did the bouncing between floors 8 and 9 thing a little more before deciding it's in my best interest to chill on 8 for a while. i think i'd developed a playstyle around finding one thing that works well and riding that super hard to wins, and it was great for rocketing through the midfloors of the tower, but also meant that my game was pretty one-dimensional, and on floor 9 was running into issues where my offense was no longer as overwhelming and without that, i was left floundering. so i've just been playing on floor 8 the last day or two, going less aggro with the rushdown style that was repeatedly getting me up to floor 9, and instead trying to develop other tools for myself.
it was definitely a rough adjustment at first. like i was prepared to lose matches, but the feeling lost and floundering in my play definitely caught me a bit off-guard and found myself building some frustration with it yesterday. but wound up deciding to stick with that frustration and use it as motivation to go into training mode and just drill out 2K 2D 214S (i've established a lot of muscle memory instead for cS as my 2K mash follow-up, since it leads to more immediately damaging routes, but I'm trying to get the hang of making better use of bridget's 214S yo-yo, so want to get more muscle memory for 2D, since its knockdown gives a window to throw it)
came back today a bit more prepared to struggle while i readjust, and spent some time still struggling in terms of win/losses, but i was starting to get a better feel for keeping 214S yo-yos out, as well as feeling a bit more comfortable staying grounded and just controlling space instead of always rushing in with jump-ins. finally about 2 hours into my session, midway through a long set with a sol that had been pretty even back and forth, something just clicked for me and round after round i just kept him locked in the corner, constantly reapplying 214S yo-yos and leaving him unable to escape. after 2 days of feeling pretty lost in my play, daaaamn it's incredible having things just suddenly feel utterly fluid like that. it's one thing to know "yo-yo mix is an important part of bridget's play" but something else entirely to just in an instant experience "damn, bridget is SO MUCH BETTER when she just always can keep a yo-yo on-screen"
and even though most of the time things probably won't feel quite as clear as that big level-up moment, it's nice to hold on to, both as a reminder of "this is what bridget's capable of as a character" but more importantly, also "this is what i'm capable of as a player". there's probably gonna be plenty more valleys like yesterday along my journey where things feel so much sludgier than they had just a day or two ago, but man it feels great coming out the other side of one of those spells.
learning fighting games is fucking fun.
