speedrun_6.7.21

Been feeling speedrun motivated the last few months and I plan to keep with it. It's been nice to dedicate more time towards speedgaming. I have no thoughts about stopping speedrunning anytime soon

Dragon Quest III has been both fun & rough to get back to and I have no complaints, been fun. Game is sometimes (often?) BS & cruel, but I have some room to improve too. I plan on pausing on most other speedgames for quite a while to really dedicate towards this game in my free speedgaming time. My immediate goal is to cut a 2:50 in DQIII, and for the most part I have to set aside some things like Mega Man for a short (maybe long?) while to get it done

I also felt like I achieved most of what I wanted out of the big & beefy Dragon Warrior Monsters All Gates run - a fun routing project, even if it wasn't a frequent game for me. Unsure what the future looks like for this one, but it has been a fun ride

I did fully de-rust Mega Man 8, and although it's fun to play, it's really demoralizing to try to optimize movement to save a few frames or 10s of frames, when there's gigantic random swings literally everywhere. To a lesser degree, same for Rockman Zero 2  / Rockman & Forte and (also very cool to see R&F have a bunch of activity lately~). I'll always have fun with MM8 but it's pretty hard to envision really grinding it. And it's all somewhat a shame because I think there are a lot of really cool minor strats to improve upon, but for being a longer Mega Man game and having such massive swings in time for things out of your control, it feels like a lost effort. But I go back & forth on this one a bit, so a little bit TBD here

I've thought a lot about deciding upon speedgoals for the future. For a few years I somewhat dabbled in games outside my norm (DQ & Mega Man). I don't regret trying different things out, but at the end of the day I had a hard time feeling motivated towards a lot of them. I feel like I mostly hit the checkboxes of games or types of runs I wanted to try out, and I do plan on sticking to DQ & Mega Man for the future, maybe the occassional deviation (Arc Rise Fantasia when I get a Wii U!!)

I have two general goals in mind for the future:
- Build out a set of competent times in one to a few more classically competitive DQ speedgames, likely SFC/PS. I know the next one, and I'll cycle it in in the near future for some first scrappy first runs. Though DQIII is definitely the priority atm
- Round out some of my Mega Man times, including possibly finally dedicating time for a NES Mega and trying to compete

But a lot is contingent on that side of things, if I've still got the bandwidth years into the future. I hope & plan to, but its tough to know. I like thinking about the future, but things change and there are definitely times where I say I'm going to do something, then priorities or thoughts shift around. I don't ever intend to be wishy washy/frivolous in my goals, but speedgaming can be tough to commit the mental effort towards to stay invested, and to also feel like youre putting time into the right game. But for me, even if I just learned a run and dabbled with a game, it's not a wasted effort or something, and I think sometimes other people think so. I generally enjoy the learning experience and I think people can glean a lot about what other people & communities do for their speedgames, to help you round out knowledge about your own main speedgames. But lately I've been feeling like that effort should really be going into the two series that I care about the most, DQ & Mega Man

This is kind of a random tangent, I think it's sometimes kind of weird in the general speedrunning community where there's this sort of idolatry for people that disappear for months/years and come back to play speedgames randomly. But there's a lot of people who stay on top of modern speedrunning and get a lot less credit & hype for it. Or even simply deciding to spend their free time elsewhere online. As if it's more prestigious if you just evaporate and come back ("Oh, X is playing Y again!!"). I never really understood it - definitely cool to be excited about peers playing & pushing speedruns that you're excited about, but I think juxtaposed to people that are regulars, it's really nothing noble. Things that get my respect in speedgaming are dedication, commitment, good practice habits, and attitude - who really cares about how you spend some of your other free time? Further, bleeding over expectations about social life & how people spend time online, it bothers me quite a bit. Everyone has their own things going on, and silently judging people/being passive aggressive for what they're doing/how often they're streaming/what they may or may not be speedrunning, I don't support it. I think it happens quite a bit honestly in speedrunning and on Twitch in general. There's a big difference between sharing what you're up to IRL for fun (which I think is great) vs. being on edge about expectations of people understanding how you spend your time (i.e., I truly don't care how busy you appear). What I think is great about online culture is that in being such a different beast than IRL social interaction, it is in itself its own social climate and I enjoy the duality of both of them a lot, personally

All of this is a wrap up of me saying that on stream I'll probably be playing DQIII for an eternity at this rate, and I'm happy to be here. I really do want to work on some other speedruns and make them all a more integral part of my stream, but priorities first and I gotta hit my immediate goals. Otherwise, Melty Blood still rules, and I got some casual plans like getting back to Persona series, P3 first time up next

Thanks for reading