Is this possible?
Why not. I've given it some idle attempts, but the end has always been rather, uh, anticlimatic for me. I was trying to keep it secret that I had done
most of it, saving it for a whatever volume of Dodging like a Boss it could be in. Maybe the director of the videos decided to drop it out, though. Always seemed just poor-performance and lucking out with a bad end. I posted about it now, on a whim. I'll probably regret this later, but I'll regret the post anyway. Whatever. This had no reason, anything within this probably has no reason. For most of the forum, at least. There are several reasons for me, some which I prefer to keep hidden.
-
Decided to post after all. This will probably get rather terrible. You've been warned, I guess. Read if you're dumb enough.
-
Me. As selfish as I am, thinking of my own things has always made me feel bad, there always was something bad. I never found much pleasure in looking to the past, but it probably is good for my mental self. And maybe it can teach me things. All in all, this could be useful, and I can endure some minor pain, especially when I get to complain about it beforehand.
So. Start of the year. I had been doing IN easy for about half a year.
First finished Yukari run. It's rather funny, looking how totally different it's got while I've only made minor increasements in the score. And now I'm heading for AM's score. Had you told me that I'd be trying to stand against Konatan's score back when I did that run, I most likely would've laughed at your face. Yukari is a nice shot, though. I like her a lot, she is rather easy to pilot around. The unfocused speed is a tad faster than Yuyuko's, making it easier to manage movements on Yukari. The homing is odd and I'm still not sure about everything Ran has controlling her, and that has caused some, uh, restarts during stage 1. Nothing serious though. She's nice, I like how the dress looks in IN, even if I prefer the one she wears in PCB. Oh yeah and being the huge secondary I am (I
ship - which is a funny word - Reimu and Yukari), I like to occasionally read the dialog or the endings. Border team doesn't have as good dialog as Magic team does, but I still like theirs as well. I like the game in overall. I like grazing, and Yukari as a character. I like Necrofantasia as well, but it's probably not related. Or maybe it is, I don't know.
Later in January, I was asked to time out
this. Or maybe I wasn't. I'm not overly sure of it anymore, but I also remember there being the possibility of adding nonvertical movements to the challenge, but I had decided that it was beyond my ability to read and would require too much luck for me to pull off. I've always been bad at planning dodges for nonvertical movement. I should learn things, I really should. The timeout wasn't too serious, it was a nice little relaxing break from whatever I was grinding back then. Youmu's IN sprite is really nice. I like how her headband wiggles in the wind. It's cute, one of the reasons I like her, I guess. It's saddening that she is too hard for me to play seriously, at least currently. I'll eventually get into learning proper control and timings for her, but that time has yet to come. I'll play on easier shots for now.
Soon after, I had started meddling in spell practice with Yukari. Trying to figure things. Did some replays and was in contact with some people via the uploader. I wouldn't pull out thinking about 160, but I find it comedic, how st later formed a completely new tactic for this card.
Later, I was thinking of NFNBND run of IN Normal on Youmu, and practiced for it a bit. I never looked into it much, haven't returned ever since. I forced someone to do the same thing in TD though, rather awful thing from me now that I think of it. I should repay it by meeting their standards and completing the challenge, but I'm not touching normal Youmu for a while. Targets. Future.
Unfocused Youmu and easy lead me into
this. Then I planned about doing a NDNBNV (NV stands for Nonvertical. Always did for me and always will.)
Three Remilia scores followed soon after. I don't think I ever improved them. VgameT beat me rather fastly, but he never posted the score. I'm a lazy ass bastard, so I didn't bother improving my standings.
Long grind finally paid off, and the first SFN timeout on Youmu no focus was done on 2.2.2012. After all of these days I've come to the conclusion, that the end was not the best part. Finally succeeding was nice, yes, but all of the rush and thrill I had felt for countless times during the attempts at it was more of a major thing. Heartwarming, and keeping me playing. Making deaths and failures not mattering, since after every failure I knew that I'd get to feel the rush
once again. All in all, I had a good time.
Soon after the SFN timeout, I started playing around with the new IN ultra patch.
Hourai Elixir was really nice and it still is the most watched one of my Youtube videos. Odd, given how so many people seem to hate the card (I always liked it).
Beauty beyond measures. The pattern was made to be timed out, I noticed it immediately. It altered, got more intense and thrilling. My heart lived along it and partially died when all of it reached the end. It was saddening and cheerful at the same time, doing this one. The person making the ultra patches had really hit it with this one. I was left almost speechless after being left to the pattern's mercy.
Then, I started capturing cards on Ultra. I did most of Extra, 6A, 6B and the entirety of 4A and 4B. Spent a few days doing things, annoyed Jaimers a bit by talking about it with him. Some of the patterns looked really nice, others were just a plain pain. Nevertheless, it was a funny, silly journey.
And then I found her. Yuyuko. IN easy Yuyuko. I started slowly climbing up the stairs, slowly learning new things. Slowly improving the score. It's still in the progress. Unfinished. I still haven't been able to make the comment I've had ready for ages, in the case I beat one of IN easy Yuyuko WR's. It is time to learn more things and execute correctly. Let's hope that I won't fall down all of the stairs, it's still a long way to the top. Always is, always will be. I see improving routes as an endless staircase; the further you get, the longer is the way you have to go. It's ... nice.
Sakuya. Someone almost got a WR, it wasn't me.
"Maybe you should switch shot-types for a while." It was a good advice, I never returned. I'll be looking into it one day, but having to maintain 24 (or 12) different routes takes time and commitment. Years might pass, I might never return. Or maybe I will, who knows.
A bit after that, I started running a tournament on the Finnish forums.
Archives. Currently, I'm not hosting any more rounds unless specially asked for, since the amount of participation dropped way too low for active tournaments. It was nice as long as it lasted. Maybe 2013 will show us more of these, who knows.
Time flies. Soon it was already April, and I had been doing active grinding within IN easy for several months.
First Border Team 2.3B, in a rapid succession with
2.4B Netherworld Team and the eventual
Magic Team run which broke 2.6B, being my first run thus far to do so. Another Magic Team easy score popped in the uploader within two minutes, beating my score. It was not until lately that I made new effort in it, finally beating that one score. Took a bit longer than a few minutes though.
First time breaking 2B within IN extra. It was a silly survival run, but I was happy about it. It's bad all around, but I was pushed to the edge for the entirety of it. It still is the most intense IN extra clear of mine this far, which is rather silly.
IN easy nonvertical, never made the NMNB. Too busy being bad at other things, I have loads of challenge runs unfinished.
Then I started UFO. The target was to counterstop it on Lunatic. I spent several hundreds of hours griding throughtout a few months, or maybe it was only weeks. I can't remember. I don't want to remember. I never made it to the end, the game crushed my soul into tiny bits. I even went as far as punishing myself physically, thus angering my partner and a few other people, getting very, very depressed in the long run by it. I have yet to return. I tried around a bit, but nothing more. I'm too scared to return.
Then I started playing PCB, during the summer. I got hooked into it rather fast. Quite a few things were done, for example I got 1B on every shot for Extra and Phantasm. Maybe Easy as well, my mind might be deceiving me on this one. Then, normal. 1.5B broken on two shots, then I gave up and returned to other games. Both recent. ReimuA and SakuyaB were the shot-types. I like both of them. I'm too bad for the game, I'll be back... possibly. I will. One day I might come back and see into it, looking if I could force myself into learning all of the neat grazing and bomb-timing tricks. I did some condition runs of PCB, though. Most notably,
no-focus ultra and
no-focus/bombs clears. They were silly, but I had relative fun doing them. I still like the game and all. Did some idle NB-runs on other shots whenever I was bored enough.
Then, I was forced to join STGT by .ASP, which took him quite a while of forcing me into it. I got very angry, depressed and lost a few
friends due to being and idiot and openly getting into arguments with several people. All in all, however, I made some new friends via the tournament, and the team I was in turned out to consist of very awesome people. They made it overall a pleasurable experience.
I made a
Twitter account in May. I've been using it to blog about my Touhou runs and sometimes commenting to stuff posted by others. I also sometimes communicate with the Finnish anime-fandom scene via it. I'm mainly using English (or Japanese if I'm tweeting about gameplay), but sometimes it's filled with Finnish nonsense. It's been nice to have a Twitter account. I was afraid what would come out of it in the first place, but it has been nice thus far. I also follow several people via it, so it's a rather useful tool for me.
I decided to snipe some older scores during the Autumn. Targets that I reached where
820M SA Normal ReimuA and
2.8B IN Normal, both being rather low, but I enjoyed doing both. I didn't spend too much time on either, SA took one week, IN took two runs.
Other things I
sniped were some IN Extra scores. I mainly did it due to the fact that I wanted to play the stage, but becoming THE BEST IN THE WEST! with several shots was funny.
All of the runs are awful and unoptimal, but I can smile at them. They're my little things.
Oh hey, I was playing IN. Lead into me rethinking Easy. November brought me
several new scores. Magic Team,
Border Team, Yukari FinalA (WR!), Alice FinalA (WR!),
Reimu, and some other shots. It's nice to look how high I can get on
this list without actually going for any cool and hard things. Picking the low-hanging fruits as always. I'll be punished for it eventually, I'm sure.
It has been a nice year.
-
Other people. I hanged around #PoFV and #Ijiyatsu, causing lots of pain to several people, and becoming joyous myself. Those people were very nice for not banning me.
I enjoyed watching T and .ASP get their records and do high-end scoring. I don't have much insight for TD or UFO Extra, but all of the runs I watched (I don't think I watched all of T's runs though, ... I'm a bad friend. Too uninterested in TD Extra Sanae or something) were really nice all around. The execution seemed (especially in T's case) to be much better than mine. I do minor mistakes all around the place, and carry on while T remains confident all along. I also liked the lunatic runs of UFO .ASP did and beat me into the ground. I've eventually learned into liking being beaten into the ground since that happened so many times with that one person. Oh well. It might not be
irreversible damage, since I don't know if it's irreversible, or damage, at all. Time will tell, I'm sure.
.ASP forced me to join STGT'12 as I earlier stated. The team of Which 2hu Wud u Fuk was very, very great. I'm in eternal gratitude for all of the people who were playing within the team. I had a good time. During STGT we (our team) joined an IRC channel of one of the, uh, less playing teams and the channel eventually developed into a friendly place of people who I grow fond of. All of them. Friends are a nice thing, even the ones over the Internet.
Thanuris, Shmoop, Zodiac and tomko were the mainly playing force of W2HUWUF. I'm still very emotionally charged about the everything, and I still feel like thanking all of them again and again. Also thanks for .ASP, without whom this would not have happened.
From HME, Zil. He was nice to follow and I remember chatting a bit with him. I've been lurking for a good while, and it's been fun to follow many of you. I'm giving one example here. I never understood much of the PoDD systems, but I enjoy watching runs of those nevertheless. I guess I also like Yumemi x Chiyuri, which is totally out of concept here.
Several other people of these forums were also nice to follow. As I said, I lurk most of the threads even if I don't post too often (I feel like I don't have too much to post about). All of the timeouts and scoring and clears and things you people have done has been fun to watch.
I enjoyed playing against Vanhaomena in the finnish weekly tournaments. I wish he'd return some day, and I could have a rematch or two. (the tournaments were mainly me losing)
Nereid got a WR of MoF. I told him that he'd be faster that I was and he'd get it within something much more important and played than FinalA easy. He didn't believe. I was right, for once.
I'd like to mention a lot of other things, but that'd feel like prolonging the post. Every run that st and shin did were great watches and inspirational. Zengeku was actually a nice guy when I got to speak with him. Lots of things. Lots of people. A year is a long, long time. I forget half of what happened, and the other half is foggy in my mind.
I had fun. I hope others did too.
-
Challenges. I've got several irons left in the fire myself, things I should do like the SA Normal graze-run. People could always try those. Oh, and unless you're that one guy, I guess you could try beating some of my IN easy scores. Some of them are really bad and easily beatable by anyone of you, and I could use some motivation. The IN normal and SA normal are also rather bad, and everything I have in PCB are rather bad. I'm unsure if I'd be able to dance with those, but we'll see. Some person-specific things, too.
T: Smile. I know you can do that.
Old_grumpie: You deserved this one for forcing me into STGT.
Zil: Start using IRC.
Nautie: Quit WoW it sucks.
-
Targets. I don't really think ahead that much. I do whatever I'm currently doing and see what future brings. It's usually no need to rush things, since I will not reach any deadlines anyway and making time-based assumptions of reaching things would just give me more pain. Currently I'm playing IN easy, and IN Extra, trying to push myself a bit higher on
this list.-
That's all. Happy new years, don't drink too much, I'll do that for you.
