Archaic

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Liam Pomfret, better known as Archaic, is the current head of Bulbagarden.

His aliases (that he feels alright with others being aware of) include:

• 昔 Mukashi, a translation of Archaic into Japanese;
• 折橋 守 Orihashi Mamoru, a translation of Liam Pomfret into Japanese, and the name he goes by amongst friends in real life;
• 岩橋 守 Iwahashi Mamoru, an older variant of the above; and
• GirafarigBG

He is also occasionally known as Arcy, Archie, ムカちゃん Muka-chan, and as of late, 守くん Mamoru-kun.

Real world information

Archaic was born in Gosford, New South Wales, Australia, on the 8th of November, 1984. His family moved to Brisbane in 1988, where he lived until February 2004. Spending a year living in Nagoya, Japan, studying Japanese language, culture and economy at Meijō University, he returned to Brisbane in March 2005.

As of 2005, Archaic was completing his final semester of a degree in International Business (Japanese Language Specialization) at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane.

Besides his obvious interest in Pokémon, Archaic is a self-professed Otaku, with a large collection of Japanese language manga and dōjinshi numbering in the hundreds of volumes, and has had minor experience in both fansubbing and scanlation.

Despite winning the state championship for Pokémon Snap in 2001, Archaic has still yet to catch a 10,000 point Mew on film.

On December 25th, 2008, Archaic proposed to Kasumi, and the two are currently engaged.

Early history in the fandom

Archaic apparently first learnt of the Pokémon anime through a young Japanese exchange student whom his family was hosting for a period, sometime in mid to late 1998, though it seems he was aware of the games from before then.

He first joined the online Pokémon fandom under a name he still refuses to disclose, back on the original UPN forums in mid-November 1999, registering as Archaic on Christmas Eve of that year. He soon afterward became involved in the various Shipping discussions raging at the time, having already become interested in the subject through his original introduction to the anime (via the Ghost of Maiden's Peak episode he saw at that time), and the original English AAML site, and having already converted to PokéShipping from GymShipping due to the results of a now long forgotten debate with a long forgotten debate opponent.

While it would be wrong to say that he made any friends during this early period, partially due to his limited schedule of online days (every second weekend, and every wednesday), he did become well known amongst Shippers and other anime fans.

Shortly after the creation of the original Shippers forum at UPN, he founded the OPS, together with several other major PokéShippers of the day, and proceeded to spend most of the next 6 months debating Shipping, taking the time out only to create the rumor of Ash catching a Pink Rhyhorn in an Orange Islands episode (thanks to his rather poor translation skills at the time), and to participate in the second ASB battle ever (which he proceeded to lose to Farfetcher by default following a slipup with moves).

While he did become a founding member of the UPN PASBL upon its establishment (as well as the person who named it that in the first place), and both a champion and gym leader in the league, ASB remained a secondary focus to Shipping up until the death of the original UPN, and the restrictions on his Internet access being removed.

Shipping

While not really an active player in the shipping community for several years now, Archaic remains a significant figure in it, and is still considered by some to be somewhat of a defacto-leader (if perhaps a figurehead one) of PokéShipping debaters. Technically, he remains President of the Official PokéShippers, however this club has not had any elections conducted since 2001, and can be considered largely inactive.

Together with Murgatroyd, SAMAS and The Mysterious Blue Hiker, Archaic was responsible for creating the General Rebuttal of PalletShipping, which brought an end to the great OPS/PI debates at the end of 2001.

As the original archivist of The (In)Complete List of Shippers, Archaic can be credited for having named a significant number of ships. Some notable and controversial ships he has named/created include:

• BostonShipping
• DildoShipping
• FantasyShipping
• SpankthemonkeyShipping

PASBL

Archaic is one of the founding fathers of Anime-style battling, having participated in the 2nd ever battle ever held, and being a founding member of what became known as the UPN PASBL, or UPNetwork Pokémon Anime Style Battling League, the first ASB league to be established on any forum.

(More to come)

Bulbagarden

(To come)

Related

• User:Archaic