damn that was so good. playing fighting games vs people in person is great.
night started out a little weird cause neither of the strive setups they had had bridget unlocked which sorta left me in the lurch, but people there were friendly and welcoming and i just spent some good time chatting with folks and introducing myself. met a guy who was also there for his first time and also relatively new to fighting games, and we wound up finding each other a few times over the course of the evening and catching up. and eventually they switched a flex station over to strive which did have bridget, so i got to play some sets.
and once i did it was so much fun. was a little expecting to be nervous or intimidated going in, but it was actually super chill playing. first set was vs. a happy chaos, a char i'm not sure if i'd ever(?) fought before, but i definitely learned and improved over the course of our set, made several rounds pretty close, and afterwards the other player was pretty forthcoming with matchup advice when i asked, which was real cool.
shuffled off to let a few people cycle through the station and came back for another set later, this time vs a gio who looked very good. it was his first time playing vs bridget though, so i had that going for me, and managed to take a round off him, which was super satisfying. also felt like i played way better defensively vs him than i had been lately vs random floor 8 gios in ranked, which felt real good. managed to keep a cool head while blocking, and found a couple reliable spots to 2K out of pressure and take my turn back.
lately i've been realizing how important playing with a sense of confidence in my play is, so it was really fucking cool going toe to toe with much more experienced players, and seeing that yeah there's obviously a big skill gap between us, but also that that skill gap matters substantially less when i've got yo-yo pressure going, they've still got to guess high/low like anyone else i play, so might as well try and get aggressive and set up oki.
that was real great, though. i'm thinking i'm probably gonna go again next week? oh yeah, also it's blessed as fuck to step outside for some food and a drink, step up to a few people who are also taking a break and chilling, and have the conversation i walk into be them arguing whether there's any actual statistical merit to the "fallout new vegas is transfem culture" meme or if it's just a game that most millennials sunk a bunch of time into.
