BBCF Casual Sets vs Heartwad

9/18/2026 Another long day at the getting the dog surgery beaten out of me, but I've actually been doing this all week with heartwad, and there's some meaningful progress compared to the start. The first night I was about as successful set count wise, but he was very noticeably uncomfortable combo'ing Hibiki in comparison to this set. Multiple 10-0's and 20-1's this week. I was probably running out of steam towards the end but he probably was slowing down a bit too coming up on two hours straight. Re-evaluating the risk/reward on DP'ing so much vs Bang - given this character's fucked up mix and the kinds of gaps IB's can poke in his blockstrings - as actively stunting his offense by making him work around DP threat makes me feel less averse to it like I was before. Hard to shake the feeling of just jamming a reversal like an animal instead of thinking... ...But as I'm sure this footage demonstrates, if you don't really get how his blockstrings work and a few key numbers/gatling points, not having the active thought to even get the DP is hard. Or maybe I'm just pretty bad to doing the damn motion in blockstun? It's probably both. I'm looking for IB DP's and getting a hit a lot this set. I'll have to proactively study how is blockstrings are built to have a better idea of when to actually represent it. There's some questionable mashing/flailing for sure (give me a bit of grace though, this roided out gnat is flying around me!) but it feels like the RPS coming down to TRM attempt points, hunting for IB DP spots...maybe I'm starting to understand the game. I have to be more dynamic on offense though when the same sequence 5 times doesn't work (and less willing to force being dynamic when it is working) - earlier mix, shimmying/baiting, heavy delay gatlings to frame trap/catch fuzzy jumping.... Heartwad has gotten very good recently. I couldn't struggle this badly against him 6-12 months ago. He clearly sat his ass down and got comfier converting off hibiki's twinkbox after the first set we played early this week, and he's much harder to get a successful hit on than a lot of people. For all the ass beating, tangible progress and actionable room for improvement. The music is about one and a half The Mars Volta albums. Their debut, Deloused in the Comatorium (including a bonus track at the end...? that I've never heard before I put this one on somehow?), and then I queue'd up Bedlam in Goliath until the video ends, it gets somewhere halfway.