In four years, Smogon had completely revamped its frontend and forum software. Yet for me, the only real change to my avatar is my choice of subject—from a canon Ninetales to Kitsunoh, one of Smogon’s CAP designs. I even stick to the decade-old technology of Microsoft XP Paint and a mundane Dell mouse. (That’s how static I am, apparently!) Regardless, I consider the change of character significant for multiple reasons. I only have 200 words, though, so I will be brief about my reasons.

• New pixel art shows my continued work as a pixel artist.

• A CAP design shows my contributions to the CAP Project.

• Kitsunoh’s natural colors are desaturated compared to the bright colors of my existing avatar, fitting tradition.

• A fiery fox to a ghostly fox indicates my once-active online presence is now a ghostly, inactive one. However, a ghost is not, colloquially, ‘dead’.

To add to clarity, I added a custom title that showed I was moribund. While other badgeholders frequently use their title, I had intentionally neglected mine. Adding a title lets my audience recognize that I had a particular purpose for finally assigning a title and that its content is significant!

Effect