Aight so TMG happened

I drove 5 1/2 hours on Thursday, and I was like "imma be cute we're gonna make Chompy do the livetweet" and quite literally 5 seconds after the we're off tweet I got a flat.

So 5 1/2 hours + 2 hours of roadside repair/tire repair later I was in this cute airbnb with this friendly elderly couple's home and their 2 dogs. I am slightly spooked by dogs (genetic, apparently) so that was... a surprise. Luckily they were the kind of dogs that bark real loud but are really small and snuggle up on you and slobber up your pant legs so we were good. I was also blessed in the room by this massive angelic mural so in case any of those sinful New Grounders tainted me with evil I would be cleansed the moment I returned to my room like a totk light root.

Hallelujah. There were also prayer books.

Anyways

It seemed from coming nobody actually knew what was up. I hit up @Luis and he didn't know what was going on and was like hmu in the morning and I was like aight might as well reach out to the other peeps I knew from Pico Day 2019 and see if they know so I hit up @SrPelo the next morning and we wandered in the general direction of the office, then I hit up @TomFulp while I was at the Wawa next door and was like "hey Tom Fulp of New Grounds dot com me and the afro fella next to me are in the area" and he was like "yea come on in we're fixing the AC because tho we like to get hot and sweaty it's not hot and sweaty in that literal of a sense so it'd be a genuine pleasure to have you be in the office at this early Friday hour however I must first say that I do desire to shower so I do not appear before the New Grounds Masses being all hot and sweaty myself"

Yea anyways we showed up to the office.

I met @Spazkid for the first time after working on Fetal Fury together, he's coo' and we talked about the challenges of having side projects while you work on a big ass game for an eternity

I met @JohnnyUtah for all of five seconds but he's as cool as is online

I met @ivanalmighty (only person I'd met before irl) and talked about how his work on the soda machine inspired me to make my Twitch stream layout

I met Tom too but the less told about that encounter, the better.

Then this fucking Canadian and his two friends showed up and shoved a copy of Hannah Montana on me. @ninjamuffin99 @kawaisprite and this dangly fella by the name of phantoon's pharcade or something (cursory ng search says it was @phantomarcade but I don't believe it that guy only exists in collabs) just manifested in the office, the sky turned a pale grey (actually maybe it was always like that considering it was raining,) and they mentioned the Newgrounds Toronto Meetup which you should go do.

Yea did I mention they gave me a copy of Hannah Montana: Rock out the Show for the PSP? I don't know how they knew I have a PSP but yea that sure beats the hell out of any other competing rhythm game I've seen in the last few years, especially ones on New Grounds Dot Com.

Anyways

I found two Chompy figures in the office. That's 2 more intact ones than I have. I really gotta make more of those sometime...

Okay so the actual meetup

Pelo and I drove on over to the convention center

Then we got rained on

Then we got lost

Then we found it!

I plopped Chompy down by the flag and met a bunch of people. You can check the other pages for pics but as a general rule I don't post pics of myself.

I finally met @DrewPBalls who's really fuckin awesome and he's been telling people about my stream so when I went there I was surprised there were a lot of NG'ers already familiar with me. He's genuinely the coolest dude and I made sure to spend much more time hanging with him the next day (cause day 1 was a bit of a clusterfuck, a fun clusterfuck, but anyways...)

I also met @Bacun who was Hardstyle™️

I saw @BrandyBuizel who at this point is like a recurring character in every distantly NG related adventure I have.

I walked past @MindChamber and didn't recognize him after pestering him for ages to come. I then was like OH SHIT IT'S MINDCHAMBER and yea now everyone knows MindChamber was there. It seems many new NG users don't know MC basically defined the NG style with his robot designs and redesigns of the original Pico's School chars. Man was literally making Pico 2. I know the "modern Pico style" is a bit different, but it's based on the one NG ran with from like the entirety of NG's run with the portal. So yea give him some love - he's an old dude who would just love to be sent a million DMs right this moment saying thanks. And fan art. Don't forget the NG bot and Alloy fanart.

Okay anyways

After the meetup we did a bit of lingerin'

Talked to a whole bunch of people. Anyone who knows me, knows I am god awful with faces and names (though not conversations, like, I remember those rather well.) Like straight up think I'm partially faceblind low key and ended up saying goodbye to the same people twice. So I'm gonna go off my "just followed you notifs" which say I met:

@tamag0 (who I just talked to on the discord, actually)

@NattoSumi

@D-Slick

@NickSenny

@Septicsebi

@Jrx

@Chuorios

@MysteriousMantis

@Bro-son

@Sochakkpoq

@EliteMasterEric

@Marvazoid

@MSGHero (who we didn't end up converting the meetup into an OpenFL dev conference with but we did get to harass for not using HaxeFlixel)

In most cases I actually think I do remember what we talked about, I'm just too shy to name anyone in case I get it wrong lol, but you're all cool and hmu c:

It's weird, I'm actually excellent with remembering facts of a conversation, but man, just not great with the names. In this case, actually, I think I remember people's faces really well this time around except for that time I kept mistaking @Droid for that Canadian.

Anyways

Chompy got all signed up! Here are your long awaited "Chompy from every conceivable angle" pics as a follow up to this tweet that was taken at the event (these are taken at home) (edit: I had to post the same pic at the bottom cause apparently embeds only take the last pic as the thumbnail and I didn't want jollibee as my embed lol)

I brought a box of chompies cause' Drew wanted to get one, so I was like, might as well bring out the road trip adventure chompy who was with me for a flat tire to be the "NG Sketchbook Chompy"

It was really cool to have a unique lil reminder of the event, I couldn't have done shit without NG, and this Chompy's like a testament to that in a weird way

Anyways

The next day Pelo and I went to Jollibee, which I've always wanted to go to. The lady working there saw us taking pictures with the bee and was laughing and I was "yea I came all the way from Boston for this and he came all the way from Mexico" and they were like "oh shit" and served us super fast despite there being a 30 minute order delay. The whole ass restaurant was coaching us through the Jollibee Experience.

It was some good ass chicken. I want more. They gotta bring that shit over here.

Anyways, the rest of the day was hanging out with Drew, Pelo, Bacun, and their friends it was all fun! I saw some retro games I haven't seen in ages and I really should spend some more time here next time around. Sadly, I just didn't have an airbnb booked for the night and told my loving family I'd be back Saturday night (5 1/2 hours of driving later) anyways. Ah well.

Anyways, gotta go eat, get groceries, and prepare for stream (gonna do a Sunday one for my side project.)

Seeya guys again soon 🦑|