Hi!

I'm not sure how many people are actually interested in this sort of thing, but I'll use this space to give you an introduction and history in the art of being Dikarika.

It all started, apparently, back in March of 2007. I was known as S1GN4LM4N back then. I was just like most other white belts: confused and amazed, all at once. Back then, there was registered and unregistered servers. After a short play as unregged, I paid happily to Nabi studios to receive a registration key.

It was soon after my registration that the introductory call for the first clan league was going around. Ian, the hoster of the event, had this crazy idea to allow non-clan teams to participate. The venerable and enigmatic Spaztic_One was the lone man trying to form a team to compete against the established clans. He happily took me in, as well as a few fantastic teamates: kw0mp, Gov_Cheese, Imubai, and Mosier. We barely had enough members to compete, but what we lacked in numbers, we made up in hunger.

We had won our first match. It was quite the upset. Most of the competeing clans looked down on us, and others did even more than that. Through all this though, we had won that first week fair and square. We were on our way.

Second week, not so much. The team seemed to suffer a communication breakdown, and a lack of organization. I think only myself and Mosier showed up for week two. (I might be wrong...) I couldn't stand by and watch my team fall apart. So, I did what I though needed to be done: I wrested control of team [PSP] from Spaztic_One and made myself its leader. Its funny, Spaz actually seemed to prefer it this way.

I kicked everybody's ass back into line and PM and messaged everybody constantly to get psyched to play. We went back to our winning ways, and made it into the semifinals. Quite an achievment for a batch of un-clanned noobs! Eventually we got ourselves a solid third place. Not bad, indeed...

[PSP] seperated and went seperate ways. I followed Spaz and Mosier into [Guru]. It was a new clan, formed under Javagamer and B-rad, co-lead by Lancer_c and fiercly gaurded by their recruiter; 1,000,000. This was by far, the hardest recruitment test I've ever had. Mill slaughter me from sunup until sundown (or so it felt). I was sure I didn't have the chops to join...

Luckily, my charming personality and clever wit (also, I make a wicked Salmon flavored dessert cake) got me in. Around this time, I started messing around with the old toribash_server program, and set it on an old PC I had laying around. The "S1GN4LM4N Server", as it became known, was a popular hang out for unregs, because it allowed them to play modes online that the free demo servers didn't allow. It took some work to get there (altering the server.ini) but many thought it was well worth it.

After some time of lazily playing and messing around with server modes (I had many custom modes for my old server, some of which are in the custom gametypes thread...), I caught on to a thread announcing a competition hosted by Mahatma. He had this fantastic idea to hold a competiton, the prize being a free registarion key. I loved the idea, but I didn't quite like his method. (He was going to parse the days worth of matches, and key went to the player with the most wins.) I decided a simple series of knockout tournaments would be far more suitable.

I held a few knockout tournaments for registration keys. Some were successful, others were not so much. The winners were always greatful and excited to be registered, winners like: Korvin, Drakhir, d[1]mka, and others whom I don't remember quite as well (sorry...). It was an amazingly fun time, but very different from today's knockouts. I had no knockout mode, no scripts, no mute. Just me, a handwritten bracket sheet, and some willing participants. It was awesomely simple and increadibly complex all at once. Great times though.

Around this time, I had changed my name from S1GN4LM4N to Dikarika. Dikarika was a name I had used many other times in prior online games. I had initially chosen not to use it, but was steadily becoming frustrated with typing S1GN4LM4N over and over (its much harder than Dikarika...). The change was made, and it stuck.

I had a "falling out" with Guru. In a moment of late night thought, I had determined that clans were more an activity of division than of community. I had also convinced Mosier of this foul thought. Because of this, we were both eager to quit. Then, after realizing what we had done, tried to rejoin. Mosier was reaccepted, I however, was not.

Lucily, bouncy came by and swooped me up.

I have no idea why or how. Sure, Lucidess had taught me how to wushu, Mahatma was an inspiration, and Ishi, Dafe, and others were constant opponents. But I had no idea they had any interest in me. Ultimately, I actually didn't stay. I'm actually not 100% sure of the order. I was in [ToD] very briefly (I think, anyway...), Toxic/Evolution (I created the [eVo] tag they use today!), and [m] (The greatest toribash clan ever formed!).

Eventually, I came back to bouncy. Its home, for now anyway. I've been having thoughts to go out and try new things once again. Hopefully Ishi won't mind...

I skipped over quite a bit: SIGN4LM4N Server's eventual failure and downfall, Second Clan league and the [m] screwjob, the [ToD] screwjob from the first league, but its a bit late, and I've gone too long already.

For the tl;dr crowd, here is a rapid synopsis:

Started as S1GN4LM4N
[PSP] clan league noobs but finished third
Private Server / key tournaments
Name changed to Dikarika
Joined Bouncy
Left Bouncy
Joined Bouncy
Joined Bromo-team

Got it?

Good.