AGDQ came at a great time for me. I was a bit lost on speedrunning, losing a bit of motivation and direction of what I wanted to do, but it gave me a lot of focus and so now I feel like it'd be a good idea to explain to anyone interested what the next year or so is going to look like.

Pokemon: There are only 3 Pokemon runs I want to do from this point onwards.

Pokemon Heart Gold any%: I want a clean deathless run of this category. It doesn't have to be super good, but I've started and I want at least a decent final product here. I imagine it'll be below 2:30, but I don't want to invest too much time into this.

Pokemon Emerald (any%): I want to go back and improve this run specifically, one because it's bad but mainly because I accidently fought trainers in Lavaridge gym I didn't know you could skip. This shouldn't take too long to beat, maybe get something around the 2:45 mark that's at least semi decent and move along.

Pokemon Red/Blue any% glitchless: Goal Time: 1:51. This will be my final product on pokemon speedrunning. RBY are objectively the best pokemon speedgames, and I want to return and finish with that instilled into my mind on how great running the games can be, and it'll be a very fitting ending.

After I reach that goal time of 1:51, I will retire from Pokemon speedrunning. I'll still do the occasion 24 hour or something where I do something fun like the all gold emblems on emerald (which I still want to finish, don't worry) of go through all of stadium 2 in one go, and still take those runs seriously, but they aren't really a speedrun to me, the grind will be over at that stage.

Why? #1: I never really wanted to be a Pokemon speedrunner. It happened by accident. A little history lesson, there was a race on SRL back in 2011, a race to misty. I couldn't actually join the race because my internet was down, but my brother joined on his phone and I played along. I got around 7th. I was mad because I loved pokemon, so I routed the whole game the next day, and the day after that I beat the best time (2:29 on SDA) by around 20 minutes. After that I got sucked in because it was really fun, and everyone else was really bad. Which kinda leads into my next point...

#2: The community is big enough now that I can trust them to do a decent job with the games. There are plenty of good, dedicated and smart runners out there now that it's not like I'm required in the community. A big part of the reason I got sucked into speedrunning pokemon games is because I felt like if I didn't no one would, and that isn't the case anymore. I feel like I've made my mark on the community, and with the 1:51 run I'll leave a mark I'm proud of and can move on.

#3: It's just not as fun as it used to be anymore. Part of that is because of the direction the community is taking, but I feel like it's coming less and less about actually playing the games and getting good times because you are smart etc, and more about just straight up reading the code, running scripts, and letting the games play itself etc, which is not something I enjoy nor can really do at all, and so it's a good indication for me to move on. Things like trying to get rid of game time, and trying to move to Japanese language too have been good indicators that the community is moving in a direction I don't want to go with, so I think it's definitely for the best that I move on

#4: It's effectively my gaming in a negative way. A lot of pokemon game instill the message of "oh it's ok I lost a second due to movement there because I can make up 7 seconds by just getting a critical here" etc, which is obviously not a good mentality for speedgaming at all (note that RBY doesn't do that, which is another reason why they are better speedgames, especially for me) and I'd like to break this habit and actually be good at games again (I was once I swear)

After all this though, I certainly don't like Pokemon any less. I've enjoyed running the games a fucking lot, and will still enjoy the last 3 projects I have, it's just time to move on from this little aspect of it. I will still be a huge Pokemon fan, I actually still watch the anime, and do still enjoy to comp battle with company, and I'll definitely still pick up every new game etc, I guess it's hard to explain that speedrunning pokemon games is a small aspect to me, because I do understand it's all a lot of you know me for.

So then, what's next? Well, I've been speedrunning Sonic games for about 10 years now, and I still consider it my "main" series for video games, so there's sure to be a lot of that on the horizon. I'll give ya'll a list of games that are in my mind to do runs of, in no particular order:

Wario Land 2

Wario Land 3

Golden Sun 2

Golden Sun (assuming my time gets beaten)

Tails' Adventures

Sonic 2 (Genesis)

Sonic 2 (Master System)

Sonic Spinball (Genesis)

Sonic Spinball (Game Gear)

Sonic Drift 2

Sonic Labyrinth

Sonic 3 & Knuckles

Sonic Chaos

Sonic Advance 3

Sonic Heroes

Games I will maybe do Individual Level runs of (these are for youtube, streaming IL attempts is hella gay)

Sonic Heroes

Sonic CD

Sonic Triple Trouble

Sonic the Fighters

Sonic Adventure

Sonic Adventure 2

Sonic 2 (Genesis)

Sonic 3 & Knuckles

Sonic 1

Knuckles Chaotix