Whatever I Want: May 2025

Reminder even if you're family, you're under no obligation to read this whole thing, haha. I just appreciate you being here:) There's a whole lot of stuff in here that I'm pretty sure I only care about, so feel free to just glance at the bolded parts; that helps me feel more connected to you and hopefully you to me.

Recapping two seasons into one post. My last two seasons.

It's been quite the ride; I have loved my time in the Smash community in Rexburg.

Not sure where to really start, so I'm just going to write about whatever I think of first.

I think my favorite part of these past two seasons has been my rivalry with Gage (Gamertag: 22Cents). It's been kind of insane and just so much fun. So here's the whole story, I guess:

(okay, rivalry is a strong word considering the fact that there's no animosity amongst us whatsoever and we love and support each other instead, but for purposes of competition, Gage has been my greatest rival)

Gage came into the scene two semesters ago. Initially, he didn't do so great, with his first tournament even going 0-2. If I remember correctly, I played friendlies with him that first tournament, and although I beat him pretty solidly, I could tell that he had a lot of potential. I remember thinking something to the effect of, "I hope this guy doesn't stop coming to tournaments just because he went 0-2 at his first one." Blessedly, he didn't.

For the next 7 tournaments, he had a string of solid performances with some 7ths and 5ths, but nothing crazy.

The Arcadian tournament was coming up, an invitational tournament where you are only allowed to participate if you haven't been on PR in Rexburg before. In our scene, we have players who are on PR coach the non-PR players who are in the tournament.

As referenced, I thought Gage had a lot of potential as a player, and he just seemed like a great guy, so I asked him at a tournament if I could be his coach. He said he thought that would be awesome and a lot of fun. We fought that same night in bracket, and I asked him before the set if he was ready to beat his coach, haha. He did indeed beat me that night. In fact, he beat me the next several times we fought, even though I was supposed to be his coach, haha.

He won that tournament and the next 3, beating me several more times in the process. During this time, he starting coming over for friendlies frequently so we could help prep him for the Arcadian.

Although I didn't do anything crazy during our coaching/training sessions and I'm confident he would have won the Arcadian without my help, he attributes a chunk of his uprising as a top player to me, which is very sweet of him.

After he won 4 tournaments in a row beating me 6 times in a row, I struck back and won the next 7. We've been back and forth ever since then, and it's been wonderful:)

And because of our overall dominance in the scene and because of our very consistent attendance to tournaments, we fought a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT; in fact, by the end of the two semesters, we fought more than any other two players have ever fought in the Rexburg scene all-time. In just two semesters. To put this in perspective, Ben and I have both competed in this scene at the same time for roughly 5 semesters. And we've fought 30 times in total. Gage and I in just two semesters fought 47 times. Actually insane.

Our first semester our set count was 11-8. Our second semester it was 10-18. I visited for another tournament just a week ago and we fought twice, splitting 1-1. Our lifetime H2H is 22-27. I won roughly 45% of the time, he won roughly 55% of the time. I beat him out on PR his first semester there, he beat me out his second semester there.

We fought so much that it became a meme in our community. Ethan (Gamertag: Java) during a twitch stream commented something close to, "Hey, look! It's 22Cents and Theo fighting on stream. Someone, quick, take a screenshot, I'm sure we'll never see this again!" This quickly became a copy-pasta and was said practically every time Gage and I fought.

Gage and I played Randubs together twice and named ourselves "We'll never see this again".

One day, unfortunately, "We'll never see this again" became true, and our last sets were played :*(

Another one of my favorite parts of the past two semesters is training up and pulling out my Lucas in bracket.

Before this past semester, literally every game in every set I have every played in a serious bracket, I have played Pokémon Trainer. The only times I have not done so were in side brackets or other brackets that didn't count for the rankings.

This last semester, I decided to change that. In a random friendly session with Drake and Gage, I messed around with Lucas, and it did better than it reasonably should have and, more importantly, I was just having a lot of fun playing them. After that, I started training it up.

Brought it out in a few tournaments for fun and did quite well with them:) (Tournament results involving Lucas are noted in the results list below) Helping beat the carried allegations (which ofc I didn't because it's a meme at this point, so I did indeed get voted Most Carried again, woot woot, haha. They even made a carried2 emote (the carried emote being PT, the carried2 emote being Lucas)).

Arcadian and Summit

Already talked about Arcadian in the story with Gage. It was a lot of fun. Was a conduit for Gage and I playing friendlies a lot and becoming good friends, which was awesome. Got a 'Disapproval' Emote from it. Got to celebrate with Gage in his victory. Good stuff.

Summit would normally be a big thing I would write about, but this one was just a rough tournament for me, haha. Because the way everything worked out, the top 2 seeds, NinJamez and Gage fought round 1 and then the loser dropped down to fight me (the 3rd seed). I was not destined to win against Gage that day, and I unceremoniously got out at 9th. But it's all good, it was a well-run tournament and outside of my personal bracket, was a really fun time.

Came so so close to beating NinJamez on a couple-few occasions, but still haven't. Lost to Drake for the first time ever. Still undefeated against Java though 😁

Last two PR Graphics. Last time working on the PR. Last semesters at college in general. Life be moving forward.

My rankings throughout my semesters have been:

Unranked (13ish), 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd, DNP, 4th, DNP, 2nd, 3rd.

Fall 2024 Tournament Results

Winter 2025 Tournament Results

My Presumably Last Rexburg Tournament for a least a while that took place last week

2nd (out of 16), 2nd Seed, BYU-I Bash #78

Golly, quite the month, eh? Going to go vaguely in chronological order.

Best thing from the Nintendo Direct was the fact that Silksong is coming out in 2025, hype hype hype.

Played the Bazaar a lot and then not at all. New character dropped. Played them a lot and then played a lot on my roommate's computer to unlock the new character for him. Played it once since then. Still love the game, just kinda done with it for now at least.

Uh, graduated, I suppose that's probably an important thing to reference. Computer Science major, Mathematics minor. Feels really weird.

Got to go to my Follow-up Trainer's Wedding Celebration. Love Elder Wilkins, super happy for him.

Same Small Pikachu from when we were Comps

Awesome Cake

Visited Ryan, Angeles, Melody, and Hannah in Texas. 'Twas awesome, super glad I got to go. While I was there, we played tons of typing games (specifically Glyphica and Chef's Shift), watched various anime (Frieren with Ryan/Angeles, Solo Leveling and ReLife by myself), went on lots of walks, got to see my good friend Emma, had some wonderful Easter celebrations, updated my resume, played a lot of Nine Sols, and probably some other stuff.