It's been weighing on my pretty heavily the past 24 hours so I'm going to talk now and let it loose.

Last weekend, I intended to go to the Backyard after being away from my local FGC since around November. I had distanced myself from my locals because I was focusing on going to the gym after work during the week, and I was hoping to play some MVCI and DBFZ instead of just hanging out in the front of the Forge because I didn't have any interest in playing what was on the menu for the tournament.

Instead, I was informed that I had been banned for something that happened at the last Backyard that not only was incredibly minor (not moving my setup when asked), but that in the 5-6 months after the alleged incident happened, no one told me that this was a problem and thus I assumed that all was in perfect order until the night before Backyard.

So, since that's the game that whoever issued the ban wants to play, I'll set off some fireworks.

Last March or April, during one of the SFV weeklies, my continued issues with one of the current TOs of the Backyard finally reached a tipping point to where the other party decided to turn our squabble into a physical encounter. Given what life at the Villa was like, I was quite upset that I had to pretend the other guy was a client in order not to escalate the conflict further into something that would potentailly harm my reputation as a mental health professional that I worked hard to achieve. But despite all of that, I was not only told that there would be no consequences issued, but that I shouldn't expect any sort of apology and that the majority of the RVA FGC saw me as a nuisance despite my 5 years tenure there and all of the things I had accomplished since returning to RVA from Marshall University, and then again after returning from Mecklenburg.

And, sad to say, all of this drama, especially with those involved in the Backyard and parts of SoVA, have led me to gain an overall dislike for anime FG players. When it comes to SF, Tekken, DOA, and even Marvel, my interactions are usually pleasant, but apart from those who were already my friends to begin with, most interactions I have with "anime" players are ones that I would rather not have.

So when I see EVO's reveal, and people celebrating games not being there that are not only still being played, but are outdrawing many other games that made it to the main event, and then Mr Wizard flat out LIE about why a certain game didn't make it while others did...combined with everything that has happened, for the first time in a long time I feel like the FGC is no longer "my people."

I've been told that the games I like are bad for 6 goddamn years now, and I've even made an effort to play other stuff, but anything I might be invested in is met with ridicule by those I'm trying to build a community with. Sadly, not everyone is as persistent as me, like I was with SFxT, but I don't have the time to keep the lights on for all of these games when social media has made these games more and more toxic.

SFVAE is the best free update I've seen in a fighting game in a long time. Depending on how this season turns out, this might be my frontrunner for the best mainline SF EVER. It's got more lore than I've ever seen in an SF game, it feels like everyone can hold their own right now with right player and mentality, and the netcode on PC is far more cooperative for playing my overseas friends than Ultra ever was. On top of that I'm having a lot of fun with the V-Trigger system.

MVCI, Michelle Pinsky can telll you how much I adored those CPS2 era Marvel games, and while I do appreciate her getting MVC2 for me for Hannukah that one time, I wound up gravitating towards CVS2 instead when I was younger. I was looking forward to going back to the developer that I grew up with, Mr Hirose, who was back in the fold and adding Grooves to the game while giving the lesser-used characters from last time a chance to shine in the new system. I'm grateful to RD Ash for keepign the lights on by adding it to Nonplayable (not that they were ever off to begin with, more on that in a moment) and I look forward to playing it some more once Filthy Casuals resumes.

DBFZ, the game is cool and all, and it's nice that I can play a DBZ game for the first time in a long time that has proper fighting game inputs (up to a point), but pretending a 3v3 game is cannibalizing a 2v2 game is ridiculous. I see the game on its own merits, and I'm already asking myself if I would keep playing this game if it wasn't a DBZ game. Although I'm sure whatever skepticism I have of it right now was bred from "Us vs Them," where anyone who liked MVCI was branded a shill.

Going back to EVO, Mark Julio, AKA Markman, went live on twitter saying that Capcom continues to support MVCI to the best of their abilities and he is well aware that MVCI was still outdrawing Injustice, BB, Xrd, and several other games at the time of his decision, but that a third party was preventing the game from being shown on the main stage. Last year while hanging around EVO, I heard rumors that Disney's upcoming involving in the event was a huge point of contention, especially that weekend, so I braced myself expecting something like that to come into play.

But for Wiz to just flat out lie saying no one is playing when it's getting the turnout numbers it's getting right now and then for Markman, his colleague, to flat out confirm Wiz was lying?

The FGC has clearly passed me by if this is what happens on what was once the biggest tournament of them all. I keep hearing that CEO is quickly overtaking EVO as the premier FGC event, and Jebailey's connections to pro wrestling have made it so that both Capcom and Namco are regularly going to WWE and NJPW to cross-promote their new fighting games. But I went, no, it's still EVO, I can still hang out with the JP crew for SFxT.

I'm talking to them today and they're all "WTF" at no MVCI because not only is it getting looks here, it's been getting looks there too. So clearly its' not just me.

I'll let this cool down, but this has been a perfect storm for me to get very jaded right now. Right now I expect this next EVO to be my last, and after that...I don't know, it might be time for me to bow out of the FGC entirely, because clearly what I look for in a fighting game isn't hip anymore, and with Xanadu closing soon I have no idea where I'm going to be able to go to find what I'm looking for.