Have you ever seen someone with a gold name in chat and wondered who they are? Every RPF Legend has a story, and this is the twenty-fourth edition of the Vet Spotlight column, where we take you back in time to tell the story of our esteemed veterans! Today, we’re telling you the story of our veteran, Twitchy543.
Twitchy’s journey in armies began not in RPF, but rather a S/M army called Red Raiders Warriors in 2008 being recruited by a friend of a friend.
From there he joined other armies too such as Underground Mafias Army, Army of Club Penguin, Nachos, and Roman Fire Warriors.
UMA Era
He joined every major army at the time to find the place that fit him best. It wasn’t uncommon for people during that time to be multi-enlisted. He was an Officer in UMA around mid-2009.
Twitchy shifted to show more focus on them during this time, but also remained enlisted in several other armies primarily ACP, Nachos, and RFW.
In the Autumn of 2009 he was promoted to Second-in-Command. Where he started to gain more leadership experience.
From there he ended up leaving UMA due to leadership changes and in-army conflicts so he shifted his focus to ACP and RFW.
Shifting Focus
In late 2010 he then joined Elites that was led by a friend from ACP. While Roman Fire Warriors rebranded into Ninjas mid-2011 to make in-game recruiting easier.
Sometime later a friend, Zach610 told Twitchy he was working to re-brand an army, the Water Vikings in its third generation and asked if he’d like to lead with him.
Water Vikings/Elites/ACP Era
Twitchy led Water Vikings for about a month before he was given the option to be promoted to Elites leader as well, in which he stepped down as leader from Water Vikings to be an Advisor for them for about a month before stepping down.
In September of 2011, he switched focus again mainly on the Elites
He was promoted to an Officer rank and worked his way up to a leadership position which took about a year, they hired some new leaders that he didn’t get along with so he resigned in December 2012 and decided to move back to ACP.
In Army of Club Penguin, Twitchy held the rank of Officer and was with them exclusively 5-6 months prior.
Rebel Penguin Federation
An army that always seemed cool to him was, Rebel Penguin Federation he heard about it being re-created by the creator and significant CPA Legend Commando717, he had made an appearance for the first time in several years.
So Twitchy went into the RPF server to have a chat with Commando717 about the basis on his motives of creating the army in the first place and now why he was re-creating it as well. Based on his responses about a safer and better community convincing Twtichy to become a part of that as well as it fit his views.
Why did Twitchy stay in RPF?
He stayed in Rebel Penguin for the reasoning Commando717 gave alongside just liking the culture- RPF was an army that was talked about like some legend notoriously throughout his CPA career up until that point, but he had missed the Golden Era of 2007-2008.
He did join briefly in 2009 and 2010 under either Cewan or ATM’s leadership (respectively), but it had lost its sight of the original mission that Commando described to him, that is until Commando717 came back as an Advisor in 2013.
Between his contributions as an Advisor and Elmikey (first ever 2IC) and later Silverburg as leaders, the army quickly entered the second Golden Age.
Quickly, rising to the top of CPAC Top Ten and becoming an army that basically everyone wanted to go to war with-and lost against. Compared to other armies aside from ACP (the army that he has been more active in),
RPF was the only one that seemed really interested in actually bettering the Club Penguin and Club Penguin Army community, which is what made it stand-out to Twitchy the most.
Differences between Xat and Discord
When it came to moving to Discord, Twitchy was largely credited for Rebel Penguin moving to Discord (and CPA by extension some other armies were using Discord already, but RPF was the first major army to move).
They were very different in alot of ways, you only had five roles to choose from-
- Main Owner (similar to Admin typically reserved for Leaders/Advisors depending on army),
Owner (manager type-of-role)
Moderator
Member
Guest
Most armies set their Xat Chats to be members-only so Guests wouldn’t have access to see or send messages, until they got verified; Discord uses some alternative verification now. This is why leaders today will primarily group their ranks into
- HCOM (owner)
- Officer (moderator)
and enlisted member categories
As those are the roles they would have been given out in the days of Xat. “Channels”, weren’t really a thing; in the years leading up to CPA moving to Discord; Xat did release something called “Pools” which were basically separate channels for moderators/owners, but again it was much later down the line.
Creating a channel for a specific topic or content like on Discord was not a thing.
Activity
Activity was much more limited in a few ways Xat was computer/PC-only, but also
was because of the amount of people logging on.
There was very few EU and AUSIA generally, so as Twitchy got out of school earlier than most he wouldn’t see alot of people talking and chatting in the Xat and instead see a few EU heading to bed.
Chat would start populating more around 3-4pm Eastern and drop down at around 1am.
Relationship and Experiences
There was too many to name that he developed close friendships with that had quite the impact on his RPF experience; to name a few;
Elmikey, Red Gush, and Silverburg; he was also on good terms with other HCOM and Officers as well as Commando717, himself. However, it wasn’t until 2017-2018 that they moved to Discord that alot of the friendships remained outside themselves
What influences made you become RPF Staff?
In Twitchy’s era you weren’t really “asked” if you wanted to become Staff or not; the option wasn’t even really there it was just a presumed natural next step for people in the army; so if they were seen worthy of a promotion, they received it.
Granted back then there was mostly people that had more free time to be active in those positions.
How did it feel getting Rebel Commander?
“Pretty good for the first 5 minutes” ~Twitchy
Taking on the mantle from Elmikey and Silverburg was a little rough because they employed strategies that weren’t well-received, so that proved difficult when leadership transfered.
They both announced their resignations at the same time they announced Twitchy to be the new Rebel Commander. As a result alot of troops resigned with them they went from averaging between 60-80 to around 20-30 during a war.
Their loss took a toll on the server, but Twitchy got along with most Army Leaders, so he was able to pull together an alliance to help RPF win the war.
Did you ever expect leading the army?
Sort of, but not really Twitchy joined for the rank of Officer and figured he’d settle into a position of HCOM, he hoped to had lead the army someday, but that never happened as other things were going on in the background as Elmikey was seen as the unofficial “main leader”in 2013 there was other Rebel Commanders alongside him, but were seen assisting him.
Twitchy rose to Second-in-Command in 2013 before stepping down to pursue other interests outside of CPA, Elmikey was actually removed from his position in 2014 and led other armies for awhile, before coming back in 2015.
With Silverburg as a leader, Twitchy came back gaining an Officer rank at first before reaching Second-in-Command again. He thought about how he would do things differently if he were leader, but he didn’t see it as a reality to happen.
Rank Journey (summarized)
What was different about re-enlisting/retiring each Time?
When he first enlisted in 2013 due to his conversation with Commando717 he wanted to join an army that had a sense of purpose, not just vibing or because he thought the leader was cool, due to this it set RPF aside from the other armies.
In 2014 when Elmikey was removed from leadership he impressed upon most of the troops that the RPF that was continuing on “wasn’t the real RPF”, so most left for about a year, including Twitchy.
Prior to Elmikey gaining control of the server again in March 2015. Somewhere between this time Twitchy left armies altogether, but ended up re-joining in the late summer of 2015 for a Second-In-Command rank after becoming active again.
Silverburg (and shortly after Elmikey) decided to resign from leadership for some reason and promoted Twitchy to Rebel Commander.
During his first leadership Elm and Silv both gave themselves “RPF Special Forces” which worked similarly to an Advisor position, but had more authority than a Rebel Commander position.
They both abruptly decided to return to leadership again which made Twitchy think his efforts and decisions weren’t being respected so he stepped down to 2ic.
After about a month Elmikey and Silverburg resigned again.
This time having Clout as Rebel Commander during the midst of a war with Nachos, this caused issues as she struggled severely with the position and thus Twitchy doing more of the leading.
After having conversations with her about the position and her becoming inactive Twitchy was able to lead again through the struggles, thus convincing Nachos to sign a treaty that returned all of the land back to RPF, brought them through Christmas Chaos, and into the Finals. (Twitchy‘s first and only tournament win as RC)
Shortly following this in January 2016, when one particular army shutdown, Elmikey had his entire leadership to join Rebel Penguin as Rebel Commanders, this did not set well with Twitchy, so he sent out a second resignation. This was his first time leading with Left who turned out to be Xxtoysoldier, but he didn’t like the precedent of people he did not know being able to lead with him.
In December 2016, Twitchy re-joined the server as Christmas Chaos was around the corner for “old times sake” and following the trend that other army leaders were re-joining to help their army out during the tournament. In which Rebel Penguin lost, but Twitchy is half the reason for it due to two reasons:
1. At the Christmas Chaos Finals, he accidentally muted the Judge in the Xat channels as they were about to announce the room (they used to come into the chat to let leaders know)
2. Another leader noticed the size disadvantage that Rebel Penguin had so they suggested that RPF should re-group in another room after losing the first room; to the Judge it looked like Rebel Penguin was retreating.
He is still in-fact teased about this incident to this day, but he laughs at it 😀
Moving to Club Penguin Rewritten/CPPS
Following the shutdown of Club Penguin in May 2017, he suggested that Club Penguin could continue to thrive on sites called Club Penguin Private Servers (CPPS) which Silverburg, leader at the time was familiar with.
After a bit of research Silverburg settled on joining Club Penguin Rewritten, as it was quickly becoming incredibly popular as a replacement to the original Club Penguin. After about a year and a half of using Discord, Twitchy was able to convince the RPF leadership to also using Discord, while Xat was decreasing in popularity in favor of Discord.
What followed was a set number of roles, channels for different content such as Announcements, Event-Pics etc. As RPF saw massive growth from these two moves, being one of the only real armies on CPR, they saw a large amount of counter-protest from a bunch of CPR members in the form of Tubas. Which, is now known as the RPF-Tuba War.
Twitchy thought it would be fun to take part in this and decided to re-join, this time mainly for nostalgic purposes, in which he did so for about a month before retiring in July to help Commando work on creating a larger platform he’d been trying to do since 2008 and saw Discord’s flexible structurability as an avenue to finally do so called “Rebel Federation“.
Rebel Federation
The first generation of the Rebel Federation launched on July 31st, 2017, but due to lack of support from Rebel Penguin Federation at the time, the project quickly flopped.
Thus began the behind-the-scenes planning of a project called Operation: Exodus, which was this time intended to migrate RPF off of CPPSes and onto other games. This project ended up being enacted prior to planning being finished in the summer of 2018: CPR had shutdown and armies including RPF moved to CPO.
However, RPF was banned from CPO, and with no other viable CPPSes to move to RPF Operation Exodus was forced into an early and disorganized launch.
RPF’s name was changed to Rebel Federation and operated on a variety of multiplayer games which worked well under the current leadership at this time for awhile, however then there became a few security breaches in the server and issues with hackers. Which lead to some resigning.
Plane and Night were set to take over as Rebel Commanders, but weren’t entirely sure how to continue operating on other games, being much more comfortable on a CPPS. After Club Penguin Rewritten (or a new CPPS) came to be giving RPF an option outside of CPO to operate on, and after RF had problems with their leadership during this time he suggested they also move back to Club Penguin, while keeping the name “Rebel Federation”.
The army began to quickly improve, until they too were being threatened to be doxxed, by people on Club Penguin Rewritten and a series of other security issues happened; Twitchy then had conversations with the leaders about putting him in charge as they expressed discomfort about the current situations.
When he took over being in leadership he put massive security protocols into place in the Rebel Federation that are still used today.
New Leadership
In this new leadership position, Twitchy continued operations on Club Penguin, but instead of himself focusing on the Club Penguin Army, he delegated to the Second-in-Commands, while he instead focused on how to re-frame Rebel Federation in a structure that would be most effective. Learning from the unsuccessful generations in 2017 and earlier 2018.
They were already re-branded in 2018 so most of the problem in 2017 was solved, he had to focus on the issue in 2018 which was members not necessarily being interested in leading/participating in non-Club Penguin events.
After thinking about it for awhile with the name being Federation, Twitchy had an epiphany to federate the community into a Division structure.
He contacted Commando717, the Second-in-Commands, and his Advisors at 4 am EST to tell them about his ideas, which was greatly received with approval.
Divisions
There would be a Club Penguin Division with Club Penguin Division Commanders and other Divisions with their own Division Commanders, themselves being partitioned into their own sub-communities, with an overlap in the central “Hub” aka Rebel Federation. Some of the Advisors; Red Gush24 and Moondog agreed to set-up a Minecraft Division.
On January 1st, 2019, Twitchy changed his role from Rebel Commander to Rebel Federation Administrator, promoted the Second in Commands who were handling the Club Penguin side of things to Rebel Commanders/Club Penguin Division Commanders, and from there launched the next (and current) generation of the Rebel Federation.
Key takeaways from Twitchy’s time in RPF
Aside from the major ones being general communication and leadership experience, he found through enough practice that as much has he’d like to it’s not always possible to make everyone happy, and sometimes you just gotta do what you believe is best after measuring all of your options and have faith that it will work.
Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t- but when it doesn’t make sure you learn from that and adept your strategy into a better approach then try again.
Also to emphasis finding people who will give you good advice and listening to them, it doesn’t necessarily have to be people who are more experienced than you, just people who are familiar with the subject who you can trust and lead you into the right direction.
Is there anything you would have done differently?
No, he didn’t think so; everything that’s happened has led us to where we are now which is an outcome his pretty satisfied with.
Rebel Hall of Fame
When he was first inducted into RPF used a different Hall of Fame structure: “Red Legend” for Army Legends, “Blue Legend” for Generation Legends, and “Black Legend” for Troops who were otherwise deserving of recognition for their contributions. He was first introduced as a Black Legend in the RPF Victory Era (2013). The Hall of Fame was restructured in 2015, and he was re-listed as “Rebel” for the generation, and “Hero” for two generations he’d led that year.
He received Icon in 2017 following the Rewritten Era (when RPF migrated to Discord/CPPSes).
I sort of anticipated I’d be receiving both Hero and Icon and considered myself deserving of the titles. The one that really surprised me was when Commando raised me to RPF Legend following my launch of the Rebel Federation in late 2018, which I laid the groundwork for as an active RPF leader. I wasn’t really expecting it at all. It definitely felt pretty elating to receive that recognition though. –Twitchy
Activities Outside RPF/CPA
He is not too involved in RPF/CPA in general these days, but as far as favorite activities, go, probably exercising and teaching himself more programming languages that he’ll probably end up never using.
What is Twitchy543 up to these Days?
Mostly administrating Rebel Federation when his on a computer, if not that then either working or one of the aforementioned activities. His also currently back in school pursing a cybersecurity degree!
Thank you Twitchy for this very informative interview about not only Rebel Penguin Federation, but how it evolvd and changed from the early days of Armies to where we are now!
Artistic23|Third-in-Command
