Z-I-v Summer Contest 2016

Cardboard Castles +3
なんでやねんねん +3
Smooth Criminal +3
Rather Be +2
When I'm Around U +2
Live Forever +2

Cardboard Castles [Feraligatr] - 33
Rather Be [mf32892] - 27
なんでやねんねん [Lisek] - 18
When I'm Around U [KevinRocker10] - 17
Smooth Criminal [Benpai] - 17
Live Forever [NuVirus] - 12
Stayin' Alive (Night Fever Mix) [Nezemarth] - 5
Inner Universe [5l1n65ho7] - 3
_z [5l1n65h07] - 2
Everything You've Ever Dreamed [Nezemarth] - 1

DJXYZ Personal Stats Page- SC 2016
Please note- this list discounts "[Long Week] - Sun of Pearl" from all calculations, taking into consideration that I withdrew from the week.
Participant in 11 weeks, voter in 10 weeks
18 total song submissions
4 files added and removed
165 Points Earned, 8th highest total, 19th in votes per voter
Average points per file: 9.17 (lower than SS 2015 by 0.03)
Most HMs in one week- 15 for [Voiceless Week]
Total HMs- 51 (discounting Sun Of Pearl's 4 before withdrawing)

Best-Scoring Files
[ZIv Academy II w/ Loodee] Gourmet Race (Drumstep Remix) / dj-Jo (27pts, 4th)
[Voiceless Week] illuminate / Sota Fujimori (23pts, 5th)
[YWSTIDDR 5] Mechanical Rhythm (KAZOO'd) / Tsuko G. vs ACE+ (20pts, 5th)
[Gimmick Week] Let Me Hit It / Sporty-O (15pts, 7th)
[Girls Week] River / Bishop Briggs (13pts, 9th, notably low V/V)

3 Favorites by week
[Show & Tell] - Like a nameless flower, Candy Dash, ID
[Girls Week] - Neon Twilight, Portrait of the Pirate F, do the thing (HM Stay Awake)
[Passport] - Vegas Lights, Moskau, LAS VEGAS
[Voiceless Week] - Lorikeet, Backflip Dinosaur, Shining Wizard
[Food Week] - Tonchinkan Feast, Renge Chance!, Cake By The Ocean
[ZIv Acdemy II] - Hakanakimono Ningen, Wildfire!!, Kongara Girl
[Gimmick Week] - Valkyrie, COLOR, Chururi Chururi-Ra
[YWSTIDDR 5] - Jackie Chan Adventures, Looking Like This, Dong Saya Dae
[Combine Week] - Perfume!, Blow, Hikikomori
[Key Change] - Black Hole, Cherry Blossom, Doki-Doki

Files added and removed
Checkpoint / Nitro Fun & Hyper Potions (still waiting...)
High School Never Ends / Bowling For Soup (resubmitted in a later week)
Crazy Noisy Bizarre Town / The Du ()
Sun Of Pearl / An Endless Sporadic (removed from voting by request)

Next direction
More originals inbound! Beyond The "Period", Doofenshmirtz, Xepher cover, and more!
More Chvrches sometime as well, I have the Every Open Eye album ready to rip.
A Simfile Shuffle run is in the works... if everything works out right

PLATINUM - jioyi

Simfile #14, Week 4, placed 10th (12th) with 13 points, my 6th (3-way tie) best placing file.

I realized I never properly explained this one. This was basically a warmup file, I started contemplating returning from "retirement" around Week 3 with another file, but that one had to wait, so I quickly put this together in just 4 days. I wanted to restep this awesome song ever since it flopped in SS15. With 34 files to compete against, I managed to do very well. 13 points may seem average, but over half of the files in that week got single digit points. The problem here as it turns out was that the song didn't really have a proper climax, the ending was much easier than the middle of the file. A pretty nice intro otherwise.

SA-KU-RA - hitomitoi

Simfile #15, Week 5, placed 11th (14th) with 7 points, my 13th (3-way tie) best placing file.

Probably would've glossed over it if I didn't have a burst of interest in Super Monkey Ball in June. Stepping this song was what made me start planning to come back to SC. It fit week 1, but I decided on it too late. It fit week 2, but... well, I was still too insecure to join. Eventually, the time to enroll it came in week 5. It's too bad that I ended up submitting it to a week with the most files (46!!), it's straightforwardness was not enough to compete with files like Exchange Palace, Transport, Samba do Brasil, Sweet, Nowhere, etc., I'm very certain I could've gotten more points with this in a smaller week. ...Even still, I somehow managed to still land in the green with this one. Which is an astonishing feat for single digit points. A "pleasant" (words of AngledLuffa) file overall, and I also tried my hand at some doubles charts. Turns out I am the only other individual person to submit a file with them (Nezemarth submitted them for all of his files).

But yeah, while not quite Step & Roll, you should totally play Super Monkey Ball sometime. The game is fantastic.

Triops Has Three Eyes - They Might Be Giants

Simfile #16, Week 6, placed 12th (12th) with 14 points, my 5th best placing file.

Well this one didn't happen to be on the schedule. Food Week was quite a bizarre week, and I simply could not come up with anything good on the spot. (I could've taken the cheap shortcut and stepped something related to sweets, but... ehh... nah.) I considered PaRappa the Rapper, I considered The Brothers Johnson, all of which didn't work. However, with a brief confirmation, I ended up getting away with this song, something almost anyone wouldn't see as steppable. Inspired by the revolutionary risks Sigrev2/AnonyWolf's Trouble Awful Devil Evil file by the same artist took, I made the most unique file in the round (not necessarily the best though :P) and watched in awe as people (including people I never received points from up to that point) actually gave points to it, it surpassed both PLATINUM and SA-KU-RA, and I was very close to reaching green (stopped by one point by one last minute vote ;-;). What I think might've been the reason why I didn't is the sync is a little wonky. Oh well. I'm still quite proud of it.

Oh, and Trouble Awful Devil Evil also got 14 points... ...how interesting.

Rock The Club - Expander (collaborated with Gameoson)

Simfile #17, Week 7, placed 3rd (3rd) with 28 points, my #1 (!!) best placing file.

This song is legendary (well... maybe not to some of you). This song got submitted to SS15 in the first week and stepped by rikame, and though his challenge chart has some weird choice-making, it was still a really nice file overall. Only problem? He failed to submit it before the deadline and was summarily DQ'd. I was itching to restep it and get it the competition qualification it deserved since then, but I... simply could not. I went through like, 6 failed drafts through a challenge chart across the months, none of them worked, so I gave up in Mid Speed. And then watched in awe as a series of events in Week 7 gave hope to a seemingly lost cause. First, ddrstepper revived ZIv Academy, an idea I was totally in on. Then, I threw Rock the Club in a .zip of cuts I wanted to step. Surely someone is gonna be interested in it. Then, Gameoson happened to notice it and:

Quote: Gameoson

Screw it, I love the song too much to even consider passing up on it. Cuzco, you got yourself a collab!
At this point I've already got two collabers. Apologies to anyone else that was interested that asked.

I succeeded. Once I saw this, I knew this song was finally going to be stepped in this week.

I ended up stepping light and heavy instead, and it turns out that worked out way better than trying to step challenge (Gameoson took care of that). The fact that I got a bunch of points and saw the podium for the first time because of this file made me very happy. I definitely knew I could get this song to be a success somehow, and it turns out collaborating it with someone was the solution.

Journal of an Unlucky Girl / maras k ft. Hatsune Miku (collaborated with darkanine)

Simfile #18, Week 7, placed 11th (12th) with 13 points, my 6th (3-way tie) best placing file.

This song got assigned to me in Round 11 of Simfile Shuffle 2015, but by that point I was genuinely sick of that contest to the point where I didn't even bother trying to step this song. However, once again, ZIv Academy ended up turning that around. Initially I was going to collaborate with Valkyrie with Quickman, but unfortunately that failed and the collab was dropped. From there, I immediately picked up darkanine. darkanine was really interested in this, as well as Valkyrie and Aluminum City, with both eventually getting stepped anyway. I really wanted to do Valkyrie, but then I decided "let's take care of some unfinished business", for usaminseijin. Turns out I did 75% of the work as darkanine was barely able to finish a light chart, as it turns out. But I finished that work, and I'm honestly proud for finally stepping this. Perhaps I should've cooled it with some of the gimmicks (and, with all of them being mine marked, some mines feel rather arbitrary too), but I really enjoyed making this. The more I actually listened to the song, the more in fact I enjoyed it.

Valkyrie - Savant

Simfile #19, Week 8, placed 4th (4th) with 25 points, my 3rd best placing file.

Once again, a song I found out from being interested in Super Monkey Ball, only this time I found it through a compilation of stunts and WRs. When I heard the swing part at 6:40 (during Centrifugal), I knew this song was going to be a great simfile. I settled on it during TOI missed connections, and planned to save it as a skeleton to submit for Simfile Shuffle 2016, but I couldn't resist once gimmick week came and submitted it there. This is, in my opinion, the best file I've ever made (I like it just a bit more than Rock the Club!!) and it's too bad it missed the podium by one last minute vote but I still got so many points just from this file. Come on, look the posts above, it's in two people's top 3 for Gimmick Week as a whole. I ended up getting the most points of the week with some (unexpected) help from Seaside Heaven 3000 below. Definitely worth checking out.

Seaside Heaven 3000 - Macho Robot

Simfile #20, Week 8, placed 9th (9th) with 10 points, my 12th best placing file.

Another song I was itching to step (Spork! failed to do it when I submitted it to SS15) but had lots of difficulty with, and this time it didn't happen to get selected for a collab. Eventually, I said "screw it" and finished it... with an actual chance of getting my first 0. The steps here are utterly ridiculous, with footswitches and side footswitches sprawled across the song, note color gimmicks, an excessive amount of crossovers, what have you. It was a recipe for disaster, but nope, 5 people liked it enough to give it points, double-digit points in fact. This song ended up being my finale in Summer Contest 2016 and the latest file I have so far.

FILE TALLY AS OF SC16

01st: Rock the Club (28)
02nd: Seedy Try (27)
03rd: Valkyrie (25)
04th: TAKE A LOOK AROUND (16)
05th: Triops Has Three Eyes (14)
06th: Journal of an Unlucky Girl (13)
06th: PLATINUM (13)
06th: TRICKL4SH 220 (13)
09th: werewolf howls. (12)
10th: Flowlight (11)
10th: Otasa revolution (11)
12th: Seaside Heaven 3000 (10)
13th: Chance It (7)
13th: SA-KU-RA (7)
13th: Youkaisai Sendou -Oriental Swing Mix- (7)
16th: LOVE CLUTCH (4)
17th: Road to G6 (3)
18th: Hitoribocchi (2)
18th: When Love Takes Over (2)
18th: Who What Who What (2)

SS14: 11
SS15: 97 (+9 bonus points)
TOI6: 9
SC16: 110

Overall: 227 points

Wow. 20 files and I'm surprised, I have not once received a 0 in my life yet.

My top 15 favorite song entries are (excluding Week 1 since I didn't attend that one):
#1: Color [brunobg24]
#2: Milky Berry Sweet Time [Gameoson]
#3: Exchange Place [Oni-91]
#4: Sweet [Feraligatr]
#5: Like Asian Spirit [mf32892]
#6: Cosmic Cat [KNS-17 & Loodee]
#7: No Title [ddrstepper & DDRDAIKENKAI]
#8: Harmonia [ledgam3r1279]
#9: 会社はワタシで廻ってる!? [coolpeaches]
#10: Alive (Remix) [ohaiimian]
#11: Afro Knuckle [SM MaxX & xXMokou98Xx]
#12: Mechanical Rhythm (Kazoo'd) [The Legendary DJXYZ]
#13: Playing a Capriccio to Awaken One's Love [Nezemarth]
#14: Neon Twilight [Lisek]
#15: Platinum [CuzcoBlocko]

Hopefully I got most people in that list without repeating

I'm not going to say top "insert number here" favorite charts because I honestly don't remember what most of the charts were like and I'm not going to go through all of them just for this.

As for charts I submitted:
Week 2: Hoshi Furu Yoru no Adenium [3] and Longin 4 U [1] - That was a rough start...
Week 3: Paris [13]
Week 4: Going Haywyre [31] and Masked Heart [11] - My first 1st place
Week 5: Jungle Bae [8] and Gloss (Niteloop Flip) [5]
Week 6: Sugar Rush [24] and Mille Feuille [9]
Week 7: Night Landscape [19] and Comet Fall [4]
Week 8: HYPER BURST [21]
Week 9: The Sampling Paradise [19]
Week 10: Perfume! [24] and Hikikomori [15]
Week 11: Cherry Blossom [23]
Week 12: Smooth Criminal [23]

Overall standing: 253 points, 4th place (right behind brunobg24, so close mannnn)