1. Please get Fightcade.
There are basically infinite games on there and it takes 5 seconds to boot up. I can't stress how much fun I've had mashing with people in obscure games. Even if you don't end up getting really deep into them, it builds a good mindset and makes it easier to pick up big new releases when they roll around. It's super easy to set up as well: download it from fightcade.com, then grab the rom auto-downloader
2. Watch, if not attend, Combo Breaker.
I can't speak for the in-person experience because the last time I was at EVO was 2015, but as a viewer it kinda sucks when you see more ads than games. Now CB has incredible vibes, tons of side games that get attention, and less huge ad breaks to take you out of it. It's still the number one event to me. It's a lot more accessible and less hot and crowded than EVO's Vegas location, being in Chicago. I even wrote a full article on the Mystery Game, a still-living tradition from the region. You can read that here
3. Have fun!
I get it, a big part of fighting games is the fact that anyone could be a top player. This doesn't mean you have to force yourself to play when you're not having fun, much less worry about results. So what if you went 0-2 at your first local or got placed into Bronze on ranked? You're here to have a good time at the end of the day. None of this would exist without people like you, no matter what anyone says.
Their summons comes after they've waited (deliberately been made to; Ryssa knows this, as sure as breathing) overnight on the beach. In the early morning light, a series of great stone slabs float to the surface, amid the plumes of seafloor mud they rested in.
There is as much magic as in the floating, Ryssa thinks, in the fact that the topside of each has nothing attached to it; no shells or soft petalled stinging things or streaming weed. It's a nice touch. The causeway is an intricately considered, dizzyingly unnatural, power-flaunting path of utter barrenness. Wizardry all over.
Ryssa's met a lot of wizards. Ryssa's left the world with somewhat fewer in it.
"Hanssen," she says dourly, when he eagerly steps forth, "they're in no hurry for us, or they'd have let us inside to sleep in beds. Do you want to march straight over and go nuts over noggin on smooth wet stone? Let it dry. They'll wait."
He's torn. On the one hand, speed and enthusiasm and a ringing call to action; on the other, now she's said it, he's clearly picturing slipping over and looking clownish in front of the wizards.
"You wouldn't want anyone to get hurt. Someone delicate, say, like the elf."
"It is hard," the other paladin says, shading his eyes against the sun on the water and staring out across the causeway, "to quite think of the elf as delicate when she's been sparring with you for weeks."
Ryssa grins. "Bitchteeth!" she says in mock wonder. "Did you admit to learning something? Hoy, priest! Do your lot not set fire to your brothers who accidentally do that?"
They finally cross, Hanssen and his brother priest in the fore, the sellsword and Ulsmyn next, the elf, and lastly Ryssa, whistling and keeping her hand near her sword.
The elf lags back, and Ryssa, without appearing to take much notice, lags back at the same pace, so they don't end up walking together, but the gap between them and the rest grows.
"I'd rather not be here," the elf sighs.
"Too visible for a sneak-thief," Ryssa says brightly.
"Too visible," the elf says, quieter, "for what I actually am."
"Hip-wriggling elven slatterns? I'm sure some wizards can find a more private welcome for those—"
"You are exceptionally annoying today."
Ryssa goes back to whistling a jaunty sea-tune, paused patiently for the elf to hop over the arm's length of chilly, glimmering brine between one stone and the next.
"If you'd let me keep the Oracle," the elf sighs, after a pause. "At least till we were closer. I could have tailored something more suited—"
"You couldn't resist taunting me," the paladin says, and the elf grumbles low and wordlessly.
And then they're catching up, at the great doors of the fastness itself, with everyone; and to the wizard here to welcome them.
"—Heard contradictory things," the robed figure is saying, all kohl eyes and shaved head and excited hand movements. "An explosion, a theft — and here you are with it! Ah, this is your elven compatriot? And — oh. Hello, you."
"Vimbrissaminah," Ryssa says politely, giving her a nod, and the wizard strides forward with a laugh.
"Didn't I hear you'd given all this up to grow parsnips or some such?" she says, and reaches out a hand.
Ryssa can see the horrified surprise from Hanssen and the priest, the seething outrage from Ulsmyn, and the sellsword simply raising an eyebrow, when the wizard doesn't try to take Ryssa's hand in greeting; she lifts it instead to run her fingers, tousling familiarly, through the paladin's hair.
Vimbrissaminah purrs.
Ryssa doesn't check on the elf's reaction. She can hear her revising her list of People To Kill.
Funny thing about the new canon: despite all the effort puts into gesturing at clone individuality, every time we see a clone, it’s still so they can fight. The Bad Batch’s whole thing is that they are individuals... and that makes them better at fighting. Cut ends up fighting in Deserter which is supposed to be about what life could be like for Rex if he left the army, and the episode depicts that as a way to indicate that he is still worth something as a person. Echo literally gets abducted and turned into the war version of chatgpt, and when he gets out, everyone's like "so, who you gonna join up with for the rest of the war bud?"
It isn't that clones don't have interests outside of war. They do. They listen to music, they drink at bars, Cut gets married, Rex wants kids, we meet tons of clones who think women are hot (and how could you not), there's so many things they want that have nothing to do with war. But no show yet has tried to imagine a clone who not only doesn't want to fight, but whose life has significance outside of fighting. Clones are purpose-bred for war, and the canon has no interest in imagining a life for them beyond that. When we see Gregor, for instance, he is literally inhabiting an existentialist void that has no color until frog man and his droid bois come and make Gregor color it with explosions. The only thing Rex can give his friends is his combat prowess. Lending someone his gun or his military expertise is the deepest symbol of his loyalty.
Real talk, clones are like half the reason I ended up liking Star Wars enough to make 1000 Wookieepedia edits as a kid or write posts like this as an adult. They are the thing I've loved about Star Wars since I was a kid and Clone Wars was airing. If you grew up in poverty, they're such an evocative idea; they are the embodiment of the "I am here because I'm good at something and for no other reason and if I fuck up or change my mind I will be dead because this is the sole purpose that capitalism has assigned me" alienation that you experience when you're poor and your talent gets you stuck with a bunch of rich kids. In the old canon, they were the thing you could point to as evidence that the Jedi were a fucked up group of crazy ascetics. I love that the hypocrisy they embody still comes through enough in the new canon that people like AMCA can see it and give us new perspectives on it. I just wish the new canon was willing to engage with that idea the way the old was. I wish we got a story where Ahsoka grappled with one of her best friends being a slave soldier, or where Cut tries to form his identity outside the army. The old canon gave us things like that, though they were often unsatisfactory. Will it ever exist in the new?