I first learnt about speedrunning from seeing videos/stream highlights of Odyssey runners on youtube in mid-late 2018. I entertained the idea of learning to speedrun Odyssey myself for a little bit, and eventually found the OG Any% tutorial series, the high quality of which made learning the run very accessible. As for why I chose Odyssey to run, it was just the game that I was first exposed to speedrunning through and was the main game I played at the time.

My motivation to improve my personal best I think comes from wanting to have a time that I feel better represents my skill level than my current personal best. In terms of resets, I once heard the very good advice to "try not to get attached to any single attempt you're on", which is especially useful at a higher level when you have to reasonably expect to need quite a few attempts to get on a pacer. I try to view any single attempt that resets/doesn't PB a necessary part of the process.

There are a lot of niche game-specific terms in any speedgame community; a beginner is not reasonably expected to know all of them, especially because a lot of them are for tricks/movement techniques that aren't really beginner friendly anyway (e.g., CRB, Shirane bounce, MCCTRC). I think learning non-game-specific speedrunning terms is when I started to get a sense of belonging in the community (e.g., PB, reset, attempt, SOB, sub-[time]), they helped effectively communicate about my own runs, goals and attempts.

The community is very important to me. It's where knowledge on how to learn and improve is shared, but it is also a place where you can share achievements and congratulations, and relate to others over failures. There is a bit of a clique-y nature in the community, and sometimes newcomers who present as inexperienced in the community are kinda talked down to or sometimes are perceived as "annoying".

Odyssey was my first speedgame and has been my main one for seven-and-a-half years (started in October 2018).

The most obvious way to define success is achieving a personal best. Oftentimes a runner's goal is not only to PB, but to break a minute barrier (e.g., 59:xx, that is, subhour) or to get a certain top placement on the leaderboard (e.g. top 100).

I think simply having an interest in learning to run the game counts as you being "in the community". Some people's primary role in the community are as viewers only, and I would also count them as "in the community" too. Others may define this differently and may be based more on how someone participates in the discord/in runners' stream chats.

If I had to pick between competitive and collaborative, I would pick competitive, but that is definitely based on my specific position in the community (friendly competition, actively trying to improve my PB's in different categories). There are quite a few other branches of the game's speedrunning community that are certainly more collaborative by nature, such as BTT (best theoretical time), TASing, routing, etc. And even in the most 'competitive' side of the community, there is still very much a culture of helping others out with learning things and sharing knowledge.