The first place I found was an eSports bar called meltdown and despite the larger smash tournament scene in Lyon being very active, meltdown seemed to be one of the smaller tournaments in the area and I was mostly hoping I'd be able to use it as a jumping off point for larger events. However, I was quite wrong in my initial judgments of the space. Each week the bracket has around 36 people and everyone that I've talked to here has been amazing too.
Meltdown is also one of the few places that I've seen a pride flag as well so it was nice to immediately find a queer space even when it's not what I was initially looking for when trying to find tournaments in the area. It's a very queer friendly space with a really wide range of people who come here both for smash and just to hang out.
Spaces like these are really neat because they attract such a wide range of people around a common interest regardless of who you are. This is especially true for queer people because it can offers an environment where everyone is just there to have fun around something that we all know and love. That's not always easy because even within LGBTQ+ centers it can lack a common interest besides just being queer so it can hard to bond with just that alone but when you go to a smash tournament, you know you have something that you can both talk about together regardless of any other lived experience.
This is even true for the straight people that're there too and for some it's their first real interactions with a queer person. While it's not the responsibility of queer people to always educate them, it can be a really good opportunity that would not exist otherwise.
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