Sadie Babbles: My VHL Experience So Far

[sadie 937]

It is time to babble for a minimum of 500 words, as I await the cease-and-desist letter from Kirby Rambles Inc. Last time I did this kind of overall reflection, it was December 2022 and I had only been in this league four months. So I feel like it's probably a good time to do another reflection like this, having finished an entire career and done a lot more in the VHL.

 

The Beginning: I found the VHL by complete random chance through a YouTube video and was hooked by the ad (good job recruitment team!), so I made an account and created Sadie St-Louis. It was of course still the era of GMs pitching their team in the create-a-player thread and @jacobcarson877 simply got to me first. I think the Marlins LR environment was one of the biggest reasons I stayed around, and it had a lot of active people which made it feel more comfortable getting into conversations and getting to know people. One of my biggest recent concerns has been the relative emptiness of the two VHLM locker rooms I am a part of compared to what that first experience was for me. For instance, when I joined the Lynx after player creation, me and @kirbithan were the only players there aside from our goalie until we had more created players come in later. I think this merger of the VHLE with the VHLM should fix that problem, though. Anyways the VHLM felt really exciting the first time I went through it, given how prolific St-Louis was and how much fun it was talking to teammates even on days where we might have lost by a lot. I'm really looking forward to seeing it return to that level again, and I'm happy to have another great gm @Grape in the second run.

 

The JST was also a major reason those first seasons really sucked me in; even aside from the lower TPE level needed to be a top level player, the enthusiasm shown by the GMs, who were all very clearly excited and invested because most of them were new-ish users doing it for the first time, and if not they were fantastic anyway. I definitely think the offseason tournaments are one of the best things the VHL does and enable meeting other users you might not cross paths with otherwise.

 

I was drafted into the VHL and VHLE in S86 and it was a really fun experience- I think the draft streams are tremendous and very fun to listen to and the draft offseasons where you get an opportunity to chat with each GM (bonus points for more personal interviews) are awesome as well. @MubbleFubbles took me in the E draft and I spent my only VHLE season ever with the Vikings. Mubbles was a terrific GM and was always so helpful with any questions and I am glad to have spent a season up in the E with Stockholm. I was pretty shocked when I heard Mubbles cheered for England but I am willing to look past it. @hedgehog337 took both me and @OrbitingDeath  in the VHL draft (definitely not in that order) and Riga was an absolute blast. I spent years there and everything was super fun and I continued to produce graphics and writing at a great rate and essentially max earned up until about S91 if I recall.

 

Burning out and the latter half of my career: Before I talk about burning out, I feel it important to mention that I made the playoffs every single year of my VHL career, and didn't win a round until S93 (where we won a cup). I lost in the first round we played in for all of my first 6 playoff appearances, and that's excluding the choke of a 3-0 lead in the first round of the VHLM playoffs to the eventual champions, Philadelphia. I feel like that's just kinda insane. Also thank you Bana for assembling a cup winning team! Ok, back to the point. I was traded to Calgary prior to S91 and it happened to coincide with school starting to pick up which put the VHL second for me. Writing for the VHL when I knew I had so much other stuff to take care of was not something I could bring myself to do, and I felt pretty bad because @Ricer13 surely traded for the max-earning, model first-gen version of Sadie St-Louis, and not the one who was barely active (sorry Ricer). It's unfortunate because although I spent little time in it, I certainly got a sense of the high-caliber GM Ricer was and the amazing environment that was the Calgary LR. I made a graphic during my two seasons on the Wranglers and I think it may have been the only PT I submitted while on the team. I basically never was able to recover the same earning routine for the rest of St-Louis' career, which I do regret, because she did play two seasons even after leaving Calgary. After that Calgary graphic, I only created 5 more topics in my career- a St-Louis Seattle graphic, a Lachlan Summers graphic, a theme week, a career reflection, and a .com. That's such little output from me over 219 days, and if you know me, you know I put up 2 topics a week consistently unless I have a bigger article I am claiming. I just found it really hard to regain form after losing it and at some point I just resolved to make a fresh start with Brandon Petan Jr. I got to understand better why people retire just to have a fresh start because it feels like you lose out on a lot of enjoyment from your current player, as well as performance (I think St-Louis dipped down to the 40s in points after recording 87). I was so out of it I wasn't even consistently clicking welfare, which is unreasonably easy. I was slightly more active in my last two seasons; I did pop in and say things sometimes while on the Bears, particularly during the Cup run. Again, I got to see a great GM in @Banackock, even if I was only watching from the sidelines, really. At the beginning of S94 I was traded to Davos and spent a productive 10 games there, in which I was shockingly a point per game before getting flipped to Riga. I can't mention all my other GMs and not give a nod to @Alex despite only spending 10 games with him though. Alex is one of the people I see most active on the forum with a lot of VSN drafts/power rankings and from everything I've heard from others and experienced myself he is great like the rest of my GMs. My last one was @Lemorse7 the red panda legend, and I was much more involved than any of the prior three seasons, I think partially because it was St-Louis' final run and also because I was back on Riga, the only VHL team I really was active on and was deeply involved with. I had a blast despite the loss to the Menace in the conference finals but was happy to see Moscow's curse break. I had of course recreated at the TDL, and now I daresay I'm one of the more active users around here again!

 

Biggest positives:

- Acceptance

I know there's already been writing on the topic of being a girl in the VHL, and I must say it doesn't seem to make any difference here whatever and whoever you might be. This league is generally overwhelmingly accepting, although I certainly have seen a few individual members go against that. Needless to say, those situations were dealt with quickly. It's nice that the users in this league are so non-judgemental when it comes to that kind of thing, or at the very least are respectful enough to hold their tongue about it!

- Community

One of the nicest things about this league for me is that it's so incredibly niche. I mean I totally do wish we had more people and want the league to grow but the nicheness of sim leagues and that particular style of sports really just makes a nice community of people who at the very least have this in common. It's small enough that I recognize most names I see when I browse the forum and have a good idea of their player and engagement in the league, but big enough that I can join a new team and have fun talking to the people around me. The duality of having the forum and discord is really cool because I might know someone from their more official forum posts submitted for TPE but on discord you'll hopefully get to know the person behind that at least a little. And undeniably I have made good friends that I'd be friends with even if I ceased all VHL activity, which makes it all worth it anyway.

- GMs

I already told you all of the GMs I had up in the big paragraph of babbling but it makes the league so much more engaging to have GMs who will hype everyone up after a win, express interest in how you are doing in life in general, recognize players in unique ways, etc. I might just be extremely fortunate to have had such good ones, but I think they're for the most part all great from what I can tell. Also @Shindigs to this day has given me the best draft interview out of every GM ever and I hope he reappears one day.

- Portal

This is a less personal one, but having such an awesome and accessible place to find all the information you might need about makes this league so much more engaging and thank you to anyone and everyone who worked on implementing it and continue to put great adjustments out.

 

Biggest negatives:

- Simon

Fuck you Simon. I just want to know what I did to you for you to treat me this way

- When LRs get emptier

I kinda talked about this at the beginning but to reiterate, an empty locker room is the absolute worst thing for retention to me and I am really glad we are fixing a lot of this problem with the merger this offseason so good job everyone on making that happen.

 

Future:

- GMing

My sights are set on a GM job now, anywhere they happen to be opening up. I think I will be able to do a very good job, although it may take me a while to be selected for something due to all the other people who've been waiting longer (or the poor E gms who don't have a team any more). I've now GMed a JST and a WJC and won them both and finally learned how to do lines! Really excited to become more involved than I already am.

- VSN

Basically the whole time I've been in the VHL, I've been able to write a whole lot about the league, and generally early on that was mock drafts and fantasy analysis. I think for VSN I will have fun delving into areas of the VHL I am less familiar with, given that I only joined the league in S84 and have only ever known a league with hybrid attributes and the VHLE. I wrote 8000 words recently and I think if I can do that on a single draft year, I shouldn't have too much trouble putting stuff out for any VHL topic.

- I want to play on a VHL team with @kirbithan

2 years and counting, hopefully it happens soon

 

Anyways that was FAR too many words and more than I thought it would end up being. I'm looking forward to the upcoming VHL draft and also making a run for JST title #2 as Royals GM! Thanks for reading if you somehow managed to read all the way to here!

 

Spoiler

word count: 2020

 

[sadie 937]

claim for week ending 29/9 (2 of 4)