to have fun mostly. really i like playing people better than i am and learning how to adapt to what they're doing. i think adaptation is generally one of my weak points, especially in fighting games, but it's sort of a trial through fire. i'm a very inexperienced player, and i think i'd argue that despite knowing about the scene for about a year i'd say that i've really only been playing hands-on for about six months. so learning from people who are top ~150ish is always pretty nice even if i can usually only take two or three stocks off of them, especially since learning how to space and orient yourself differently are both really important. melee's like a puzzle or a riddle with so many variables you know you can never figure it out entirely and i think that's always held a huge allure to me.
right now i'm too busy to take it seriously since i'm trying to polish my french for college in the fall and i'm teaching myself spanish so i'm kind of taking a break and trying to break down videos very late into the night and analyze them (like right now! i'm watching hax v pewpewu and taking notes on it at 6:15am hahaha). it feels like i'm learning a lot about the neutral game which is good since i feel that understanding of it was very lacking from my play, especially towards the close of the school year. ideally i would like to make deep runs into nationals but i think that's sort of rough because i'm in college during all the big ones and by the time i'm done in two years i know that either the melee scene will probably only have two or three good years left for it or i'll have no interest in it. not to mention i probably won't even be close to good enough to even make it out of pools at the big nationals. realistically speaking i don't think i want to play video games competitively into my mid-twenties, at least not seriously, but no offense to those who do; it's just not something i have planned for myself.