From Monte, to the devs - Apology

Let me start this out by saying that this post shows my emotion and my apology(including my story) in its fullest. I'm not going to attempt to hide the ugliness of my intentions or my actions in the past year/two but I'm also not going to neglect what I (somewhat) thought I contributed to this community. I am far from perfect, and a lot of people perceive me as a person that's sole intention is to manipulate people, so I cannot simply pretend like those people are somehow just blindly disliking me, as I understand your point of view and just wish you a good day without having to see my name or me again.

However after time has passed, and I quit doing anything in relation to ban evasion or alting in the recent short term(6 months or so), I thought after getting notifications still drawing me into situations a statement was appropriate.

I genuinely hold resentment for what I did, but I understand that no one can think of me as someone worth understanding or reading messages from at this point. I, however, would like to come across and say that despite my reputation I am not intentionally attempting to manipulate the facts or your emotions here and I hope everything here can either be double checked as correct, or someone can tell/correct me if I'm wrong about anything factually.

I hold that all with resent alongside my actions, and like my actions all those things are due to my will and my bad decision making. It is my fault, which we have all realized for some time now. I have depression and anxiety, which I am not attempting to use as crutches or reasons, just as context for some of my emotional escapades. Below is my full story, and at the bottom there is a list of contributions I made that I hope had a positive impact on the community- if that's any sort of consolation.

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my story in full, ctrl f if you want to with keywords like beta or just your name
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What I can do is, speak on my emotion, because that's the only thing that people still see me as somewhat human because of. Throughout when I first joined this community, I had one motive. It was to get away from all the drama in the pokemon community(in which I asked to get banned from by posting shock sites in the troll section of the forum, because the drama become such an apparent issue in my life.). I got on the forums and didn't say much, Quote had recently introduced me to the forums himself due to the fact that we both played pokemon and similar metagames and I found an idea on modding this game and I found out he played it too.

I didn't use it for some time. Later on- Quote and I spoke again, which was odd at the time because like the character his name is based upon, he usually didn't have much to say(at least in the OM sub community of Pokemon). He showed me SoldierSunday's stream, showed me the IRC link in the forums. This was roughly late 2014 going on 2015, I was 13 at the time(Late 2001 born).

I started out on the mibbit IRC with few people such as Reimu and SoldierSunday where I said some ignorant stuff and got 4stocked on my first day by Chaunch and Infernape/Sam. Later on I went on to play in my first tournament, it was the first smash tournament I had ever been to and I lost to Auraka and someone else. It was the original X series, tournament 3, after losing to Auraka he gave some encouraging advice. After that I became drawn to that community due to the seemingly perfect atmosphere of friendly competition(from my ignorant perspective).

Later on I met Reverse2Reverb, Dopeness, Samthenigga, Lunary and a couple other people through the kiwiIRC(a chat system in 2015 in the community). I had an elitist view on the way I thought some game mechanics should work, I was exposed to debate at a young age before I could understand most of it so I just went on to repeat the same "Melee only" elitist rhetoric that I had seen in my local scene from the scrubbier players. Anyone on the IRC at the time could tell you I brought some drama when I was online. I was really annoying(not implying this much has changed) also, which was the reason why I had very few friends.

However in the very few people I met, I was basically a random with some opinions who was annoying and talked about melee/beefed with randoms too much. To make it easier to imagine, I was basically Mac except worse at the game and less prevalent in chats. Reverse2Reverb told me about the debacle of switching slack on the forums and how to join as an explanation for "where you been lately dude" when I asked him in private message. This is where a lot of you winded up meeting me from. I saw the forums and was slightly peeved that they wanted to switch and alienate players because the IRC was "too childish"(wasn't totally their intention, they wanted a more presentable and respectable community with control, so the devs had good intentions). Either way I didn't say much about it on public and I went on to join slack.

After I joined slack, I immediately entered this tournament called slackfest which set the tone for the rest of my appearances in that chat. I got salty after losing and somewhat johned and went off on one of the most chill genuinely nice human beings from this community(Reimu). It took the judgement from Reverse2Reverb, who at that point I perceived to be quite close to me and somewhat like a brother(who also beat me in almost every single match we played back then) to calm me down from my complaining. I was pretty rude and odd in the way I talked back then, even moreso than now considering I had no reason to do so at that time. Being immature, young, and having a pretty bad life socially in real life at the time, it's no wonder I acted the idiotic way I did.

I was big on reading on the wiki to educate myself for events I wasn't there for (X1, X2) especially if I just missed them for reasons like school. So after reading up on the gaps in my knowledge and meeting lunary from using both irc and slack, I became a pretty big fan of Lunary. I played him and I uploaded the matches to my youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYKQa_OB1b4 ) with the WORST LAYOUT IN THE HISTORY OF LAYOUTS. I was into graphic design back then as well except I was way worse at it than I am now, but then again most 13 year olds arn't exactly the best at graphic arts. (Minus young spriters like hero and genuinely talented traditional artists at that age). I over extended in terms of how much I thought he considered me his friend and vice versa back then and acted somewhat cringey. This went on until he retired and even afterwards to some extent. He and Reverse2Reverb called me out on my immaturity on my later days on slack and I acted even more immature in return and had a had time handling the reality that I was acting stupid.

At this time I was also pretending to be 27 due to the age I set in the pokemon community when my actual age way too young for a forum system (11 back in early 2013) sticking with me. I was using the same name as I did in the pokemon community so I thought I had to keep the lie of my age the same, and it wasn't until late 2015 that I admitted just how young I was for the first time. However even that was under the guise of an alt, so after I came back from the whole montecide fiasco which I write about later in here, I didn't bother to correct people from thinking I was in my 20s and didn't tell people on my main account and still used a voice changer until one skype call with Miracle--7. He was the first to know, then Chaos0, then others and I saw the judgment for being young wasn't that bad in this community, but my actions were the real cause of the contempt towards me.

Alongside my bad graphic art attempts, odd supposed friendships and my bad layouts there was dumb drama about modding SSF2 also due to me, as I had claimed to find a way to mod before SSF2 mods led by Hero(I genuinely did, but it wasn't nearly as effective and they were way better modders than me back then). This got me introduced to modding and had me get into some dumb skype conversations and already set a bad relationship and friction with Hero and I from the start. My public reputation on slack was getting worse at this time.

Later on I tried to run some tournaments, which failed, and some that went decently for the time. I created the mod for "Melee Wavedash" which was just me searching the code for the Melee Wavedash developer switch in the code in the save data. I shared this in a video and put it on reddit. To give some context, Geno and I always had talks about if I "found melee wavedash" and I liked to talk to tson and geno about the game's code back then because I had aspirations of eventually become a developer later on. I shared my discovery with geno and others and also promised to not give away the save file in the description of the video(although I did share it slowly on the irc to different people). This inspired a wave of new modders at the time, most of which turned out to be somewhat bad at what they did and caused more friction in the community(also due to SSFM, a group I started and made shitty mods in among other things I did in that group, I made bad choices and had hardly any fraction of the programming knowledge I do now so it was a pretty bad test release).

I had gained a reputation as somewhat of a drama instigator and generally annoying human being on slack at this point, so I asked a developer to deactivate me due to my dislike for the environment of the chat and the environment's dislike for me. Slack got better around this time from what I know, so I assume this was a good choice of mine which was rare back then. I tried to create content and mod and was somewhat decent.

Here's a list of some of the more idiotic and odd mod videos(with no download link) I made at the time, they're unlisted and not monetized. Simply posting them here for examples and transparency:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozmet119Zqc (using some sprites from I think Geno to make a meme mod that I think we both enjoyed)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoL2ZhVtlbI (drake over jigglypuff mod)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_58akww4p3s (Goku with a psuedo wavedash nair)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2NOQprEPfE (the original meme version of Super Smash Flash 20xx)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDa8_Ya0_Y0 (naruto without clones)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=790eKNjvRco (really laggy due to my OBS crashing, transformation mod test)

I had an idea for a tournament with a prize pot, and would use a compendium of money donations to start it. However after some personal life drama, recent events in the community caused by idiocy and other factors - I, like many other times in my life, thought of the option of suicide. After leaving a cryptic message on the forums that led to a frenzy of chaos and worry from people with genuine compassion for me at the time I realized yet again like other times in my life, I did not want to commit suicide and end my life early due to the impacts that it would leave on other people. However, I never cleared this up, and one of my friends thought I had legitimately taken my own life in a skype call. https://www.reddit.com/user/CheezyMoon , who posted https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/3lczfl/allssf2_playerto_montecrito_passes_away_via/ . This is the action most people know me for. I had attempted to take my life in the past, however my presence as a public figure made this attempt much worse for the people impacted and hurt the community for some time.

I did not attempt to remedy the situation by clearing it up at first, infact, I was so scared of letting the people down who thought I was dead and so scared of public backlash that I pretended to be who I am not. This started the "alting" trend for me. After this I pretended to be my own cousin which everyone in the community who wasn't overly optimistic saw through in a matter of minutes. I did not attempt to conceal my IP or anything of the sort back then, in fact I acted extremely bratty back then as well. As most of the events in my life turned to garbage at this time and I was just starting high school(year 9 or so for those not in America), I acted even worse until the event hit the peak of the tense drama around late 2015. I turned 14 I think and after having an open talk with TSON in private, I decided it was time to stop abusing this community with this lie and opened up about it(despite people already knowing it was a lie). This caused more of a shitstorm in the community and I still had not solved my attitude issues at the time.

For the most part, my actions over the next couple of months at this time are history. I made multiple videos attempting to help the community, I made alts to respond to my own fake attempts of quitting, among other things. I had good intentions in a lot of these circumstances, I am not going to lie and say I was entirely innocent but I still had no real gripes with the devs at this point.



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leaks situation
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Late into 2015/Early into 2016 I was introduced to the beta Sora in a skype call with some people who shall not be named, it did not include Chaos0 as he found out much later. I did not get the file as early as other people did. One person in the group told me to troll the facebook group with reused pictures of beta Sora. I did this for a while to troll and quickly realized how stupid this was and how much the developers disliked it even if it had no download and it had no association with new content.

Shortly after that, around spring, months after I forgot about the situation and deleted the initial copies of the DATs. I made a stupid comment to 135 about getting his appdata. I knew it wouldn't result anything, but I wanted to see the appdata to see if it would reveal anything new about beta or anything of the sort. It of course failed, and my intention wasn't to get beta itself but to find new information to keep me entertained. TSON later confronted me about asking for appdata and thought that hero and I both had full beta copies or were looking to get some. I told him I claimed not to associate with hero and didn't talk to him.

At the time, this was true. I had not really talked to hero much and if anything it was just to be a relatively inactive member of SSF2 mods that basically did nothing but chill there and ask hero to post certain things whenever I wasn't able to on slack(like my combo video or a reddit thread) and talk to Micbro, who is amazing at programming. However, around this time someone also sent me screenshots of beta mega man in private messages on slack and sent me the file to it. After talking to them and two others, I realized that hero was slowly leaking to others.

Around this time, I also hit TSON back up about his claim and told him that if I helped them solve the whole beta leaks case that he should leave me alone about it and help my name with the devs a bit. He agreed somewhat to this, so I invited him to the SSF2 Modding Discord. He went undercover as "Transmission", and I made plenty of jokes by calling him Trans and things of that sort. The friendship I perceived myself to have with TSON at the time was mostly a close one that was brought together by both of our interest in programming. I had somewhat thought of him as sort of a brother to me due to the fact that he gave me very little stress despite all the bad choices.

Through this time period, a lot of things were awkward for me. I wanted to become close to hero as to "solve the case" of who leaked it to him, who I later found to be Lisnovski. However, as two friends actively encouraged me to do, actively coercing him to give more files of beta to give back to the circle that gave me the initial beta files quickly became my intent. So I had two intentions and wanted to profit off of both in some way or another, which was extremely messed up and warrants the backlash that it did.

I also ended up getting extremely mad at what I percieved hero to do and cursed him out in private messages after actively having him instigate with me in Discord private message which went deleted and forgotten. This was extremely considering we're both extremely young and nobody honestly deserves to die. It was too emotional and genuinely disgusting the way I acted towards him in that moment.
After I was permanently banned due to my actions, I leaked three beta character file DATs. I also leaked a video(which had the aspect ratio ruined, not due to the fact that I was hiding the skype chat, but because my OBS desktop recording settings were on the aspect ratio for my Dolphin melee capture).

However there are some issues with the versions of the stories being spread right now. I didn't and still do not have the full version of beta, I had four files. I did not tell Hero to say those things he said in the video, there is no evidence pointing towards this. I agreed with him on some things and I disagreed with him on a lot of others. The video was originally taken to show devs that he had beta in the first place and went unlisted for months, his commentary hating on some of the developers was just a consequence of capturing unadulterated thoughts of someone who probably does not hold those feelings any more.

Also after my ban I started a private chat (Not the IAF slack, which is the chat RemPrower and I shared back in 2015 which is the one I encouraged him to get online on). In that chat we skype called a lot, we talked about the situation with the devs and other issues. Afro actively captured this chat however he chose to left out some of the more mundane things, as I doubt there would be any point to it. The chat was mostly filled with the air of feeling abandoned and abused by the power of the system of the devs, and a discontent for the way the bans were carried out and the lack of general transparency at the time.

In this aforementioned chat, I had threatened to come up with a plan to "expose MG/the devs" for all they had done and manipulate the voting system on reddit to promote such a video. I was talking about r/smashbros, and the video would be about the actions the devs had actually taken, not lies, and what we felt about it as fans who had loved the series for years(and out of all of them, I was the only one that actually deserved to be publicly ostracized, which made their discontent for the situation even worse). This was all tough talk, we had no means or detailed plans to carry it out. Most of us liked SSF2 too much and it was just venting, I lied about this when 135 questioned me if it was real, to protect the integrity of the chat and the people that used it. Afro captured the words spoken in the chat, but what he did not capture is the emotion that resonated with the group of seemingly abandoned individuals with no where to turn to but places they're banned from.

Months ago I had a quick run through of the chat itself, we were like family just keeping together and telling each other a lot about what went on. I used a fake profile picture from the same person who had allowed me to use their pictures in my initial age-faking when I pretended to be 27 in case the chat had doxxing or public exposure of any kind.

Here is the video of the chat from a couple months ago, I genuinely considered most of these people to be good friends of mine. I did not think I was manipulating them and they convinced me to do some things as well.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yvR4l-Y3h8


Overall I regret the choices I made, however I've made too many mistakes and have been too present in this community for "sorry" to ever be enough. So I wanted to say it in a way that more fits the length of my issues, by having a long post. I do feel for the devs and I know it won't ever be the same and I won't be able to recover the friends I once made out of the dev team(RemPrower, 135, TSON) and those who I had hoped to be more chill with in the future(Starkiller, Zero Insanity, and despite my unreasonable vitriol towards him, Aegis).

Below I have a list of all the editing and contributions I've done for the community, just so you guys can know that despite how awful I am as a person and all my bad actions, I was not entirely worthless to this community. Or should I say, I hope not.

List:
https://inaflashssf2.wordpress.com/ old test wordpress for a content creation Crew for ssf2
http://209tournies.challonge.com/ my tourney hosting organization where I wanted to host several tournies for the community in 2014/5
http://challonge.com/users/monte_ssb the tournaments I've entered and hosted for this game, for better or for worse
http://smash.gg/exodussf2 first smash.gg SSF2 tournament, somewhat new and inventive for the tournament scene but it wasn't the greatest tournament and I did quite a bit of things wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBSq4-TDoiY An interview with Traweezie for a planned documentary about SSF2, like the smash doc, the audio was going to be used for the Doc but it never did
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS7ceCXGF3w a player documentary series I was going to do about Gax, the audio mixing is bad but this is the first test episode featuring Gax
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXdrJhtBExM unlisted extra of that same documentary episode
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMid6D3w2Zk ASCEND community combo video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw42kO0HFIA Joke video of a replay of TAC3 fighting the goku CPU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WZy-cL3BsQ - ssf2 sheik community combo video, all the editing done by me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J7pDGiz1o8 SSF2 community combo video, editing done and credited as Solarise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxc--SNDpzQ Flashback pt.2 ReEdit test as Solarise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L8qS3bnm7M&t=39s thumbnail for the m7kyoz synnergy video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pKocsx4cqU the editing for the NA vs JP crew battle, edited by me no credit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08-gvu9Mqro&t=10s Smash Island S3 II highlights, edited by me with no credit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRkUbtd8kPw edited and credited as Solarise on Incinerate's combo video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heu2xxZbXwA Oligarchy of SSF2 trailer, credited as solarise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CakV71eDWD0 Marvin combo video editing, credited as solarise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV79QIoGSuc - a mediocre/bad trailer for an ssf2 tournament - Big Finish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5jWgk1Fh-8 ssf20xx release trailer
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA0L2jcwgLo prerelease trailer for 20xx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNaYaYaJBe8 in a flash intro and logo which took a while to ever be completed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz6ha80SesY melee airdodge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2VX7oRsCIM shield dropping mod
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vfpUtTQCBk informative vid about spotdodging through shinegrab, which some marths still don't do
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ei79JeUVwo the layout for elevated, an invitational that never happened
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzLvDT1KQu8 did the editing for a combo video of Zair's
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebk5VvqdvYI the trailer for exodus, the first ever ssf2 tournament on SMASH.GG, hosted by me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygJTZnG0xFs the replay fast forwarding mod which has yet to be released and most likely won't ever be