The marathon really was an emotional roller coaster, and I feel it's only fitting as the main organizer to detail my feelings throughout the week, which started fearful and slowly changed to enjoyment.
The marathon opened to immediate technical difficulties, with Naegleria unable to mix the Skype commentary into his gameplay. When Naegleria's time was almost up, bertin wasn't at his computer and a "lucky" series of Game Overs in Death Egg Zone gave him just enough time to get back and set up his stream. The day itself had a very slow influx of donations, making me concerned about the marathon as a whole. We ran into more difficulties at the end of the night during Saturn Sonic 3D Blast, when Twitch wasn't showing the stream to half of our audience and my game went on to freeze, forcing me to finish on Genesis. SDM was nowhere to be found on Day 2 for his Sonic 3 & Knuckles run, so I had to run the game myself despite having no practice (although I did manage a no-lights Sandopolis 2 run for a donation). The sheer amount of difficulties caused me to start the first "bonus stream" on the first night, in which we continued to play games well after the supposed end time of 10 PM.
The bonus streams turned out to be a great idea; while people were rarely donating over the course of the day, people donated to see more of us when we hit the end of the night and threatened to turn the stream off according to the schedule. DsS, bertin, Parax, and I all did bonus streams and every single one drew donations. We occasionally received donations for events during the day, such as Sonic 4 Episode 2 co-op and All Stars Racing, but the bonus streams were by far the biggest draw, as if people were paying for us to entertain them more than they were paying money to charity (although I'm sure it was a mix of both :P).
This realization caused me to lighten up more and more as the days passed for the sake of simply being entertaining. I stopped becoming an absolute slave to the schedule and started becoming more flexible, culminating in removing the fan works section entirely when people were more interested in Saturday's four-player shenanigans and wanted more of that.
This happened and I laughed instead of ignoring it and moving on. I started fooling around on the stream commentary as opposed to talking only about the game, using memes started by the chat and even embracing one directed at me. While I can't speak for the thought processes everybody else had, I think they were similar, because by Friday the commentary had changed from monotone speech and became a bunch of us laughing at memes and silly occurrences on the screen, poking fun at each other with nobody taking offense. Karaoke became a common occurrence and nobody became overly embarrassed about it (the chat loved it). We came to call the bonus streams "TSC After Dark" as we started talking about subjects we'd never touch on while speaking during the "core" marathon.
Sunday opened to a large amount of donations, pushing us from about $940 to about $1020 in no time flat. The middle of the day had no money flowing, but as the day ended and we discussed both bonus streams and the goal while Parax streamed Sonic Generations, the cash began moving again. Then DsS mentioned that he'd stream for 12 hours on Monday if the goal was met, and the cash flow came so fast that ChipIn couldn't keep up. We reached our goal and then some that night, and had a hilarious After Dark stream in which I started reading Internet articles in monotone, then Time Cube, then fanfics being linked by the audience and Parax himself.
Monday's 12-hour DsS stream went by surprisingly quickly for me, as the commentary was a lot of fun. We weren't on the formal schedule anymore, so the content was at the After Dark level all day. DsS landed a donation challenge that Parax couldn't, to much applause, and we continued to play up the marathon memes all day. When we finally did stop the stream, it was almost tough for me to speak about it in Skype as I was sad to see it go.
All in all, I ended up having a great time and it was all for a good cause. We've been discussing the idea of a shorter streaming event a few days after Christmas (can't get edged out by AGDQ in January) and I hope everybody will come to that and participate if possible.
Marathon memes that need to get used on TSC:
- Big the Car: Bargain Gamer made the best typo ever, and it stuck. Any instance of Big or vehicles after this typo was turned into a reference to Big the Car.
- Magnets: Just... magnets. Every quirk in streamed games from that point on could be explained by magnets.
- OH NO: From bertin's vs. Knuckles fight in Sonic Adventure. It became just a bit popular.
- $5 for Game Over: It's as it sounds. A donation that came in for a Game Over was mentioned repeatedly during the marathon.
- Thorn is a BEAST: This was mentioned by sonicsama during my Unleashed 360 stream, with the obvious double meaning in play. I was declared a "beast of epic proportions" after beating the monster that is Sonic Spinball, and once sonicsama joined the commentary on Friday and mentioned it again, I allowed myself to get into it and occasionally grunted and snarled and explained things/problems as due to being a beast whereas nobody else was. The Twitch chat and Skype chat began getting into it, and eventually other declarations were made, such as Parax being a robot and DsS a cyborg.
- Karaoke: Too many instances to count; I'll try to locate all of them sometime.
- PHYSICS: Used in the same context as the pokecapn and posse Let's Play of Sonic 2006 during the 12-hour bonus stream, then carried over into 8-bit Sonic Spinball and Megamix.
- Uncle Thorn: He's the creepy uncle that reads you perverse stories.
- Skypatrol: Chat derailed bertin's 8-bit stream plans in order to see Skypatrol, and DsS wouldn't start his stream until Skypatrol was finished. From that point on, Skypatrol became the game to which everything else was compared, leading to its presence in both the Saturday bonus stream and the Monday 12-hour stream.
- Charpers: These are from the fanfic Parax linked in chat on Saturday night for me to read aloud. Don't forget that there are two instances of Charper 3.
- Team Blast: It's Team Chaotix's only attack.
- sonicacademy: LilyBlade tried to read the chat while looking at the computer sideways, and botched sonicandamy's name into sonicacademy; it stuck.
- 69: sonicacademy planned many of his donations around 69s, making it funny for a different reason than usual whenever 69s appeared.
- Casual yoshifan: We added yoshifan to a "casual" match of Puyo, and he completely dominated. We went on to redefine casual for the rest of the marathon.
Some general and specific thanks:
- Everybody who donated: For obvious reasons.
- Everybody in the commentary: Also obvious.
- Everybody who streamed: Still obvious.
- Everybody who watched loyally: We had people such as MigelTheHedgehog, ChilledMadness, and MissMysterics that watched pretty much every day and were very active in the chat the entire time showing support. I hope everybody keeps in touch, and I hope that everybody attends if we have a stream around the holidays.
- Guest participants from other sites: charlie from NiDScores and Naegleria, footbigmike,and mike89 from Speed Demos Archive were all a big help, and charlie donated $130 to the cause. Thanks to the guys at SpeedRunsLive for letting us stream on their front page as well. Gamble, who streamed Ristar, is a member here but is more often found at Puyo Nexus, and many other people from Puyo Nexus came to the stream and were very vocal.
- Bargain Gamer: The sheer amount of work you did for the marathon is incredible, from making a total of $100 in donations, to joining me for the multiplayer events, to buying ad space on 918thefan.com to advertise us, to getting other people on said site to plug us and visit us. Also, Big the Car.
- LilyBlade and GerbilSoft: You guys took the time out of your weekend to help me stream the multiplayer events, and Gerbil even donated as soon as I took him home.
- DarkspinesSonic: Your bonus streams were a big help, as were your donations. You had to sacrifice some cash to be allowed to stream for us, yet did so with little hesitation. The 12-hour stream was a big factor in getting the donation goal met and I don't know what we would've done without having you in the marathon.
- sonikku a.k.a. sonikkusama a.k.a. sonicsama: You helped plug the charity when we were occupied, donated and played on the stream, joined us for commentary for four days, and of course turned me into the beast I've come to embrace. You took it in stride when I mentioned your deviantArt work on the stream, which was an honest attempt to show that you'd helped with past charity marathons and a conversation point, and I hope I didn't embarrass you in any way by mentioning it. Hopefully my commission offer is a nice change of pace, getting to draw something you helped to design instead of "Hay, here's mai fanchar I drew, can you draw it except better in exchange for this virtual currency?"
- Sofox: As with sonikku, you donated and played on the stream and also commentated a good bit. It was cool having both of you joining us for commentary and being surprisingly good at it, and thank you for sticking around instead of bailing out after All Stars Racing.
- Quartz: The banner was great, and you even did more art for our ad on 918thefan. You were also present constantly for commentary.
- werster: Despite the drama that went into your involvement in the marathon, you were a big help with commentary and donations. It only figures that the other admins didn't actually participate in the marathon beyond All Stars Racing; I very much should've left you involved in the actual runs despite being told the contrary.
- yoshifan: Thank you for commentary and Sonic Adventure 2, as well as chatting with me about marathon setup.
- sonicacademy: For all of your 69ing.
