Pastebin It's Monday Somewhere 7/27/2017

Pastebin It’s Monday Somewhere
So this may be long. I don’t know. I just haven’t done a personal life update in a while, and feel like doing one before SGDQ since there are things people kinda know about that they’re probably waiting on updates for.
So as a lot of people know, at RPGLB I got through a second round for a job that would have me covering speedrunning at a pretty major website. Round 2 led to round 3 led to round 4… and as I found out Friday, I didn’t get it. It’s a bit sad and a bit depressing but not entirely unexpected. The thing I’m sadder about is that it means that sadly, speedrunning related activities have to remain a hobby. This was the reason I ended up with a last minute SGDQ registration though; had I gotten the job, the networking would probably have been super important to doing the job well. That said, I’m still going on Monday morning and I’m probably going to have a great time. It’s always good to see friends as well. (As an aside, I’ll probably refrain from talking too much more about this or who it is, since I don’t want to give a negative impression. All in all, everything was handled professionally, and on the off chance one of them reads this, I wish them the best of luck in what they’re doing)
As for me personally, the other trip I have planned is EVO. I’m set to compete in Smash 4, I’m going to try my hand in Guilty Gear and I’m not much better than a pot bonus for Melee, as far as main stage games go. Not really expecting much in any of these; I made it out of pools in Smash 4 last year but I’m much less practiced and the meta has advanced a lot faster than my own personal growth in the game. That’s fine; I’m also going to stream and compete in Catherine. As a side note, this has the potential to be huge for my stream, since I’m streaming Puyo Puyo Tetris, Catherine and Persona 4 Ultimax. I need to assemble all of my gear and everything, and huge thanks to Linus for offering to let me borrow his external capture card. This should let me run off my laptop, and I’ll be doing a test at some point to make sure everything works as I want it to. As far as the AnimEVO games go, I’m going to do everything I can to win Catherine and I think it has the potential to be both mine and the games best tournament ever. Puyo Puyo Tetris is something I’m entering for fun with no expectations and… I’m debating on not entering P4U to spare myself some embarrassment for the stream (I got bodied so hard at CEOtaku that I actually shook hands after the first game, completely forgetting it was 2/3).
Stream-wise, I’m still in a weird spot. I haven’t fully committed to much beyond improving my times in Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden, with the initial focus being on finishing the P4G route, where there are some really exciting things happening. I’m confident in the early optimizations to the Yoshitsune route, while Mul is looking to push the Futsunushi route as far as it can go. Both routes have merits but given that the Yoshi route is newer and definitively faster than the original route I’ve been using, with minor optimization, since the game’s speedrunning inception to now, I’ll finish my work on it and likely do at least one run with it before Mul finishes, unless he does it before I get back from SGDQ. I’m still extremely unhappy with my time in this game but I still love running it and continued improvement in both the route and my abilities will hopefully lead to the ability to offer a 10:45 or 11 hour estimate to future marathons (ESA and RPGLB being the only two that potentially make sense).
I’m still working my way incredibly slowly through P5, but do intend to learn and run it once I’m a bit happier with my earlier Persona work (Likely when I actually complete both back to back in less than 24 hours). I have a *lot* of thoughts on the game and it is super good but also has a lot of flaws. I’ll either compile them together into a video or another pastebin, depending on what I want to do with them.
I’d like to learn and run a shorter game as well so that I’m not locked into the same cycle of either not streaming or streaming 10 hours, but admittedly, my channel is in an odd spot atm. Catherine is fun and draws okay but it’s also a bit short and not something I want to do a ton of. I don’t really love what I did for Ni No Kuni, so I’m leaning towards one of the Tales games. That said, when factored in with the 15+ hours of work I have to do on P4G to finish that route and the fact that I don’t like streaming practice… yeah ouch.
I’m kinda debating if I want to try to independently pursue the angle of covering speedruns or high level gameplay, focusing on what I enjoy most. I’m not sure if this is best done through a personal blog, trying to create youtube content in line with what somebody like Dax makes, trying to do a podcast or what… Honestly, I just don’t know what’s best, when factoring limited time and still wanting to stay a speedrunner myself.
As for more personal stuff, I need to double down on the job search, and just be more healthy/productive in general. I’ve had a lot of very late, unproductive nights lately and that needs to change. I’m wondering if a stream schedule might keep me in line there; waking up at a specific time, doing job related things for several hours and then start streaming. I feel like this would help a lot… provided I had a way to give steady content of some kind, which ties back into needing to find another game I feel passionate about that isn’t 10 hours for a run.
OH. I forgot, I meant to do a post RPGLB pastebin but had been waiting in case the earlier job related things came through. Ultimately, RPGLB is still a cause that I love and believe in. Meeting Cyd and MLSTRM and so many more people than I could name was amazing, as well as just hanging out with old friends. The event itself was great and despite a few minor grievances with the schedule and games list the event is still incredible and I couldn’t be happier that it’s growing as it is. I also managed to drop by Buckeye Speed Bash which was a super cool small event. It reminded me a lot of Race to the Finish, except done on a larger scale. That said, it was also super sad that Cosmyk wasn’t there the same day I was, and I didn’t know many people at the event well, which is pretty hard on me as shy as I am.
I think that just about covers most everything. With that, I’ll get back to packing, maybe looking to finish Persona 5 tonight and seeing everyone at SGDQ. If you read this far… what are you even doing. Go… do something else.

One final edit; sorry for the low amount/quality of my recent streams. Spent 9 days with my grandparents while my aunt went on vacation, my nieces are visiting their grandparents, my sister is home on summer break... Life is hard sometimes.