I passed my first 22 on 11/19/21! The chart: Speed Disco Vol. 1-5 (Expert) — 1104 unbroken measures of 210 bpm stream for 21 minutes.
I got another 21 the day prior too: eat it up, boi! FP 218
Vids:
[In The Groove] JOKR - FIRST 22 PASS - Speed Disco Vol. 1-5 (Expert) [22] 83.20%
22: https://youtu.be/pRYOPR-X53c
[In The Groove] JOKR - eat it up, boi! FP 218 [21] 84.51%
https://youtu.be/olHTttGI-dw
These tiny arcade machine toys have been popping up everywhere lately. I've come across them while shopping online as early as several months ago and started seeing quite a few friends post about getting their hands on them as of a week or so ago. Target now has them for sale for $20 each. Though none of the Vegas stores have them stocked at the moment, and it seems they're either out of stock or not (yet?) sold at many Target locations nationwide, they can be ordered online through the Target website, which offers free shipping on orders over $35: Tiny Arcade - Dance Dance Revolution at Target
They're so adorable and I love them forever. 😭 I need like 100 of them. Sean surprised me the other day with three of them he'd ordered from Target, so I just need to get my hands on like 97 more for life to be complete. Haha
Quick vid we made for anyone interested: https://youtu.be/aYYiHBAK9JY
My culinary skills still leave quite a bit to be desired, but Sean and I followed the instructions my grandma left behind when she passed and made egg rolls (technically lumpia, I think, but she always called them egg rolls) for the first time without her. 😢 They probably don't look like much, but they're delicious and will always remind me of her. Thank you so much to my cousin Bina for sharing the recipe. ☺ I really am pretty useless in the kitchen on my own, so it meant a lot. ❤
Sean and I decided to run the free Global Energy Virtual 10k around Cornerstone Park in the beautiful, cool, cloudy morning on 10/5/21. Donations went to a great cause, and cool swag is on its way to us now. 😁
$1.04 total (BEFORE cash back 👀)
These were all National Coffee Day and other freebies we picked up from Starbucks, Circle K, Dunkin', and AMPM today. $0 for everything except Dunkin'. For that, we each combined $1 credit we got yesterday (thanks, T-Mobile Tuesdays) with their "free medium hot or iced coffee with any purchase" deal and paid $0.52 out of pocket for a donut.
National Coffee Day is Sept 29th every year, so if you didn't take advantage this year, be sure to put it in your calendar for 2022!
Oh, and my husband doesn't like coffee, so... 🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪
Today marks the 10-year anniversary of me quitting my job at Moneytree — the last and final time I was anyone's employee!
This was unsurprisingly a special moment for me. Poor execution on my part and a bumpy ride for awhile afterward, but one regret I most definitely don't have is taking control of my schedule. I didn't know what the future would hold or that I would be so settled and comfortably self-employed a decade on, but this was the moment I got my freedom from the "9 to 5" (I was actually working graveyard shift, but that's details), and I have never looked back.
On September 19, 2021, tens of thousands of runners participated in a remote 10k in pursuit of the Guinness World Records™ "Most users to complete a remote 10 km in 24 hours" record. Sean, a handful or friends, and I were among them. Many of our times weren't much to sniff at, but all together, we got to be a part of something kind of special. Oh yeah! And we broke the record. 🙂
As for Sean and me, we just did our part running our miles up and down Las Vegas Blvd that hot, fall morning.
For those who might otherwise ask, though a lot of participants wound up buying medals and other items to commemorate the achievement, this was a free event to partake in, and the digital certificates we received for successfully breaking the record were more than sufficient mementos for us. This didn't feel fractionally as personally significant to Sean and me as breaking the rhythm game marathon record back in 2013 or as any number of other personal accomplishments felt at the time, and most things we do feel more trivial after the fact anyway (or to me, anyway), so I never got around to posting about this at the time (it's actually January 2022 as I'm typing this), but I'm learning to appreciate and value the power of teamwork and recognize that what we can achieve together is at least as worthy of celebrating as each of our individual contributions, so yay! 🎉
SRPG5 ended last night! It went roughly like SRPG4 did for me but with a one or so difficulty improvement. I'm still working on the not going all out every session thing. Other than that, I mostly just played everything I could, had a peek at the quests when I started finding myself low on goals and direction, and otherwise hoped for the best. 😄
In addition to tons of unlocks and the 20s and 21 I did, I'm pretty sure I finished all the base pack 19s and below. I didn't think to keep track of milestones and achievements as I went along, but I was happy to get Stamina Nation Rank 3 and master or grandmaster every bpm tier up to 200. I also didn't know where I stood as far as the other ranking stats almost at all until the very end, aside from occasionally checking out the TP + LP ranking. (Actually, I didn't even realize most of the ranking sorts existed til really recently.) Kinda cool to see how all the effort came together after the fact though!
My results for 2021:
Level: 86
Highest pass: 21
Rankings:
•TP/LP: 31/483
•TP/LP (female): 1/51 (Amy didn't enter this year)
•Experience: 21/484
•Experience (female): 1/52
•Marathon (BB): 13/349
•Marathon (BB) (female): 1/33
•Timing (Gold): 10/459
•Timing (Gold) (female): 1/50
•Footspeed (JP): 56/68
•Footspeed (JP) (female): 2/3 (1st place: lolipo)
•Stamina Nation accolades: 8/349
•Stamina Nation accolades (female): 1/33
•Democratic People's Republic of Timing accolades: 14/415
•Democratic People's Republic of Timing accolades (female): 2/44 (1st place: Freyja)
•Footspeed Empire accolades: 19/304
•Footspeed Empire accolades (female): 1/28
•Pass count: 8/484
•Pass count (female): 1/52
By contrast, in 2020:
Level: 78
Highest pass: 20
Rankings:
•TP/LP: 44/493
•TP/LP (female): 2/56
•Experience: 31/504
(The rest was N/A for last year, or I didn't check.)
As always, I'm massively grateful for all the effort put into this event by organizers as well as fellow competitors, Urza for motivating me, and Sean for putting up with me. ❤ Thank you once again! 🙏
As for what's next, like I've heard a number of others confess, I'm feeling pretty burnt out and ready for the off season. I played through last year's and think some downtime is LONG overdue. I'll be tapering down now but sticking it out enough through ECS10 in a couple of weeks to see the end result of the past few months' effort. Gotta bring it on home! 😜 I'll still be aiming to maintain and even work toward gains after that too but definitely planning to cut down a bit, mix in some running and other activities, and catch up on some much-needed R&R. 😴
My Facebook posts from this year vs last:
SRPG5 (2021): https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157794409372024&id=550422023&sfnsn=mo
SRPG4 (2020): https://www.facebook.com/550422023/posts/10157067784587024/
With our friends Gordon Louie and Nick Coltor in town, we had Team BBC at 50% the other night! The other 5 of us live too far or couldn't make it, but half's not bad. 😛 We got a couple of our other good friends out too. As life hasn't been the easiest for everyone lately, we decided to limit the get together to a couple of close mutuals only, but it was a great time catching up nonetheless. Always SUCH a treat to spend time with these folks. ❤ Thanks again to Nick, Gordon, Sharon, Remy, Natalie, Danny and the husband Sean for yet another memorable night!
Details: This was at Player 1 Video Game Bar here in Vegas the other night. I had no idea Vegas had opened up a barcade this cool! (It actually turns out there are others in town we still need to check out.) They even have a DDR SuperNova machine in not the worst ever condition and a Guitar Hero too! Drinks are pricey, but the gaming cost is pretty decent: cover charge of $5 for locals or $8 for everyone else, and all games are on freeplay!
NO. FREAKIN. WAY. I won a LELO SONA 2 Cruise and it really showed up in my mailbox. 😲 When I saw a giveaway for it online a couple months back, I thought "lol whatever, might as well try." When they emailed me in June to tell me I'd won and get my info, I thought "riiiiight. I'm never getting this." but put my address in just in case. IT'S HERE.
No joke, this toy in this color (black) have been the at the top of my sex toy shopping list — an actual list on my phone — since around the time it came out. In fact, when I logged into LELO to register this one for warranty protection today, it was still in my shopping cart. 😂
I still love my Soraya (the other black and gold LELO toy in these pics), but am obviously VERY excited to ummm...go on this Cruise, probably right after I finish posting this.
Some tl;dr some of you may also find interesting:
-I feel like Sean and I win things fairly often these days just by putting ourselves out there a lot. Though you should still do your best to weigh your odds before investing too much into an opportunity, I've learned that people who dismiss thoughts of not being likely to achieve or win and just try anyway tend to find themselves "lucky" much more of the time than you'd expect.
-I can already tell that the SONA Cruise I just received is by far the most convenient vibrator I've ever owned with USB charging (no AAs needed), a fairly compact size that fits perfectly in hand, and very little sound. Assuming it's as toe-curling as the reviews promise and as it feels to the touch, I have a good feeling about it becoming my new go-to travel toy — and possibly even my main!
-I bought my original LELO Soraya back in 2009 or so, give or take a year, for around $200. That was by far the most I've ever spent on a vibrator, but I was sick of wasting money on crap toys that gobbled batteries and broke within weeks, and I definitely ended up getting my money's worth. (See pic of my well-worn toy in 2018.) When it finally died in 2018, it was still juuuuust within the 10-year warranty, and LELO actually sent me a brand new replacement 100% free of charge (even free shipping). I just had to send them my old one. 😬
-I've actually been picking up old school "massagers" here and there from thrift stores, swap meets, etc. for several years now, usually for $1 and never for more than $8. I just sanitize them. (Yes, I'm nasty. Oh well. If it feels good, idgaf.) Though they're always wired and therefore no substitute for my wireless LELO and other toys in that regard, they're actually often at least as mind-blowing as any expensive toy I've tried. Turns out you don't always get what you pay for.
-Although I'm suuuuper excited to see whether my new SONA Cruise will make me eat my words, BY FAR the best vibrator I've EVER used is the ancient, red and black Vibra Queen I picked up at a swap meet in Oklahoma, I believe it was, for $1. (See pic above.) OH MY GOD. If I don't find anything that can keep up before this one kicks the bucket, expect to start seeing me very grumpy. 😡 Counting on you, SONA Cruise!
Small change. Since working out with heavy earrings in for years as a teen, my earlobes have never been the same. For the most part, two small hoops in each ear has been my go-to look since then and is probably how you'll have seen me over 99% of the time in the recent half of my life. I've rarely thought twice about it, but it felt like time to try something new. It was $1 on eBay for this little pair of black plugs. I switched my nicer hoops to the back for now but could use some ideas for hypoallergenic (I'm allergic to nickel) studs or earrings that would work better with the plugs, given my look. (See pics. Yes, I slept in my makeup but wasn't about to stress over that to post about my earrings. 😂) I'm partial to stainless steel and black for a low maintenance, durable, goes-with-everything look. 🤔
A couple of nights back, Sean, our friend Jewel Rodriguez, and I had the pleasure of getting to meet a fellow dance gamer named Hiten Trivedi! He's been driving cross country, moving from Boston, MA to San Jose, CA, so it only seemed right to try and give him a warm west coast welcome as he made his way down through Las Vegas. ☺ We met up at a local arcade called Game Nest — which, amazingly, Sean and I had still never been to til now, despite it haven't tons of rhythm games, including DDR and PIU — and then got dinner at Ichiza.
Jewel & Sean: thank you so much for coming out with me. I always appreciate your efforts, and it was good getting out with you both again. ❤
Boston: I'm sorry for your loss, but we'll do our best to take care of this guy for you. 😁
Hiten: Welcome to the wild west, and I hope it lives up to your every expectation. Give our love to the bay area homies 😛🥰, and we'll be looking forward to hearing all the details of Cali life for you when we catch you at some arcade or dance game event in the near future!
20 first song of the day now! Well, an easy marathon 20, anyway. The difficulty is probably like 20.0, it starts at 200 bpm, and it's 19 mins 50 secs long. Still, maintaining 200 like that with no prior warm up is good for me, and that ending was flippin rough. It almost did me in! The rest of the chart wasn't too bad, but 220+ is no joke like 600+ measures in. Ugh Anyway, I actually only wound up passing 3 songs today as this first one kinda burned me out. 😅 I can't complain about the new difficulty so soon after ticking off that last one the other day though, and I've gotta give it to these Stamina Nation daily quests; they sure as hell light a fire under my ass! 🤣
Also, shoutouts to my friend David Sjöstrand/Urza for knocking this song out earlier today and letting me know what to expect. Due to the bpm increase throughout it, I never would've even attempted it first song if not for him doing it twice already now with 87.xx% and 93.xx% scores and telling me it was an easy 20 I could definitely do. I just kept that in mind while fighting with that GD ending. Haha
My 18-year dance game anniversary is tomorrow. I'll be out of town and away from ITG for at least 4 days but will probably mess around on the Max 2 machine where I'm going. Either way, not a bad way to pay early tribute to 18 years here!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my old friend David Frausto/DJFX!!!
I've known this guy since I was 15 or so. He was probably around 13 when we met at the Oh Wow! Nickel Arcade in Merced, CA — pretty much our second home during those big, important years. He came to Vegas early this month and stopped by our house to visit June 6th. Anyone who knows David will know that it's needless to say we had a hell of a night! See, David is one of those rare people who makes me — perhaps not you, but definitely me — feel at home, not only because of our Merced upbringing but because he's the type of person who knows and doesn't so much as flinch at the 100% unfiltered version of me and gives me that crass, potty-mouthed, mind-in-the-gutter version of him right back! 😂 I can't overstate how refreshing that can be and how much I love him for it. Growing up, David and I had fun, drama, lows, and highs, but it was nothing but love when he visited. That's friendship! The best type of friendship I know, in fact. The greatest part now is getting to share that love and joy and energy by hanging with him and Sean and even Danny for a moment at the same time. In particular, watching David and Sean get to know each other, sharing old memories with each of them, A LOT of talking (we had so freakin much to catch up on and I hadn't spoken to almost anyone in person in ages!!), messing around on dance games together like old times and playing our most nostalgic songs, getting maybe just a little bit tipsy,...David's visit made for hands down one of the most special nights I've had in a long time. I absolutely can't wait til next time. Til then, I just hope this fucker is having the best possible birthday and doing all the most jaw-dropping things that I don't dare mention here to celebrate!! 😛🥂
❤ you, David!!! And Sean sends his love in a British accent too!! 🤣
Our teams placed 2nd in Mid Division and 3rd in Lower this year! Read on to see how that happened, or check out our event videos here:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrJjrQtZSSXwhM_tbDc9VAVcyx1ec77JU
Mid Division team info
•Team name: Help, I Misplaced My Calories
•Members: 2
•Member names: Aleta Ewing (JOKR) & David Sjöstrand (Urza)
•Location(s): USA & Sweden (respectively)
•Place: 2nd out of 15 teams who submitted both Marathon and Raw Output scores (21 registered, but 6 did not submit scores for both)
Lower Division team info
•Team name: Cheese Baguette For Pleasure
•Members: 3
•Member names: Aleta Ewing (JOKR), Ilia LeRouskoff (Diablos), & Richard Dannenberg (Rinch)
•Location(s): USA, France, & Wisconsin (respectively)
•Place: 3rd out of 54 teams who submitted both Marathon and Raw Output scores (78 registered, but 24 did not submit scores for both)
Story
For a number of reasons, including the COVID-19 pandemic and Vegas dance game friends not being as active with ITG these days, I found myself without teammates leading up to this year's ECS team tournament. I'd made plans to participate with another of other people, but several of them suffered injuries or physical setbacks in that time, and all fell through. While it's possible to enter and compete the same way with anywhere from one to three people on a team, meaning it's a viable option to enter solo, it can be a lot less physically taxing with multiple people. Besides, I primarily play for the social aspect, so competing in a team tournament without teammates ideal to me. Fortunately, with fellow stamina players scattered across the globe, I was able to rustle up a few to make teams with! I'd also preemptively done some of the marathon splits in my own time, meaning there was less I needed to play in order to obtain the necessary scores to submit to participate in the tournament. The bad news: by the time I had my teams sorted and therefore had some idea of who would be handling which portions of scores and passes (marathon splits and various raw output songs) for the tournament, I had six days left to play two four-hour raw output sessions with my teams and pass one challenging mid marathon split. How that played out, by date:
5/11/21: Mid raw output with Urza
5/12/21: rest
5/13/21: 190bpm Mid marathon split attempt (unsuccessful)
5/14/21: light ITG session to keep loose
5/15/21: Lower raw output with Rinch and Diablos
5/16/21: 200bpm Mid marathon split
Mid team formation
Urza reached out roughly one week before the end of the tournament to see if I'd be interested in teaming up with him in Mid. He only had a couple of days he'd be able to play before the deadline, but between us, that would be enough to get the marathon splits and raw output done.
There were three splits to be done per division (or teammates could play the whole marathon in one go if you're able to play together in person, which we weren't). For Mid, each split had two 17s, two 18s, and two 19s (in that order) at or above the bpms given in their titles: 190, 200, and 210. Urza and I had both already done the 210 split, but he'd taken a break from playing ITG stamina just prior to doing so, so I wound up with a slightly higher score. That left us still in need of scores on the 190 and 200bpm splits. (We'd made prior attempts at these but had not yet passed either between us.)
Lower team formation
Once I found out none of the people who were supposed to enter with me this year would be available after all and after Urza and I had worked out teaming up for Mid, I made posts on social media to recruit new teammates for Lower. I got a handful of responses and wound up teaming up with Diablos from France and Rinch from Wisconsin. Neither Rinch nor I had ever met or spoken to Diablos before, but I saw that we did have a few mutual dance game friends with him.
As for a team name, we decided on Cheese Baguette For Pleasure because Wisconsin is known for cheese, baguettes are stereotypical French food, and Las Vegas is known as Sin City, so "For Pleasure" just sort of completed it. Nothing special, but we needed a name, and it worked.
As far as the three Lower marathon splits, each had two 12s, two 13s, and two 14s (in that order) at or above the bpms given in their titles: 140, 150, and 160. I'd done all three well in advance, not knowing who I'd be teaming up with and what they'd need from me, so I just left it to Diablos and Rinch to decide which of my scores they'd prefer to use and which split they'd each like to do themselves. In the end, we used my score on the 140bpm split, Diablos did the 150, and Rinch did the 160.
5/11/21 ‐ Mid raw output
Some quick info to note about this: the available songs for Mid raw output range from 17s to 22s + one 23. Each team has four hours to pass as many songs as they can, but only one person is allowed to play at a time. Scores don't matter, fails don't count, and each passed song can only be counted once per team.
I don't know about Urza, but I didn't go into this with much of a plan. With him in Sweden and me thousands of miles away in Las Vegas, coordinating trading off songs wasn't completely straightforward. He and I decided to watch each other's Twitch streams to see what song the other person was playing in order to keep track of what had been played and when so that we wouldn't end up playing the same songs or at the same time as one another and in order to total our score later. We did have a backup plan of messaging each other via Facebook Messenger if stream lag became too much of an issue to track when the other person had finished their song, but we hadn't realized that we'd basically have to rely entirely on those messages, as the lag on the stream quickly proved to be consistently bad and was wasting a lot of time. We decided to just send the word "Done" to each other after finishing our song(s) to signal the other person to take a turn. At times, one of us would get a message saying "Done" while their stream still seemed to show them with nearly half the song left to play! Urza had an incredible set on his end though and beasted 18 songs ranging in difficulty from 18 to 21, averaging at 19.11 difficulty, which was 1 difficulty higher than he's anticipated. I'm sure he faced some challenges, other than just coordinating with me and carrying the team, but he sure as hell did a fantastic job of compensating for them!
As for me, my struggles were primarily technical; I had multiple cameras freeze multiple times during my set and one camera kept falling over. The worst of the issues, however, was with the machine itself. TWICE during my set, the machine kicked the pads out and wasted a bunch of the limited time Urza and I could've otherwise spent playing and gaining points. The second of these times was worse, however, because it happened 40% of the way into an 18, wasting not only time but energy that I could've used to pass something else. I'd gone into the set playing it safe, telling Urza to expect nothing more than 17s and 18s out of me, just in case I couldn't offer more without the risk of failing and therefore wasting time. I realized a good way into our set, however, that I had it in me to do one or two long 19s for the team. Sadly, my machine had started kicking the pads out by that point, and I couldn't trust it enough to ever try. Maybe next year I'll have a backup setup to decrease the risk slightly. This year, I was limited to helping out with 16 songs at an average difficulty of 17.38.
Anyway, I had a good time, and we both got a good workout in "together" but from afar, and finished up with a total of 445 raw out output points to show for today's efforts.
5/13/21 - 190 Mid split attempt
I didn't have high hopes for the super-streamy 190bpm Mid marathon split today, but I promised Urza I'd give it a shot so we'd at least have some kind of score to submit for it by the May 16th deadline. Getting through the 17s and 18s and failing during the first 19, I actually made it slightly further than I'd expected to be able to, finishing with a failed score of 51.41%. Unlike in raw output, score is all that counts, and failing only matters in that it stops you from getting a higher score, so we were able to use my score as a placeholder in case nothing better could be achieved before the deadline.
5/14/21 - short session
I just played a quick, easy session today to keep my legs loose without burning out before Lower raw output tomorrow.
5/15/21 - Lower raw output
So soon after this week's prior ITG sessions, I didn't know what to expect from my body going into today. It's rare that I play this much in such a short period of time these days. That said, today's demands were lower. :p For one thing, the difficulty range for Lower raw output was just 12s to 17s + one 18. Diablos had already laid claim to the 18, as we'd divvied up the bpm ranges between us and it was within his, and there were only so many 17s available to play before we'd run out and have to drop down to 16s and under anyway.
With regard to divvying up the bpms between us, I had started with my recruitment post, requesting someone to do the 175bpm, 28-minute-long 18 if they did not want to play any of the 200+bpm songs, as it would be uncomfortable for me to take care of both extremes in one set. Diablos had offered to handle the 17, saying he was most comfortable at 180bpm and lower and would handle any content in that range. Rinch said he'd prefer to stay under ~200bpm, so he mostly tackled the 180 to 200bpm range. That left the 200+ stuff, so I took that. I didn't have much preference anyway as the fastest song in the pack was 218bpm, and bpm isn't too consequential to me at those difficulties.
Since we were obviously doing this remotely, just as I'd done with Urza a few days prior, I suggested using the tactics Urza and I had devised for coordinating with each other while playing. Though the difficulties were different between Mid and Lower, the format was the same. I'd sort of taken it for granted that we would each play roughly one song and then rotate to the next teammate in line though, so it hadn't occurred to me to plan the set out in detail with the guys. On the day, it turned out Rinch would need to play more near the start of the four hours so that he could leave early to help a friend, and Diablos would need to play the 28-minute 18 fairly early in the set but after warming up on another song during the set. Accordingly, we had to go into some of our songs almost completely cold. In fact, I actually waited 59 minutes between my first and second songs! X'D With those first two songs being [17][200]BE AS ONE and [17][205]Chrome Vox, I was just grateful that nothing in the pack was so insanely fast as to be impossible to tackle cold. I did have one moment of discomfort though: my third and fourth songs, [17][207]winkles twinkle '11 and [17][218]Goblin Humpa, were another 29 minutes after my second song, and that 218 was definitely a bit rough on otherwise sedentary legs. Haha I honestly couldn't complain though. For one thing, the challenge of playing that way was good tournament practice. For another thing, I really didn't have to play much during our four hours — only 39 mins compared to Diablos' 103 mins and Rinch's 85 mins! They were both so eager to keep knocking songs out, and who was I to argue with that? In the end Lower raw output turned out to be an absolute BREEZE for me. I've literally NEVER had an easier time during a raw output session, or probably any tournament, for that matter. My average heart rate during it was 102 and max was 138. Best part: this meant I might have some steam left in me for tomorrow — the last possible day to submit scores for ECS... Til then, it was time for some celebratory 151 with Sean, who'd just returned from running up and down one of the biggest mountains out here!
Some noteworthy moments from today: Rinch getting into his fancy dress for the second half of his set and Diablos doing the Stardust Curry challenge, i.e., push-ups during the long break in the song Stardust Curry. Find both in our raw output video below.
5/16/21 - 200bpm Mid split (last day of ECS 9.5)!
I woke up a bit parched, probably because of the 151. Luckily, it turned out Urza had already passed (more like annihilated!) the 190bpm split by the time I started thinking about playing today, so the 200bpm one was the only one we had left to pass! Also, I'd done so little yesterday that I had energy and felt plenty good enough for it. I wouldn't say it was easy by any means; my timing was horrendous, and I got 10.55% lower on it than I had on the 210bpm Mid marathon split. That's details though. We'd passed all three splits, which was far more than I could expected ahead of time!
Results
All said and done, here were our final numbers:
Mid marathon scores:
190bpm: 89.68% (Urza)
200bpm: 76.01% (JOKR)
210bpm: 86.56% (JOKR)
Mid points:
Marathon: 844
Raw output: 445
Total: 1289 (For comparison: First place had 1775, third had 1263)
Lower marathon scores:
140bpm: 98.88% (JOKR)
150bpm: 96.94% (Diablo)
160bpm: 99.56% (Rinch)
Lower points:
Marathon: 985
Raw output: 994
Total: 1979 (For comparison, second place had 1981, first had 1999)
Additional notes
I used the aliases our team members entered with for consistency here, but you may find them under other aliases elsewhere (e.g., Diablos also goes by diablos3000), so I have also included their full names (above).
Per ECS team tournament rules, each person is allowed to be on up to two teams per division. All three of my teammates had also entered Lower separately from me prior to teaming up with me. Urza had entered solo and placed 4th, Diablos had entered solo (under the alias diablos3000) and placed 17th, and Rinch had entered with his wife Steph/freyja and placed 7th.
As is somewhat typically the case when I play ITG, I was on my own much of the time while training and doing various parts of this tournament. Sean went to the Mount Charleston area twice this past week, for example — once during each of my raw output sessions — and climbed Griffith Peak and Mummy Mountain! (He wasn't slacking either. Haha) Danny was with me for almost all of my Lower Raw Output though, and Sean was there for part of both Raw Outputs and was also the brains behind putting all the videos together for me!
This is the first year the ECS team tournament has had three divisions — Lower, Mid, and Upper. In past years, I believe there was always only Lower and Upper, though perhaps there was only one division at one point in time? I can't say. In any case, I didn't do Upper this year as I am not yet good enough to pass even one Upper raw output song and therefore wouldn't be able to even if I wanted to. In total, 5 teams did submit both raw output and marathon scores for Upper.
A lot of this was typed as I went along through the week and just added to later. I didn't mean for it to transform into a novel. Welp.
Twitch stream links, in case you'd like to give any of us a follow:
JOKR (location: Nevada): https://www.twitch.tv/teambbc
Urza (location: Sweden): https://www.twitch.tv/urzagaming
Rinch (location: Wisconsin) : https://www.twitch.tv/freyja87
Diablos (location: France): https://www.twitch.tv/diablos3000
List of my YouTube vids from this event:
ECS 9.5 Raw Output (remote) - 2nd Place Mid Division (ITG):
https://youtu.be/n09_LTODhyc
JOKR - ECS 9.5 Mid Marathon Meme Tier High - 190 Vlad [20] 51.41% FAIL
https://youtu.be/rJxnXW09J8k
JOKR - ECS 9.5 Mid Marathon Meme Tier High - 200 Dad [20] 76.01%
https://youtu.be/oeZpn7Ot1fQ
JOKR - ECS 9.5 Mid Marathon Meme Tier High - 210 Aincrad [20] 86.56%
https://youtu.be/MefBrKtkGhc
ECS 9.5 Raw Output (remote) - 3rd Place Lower Division (ITG):
https://youtu.be/9qLkcM-O2Go
JOKR - ECS 9.5 Lower Marathon Meme Tier Elementary - 140 Lad [15] 98.88%
https://youtu.be/tVKnXq-IgBU
JOKR - ECS 9.5 Lower Marathon Meme Tier Elementary - 150 Sad [15] 98.86%
https://youtu.be/iTQFBLWYmTk
JOKR - ECS 9.5 Lower Marathon Meme Tier Elementary - 160 Plaid [15] 98.63%
https://youtu.be/Xzr7t1r0RDY
Mid ranking:
Lower ranking:
