2019 Ramblings

One of the hard parts of success, in my opinion, is learning what to share and what not to share with others while you're on your journey. I have read some studies that show we, as people, gain a sense of satisfaction by talking about our goals, as if our brains believe we've already achieved them. Ergo, you feel as good when you discuss what you want as when you actually get it. However, I am also a firm believer in momentum and intention. Especially as a livestreamer, it is oftentimes more beneficial to discuss goals with an audience *as long as you are actually making forward progress*, since people will become more invested in your goals and want to see you accomplish them.

So, I'm going to trust my work ethic and lay out what my speedrunning plans for the next year or two are to you all.

Let me start by saying my one stream-related ambition, my absolute driving force, is to be the greatest speedrunner in the world. This goal is, admittedly, impossible. There's too many facets of what makes a speedrunner good, and there's absolutely no way to directly compare speedrunners that play different games in a way that would make ethical sense for some sort of ranking system. However, I thrive off impossible goals, since one of my biggest strengths as a runner is my tenacity in the face of stupid challenges. Therefore, my stream goals begin and end with this impossible ambition in mind.

Step 1) I want to clear 28:3x in UYA NG+ no QE. This category has been akin to my child as long as I've been a speedrunner. I love this category more than any category I've ever played, and that will never change. So, I want to walk away from this category for the time being with a clear conscience. I'm only 4 seconds away from this goal, with a 28:43 as of April 12.

Step 2) Sweep the board. I need to get world record in UYA NG+ proper now that it's its own category. As soon as I get 28:3x, I'm turning right around and getting it. There's another runner named Scottobozo who is currently trying to bop my all titanium bolts pb, so I'm giving him until I get both NG+ times I want to do it. Either way, once I get world record in NG+, I'm turning right around once again and cementing a much stronger ATB pb for myself.

Step 3) This step is the most pivotal, because it marks a new paradigm in my entire approach to speedrunning. It is also going to serve as an experiment of sorts; after all, as much as my end goal is to be the greatest speedrunner, I'm not going to alienate my entire viewerbase. So, this step is a Great Compromise™.

I'm going to attempt to balance my time between two different speedgames. I have work to do in Ratchet 2, since pretty much all my personal bests are garbage at this point. However, I also don't really need to spend that much time with Ratchet 2 outside of my usual amount of practice/runs per day, so I want to use this time to venture into another game as well. The first half of the stream will be run attempts in the rac2 category du jour, and the rest of the stream will be spent either running Celeste any% or Super Mario Odyssey any%. I plan on playing Celeste on stream in its entirety this May, and once I finish it, I'll decide at that point which one it'll be. As far as Odyssey is concerned, yes, I would have to reset my switch to factory default settings to run it (at least, as far as I'm aware), but I would start by running 1.2 until I'm proficient enough to justify transferring all my data to an SD and resetting my switch.

Yanno, I wanna take a second here to get something off my chest. To some of you, this may ring bells of Sunshine. Let me clear the air here, since for some reason people have their own twisted ideas of what the story actually was. I had three reasons I quit Sunshine, and only three. Spam sprays were destroying my right wrist, my viewership was tanking, and I absolutely fucking hated the intro cutscene. I didn't quit because I thought I wasn't good enough. I didn't quit because "I wasn't gonna get top 10 in a year", which was a bet between me and two of my friends anyway. It concerned nobody else, and yet many in the SMS community took it upon themselves to act as if I was personally attacking them by having a stupid prop bet *for fun* with my friends. Yeah, I shittalked a little, I admit that much. At the same time, when I have fun with something, I go all out. Shittalking is a lot of fun, and it raises hype. Many people heard about my bet, and many more wanted me to lose. That's fine. However, if you're going to act as if that one blemish on my speedrunning tenureship delegitimizes me as a good speedrunner, I encourage you to, instead, look at my 4 years of domination in the Ratchet community. Moreover, considering I played SMS for about 5 weeks total from 2016-2017 and my PB is still better than ~80% of all people who have ever touched the category, I'd say I didn't do too badly.

Anyway, now that I've dedicated 60% of this pastebin to that, let's continue. I'm not going to make any fantastic promises. I'm not going to say I'll easily get this time or I'll clear this hurdle by this point when I run these games. All I'll say is that, if I like it, I'll keep pushing until I don't like it anymore. If I like it long enough, I'll get world record.

That's all I really have at the moment as far as steps and goals are concerned. As a reminder to everyone, I start full time streaming again on May 1st, all the way until my 2nd year of my masters degree (see also: my final year of schooling ever) begins at the end of August. 6 days a week (Monday-Saturday), at least 6 hours a day, and every Saturday stream will be at least 10 hours long. July will be hundo month, where I exclusively run 100% categories, and Saturdays will become Ratchet OG Trilogy hundo trifecta runs!

tl;dr - I'm gonna play uya, then rac2 and either celeste or smo any%. #racefile. full time streaming starts again on May 1st and continues until the end of August. Also, I'm gonna work tirelessly to be the greatest speedrunner ever.

Yours truly,

Scott
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