Hey guys!

I'm suuuper late on this, but I promise I haven't forgotten about you all and I do promise I'll try to do better with these in the future! Before I get too much into everything, let me give you guys a quick summary on what this newsletter is going to be about:

1. Future speedrun goals/games!
2. Casual game info!
3. Emote stuff!
4. Flares that Care charity!
5. Feedback from you guys!

So, to start, let's take a look at the stream's current speedrun goals:

Sunshine (any% and 100%) - I know I've been playing this game a lot lately, but I can't really seem to put it down. I've been getting a lot more consistent with any% and I feel like we're making a lot of progress. For those of you who don't know, as of yesterday we PB'd in any% again with a 1:26:07, which means that 1:25 is right around the corner!

As for 100%, I'll talk about that a bit more in the casual section, but essentially after we finish our casual 120 shine playthrough (we only have blues left!), I'm going to be doing a lot of offline route learning. I'm hoping I can do my first runs of 100% by the time I'm on spring break (Mid-March or so), so look out for those soon!

Super Mario 64 (16 Star and 70 Star) - I really like SM64 as a speedgame, but my times in this game are really lacking. I'm going to need to put in a lot of practice if I want to get a decent time in either of these two categories. For now I think I'm going to just focus on sunshine (any% and 100%), while maybe doing occasional SM64 runs on the side. Once we completely learn 100% in SMS you might see me shift focus back towards this game, but no guarantees!

DKR (any%, All Trophy Races, and 100%) - I think for now I might be putting DKR on the side. The game's still great fun and I'd be willing to race it if anyone wants to, but I just haven't had the motivation lately to do the grinding of individual levels necessary to really improve much in that game. I might return to this in the future, but for now it's going on a bit of a hiatus.

Other games - So, after I learn 120 shines I don't really know what I'd be interested in learning. I've tampered with the idea of learning both of the Galaxy games (any%) so that I could take part in a 247 (which is SMS any%, SM64 70 star, SMG1 any% and SMG2 any%), but I haven't committed to the idea yet. I'll be talking about this a bit more in the feedback section, but if you guys have a game you think would be fun to run (as well as watch!), I'm open to suggestions. Preferably I'd like it to be a game I've played before, though.

Now, onto casual stuff!

So, when I think of casual, I think of two things: Multiplayer (w/ viewers) and single player playthroughs. I'll be talking about this a bit more in the casual section as well, but essentially I want to do a bit of each with you guys. I really like how FiFi occasionally does MK8 days as well as single player game playthroughs, but I've been having a bit of a hard time balancing between the two. That being said, neither will be going away. Right now we're finishing up SMS 120 and after that we'll (hopefully) be moving onto Wind Waker! I haven't decided what to do after that, though. I do need to think of a better way to manage Smash days, though. As much fun as it is to play with you guys, it's a bit of a nightmare to organize and only a few people can play at a time. I promise these won't go away, but I think for the time being MK8 might be easier to organize for casual play.

The emote stuff is brief:

We're still a ways away from the next tier of emotes, but I figured I'd let you all know that we're definitely making progress towards it so you can all get thinking. I don't know what emotes would be good to add to the stream, but I'm open to ideas. I think Merlin's work is absolutely wonderful however (and I think we need more cartoony emotes), so I'll probably talk to her when the time comes.

Flare that Care:

So, I was asked by a friend of mine to pitch in a good word for an upcoming charity that he's helping to organize, and loving the guys from the TF2 community in addition to my love of helping out a charity, I was more than happy to slip in a good word for him in this newsletter. Here's some info on it:

"Flares that Care is a quarterly fundraising livestream event supporting the charity Child's Play. Our next event, taking place on March 13th, will consist of TF2 jumping and surfing races, showmatches between top Highlander and 6's teams, Goofy pubs, and much more! The event will be hosted by CeeJaey and B_RED, and will include many big-name community members such as TrukTruk, Afterglow, and Satan. We hope to see you all there for a full 36 hours of fundraising and fun!

Check out the Flares that Care website HERE for more info http://www.flaresthatcare.org/
Join the steam group here for updates on the event: http://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/groups/flaresthatcare
If you have any questions, you can contact Chris here: http://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/id/chrisisblind/ "

Finally, feedback from you!

I really love every single one of you guys for making the stream what it has become today, and I know it wouldn't be possible without your support. However, I know that I'm not perfect and I feel like if you guys help provide me with feedback on the stream, we can make it even better. If you have any thoughts/concerns/ideas that you'd like me to read (privately and directly to me), I'm always open for info! So if you have a game you think would be fun for me to run, a good casual game, or just anything else, feel free to respond to this!

We've broken an all-time high number of subs and I am forever in debt to all of you for your kindness. Thank you all so much. <3

Current subs: 160

I love you guys, and thank you.

rays <3

I sent this on twitch to all of you current subs, too! If you want to reply privately, make sure to respond to the newsletter here and not there! Thanks!

Hey guys!

Sorry I'm so late on this; I promised you all I'd start doing sub mail every few weeks, then forgot before I even sent out the second letter! Anyways, I'm going to do my best to remember to do this more frequently so you'll all know what's up! Also, from now on, so you guys don't all have to read walls of text, I'll try to as brief as possible, and I plan on sectioning out the whole letter so you can all skip to whatever parts you're interested in. With that in mind, let's get into it!

SPEEDRUNNING GOALS

Okay, so as a lot of you might already know, I plan on learning 120 shines for SMS very soon. Before I can do that however, I really want to get another PB in any% (to maybe shave off the 1:29?) and get a sub 1:15 time in SM64 70 Star. I'll probably get a better 16 star time at some point too, but at the moment I'm not too worried about that category, it's just something I want to do for fun. Other than that though, I have no other games at the moment that I want to learn. If any of you have recommendations, you're all free to reply to this telling me what you think might be a good speedgame and I'll look into it. Anyways, in review, here's a summary:

1. PB in SMS any% again
2. Get a sub 1:15 in 70 Star
3. Learn 120 Shines

SUB EMOTES

So I'll keep this one brief. I really like all of the emotes that we're using at the moment, but recently merlin re-did two of the most popular emotes (raysBeef and raysFox) and I wanted to get everyone's opinion on them. I'll link a strawpoll at the end of the section, and again at the end of the letter, and if you could all vote in it to determine which version you guys would like more, that would be great, thanks. :D

Here's a side-by-side comparison between the new and the old emotes; keep in mind that the smallest version is the one that you'll see in chat:

http://puu.sh/eSNb3/cc123356f5.png

and here's a link to the strawpoll:

http://strawpoll.me/3477681

The more votes we have, the better.

Also, if you're ever curious as to which emotes are the most popular/most used, twitchemotes now tracks this stat on their website, which you can find here:

http://twitchemotes.com/channel/raysfire

MILESTONES

So as of yesterday (1/23/15), we've actually reached a huge milestone in followers; breaking the 9k barrier. It seems that the stream has been really growing lots as of late and that's super awesome; thank you guys for everything you do. It means more than you know. Unfortunately, due to school restraints I don't think I'll be able to do a 9k marathon. However, when we reach the big 10k mark, I'll see if I can't do a 12-hour special at some point. Even if I can't do it while I'm at school, I'll make sure to schedule something special when I'm home for spring break in 8-9 weeks, assuming we've reached the goal by then.

We're also almost halfway to the next tier of emote slots! As of this very moment, we're at 121 subs, which is an all-time high for the stream besides when I first got partnered and did that silly 2 subs = 1 hour stream thing.

CLOSING

As always, thank you all so much for staying with me as we move into the year 2015! I feel like it'll be a great year for many things for all of you, and definitely a great year for the stream as a group! You're all super awesome people and the amount of support I've received lately is incredible. I really feel like we're becoming a stronger community as every day passes, which is an awesome thing to be able to see.

Again, if you could all look at the image linked here:

http://puu.sh/eSNb3/cc123356f5.png

and vote in the strawpoll here:

http://strawpoll.me/3477681

I'd be very helpful! The more votes the better!

As always, if you guys ever need to talk to me about something relating to this newsletter or something else entirely, you're always free to PM me on Twitch and I'll do my best to get back to you.

<3 u guys

rays :3

Hey guys, my new server is finally in a working state! While there's not anything fancy on it yet, we've (and by "we" I mean whisker biscuit) gone ahead and thrown a few of the basics in a server to get it up and off the ground. Expect more maps, features and more as I get used to this whole server thing.

With all that out of the way, let's talk about what exactly is on the server at the current time. Here are a few specs and features:

-No random crits.
-No random damage.
-Fixed weapon spread.
-24 slots.
-Located in chicago.
-FastDL for custom maps.
-Competitive maps (viaduct, turbine, barnblitz, etc) [MORE MAPS TO COME SOON]
-rtv/nominate.

I've gone ahead and filtered out the maps that I personally don't enjoy playing in pubs personally (junction, standin, etc) from both the rotation and the nominate/rtv list. I'll be playing in this server when I go live tonight, so if you'd like to try it out, feel free!

You can connect to the server at the following IP address:

connect rayserver.game.nfoservers.com:27015

(Also, I'm going to be posting this same thing in the main group, but I wanted to make sure that the hooligang had first look. :3)