before anything else, i'd like to thank parrot and jojo for inviting me to join the group. this project had a bit of an unfortunate ending anyways, but it is what it is. parrot did a hell of a lot more work stratfinding than I did, and I wouldn't have started trying if not for them. go check out their channels:
- parrot |    / parrotdash  
- jojo |    / @ajojoweeb9638  

---------- backstory
to start - no, this is not an actual clear of the level. go watch parrot's video instead for that. while i cleared rooms 1, 3, and 4, i never finished room 2. as the beginning of the video says, my best run (included in the video) was literally 1 frame away from beating it. this is because depending on which x pixel you hit the kevin on, you will either get warped back in bounds immediately or get stuck outside longer for some reason. from some brief experimentation, the former happens once every 4 pixels, and the kevin moves 1px/f. so it's just a 25% chance to get warped inbounds immediately and die and there's not much you can do about it.

secondly - yes, this is already out of date. 1.5 (and then subsequently 1.5.1) was released, and after that we just decided fuck it we're done here. all of the footage in this video was recorded before the update was released, however. additionally, parrot did actually clear the level (v1.4) on the 21st, 2 days before the update dropped. so i think it's reasonable to consider it a legit clear, personally

the timing here was really sad but not much to be done about it now. the plan was to drop three cg clears at once (parrot, jojo, and myself). this has been in the works for only a few weeks, but the update dropped at pretty much the worst time possible. so, we decided to just stop here - parrot already cleared the level in v1.4, jojo never really started because he was more busy with d1d7, and i'm fine with stopping here even if i could have cleared it myself.

---------- opinions i guess
it's pretty cool to see this level actually be challenged to some extent. even if many of the solutions here are clearly unintended (and those in rooms 1 and 3 have since been completely patched), it was a really interesting experience to try and take down a level which has been a source of countless jokes about how there's no solution; it's a social experiment; etc. (even if perhaps there's some truth to them 🙃) overall i think this level is pretty interesting and certainly a bit of an enigma, although it was a mixed experience to say the least. i'm not expecting to see the current version get cleared anytime soon, but we'll see i guess.

]] room 1 with the strats here is kind of annoying. it's since been "improved" with 1.5; the solution shown here doesn't work anymore. no idea what it is

]] room 2 is..... a room. i didn't like it.
- to put it bluntly, the ultras are not fun. they are way too precise, for a number of reasons. i don't want to make this excessively whiny so i won't go into excruciating detail. but, i will complain about:
- the stupid fucking dash at 1:02. it does not get consistent. both parrot and i died there dozens of times. if even a SINGLE PIXEL of the kevin is inside the crumble block to the left, it will get stuck inside of the block and you will die. not to mention the kevin is constantly in different spots based on how fast you got there, so you have to do it pretty much entirely off of feel.

]] i found rooms 3 and 4 to be pretty fun with the strats here (even if it's because it makes the rooms actually doable), can't comment much more because i have no idea what the intended strats are

i want to be clear that i'm not trying to bash on the level. i think ultimately this type of gameplay isn't my sort of thing, but i do think that there are certainly things which could be improved upon regardless.

---------- ???
i don't have any other celeste plans at the moment. i was doing another farewell map golden for a bit but it got boring after a few hours so i probably won't finish it. i don't have anything else i'm interested in doing at the moment so back to no uploads for however long

---------- stats
deaths: ~12k
time: ~18h (~1.5-3h each on rooms 1, 3, and 4, ~10 hours on room 2)
deaths to funny dash (1:02) and beyond in room 2: 43