My first Smash tourney

Oh my god! Suddenly nearly another month has passed before my last entry

Today I went to my first Smash tournament. I would barely count it as a real tournament though, because it was just my universities club setting up a tourney for Smash Melee and Smash Ultimate. Even though I knew it wasn't really a big deal, I was still pretty nervous because of the.. social interaction. I think it's time for me to admit to myself that I am very introverted. People get misconstrued that introverts are just people who hate talking to anyone and prefer being quiet 100% of the time. But that isn't the case. Actually introverts can love talking to people, having friends, and be in social events. For me, I always get nervous because I'm scared of being around people I don't know and being awkward. 

Background: I met some of the people earlier this week from another event I went to. It was for Smash Melee, I had to swallow my awkwardness and force myself to go because I really really wanted to play Melee with a gamecube controller on a CRT. I don't have a gamecube controller, adapter, or even Wii to play Melee on my own so this was the only opportunity I could get. It was so worth it because I had a bunch of fun AND I got the peak experience of the "gaming room" which is a room on campus the smash club uses in the basement of one of the main buildings. It looked like it was straight out of 00s (probably because it's a neglected room the university doesnt give a shit about). and Yes the people in the club did pass the smell check, which I am very glad about. I told them it was my first time playing Melee and I wanted to play jigglypuff because I like Hbox and I play jigglypuff in Ultimate. One of the guys was excited because "No one else wants to play puff even though she's so good and cool, so I'll teach you." 

Fast forward to today, I was pretty scared walking in but the people who I met called out to me instantly so I felt more comfortable after that. I kind of awkwardly sat behind the guys playing Ultimate, waiting for my set, until people started striking up conversations with me. Of course, like most clubs in college clubs are already friend groups where it's hard to interfere (looking at you asian culture clubs), but unlike gatekeepy, cliquey clubs I think the people here were very happy to see a new person show up and want to talk and play some games. Anyways, about my sets, in Ultimate unsurprisingly I went 0-2 round 1 0-2 losers, that is not surprising to me. I played Game and Watch round 1 and we went random in losers to troll. (all the really good players were going random because apparently they were partying too late and got no sleep and didn't want to play hard). But very surprisingly in melee, I actually went 1-2 round 1 and 0-2 losers. I won round 1 against another jigglypuff where I landed 2 rests in the first game. It was very hype, but then I lost the two other games (albeit pretty close, we got to last stock on both). In losers bracket I lost all momentum and steam and got rolled, but that's ok with me. I ended up playing some friendlies with some ppl after and watched the bracket end to see who would win. 

I think I was just so glad to finally be able to talk to other people who just liked the same stuff I did, and also to get to play against someone else, because whenever I play smash I only play against one guy. It was refreshing to meet “real nerds” (I say this in the nicest way possible) because nowadays we just be letting ANYONE say they are a nerd but when someone with actual nerdy interests outside of valorant show up it’s cringe and stuff. I’m gonna be entering another tournament on Weds, I’ll keep updated!