i take pride in the fact that i'm a unique person. i have my own life, my own hobbies, my own struggles, my own ups and downs. in terms of being someone i can call "myself", i'm not an NPC and i'm proud of that fact. but there's a separate thing that bothers me: i blend in. i'm not well-known for anything in any community.
in the guilty gear strive community, i'm just some random hardstuck diamond player who never improves because they never take time to actually change anything. i never study my replays (i only watch my own replays to clip things, and i spend the whole rewatch waiting for the clip and not paying attention to what i did). i almost never ask for advice (and when i do, it goes in one ear and out the other as i boot up ranked again).
in the keep talking and nobody explodes community, i'm a modder. i'm just a regular old modder who makes modules and doesn't know how to make anything else. people like my modules, sure, but i'm not as known as that one modder who make nothing but extreme modules or that other modder who made a whole ass ktane rewritten and a bunch of utility mods.
in th,,,,shit. i have nothing else. and that's a problem. my interests are so few and so narrow that it makes me feel like my life is bland. i only ever play one video game ever and that's guilty gear. guilty gear and ktane are literally the only two communities i have ever called home. aside from something i'd rather not get into. i can't even get that something community back anyway.
i don't know how to be someone unique. i don't know how to tear down a unity game's code and rebuild it from the ground up. i don't know how to beat fighting game opponents of my skill level, let alone above. i don't want to sink in endless time into learning over 2000 modded modules. i don't want to treat a fighting game like it's something i have to study. but what else is there? i refuse to ever pick up a second fighting game because i don't want to have to both learn a new one from the ground up and balance it with strive. i have vague recollections of the OG ktane mods, but there are so many new ones that i'm just left completely lost.
this post was meant to be about standing out and being known in a community. and on that note, i vented before about being a modder for a retro fighting game, but i don't think i have it in me to learn sega dreamcast assembly or whatever the fuck. i'm a programmer, i've been coding since 2019. i'm a fighting game fan, i've been playing fighters since 2021. but i have nothing else to me as a person. what can i even use these talents and interests for?
i've had tumblr installed for at least a week genuinely what are you on
this happens all the time. i install an app and days later it tells me i can use it. might be a grapheneos thing bc this never happened on stock pixel android. i just turned off this category of notification rn but still
it's always "when the imposter is sus" and never "when the crewmate is sus" which happens way more often. and also never "when the impostor is sus" which is how it's spelled in among us in among us
had an existential crisis fighting some random ky on guilty gear strive ranked
in the middle of my pressure, something just clicked within me. not in a good way, just,,,,all of a sudden, i was thinking some new and unusual thoughts. out of nowhere.
i was thinking "wait wait wait hold on, why am i even playing strive? what's the point?" i was thinking "i'm not gonna make an impact in the community, whether competitively or as a name for myself". i was thinking "why do i spend every moment of my free time hopelessly grinding this one singular video game?"
i've been hopping on guilty gear strive ranked almost daily these past few months. i've been going to my local and going home almost always 0-2 just about every week. i don't play hero shooters, i don't play mobas, i don't play RPGs or singleplayer indies (outside of deltarune). strive and deltarune are unironically the only steam games i have installed right now.
i went 3-2 at evo, which is better than last year (plus i didn't get my ass handed to me in front of everyone watching at home like last year), but i'm still just a drop in the ocean. i'm still some random diamond 2 goldlewis player that still doesn't know how to frametrap. i'm still not gonna be anyone in the guilty gear community.
tangent: i may be a programmer but can i even call myself that? i haven't written a line of code for a non-school thing since like 2024. and i don't maintain my previous projects bc i deleted them off github for reasons that i feel would be better unexplained. i might just be a programming larper.
the reason i bring that up is because i have a sense of admiration for the communities of older fighting games (think street fighter iii 3rd strike or capcom vs snk 2). there are people who work night and day to document every last hitbox, every last jank interaction, every last detail about every last character, and that is so heartwarming to me. i want to be part of that. i want to use my programming skills to make a name for myself in at least a little esoteric corner of the fighting game community. i want to make tools and mods and documentation. i want to be known.
guilty gear strive is an actively-updated modern fighting game, with a battle pass and everything. there's no room for me to contribute anything meaningful. beginner resources? documented. character frame data? documented. i have so much respect for dustloop editors, but there's no room for me to do anything. and even if i tried, i'm not that guy. i won't have it in me to contribute to the page for the upcoming character robo-ky, because what the fuck am i meant to say about the use of his 5P? it's a jab, it might not even have as good of frame data as 2P,,,, i can't contribute. i can't mod. i can't document.
about the "this one singular video game" thing,,,,guilty gear strive is all i play. i used to play street fighter 6, but i was so unbelievably ass at it. for context, once you make it to the top of the normal ranking system (which uses League Points, or LP), you enter a special ranked area called Master (which uses Master Rate, or MR). the starting position is 1500 MR, and all master players are reset to this level every few months. the highest MR i have literally EVER had is fucking 1528. that's it. i've spent ever MR phase down in the fucking 1200-1300s. and 1200 is the first goddamn percentile of MR. that's how ass i am at street fighter. the only reason i ever made it to master at all is because i grinded the game enough. i never deserved master.
guilty gear strive has something similar: RP (Rate Points) for the lower ranks, and DR (Duel Rate) for a higher group of ranks called Vanquisher. i'm currently at ~37000 RP, which is the lower 25%ish of diamond 2. diamond 3 is the highest rank before vanquisher, which means i'm only,,,,i don't even know how long until i inevitably get to vanquisher just by grinding. the point is, i wished in street fighter 6 to just be sent back to platinum or something where i belong, and i need to cherish how i,,,,motherfucker i'm supposed to be venting goddamnit
the FUCKING POINT IS: i have nothing but the fgc. the fgc means a lot to me and i'd rather die than become a ball & gun gamer, but i can't just be a strive addict all day every day. i need to be someone. i need to stop blending in. i can't just be a ranked grinder and that's it, i need a purpose in my free time. because i don't even know if i like spending my free time this way anymore. why do i even play the game? i have to. i'm a guilty gear fan. therefore i have to play guilty gear. i can't be a larper.
i'm just now remembering something huge: street fighter 6 world tour. the ginormous RPG story mode of street fighter. every time i saw someone mad at the metagame of sf6, i would always shill world tour. i would always say to stop and smell the roses. i would always remember what asumsaus said (0:43-1:49). video games are far more than just the competitive aspect.
guilty gear strive has a story mode. it's all cutscenes and no gameplay, but that might just be what i need for now. it would do wonders for me to even scratch the surface of the tip of the iceberg that is guilty gear lore. as for being someone in the community,,,,i'm gonna learn how to mod capcom vs snk 2.
addendum: as i was fighting this ky, all i could think of was this whole thing. needing to write about this whole thing. wanting the match to be over so i could write about this whole thing. i was blocking the whole time, barely playing any offense. the whole match became a sludge of f.S 5H stun dipper PRC, with the occasional airdash j.D j.684 on my end. i wouldn't say i was dissociating or anything, just that i was kind of spiraling.
i do often get lost in thought in the middle of my ranked sets, whether daydreaming about "what if this game had voice chat, what would i say to this person rn" or some other bullshit. but this was different. this was a random snap that consumed my mental stack. it just popped up out of nowhere and hindered my ability to even play the game. maybe because i was on at 9 PM, far later than my usual latest. i guess i gotta remember:
do i even enjoy strive anymore? it's become the same old routine: i hop on ranked, play a few sets, and hop off. and during those sets, i do my exact same gameplan the whole time. roundstart 248/roundstart forward jump j.D, try to use j.H j.486 as a crossup on HKD somehow, tell myself i need to use 5H more often when i don't even know where to. what's the point? am i growing tired of strive? 521.6 hours in, been playing since season 2, yet i don't grow. i don't improve. at least recently i haven't been improving.
every ranked match is "duel 1 let's rock", my same old flowchart which only sometimes works, then "slash". i don't even feel suspense anymore. i don't even feel triumph anymore. i think i'm beginning to see strive as a strategy game and not a high-paced action fighting game. i'm in so deep into the competitive aspect of strive that i fail to see it as what it is: fun.
but what fun is there to have? this is a fighting game. the developers make changes with the intent of appealing to the competitive fans. the competitive fans outnumber the casual fans (or maybe i'm just in an echo chamber). fighting games are inherently meant to be an esport. there is no world tour RPG story mode in strive. and even if there were, what about it? how would an interactive story mode quell my woes?
if i drop strive, i'll have nothing. fighting games are the only interest i have at all,,and deltarune too but that's nowhere near as much a part of my life as the fgc is. if i drop strive, i'll have no interests left. if i drop strive, i'll have no community left.
and i can't just nicotine patch my way out of this desolate feeling. sf6? i'm 1st-percentile-of-MR levels of ass. 2xko? i refuse to use windows, let alone run kernel-level spyware just to play something league-adjacent. cotw? too saudi. tekken 8? the balance of the game is perpetually ass, it's too expensive, and i can't be bothered to even larp as a baki larper.
related anecdote: i used to use this """""language-learning""""" app (really just vocabulary) called Drops, to """""study""""" persian. there were profile achievements for various daily streak numbers, with the highest one being 365 days. i remember after about 200 days of use, i felt awful that i had to do my daily drops, plus the app was terrible. it only taught first-person singular conjugations of verbs ("I do", rather than "to do"), and i already knew enough persian to be able to tell when it was inaccurate. it would display these same inaccuracies multiple times, and it always pissed me off. plus some of the images it used were unnerving to me for some reason. i eventually snapped one day and uninstalled it, never to look back. i might be approaching a similar breaking point with guilty gear. i might just snap in the middle of my ranked and decide that i've had enough of strive.
i've been playing nothing but fighting games since 2021, back when kazuya was revealed for smash. before this snap of mine yesterday, i felt a sense of pride that i had found a community that i could fit into, and not blend into. i still wouldn't give up the fgc for anything, but being a player just might have become too tedious and repetitive for my own good. i can't quit though. i have to compete. i have to play. i can't be a larper. i can't be a larper. i can't be a larper. what do i do? what else do i have? what else can i have?
had an existential crisis fighting some random ky on guilty gear strive ranked
in the middle of my pressure, something just clicked within me. not in a good way, just,,,,all of a sudden, i was thinking some new and unusual thoughts. out of nowhere.
i was thinking "wait wait wait hold on, why am i even playing strive? what's the point?" i was thinking "i'm not gonna make an impact in the community, whether competitively or as a name for myself". i was thinking "why do i spend every moment of my free time hopelessly grinding this one singular video game?"
i've been hopping on guilty gear strive ranked almost daily these past few months. i've been going to my local and going home almost always 0-2 just about every week. i don't play hero shooters, i don't play mobas, i don't play RPGs or singleplayer indies (outside of deltarune). strive and deltarune are unironically the only steam games i have installed right now.
i went 3-2 at evo, which is better than last year (plus i didn't get my ass handed to me in front of everyone watching at home like last year), but i'm still just a drop in the ocean. i'm still some random diamond 2 goldlewis player that still doesn't know how to frametrap. i'm still not gonna be anyone in the guilty gear community.
tangent: i may be a programmer but can i even call myself that? i haven't written a line of code for a non-school thing since like 2024. and i don't maintain my previous projects bc i deleted them off github for reasons that i feel would be better unexplained. i might just be a programming larper.
the reason i bring that up is because i have a sense of admiration for the communities of older fighting games (think street fighter iii 3rd strike or capcom vs snk 2). there are people who work night and day to document every last hitbox, every last jank interaction, every last detail about every last character, and that is so heartwarming to me. i want to be part of that. i want to use my programming skills to make a name for myself in at least a little esoteric corner of the fighting game community. i want to make tools and mods and documentation. i want to be known.
guilty gear strive is an actively-updated modern fighting game, with a battle pass and everything. there's no room for me to contribute anything meaningful. beginner resources? documented. character frame data? documented. i have so much respect for dustloop editors, but there's no room for me to do anything. and even if i tried, i'm not that guy. i won't have it in me to contribute to the page for the upcoming character robo-ky, because what the fuck am i meant to say about the use of his 5P? it's a jab, it might not even have as good of frame data as 2P,,,, i can't contribute. i can't mod. i can't document.
about the "this one singular video game" thing,,,,guilty gear strive is all i play. i used to play street fighter 6, but i was so unbelievably ass at it. for context, once you make it to the top of the normal ranking system (which uses League Points, or LP), you enter a special ranked area called Master (which uses Master Rate, or MR). the starting position is 1500 MR, and all master players are reset to this level every few months. the highest MR i have literally EVER had is fucking 1528. that's it. i've spent ever MR phase down in the fucking 1200-1300s. and 1200 is the first goddamn percentile of MR. that's how ass i am at street fighter. the only reason i ever made it to master at all is because i grinded the game enough. i never deserved master.
guilty gear strive has something similar: RP (Rate Points) for the lower ranks, and DR (Duel Rate) for a higher group of ranks called Vanquisher. i'm currently at ~37000 RP, which is the lower 25%ish of diamond 2. diamond 3 is the highest rank before vanquisher, which means i'm only,,,,i don't even know how long until i inevitably get to vanquisher just by grinding. the point is, i wished in street fighter 6 to just be sent back to platinum or something where i belong, and i need to cherish how i,,,,motherfucker i'm supposed to be venting goddamnit
the FUCKING POINT IS: i have nothing but the fgc. the fgc means a lot to me and i'd rather die than become a ball & gun gamer, but i can't just be a strive addict all day every day. i need to be someone. i need to stop blending in. i can't just be a ranked grinder and that's it, i need a purpose in my free time. because i don't even know if i like spending my free time this way anymore. why do i even play the game? i have to. i'm a guilty gear fan. therefore i have to play guilty gear. i can't be a larper.
i'm just now remembering something huge: street fighter 6 world tour. the ginormous RPG story mode of street fighter. every time i saw someone mad at the metagame of sf6, i would always shill world tour. i would always say to stop and smell the roses. i would always remember what asumsaus said (0:43-1:49). video games are far more than just the competitive aspect.
guilty gear strive has a story mode. it's all cutscenes and no gameplay, but that might just be what i need for now. it would do wonders for me to even scratch the surface of the tip of the iceberg that is guilty gear lore. as for being someone in the community,,,,i'm gonna learn how to mod capcom vs snk 2.
addendum: as i was fighting this ky, all i could think of was this whole thing. needing to write about this whole thing. wanting the match to be over so i could write about this whole thing. i was blocking the whole time, barely playing any offense. the whole match became a sludge of f.S 5H stun dipper PRC, with the occasional airdash j.D j.684 on my end. i wouldn't say i was dissociating or anything, just that i was kind of spiraling.
i do often get lost in thought in the middle of my ranked sets, whether daydreaming about "what if this game had voice chat, what would i say to this person rn" or some other bullshit. but this was different. this was a random snap that consumed my mental stack. it just popped up out of nowhere and hindered my ability to even play the game. maybe because i was on at 9 PM, far later than my usual latest. i guess i gotta remember:
had an existential crisis fighting some random ky on guilty gear strive ranked
in the middle of my pressure, something just clicked within me. not in a good way, just,,,,all of a sudden, i was thinking some new and unusual thoughts. out of nowhere.
i was thinking "wait wait wait hold on, why am i even playing strive? what's the point?" i was thinking "i'm not gonna make an impact in the community, whether competitively or as a name for myself". i was thinking "why do i spend every moment of my free time hopelessly grinding this one singular video game?"
i've been hopping on guilty gear strive ranked almost daily these past few months. i've been going to my local and going home almost always 0-2 just about every week. i don't play hero shooters, i don't play mobas, i don't play RPGs or singleplayer indies (outside of deltarune). strive and deltarune are unironically the only steam games i have installed right now.
i went 3-2 at evo, which is better than last year (plus i didn't get my ass handed to me in front of everyone watching at home like last year), but i'm still just a drop in the ocean. i'm still some random diamond 2 goldlewis player that still doesn't know how to frametrap. i'm still not gonna be anyone in the guilty gear community.
tangent: i may be a programmer but can i even call myself that? i haven't written a line of code for a non-school thing since like 2024. and i don't maintain my previous projects bc i deleted them off github for reasons that i feel would be better unexplained. i might just be a programming larper.
the reason i bring that up is because i have a sense of admiration for the communities of older fighting games (think street fighter iii 3rd strike or capcom vs snk 2). there are people who work night and day to document every last hitbox, every last jank interaction, every last detail about every last character, and that is so heartwarming to me. i want to be part of that. i want to use my programming skills to make a name for myself in at least a little esoteric corner of the fighting game community. i want to make tools and mods and documentation. i want to be known.
guilty gear strive is an actively-updated modern fighting game, with a battle pass and everything. there's no room for me to contribute anything meaningful. beginner resources? documented. character frame data? documented. i have so much respect for dustloop editors, but there's no room for me to do anything. and even if i tried, i'm not that guy. i won't have it in me to contribute to the page for the upcoming character robo-ky, because what the fuck am i meant to say about the use of his 5P? it's a jab, it might not even have as good of frame data as 2P,,,, i can't contribute. i can't mod. i can't document.
about the "this one singular video game" thing,,,,guilty gear strive is all i play. i used to play street fighter 6, but i was so unbelievably ass at it. for context, once you make it to the top of the normal ranking system (which uses League Points, or LP), you enter a special ranked area called Master (which uses Master Rate, or MR). the starting position is 1500 MR, and all master players are reset to this level every few months. the highest MR i have literally EVER had is fucking 1528. that's it. i've spent ever MR phase down in the fucking 1200-1300s. and 1200 is the first goddamn percentile of MR. that's how ass i am at street fighter. the only reason i ever made it to master at all is because i grinded the game enough. i never deserved master.
guilty gear strive has something similar: RP (Rate Points) for the lower ranks, and DR (Duel Rate) for a higher group of ranks called Vanquisher. i'm currently at ~37000 RP, which is the lower 25%ish of diamond 2. diamond 3 is the highest rank before vanquisher, which means i'm only,,,,i don't even know how long until i inevitably get to vanquisher just by grinding. the point is, i wished in street fighter 6 to just be sent back to platinum or something where i belong, and i need to cherish how i,,,,motherfucker i'm supposed to be venting goddamnit
the FUCKING POINT IS: i have nothing but the fgc. the fgc means a lot to me and i'd rather die than become a ball & gun gamer, but i can't just be a strive addict all day every day. i need to be someone. i need to stop blending in. i can't just be a ranked grinder and that's it, i need a purpose in my free time. because i don't even know if i like spending my free time this way anymore. why do i even play the game? i have to. i'm a guilty gear fan. therefore i have to play guilty gear. i can't be a larper.
i'm just now remembering something huge: street fighter 6 world tour. the ginormous RPG story mode of street fighter. every time i saw someone mad at the metagame of sf6, i would always shill world tour. i would always say to stop and smell the roses. i would always remember what asumsaus said (0:43-1:49). video games are far more than just the competitive aspect.
guilty gear strive has a story mode. it's all cutscenes and no gameplay, but that might just be what i need for now. it would do wonders for me to even scratch the surface of the tip of the iceberg that is guilty gear lore. as for being someone in the community,,,,i'm gonna learn how to mod capcom vs snk 2.
update: i will now be posting all of my fgc posts on my twitter, my deltarune posts on my bluesky, and my general shitposts here. stand ready for my mass un-reblogging
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