AGDQ 2019 PASTEBIN
So this is gonna be a long one, honestly its really surprising how much came out of this trip so im gonna be starting from the top and working my way up to my return

So I submitted kinda not really expecting to get in but it happened anyways so of course I spend a lot of time practicing and honestly at points it became really stressful just because there were some days where nothing would go right. Honestly its just amazing to even get a run in to begin with, like if you told me 2 years ago that I would get a run into gdq I would’ve laughed at you. Anyways leading up to gdq aside from irl shit and practice not much really happened, not counting the drama with gdq and its management which I wont get into because it was stupid.

So anyways my flight there, was kinda way too long and honestly being on a plane with a bunch of foriengers isn’t exactly pleasing when you need to ask them for something. Anyways my plan for this trip was to make a full on vlog of the entire thing. After I got out of the airports, that didn’t really end up happening, what I got was more a lot of photos of people and the event along with a few videos. Ideally I will be uploading these somewhere. I would also like to be able to get a hold of photos other people took of me or what was happening and weren’t uploaded but I dunno how that will happen. Anyways for the night before the event I first met up with Whitepawws and his whole room where we messed around with CTR and J Bash of all things, and the rest of the trip was more or less really good for the duration of the actual event at least.

We did a lot of things, from going out to eat at various places, to playing shit in the casual room, including have the priviledge of playing virtual boy games haha. But the casual room was where I spent a good chunk of time at gdq, just watching other people play their speedgame and showing mine off, alone with some sick races with tebt including 2 player one controller and co op any% bash with the clutchiest tie breaker in existence, especially when I was chasing him with low health trying to kick him. Then there was the arcade where the 2 main games I played there was initial D and Puyo Puyo Tetris, both games which I am now really interested playing casually as I had a blast while playing them, and they both have home console ports which hopefully fixes the whole auto game over issue that initial D had, finally there was the tournament room where I took part in the ps1 mystery tournament, consisting of really weird and bad games that were kinda hilarious to play. We also ended up going to Estarland, a gaming store that has almost any NTSC-U game that you could think of, and it was really fun looking through all the isles and seeing what they had. I wanted to get more stuff there but unfortunately my credit card was having some issues that I couldn’t fix.

So in terms of the actual run, aside from practice at home, the biggest hurdle was trying to sort out commentary for the couch, since I could only have 3 people on there. So originally I was just gonna have pawwsee people on couch, but not only did they not really know the game, some of them didn’t even want mic, and because of this I was in a sort of array of who I wanted to have on couch. Well anyway this guy who goes by Etral reached out to me via discord and when we finally met, we had a pretty good chat and then he showed me some of the most impressive notes ive ever seen of the game and I instantly decided that he was on couch. Then we have Georgia_o_keef, who was a former runner of the game and it turned out he was attending this gdq, originally I felt like he would clash with the original couch decisions, but once my focus on couch ended up shifting from people I know to people who know the game, he was also on couch. Speaking of which, when I ended up doing practice with Etral alone first, we actually had really good chemistry and I started to feel really comfortable about this, and when Georgia joined, we originally felt like it could make things awkward, but when we did a test run through with the 3 of us, it turns out that it make the commentary even better. I spent a large amount of the night leading up to the run in the private practice room both by myself and with these guys. I spent a lot of time just practicing hard levels and getting them down now that I had to get used to playing on a CRT. Also I leant 2 new skips in 3-1… 10 hours before my run. I know professional.
So now im going to detail what happened in the run itself. Now when I went up there I was really nervous and this feeling continued throughout the whole run, but for the most part it went pretty well. Erin ended up joining couch micless, as she expressed interest in joining but ended up having problems with coughing. So things start out “”well”” and I forget the put in the donation incentive name for the run, instead just doing the fast 1 character thing, so I had to reset the console in awkward silence. In terms of how each
individual level went

1-1 – Standard, sloppy cutscene skip but doesn’t matter
1-2 – Standard
Rongo Lango – Really good, managed to deal with sloppy start rng and get the 2 second time save
2-1 – Standard, got fast leaf cycle
2-2 – Good, except for the damage abuse strat
Pamela – 5 Cycle, hopefully I can figure out the fast grab, okay overall
3-1 – Put the new 2 skips into here for the first time in a run, and they both went pretty well thankfully, failed to carry the moo through the autoscroller though
3-2 – Standard, got fast detonate
Gelg Bolm – PERFECT
4-1 – Wall clip was too slow for my liking but a least I got it, other skip was good, middle section was awkward because I took to many hits, making me be a bit roundabout about it
4-2 – IT DIDN’T CRASH THANK FUCK
Baladium – Standard
5-1 – Everything went well except for green orb clock death abuse, missing that was flat out unacceptable and a big disappointment for the run, as it was entirely my fault. It’s also easy.
5-2 – Got fast cycle, failed optional wall clip so did intended route, had the 3d range death which cost 30 seconds which wasn’t my fault and hopefully I’ll investigate, cage grab was good though
Joka – Good
6-1 – Slow and sloppy
6-2 – Standard wall clip, then it was followed up by the clutchiest main 6-2 skip ive ever done, the setup was so awkward because of the knockback but I managed to pull it off and it was sick
Ghadius – Got Fast Ghadius with a 5 cycle which I was happy with
Nahatomb – Standard

Overall im pretty happy with how this turned out, even if it was overshadowed by other runs. The crowd I was happy with too considering the time. Now to discuss the commentary. I feel like it was honestly close to the likes of swords and crash’s run in terms of commentary at points but the thing is, it took 3 people to do that. I felt like me specifically, my commentary could’ve been a bit better, as there are some times where I either stutter or just stop talking because I have a blank out moment where I don’t know what to say next. Nevertheless im still happy with how it turned out.

Finally ill discuss some more general things that happened during the event such as the people I interacted with and the like. While most people said they talked to too many people and regretted not sticking to one group, for me it was kinda the opposite, I spent too much time with pawwsee people. Don’t get me wrong I really love you guys, but I felt like my shyness is what really prevented me from branching out a bit, and is something I will improve upon if I attend another GDQ. Granted I did talk to some people that I don’t often talk to, including some of the couch people as I spent some time with them after my run the next day, It was definitely one sided for the most part. It’s not a big problem but something I felt like bringing up anyways. On another note, I apologise in advance if there were some things I did or some ways that I acted that ended up annoying or rubbing people the wrong way, although I did put a conscious effort to make sure this didn’t happen, but only time will tell. Was pretty disappointing that me crash and tebt couldn’t go to that pizza place because it was way too cold for me, at least I know to bring a jumper wherever I go in America now, like it takes a lot to turn down my favourite food of all time.

Im not going to do shoutouts mainly because I am really conscious on missing people but I had a blast seeing you all in person for the first time and this trip as a whole has made my year and we have only just started 2019! Hopefully I will be able to go to 2021 since plane flight funds among other expenses would ensure that there is absolutely no way that I could go again next year.

Trob