Farewell golden strawberry - 190/202

Writing this 2 weeks after, so the acceptance of getting the golden finally settled in… gonna record all my thoughts here about this journey :33 warning: information (lots of it)
what started off as a pipe dream became reality. it was just one of those silly things that was a fun “what if”, especially so considering my hardest goldens at the time were only 1b and 2b. There was a lot to learn ahead of me and skill to improve in. did lowdeaths for a while: starting at 5k on my first playthrough, then down to 600, then 200, and eventually down to only 4. I practiced checkpoints for a while and optimized my strats to be as safe as possible. eventually, I felt confident enough to go for real runs.
upon achieving it, it just felt so unreal and was literally the best thing I’ve done in gaming - to be sub 1000 and goldening the hardest chapter in Celeste, and to have all my practice and discipline pay off. i spent the next few hours and rest of the day in ecstasy. I was still pumping my fist hours after the fact, lol… it was one of my best days ever. i’m also incredibly grateful I had people to celebrate this with - all the people in stream and personal friends. it would not have been nearly the same without y’all 💙
seeing how Parrotdash approached 9dp was incredibly helpful for my practice. I started developing consistency going from the bottom-up - starting at doing streaks in each room, then moving onto checkpoints, then segments. now, i’ve always seen these drills as way too tedious for me, and I thought that given my 4-death and 2-segment, I could just get a lucky run. but a month before I got the golden, I just really invested myself into practice. going for streaks in rooms and CPs was in fact not tedious as ConsistencyTracker gamified it and took over counting for me. by the end of it, I had a 20-streak in chokefeather, 20 in EH final, 16 in comb room, low death pb=2, 5x Stubbornness in a row, 3x Reconciliation, 3x Determination (!), and nearly 2x Determination to end. this gave me so much confidence as I approached each CP in the run, especially so in Reconciliation where I played with zero hesitation. so if I were to give a tip: develop consistency from the bottom up like this - start from rooms, then CPs, then segments.
getting to Stubbornness (ST) & Reconciliation (RC) with the golden was quite surreal. all this time i've only been doing these in practice, but now i'm here - with the golden. this made me deliberate a lot more on my timings in ST as I took waaaay more time on those rooms. i still remember the feelings of relief and nervousness I had when passing the hard inputs. in the interim between ST and RC, I took some time to refresh myself and realign my mental. in RC, I remember I was nervous, but not overly so. my heartrate was up, but I had near complete confidence in my ability to pass everything up until wind feather due to all my practice. the only thing i was afraid of was a nerves death where I mess up something trivial. but I kept composed and saw it all through. I WAS LOCKED IN~~~ i will call ST-end a fluke just because it's funny, but if we want to get technical, my practice carried so much, plus a small dash of luck to save me in some close moments.
the 250 hours i spent on this map included a lot of trial and error considering I had very little golden experience, so I practiced inefficiently and didn’t know when the best time to go for runs was. also life had a lot going on so FWG was not a huge priority and I just played it as a time killer rather than seriously improving. but once things got better and I decided to invest more into practice, i got it super quickly, only within a month.
Farewell is by far my favorite chapter - in gameplay, music, and most importantly the story. as I got the golden, i was thinking back to the time when I first played this chapter, and how far I’ve come since then, in gameplay and as a person. it was a truly magical moment ✨
there’s still a lot i want to do, mainly irl outside of the game, and i view this achievement as a symbol for my ability to see any challenge through.
if you choose to go for fwg, i wish you the best! it’ll be difficult (unless you’re just a freak), but anyone who puts in the effort can do it. if you’re here, thank you for taking the time to read :3
music used:
Thegur90 - 9D Original Soundtrack
* Parting
* True Love
* Madeline’s Trust ~ In Nature’s Embrace
* Monika’s Realization ~ True Love Comes from Within
* Our Lovely Home at the Edge of the Universe
Ceph/Strawberry Jam Team - Blueberry Bay (Ebb and Flow Mix)
funny album
imgur.com/a/UIhHVYb
stats spreadsheet
tinyurl.com/JuliasSheets
00:00 hi
00:36 the run
25:00 intermission
25:36 final stretch
36:13 celebration

[@PancakeTAS]

finally got around to watching, hope the berry was tasty :3

[@Unease37]

Glad to see the golden collected! The Stubbornness fluke to end is crazy!

[@npexception]

Again congrats on this achievement! I'm still bamboozled by you just running from your first ST entry straight to the end :D

[@Julia_14339]

much love

[@npexception]

@@Julia_14339 I hope to get back to Celeste soon. The long FWG hours unfortunately caused some hand pain, and I'm still trying to avoid using controller for it to heal up properly.

[@Julia_14339]

​@@npexception I hope they heal well. A splint is helpful for that if not using one already. They really helped the occasional wrist pains I'd get at work.

[@XerocExtras]

dont tell me u can do fwg but not 3a

[@Julia_14339]

i laughed at this cuz it's true ^^" (somewhat). i can definitely do it if i tried enough, but I've just never had the motivation for it