Hello everyone! I haven't written in quite a while. I thought I'd talk about the year I've had in Melee (and even some things out of game), because there are a lot of things I'm very happy with.
I competed a lot this year. Very easily the most I ever have. Around 45 offline tournaments. There was a very clear spike in attendance from when I moved to San Diego and finally had a very close weekly that I could consistently enter. I think being able to compete more frequently has been a very apparent source of my improvement. Just being in the tournament environment more often has been huge to me. I feel like I've been able to close out sets a lot more and be less afraid. I no longer get in my head about events being limited opportunities and putting pressure on myself to "make them count", as I used to before. Don't get me wrong though I still have a long way to go, I am still choking a lot LOL. Anyways, I wanna recap my significant events from the year and it's easy for me to divide the year into two parts, pre and post move.
Pre-Move
The beginning of the year was definitely a struggle for me. SoCal Melee was definitely on the downswing losing Verdugo, MiP, and SoCal Star League, and these were tournaments I was frequenting very often last year. There were less tournaments I had the opportunity to enter, so the whole "make each event count" mindset was present. To an extent, the silly pressures of "having to perform" as a ranked player had caught up to me as well. In conjunction with the pressure to make the most out of my limited events, I was really making competing hard on myself unnecessarily.
My first notable tournament of the year was TITAN 2, a college regional that had a good bunch of SoCal top talent. I got 13th at this one and felt like I had underperformed. I think the fact of the matter is SoCal is just a hard region to play in and you may not understand until you experience it for yourself. It's easy to know the household names from SoCal, like Fiction, KoDoRiN, Kurv, etc., but underneath them lies a plethora of talent that goes under the radar. I think the Random SoCal Player phenomenon isn't really experienced much these days since most of us aren't really traveling and we don't have many tournaments that other regions travel to. But I swear on my life most people would get caught off guard at the skill level of some of the Arcadians here. In winners, I lost to a Samus player named jams that is extremely fast and technical and has beaten some other SoCal ranked players. In losers, I lost to Alberto who had recently first got SoCal power ranked in 2024 and is a very fast Falcon player that I hope people get to see more of in the future. I don't really remember much of my thoughts about this tournament, besides feeling shaky and just not being able to handle the very high floor here in SoCal that day.
The next big tournament for me was GENESIS X2. My Genesis weekend started off not so great, as I went to the pre-local and lost to an unseeded DK Kid in my Round 1. I then proceeded to leave the venue with some friends and crash out about it over pizza. I won't lie, it's a bit silly but having this happen did get in my head a little bit for the main bracket. I made it out of my Round 1 pool and had to play SaltInYourEye, who had just upset Krudo, the next day. Luckily, my friend Jiffy play friendlies with me that night so I could prepare for the matchup. Without that, I might have lost to 2 different 13 year olds in the same weekend. My next 2 matches were against top 50 players that just shut me out hard, both in 3-0 sets. In winners, I lost to mvlvchi, mostly due to not really contesting his aggression and just getting hit really hard for it. And in losers I had to play Krudo, who was just clearly on another level as he clawed his way to 13th after losing in pools. I ended 65th, just feeling greatly outclassed. I think ultimately these players were hard draws, but I was disappointed in not being able to at least put up a fight against them.
My next tournament was Battle of BC 7. In winners, I played Agent. I prepared for this match quite a lot, watching VODs of my friends on the east coast playing him. I went up 2-0 in the set, but unfortunately got reverse 3-0d, keeping it close but dropping some crucial pickups. This one hurt a lot, because I just felt like I really blew it here. I'm noticing while writing this whole thing I just talk about me losing LOL. I'll try to talk about some W's as well to not make this too sad of a read. After that heartbreaking set, I had to play a pretty good Sheik player, Zvara. I won game 5 after going down 2-1, and I'm glad I was able to keep some amount of composure under the pressure and after undergoing distress in the earlier part of the bracket. I was confident I could pull off a nice losers run going into the next day, but that ended up coming to a quick stop when I had to play moky for 33rd, after he got upset by Graves. He dominated me for most of the set, there were some times where it was close, but I'd say it was a mostly uneventful 3-0 for him. I think this was just a case of bad bracket luck, but afterwards with this and Genesis I felt like I was just getting really hard matches for my level. I felt like I was not good enough to break through and choking when presented with the opportunity.
Back to SoCal, my next event was Frag Fest Spring 2025. This is a college regional that often features some cross region action in SoCal. This was the first time I looked at a big bracket like this in SoCal and saw that everyone I was projected to play I had won against before. It would still be a challenge, as one thing I had been thinking about was my incapability of beating multiple high level players in a row. But I was hopeful and excited to play and see if this would be my chance to secure my spot on the PR. I ended up losing pretty solidly to Venelox in pools and my hopes of winning out my projected bracket were lost. I ended up getting 5th beating Iggy and Mooshies, but lost to nut at the end. I just kept thinking about the brutal nature of this region, where I feel lucky enough to win a few sets here and there against some of these players, but to win a whole tournament over all of them just felt such a monstrous task that was so distant from my capabilities at the time.
I made a trip to Oregon for Fight At The Museum, because I loved my time there last time so much. I love the people in the scene and the tournaments always have such a great energy to them. I remember my emotions around this time very vividly. I'm sure I've talked about it somewhere and if you're a frequent follower of mine, but the passing of Michael (Steech) really had (and still has) an intense effect on me. Under the weight of all the grief, I really had questioned what direction I even wanted to go with Melee at that point. After going through memories and chats with Michael, I found an old Facebook message from him that broke me down emotionally. It was from a long time ago around Mainstage 2019, when we had known each other for almost a year since we were both pretty low rank on Anther's Ladder. I was talking to him about how I was seeded to play Leffen and I was gonna get destroyed. I said "Leffen is the best Fox in the world against Falco". And he responded with and "[You} are the best Falco in the world against Fox. Remember that". At the time I obviously thought, "Man, what is this stupid kid saying". But after everything, I read this message and thought deeply. I wanted to make a change with how I mentally engaged with competing. I no longer wanted to passively accept the losses against better players and believe in my own right to win. I repeated a mantra in my head often when competing. "No one is harder to beat than Steech". Oregon was my first test with this new mindset. I entered the pre-local. I ran into Zvara again and won a close set, which let me play Aura. TWo months before this tourney, Aura had beaten Mango. The cliche of old would give up on their chances immediately recalling this fact. However, I didn't care and simply was gonna try my best. It was a very close game 3 set. I had Derek slapping his leg, it was that close. I remember being very proud of that even though I lost LOL. I made top 8 beating s-f, my fellow SoCal compatriot, and lost to Stiv for 7th. While it wasn't the most flashy result, I was really happy with how it felt like some general mental blocks had been broken and I was very excited to play in the real tournament the next day. I had a close set in pools against decoste, but I just remember feeling like it was very fun and not stressful. I would play Graves next, who I had played before in the previous year at SoCal Star League and lost game 5 in a reverse 3-0. This was an incredibly fun set, I remember the crowd being split even though Graves is PNW. I think I'm lucky to just be somehow very entertaining to watch. I lost game 5 again, which sucked but it was a set I felt very present in and was never at any point counting myself out. I played Zvara AGAIN in losers and won(sorry Zvara), to make it for a losers top 8 qualifier match against Preeminent. This set was competitive for most of it, but I kinda got owned at the end, and once again losing another game 5. Losing the second game 5 in the day was definitely heartbreaking, but I remember being at least happy that my friends were supporting me the whole way through and many people even went out of their way to say they liked watching me play. I always look back fondly on these Oregon tournaments. Looking forward to Fight At the Museum 2!
My next major tournament was GOML Forever. I was very hyped for this one since a lot of my friends from SoCal were going and I'm always excited to play against East Coast competition and hang out with friends I don't get the opportunity to see often. GOML is one of the majors that doesn't run any Melee Singles on Friday, so I had a ton of time to prepare for my bracket. My pools bracket had 2 Peach players, Fahey and mvlvchi, so I took the day to prepare specifically for that matchup and played friendlies with like 4 different Peach players and was feeling pretty confident. When it came to the bracket, I barely clutched it out against Fahey, and popped off which I normally don't do. I'm honestly kinda proud of myself for letting the emotions come through even for a result that is "expected" due to seeding. At the time, I felt like I was learning it was better to give yourself credit in the moment for overcoming a set that you experienced a lot of difficulty in playing. Mvlvchi ended up DQing, so I ended up playing another player who took his seed to make it out, playing pretty solidly. Next came the result that surely nobody could have anticipated even myself. I played Hungrybox and took him to game 5. It was a very odd set. I got 4 stocked game 1. Lost a close game on Yoshi's game 2. Finally won on Yoshi's on game 3. Won on Dream Land game 4, pretty solidly. Then got 4 stocked again pretty much game 5. Definitely felt a mix of just not being able to play under that amount of pressure, as I'd never been in that situation with a genuine top level player like that, and Hungrybox just focusing up and deciding that he shouldn't lose this set. Even though I lost, I feel like I'm just learning from this that there is just no point in counting yourself out when it seems like this game always manages to subvert expectations. I played Erik in losers and won through hitting pretty hard. In past tournaments, I'd been pretty rattled after not winning a close set like that and just losing immediately after to the next person in losers, so I'm proud that I didn't end this tournament that way. Next I played salami who was one of my most played people in region and in practice, so it kinda sucked to play all the way in Toronto. He usually has pretty good reads on me and that's what I felt like gave him the edge in this set. I ended 49th at GOML and was ultimately satisfied with what I was able to put up with my play, but I can't help but think "Man, what if?" with this tourney.
I wrote about my experience at Unranked here, so I won't talk about it for too long. TL;DR I put it in a lot of prep work for this event, since it felt like I had the chance to win this one. Lost to Ferrety and Fable for 17th, not making it to the best of 5 stage. I was able to beat DK Kid this time, at least. In retrospect, many of the players in this tournament ended up on the end of the year rankings, so this was always a difficult tourney to win. Obviously I don't regret all the studying and prep work I did for this tournament, but my takeaway was that my general floor would need to be a lot higher to perform and win at a tournament like this.
My last major of the year was Supernova 2025. I was flown out to this event by Steech's brother, Matthew (aka cinder), and I have the utmost gratitude that he chose me to sponsor me in dedication to Michael. I obviously felt a little bit of pressure, as I was competing off the generosity of someone else for the first time and I didn't want it to be a disappointment. However, I was able to reconcile with the fact that this trip would be worth it, as long as I had fun, and I'm sure that's what Matthew wanted as well. I did end up having a lot of fun, and I think I made the most of it, spending time with east coast friends that I was unsure when I would see again. I definitely did feel a lot of nerves in this bracket. I almost got reverse 3-0'd and put in a last stock last hit situation by a Peach player named MC David at the beginning of R2 Pools. After barely winning that, I had to play Gahtzu next. This set was odd. I got kinda beat solidly the first 2 games and mentally thought I was out of the set at that point. I won game 3, then game 4 Gahtzu started getting killed by my side b recoveries and messing up edgeguards and killing himself. I won game 4 through that, and the pattern continued into game 5. At this point, I made the crucial mistake of thinking about how he was "giving me the set" and I lost focus on in game details due to this. I lost last stock game 5, and was pretty disappointed in myself for my thought process during the set more than anything. I ended up fighting my way back to a losers top 64 qualifier match, after clutching some close games in a set with SparkinMed. In the qualifier match, I played eve. I sometimes feel a lot of confidence in the Jigglypuff matchup, but I don't often play it against many other players in tournament besides Khalid, so that detail made me a bit wary. The games were close and in game 4 I was down 2-1 in the set, but had a pretty big lead on FD. It came down to last stock, and I had her at like 150%, but after a lot of failed opportunities at kills I got hit with an upsmash rest and that ended my tournament. I didn't necessarily have a bad tournament but I did lament on how I wanted more from myself at this one, given the circumstances. But it was an extremely valuable and memorable experience overall and I'm so grateful I got the chance to play at this one.
Post-Move
In Late August of last year, I moved to San Diego. I made the decision for many reasons, but I can mostly tl;dr it as wanting a lifestyle change, due to personal circumstances. I got to move in with Melee players/friends I've known for a few years now, Georgie and snake. The biggest thing for me regarding Melee with the move was now having access to a consistent and close weekly local. San Diego especially has had strong competition in recent times, which has been great for me. Being able to compete more consistently has made a huge difference in my play. It's so motivating to come back every week with new ideas to try and strong players to gradually build plans and improve against! I love it so much here! I didn't enter any majors during this part of the year, but I entered 27 tournaments in around 4 months, mostly comprised of locals but some big regionals.
I decided to go to The Big Abbey 2 in late September on a whim, since my roommate wanted to go and it was a pretty cheap flight up to NorCal. The west coast hasn't had as much crossover for each other's regionals recently, so it was nice to go up with other SoCal players. My goal with this trip was mainly to have fun seeing friends up in NorCal and just feel the excitement and freshness of playing other players from different regions. I didn't really have any expectations otherwise. I had a close set in pools against another Falco called Slump, where I felt like I was getting outsped which is unusual, but I won being cleaner. After that in Top 32, I played Typhoon. I always feel like I can play pretty well in the Marth matchup and I don't get a lot of opportunities to show it. It was a super hype set, ended game 5 both over 100% last stock with a suicide dair. This set felt super good because I feel like I usually lose in sad or embarrassing ways in those kinds of situations LOL. I also got to play in front of a loud crowd of my friends so that was pretty hype. I played Graves after for top 8 and was excited because I had a close set with him earlier in the year. However this time around, I kinda got shut out really hard in neutral and dropped a pretty big lead game 2. It was tough but I still had losers to play. For the losers top 8 qualifier, I played Espy, Falcon player from Norcal. I had played her earlier this year when she came down to SoCal and it was a close set that I ended up winning. In this set, I feel like I just hit really hard and won pretty dominantly through that. It didn't hit me until a little later that this was the first time I placed Top 8 at a decently sized regional. Honestly, a year before, I would not have expected to be able to be at this point to accomplish that. So it felt pretty good to have been able to do that. Unfortunately, my Phob started having a malfunction where it would stop being able to shield drop in the middle of a game, so I got cooked in my losers set against salami. But I was still happy to have placed 7th and made top 8, making this a very memorable tourney for me.
My next regional was in my home region, SoCal Sweep. Truthfully, this was a very difficult tournament for me due to surrounding personal circumstances happening in my life around this time. The day of the tournament I really felt like I did not want to be there. In pools, I really got away with winning my set to make it out against Cohenski. I was not very focused and I think I only got the advantage from him getting tilted at mistakes and the fact that it was still Best of 3 in this stage. I had to wait a bit to play for the next top cut part of bracket because the tournament was running the Waterfall format, which was rough for my emotional state. During all the waiting, I felt that I really just wanted to distract myself by playing tournament. When the top cut came around, I benefited from a Fiction DQ playing The Charles Guy, a local Puff player, instead. I won pretty solidly and I had salami in a winners side Top 8 qualifier up next. I had a very lopsided record against salami this year, where I had not won a set against him since 2021 until a local this year. I was pretty locked in and was able to play slightly off from how I usually play, adapted more to his style. I won 3-1 and made another Top 8 at a regional. I was pretty happy to have another performance like this, but I was moreso happy that I put myself in a position to play more in front of the crowd. The excitement of that was really getting me through that day. In Winners Semis, I played KoDoRiN, who I had been aiming to beat at my locals for the past few months prior and had gotten very close in some sets before. I played pretty well and took game 1 and took it to game 5, after losing a very close game 3 where I had a lead. I lost game 5 pretty solidly. It was a bit deflating to lose another game 5 to KoDoRiN, but that was definitely the hardest player for me to play against in the bracket and I still had losers. I would end up playing a close game 5 set against Venelox, but ended up losing that one as well, ending 5th at SoCal Sweep. At this tourney, I took being finally out of the bracket really hard and went off alone to cry, since I just wanted to keep playing and being in a state of mind that was able to block out a lot of external noise. In retrospect, I'm really proud of myself for being able to put a show like that, despite being in a rough place emotionally.
The last tournament I wanna talk about was Bronco Brawl Fall 2025, which was just a rebrand of FragFest from earlier this year. It was just another SoCal bracket with a lot of the top players from all over SoCal competing. I had a lot of momentum going into this tournament, as my past performances at big tournaments were pretty strong as shown earlier, and I was also doing incredibly well at locals. I was the 2nd seed at this tournament and was in a bracket of players who I had all beaten at prior tournaments. This mirrored the way I felt at FragFest, but it was slightly different as I had more confidence and felt more favored to actually win than before. I made it to Winners Semis, playing salami again. I approached the set pretty similarly as the last one, and I felt like I just edged out in punish game. I would play Khalid next, but an extremely frustrating thing happened where there was a delay for top 4 in the bracket, that was not set in the schedule prior to the event, so that Rivals of Aether 2 could be played on the main projector. I obviously now don't hold any hard feelings for the Rivals players, as I think they just wanted to show off their game and they don't often get the opportunity to. However, I had waited over an hour for that between Winners Semis and Winners Finals, and by the time I played Khalid, I kinda let that fact get to my head and was just very impatient and got 3-0d. I then subsequently lost to Noire in Losers Finals, just getting run over and not keeping up in speed and punish. I was not happy about the circumstances, but I was even more unhappy about how I handled it mentally. During the delay, I tried to get it into my head that I would be able to stay warm and this would not have an effect on me. But the moment I faced difficulty when I was finally in the set, I just kinda crashed out in my head about how it was affecting my ability to be calm. This one hurt a lot and I regret how I acted after the event, but it came from a place of disappointment that I was once again so close, but so far from winning a tournament that I felt like I had a great shot at. Turns out that this day was just not mine, but I still have plenty of opportunities to keep trying in the new year.
Other Closing Thoughts
There's some other stuff I wanna talk about that didn't necessarily fit into the structure of this recap, but want to bring up as there are other things that I am happy about from this year. I supported Melee in my region in many other ways besides just playing. I built a website, socalmelee.com, to help with hosting information about finding tournaments/other relevant info. It's been a really cool project and I've been finding it very rewarding to implement suggestions from my friends and other people in my scene to improve the experience and add new features. I also started up a Discord server for SoCal Falcos to share information and ask questions, akin to old Facebook Messenger group chats from back in the day. It's nice to be able to help newer players, and I found that it's also been useful to me to help reinforce / rethink my own ideas about the game. I believe I'm going in the right direction with my approach to improving and I know the areas where I'm definitely more lacking in, so it's a matter of building the discipline. I have a ton of support from other Falco players that I get to convey ideas and ask questions to, so that's been really great for me. It's funny that towards the end of the year, I ended up with more consistent results, specifically with losses. I attended a lot but rarely got upset, which was such a change from the me from years before. And I know it kind of carried over into the new year, but on the personal side, I've found more freedom in my own self-expression and I'm really looking forward to continuing to see where that takes me.
In terms of my goals for this year, I just want to be able to get to events and play and perform well. I'm pretty uncertain on what events I will go to / be able to go to. It's definitely wishful thinking, but I really do dream of being able to get help getting to events this year, as my personal circumstances in life are pretty uncertain at the moment and I don't really know how much I can justify putting into traveling for Melee. But I do really love playing and I would do a lot to make that happen for me. As far as Top 100 goes, I think I've expressed before that I don't really like to set my eyes on it, and would rather just continue to focus on my own improvement and goals that are adjacent with it. If I get it, that would be really cool for sure, but my focus is on getting to a level where going on big runs at tourneys becomes more and more realistic. And if I'm able to accomplish that I'm sure top 100 would just come along with that. On a completely separate note, my new year's resolution is to stop saying phrases involving "kys/kms". I've thought a lot about related hardships from the past year and I think personally this is just something I want to work on for myself. I'm not perfect yet and sometimes I definitely just say different things that essentially mean the same thing anyways, but this is really something I'm trying to hold myself accountable for. And of course my other personal goals involve supporting my transition. To conclude, I think in many ways last year was the year of cliche, but I think this year is looking to be the year of cliche as well :3. 2026 we are getting cuter!
- cliché / Alicia