back, a “something” that I’ll go into later down this pastebin. Before going into the details of this “something,” though, there’s one question that actually needs to be addressed: Who is “Bloo” anyway?

I’ve been involved in the Pokémon community for around 7 or so years, yet despite this, people know very little about me as a person. I am always called mysterious, and that’s not surprising to me. It’s no secret that I am a really private and secretive person regarding my real life information. The information that is most commonly known about me can be summarized in the following way:

- University student studying medicine. The ones that really know me are aware I would like to be an anesthesiologist or cardiothroacic surgeon.
- Age-wise, in the twenties.
- Ethnicity-wise, half Spanish and half German.
- Administrator on Smogon who is viewed as a “big” Pokémon player, is friends with everyone and admired by many, or at least was if we're talking in terms of the present.

All of the above is true, but that’s all people really know about me. I can talk with anyone about nearly any subject and share my thoughts, stories and views on pretty much anything - you name it, I'll be able to hold a conversation with you about it. However, when it comes to personal information/anything that gives people an indication of my real life self, I’m typically very vague and evasive, and I know a lot of people find this strange. There's a reason for all of this, but before going into that, I'll explain how "Bloo" was born.

Bloo wasn't my first account on Smogon. I had a prior one that I prefer remains unnamed for the few people who do know the name, but in short I wasn't very smart under this account. I was new to the Internet and generally foolish/naive, conducting myself in a way I wasn't proud of looking back and the account was pretty short-lived. This isn't something unique to only me, anyway. It's not the first time others have done something similar. Staying under this account wasn't something I wanted to do. Fast forward some months and an online friend of mine who I got to know very well during my time under this account registered the name Bloo for me. For some time, the account was managed by the both of us, and I eventually ended up taking over Bloo when my friend left the Pokemon scene. Somehow, it went under the radar and under the name, I was able to establish myself as a positive member of the Smogon community, which I initially failed to do. Fast-forward and I ascended the ranks, managing to ultimately become an administrator and star Pokemon player on here. Someone loved by nearly everyone, removing any traces of my past in the process.

And that's what I grew to eventually truly hate. The Bloo people grew to admire and look up to was someone I knew wasn't entirely truthful about who they were. Before saying anything else about this, though, the only way I can fully explain what I mean is by revealing the one big secret 3 whole people truthfully know about me: I'm not male, I'm actually female. I know some of you reading this will think I'm trolling, but in all seriousness, I'm not. I never ever planned to reveal this information, but after a conversation I had with McMeghan yesterday after all of these OST investigation hocus pocus (http://pastebin.com/QvdEaCiR) where he managed to find out this piece of information via someone (they will remain unnamed to save them from being asked about it by others) who knew that about me, I've thought about it and have decided to just let all my secrets out. This conversation was one of the first times I felt a sort of "release," a very long overdue one.

Let's go into why I never revealed this information, and how those users (who will remain un-named, even if it won't prevent speculation) know of this.

Being a girl on the Internet is something everyone makes fun of. Girls don't exist on the Internet, and if they claim they do, people will never stop hounding them. Asking them for their pictures, which if they give, will be Google traced to see if it's real. Asking them to do Skype calls, you name it. If they do neither of that to satisfy the egos of Smogon's male population, they will be criticized and become the recipients of comments like "haha, another user pretending to be a girl for attention, pathetic," among other things. Don't claim it doesn't happen, because it does. I've seen it happen with nearly every user who claims they are a female on Smogon; they all undergo this sort of treatment and become subject to the continuous harassment of others trying to get them to prove themselves in one way or another, and there's a reason I am known to defend a lot of them despite knowing I'll just be labeled as an Internet guy looking for some e-v. There's just some things I couldn't hold back from doing despite trying to keep the secret, from defending those gals because I know how they'd feel, girly suspect test alt names and trainer sprite choices, to berating BKC for wanting to grow a ridiculous beard. I didn't want to go through any of the treatment girls usually fall victim to whatsoever, and I knew very well after my first time on Smogon that pulling a Solace and hiding under the mask of a boy at first would be the wisest decision to avoid it from happening. Simply put, if you're "one of the boys" on Smogon, it's much easier to fit in without having to deal with the nonsense that comes with your gender, so that's what I decided to do. Pretending to be a guy is hella easy, and people assuming you're automatically one makes it even easier.

And that's where the facade starts. Because I never revealed my gender to anyone, there was a certain degree of "deception" and "evasion" I had to go through while on Smogon. Denying any Skype call requests, denying requests from my close friends to add them to my Facebook after they retired, showing close friends things like my linkedin, telling people my name was something that it was not when they asked and using emails that reflected the name when needing access to Google documents and the like. Even questions like "Bloo, do you think this girl is hot? Give me your opinion on her" I would avoid because there was a certain degree of discomfort I felt answering. When talking to people on IRC and telling them stories about some of my real life experiences (take relationships, for example), I would have to twist the story a little and tell the story of the girl in terms of the guy. This isn't that easy to do because it involves an annoying and unnecessary amount of fabrication, and I would always have to be careful about being consistent with the things I would say, which isn't always easy and something I've screwed up with before. Regardless, that's what I've done for 7 years now and I've grown used to it, to a certain level where it became routine enough for me to grow good at doing it.

So used to it that I kind of grew an obsession with keeping up appearances on Smogon. Despite hating the Bloo persona in many ways, I grew an obsession with the amount of attention I would always get under Bloo for being really successful as a battler and contributing positively. Attention and praise is always nice, who doesn't like that. Unfortunately, I grew to like it a bit too much despite how annoying being in the spotlight so much was, enough to continue keeping up my facade and doing anything I could to keep it alive. Admittedly, this obsession isn't healthy and has led me to do some things I'm not proud of in the past Pokemon-wise, but I was blinded by and immersed into the persona that grew into a whole different beast that I had trouble controlling, despite knowing it wasn't really who I was truly was.

Pokemon turned into much more than a game for me. It turned into something that legitimately started to effect me on a personal level and emotionally outside of Smogon. I would lose sleep when I lost games that meant a lot to me (take Smogon Tour for example), be upset over them for a week or more. Even after weeks or months, they'd pop up in the back of my head here and there. In addition to this, as my time here progressed, I would genuinely have moments where I would be "depressive" and cry over the fact that I had to twist my stories to keep up a facade in front of people I consider my friends. There was a point where after a year, a female user grew big feelings for me, or I should say the Bloo she looked at as the male figure that showed her the attention she rarely received in life, and I grew extremely uncomfortable with this such that I ultimately made a recording of myself saying certain things to prove to her who I was and to ultimately be truthful to her. This particular incident bothered me a lot, and since it happened, I've always thought about how my facade has been impacting other people, especially the ones I interact with the most. All of this contributed to the by in large negative outlook I have on Pokemon now, and it's largely my fault for burdening and pressuring myself by not being completely honest in the first place, but now that I've written about it and have shown it to people, I feel very liberated. Bottling things up inside of you isn't good for your health, especially when it's for a whole 7 years, and I can definitely say talking about these things has done me some good.

Besides wanting to let these secrets finally come out, what pulled the trigger to make me do it?

The whole incident surrounding OST with Style. For starters, I'm not Style regardless of what you Sherlocks believe. There's a lot of things that bothered me about this whole affair, however, and made me feel enough of a way to leave everything behind me.

To preface, don't take this as me trying to play the victim here. One of the things I believe in a lot in life is forgiveness. To an extent, I always held the belief that people should be given more chances to redeem themselves after doing something foolish. Whenever someone on Smogon got in trouble and they approached me to help them out of it, I almost always did. I can't count the amount of times I've helped people out with their problems when they got in trouble, no matter how ridiculous their action was and how oblivious they were to what they actually did wrong. Whether I talked to you frequently or not, I was usually willing to have your back as long as you weren't super annoying. I was always willing to forgive and give people the benefit of the doubt because it's a belief I operate by. Yet, the one time I am put under fire with this whole OST thing, a lot of of those same people who I backed when they were under fire immediately picked up their forks to try and bring me down. 7 years of contributing mostly positively to the community and helping nearly everyone, all it took was one case filled with circumstantial incidences people could use against me to make all of it mean nothing. Of course, I had friends who stood by my side and showed me support throughout this affair which I appreciate, but regardless of this, it opened my eyes to various things.

Physically calling someone's university club president, contacting real life members who go to a person's school to try and get them to verify the existence of someone who visited a Pokemon event with friends once without having to leave a trace, and joining a Facebook group of a school you aren't part of to try and track someone down: surely you see there's something wrong with doing all of this, no? It's a blatant breach of privacy, and to the people involved, you should realize there's multiple people behind your Smogon computer screen that you're actually making extremely uncomfortable by doing so. What's more de-humanizing than trying to prove a person doesn't actually exist? An e-mail was sent to Style by someone who received it due to a moderator's poor judgement, yet on the same day the e-mail was sent, she saw it and showed Hugo a screenshot of it, and TDs were made aware. Now, let's think. Perhaps Style hasn't been completely honest about some things and there are weird circumstances in everything she's been involved with, but typically when someone makes a "fake e-mail address," they don't check it daily after creating it. This, coupled by the fact that the screenshot actually had a normal "23 unread messages" out of hundreds of hundreds messages displayed in that nifty upper right corner of gmail might actually lead you to believe there's an actual person being affected by the stalking.

But no, instead the people involved decide to ignore everything else and only focus on things they think will incriminate someone while completely disregarding the possibility that they are dealing with a real person and making various others feel wronged. Even close friends of people started to attack the ones they knew for years, all over nothing. I can assure you none of the people involved in doing the stalking would want to be stalked themselves and would want those who tried to breach their privacy punished, yet some of you actually think you're not in the wrong in the slightest for doing what you did, which is honestly mind boggling. Now look at what resulted from it all: nothing but shattered friendships, lost contributors, a distraught community, and God knows how much else. You have a right to think what you want about the situation and the people involved, but there's a certain degree of conduct you should try to carry yourself by when dealing with such a delicate situation, because whether you want to believe it or not, it's negatively affected more than one person on a personal level and all for what? Nothing. I'm no angel myself, but it's things like this that make people view the community in a negative light despite there being many positives Smogon has.

With that said, I'm putting an end to Bloo. Not because of anything that's happened, but for myself. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time, but have failed to because I've grown really attached to the community and had a hard time letting go. I've done everything I could possibly do on this website and there's really nothing left for me to pursue. Maybe I'll regret not finishing off some things like Smogon Tour, but I'm satisfied enough with the battle level I've reached over the years that I don't need anything else. But with this recent incident, I've mustered the motivation to cut out everything holding me back from leaving and finally pull the trigger because of a numerous amount of realizations stemming from why I ever bothered keeping up the existence of a fake me. This is not to say I'm quitting, no. I am simply relieving myself of the things that contributed to turning myself into a negative thinker, and sticking to the things I genuinely enjoy: hanging around the people I know are my true friends and sharing my time with them. You guys know who you are, and I'd like you all to know I always enjoy every bit of time I spend online with you guys, and unlike the past, your perspectives on me are the only ones I'll ever care about now. I'd still like to be viewed as "one of the boys," though, I prefer it. I'm still Bloo after all.

I'm in full blown tears after finishing typing this, but at least now I can finally be myself, and for that I can't be any happier. Shoutouts to Jamvad though, you're literally the only one who called it dude, even if we all talked about it jokingly!