It is now one day after Collision 2024, my first tournament since moving back from London (actually, my first tournament since Collision 2023!), and I consider it to be a sign of heightened skill and emotional maturity that I don’t hate myself. Please see below for a visualization of the relationship between skill and self-loathing:

I think there is a causal relationship between managing one’s self-loathing and improving one’s skill, thus the drop-off about 3/4 of the way through the curve illustrated above. There is a third axis (not pictured) – ego – that is a significant variable in this relationship. One’s skill might deteriorate over time, but ego is a sturdier thing, and the disconnect is largely what drives that self-loathing. If you are able to either manage your ego or put in the work to revitalize your skill, you can reduce your self-loathing and improve your skill. Whichever one comes first doesn’t matter, because the other will shortly follow suit.

The nature of online play pushes the curve further right because it hurts you on both fronts. The anonymity of online play can critically harm one’s ego, bumping up one’s self-loathing and subsequently harming one’s skill at the game. And from the other side, the ease of mindlessly queueing online is not conducive to productive skill-building habits – we can all think of Unranked monsters who log dozens of hours a week but never manage to break beyond going 2-2 in bracket. Only through intentional management of a) one’s ego or b) one’s approach to utilizing online play as a tool for improvement can we find ourselves on the far end of this curve. Unfortunately, the self-loathing plateau is a bit higher for those of us who rely on Slippi. But this is a trend that humanity as a whole is facing on a global scale, anyway.

I digress.

One of my aims for this weekend of competing was to come out on the other side with no self-loathing, and I think I accomplished that. I got a lot of questions about whether I’ve been playing lately – the answer is yes. I know I’ve competed only sporadically since COVID, but I do generally stay plugged into the game. When I have a tournament coming up, I definitely am more plugged in than not, and try to prepare the way I would have in any other phase of my career. I know myself well enough at this point to say that giving any less than my all will never be satisfactory for me, so I never let myself off the hook easy in these things. It’s also the reason, at least in my current mindset, I never see myself declaring “retirement,” because even 20 years from now I might say I want to compete in a tournament, and if I did so, I would be giving it my all. For me, a declaration of retirement is almost a sort of ego protection, and it contributes to that disconnect that feeds into self-loathing. Whether I place well at a tournament or not, it’s of the utmost importance to me to maintain a healthy relationship with myself, and this is best way I know how.

To speak a bit about the actual gameplay…

TEAMS! Me and lloD got to play teams again for the first time in a year. It’s always a roller coaster when we get ready for another bout, because, if you’ve ever talked to me or lloD about smash, you know we think about the game very differently. Yes, we are brothers, but teaming does not come natural, nor do we make it easy for ourselves by playing an extremely difficult, non-top-tier team as Marth and Peach. But years and years of hard work pay off and I think we are very good at what we do, when we’re able to polish off the rust. Given the constraints, I’m quite proud of how we performed amidst the sea of Sheik/Fox teams at Collision, and more than anything, it was fun to play with my bro.

Singles was an interesting run for me this go-around. I’ve been working on some different mental approaches to competing in bracket, and have been happy with the results so far. In short, I’m focused on methods to staying engaged with my opponent such that I can play mentally agile and highly adaptable. These have always been my strengths when I allow myself to access them, but I often get in my own way. This weekend, I don’t think I was getting in my own way. That being the case, it becomes easier for me to identify “in-game” deficiencies that I can work on moving forward.

One matchup of note for me is the Marth ditto. I did end up beating Asidyx and Fro116 – two very capable Marths – in my bracket, and I have to credit Ahmad here. A week and a half before the tournament, he and I played online for the first time, and he was easily winning most of the games. A couple days later I played him again, and I felt very motivated to play even sharper. Still, he was winning overall. It was a fun challenge, honestly, and made me brush up in the matchup. Before my pools, I played Zain for a while as well, and our games were essentially 50/50. I think Zain and I are probably tied for 2nd best Marth ditto-ers in the world, far behind Ahmad who holds the #1 spot.

My set with Magi was kinda wild. I netted way more openings in game 1, but she still came out on top in large part due to her punish game. I think her methodology in neutral was a lot more fine-tuned than mine, as well. I’ve known for a while that I’ve been getting away with murder against Falco for most of my career, making a career off punishing mistakes and not really mastering the fundamentals of that matchup – I’ve even done this against Magi, and now we’re 1-1!! So I don’t feel any self-loathing about my loss to her because she came in more prepared than me, and fully deserved the win. I had a great chat with Squid on day 3 about the matchup and am looking forward to fine-tuning my approach to that matchup. I am very certain I will come back stronger.

My last interesting set of the tournament was, of course, against Nicki. This is a funny one…and it honestly hurts me a little bit. I’ve always been strong at Marth vs. ICs, but, at this point, the cat is out of the bag – I’ve been working on my Peach for about a year now. One reason is that she’s very fun for me to play, and another is I can see the value of having a very powerful secondary for certain matchups. This is the one set in which “giving it my all” is a gray area – if I’m being 100% honest with myself, my best shot at winning was to go all Marth, and I knew it going in. I handily won games 1 and 3 in Marth vs. ICs, 2 stocks each. But I’ve been waiting for opportunities like this to get my Peach some bracket experience, and ICs is one of the matchups in which there is potential value for Peach. That said, my Peach doesn’t have the years in the trenches against wobblers that my Marth does. I went down 2 stocks early vs. the ICs on FD, and nearly brought it all the way back – a rough start, but a promising result. I played Peach into the Fox on PS, and lost that as well. Honestly, I was a bit overconfident going into the Fox. I do generally well vs. spacies, but wasn’t fully prepared for Nicki’s run-and-gun playstyle. On game 5 in Marth vs. ICs, I felt in control again, but unfortunately overextended vs. Nana one too many times, and lost a couple early stocks (I can still see the 47% in my mind’s eye as Marth fell into the blast zone………..).

All that being said, it was an investment in a long-term strategy (“giving it my all…” in the longer-term) I’ve been thinking about for the last year. I am disappointed it didn’t work out for me, but I can’t practice my Peach only in friendlies forever. Maybe I won’t even use her against ICs in the future if she doesn’t catch up to my Marth – even Nicki said my Marth is the hardest to fight as ICs! But we’ll see, we’ll see. I’ve got to live with the decisions I made in the moment. My Peach did pick up another good win, at least… I played Hbox’s ICs (I’ve never seen a SoPo with such good Bairs), then his Fox. I was winning all of these games, and told him not to feel too bad – not everybody has good secondaries. He immediately quit out and challenged me with his Ness (and selected YS) – in this bout, my Peach handily defeated the Collision 2024 silver medalist.

I often find myself wishing for more hours in the day. I love Melee and competing pushes me further than most anything else, but I have aspirations beyond just this, and they often get pushed to the wayside in my pursuit of the Melee high. At the end of the day – and I don’t mean to sound arrogant here – it’s hard to pursue other endeavors when doing something I’m one of the best in the world at feels so good. That’s just how it is. And yet I go on trying to be a well-rounded person, intentionally setting aside time for other things, because I can’t be sustained by only Melee. I like to read books, and write, and be creative, and spend time with SmashD0G and my family and friends, and also spend a dozen hours a week Z-jumping on Slippi. It’s hard to find time for it all, but at the end of the day all I hope for is to find fulfillment in the journey.

Good Melee to you, and to all a good Melee.