Hey, hi, hello, it's me. Samsara. I'm very bad at talking about myself!

I haven't felt like rewriting this part yet! Feel free to skip! I won't judge!!! Pun probably intended!!!

I've been on TASVideos for over half of my life, joining in November 2006 as a dumbass 16 year old, but only starting to TAS consistently in 2014 as a dumbass 24 year old. I became a Judge in October 2015 before stepping down in November 2016 after my personal life bashed me over the head with a sledgehammer. I had a meltdown and got banned left willingly and completely on my own so I could recover, returning three years later on July 10th, 2020 to a somehow warm and welcoming reception despite... everything. I returned to judging exactly one month later, on August 10th, 2020, then proceeded to change basically everything I didn't like about the site through sheer determination, force of will, and also many many other people also didn't like those things so I didn't actually have any opposition. I then became Senior Judge on January 1st, 2022, the same day we premiered the revamped site, and became the third Admin on April 23rd, 2023. As of March 17th, 2025, I have finally stopped hogging Senior Judge and am now just Site Admin, a role that completely encompasses the permissions of Senior Judge anyway.

As of roughly June 2024, I've been on an indefinite forced hiatus acting as a full-time caretaker to an ailing family member, having little time, energy, or happiness to spare for TASVideos. Needless to say, my personal life has decided the sledgehammer wasn't enough and upped the head trauma game to the cerebral bore from Turok 2. I haven't left the site completely, I still lurk as often as I can and try to handle things as they reach me, but I'm far more limited now than I was when I was keeping a steady streak of getting promoted every year and a half. Hopefully things will get better for me soon. I miss being around.

I tend to do games that catch my attention in some way. I've done a few games from my childhood, but most of what I do tends to be obscure, but interesting games that often don't make it overseas. I have a soft spot for games considered "weird", "bad", or even "downright terrible". I like challenging myself with complicated TASes at times as well.

My personal philosophy towards TASing is that the barrier to entry should always remain low. I've maintained for close to a decade now that the only "skills" or "tools" required to create a quality TAS are patience and Google; i.e, the ability to find information and the time it takes to implement it. It pains me a little to see others present TASing as requiring more than that, whether it be people outside of the loop mistakenly thinking it's more complicated than it actually is, or worse, longtime TASers trying to convince newcomers that they're required to learn and use every possible tool at their disposal. warmCabin said it best: You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.

Or, "A Long Speech About A Role I Shouldn't Have Had For Two Years Because Having It Alongside Being An Admin Made It Effectively Irrelevant For Me". A less intelligent Samsara would have posted this whole thing in the staff post, completely taking the spotlight away from ikuyo's appointment. Good thing I'm just barely sentient enough to not do that!

Recent events, both in my life and on TASVideos, have confirmed that I'm not currently capable of performing the role in the way I want to. I see the role as being a leader, an open and welcoming bridge between TASVideos as a content provider and the community that provides that content. I've really only been able to operate inconsistently and quietly from the shadows as of late, definitely not up to my own personal standards of what I want the Senior Judge role to be. Even then, I'm finding it harder to perform behind the scenes work as well. I've lacked confidence, I've lacked energy, and most importantly I've lacked Not Having Social Anxiety. I'm a closed bridge at the moment, which admittedly is much better than the burnt bridge I used to be, but it's still nowhere near what the community needs out of this role.

On top of that, I've held onto the role longer than I should have. I've been an Admin for about two years now, and that role completely encompasses the privileges and permissions of Senior Judge. Since I'm remaining Admin, the Senior Judge role is effectively ceremonial while I still have it. I was using it as a way of indicating that I'm still the top person to go to for judgement or rule-related matters. While that worked out well enough over the time I was still consistently active, I could never shake the feeling that I was hoarding a role that someone else could have and should have been performing in my stead, and I wouldn't be surprised if many others felt the same. Hell, even TASVideos itself wasn't too happy with it: At one point, me having both roles actually uncovered a bug in the site's permission system that left me unable to access the site for a couple days.

The main reason for me keeping it so long amounts to a lot of bad timing. I had always intended on passing off the role, hence "acting" Senior Judge, but things kept coming up to prevent me from being able to pass on the role. For context, I originally became Senior Judge on the same day that we launched the new site: January 1st, 2022. 2022 saw us breaking our yearly submission record for the first time since submissions opened in 2004, surpassing that number by nearly 100 submissions. In response, we appointed five new Judges at the beginning of 2023, which just so happened to completely shatter our brand new submission record by about 250 submissions. I became the third Admin just a couple months after bringing aboard the new Judges, so I didn't feel it was quite right to pass off Senior Judge in the middle of both training five new Judges and dealing with what was effectively a doubled submission rate from what the site had ever seen before. My personal life issues then started picking up near the end of 2023 and it has kept me pretty detached from the site ever since, not just in terms of physically keeping me away but also causing me to keep myself away for fear of my negative mood causing issues. Only recently have I started managing to actually get some time and positive energy back, which means that not only should I actually be around more often instead of constantly promising it and not delivering, but I can finally pass off Senior Judge in good conscience and take that weight off my mind, knowing it's safe in capable hands even if I do end up not delivering on that promise again.

Thankfully, I think the site itself is also at the point where I feel completely safe passing the role over. Submissions have slowed from the record high of 2023 and we're no longer making sweeping changes every couple weeks, so I don't feel like I'd be throwing anyone to the wolves anymore. Even if I did still feel like that, I'm definitely no longer underestimating the team in the same way I believe I was over the past year of absence and personal life BS, which I can't apologize enough for. Sorry, y'all. The current team has been absolutely crushing it on judgements and decision making in my absence. It's a damn good feeling to look at the entire field for a replacement and have my only "negative" thought be that a couple of them are too new and need a little more time to settle in.

Thank you for reading this speech. If you want to know why I wrote it: I'm Samsara.

This list hasn't been updated in years, someone remind me to do that when I'm free.

Move to the new site broke this section! Will be remaking someday!