Character Loyalty Part 2: Street Fighter: Xian and Gen

Next up for the Character Loyalty stories, I'd like to tacke Xian first and his Gen because I have been on the Street Fighter binge recently and me and a friend have been trying out Gen just for kicks.

As always, let's breakdown Gen:
My Personal Opinion: Gen is a rather difficult character to use because you need to keep switching between his two stances to bring out his full potential. When you can get the hang of that, you can now take advantage of how effective his normal moves are. The ability to pick the right normal for the right situation is key to a Gen player's success. Pair that with his above average movement speed , you can know start applying his strong crossup game (one of the best in the game).

What makes Gen bad is his low stamina and stun, his damage is not really amazing outside of FADC combos and he only has one really dependable reversable (EX Up Kicks)

On paper, Gen is one of those characters that will get you wins if you can take advantage of his huge movelist. Knowing what normal cancels to what special, what pokes can be kara cancelled, which moves are the most effective are all essential to securing your win with Gen.

At this point, you can start to understand that in order to win with Gen, you have to PRACTICE and LEARN all his shit. Not only that, you have to start getting creative with the applications of his crossups and mixups because opponents may start catching on. That's where Xian comes in.

If I remember correctly, Xian was maining Yun in the Arcade Edition of Street Fighter 4. To the unfamiliar, Yun (along with his twin Yang) was crazy godlike in this iteration of SF4 and crowd's worldwide would hate and taunt the player whenever either of these two characters were used. Xian was getting affected by the crowd's reactions whenever he played so he chose another character. This is where he started to pick up Gen.

Xian practiced with Gen tirelessly and when he started to bring Gen out to tourneys locally and worldwide, the results were...just a little short. Sure he could beat Singapore's best (Leslie, Gackt, etc.) and as well as international players (Daigo, Riceata, Dieminion, etc.) in a few long sets and finish in the top 10 of most tourneys, it was rather hard to keep consistent when combos kept dropping at the most important times, when setups would weirdly not work anymore and worse, people were start to see your tactics. So Xian went back to the lab...and My God, the results are amazing. Xian not only knows Xian's moves inside out, his inputs are always on point and he has made his own despicably confusing setups and crossups as well.
Which is my point for this whole article.

Early in the AEver2012 build, Gen was assumed to be a low tier character. This was because it was seen that Gen had a hard time with divekick and grappler characters and his low stun and stamina always posed as a major problem. As Xian came along, Gen is somewhere in mid tier nowadays (theory and paper wise).
Let me point something out here: Remember the fact that you have to keep switching Gen's stances and have good memory of which and what move to use so that he can be truly effective? Xian was one of the few Gen players to be consistent with this requirement and because of this, people began to see (and acknowledge) that if you knew what to do, Gen always has an answer to what the opponent could do. With regards to setups and crossups, it was assumed that in order to get an effective mixup, Gen had to jump. Xian introduced that you can get mixups (as well as resets) from FADC combos and from counter focus tactics. If you can make a significant positive change to a character with your performance alone, that's truly amazing. Xian not only learned everything there it is to learn about Gen, he even took the time to create his own tech. That's just amazing dedication.  

I'm not entirely sure of how many major tourneys he's been in but for the first half of 2013, Xian has won a majority of the tourneys he has been in...including EVO 2013. Just goes to show much Character loyalty can take you.

Although Xian has already said that he's gonna drop Gen when Ultra Street Fighter 4
News here
it's still amazing how much effort and sacrifice he put into the character to win a lot of tourneys.


-Chady

Life with Imaginary Power-Ups #23

*The only group activities I actively share with my friends nowadays (besides eating) is Diablo 3, Dragon's Crown, Bomberman Live and Cloudberry Kingdom. I ain't even sad :D

*Fun (or awful, depending on the result) prank: After watching a horror movie with friends, download the signature sound effect from said horror movie (Forbidden Siren's Siren, The Conjuring's Toy Box, The Grudge's Girl Moan, One Missed Call's ringtone, etc.) into your phone, wait for your chance and do either of these things:
a.) When your friend is off his/her guard (Sleeping, drowzy, drunk, busy with a report that needs to be passed the following day, etc.) play the tune. Hilarity ensues.
b.) If you have +5 Ninja skills, steal your friends' phone and if the phone has this capability, assign your name with the customized ringtone. Otherwise, just change the call ringtone and wait for the appropriate time to prank him/her. Imagine calling someone at exactly 3:07am with the Conjuring ringtone. Evil lolz.

*Speaking of horror movies...Insidious 2 is coming. Fuck yeah/Fuck no/Fuck this.

*I've already said goodbye to a few of my friends today. I won't be seeing them for a couple of days. Maybe months even.... GTA:V, I'm coming, baby.





-Chady

I unintentionally keep screwing up the universe's attempts to get me to meet "The one" because somehow I keep missing to see the little, intricate things and details I like in the woman I'm supposed to end up with and eventually someday, make me say 'I do.'

It's been awhile since I posted a short story. I have to say though that this one is completely irrelevant to anyone's life.

*You can go to another page now...*

To those who are still interested (yey), This was a silly thing that happened in my arcade late August 2013 and I only wrote this for a couple of friends to share a laugh but seeing that it turned out to into a full story, I
thought it would be a waste not to share to you guys. Again, read when you completely have nothing else to do. It's just about me and the universe attempts to get my shit together.

When I was rewriting this story for the blog, It was hard to give it a proper title and because it is funny to think about and yet kinda sad at the same time and also infuriating (mostly funny, really) but I'm still gonna do it...because this is my blog.

"I unintentionally keep screwing up the universe's attempts to get me to meet "The one" because somehow I keep missing to see the little, intricate things and details I like in the woman I'm supposed to end
up with and eventually someday, make me say 'I do.' "

Let me set the venue: My Arcade. Only a few people around. There was me, a good friend and one of my attendants. It was a rather slow day and both my friend and the attendant were playing games to pass the time while I was focused on my laptop, headphones on, oblivious to the world.

and then suddenly, out of the blue...in comes this girl.

Kidding, kidding, That's not the girl (google search: kawaii bangs) but that pic is pretty close to her...um, "features":

Looked kinda Japanese, well trimmed Bangs, Wearing a Victorian-esque dress(Like Lili's default costume for Tekken) and (as my friend pointed out) faded and worn out Chuck Taylor Hi-cuts.

The last part is important because I've always been a fan of people who proudly wear their old, tattered Chucks because the more worn out it is, the more you get to think about how much history it has with its owner and the things they have went through together (Much so that I even wrote a whole different story about it lolz. COMING SOON!) and to this day, I keep thinking HOW COULD I HAVE NOTICED HER SHOES...OR HER SENSE OF STYLE...OR HER :( ... but I'm getting ahead of myself...

Oh, and also, I am apparently COMPLETELY BLIND to flirting nowadays. FUCK. MY. LIFE.
The latter part you will get to understand right now.

Before I continue the story, though. Let me explain that this part of the story is told from the perspective of my friend and the attendant because I wasn't fully aware how she came in because I was distracted by my 'work'...By work, of course, I mean watching two series' at the same time while reading blogs as well.

NOTE: Their story may have exaggerations.

A black, sleek, luxury car comes up and drops this girl off. She looked so beautiful that nature gave her a gust of wind to give her a dramatic look. She was shining as the sunlight hit her.As the car drove away, She walked up to the door and took off her headphones. She popped her head in, looked around with her eyes sparkling, smiled and asked "Is Sir Richard around?". We could not reply at all because we were still surprised by her sudden appearance and all we could do was point at you and she replied with a bubbly "Thanks!". She steps in and..."

I'm going to switch to my version now because their version gets weirder by the minute...

She politely waves in my line of sight (I was wearing headphones, too) to catch my attention. I see her hand and I look at the hand's owner...which was beaming with a smile. As I take my headphones off, I noticed she was slightly red and as I take a glance outside, I said to myself must have been the heat (Yeah, the heat -_-..).  

Before I could ask what I could do for her she suddenly blurts out, "Hi sir! I'm May/Mei, from *cannot
remember exactly but I did hear*, Dumaguete. I am only visiting for a short while and I would like to ask you.." She suddenly pauses, looking at me with her anime eyes. I took this pause as an opportunity for me to
reply but before I could say anything, she launched into a barrage of questions regarding if I could hack PS3s,Fix PSPs, physical and digital copies of games for the PS3 and/or the PSP...she was a fast talker -_-

As she continued talking, my first immediate thought was wow, a gamer girl. Normally, I don't get a lot of
legit gamer girls in the arcade and normally, this would have been the start of a wonderful conversation that would lead to what could have been a date...but for the life of me, I could not understand why I replied so blandly to her questions. Maybe I was surprised that she understood the stuff that I was saying even though some terms I was using was pretty technical na. Maybe my use of the laptop to present visual aids to her prevented me to notice that she was looking at me during my explanations. Hell, maybe the monotony of my often repeated explanations have caught up to me and my personality has turned off to strangers.To my every reply though, she kept nodding enthusiastically...accompanied with an occassional 'aaaah' or a
giggle.

Finally, she decided to copy some of my games for the time being and as she was swinging around the table to hand me her hard drive, she tripped on one of the wires and I, who was sitting in an office wheel chair at the time, quickly slid to her front side and grabbed on to her hip and right boob (lolz boob) to prevent her from falling face down on the floor. Needless to say, there was a moment where we locked eyes...and did ya know how I followed it up? Gave her a smile? Flicked her hair? or maybe, *gasp* gave her a kiss? Fuck no. I said and I quote"Be careful, miss" and I stood her upright... -_-
BE. CAREFUL. MISS.
Universe, if you're reading this, I apologize for Past Chady.

For the next 10 minutes, she just sat in the chair opposite me, clearly embarrassed of what happened. She was twirling the cord of her headphones with her head down as she waited for the transfer to finish...while I slid back into my laptop and put my headphones on. I did not notice that my friend, who was the sole witness to the whole tripping fiasco, kept signalling me to ask her something to which I kept replying...with le middle finger. Honestly, I would have (should have) attempted to talk to her again but I can barely make out her face as she was facing down.


When the copying finished, I stood up and gave her the hard drive, I was just happy to see that when she looked up and asked for the price, she wasn't crying or angry... she was still smiling. Of course, it wasn't the same beaming smile she wore earlier (probably because I held her boob but that's just me) but she kept her demeanor ba...Now this is the moment where my brain suddenly functioned and thought up an important
phrase:
"Dude, this girl..."

As she handed me her payment, the car arrived. I just noticed that it was also heavily tinted so I could
not make out who was driving. As I crouched down to get her change, I noticed she stood up and proceeded to walk towards the car. I thought "Hmmm..she must be in a hurry" so I quickly counted her change while crouched down. My friend later told me that when she stood up, she walked to the door and signalled the car to "wait", she immediately turned to me, took a step and stopped, as if expecting a huge surprise. As I stood up, she had this face...this face of anticipation like you were about to get something good. You know what I thought? "Wow, she must really want her change now, huh?" I give her her change and happily say in a sing song voice "Your change, miss!"
* Insert your FACEPALM here ples*


She replied "Thanks..." rather unenthusiastically na and my end reply to all this? "Come back soon!"
A SCRIPTED RESPONSE. I gave her a leaving a restaurant outro. FUCK.
On the plus side though, she did smile again as she got into the car, moving away, never to be seen again :( When she left, my friend gave me the most disappointed, what the fuck is wrong with you face . For lack of a real picture, this dog will demonstrate what face my friend made.

As I think of that scenario over and over again, there could have been a million ways I could have done it better. A million ways I could have turned it in my favor. But maybe, just maybe, this wasn't for me. I know it's what I can only say now because of my rather shitty performance but maybe this was my wake up call. I have noticed I have been avoiding social interactions outside my circle as of late. Just hanging around the office/shop, twirling around. I've always been a hopeless romantic and I believe in those fated meetings, destiny and whatnots. Maybe it's my reminder that in order for this to happen, I have to do my part pod. Because somewhere out there... She is there. Waiting for me. :)
 


 

-Chady

BER months of 2013

So we've entered the BER months now and I am not gonna greet anyone a  'Merry Christmas!' because that's clearly in December guys...seriously.

The purpose of this post is to let everyone know (and to remind myself ) the topics that I will be posting in the following months to come. They are:

- Chuck Taylors: The Love
-More Life with Imaginary Power-Ups
-My Wake Up Call to Finding the One (is the working title)
^This one has been retitled to "I unintentionally keep screwing up the universe's attempts to get me to meet "The one" because somehow I keep missing to see the little, intricate things and details I like in the woman I'm supposed to end up with and eventually someday, make me say 'I do.'"
-Revisiting: Kartia
-Character Loyalty Parts 2 and 3

This are the ones I can confirm that I am gonna do. Stay posted though if I can add anything else.
Till then,


Peace Out
-Chady