SGDQ2016

Hello all!

I missed #PastebinMonday by a lot, but oh well. I thought I would do a write-up of my SGDQ experience as well as stuff that will be happening in the near future! This pastebin will probably be very long, so if you read the whole thing, you're pretty awesome~

SGDQ 2016
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Holy shit, I don't think I've had this much fun at a GDQ since my first SGDQ waaaay back in the Luigi's Mansion days! My flight to the venue was more than twice as difficult, with many unexpected, ridiculous delays (by the time I got to the event, everyone knew about it lol) but that didn't stop me from travelling 6000+ miles to see some good friends and play some video games! Air Canada finally got us in the air after 7 and a half hours of excuses and 6 different airplanes, with problems ranging from engine failure, to wing damage, to a bathroom "exploding". I was baffled by the last cause, but ultimately I am kinda curious as to how the fuck somebody blew up an airplane bathroom. Even the plane that eventually took us from Toronto to Minneapolis had a bathroom we couldn't use because the bathroom lights wouldn't work lmao. Once at the event, I met many of my dearest speedfriends and some new people as well. Most notably, I met a stream regular, Blake (regularly referred to as Buh-lah-kay), who seemed like an awesome individual and someone who I wish I could have hung out with a bit more. Jet lag was most certainly an issue with this GDQ but I was able to cope a bit with friends taking me out to do things regularly. Practice rooms were huge, amazing, and surprisingly smelled good this year. This was also my first GDQ with an arcade, which was absolutely incredible! BLACK KNIGHT 2000 was indeed the table to be at this year! Special thanks to cyghfer for also pointing me in the direction of that anime sparkle game or whatever it's called (totally forgot), which I really enjoyed. All in all, staff were awesome, attendees were awesome, venue was amazing, all was good!

SGDQ JAK AND DAXTER RUN
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PROS:
-Hilarious couch
-A+ delirium
-Good humour for the most part
-Amazing live audience (single claps were fantastic)
-Naruto and Pikachu
-Owen Wilson

CONS:
-A+ delirium
-jet lag
-own self pressure
-terrible game performance

Review: Going through the pros first, I honestly wouldn't change a thing about the couch. LeonPow, my good Canadian bud, and Pcull44444 were amazing on the couch and I wouldn't change that for anything now. Patty and Leon were the peanut gallery to end all peanut galleries. Darkman was on the couch, but didn't want a mic and said he was gonna peace out half way through the run, but ultimately stayed to the end, probably due to the sheer hilarity that ensued. The delirium set in around the 1:15:00 mark of the run because I basically just let all of that pressure and anxiety go. Seeing as the game was going very awful, I decided that "just having fun" with the game, my couch, and live audience were what was needed for the run to succeed in the end. I think I made a good choice there. The audience was truly amazing. The single claps were totally unexpected, but hilarious. The donation comments were getting better and better. The only regret I have is not being able to hear more of those awesome donations. I'm sure there was more gold to be had in there. The Naruto and Pikachu donation was absolutely amazing; I had never thought of Jak and Daxter as Naruto and Pikachu but my god, it just works so well. Owen Wilson was just something that happened... totally unintended but worked positively for the run in ways no one would ever imagine. O-Dawg just worked as a massive coverup for the crap run that was at hand, but was genuinely funny and very stress relieving to be quite honest. The only "con about the pros" was, the fact that everyone, especially Patty, Leon, and Striker who appeared later, was so damn funny made my concentration towards the game drop even farther lmao. I also feel like some of the jokes and stuff we said may have offended some people, and for that, I also apologise. It was also brought to my attention that some of the jokes were repeated a lot which may have turned some people off, I apologise for that as well.

Looking at cons, I mangled my presentation of Jak and Daxter to the highest degree and I apologise deeply. During the run, I could feel my phone going off in my pocket and I was starting to get anxiety, having this genuine feeling that people on Twitter were saying what a screwup the run was and how anyone who plays this bad could get in to a GDQ. Truth is, I was approached by staff after the run and they said they were looking at two options: mercy killing the run and ending it right there, or memeing literally so hard that we made the run a success. To be honest, I had mixed feelings immediately following the run, because the laughs and memes were great, but I really felt like I let a lot of people down by giving such a bad performance. I practised a lot and had a generally good time doing the practice, but by then I was so far gone with jet lag and stress that there was a very low chance I was gonna be able to give a decent showing of the run. I was so disappointed in myself after ward. I outlined all of this in a poorly formatted Reddit post in one of the SGDQ threads. In a way, I lost the only thing I stand for in speedrunning; to have fun. I told myself, if things start to go badly, just have fun with it, but it took me a long time to let that "whale of attachment" go (about an hour and fifteen lmao). Finally I thought, if there's one thing I'm going to do right during the run, it's to have fun with my friends, and play a video game like no one was watching. Go out with a bang. Show em all you've got a personality. Moral of the story: Pressure is unnecessary. Have fun.
In hindsight, I wouldn't change a thing.

Other than that, staff seemed to enjoy the run A LOT surprisingly, like most of the viewers did, surprisingly! Staff were amazing letting us carry on in that crazy run. I think they let us get away with a lot more than we should have. I'm really happy you guys "enjoyed it" and I hope I didn't give you too many heart attacks. You guys are great <3 shoutouts to GDQ staff and PowerUp Audio!!

RUN RECEPTION
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"What the fuck just happened?" was what I said when +1500 notifications popped up on my phone, with 99.9% of them being...

overwhelmingly positive.

People genuinely enjoyed the performance. I was in the hotel room by myself, sitting on my bed thinking, "I turned a trainwreck into a fabulous trainwreck." I absolutely cannot believe the amount of positive support that myself, the couch, the gameplay, the donations, the memes, basically *everything* received. People were singing praises to things I don't even remember happened during the run. I don't know how it happened (by some divine intervention perhaps) but you guys made that run great, somehow, someway. I didn't do it. You did. Though it became difficult to concentrate, due to laughing so hard, it made me realise what I was missing. I needed that spark through my haze of sleepiness to bring back that lack of personality, to banish that pressure and anxiety, to just lay back and say, buckle up because this shit is about to happen. The Owen Wilson memes just spontaneously happened, I am forever grateful that they happened, Naruto and Pikachu was amazing, single claps were amazing, my couch was amazing, live audience was amazing, viewers were amazing, donors, fabulously amazing~ and I cannot describe with my little typing fingers how great you all made me feel. Though I don't know hardly any of you, I love you all~
I was so disappointed with myself, but you showed me that sometimes, you don't need to have the best run for it to be a great performance. People shine in different ways, I just happen to shine in my own special, delirium induced way hahaha. I am so happy you guys enjoyed the performance (despite the performance) and I hope all of you new followers stick around for more. Many people on social media praised the run saying it was the best of the marathon; this makes me so happy and I cannot thank you enough. Your praise means the world to me and hasn't gone unnoticed. You guys are the best, I really cannot thank you enough <3
Thanks for watching. Glad you enjoyed! <3

Best roomie: Golden for raising money on his stream to get my to SGDQ. Don't know what I'd do without him, truly a best friend!
Best meal: $60 steak, planned by darkman
Favourite outing: Putt'er There!
Best new friend: Blake
Favourite arcade game: BLACK KNIGHT 2000
Best arcade buds: Patrick + Cloud
Favourite run: Super Metroid + Super Mario Maker
Favourite deep convo bud: Caerulius (love that guy, really wanna spend more time with this dude)
Favourite general gamer bud: LeonPowPow (amazing laugh)
Best hugs: three way tie between: Darkman, SpikeVegeta, Striker
Favourite meme of the marathon: WAOW
Favourite restaurant: Key's

FUTURE STREAMING PLANS
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To all new followers: New content this September! I have no internet in Japan, but I will be returning to Canada in September, where I actually have a good connection. I am deeply sorry for the wait, but there's nothing I can do about it... I feel really bad I have all these new people who wanna watch and there's nothing I can do for you in terms of content. Please be patient and I will get back to you! ^^;
Also, totally didn't take into account that FFXV comes out in late September, so Month of FFXV will be from release to end of October! One whole month of FFXV, 8 hours a day, with a super sub raffle at the end of the month for all the new subs! If we finish the game, maybe I'll do some speedruns of it or just start learning some new games in preparation for AGDQ in addition to general FFXV sidequest stuff! I have been planning to do some speedruns mixed in with FFXV, but we'll cross that bridge when it comes! Hope you enjoy this new content! ^^
Future speedrun plans:
Resistance 2
Siren
Secret co-op game with Patty

LIFE STUFF
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Japan exchange student trip is coming to a close. Only three weeks left... feels like just yesterday I arrived. But now, I get to go home, relax, and stream for you all in September. THAT I'm excited for!
Also, just recently, I was invited into a relatively popular Canadian cosplay group that will be doing an UNTIL DAWN cosplay photoshoot! Some famous Canadian cosplayers found my Chris pictures and invited me to do a shoot with them. Really looking forward to that!
Probably returning to Japan in January for new Japanese language course in Tokyo. Dunno if this will conflict with AGDQ yet or not, but I'll keep you all informed!
Found out that Siren got a digital release on Playstation 4 about a month ago!!!!! That's exciting! My definition of SIREN excitement is: whenever anything happens with SIREN (even a new port of the same game), that's exciting. Myself and like the 5 Japanese people who run the game are all flippin our freakin lids right now lmao. Playstation 2 emulation I hear is amazing on PS4, so it might even be faster than the Playstation 3 version, and has also been upscaled to 1080p! THEY EVEN INCLUDED TROPHIES!!!! AWWWW SNAP SON!!! EXCITING!!!!
Going to see Final Fantasy XV Kinsglaive in theaters tomorrow. Holy shit I'm super excited!

LOVE STUFF
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Cosplay girl and I weren't interacting as much for the past three months which made me kinda sad, but recently we've been actively exchanging many messages! She's super busy, so sometimes she'll read the message but never respond, which is kinda disheartening but I totally understand. No hard feelings. She's having a birthday party on the 30th, which I wasn't going to go to at first (lotta money to travel, my Japanese ability is meh at best, and I don't really know any of her friends or anyone who's going (super big event btw, tickets were like $40, MC, games, etc)), but after a recent message exchange, I've decided to go!
It all started with me asking if she wanted to get together before her birthday, as I bought her a birthday present when I was in America at SGDQ and wanted to give it to her in advance, knowing I wasn't going to attend her party. She then said, "Oh, you're not coming to the party?" And I explained I didn't know anyone and my Japanese is awful. She said my Japanese was very good and that she'd be "very happy if I attended."
iweaubfiwebfiuwebfiwbefonweofnwoeifnwoefnwoeinf WELL I GUESS I'M GOING TO TOKYO THEN
Bought a party ticket, bought a shinkansen ticket, we outta here on end of July weekend!!!!!!

After that, asked her if she wanted to eat dinner together the day after her party




She said yes




c: <3