It's been a while since one of these, eh? There's no better way to realize just how much my ADHD affects my perception of time as going "hey it's been a few days since I made an update post" only to look and realize it's been possibly over two weeks. (Fun fact, I started this post, forgot about it, and had to finish it 2 days later.)

I can tell I had a weird evolution on the way I think about the game. I used to be able to pick one thing and work on it, or I guess a better way to put it would be that I could only really see one mistake or I'd have to be told what to focus on. Suddenly that's not the case. I'm watching my own gameplay and I can tell that I need to work on very specific confirms, that I need to work on very specific things about my pressure, there's very particular situations I need to refine my combos for... It should be kind of disheartening but it's not because it means I can finally make my own decisions of how to improve instead of wobbling up to a better player and making puppy eyes at them until they critique me into oblivion.

I've had a lot of very good matches lately. I've been playing with Z pretty often, and I got some matches with T again after months. Both of these are super educational, and it was really satisfying to see the difference in my gameplay against T. I wish I kept the replays of our first matches. I'll need to check old recordings to see if maybe I still have them floating around somewhere.

I didn't join tournaments for a while because of scheduling conflicts and morale issues. Then work got super difficult and BBCF was there for me to stress over instead of stressing over things I can't control so I joined two tournaments yesterday & the day before. It's really fun to join tournaments when you're in the mindset for them.

TMN

TMN I did okay. I should have won my first set, but I dropped a really important combo and then it was all over. It's a little bit of a shame because I think winning that set would have made people notice me, but it is what it is. It was vs a Jin, and I have had a lot of experience vs. Jin at this point. There were several points I could call out directly where I only didn't get hit because I've been exposed to those particular restands and mixups by G. My second set I didn't know the matchup at all and that spelled my doom; otherwise, I think I could have won.

TRO

TRO I had my best tournament run thus far. I went 2-2. First set was against a Nine. At first I was losing, but then I finally figured out that they were only catching me because I was walking into their offense. I used defensive movement to get in close and then punished them for throwing out so many buttons, and took advantage of the fact I realized their defense against mix-ups wasn't the strongest. I shouldn't be so proud of winning that set, but I really am because I actually had the presence of mind to realize their weakness and take advantage of it.

Second set was vs D the Relius player. I had NO expectations about even taking a round from him. But, fun fact -- D is another player that I've wanted to play for a really long time. One of the friends that first got me into BBCF was a relius player, and I'd send him clips of D saying "wow look at this crazy mix-up he hit this guy with" and my friend would respond "Downloaded." and make me hold it the very next set we ran. So... I've always been a little curious about how well I'd be able to block his mixup. And yo honestly, the answer was I actually blocked out of my mind. I need to figure out how to embed a video into this blog, but I actually managed to block delayed air dash into double overhead into empty jump low, all out of reaction. He then just ran up and grabbed me into an astral, but I know I'm free to throws no matter what. I also managed to nick him a few times, so I am actually over the moon about my performance in that set. He didn't just beat me with the basic mixup, he had to pull out the dirty stuff. (He also didn't insult me during our set, so I'm pretty proud of that. If I was still playing like an absolute animal like when I first started, he would have commented on that very clearly.)

Third set was vs a Mai. Which, Mai is one of my most hated match-ups. She is genuinely one of my "bracket demons", I think the phrase is? I cannot contest a Mai that does nothing but C spam. Which, thankfully, this Mai didn't do. But this Mai was good enough to realize that I was free to grabs, and really made me feel it. I managed to scrape by a win, and it was extremely satisfying to realize that it was entirely thanks to my experience fighting Mai and some advice I'd been given a long time ago and I finally understand. (Y'know that one angular dive move that she does? The fact that if you block it in the air it's punishable. When I saw her backflip, I intentionally bunny hopped up towards her to meet her in the air to block it, causing me to land after the ground hit so I could punish her.) I also played around my own weakness to manage that win, because while I still couldn't tech her throws, I managed to fuzzy jump out of one to safety. (Next -- to work on punishing them.)

Fourth set was vs a very good Kokonoe. No notes at this point, they just flat out outplayed me and hit me with the sickest combos in their repetoire. I played well enough, though I was pretty cooked after the 3 high octane sets.

To work on

I still want to write down things I want to work on so I can re-check the list occassionally.

• Still need to work on 66 barrier block
• Work on CH 6a confirms
• Work on jump cancelling 5c when I see the second hit is going to whiff
• Work on adding 4D to my pressure for free meter
• More OD combos, more combos in general -- I'm still missing a lot of free damage

I also still need to work on varying my air movement, though funnily enough when I randomly picked up Jin for a few matches I could immediately tell my movement in the air was completely different. It's genuinely something about Jin's kit vs Teru's kit makes it so I'm so much more aware and confident about my air movement, and I actually save my air attacks to react to something rather than throwing them out like on Teru.