#CTWC

[criticalthinkingwitches]

Join us for the next Brew!

Glamour and You! FREE!

Sat January 20th

11 AM PST / 2 PM EST / 7 PM BST / 8 AM NZDT (1/21)

featuring: Bree NicGarren ( @breelandwalker ), Savannah Rayne, and more!

Register for FREE tickets on the Events page of our website!

[Image ID: Light pink background with unintelligible script with light blue cloud in the middle. Lavender butterfly, mid-flight on left hand side. Charm font is used throughout image. Text matches above.]

[startedwellthatsentence]

(By the way if any of you were interested in the Tetris news from earlier this year, the World Championships top 16 are happening now. They have four games live on CTWC on Twitch, and four more on CTWC2.)

[classic-tetris]

ALEX THACH IS THE 2024 CLASSIC TETRIS WORLD CHAMPION

[fncreature]

if fractal gets eliminated I am going to scream

[mikeperrucci]

Classic Tetris World Championship

CTWC 2024 starts today, and you can watch it here. If you're not familiar with it, it's a tournament where participants play on the 1989 version of NES Tetris.

Players are doing insane things these days. A new technique called rolling lets them move pieces faster than ever before, leading to scores of over 10,000,000 points and even lasting so long the game crashes. They inspired me to play the game again after many years.

While I'll never be as good as the pros, I set what I felt was an achievable goal. A lot of players dream of a maxout (999,999 points, the highest Tetris can display), but I would've been satisfied with half of that. I played for a few months, and on January 23rd, 2023, I got this game:

I was so close, and it looked like I'd reach 500,000 soon. Instead, my play seemed to get worse, and the fun slowly faded. I tried to tell myself it's just a game, but the failure to reach my goal reminded me of all the other failures in my life, and I had to stop.

I've barely played any Tetris since then. I put my focus into finishing my comic without my unrealized goal creating self doubt in the back of my mind. Maybe now that Chuck's Devils is done, I'll get back into the game.

I have nothing but respect for Tetris players, as well as speedrunners, who can start a game, not reach their desired score/time, and restart from scratch over and over again. That requires a level of mental fortitude I apparently don't have. And that's why I'll be watching CTWC 2024.

[orange-juice-speaks]

As a fan of competitive NES Tetris, I will say this is a good history! GameScout is a community icon and always a reliable source on the subject of NES Tetris.

But I will say no one really knows if Thor actually did pull off level 30 or ACTUALLY hypertapped because no video of it exists and he never participated in the Classic Tetris World Championships (CTWC) iirc. I'd give that credit to Joesph Saelee since he had video evidence. And Joesph Saelee was only 16. By far the youngest competitor in CTWC 2018, as well as being one of the earliest hypertappers; he dethroned 5x champion Jonas Neubauer, so he solidified hypertapping as a legitimate playstyle and was also really the reason so many young players came into the game and innovated it further--they saw themselves in him.

This is in no way to discredit the accomplishments of Jonas Neubauer! Be a 5-time champion in ANYTHING and you will be a legend to its fans. In fact, Joseph Saelee has even said that watching Jonas play is the reason he started playing.

Sidenote: A month or so before his untimely passing in January 2021, Jonas released a video on YouTube teaching Tetris to a fairly well-known Guitar Hero player, who said there had to have been a faster way of playing than tapping every input. This brief flicker of his attempting a new way of playing after this statement is sometimes considered an early version of rolling, which wouldn't have happened without Jonas.

BUT I DIGRESS. How did Joseph Saelee discover the CTWC to begin with?

Boom, Tetris for Jeff.

Jeff was an unlikely candidate to go far in CTWC 2016, but he made it all the way to the finals against, you guessed it, Jonas Neubauer. This was a huge underdog story.

Now, fun thing about the CTWC and other similar tournaments of Tetris is, it has live commentary. One of the quirks of this commentary that someone noticed was the tendency to say "Boom, Tetris for __!" Since Jeff was the big story of that year, someone made a compilation, in the meme-embroiled style of 2016 YouTube, of every time "Boom, Tetris for Jeff" was called by a commentator. To date, it has nearly 800k views, which is quite viral for the subject, especially in the era when maxing out, or reaching the built in scorecap, was rare among elite players.

ALL THIS TO SAY, a real argument can be made that we owe this massive gaming moment that has been covered in the New York Times to a humble 2016 shitpost that I will provide below.

Boy, I wish Jonas could see how much people who never cared about Tetris before this moment could see how far the game has come.

So apparently the pro-Tetris scene is exploding right now because a 13 year old nerd just reached the game's true killscreen for the first time ever

[onenettvchannel]

FLASH REPORT: Oklahomian Tetris Kid 'Blue Scuti' failed to advance Semi Finals against New Yorker 'Tristop' at the 2024 CTWC in California [#OneNETnewsEXCLUSIVE]

(Written by Craig Ichabod Williams & Mitch Williams / Herkleton Oaks Elementary School news intern of Cartoon Network News and Senior Tech Correspondent of Nickelodeon News)

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA -- E-sports in the Tetris world would fire up the annual offline competitions, rising to new heights at the Classic Tetris World Championship in Pasadena, California, United States of America (U.S.A.) last Sunday afternoon (June 9th, 2024 - Pacific local time), using a classic Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) version of the 1989 Tetris game.

A classic Tetris player from New York named 'Mr. Tristan Kwai', known as 'Tristop' with 3 gaming session points scored in the Quarter Finals and 311 Tetris lines, while 'Mr. Willis Gibson', knowningly also as 'Blue Scuti' with his plushie toy of Yoshis from Super Mario games, has failed to advance to the Semi Finals with 1 gaming session point and 328 Tetris lines, supposedly compete against the last remaining Tetris players in the Grand Finals, where it potentially headlined with 'Alex T.', 'DogPlayTetris' and 'TheDengler'.

Before that in a Special Event last week on Friday (June 7th, 2024). A multimedia YouTube podcaster, social media influencer, pro-wrestler of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)'s current U.S. champion and the now-guest Tetris player named 'Mr. Logan Alexander Paul', lose himself out with zero (0) gaming session point in 4th place at CTWC 2024's Special Event. Gibson received 2 gaming session points against Mr. Logan, embarking his way to a Special Grand Finals with 'PixelAndy'.

In the early-Q1 2024, Gibson has broken and beat the entire game with a kill screen crash of nearly 160 levels that breaks its unreachable code, and crushing its Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) combined. It is fully unclear if gaming developers originated from the Soviet Union in Russia and the United States of America, who legally bought copies of the Tetris game may potentially receive a 3-digit or above the 5-digit figure offline cash incentive as a reward only for Gibson.

E-sports enthusiasts across the world are feeling really low because it's the big disheartening loss of Mr. Gibson, who personally, didn't make it to the top in the upcoming Grand Finals of his Tetris game on this same night in Pasadena.

Wrapping the e-sports competition, Gibson did pull it off and missed the Tetris drop within minutes before his latest defeat for this year's annual e-sports Tetris competition: "I thought i was but I screamed of, I misdrop the 'T' and I couldn't get 3 Tetrises after that", he said in an exclusive post-defeat interview thru TeleRadyo Serbisyo: Dumaguete and OneNETnews.

Online and in-person, friends and families of 'Blue Scuti' are in the fullest of support in Pasadena, despite his loss before entering the Grand Finals. Gibson ends in 5th Place for this year's offline E-sports competition of CTWC.

SCREENGRAB COURTESY: CTWC via YT LIVE VIDEO BACKGROUND PROVIDED BY: Tegna

SOURCE: *https://liquipedia.net/tetris/Classic_Tetris_World_Championship *https://liquipedia.net/tetris/CTWC/2024/Special_Event *https://liquipedia.net/tetris/CTWC/2024/ and *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jeaamhqfG8 [Referenced YT RECORDED LIVE VIDEO via ClassicTetris]

-- OneNETnews Online Publication Team

[silencervalkyrie]

Just realised I won't be able to watch the final CTWC live because I'm 9 fucking hours ahead!!

[heeleryuta]

ERICCCC

[eggshellsareeat]

Looks like it was an ad for some Gameboy clone, but I can weather one (1) Logan Paul appearance if it means that CTWC can grab that bag.

so classic tetris has been one of my hyperfixations since the first game crash and i’ve been watching the classic tetris world championships

just happen to pull up the stream at like ten last night and logan paul was there?? just like. competing.

had to take a screenshot to confirm this was in fact reality

[dragonflute]

cannot believe its already the time of year where im insane abt classic tetris

[criticalthinkingwitches]

Hey Witches! We've got DAYS left until our next FREE brew! Sunday May 19, 2024 12 PM PST

Critical Thinking WItch Collective is happy to host a virtual community event on Pop-Culture and Witchcraft!

From Discworld to Billy Shakes, from DnD to Sabrina, and from grandmothers your reindeer couldn’t run over to witchlings making “soup” in muddy backyards – witches are everywhere. And so is pop-culture!  Join your global community of critical thinking witches and visit a topic so pervasive, it even sits on some of our heads: that fascinating intersection of popular culture and witchcraft. We’ll be talking about games, TV shows, pop-culture on our own altars, bedtimes stories, costumes, and so much more.

We'll be discussing different Pop-Culture witches and how they've inspired our craft. Bring your thoughts on pop, and we’ll bring ours!

We’re excited to share that we’ll be joined by Lozzie Stardust, a history-loving witch (to whom “Billy Shakes” should be credited) and occasional contributor to the Hex Positive podcast, as we page through popular culture and make it out own.

Register for this FREE virtual event at :

Critical Thinking Witch Collective, you may already be a member!

[hertwood]

the way both the winner and runner up of tetris brought a special plushie to hug this weekend is so special to me

[classic-tetris]

ctwc 2024 is this weekend!

the two agreed favorites to win the whole tournament would probably have to be alex and fractal - alex has been on fire these last few months, and fractal will look to be defending his world championship title after a ridiculous streak of wins at the start of the year!

sidnev and blue scuti are perhaps the next most likely contenders for the title! blue scuti got 3rd at the world championships last year and has since become a cultural phenomenon - and as for sidnev, she'll want to improve on her 2nd place from 2023 and win the whole thing!

but even in this new era of tetris, we can't count out the artiaga brothers... since 2020, at least one of them have made the top four, and it's usually been both of them! could andy win his first world championship, or could dog become the first and only person to win the title with two different playstyles?

with how good tetris players are getting in 2024, though, someone unexpected could always come out of nowhere and pull off an incredible bracket run! noah, myles, danv, rahmations, huff - all of these players are regulars to the top level and have potential to cause some chaos for the favorites! or maybe even... someone else???

the classic tetris world championships are taking place june 7th to june 9th, and all the action will be livestreamed on the ClassicTetris twitch page! be sure to check it out this weekend

-jynx, signing off

[fncreature]

sorry dog but I fucking love jerpi already

[upthewitchypunx]

If you missed the CTWC Witches' Brew you missed my presentation on Shambles!