Rin

1) As miserable as it would be to not be able to experience music, I'd probably have to go with deaf. I feel like you can practically work your way around deafness easier than you could work around being blind, thanks to an uncountable number of accessibility tools and the invention of languages like ASL. From a purely practical standpoint, you have more ways to overcome it, I feel. 2) Yor Bjorven would choose absolutely nowhere. Bundled up happily in a small Icelandic city is exactly the place he longs to be, so much so that he tends to get incredibly homesick during road trips. Perhaps there are many places with greater opportunities and experiences, but home truly is where the heart is at the end of the day. 3) I HAVE to put anime recommendations in a question like this-- Frieren and Oshi no Ko are the current one, two punch that I've been onto for a while now. Really hoping the former gets a second season soon. I don't normally go all-out on watching/finding shows though (even anime) so other recommendations would be pretty basic-- Better Call Saul was phenomenal, I've heard a lot of good things about The Bear but still have yet to watch, Mad Men was a phenomenal watch and I really need to get back to my rewatch of it. Avatar: The Last Airbender was a really cute, easy to cut through series that I finally sat down and caught up with lately, and I don't regret it. ----- 1) Would anything ever cause you to primarily root for a different NHL team, or are you a guaranteed devotee for life? 2) The VHL openly considers starting up an All-Star weekend in similar vein to the NFL, where players are put through obstacle courses and dodgeball tournaments. What events would you suggest should be included? 3) What animal makes for the perfect "team/locker room pet" and why?

It really rolls off the tongue, was hard not to turn it down in my head

Transaction ID: 62634084BF8393259 5 uncapped (Claiming 2/2) Free Week Doubles Week (Claiming 2/2)

Player Information Username: Rin Player Name: Yor Bjorven Recruited From: Returning Age: 23 Position: G Height: 75 in. Weight: 238 lbs. Birthplace: Iceland Player Page @VHLM GM

48) A little predictable given the date/timing questions, a little cliche since it's always a big talking point for the NHL and other leagues when the time comes. I think highlighting it even further this year made it noticeably more disappointing when nothing of note happened. 50) Hilariously, I think more roleplay-focused communities would make for a decent recruiting target. It feel like it'd be far easier to convince roleplayers to type out articles or create custom graphics (essentially, do creative homework) than people who are into hockey but not into arbitrary online activities. I always pictured us closer to a complex D&D group or roleplay forum than a "Be a Pro" community or however we marketed ourselves in the past. 51) Sure, I don't see why not. I would want a little more effort to go into the actual advertisements themselves, though, and perhaps a bit more research toward the right creators to approach. The "just like Be a Pro" campaign we had some time ago brought over a LOT of (noticeably younger) people who thought we would be more like the EA NHL games, who then left upon realizing that everything revolved around text-based box scores LOL 53) It's going to be tight, but I think we have the talent to squeak into the playoffs and it's hard to feel bad about that. I think we could truly give any other playoff team a decent run for their money, but it's hard to deny that everything going forward is an uphill battle. 55) I've always loved what is essentially fake hockey. CPU vs CPU, managed by human players that put together rosters and put time into team identities, branding, etc. I love that the VHL is a big community of other people just like that, literally just a whole bunch of us taking up one small role to create something bigger than the sum of its parts. It's also a consistent creative outlet that gets me into hobbies I would otherwise struggle to do on my own, like write or edit photos. 56) No, and I probably never will be again. Around when I first joined, it was a pretty open secret that the league's Discord general chat was the worst way to engage with the community, and that stigma has just passively lived with me ever since. Even if that's changed, I think I'm just entirely exhausted with/over the idea of big Discord servers anyway. If you're not terminally online, discussion is way too easy to miss or keep track of. You could spend hours doing nothing but typing away in conversations that have little staying power unless something controversial or outright rancid was said. For trackability, ease of use, accessibility, respect toward one's time, and even recordkeeping, I feel like forums are far more useful. I'd much rather scroll through discussion threads that get a more thought-out reply every now and then than dozens of instant thoughts being sputtered out as quickly as they're conceived.

Last in a series of sigs inspired by Rin-featured albums, I've finally gotten around to making a sig based on my favorite album cover. Using Hikarisyuyo's "Day's Footsteps" as a reference, we've got a pretty simple design that I honestly ended up putting way too much work into. In all honesty, this would have been one of, if not THE first album I used as reference if I had played for a red team earlier in my career. Now that I'm getting ready to retire Rin and recreate into my fourth player, I really regret not putting a little more into Rin's career than I did. This run was plagued with quite a bit of inactivity, which isn't at all what Rin deserves out of me. It would have been fun to look back at an entire career's worth of album-inspired signatures, but only three ended up being completed (with one of them kept generic because I hadn't found a permanent destination yet). Notably, all three albums chosen were Hikarisyuyo albums, which is remarkably fitting. He's been a consistent producer of j-rock featuring Rin for YEARS, and he works closely with my favorite vocaloid artist in the scene by far- NEGI. I discovered her artwork shortly after getting into vocaloid music as a whole, and her unique art style made it so easy to pick out her work in a crowd. She's done work, officially, for vocaloid/Miku (Crypton being the company at large) a number of times, and I've even been beyond honored to have her draw a fair amount for me through commissioned works. I love how the vocaloid scene is built on the backs of not only musicians and their works, but also the traditional artists that support and help bring their visions and imagery to life. It's why I love collecting physical CDs from various producers-- so much effort goes into the overs, the imagery on the discs, even the little lyric books that are written in a language that I can't read. It's been a pretty alright career for Rin as a depth piece, here's hoping Seattle can add one more cup to her resume. Having her become my first player to win multiple cups would be a wonderful sendoff for someone that holds such a special place in my heart. For fun, the other sigs and their references: And, of course, my favorite song from the album:

Coming back to this with an interesting addition-- totally forgot I have access to Clip Studio Paint, which targets itself as more of a drawing software but happens to have a LOT of the features I'm looking for out of a Photoshop-like tool. I started dabbling with digital drawing late last year (and own a decent enough drawing tablet to supplement that), maybe I can marry two worlds and find something that really works out here.

I feel like it's becoming tradition for me to throw some thoughts like this together in a .com article for 2 TPE, so here's hoping this is the last time it ends up happening. For the majority of Rin's career, I ended up going entirely inactive. I thought it would be fairly easy to at least keep up with boosted welfare and a practice facility click every week, but something about this run really just didn't stick. Even with my player taking the form of someone I really wanted to see succeed, I wasn't able to keep up the motivation to update. Only recently have I returned, and it's mostly because I knew that it would be within reasonable time to recreate and start anew, which is always a fresh and exciting experience. I'm glad Rin has stuck around in the league as a cheap and rather important depth piece for some teams. In my absence, she was able to pick up a Continental Cup victory as a member of the Riga Reign, which means every one of my three players has been a Continental Cup champion. I'm glad that's a streak kept alive, it's about the only modicum of success I could have asked for with a ~500 TPA player. This time around, I really think the VHLE completely killed my momentum and desire to keep updating and checking scores. Now that I've had multiple players hit the bigs and compete at the very top, even returning to the VHLM can feel a little bit dull or "tutorial" -ish. Adding an entire extra year of padding between the M and the pros only increased the impatience and feeling as if what I was doing meant nothing, especially given the situation I was thrown into. Literally the only active player on an actively tanking VHLE team, no locker room or GM interactions to speak of, not giving a remote fuck about results because the story was the same every time; Rin picks up a few points, perhaps, but the team loses because nobody else is playing. Eventually I stopped giving a shit and stopped trying, and when the time came to finally jump to the big leagues, I had already moved on to other things. I'd like to say that I've had really interesting projects going on during that period of inactivity, but I'd be lying. I mostly hung out with friends and bullshitted around after work. I've been introduced to a newer in-person friend group, so I've been transitioning into someone who actually regularly has things to do and people to see (I still don't know if I like it or not LOL). Despite that, I'm still left with a big hole where some kind of creative drive exists, and stupid hockey roleplay with other people on the internet is a fantastic outlet. I really can't wait to recreate and get back into some kind of VHL rhythm. It might be a stupid idea, but I really want to recreate with another goalie. I really, really love goalies and feel like i'd be more likely to fixate on my player if that was the role I played. Here's hoping I'm not overpopulating the position.

Oh no, I'm with you for sure. Even worse where I'm at; it's a tiny company so we're additionally expected to QA, and the boss is so disorganized that we also end up having to become project managers. I'm regularly handed stories that aren't remotely close to done, and am expected to be able to fill in the gaps with assumptions. The other dev on the team is complacent with this, mostly because he's been here for almost 5 years and is so used to this bullshit that he CAN just make the correct assumptions, so now I'm also expected to. Shit is out of control and I'd really like to be somewhere else, but I'm still working fully remotely and can, for the most part, just coast. Super hard to give up.

Not a bad point LMAO I think, thankfully, some of the alternatives are good enough that the bravery isn't required. It's always on the table, though

> Your player needs a pick-me-up mid-game. What's their go-to? Definitely putting the headphones on and plugging in to some kind of up-tempo song to get the blood pumping. For Rin, that's the kind of thing that would never fail to get her going. > Who is your biggest rival in the VHL? I feel like this has rotated constantly between a few fun and not-so-fun answers. I'll still never forget the PT-for-PT rivalry between fellow draft class goaltenders Alexander Pepper and Cole Mertz. These days, it's hard to say I formally have one, especially since I've been back and forth with activity. > Which VHLM franchise is your favourite? It's hard to solidify an answer between the Las Vegas Aces and the Houston Bulls. On one hand, I'm a Las Vegas native who had a hand in updating the Aces logo to what it is today. While it was designed by another member, it was polished a bit and transformed into a vector format by me, and I'm glad to see it still exists in its current iteration. As someone who's from the city, I really like that the Aces name now acts as a double entendre celebrating the gambling culture of the city as well as its rich presence in aviation history. The gambling comparison is easy, but connections that recognize the more diverse history of Vegas will always have a place in my heart. On the other hand, I currently live in Houston, and at this point practically grew up there/have lived here most of my life. I've slowly been feeling more like someone from Houston, rather than a transplant from another city. I served as the inaugural GM for Houston (though it was short-lived due to it taking place during a stressful time), and have a lot of good memories trying to make the best out of that situation. I feel like I really put my all in trying to push the idea of what a VHL(M) team could be. Definitely a fan of both that branding and the memories. > What's something you want to accomplish next on the VHL? While I'm happy to have won a cup with all three of my players, I'd love to finally get one into the HoF. They've all been pretty okay, but the first two definitely felt a little underwhelming for how much I was willing to put into them. Players aside, I might like to take up the helm of a VHLM team again and really try to focus hard on the role of retaining new players/creating a fun initial environment to jump into. During my last few tenures, I feel like I put way too much focus on trying to trade and put together the best team possible in order to win. Nowadays, I feel like it'd be better to keep as many draft picks as you can to make sure you can be competitive just about every season. Enough of the rebuild/all-in attitude, I feel like constantly drafting and maintaining a fun environment that free agents can enjoy will keep you in the picture more often than not. > You had some Chinese for lunch. It's the final 3 minutes of the game, and the score is 3-3. You have to use the washroom so fucking bad. What do you do? You do what you can. Nothing more to it, it just a'int your day. > Who is an underrated hero on Seattle? Is it cheating to give a shoutout to Rin in this scenario? I'm surprised at how much she's been able to hang around and contribute, despite me not funneling in as much TPE as I can. With a little extra push on the way out, I'm hoping she can contribute just enough to be one of the most valuable depth pieces in the league.

Okay cool, that's about what I thought. I'll definitely poke around with both of these options then, surely enough of my paint.net knowledge will transfer over to those to make it an easier transition.

GIMP also happens to support working with .psd files, which is part of the reason I know it exists. I'd entertain learning Photoshop proper, but I feel like it's too expensive to consider for just a small hobbyist thing. It's been a hot minute since I actually looked into pricing, though.

82 shots against, fucking hell LOL

Full stack web dev-- I guess the actual title is Software Engineer but I don't feel remotely in touch with it enough to call myself that LOL

Isn't Photopea entirely browser-based? Curious as to how it feels compared to other options

As I'm preparing to recreate and start dipping yet another toe into graphic making, I've been wondering if I should try and push myself to learn a stronger program than the classic paint.net. It's been more than serviceable thus far, but I feel like learning something more powerful would make graphic making not only faster and easier, but higher quality the more time I put in to actually mastering the software. GIMP is the program I'm most interested in, since it's free and handles .psd file types very nicely, but I was curious to know if others had experience with it, or just general advice to share when it came to making this decision.

Absolutely gorgeous texture on that banner. Really love the presentation

My favorite instance took place like a year after after the Bulls/Reapers fallout in which [Redacted Philly GM] got into a disagreement in a random thread. Someone rushed to join the thread, adamantly defending [Redacted Philly GM] on whatever point was being made. The user that rushed to their aid had literally not logged onto the VHL in 3+ months. They replied to some press conference thread, went inactive for three months, and suddenly appeared in the right thread at the right time to defend their friend. I don't claim to be fully in the right about anything that happened back in those days, but holy shit... at least I didn't start an active simp cult.

Week ending 1/21 1) It's been a hot minute! The Americans are under new management with new general manager @STZ, how are you feeling about the change so far? 2) How did your player spend their offseason? 3) Between signings and callups, the Americans are a fundamentally different squad this year. What do you think was our best area of improvement? 4) What do you look for most in a team captain? 5) It's been a fairly hot start for the Americans, what do you attribute that most to? 6) Be honest-- is New York style pizza the BEST style of pizza? If not, what is?

This was the initial plan- to put it in the red stripe Maybe I'll keep playing around with it, I think that's the right idea