frosty fausting's 2024 - retrospective

last weekend was frosty faustings, "the guilty gear major" and my personal first fighting game major tournament. i had a ton of fun and decided i wanted to write up some thoughts

xrd bracket

i had one real objective for frosty's–go at least 1-2 in xrd. turns out i managed that frame zero because my round 1 opponent couldn't make it.

round 2 i fought rude+e in the mirror matchup, the second or third best baiken in north america depending on how you're counting. it was not close, but i managed to hit him with baiken's himawari (read: slow command grab with a hilarious animation) once then almost scammed a round off of that, and we both had fun it with. rude+e's a sweet dude and gave me the matchup advice i used to prep for my round 3 opponent. i've got no real notes to improve on from this set besides "get a lot better and then we can talk," "himawari should be used max once per set," and "you need to break the habit of auto-mashing tetsuzansen after kabari AGAIN"

round 3 i fought the bedman opponent i tried to prep for, but alas it was not meant to be. they had many more years in fighting games than i, even if this wasn't their main game they managed like 50th place in +r and played very differently than the practice partners i had for the character. lost to them 1-2, and it genuinely was close, which i'm trying to remember to keep myself from getting down about my performance. the matchup practice did yield results, and looking to go 2-2 at my first major seems like habitual overachieving

in short, my bracket run was technically 1-2 even if i didn't get the win honorably. everyone's telling me "you take those" but it feels a little hollow.

outside of my run, it was cool being from a region with huge representation at frosty's. someone told me at majors, we're all team norcal and they were not kidding. during pools and bracket it was great running around, seeing which local friends had a match when and showing up to cheer for them... especially for the stream matches, and seeing the people who you fight and train with on the regular make it out of pools is great. like, yeah i have to put up with these people every fucking month, now i get to cheer for their hard work and make it your problem, not mine.

non-bracket games

this was the thing i really wanted to get out of this weekend; a ton of experienced xrd players and plenty of setups to games with them on. besides experienced people giving me explicit tips (special thanks to kizzercrate, who gave me a weapon i hit people with the entire rest of the weekend, and lazy who gave me very specific, practical guidance for learning to kill axl), getting longer-than-bracket sets with people better than me gave me a glimpse of what the game turns into and what should be occupying my brain once i'm not worried about my very basic execution (iad tatami, one day you'll be in my muscle memory).

it's too early for me to know for sure but it felt like i learned a lot from these longer sets with the chance to talk between games, i'm excited to antagonize my friends with some of this

social stuff

meeting people "from the internet" in person is not a new thing for me... first eve online corpmates turning to real relationships, later meeting destiny 2 clanmates in person and discovering we made great friends without the fireteam going, most recently getting to see escape from tarkov squadmates in person...

i guess what i'm saying is even though internet friends gaining real faces isn't novel, i'll enjoy it every chance i get, it's another thing for me to love about majors besides the games and the grind.

my one regret here is i was so consumed with my bracket and getting games in i didn't really get the chance to meet new people or make friends outside of my game. but again, first time, not everything can go perfectly

misc stuff

alright everyone says guilty gear is the game all the trans people play but holy fuck it was like a third of the venue, my hair game was not prepared for this shit... i need to make plans with my stylist for combobreaker

also i didn't get any deep dish while in chicago which seems like a huge fuckup on my part

closing thoughts

frosty's was fun! i definitely want to do more of this, and i will (see me at combobreaker (or slashback)). gaming with people in person beats netplay any day, and getting to do that for a whole weekend was a riot

it was also terribly motivating. i've never been within striking distance of so many people, never had such a close bracket match, never seen such a big crowd gathered for xrd. i'm putting together a training plan for combobreaker, i will get that 2-2 or pour my guts out trying.