Here's my main issue with your analysis: as I've said to you directly before, it does not match the reality of the original TPP Red run.

I watched the original TPP Red as one of those people who was just cheering on the stream (without a Twitch account), to see the chat reactions and the gameplay.

I'm going to make this point to you: the majority of the original TPP Red players would not share your views on these issues. As something of an outside observer to the TPP Red run (as a fan, not a participant), I think I can make that statement.

The majority of the TPP Red players that I watched for that second half of TPP Red were hardcore progressionists. They were obsessed or possessed (choose whichever adjective you like) with proving that they could beat a Pokemon game when there were many who thought they could not.

The TPP Red that I watched wasn't about a purism of anarchy vs democracy, it was about the journey itself: tens of thousands of people with one goal, to bring the party to the Pokemon League and win.

Everything fed into that one goal; there was a hivemind unity, a religiousness about the task at hand.

I'm going to use one moment as an example: teaching Bird Jesus TM 43 Sky Attack (since we may have an analogous situation come up soon in our stream with Super Saiyan Zapdos).

What I remember from that moment was how careful people were about ensuring that they properly taught Sky Attack to not overwrite Mirror Move or Sand Attack or Quick Attack. I saw hundreds of people that wanted to be so careful that they almost treated it as if it was a baptism; hundreds of people were spamming wait in Democracy so that they could see the menus and be sure that when the time came, they would be able to target Whirlwind for replacement with a properly used "Down3a" since it was at the bottom of Bird Jesus' moveset.

That moment is an indelible part of TPP Red's legacy. The Zapdos switch in democracy is also an unchangeable part of TPP Red's legacy.

I'm going to say this one last time, I think your nostalgia for TPP Red has created something of a blind spot to those many moments that were magical in TPP Red but did involve Democracy at some level.

We did not spit on Red's grave when we made that party switch at Seafoam. And if we do end up teaching Sky Attack in Democracy to Super Saiyan Zapdos, no we will not be spitting on Red's grave at that time either.

In fact, we will be making an homage to a great moment in TPP Red's history, just as we did when we once again returned to the Power Plant to capture Zapdos with the Master Ball. Yes, we may be far fewer in number, but that doesn't take away from what it meant to once again return to the Power Plant and capture Zapdos in anarchy.

At some point TPP is about having fun. It's about doing things that people think are fun.

The constant debate about how we play... is not fun. It's tedious. It's boring.

Expecting people to sit around for an unreasonable amount of time just to get a specific party switch given Gen. 1 mechanics which make it a total crapshoot (it could have taken anywhere from 5 minutes to 100+ hours; our actual attempted hours was something like 15-20 hours) is not my definition or really anyone's definition of fun or necessary.

Why exactly do we need to prove after 10 completed games that Gen. 1-3 and the terrible menu mechanics in them are worth spending dozens of hours of time on just to accomplish a single specific party order switch?

And no, from the TPP Red that I saw, I don't think those players would have seen it as necessary either.