#PastebinMonday 12/02/2024 Take Nothing for Granted Edition

'Sup, doods!

I'm trying to keep things upbeat this week. On one hand, a week off from my day job is super relaxing and super enabling for getting this personal stuff done. On the other hand, if I had to work on top of everything else that happened this week, I would have actually had some sort of breakdown and it takes A LOT for me to fully break down. I'm going through a situation at home and, one day, I may have enough blessings to explain myself.

One thing I will definitely never be able to explain, doods, is how Wednesday happened. It was nice to post a good qualifying run for the Brock Open this Saturday. It was the run before that turned heads, mine included. The PPL open tournament qualifying is an Easy – S-Hard run so I prepare by doing a full Easy – S-Hard to judge how much progress I am going to make. I don't expect to not only get through the entire run in under an hour, but also beat the current world record by 30 seconds. It took a V-Hard that got within 30 seconds of my record and my second ever sub-17 minute S-Hard to pass FFRPro's time. I don't expect to get a run close to that for a long time, but I have at least one set of opportunities every month to give it a try.

I'm still easily distracted, doods, so I didn't get as much done this week as I would have liked. I got through rendering all of my past Shorts clips. I just would like to upload & schedule them all now so I can properly move my attention to the next thing. If I try to focus on ten things at once, I can't get one thing done. There's a reason that my list is not shrinking. I'd love to have the willpower to change that.

The big message that I take away from this week, doods, as I experienced it, is to take nothing for granted. Considering the fandoms that I also observe from time to time, this message also needs to go out to all of the Shiikuin and Saplings. I know I have fans that follow Vtubers and hololive production so they are fully aware of what happened on Saturday. It was a one-two gut punch for a lot of fans. In the morning, Sakamata Chloe announced that she was stopping her streaming activities on January 25. Then, in the evening, Ceres Fauna came out with a short live announcement that she would be leaving altogether on January 3. Not gonna lie, doods, I fell into the Vtuber rabbit hole as a Kiryu-kai so I had these feelings three years ago with Kiryu Coco's graduation. But even then, I knew that I could look back on the memories of watching her meme reviews and find someone else to pass the time with. I never did become so dependent on Coco's entertainment that I could not function without it. There's some debilitating parasocialism going on out there in the Vtubing space. By the way, I wasn't sure if there was anyone else out there who shared even half of my tastes in games that was entertaining to watch, but I did find someone else. It was Fauna. lol And then it dawned on me why I liked Vtubers for so long: it was never about the characters that the people were playing. It was always about the people playing the characters. It's almost as if Vtubing allows people to express a part of their personality that they otherwise can't. I guess my message is that don't follow the characters, follow the actors playing the characters. You can't take the anime characters for granted because they eventually go away—unless you're in One Piece, I suppose.

Now if you'll excuse me, doods, I'm going to schedule the rest of these Shorts uploads so I can move on to bigger things. I still have a lot of mental hurdles to climb over.


Today's (permanent) extra streaming goals (this won't be going down for a while, will it):

Goal #1: get current on YouTube Shorts. I am going to schedule the rest of the uploads before I do anything else.
Goal #2: script and record footage for my Puzzle League tutorial series. I have some scripts left to touch up before feeling comfortable with moving on to recording gameplay. Then I will need to record my talking points and edit it all together. Getting back to this will be easier once the workflow for the monthly tournaments is finalized.
Goal #5b: finalize the tournament layout once and for all in a way that I can adapt for the Pokemon Puzzle League tournament and every other game we might play. I have three months to get this part organized before the Tetris Attack championship starts up. Otherwise, I will have to postpone something yet again.
Goal #6a: clean up my own stream layout. Most of the framework necessary for a semi-proper stream is done now thanks to streaming the process, though I'm not currently motivated to stream any other part of it at the moment. Next major objective is to make alerts. I have stream reaction clips to put in. Emotes, one or two alternate overlay themes, and alternate timer themes would come soon after, though I will put in any timer theme I can use from Pokémon Puzzle League upon request. As soon as I think of things to put in, I will add them to the list.
Goal #6b: catch up on video archives that I have yet to upload since I restarted streaming. I may put them on a separate channel.
Goal #7: edit personal best videos in Tetris Attack Easy – V-Hard (post commentary recorded) and Normal (post commentary recorded)—and everything I did in Pokemon Puzzle Week—and that S-Hard PB—and that V-Hard WR—and that Easy – S-Hard WR. Standalone archival videos are already attached to my speedrun profile. I'm hoping to make eye-catching productions from each speedrun. I'm considering it to be my personal test to be a YouTuber. I am failing miserably right now.
Goal #8: release the Puzzle League tutorial series YouTube shorts once a day until they're all done. I really do think I need to time the release of the series with a ramping up of my streaming schedule so that I can take advantage of whatever there is to gain from releasing the shorts.

This week's schedule:

Friday @8pm – 11:30pm ET – Friday Night Salt Mines – Pokémon Puzzle League Brock Open Tune Up
Saturday @2pm ET – twitch.tv/puzzlespeedrun Brock Open

That’s my life story for the week. Until next time, everyone, be decent to each other. Later, doods!

P.S. I'm going to try out releasing a video version of these updates to my Tier 2 and 3 YouTube Sardines so that I can go into greater detail on my goals and feelings that I share each week. I felt the need to go into my feelings in video form this week for reasons that I cannot go into yet.

--Cards