Neutral
Let me first start off by saying that I am, without technicality involved, an '08er. However, I was introduced into the competitive Smash community upon Melee, but that was only about a year before Brawl's release. During that, I thought it would be useless to train myself in Melee because everyone would transfer over to Brawl.
With the introduction of Brawl, I knew that I was here from the very beginning, and I knew I could contribute to the competitive smash community by any means. However, I had a big problem. No one in my area liked playing Brawl. In fact, it was pretty much a dead zone for Smash in general. I was an oddball gamer that had no one to train with. All I had were CPU's, and everyone knows that you cannot get better by those.
A lot of my early days of entering the competitive Smash community has been by using WiFi and Smashboards' Friend Finder. Lag johns or not, this was the only way I'd be able to connect with others and test what decent skill I had with my Mario, Ike, and Link. Despite it being WiFi, the skill level indication was usually always clear. I was only a decently-skilled player and I knew I had to play against better people in order to improve.
Come September, I moved to college. As it turns out, the college network is pure crap. So WiFi is no longer an option. Pretty much, I was stuck, until I searched around and noticed there were -a lot- of people who played Brawl. A handful of those people also played Brawl competitively (and we're currently in the process of making a competitive Brawl club), and we usually have "meetings" where we all sit down, talk about strategies and play against each other. Thus far, we have four people, including myself, who meets up regularly, and have true mains.
I play Mario, with Ike and Link on the side.
Binz mains ROB, with Jigglypuff and Pit on the side.
TRA mains Marth and only Marth.
2+2=5 (funny name) mains Lucario.
Some others just comes and goes, only happening to "show up" most of the time. In that case, we sometimes go up against a Diddy main who also uses Yoshi and Falco, and a G&W main who occasionally plays Capt Falcon. We also watch videos of other top players to see what to expect upon tournament play, and sometimes we even try to adapt other playstyles into our own for better improvement.
At this part, my Smash life was very grand, until last week, when I went to my very first tournament.
Meeting other people was great, seeing other people like us made my group feel comfortable, but when it was time for our tourney matches, everything changed. The seriousness increased into a higher level, and the jokes ended. I personally, felt my stomach churn and my mind go frantic from all the boiling intensity of my matches. Upon the end of each match, my hands were soaked with sweat, I was mentally exhausted to the point where I easily grew hungry, and I was in desperate need of a break.
This to me, was entirely new, because I could play friendlies for five hours straight without breaking a sweat, with the jokes flying around and the laughter consuming us all... but when something is on the line, everything changes. There is no longer any "funny" moments. There is only the intensity of the match and your will to win.
This allowed me to gain an epiphany when I thought back years later when Melee was still at it's prime, and I compared it to now. There were a lot of people who played Melee and didn't know a thing about the ATs. I at the very least knew about L-canceling and Wavedashing, but had the belief Wavedashing wasn't useful (how wrong I was) to practice in. So you can say my old group of friends were "Competitive Casuals". Out of that group, I usually proved myself to be the best.
Where am I going with this? Well, there were times when I was beaten. I still played as Mario, and one of my friends played as Falco, and well, he was constantly good with spiking. I eventually grew frustrated with fighting Falco and tried to use other characters. That's when I picked up Link and used him to combat Falco. Somehow, he proved to be quite good against my friend's Falco. After that, I had for a time constantly used Link against my other friends, and I was once told that, whenever I played as Link, I seemed to go into a zone of seriousness that made me not fun to play against. That's when I lightened up and began to go back to using Mario more, and in the end I was actually able to defeat the Falco player with my Mario.
When I compare that time to now, I actually see that the intensity level between Melee and Brawl, for me, is no different. They're exactly the same. As long as something is on the line, as in wanting to prove yourself to the world that you're one of the best, then the competition is there, and there is nothing that will dwindle it.
For me, Brawl and Melee are the same, although I will say that Melee has the greater options for it to be the better competitive game. However, that doesn't make Brawl an inferior version to Melee. It is instead just an alternative option to Melee. In reality, both games were not meant to be competitive at all. However, the Smash community detoured Nintendo's ideals for their own, and made it competitive. Brawl, with all those intents and purposes in mind, is the Exact. Same. Way.
Personally, if I went back to Melee, then there is nothing I could prove because in it's lifespan, there are already the awesome people who play it, the ones who train for years to be to the top. If I joined in now then I'd only just be aiming to prove that I'll just be another great player. At least in Brawl's short lifespan, there is something more I can aim for. I want to be one of the best players out there, and I want to prove it with using my mains, not with all the advantages/disadvantages counterpicking characters and such. I want to prove that I can win with the characters I choose, no matter how bad it gets, especially with Mario.
As long as I have that to aim for, then I won't stop playing Brawl.