Putting up an update even though I don't have too much interesting to say just to make sure I stay in the habit.

TRO

I streamed my TRO run from last week. I wasn't planning to, but a friend asked for the tournament stream when I knew I wasn't going to be streamed for sure, so I put up my own stream instead and linked them to it. I went 1-2; won against a newer player and then fought against two really good players and all my matches went really quickly because my first match was the only "winners round 0" set. I was about to end stream, but it felt kinda short, so I asked my chat whether I should keep streaming or not, and two(!) whole people responded saying I should keep streaming, so I did. I ended up streaming for a solid two or so hours with some player room matches. The stream VOD's up on my youtube; I don't know if I'll bother re-uploading just the TRO sets since it's not like it was anything spectacular.

"Chill" games eh?

I was being particularly depressed on Saturday night so started drinking. (Somewhat rare for me since it hits me so hard with all my health issues + medications. Plus, y'know, when I do take my painkillers, they say DO NOT TAKE WITH ALCOHOL UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.) Then decided to put up a player match room for some "chill" games. I had two players of my level who were trying their absolute damndest to win, which props to them but those were definitely sweatier than I wanted in that moment. Then I had a new player who quit after the first match because I won too hard. And the rest of the matches were against pink squares. Which, yeah, I usually like, but it was really funny how sweaty the matches are the one time I was trying to take it slow.

A hazama player, who I'm calling S from now on, ended up being my last set of matches. At first my reaction was again, "oh my god why do I have to be drunk right now" because not only am I already bad at playing into hazama, I was playing into a good hazama when I was very much not in the right state to do so. But, I pestered my friends into watching the stream because they haven't really kept up with BBCF netplay, and the whole thing became lots of good fun with the peanut gallery. M was pointing out the sick mix-ups he was doing and constantly harping on the fact that his character was straight up better than mine, but also actually hyping me up when I blocked some mix-up or moved around his nonsense or confirmed a wild hit. G was just in shock at the crazy ass combos S was landing on me, with M explaining that that's just how netplay hazamas are now.

Deadass, S kicked my ass so hard I sobered up, and I actually managed to start putting up a fight. He wasn't going easy either, so it actually felt like an achievement when I managed to not get perfect'd. I saved those replays and I'm going to see if I can't re-watch the sets just to see what actually worked. One round I took just because of hilariously Terumi-style things -- I had ODR'd so early in the round that I got OD back before the end of the round and proceeded to ODR and hit him with the exact same combo and win.

Ikaruga

I was disassociating, playing Satisfactory, and watching DW's Ikaruga stream when something really funny happened. I hadn't joined because of my time concerns (and I'm still not sure how much I want someone to hold my hand through learning a character), but one of the participants had no-show'd. I knew the person who was supposed to fight them, and thought it was a hell of a shame they wouldn't get to show off what they learned on stream. Then my friend, also a friend of DW's, suggested that I fill in for the missing person and that's how I ended up fighting a ft5 with 0 warm-up and being 30 minutes to ffxiv raid. I felt pretty bad for being late to raid, but it seemed like everyone understood.

The ft5 was hella lot closer than I thought it would be. I'd fought the person many times before in random online ranked matches, and I'm pretty sure we were at like, 1-30, if not 0-30. This set ended up being 4-5, with him winning in the end. I didn't do too bad, the main thing that got me any wins was the fact that if I got a hit in, I got damage out of it. The main thing that made me lose so much was my defense and neutral was bad; he found some cross-ups I had no idea how to respond to. I was experimenting with a few techniques, but none of them worked.

People keep saying I'm downplaying, but I dunno. As usual, I think if I was downplaying, I'd be actually winning? I think I'm absolute garbage at this game; I don't have any innate or gut understanding of fighting games, I don't have the experience, and I'm 5k games in barely able to put up a fight against new players with sub 1k. I'm bad! But whatever, if people don't believe me despite all the evidence that I'm right, no point in repeating it.

I signed up to join the next one for Hazama. I think I still want to figure out Terumi myself, and for Jin and Hakumen I have someone waiting to teach me them. I just hope I actually get along with the mentor I get paired with, if I'm chosen. I technically shouldn't be learning another character, as I just decided to put Jin down because he was distracting me from Terumi, but honestly, I play this game to have fun. If learning Hazama is fun, why not. I'll have a 2 week side arc and then I'll be back to the regularly scheduled Terumi. Playing vs. S reminded me just how fucking cool Hazama is.

(And if I don't end up wanting to play Terumi, and want to stick to Hazama, despite how much I've branded myself around Terumi... well, it is what it is, aye? Better play to enjoy the game, not out of some loyalty to a set of pixels who'd be a cunt if he actually existed anyways.)

There's also the awkward bit that everyone in this sub-community calls me "he" and I think that will be... rough when I first join vc with them. They technically asked me to join vc for a moment when I filled, but I didn't want that to be the potential first time they heard my voice. (Plus what were they going to interview me about? It's not like I actually went through the mentoring process.) Don't get me wrong, I don't mind being called "he". If it wasn't for the fact I don't want to deal with the baggage of someone introducing me as "she" to someone I don't know on the internet, I think at this point I'd literally go by any pronouns. I'm more worried about their response to it, especially since they've been making "us men" jokes with me for a while now I've been too awkward to correct them on.

Or maybe they already actually watched my VODs and know and don't care and are trying to be supportive with those jokes. Who knows. I don't. We'll burn that bridge when we get there. Not worth losing sleep over.

(Sidenote: I feel like it's a bit awkward for me to mention "the baggage of being introduced she". I do want to state that the fighting game community has been far more accepting than I ever expected, especially after my experiences with League of Legends and other gaming communities. (e.g. I got dropped as a guild founder back in Wildstar after joining a VC for the first time.) But at the same time, a certain bang player comments about how he'll tutor only people who go by she/her which is simultaneously trans-accepting and extremely uncomfortable for someone in my position.)

To Work On

My pressure's still fucked up. I keep autopiloting into 5c, and I need to stop. I need to practice short and safe pressure more, with clean microdash 2As, 5As, 5Bs, and actually mix up which buttons I press. Use some 2c instead of 5c, jump cancel those. Also practice jump cancelled 5C to make it more of a threat now that I know about a j.b crossup. My buddy showed me some good things I can be doing if someone is fuzzy jumping out of my pressure to force them back into the ground that included a lot of 5as, j.as, and j.bs I should play around with.

I also just saw a terumi combo posted to the terucord that reminds me I need to learn to 6c -> rc -> iad -> j.c.