Post-LEGOthon thoughts

Hey everyone,

I wanted to start this off by reiterating my thanks for everyone who contributed to making LEGOthon 2019 a success, especially from the Bionicle community. I'm incredibly proud of the representation we had in the general LEGO speedrunning community, and I'm so happy we had the support of everyone who ran, commentated, or otherwise supported the marathon.

I'm also very very happy with my own runs from the marathon. I got a very great run for MNOG with good RNG and no reloads necessary, and also managed to PB in Bionicle GBA. I was really nervous going in, since I had planned from the start to use these vods as submission videos for GDQ or other speedrun marathons coming up in the near future (I'll be submitting to AGDQ 2019, Diet HUTEfest, and Valuethon 7, to name a few). I was scared that, if these runs didn't go well either in the commentary or in the gameplay, then I would have to record dedicated submission videos, and I know at least for GDQ, being able to perform well on-the-spot in a public setting is very important, so a vod from another marathon is way better than a dedicated submission video. And I'm really happy I was able to put on a good show with both the commentary and the gameplay.

Along those lines, I've been thinking a lot about my approach to speedrunning and my relationship with the speedrun communities that I'm a part of. My long-term goal for 1.5 years now has been to hold the world record in all Bionicle games recorded on SRC, and I feel like that's beginning to change. This is coming about from both how much I've come to love running in speedrun marathons, and also the huge recent increase in activity in the Bionicle speedrun community. We recently updated the world records for Bionicle GBA and Bionicle: The Game, and we're seeing new games being speedrun that had been ignored before, like MNOG 2 and Matoran Adventures.

I'm feeling like my goals are changing from being the absolute best at lots of Bionicle games, to being able to be a great representative of the Bionicle community to the speedrun community at large. I want to focus more on games that allow me to put on a great show at marathons, instead of games that are just really frustrating to run, and probably to watch as well.

So, going forward, I'm going to be making the following changes for myself and my stream:

* Like I mentioned earlier, I'm going to be submitting to a lot more marathons. In addition, though I'm already attending every GDQ event, I'm going to be travelling more to visit more in-person speedrun marathons, like Calithon. Obviously, which ones I attend will be largely up-in-the-air, but I know for sure that I want to attend Calithon because of how many of my friends regularly attend, and its reputation as a non-GDQ size, but still very important, marathon.

* I'm no longer guaranteeing that I'll run every Bionicle game on SRC. I'm not going to run MNOG 2, or Matoran Adventures, just because I feel like they would be more frustrating than fun. Also, I'm going to hold off on running LOMN Rebuilt until it's a bit more stable, just because that game has frustrated me a lot in things like dying due to what seems like the game just being really janky.

* I think I'm going to play through (and start running) the fan-made MNOG 1.5 game, that runs off the MNOG 1 engine and shows off the events of the 2002 Bionicle arc - the Bohrok swarms. I also eventually want to pick up BTG and Bionicle Heroes, but those will be further off.

Again, I want to thank everyone for showing their support for my runs and the other Bionicle runs at LEGOthon. And now, time to start thinking about going forward with all the marathons coming up soon!