Smash: My coping mechanism

So what do I mean by it's a coping mechanism? well it's a long story that has been riding me for a long time and stuff to get off my chest. Why? well, everyone at least has a story in their life that evolves smash so I just wanted to share my crazy noisy bizarre life of how smash effected me growing up. It's been playing in my head alot and now I'm just like "eh why not throw it to the wall and see where it goes?" alright so here I go

THE ODD BEGINNING

Now smash as a series is my second favorite of all time for reasons that'll be explained, my first is the yakuza series cause it taught me alot of things but this isn't "why yakuza is the best video game of all time" no this is why smash became a huge coping mechanism in my life. Now, the first thing that you need to know about me that when I was like 3 I was already going to tournaments around the US cause my cousins had to babysit me when there was a melee tournament so they thought it was a great idea to take care of me like that. Sounds good right? well, not exactly like, a child in an environment of high schoolers and college students yelling, swearing, and trash talking isn't the best thing for a child learning things for life. So when it came around for me to go to elementary school I kinda.....well... acted as if I was with those people, and so became the huge barrier for kids my age. I didn't have much to talk about cause I played melee: a game probably the people my age didn't play at the time (7 or 8??? don't know how old you are in 1st grade), most of my interest where either shows they haven't watched or never heard of and games that they didn't know even exists (ie SNES, NES, Xbox blah blah old consoles), and my attitude was a roudy highschooler so making friends with me was like making friends with Travis Touchdown. It even shows even till this day with my friend group that mostly everyone is like 5-8 years older than me. So I barely had friends in my age group to hang out with and so when I got back from school I played melee with my cousins and that was fun for a while then brawl came out and a whole lot of wacky wack happend to me.

THE GOSS BOMB

So brawl came out and that was like OHHHHH MYYYY GOOOOD for like two weeks. I still getting brawl like the day it came out and just playing it for those two weeks. Why for two weeks? Well with growing in a competitive scene I wanted a game that was fast, combo maker, and satisfying; all the things that brawl is NOT. I'll say it: I don't like brawl, like at all. I thought subspace was a dumb mot of walking left then battle, thought the graphics look stupid whit it trying to look realistic, WiFi was awful, and the game modes sucked. The music was good and the coin launcher was alright but too my eyes, brawl is bad. Now I know what you're thinking "Lounge" or "Quiet" or "random man who post frenchfri man eating a fri person, we get it, you hate brawl, so why put so much of a rant on it?" well because I think it important for all of you to know that beforehand because in the fall of 2010 my Abuelito (thats grandfather in spanish) got sick, but he wasn't actually sick oh no that was that white lie my parents told me, he had cancer. Let me state this right now before going in with this; Family means everything to me. The meaning of family doesn't have to be tied with blood but people you grow with and establish a great bond with, but still with me my family is important. So when October 25 hit and we had to go for a two hour drive to my grandparents house to say goodbye to a man that considered me the family heirloom. It broke me, so when that happened and everything in my family just went quiet and stagnant.

I played brawl, like alot of brawl, and the reason why I didn't play melee is because I never owned a copy of melee and played off my cousins. So when everyone in my family just stop hanging and went gloom I just kinda locked myself in my room and just played brawl for hours on end. Oh and keep in mind my brother had the Xbox in his room and I didn't get a ps3 until like two years ago for like 80 bucks (something was wrong with it but the prob was they didn't update it lol) so literally it was just my wii, ds with soulsilver, and the air in my room. So that was the first nuclear goss bomb and then the second one happend. This one didn't evolve death this time but was still a hard hitter cause family means everything for me; in 2011 my older sister went out of state to do college stuff and my cousins moved back to the state they where raised in to persue what career and life stuff they wanted to do. Now I understand now that what they did is a thing they need to do to persue their life goals and to secure their future which is understandable and respectable, hell I'm gonna do that soon. But little me not understanding crap about the world and how big it is felt like this

now I'm not sure how many people know what this game is so Imma spoil it for a little. In Red Dead Redemption 2 in a train heist a character name John Marston got shot off the train and presumed dead, later on when the bad man is fully revealed he comes back to the camp mad saying "You left me to die!" so in short the dumb little kid I was felt like these people who kinda raised me and was apart of my life for up until now are leaving is feeling betrayed and abandoned. This happend in fall of 2011 so I was about to go into middle school at the time aka: the worst part of everyones life cause it's the realization point in a kids life where you see a glimpse of how big the world is and how useless you are during the ages of 11-14. Soooooo yea I played brawl at that time period and kid you not, I 100% that game. Got all achievements, music disks, break the target, all trophies and stickers you name it I beaten it. It was bad not gonna lie because; was I sad? yes, did I talk to people my age? no, did I shut myself in? yes, was I depressed? OH HELL YEA.

I was playing a game I considered to be fundamentally not good but I felt like I got some normalcy from it cause it was a smash game. Sure I did play some other games but the amount of time I put into brawl outshined them. In 2012 I stumbled upon project m so played that which helped wash away the taste of brawl a bit, then animal crossing new leaf came out along side finding the mash up community and that just split the time of smash in half.

THE FALL OUT

So after all that highschool happend and did band n such so meet people, started talking to people, meet people outside of band, alls good and such and HOLLY BALISTIC JUMPING INTO THE ONLINE STORE a new smash game coming out for the 3DS?????? WHAAT THE FUUUUUUU that was interesting. I'm not going to lie and say the early stages of smash4 was the good times of smash and my depressing life. It felt like all was coming good like, my sis is back from college, meet my cousins with the family reunion and played some melee but uh oh spaghetti-OS my grandpa is getting sick and weaker but not from cancer this time! Ok so everyone is going to need context for this one as well. I considered my relationship with my grandpa wasn't a good one cause I was a roudy noisy little trouble maker and he was a Ww2 vet and wanted me to become more mature like an adult when I was young. He also called me (pardon if I butcher this) Donzoko no ryū which translates to: the dragon of rock bottom (fyi I don't have any asian inside of me, my ethnicity is polish/hispanic) so he was basically calling me worthless. After I got older he started to treat me like a normal kid but still some snarkiness. But when he first went to the hospital because he had a seizure, he looked at me and called me doctor cause I wore square glasses and that shocked me. All save you all the details and later on 4 months later he ed away, I can safely say from this I literally lost all of my emotions.

I barely laughed, smiled, gotten sad or even cried and when my friends asked me how I was I entirely faked how I felt, and so I did what I would do to try and feel normal and played Smash 4 completing every challenge they had and even beating that weird game mode with every character in 9.0, along side with making mash ups, talking to some online people and friends at school and secluding myself not talking about my problems. Later on I did get out of my depression and got my emotions back with the help of my friends (if you want the whole story of how I got out if it dm me cause it's a long ride) and if I correctly sometime in late 2016 while I was still depressed I d this place and well, people here are either young and dumb or just chill and vibing is all I got to say. Meet some interesting people here along side EmblemD and senior yoshi who I would consider to be my brothers here and a whole plethora of dumb things that happened here. Highschool was interesting part in my life but smash was always there somehow wedge into my life like a sore thumb or a loyal dog.

THE....calmness?

Well, nows the time I say how my relationship went with Ultimate right? Well ultimate for me was fun for a while I did the Spirit board and junk but never got competitive with it, I play it casually and sometimes get serious but like with jigglypuff or dk and no top tiers. Also now that I am older and have a better understanding of what the world is, I can handle my problems alot more better (still not all the time cause no one is perfect)

the story continues

So I'm just going to end this by saying well, smash ingrained and merged into my life and changed some things on how I act. I still have easier times with talking to older people and people with big number on them, one time me and my friend meet alpharad and my friend was shocked that I just walked up to him, shook his hand, made him laugh, and took a picture with him. Even when it was at the most confused, sad, angry or whatever I felt during those confusing times smash was there for me to pull my away and just enjoy the game. I think I will never get tired of smash and what ever installment is new in the series I'll play and will always go back to play melee or even project m. But never brawl or smash4 cause those games are cursed tainted games with sour history and controversies. Even now when I get sad and junk or just with this covid stuff that's been happening I turn on ultimate and just lab or play spirit board, but for getting serious with it, I'll just stick with guilty gear for that so yea here we are, my long standing with smash and all that jazz. So thank you all for reading this and I'll go back in my hole and return soon(ish? idk these are sporadic with me)

OKAY BYE