Sarah Hagan

The story behind my May sub badge, emotes and "waifu pic" is this:

In 2014, members the Pokemon speedrunning community began questioning the legitimacy of several world record runs. Their suspicion was based in part on the fact that the runs were done on emulator, which is much easier to cheat on than console. Werster, the most prominent community member at the time, posted a thread requesting an emulator ban: http://forums.pokemonspeedruns.com/viewtopic.php?t=298

In that thread, he cited a YouTube video by "Sarah Hagan" that claimed to be a WR run of Pokemon Red any% glitchless: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUBUmVc7MK4. Sarah's avatar is the May picture I use as my sub badge, and the picture I occasionally display on stream. The run itself was obviously cheated (huge unnecessary risks taken, input speed resembled a tool-assisted run). It was also clearly made by Werster himself, as it was uploaded from Australia and showed techniques that only Werster and I knew about (among other tells).

The fact that Werster cited his own cheated run in order to prove his point should have stopped the discussion right there, but it was glossed over in favor of a largely uncivil debate, which resulted in the "soft ban" on emulators that exists to this day (emulated runs are allowed, but not considered "WR"). The emulator ban hasn't been all bad, as there are legitimate concerns with emulators, and the community has been much healthier since then, but it still happened in a ridiculous manner.

As the months progressed, Sarah Hagan evolved into a community meme. There were dumb rumors ("Werster banned emulators because his record got beaten by a girl!"), general silliness and a Twitch account named Sarah_Hagan that trolled Red runners' chats for a few months. Most of it was in good fun, but it spoke to a larger, unaddressed issue: that a top speedrunner was able to force the community's hand on an important issue by means of cheating. I keep the image of "Sarah" partly as a reminder of that, and partly as a parody of the gaming community's obsession with "waifu pics."

I don't mean to start drama or ruin Werster's name (he's actually an amazing runner, we all have flaws, and we move on from past mistakes). It's mostly a fun meme that happens to be a nice picture.  :)