[Thorn]

The second TSC Charity Marathon ended with a whopping $2286.22 in donations to the American Cancer Society, with donations still being accepted through Saturday (they work now!). Thanks to all streamers and viewers that supported the event! I'll be using this topic over the coming days to talk about the marathon itself and things behind the scenes, so keep an eye out.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Donations for Ponies, Part 1
Pleasing All of the People, All of the Time
Donations for Ponies, Part 2

You can watch videos from this year's marathon and from last year's marathon by visiting the archives at TSC's Twitch.tv channel. We intend to stream more in the future, so give us a follow if you haven't already and watch via the TSC Stream link on the sidebar when we go live.

[Thorn]

It's strange to think of our marathon as a difficult thing to pull off. Almost all of the people involved have streamed games on Twitch.tv before, so it should simply be a matter of all of the streamers showing up at a scheduled time and doing what they always do, with a hyperlink below the stream to allow donations to the charity. Of course, life has a funny way of making the easy things harder than they have every right to be. Most of these difficulties were overcome or partially overcome, and I thank everybody who pitched in for that. I'll use this first post-marathon talk to give credit where it's due while also discussing the hiccups we couldn't resolve.

The first day opened strong but had a serious problem occur at the very end when Parax was unable to stream Sonic Generations. Logan picked up the slack and played the game all the way through, and did so very well. Tuesday had significantly more problems: when bertin was forced to miss his 90 minutes of streaming due to a surprise double shift at work, Logan again stepped in to fill the gap (with different games) and did so very well. HyperSonic7701 filled Chao_Fan's time slot immediately following this, and finished the game with plenty of time to spare. I had my own difficulties that night, as my Sonic 3D Blast run was cut short due to my Sega Saturn being unable to read the disc; I was forced to stream other Saturn content to make up for it before finally finishing my run using the Genesis version and (dreaded) keyboard controls.

EDIT: I completely forgot about our temporary website hosting during the first two days. Thank you for that, SeanieB.

Wednesday looked like it was going to go off without a hitch until it was discovered after 7:30 PM that Parax believed his Sonic 2006 stream started at 9:00 PM instead of 8:00 PM, and was not prepared for the earlier time. Despite flying fox's anxiety about the matter, she did very well keeping the stream chat occupied for the extra hour and even birthed a meme. Thursday went by without a hitch, but problems returned on Friday: having decided to leave for an hour to clean myself and my room in preparation for tomorrow's multiplayer events, I came back to find people unnecessarily panicking over bertin's stream key (text that tells streaming programs where to send the stream's data) not working for a stream he needed to start immediately. Giving him another person's stream key solved this problem in seconds. Later that night, online Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine Puyo Puyo play ran into issues both with the game audio and with people arguing over which competitors they would fight; I place the blame for this entirely on myself, as I should have foreseen both issues.

Saturday's issues boiled down to bad luck: Sonic Shuffle ran about an hour longer than it should have simply because the game threw as many gameplay lengtheners at us as it could (e.g., terrible luck for everybody crossing rotating spaces caused the players to about face frequently). This was resolved simply by airing the missed hour after the last scheduled game of the night. The capture program being used for streaming Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed decided to crash minutes before the start of the game, but sonikku filled time beautifully so that we could take the time to get things running again. Sunday had no issues to speak of, being an unscheduled day.

The one issue that was completely out of our control was PayPal disallowing further donations on Saturday night. This was the most depressing problem of all, as we still had another day's worth of donations as well as the donations from the people who discovered the issue and from GerbilSoft. Unfortunately, we'll never know how close we would have come to our stretch goal, the "community fundraising record" of $3250 (source: TSSZ). For the sake of the American Cancer Society, I hope that this issue gets resolved as soon as possible. I highly doubt that our tiny amount of donations relative to the scale of the ACS would push PayPal over the brink to set a fraud alert on the ACS' account, but the timing sure makes it seem that way, so I'm more than a bit saddened by this turn of events.

EDIT: The problem seems to have been resolved! The donation widget should be open through April 5.

In any case, the marathon was a success on the whole, and everybody involved should give himself/herself a pat on the back. Some informal polling on Sunday night showed that people weren't nearly as bugged by these issues as they could have been, which is a testament to how we handled the issues and to having a genuinely understanding crowd. I'll be posting other thoughts on things (such as commentary, my reactions to the My Little Pony episodes that donators forced me to watch, and trying to please a crowd) in the upcoming days, but I don't want to make a gigantic wall of text all in one day. I'd rather take my time to address each point with a clear head.

[Thorn]

During the marathon, money was donated on the condition that I watch several episodes of My Little Pony. I'm a man of my word, so today I clicked over to Private Browsing mode in Firefox, went to YouTube, and watched the first episode (and don't tell me I should've watched a different one, as starting at the beginning is simply the logical thing to do >_>). I'll watch other episodes in time, but for now, here's a stream of consciousness I had while watching the first one.


unicorn powers, oh man, here we go

wicked mare, it's serious now -- why can't they just take turns, I kind of like the night

HOLY SHIT CHAOS EMERALDS

this title theme, oh man, why is th- oh was that a dragon, that's half-manly I guess, gimme more of that

actual galloping sound effects, wow

and now the dragon's hit with a door, he's the butt monkey, isn't he? shit.

okay, the purple pony just got an erection on its forehead... there, NOW it's a horn

I wonder if anypony ever gets jealous that spike has hands and is bipedal

he just stabbed that parchment pretty hard, how didn't it tear

christ, twilight, spike looks young, cut him a break on the vocabulary

*belch*

Ponyville? really?

so the male flying ponies or pegasuses or whatever make real horse noises? I sense gender bias

oh man, here's RPGnutter's favorite pony

that spike laughing at the handshake, I really hope he's the snarky one with a sense of "this is all ridiculous"

granny smith apple, how clever

okay, if I were normal, and somebody that could fly and control weather came up to me while I was next to a fucking dragon, I'd feel pretty ripped off by God

tiny clouds are tiny, smaller than a hoof

so all of the characters outside of twilight and spike are going to be batshit insane god fuckING DAMMIT

only eight minutes to go!

you just talked to birds and you can't believe spike tal- oh, twilight sparkle DOES do practical magic. still kind of prefer flying to summoning magic, I would still feel ripped off

this party's gonna make twilight snap, isn't it

they ARE crazy, I'm glad we agree, Twilight

gentlecorts? the only males I saw couldn't talk! come to think of it, reproduction must be hard like that

all this magic, and a pony still needs glasses? surely they can fix that with MAGIC~

she's gone! they say having looked for five seconds

oh, shit is going DOOOOOOWWWWWNNNNNN

that aura on the black bitch, that's the first sign of evil, nobody righteous is allowed to have that, it's a law or something

see, there's that forever night again, why can't they just make day and night 24-hour affairs instead of half-day things? it'd solve EVERYTHING!

[Luxray]

^You now have to watch the second episode

...and the third.

....and all of them

[Strong Bad]

I have to agree with Cruizer here.
Season 2 episode 4 is the best ep tho

Anyway, here are my own reflections on the marathon:
I'm happy to participate in the marathon and will always be willing to do so if I'm able. These marathons aren't about any of us individually, or even TSC, but about coming together and using our hobby/passion to raise money for a worthy cause. I lost my grandfather to cancer when I was young and I miss him to this very day. With the $2.3k we raised, we've contributed to preventing that from happening to future families, and that's a beautiful thing. This is something for TSC to be very proud of. And as Thorn said, any of you who participated should be proud of themselves. Good job, TSC. See you next time! Special thanks go to HDL for his fantastic runs of S3&K. I enjoyed them quite a bit! :D

[Luxray]

I have to agree with Cruizer here.
Season 2 episode 4 is the best ep tho

YES!

[Thorn]

Today's entry will be short, but I feel it's necessary for future marathons.

There's plenty of old sayings to the tune of "You can't please all of the people all of the time" and "Different strokes for different folks". The marathon in itself is proof of that. Consider when Sonic 2006 ran late: we tried to provide as much entertainment as possible in that time span, and some people enjoyed the filler we gave, but we couldn't calm other people that were screaming for Sonic 2006 to start. Whenever we ran a game that was related to Sonic but wasn't exactly Sonic, we had some people get really passionate about the stream while others started whining in chat. The multiplayer day was probably the largest example: Shuffle, All-Stars Racing Transformed, and Mario & Sonic drew the smallest crowds of the marathon, but the crowd that was there really got into it, choosing particular players to support and strategizing alongside the players.

It's tempting to react to the group that dislikes something, even if your reaction would be to the detriment of those that like what you're doing. The best response we can give is to follow another old saying: "Only act on criticism with which you agree". If you're entertaining a large amount of people, make that clear in how you commentate and in how you run your game. If you feel you need to keep the chat interested, talk directly to them; going quiet and focusing on the game itself disconnects you from the audience. That said, remember that much of our audience was brought here because Logan was our first streamer, so if those people remained for your stream, it's because they wanted to see you. Don't beat yourself up on stream (as many people did) and play for the people that want to see what you do. Personally, I love the passionate people and I talk to them more than the others, as they're the ones that bring more viewers and spread the word. I hope that everybody next marathon can feel confident in his or her commentary and connect with the chatters in some way, as it's what makes us unique compared to large-scale events like AGDQ that have too many people in the chat for any one to make a mark.

[Thorn]

Episode 2: Electric Boogaloo. Another stream of consciousness.


hhheeerrreee we go again!

the title theme will never get less grating :(

you "foals" instead of "fools", I get it!

more mature baby than most everybody else >_>

the five Ideya of Nightopia!

candy apples ARE good!

how are they holding each other's legs?!?

manticore, zomg!

these things ALWAYS have a thorn in the paw, no pun intended

okay, those trees are genuinely creepy

NO, NOT SINGING, NO! WHY? WHY?!?

the alliteration is killing me in this song, MAKE IT STOP

...it stopped! yes!

A gigantic sea serpent! With a *fashion emergency*~

...the color is all off. That mustache is now worse than before!

Easily distracted Sonic expy is easily distracted

I was going to say that the talking Shadowbolt had a pretty androgynous voice, but then I remembered that the males from the last episode couldn't talk, so this must be female...?

oh man, I think Twilight is learning the MAGIC OF FRIENDSHIP

stand back doesn't mean leave the building, you morons! now she's fucked!

called it! FFFUUUCCCKKKEEEDDD

there's "foal" again

oh, what the hell is this shit, she wouldn't realize that her friends had some tie to the elements of harmony

Nightmare Moon is just letting her have her speech and summon the sixth element, what a dumb villain

suddenly, JEWELRY!

her pupils, they're gone!

oh, hey, that's the sun, that plot really did resolve itself quickly -- I was expecting all of season one to focus on it

I love how Princess Celestia is the biggest, why is that always the case-- did Pinky just shed her weight in tears

they're treating Luna as if nothing happened, wow... I couldn't be that big of a person, I'd want to get one last shot in

[Strong Bad]

when's part 3, thorn?

[Antronach]

A part of me wishes that my donations were counter-donations for this sort of stuff, since no man should go through this.

I am sad. ;-;