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Narrows Gamma; aka Deja Vu, or how to avoid your DDR inadequacies by Para-ing
Today was the Narrows Gamma tournament at (duh) Narrows. I-Gene and I hit the road on like 4 hours of sleep and I totally broke the speed limit a ton and we got there at like 10:50, the tournament supposedly started at 11. (But they did qualifiers early for people who were there). The single tech qualifiers: Miracle and Somewhere Over the Speed Change... yeah, that's an easy choice. I did Miracle, got like 45 greats... qualified like 26th or 27th or something. It was kinda funny since Nykkel qualified one less than me, and I think Sean qualified one less than him.
Ray and Jonathan and I-Gene are playing IIDX downstairs and I'm gonna conk out soon, I dunno if I'll even finish this entry tonight.
So I should first do shoutouts before I forget them, actually:
DYLAN IS THE MAN. He gave me his Max2 marquee he won...
and then AMBER IS THE MAN, because she gave me a GF 6th marquee as well. I've been begging for marquees for so long and suddenly in the last week I seem to have gotten 3. I'm so happy :) Amber is also the man for running the tournament so well, but then again, so is Steve and Rayna.
It was so good to meet new people today, like James (Captain Canada and his mad freestyle skills), and Mendel from oregon, and some of the IRC kids ("Hi, I'm ________". "Oh, I'm Deanna. I think I've kicked you on IRC before." "Yeah, like 10 times :)" "Nice to meet you, no hard feelings, right?").
So good to see Farren again. I remember how we used to hang out like, once or twice a week last fall, and now I hadn't seen him since Foy's party in mid-July...
Having Crystal and I-Gene up from california was so neat.
And Laura actually put on the loose socks I got her as the late birthday present and wore them around... they look so much better on her than my pair looks on me.
Rumi and Matt were there! Yay!
Pale-Charlie showed up too! And I want to see all the goofy self-pictures he took!
Ray is fun! But I still think he shoulda entered doubles :)
Mwinzi was there and we got to PARA!
Oh, and of course it was AWESOME to see Pete and to Para and to hang out and stuff. Pete's also the man.
While I'm at it, Keel is the man too. I am SO happy he decided to come, and to stay, and to win doubles :) (Don't get me wrong. I think Dyaus is one of the greatest guys I've ever met, he's such a total sweetie, and an AMAZING DDR player, but I still wanted Kyle to beat him)
Oh, and the person I probly enjoyed talking to the most was Nykkel... I mean, I could babble about Japan a bit to other people, but at least he really *understands* what I'm talking about. I'm so glad he stuck around all day :)
Keevon always makes me laugh, and today was no exception.
Ok, so anyway. Qualifying happened, and I don't really remember a lot of the other people's matches at all, to be perfectly honest - I spent a LOT of time playing other Bemani, especially Para with Jon and Pete and Laura and later Rumi, which ROCKED, I never get to para with other people anymore. The other funny thing is that now I actually feel like I'm really good at Para. I did watch some other people's matches, mostly my friends, I guess.
Anyway, my first DDR match was against Zalf. (When I was looking at the brackets he was standing there and he points to the match and points to me and says "I'm sorry" and I go "ME TOO!!!!") We got a card with Mobo Moga HVY, We Are The Champions HVY, Baby Baby Gimme Your Love HVY, Stoic Standard, and Dynamite Rave B4ZA HVY. I crossed off Stoic, he crossed off BBGYL, we set MM first, WATC second. Before the first song I'm like "Hey, are you gonna AAA this?" and he's all like "aw yeah, I hope so". He got 4. I got like 24. Eww. :) Second song... I GOT 16! Wow, that's my best EVER on Champions, infact I think my best before that was 30... sure, Zalf got like 3, but who cares? WHEE! So I lost my first match, which was no surprise.
My second match was against Dagger Jaydo, who turned out to be a really nice kid from south hills. We were really, really, really evenly matched, which was nice, and we kidded around with each other, which was also really nice. Our card was like... Blonde Girl HVY, Highs Off U HVY, Feeling of Love HVY, B4U Remix Oni/HVY/whatever, and Mahou no Tobira HVY. I cut B4U, he cut Mako-chan, and we played the first three in the order listed above. Blonde girl... I get 19 and a miss (my leg tensed up on a set of three up stomps), he gets 23. First song to him. HOU, I get like 29 (my record I have down is 43), he gets like 23 and 2 misses. Second song to me! Then we played Feeling of Love, which is just an annoying song. I got 54 and a good and he got 52 and a good. It was REALLY CLOSE :) I knew I really sucked at it, I haven't played that song since the time I gave up on trying to AA it... but my score was actually higher than his... yeah. CLOSE. So we were both like "wow, what a crazy even match", and I really didn't feel bad about losing at all, especially given that whoever won would face Tada next. Heh. Plus, losing meant I was out, and Sean and Nykkel and I could go get lunch together, which was fun!
Yeah, so we went to Wendy's for lunch; I-Gene and Laura ended up joining us there too, and later Mendel and Toastercookie and I forget who else. I had my laptop so I sat there for a while showing off my Japan pictures to Nykkel and Mendel, which was fun, I love showing off pictures :) We actually managed to spend long enough on lunch that by the time we got back, they were in the final 6 or so matches, which is always the exciting part.
Oh, I got to peddle all of my Japan stuff. I gave Matt the Taiko pin I got him though and he's all like "DUUUUUDE" and he put it on and wore it all day! But, I sold off all the IIDX stuff. I'd had a moral dilemma about how much to charge people for it all, and decided that I really didn't want to rip my friends off even if I could get twice as much for some of the stuff on Ebay, so it was pretty much all for within a dollar or two of what I paid for them. I mean, the whole point was me going and getting cheap IIDX for people. And then *they* can sell them on Ebay and make mad profits I guess.
Hm, a total random side point but I wore my Tsuboi 7 shirt today, which doesn't quite fit me because well, I'm not exactly built like an average Japanese man. Usually my clothes are a lot more loose for DDR.. so I was a little self-conscious, but oh well. I was hoping someone might notice that I lost like ten pounds in the week I was in Japan, but no dice :) I'm sure I'll gain it back in the next few days anyway, if I keep eating fast food.
So anyway, we got back and saw the end of tech... Keevon won, of course... Dyaus second, Jerrad third, I'm too lazy to look up the rest. Yay. There were some majorly Keevon-friendly cards though... Xenon seemed to come up inordinately often :P I got to show off my memcard though. "YEAH! I WENT TO MUTHOS AND I LEARNED HOW TO AAA BAG, YO" I got a good laugh over seeing people's reactions to it, though.
(Anyone wondering about those rankings... Lith, Jedi, Tanya, and Charlie, none of them showed up. What sucks is that of course, those are 4/7 of us that went to B3, and NG got moved back to this date from May 17 because they said "No don't have it the same weekend as B3!!!")
I got to talk to James, aka Captain Canada, a whole lot, after tech. He did some freestyles, which was really cool, he's pretty good at it. He has a slight stutter and so it was kinda hard to hear him in Narrows and all, but he's an exceptionally nice guy and hopefully I'll get to hang out with him again. He was like "Are you Deanna? I saw you at B3... but even more important... I read your DDR page like, 2-3 years ago, and it was how I found all of these freestyle videos and got into DDR and freestyling. I just wanted to say thanks." and I was just blown away, that was so cool of him. We played some BMIII together and sessioned GF/DM with Nykkel, and as always it's just fun to meet another nice Bemani person. (I really have to reevaluate my position on California Bemani people. *cough*)
Justin Digitec and Amy were wandering around with a camera for most of the day but didn't enter any of the events. I'm not sure they really even talked to any other people. It was kinda weird. I tried to actually be helpful and point out useful songs and people for them to watch, though. Shrug.
And, oh, the Para, the Para... There is *nothing* as satisfying in Para as to be playing on a machine and to clap and to hear 2-3 people behind you also clap along with you and know they're doing the dance with you. Or of course to do the dance behind the machine with a bunch of people. I miss that so much. Now if only I knew the routine for Money Go... Jon and Rumi pick it a *lot*.
So, I really don't remember much of S4R. I forget what I spent that time doing... para, beatmania, hanging out talking to people, etc. I do remember seeing Crystal play a little but that's about it. After that, doubles happened, and I decided to enter, especially since I felt bad convincing Jon and Kyle and everyone else to enter without putting my own money where my mouth was. I did a warmup song with Dylan (because I hadn't touched DDR in 4 hours or so and didn't want to enter doubles cold)... Dam Dariram, single heavy. I got like 26 on it. No bar for the Deanna! Dylan had some crazy good score, of course.
UGH I SUCK AT DOUBLES. The qualifiers were Janejana and Sexy Planet. I know I'm not particularly skilled at Sexy Planet, so I went for JJ. I know I've played it, but I really don't know it that well, I played it once on either Thursday or Friday, so I knew mad crossovers, but that was about it. I got like... 12 misses. Had a C as my score in the end. Pretty crappy, and I know I qualified dead last. (Although Keel was later like "I didn't know you played doubles! You were kicking ass until you missed that one run..." which is actually true, I had like a 100 combo and a pretty good PA ratio, but then once I lost it, I really lost it) Keel and Keevon and Jerrad and Nykkel and Jon and Met and all made it to the second round, though, so I had plenty of people to cheer for.
Although the real cheering was basically for the non-bar-rapers against the bar-rapers. I mean, I know it's someone's prerogative to double bar rape, but a) it looks like it hurts your arms a LOT and b) it just looks dumb in doubles, I think. Anyway, the thing is, Keel ended up ultimately winning, without bar raping at ALL until he had to play stuff like Maxx and PSM. I mean, he got like 5 on Dam Dariram no bar :) It was so fun to watch him. It was also fun to watch Nykkel, he did REALLY well, he qualified like 5th and was 4th after the first round, and even AA'ed both of his songs in the next round but the top 4 were Dyaus, Keel, Jeff, and Jason-Trunks.
Grar, the only thing that sucked is that I-Gene and Crystal both wanted to leave, but Allan was still judging and I really wanted to see the end of doubles. So I made them stick around. I think it all worked out in the end though... so we were going to go to Laura's house for IIDX but it made more sense to stop my by place first to get another controller and games and all... so what ended up happening after the tournament was that Ray and I-Gene and Mwinzi came over and played IIDX here and we grabbed Jack in the Box food for dinner, and Laura and Allan hung out at Laura's place for a while. Or something. I had a really fun evening anyway... Ray and I hunted all over the house for a phillips head screwdriver, while I-Gene accidentally loaded a virus onto my computer (and then I made him sit there until he fixed it). We took apart and cleaned my IIDX controller out, which is good, and then played IIDX for several hours... by the end I was falling asleep watching Jon and I-Gene just scroll through all the 5th Style Anothers. They're crazy, yo :)
All in all, it was a really pleasant day... I really enjoyed meeting people, seeing old friends, playing some DDR, other Bemani, hanging out, etc. Only one thing coulda made it better, and it's petty anyway. I just think it was a great tournament and a really fun time for all, and I hope this isn't the last big Seattle DDR tournament, 'cause I will cry.
Ray and Jonathan and I-Gene are playing IIDX downstairs and I'm gonna conk out soon, I dunno if I'll even finish this entry tonight.
So I should first do shoutouts before I forget them, actually:
DYLAN IS THE MAN. He gave me his Max2 marquee he won...
and then AMBER IS THE MAN, because she gave me a GF 6th marquee as well. I've been begging for marquees for so long and suddenly in the last week I seem to have gotten 3. I'm so happy :) Amber is also the man for running the tournament so well, but then again, so is Steve and Rayna.
It was so good to meet new people today, like James (Captain Canada and his mad freestyle skills), and Mendel from oregon, and some of the IRC kids ("Hi, I'm ________". "Oh, I'm Deanna. I think I've kicked you on IRC before." "Yeah, like 10 times :)" "Nice to meet you, no hard feelings, right?").
So good to see Farren again. I remember how we used to hang out like, once or twice a week last fall, and now I hadn't seen him since Foy's party in mid-July...
Having Crystal and I-Gene up from california was so neat.
And Laura actually put on the loose socks I got her as the late birthday present and wore them around... they look so much better on her than my pair looks on me.
Rumi and Matt were there! Yay!
Pale-Charlie showed up too! And I want to see all the goofy self-pictures he took!
Ray is fun! But I still think he shoulda entered doubles :)
Mwinzi was there and we got to PARA!
Oh, and of course it was AWESOME to see Pete and to Para and to hang out and stuff. Pete's also the man.
While I'm at it, Keel is the man too. I am SO happy he decided to come, and to stay, and to win doubles :) (Don't get me wrong. I think Dyaus is one of the greatest guys I've ever met, he's such a total sweetie, and an AMAZING DDR player, but I still wanted Kyle to beat him)
Oh, and the person I probly enjoyed talking to the most was Nykkel... I mean, I could babble about Japan a bit to other people, but at least he really *understands* what I'm talking about. I'm so glad he stuck around all day :)
Keevon always makes me laugh, and today was no exception.
Ok, so anyway. Qualifying happened, and I don't really remember a lot of the other people's matches at all, to be perfectly honest - I spent a LOT of time playing other Bemani, especially Para with Jon and Pete and Laura and later Rumi, which ROCKED, I never get to para with other people anymore. The other funny thing is that now I actually feel like I'm really good at Para. I did watch some other people's matches, mostly my friends, I guess.
Anyway, my first DDR match was against Zalf. (When I was looking at the brackets he was standing there and he points to the match and points to me and says "I'm sorry" and I go "ME TOO!!!!") We got a card with Mobo Moga HVY, We Are The Champions HVY, Baby Baby Gimme Your Love HVY, Stoic Standard, and Dynamite Rave B4ZA HVY. I crossed off Stoic, he crossed off BBGYL, we set MM first, WATC second. Before the first song I'm like "Hey, are you gonna AAA this?" and he's all like "aw yeah, I hope so". He got 4. I got like 24. Eww. :) Second song... I GOT 16! Wow, that's my best EVER on Champions, infact I think my best before that was 30... sure, Zalf got like 3, but who cares? WHEE! So I lost my first match, which was no surprise.
My second match was against Dagger Jaydo, who turned out to be a really nice kid from south hills. We were really, really, really evenly matched, which was nice, and we kidded around with each other, which was also really nice. Our card was like... Blonde Girl HVY, Highs Off U HVY, Feeling of Love HVY, B4U Remix Oni/HVY/whatever, and Mahou no Tobira HVY. I cut B4U, he cut Mako-chan, and we played the first three in the order listed above. Blonde girl... I get 19 and a miss (my leg tensed up on a set of three up stomps), he gets 23. First song to him. HOU, I get like 29 (my record I have down is 43), he gets like 23 and 2 misses. Second song to me! Then we played Feeling of Love, which is just an annoying song. I got 54 and a good and he got 52 and a good. It was REALLY CLOSE :) I knew I really sucked at it, I haven't played that song since the time I gave up on trying to AA it... but my score was actually higher than his... yeah. CLOSE. So we were both like "wow, what a crazy even match", and I really didn't feel bad about losing at all, especially given that whoever won would face Tada next. Heh. Plus, losing meant I was out, and Sean and Nykkel and I could go get lunch together, which was fun!
Yeah, so we went to Wendy's for lunch; I-Gene and Laura ended up joining us there too, and later Mendel and Toastercookie and I forget who else. I had my laptop so I sat there for a while showing off my Japan pictures to Nykkel and Mendel, which was fun, I love showing off pictures :) We actually managed to spend long enough on lunch that by the time we got back, they were in the final 6 or so matches, which is always the exciting part.
Oh, I got to peddle all of my Japan stuff. I gave Matt the Taiko pin I got him though and he's all like "DUUUUUDE" and he put it on and wore it all day! But, I sold off all the IIDX stuff. I'd had a moral dilemma about how much to charge people for it all, and decided that I really didn't want to rip my friends off even if I could get twice as much for some of the stuff on Ebay, so it was pretty much all for within a dollar or two of what I paid for them. I mean, the whole point was me going and getting cheap IIDX for people. And then *they* can sell them on Ebay and make mad profits I guess.
Hm, a total random side point but I wore my Tsuboi 7 shirt today, which doesn't quite fit me because well, I'm not exactly built like an average Japanese man. Usually my clothes are a lot more loose for DDR.. so I was a little self-conscious, but oh well. I was hoping someone might notice that I lost like ten pounds in the week I was in Japan, but no dice :) I'm sure I'll gain it back in the next few days anyway, if I keep eating fast food.
So anyway, we got back and saw the end of tech... Keevon won, of course... Dyaus second, Jerrad third, I'm too lazy to look up the rest. Yay. There were some majorly Keevon-friendly cards though... Xenon seemed to come up inordinately often :P I got to show off my memcard though. "YEAH! I WENT TO MUTHOS AND I LEARNED HOW TO AAA BAG, YO" I got a good laugh over seeing people's reactions to it, though.
(Anyone wondering about those rankings... Lith, Jedi, Tanya, and Charlie, none of them showed up. What sucks is that of course, those are 4/7 of us that went to B3, and NG got moved back to this date from May 17 because they said "No don't have it the same weekend as B3!!!")
I got to talk to James, aka Captain Canada, a whole lot, after tech. He did some freestyles, which was really cool, he's pretty good at it. He has a slight stutter and so it was kinda hard to hear him in Narrows and all, but he's an exceptionally nice guy and hopefully I'll get to hang out with him again. He was like "Are you Deanna? I saw you at B3... but even more important... I read your DDR page like, 2-3 years ago, and it was how I found all of these freestyle videos and got into DDR and freestyling. I just wanted to say thanks." and I was just blown away, that was so cool of him. We played some BMIII together and sessioned GF/DM with Nykkel, and as always it's just fun to meet another nice Bemani person. (I really have to reevaluate my position on California Bemani people. *cough*)
Justin Digitec and Amy were wandering around with a camera for most of the day but didn't enter any of the events. I'm not sure they really even talked to any other people. It was kinda weird. I tried to actually be helpful and point out useful songs and people for them to watch, though. Shrug.
And, oh, the Para, the Para... There is *nothing* as satisfying in Para as to be playing on a machine and to clap and to hear 2-3 people behind you also clap along with you and know they're doing the dance with you. Or of course to do the dance behind the machine with a bunch of people. I miss that so much. Now if only I knew the routine for Money Go... Jon and Rumi pick it a *lot*.
So, I really don't remember much of S4R. I forget what I spent that time doing... para, beatmania, hanging out talking to people, etc. I do remember seeing Crystal play a little but that's about it. After that, doubles happened, and I decided to enter, especially since I felt bad convincing Jon and Kyle and everyone else to enter without putting my own money where my mouth was. I did a warmup song with Dylan (because I hadn't touched DDR in 4 hours or so and didn't want to enter doubles cold)... Dam Dariram, single heavy. I got like 26 on it. No bar for the Deanna! Dylan had some crazy good score, of course.
UGH I SUCK AT DOUBLES. The qualifiers were Janejana and Sexy Planet. I know I'm not particularly skilled at Sexy Planet, so I went for JJ. I know I've played it, but I really don't know it that well, I played it once on either Thursday or Friday, so I knew mad crossovers, but that was about it. I got like... 12 misses. Had a C as my score in the end. Pretty crappy, and I know I qualified dead last. (Although Keel was later like "I didn't know you played doubles! You were kicking ass until you missed that one run..." which is actually true, I had like a 100 combo and a pretty good PA ratio, but then once I lost it, I really lost it) Keel and Keevon and Jerrad and Nykkel and Jon and Met and all made it to the second round, though, so I had plenty of people to cheer for.
Although the real cheering was basically for the non-bar-rapers against the bar-rapers. I mean, I know it's someone's prerogative to double bar rape, but a) it looks like it hurts your arms a LOT and b) it just looks dumb in doubles, I think. Anyway, the thing is, Keel ended up ultimately winning, without bar raping at ALL until he had to play stuff like Maxx and PSM. I mean, he got like 5 on Dam Dariram no bar :) It was so fun to watch him. It was also fun to watch Nykkel, he did REALLY well, he qualified like 5th and was 4th after the first round, and even AA'ed both of his songs in the next round but the top 4 were Dyaus, Keel, Jeff, and Jason-Trunks.
Grar, the only thing that sucked is that I-Gene and Crystal both wanted to leave, but Allan was still judging and I really wanted to see the end of doubles. So I made them stick around. I think it all worked out in the end though... so we were going to go to Laura's house for IIDX but it made more sense to stop my by place first to get another controller and games and all... so what ended up happening after the tournament was that Ray and I-Gene and Mwinzi came over and played IIDX here and we grabbed Jack in the Box food for dinner, and Laura and Allan hung out at Laura's place for a while. Or something. I had a really fun evening anyway... Ray and I hunted all over the house for a phillips head screwdriver, while I-Gene accidentally loaded a virus onto my computer (and then I made him sit there until he fixed it). We took apart and cleaned my IIDX controller out, which is good, and then played IIDX for several hours... by the end I was falling asleep watching Jon and I-Gene just scroll through all the 5th Style Anothers. They're crazy, yo :)
All in all, it was a really pleasant day... I really enjoyed meeting people, seeing old friends, playing some DDR, other Bemani, hanging out, etc. Only one thing coulda made it better, and it's petty anyway. I just think it was a great tournament and a really fun time for all, and I hope this isn't the last big Seattle DDR tournament, 'cause I will cry.
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<- THE MAN!
Glad to hear you had a good time!! It was nice seeing you. :)
Psh!
Suuuuuure, I see how it is... <3
It was good to see you again. One of these days (maybe at Magic 6?) it'd be cool to have a big get together after a tournament again, and, you know, actually hang out a while. :)
Re: Psh!
but it's true! I hate to root against people I like, but sometimes when I like everyone who's entering, it's tough. So I had to cheer for the local boy (literally, Kyle's one of the few regulars at the DDR machine 5 mins from my house)
i wonder if there will be a Magic 6... but yeah, it would be good to get together and hang out. Bah, if only I could find an excuse and way down to Portland sometime. Pete and I haven't really hung out in ages either...