Month: January 2026

2025 in Review: YouTube

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Good Morning Folks. I am continuing my 2025 in Review series and this morning talking about one of my guilty pleasures. I watch probably a truly excessive amount of YouTube, and in truth it is less that I am actively watching it and more that it is keeping me company while I do other things. This morning I talk going to talk about some of the channels that I regularly watch pretty much anything that they release. There are certain channels that publish something every single day, and others that release on a weekly schedule… but it is super rare that I do not click through and watch the new videos each time one drops. Other than I will likely talk about a few of the folks from different communities that I watch content for when I am in the mood to consume it.

Trent Holbrook aka Miscast

This is probably my channel of 2025, and has been a lot of why I have been interested in getting into a bunch of more creative endeavors. Trent is a bundle of chaotic creative energy, and I feel like we all need him in our lives. Like Ace is not prone to doing any of the things that Trent does, but is still watching him because he is just too pure and inspiring with the nonsense that he does. Essentially this is MOSTLY a Warhammer and kitbashing channel, but he also dabbles in 3d modeling and has been on this entire crusade to figure out how to create his own blisterpacks for the miniatures he creates. The above episode specifically is surrounding him creating reusable temporary characters for people to drop into existing D&D campaigns. His entire channel is operating in permadeath mode where if he misses posting a day, he is going to delete the entire thing and all of the assets that he has created during that time. As someone who did blogging every single day for three and a half years… I regret to inform him that there will be a time when it does happen and I will miss this spot of brightness on the horizon. In theory his original channel will still exist but obviously because of the pressure of a daily channel he has not posted there in six months.

Tia Weston – The One Dollar House Series

Another channel that has been part of my life for the last year, is the One Dollar House series by a vlogger named Tia Weston. Essentially on August 11th of 2024, she purchased a house for $1 from someone that she knew… and over the next year every Sunday morning she dropped a video talking about whatever had happened that week. This continued until November 2nd when she had effectively wrapped that series and was fully moved into and living in the house. I am not necessarily super into home improvement channels, but there was something compelling about the honest nature of how this was shown. Sure the dollar house thing was a clickbaity title, but the content itself was deeply interesting as it dealt with the ups and downs of having to renovate a house that was in quite honestly some pretty lousy shape when she got it. On November 9th of this year, she bought a second abandoned home and is now working through the process of cleaning it out and renovating it, and I am once again happily tuning in every Sunday morning for htis nonsense.

Laura Kampf

Another channel that I watch pretty much every Sunday morning is that of the self proclaimed Janitor of Los Angeles, Laura Kampf. I think I originally was introduced to her content by Simone Geirtz, which I have been following and watching content from since her shitty robot days. Laura currently is in the middle of renovating a “free” travel trailer from the 70s, but has widely varrying content from picking up trash off the street and making something out of it, to talking about how she makes products that she sells and how she markets them. Just a deeply interesting and creative person, and it pairs nicely with Tia’s House series as I am sitting down on Sunday mornings to edit the two podcasts that I edit every week. While I am eating my breakfast and trying to wake the fuck up, I am listening to these two people and whatever they have gotten up to in the previous week.

Tendo – Daily Thrifting

Tendo is a chaotic mess of a human being and I have been following since the birth of his channel called Duck Duck Blue devoted to a toy store of the same name. That channel was an infectuous mix of the interesting cast of characters working there, frank discussions about stocking and pricing issues of running a toy store, and random creative projects as he attempted to build out different parts of the store. Sadly all of that content is gone, because there was a rather wild sequence of events that led to the store closing, a breakup of Tendo from the person he co-owned the store with, and effectively him becoming a single father as the primary caretaker of their newborn son. Nothing has really been said about ANY of that, but Reid one of the workers in the store released this pretty cool video about the Final 24 Hours of the store. What the Tendo channel now is more than anything is the daily diary of someone trying to take care of a child while stocking multiple vendor malls with merchadise harvested in large part through daily trips to Goodwill and various other thrift stores. I am not sure what it is about this but I find it deeply compelling, snapshot of a day in the life of someone else type content.

Josh Johnson – Tuesday Night Comedy Sets

Josh Johnson might be the single most talented comedian out there right now, full stop. Originally I knew him for his work on The Daily Show as a corespondent, and more recently after the departure of Trevor Noah… he has subbed in as one of the more regular hosts of the show now that they are in this weird no single permanent host kind of mode. Somewhere along that point I stumbled onto his YouTube channel and more specifically his comedy sets once he started the current Flowers Tour that he is on. Most comedians have a set, that they work for awhile, until it becomes stale…. and then move on and create something new. Josh Johnson releases a brand new set every single Tuesday night, as a YouTube premiere event… and it is often times deeply topical and none of it retreads any of the ground he has visited previously. It is wild just how damned creative he is, and how he gives the feeling that what is very obviously a thoroughly polished set… comes off as though he is just talking to the audience. Phenomenally good stuff and if you are not already listening to this each week I highly suggest you tune in.

Sir Gog – Path of Exile Analysis

I am obsessed with Path of Exile. If you have read this blog for any length of time you will know this. One of my favorite content creators in this space is SirGog, and quite honestly I am probably more active in “his” community than I am in any other part of the sphere. There is a specific Global chat channel that his folks use, and I shifted to making that my home ages ago, and never doubted that decision because it tends to be a group of fairly analytical folks who are also extremely helpful. What I like the most about SirGog is his long form videos where he talks about exploring what is happening in the meta of a given league. Rarely are these things that I am necessarily chasing, but I do find it extremely valueable to know what sorts of tech is being used and in what ways. Additionally he does an amazing job of evaluating changes to the game and how it might impact players and more often the economy. All of this is deeply valuable for me when I decide to branch out and start playing that second or third build of a league.

CheckPoint – Loading Ready Run

They are still on holiday hiatus, but I love Loading Ready Run and more specifically Checkpoint. This is a weekly comedy show… and ends up being quite possibly one of the best actual gaming news shows that you can watch. All of the crew are delightful and quite honestly I am pretty much willing to watch anything from them over the years. I don’t necessarily get into the more longform stream content as much, but I do occasionally watch things if something tweaks my spidey senses. I do however watch pretty much every episode of Checkpoint and it often becomes something we reference and talk about each week on the AggroChat podcast because a large number of us do this thing. I am also a big fan of Graham Stark specifically and his solo vidocs that he records when the LRR team is visiting some event . Great group of folks, they all seem delightful, and would love to be friends with them… but I won’t be weird and parasocial about it. LRR specifically is a huge reason why we migrated AggroChat to Kind.social, because it is run by LRR fans who have a deeply compatible set of ethics.

Ashens/NerdCubed Advent Calendars

This one is topical ONLY during the lead up to Christmas but I am going to give it a shout out regardless. It was roughly a decade ago that I stumbled onto this nonsense. I had been following Ashens for awhile and enjoyed his quirky product reviews recorded with a busted brown couch seat as the backdrop. I am even a huge fan of his two Film Projects (Ashens and the Quest for the Game Child, and Ashens and the Polybius Heist). However the capstone of each year is this dumb series where they record effectively dueling Advent Calendars and choose a winner each day. Sometimes there are penalty calendars, other times it is just them making fun of the dumb things that pop out of them. This year was particularly wild because Ashens had a survival calendar that was mostly just a bunch of weapons. Nothing gets me in the holiday spirit quite like tuning in for this nonsense every day, and the videos usually dropped coinciding with my lunch break.

Rogue Hobbies

As I am starting to fall further and further down the Warhammer hobby rabbit hole, another YouTube channel that I really enjoy watching is from Louise Sugden aka Rogue Hobbies. Videos are always charming and I really appreciate the bright and cheerful color schemes that she paints. These are not necessarily the style in which I want to paint things, but I still think they end up really freaking cool. I specifically linked the above video because I thought it was a neat transformation taking an old Mighty Max toy and turning it into something Warhammer themed using Epic scale miniatures. Kind of like Trent this is just a really cool channel to watch that might give you inspirations for other nonsense that you want to do regardless of the hobby that you are into.

Laranity

Now we are going to get into a few general shout outs. Laranity is absolutely my favorite streamer in the Guild Wars 2 space, and any time I need to farm drops I know I am going to be watching her channel. She is delightful, but she also makes a bunch of edited videos that are pretty solid. The above for example is a paid collab by ArenaNet where she taught Annie Fuschia who is mostly known in the World of Warcraft creator space how to play Guild Wars 2. She does a lot of interesting build review type content as well, or various general money making strats on how to get the most out of specific map farms. Its all super pure, and charming. If you were wanting to get into Guild Wars 2 I would probably say her content is your starting space because it straddles that line between pure casual and hardcore, and does a good job of introducing you to some basic concepts to build upon.

Pohx – The Father of Righteous Fire

I also have to get a general shout out to Pohx, who is the father of Righteous Fire in its current form. This build was the build that allowed me to start to enjoy all of the many splendors Path of Exile has to offer, because it is super fucking simple to level and is aggressively tanky at end game. I still play an RF build almost every league, because it gives me a solid base to then branch out and explore whatever weird stuff is happening in the meta with my second and third build of the league. Pohx is so unbelievably patient with the viewers, because there are so many ways you can fuck up a Righteous Fire build and he maintains this painstakingly edited and simple guide site. On top of that he is just a chill dude, who does a thing and does it reliably. I appreciate constants in the digital world.

Strange Aeons – Tumblr Royalty

Something that you probably do not know about me, is that I have a deep and lasting affection for the weird world of Tumblr. I was never as active on it as some, nor did I regularly comment on it… but I have always enjoyed being an outsider looking into that particular fish bowl. When I “doom scroll” something from bed, it is usually weird arts and shit on Tumblr, and I feel better off for doing that instead of Instagram or Facebook. Strange Aeons is super fucking hard to describe, they might post a deep dive into the etimology of Rawr XD, or give us a recouting and tour of the Grover house from SomethingAwful legend. So much of it is dives into the history of the fringe internet that was, that I honestly remember quite well. They also happen to be permanently enshrined in Tumblr Royalty after fighting the Muppet Joker at Dashcon 2.0. This will not be everyone’s cup of tea but I fucking love it.

Sarah Spaceman

Another channel that I have become fond of this year is Sarah Spaceman. Like I cannot give you a rational explanation for why I enjoy her so much. Firstly I am not a sewist, nor do I cosplay, nor am I honestly into most of the shit she seems to be into. However she DID introduce me to Dan Da Dan which I adore now… so I will forever be thankful. Its a channel about the behind the scenes happens with cosplaying and the judging of cosplay at conventions, and also has had this whole side quest recently surrounding the events leading up to the wedding of her and her longtime partner that often gets featured in content. They did this whole wild Game of Thrones meets Zelda thing and it was delightful. I am all for Weirwood Trees with Korok Faces. Anyways her stuff brings me joy and I cannot fully understand why, but also do not care. It is background material to be consumed while I am doing other things.

Toy Federation

Every saturday morning this channel drops a video, and effectively it is a shot and edited show format that is similar to something along the lines of Pawnstars. Toy Federation is vintage toy store in Greer, South Carolina and they are also behind the rather large Retro-Toy Convention in Greenville, South Carolina. Essentially their claim to fame is having a very fair and public process for evaluating the toys and pricing them, essentially giving you half the value in cash and a very “take it or leave it” sort of approach. What they speciallize is complete toys, so it has been interesting as they have delved into the back and shown just how many partial versions of things that they have, and the painful process of waiting for one or two parts to come in the doors so that they can clean it up and put it out on the shelf for someone to buy. I will always have a deep resounding nostalgia for the toys of the 80s and 90s, and specifically the toys that I personally played with. I don’t have the space or the give a fuck to actually collect these toy lines anymore, but I can get my fix by watching others doing it.

So what are your favorite YouTube channels of 2025? What do you put on in the background or what did you happen to stumble across that you think I might be interested in? Drop me a line below.

2025 in Review: The Games

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Good Morning Folks! After giving you updates on my life… it is time to roll on into the rest of my year in review topics. I legitimately do not know how many of these I have, but I have stalled long enough. This morning I am going to talk about the games that were important to me during the last year in either a good way or a bad way. This list is not going to look anything like most 2025 in review lists, because I do not play a ton of new games. I play an awful lot of ARPGs and treat each season as though it were a game launch. This wildly skews the sort of results that I have in this scenario. I am also this time sort of loosely grouping the list into less important to more important, but not necessarily a strict order.

Path of Exile II: The Last of the Druids

This is probably the most recent of the games I am going to talk about it, and I am still more or less playing it. On December 12th, Path of Exile II released a big update that launched the Last of the Druids and Fate of the Vaal league. In it they gave us access to the first of the Int/Str hybrid classes the Druid which has ascendancies for Shaman and Oracle. More important than that, they gave us access to the primal ability tree and the talisman weapon that allow us to turn into a Bear, Wolf, or Wyvern. I’ve been deeply critical of Path of Exile II up until this point, seeing it as a bit of a mechanically worse version of Path of Exile that just happens to have better graphics and a better user interface. Playing Bear Druid, and specifically Demon Bear Shaman is what really pushed me over the edge to truly enjoying this game. It is fun as heck to hop around the map causing big explosions with my fat bear ass. The game still has problems… and will continue to have problems for a very long time… but this gameplay got me hooked.

Slormancer

Slormancer is a little 2D sorta isometric view roguelike arpglike game that is a heck of a lot of fun. I did not play this game anywhere near as much as I should have, but I hope to remedy that in 2026. I did play it enough however to want to talk about it. The mechanics of this game are just really fun, and it reminds me of what if you took Rogue Legacy and turned it into an ARPG. I mostly played the knight character, but the archer was pretty fun as well. This really wants to be played with a controller though, and is ideal for television gaming. Once I get off my ass and figure out what I want to use as a proper Steam in the Livingroom setup, I will probably be playing more of this. If you have not checked it out and like any of the types of games that I eluded to in this post… check it out. It’s a heck of a lot of fun for $20.

Dune Awakening

I have such wildly mixed feelings about Dune Awakening. This is going to be a game that goes in my disappointments of the year pile. The AggroChat folks and friends decided to play together on a private server that Tam rented for us as we all got started, and I feel like that is the correct way to play this game. It is unfortunate that it requires someone shelling out for a server, and it is even more unfortunate that it does not grant you private access to the shared open world pvp deep desert. What killed this game for me though… was upkeep. You are required to play a certain amount of this per week in order to generate enough fuel to keep the shield on your base active, or your base slowly disintegrates over time. This feels really fucking bad. Namely because I got busy with various events while playing this game… and then had the death of a spouse which knocked me even further out of whack with ever getting back in. Once I lost everything, there was no point in me going back. I would love to see a pure PVE sandbox version of this game that allows you to set custom rules on a server by server basis for things like upkeep. The game itself has gone from a peak concurrency of not quite 200k players to an average of 8k…. so I think maybe it did not work quite right for a lot of players.

Hellclock

So what if I told you there was a game… loosely based on the real world events surrounding Brazil’s War of Canudos… that took place in the aftermath of the abolishment of slavery, but also somehow involves exploring dungeons and killing zombies and shit? Hellclock is a deeply odd and stylistic roguelike ARPG where you have a fixed amount of time to explore on each run, and once you run out of time everything winds back and you get to keep any powerups that you purchased during the previous run. The cyclical nature of the game is deeply satisfying and you get various tools to extend your runs as you get better. I did not play anywhere near enough of this game but again I think it is prime fodder for once I sort out my Steam in the Livingroom setup. I have to solve my wireless network woes before I really do that unfortunately because I have my old gaming rig hooked up in the livingroom, the connectivity speeds are complete ass. I’ve also not really figured out a good keyboard and mouse option, and there will be games that I don’t necessarily want to play with a controller. Anyways NONE of that is about Hellclock, which is just a universally interesting game.

Titan’s Quest II

Titan’s Quest II had quite a number of updates throughout the year and I spent several days really getting into the game and checking out what it had to offer. I landed on the decision that I do not really enjoy playing a melee class in the game, but dig the heck out of playing ranged. I played a sort of icicle archer thing that worked really well, and honestly the game itself is just gorgeous. The fights are pretty interesting, and this is very much a worthy successor to the first game, which in itself was a worthy successor to Diablo II. If you like ARPGs in general or you were ever a fan of TItan’s Quest, then I suggest checking it out. They are continuing to release updates for the game as it is still in development so if you would rather play it once it is finished, then this might be a game to put a pin in and check back when the 1.0 release finally happens.

Abyssus

This game is a heck of a lot of fun to play with a friend, and Ace and I spent a bit of time playing this game and should probably at some point return to it. I think Destiny Rising more or less stole the place in our gaming lives that this took up for a bit. Essentially Abyssus is a wave based arena shooter rogue-like… about exploring the depths of an underwater dungeon. You and your friends take on waves of monsters, get loot, and work your way down to fixed boss fights at specific floors. The deeper you go the harder it gets and the more varied the environments become. Big Nautical-punk vibes with this game because you are both wearing these diving suits while you wield your big damned guns and kill things. The further you go the more points you get to configure your build and control your weapon load-outs, but a lot of options unlock symmetrically as you reach certain floors giving you a mix of guaranteed upgrades and choice based upgrades. I am not sure this game would be fun solo, but it was a blast with someone hanging out on voice chat.

Path of Exile – Mercenaries of Trarthus

Mercenaries of Trarthus was a challenge league that ran in Path of Exile from June 13th to October 27th and represented the first new content we had gotten in almost a year since the launch of Settlers of Kalguur the previous year. First it was just amazing to get some new content in the game, but more than that it introduced Mercenaries and I have always loved those sorts of mechanics in ARPGs. One of my favorite aspects of Diablo III was building out my companion to buff the things that were weak in my build, and that is largely what players did in order to make some truly busted builds. The real meta of the league was doing some sort of build that could apply large amounts of Lightning damage, and then using Doryani’s Prototype on your mercenary, to debuff all of the mobs in your presence to have large amounts of negative lighting resistance. I think the build that I ran as my second in the league managed to get close to -300% Lightning Resistance while dealing a ton of damage with Storm Brand of Indecision. It was thoroughly busted but lord did I have a lot of fun playing this league.

Monster Hunter Wilds

There will be some of you who do not remember just how much I got into Monster Hunter World when it released in 2018 both on the original PS4 release, and later when it came out on PC in August of that same year. I had never really mainlined a Monster Hunter game despite trying to dabble in them on the mobile platforms, but this game sucked me in and stole so much of my time. Monster Hunter Wilds was a return to the same style of game as Worlds and when it launched I had a heck of a lot of fun playing it. Sadly I did not really stick around as much as I thought I might, but that does not discount the fact that I had an awful lot of fun playing it. I probably would have played it more but every time Ammo, Sita and I tried to group up I started having network problems. Capcom… has some of the shittiest grouping systems ever, and if they got someone from a western live service game to come unfuck their game interface… I think folks would be around far longer. I only put in around 60 hours, but it was 60 hours well spent.

Last Epoch – Beneath Ancient Skies

On August 21st Last Epoch dropped a pretty signfiicant update with Beneath Ancient Skies which added a whole new chapter to the game and a new league mechanic hunting down primal monsters and chosing to evolve them making them more difficult and rewarding. I had a really fun league with this game, but ultimately I burned through it pretty quickly. I played a Fire Minions Necromancer build and then ultimately hopped on the Thorns damage train for quite possibly the stupidest build I have ever played in any game where I am just nuking the entire screen with thorns damage. The new act was a lot of fun and it is probably the best content they have added into the game to date. The primal league mechanic was also a lot of fun, and each time this game expands it keeps getting better. I think the challenge for me is that I “finish” with the game way faster than I do with Path of Exile. I reach a point with my builds where I have seen everything that I really want to see and really pushing to the true pinnacle content of the game requires more hours than I really want to dump into it. That is not a failing of the game and more a case that it still needs more years to cook before it will be as rich of an experience as Path of Exile has.

Path of Exile – Legacy of Phrecia Event

Earlier when I talked about Mercenaries of Trarthus, part of the reason why that league was so damned much fun is that it had been a literal year since we last got a new league in the game. So much of GGG’s time was being devoted to the care and feeding of the fledgling Path of Exile II, that the POE core felt ignored. That is not to say things were not happening, we had a few fun private leagues like the Pohx League event, but there was one thing that probably took the cake. Almost as a shadow drop, Grinding Gear Games gave us the Legacy of Phrecia alternative ruleset event where every single one of the 19 Ascendancy classe were replaced. It was wild to play through this and I played a Righteous Fire Scavenger… which is the alternative version of the Scion. It was so much fun, and now this game mode exists as an alternate ruleset that you can use to create custom leagues. There is part of me though that wishes at some point all of the Phrecia ascendancies go core and become just alternate options allowing us 38 different ascendancy choices in the game.

Destiny Rising

Destiny Rising is essentially my game of the year…. but it does not get the top slot for reasons I will talk about later. This is a gacha game from Net Ease that remixes the tried and true Destiny format, but also makes it a heck of a lot more enjoyable in the process. There is no reason why I should be loving a Gacha game as much as I am, because I thought Genshin Impact broke me of that. However… Destiny Rising is shockingly fair when it comes to its Gacha mechanics. I have 3 accounts, 2 of which I have spent zero money on… and they both feel like I have plenty of things to do without having spent a dime. The whole three acccouints thing is largely because I am trying to maintain a guild when there are really only two or three of us that are actively playing. That is a whole other discussion. If you ever loved Destiny at any point in the past, you owe it to yourself to check out Destiny Rising. It is so damned much fun and really streamlines what made that game great. If you DO end up playing… hit me up because we certainly can use some more active players in our guild to do dailies.

Guild Wars 2 Fractal Incursion Event

My “Game of the Year” really goes to more specifically an event of the year. In September, Guild Wars 2 shadow dropped an event called the Fractal Incursion. This added a new feature to the game which allowed you to randomly queue for Fractals, giving the game what it needed so badly… a more modern group finder. Not only did they do this… they bribed the fuck out of us to run tons of them by providing a path to a piece of legendary armor, and also giving you a pathway to get said armor for every single weight class in the game. The end result was that Lion’s Arch specifically around the Mists portal was busier than at any point I have ever seen in this game’s history. The above screenshot was taken one morning when I was working on my blog post… so completely off peak hours for either EU or NA and it was STILL packed. Better yet we are going to be getting a version of this same group finder for a combined version of Raids and Strikes later this year. This has breathed so much new life into Guild Wars 2, and prompted us to have some really fun Thursday night fractal groups as we all chain ran them trying to get through the achievements. Absolutely the highlight of my gaming year, and on the 13th I believe we are getting a return of the Fractal Rush event so looking forward to that as well.

Those were my games and gaming events of the year. I am sure it looks pretty different than the lists for most people. I did not really play much in the way of single player experiences this year. I hope to remedy that in 2026, but who knows where that will go. My happy place tends to be listening to an audiobook while plugging away at a mechanically interesting but narratively devoid experience. Even for this coming year my games list will be the games that I played, not necessarily the games that came out so at some point when I finally do get around to beating Clair Obscur it will probably make a list. Anyways. Were there any unusual games that made your personal Games of the Year list? Drop me a line below.

Hearts Filthy Lesson

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Good Morning Folks. One of the unwritten promises of this blog is that I will be open with you all about my life and what is going on in it. I might not give you the totality of a story, with all of the names, dates, and places… but you can be sure that I will give you the general flow of the tale and all of the important bits of information. On the 4th I wrote a post called I Resolve to Live, and the crux of that is reaching some decisions about my life as I rebuild it after the death of my spouse. Most of it is making some decisions about who I am going to be going forward, but there was a small bit of it… where I admitted to you all that I had been in a fledgling chat-based relationship for a few weeks at that point, and things were starting to get a bit more serious.

im sorry i’m doing this early, i don’t think i can do this right now, it just feels a lot i’m sorry id love to stay friends bc we still know so so so much for each other i’m just so overwhelmed

Monday morning around 3 am I woke up as often happens because my bladder forced me to. As I was rolling over to go back to sleep… I had the misfortune of checking my phone and seeing the above message. Suffice to say I did not in fact go back to sleep as planned. In fact I was pretty much up from that moment on, and struggled through all of Monday in a sleep deprived and quite emotional stupor. I both apologize and praise everyone that talked to me on Mastodon and Bluesky that day, because I was certainly in my feels about what was happening. I’ve talked with “Ren” a few times after that statement and I think we maybe just got caught up in the whirlwind that a chat-based relationship can be.

So it is important to know that this is not new ground for me. I was a certified IRC Junkie during the mid 90s and that is ultimately how I met my first wife because we both were. Chat-based relationships can be so fast, because you end up furiously talking for as many moments as you can squeeze out of the day… staying up way too late just to see one more message from this other person. We used to say that a day on chat felt like a month in real-time anywhere else, and that is true… but it is a false sense of intimacy. You don’t really know that other person until you start trying to put motions in order to maybe begin to take it into the real world. As a result… chat-based relationships often implode like this at a moments notice and without much good reason. At least on some level… so much of it was intoxicating for me personally because it was caught up in the nostalgia of days gone by and a different version of myself.

Sometimes it is really important to have someone in your life that knows you from before the person you are now. “The Librarian” is that for me. We went to High School together, managed to somehow stay in contact throughout the years, and represents one of the few “men” in my life that I have ever been able to achieve a deep meaningful emotional bond with. They reminded me at length of all of the horrible and tragic relationships that I had prior to finding my spouse, and that it was a fools errand to even begin to contemplate that this first attempt out the gate was ever going to succeed. I also unburdened my soul with all of the specific details of this one in particular and they wanted to whack me upside the head. Taking all of the data into account… it was never going to work, not even close to ever working.

i’m sorry i just can’t handle it all at once and so much happened at once, and like i said i am uncomfortable with things that are good for me and you are

i just need a small break away honestly.. figure out exactly where i am and what i’m doing.. i can’t lie, a lot happened last night that made me really think about how i’m just not really ready for something long term right now.. and i know you’re wanting that eventually

So at the end of the day, I think I was just in a different place than she was. We’ve talked a few times off and on and I am genuine about attempting to be friend at some point in the future. It’s likely best that we do not talk for awhile, given the rapid growth and rapid disassembly of all of this. At first I got a version of “It’s Not You, It’s Me” that was thoroughly dissatisfying as that always ever is, but later I got the above more nuanced take. They know that at some point I want someone in my life that is going to be there for me, for the long haul, and they are not really sure they do. We had two different starting points, and two different endpoints… and since I was starting to develop feelings, I am not sure I could handle things moving forward on a purely casual basis. Like I said the other day, the fact that I felt anything is more of a gift than “Ren” will ever known, because I legitimately thought my heart was dead. I had not felt anything but pain in over six months. The fact that I realize I am capable of any sort of feeling is practically a miracle and going to be the thing that I really take away from this. The circumstances were wrong, and the person was wrong… but the plumbing and mechanical aptitude for feeling still exists.

So in all of the flailing around I did on social media… I made a move that is quite possibly the most egotistical thing that I have ever done. I posted the above message on both Bsky and Mastodon, because I have no clue who is into me… and this is a recurring theme in my life. As “The Librarian” reminded me… I spent plenty of time chasing folks who were of zero good for me… while ignoring people who genuinely cared for me. So with this hamfisted effort, I was just throwing it out there that if someone has secretly had designs on me for years… but never moved on it because of my marriage, that maybe right now was the time to tell me about it. I had all sorts of people boosting this… which is wild to me, but thank you very much for supporting my nonsense.

this could only happen to you

The above quote is verbatim from my sibling Ace when I told them that a Soft Kinky Nerd Girl did in fact come out of the woodwork. I was talking with a friend of mine yesterday and in the middle of a bunch of awkward discussion about the things I had been going through… she threw out that she almost responded to the message on Bsky that I posted on Monday, but didn’t have the bravery to do so. That she had a massive crush on me at various points through our chat history, but never moved on it because I was taken. We’ve been friends for around twenty years at this point, and talked off and on the entire time with various degrees of frequency. I know some of her past, she knows some of mine, because we were close enough friends to be open and honest with each other about the things that we were going through in our life. Like I have said before, I have very rarely bonded with men, but I often bond pretty strongly with the women friends in my life.

From this point forward I am going to use the code word “Erasure” for her, because I don’t want the added pressure of having prying eyes on our actions. This is someone that I interact with publicly from time to time and I want to do whatever I can to keep the pressure off us. She offhandedly said how much she liked the band Erasure, and normally I would use a profession based moniker… but she refers to herself as a “Babysitter” and that gives the wrong impression. We talked for a bit last night and it was shockingly comfortable, even though I was asking some awkward questions. Mostly I wanted to hear in her voice that the feelings she professed were genuine, or at least once were in this case. She lives a state away from me, within reasonable but not convenient driving distance. So at some point I am sure we will meet up and try and figure out if we feel anything for each other in person.

In the meantime I am going to be moving very slowly at getting to know her better. We’ve always been the sort of people that would talk very regularly for a few months, then life would get in the way and we would fade apart… and then one of us would get the nerve to ping the other and apologize for not talking more… and we would be back to normal like no time had ever passed. There is a very easy back and forth between our conversations, and I have always appreciated it. I know some of the struggles that she has gone through in the past, and I had a much easier lot in life. However we are both stable and functional adults, and neither of us needs saving. Things could start in a far worse place than having someone you already trust a heck of a lot, and have shared countless details of your life with over the years. My wife was someone that I knew for about a year before we got together, and I think it is probably more important that someone is my friend than any other trait when it comes to a long term relationship.

I know I am still really broken, and in truth…. in many ways they are too about various things. This is going to be a slow climb that we take together, and the most important thing to me is that we remain friends no matter what happens here. That is always the scary thing of taking something like this to the next level… is that you don’t want to damage this comfortable stable foundation that you have built up. The thing with “Ren” was that it was so new and fleeting, that I felt like I had to hold onto it with both hands for fear the wind would blow it away. “Erasure” is stable, and someone who has been a constant in my life for literal decades… I can walk away and take time for myself and know that she is not going anywhere. We’ve survived countless gaps in our communication just fine, and always… came back and started talking like zero time had passed. I don’t need to mind the ship to keep it from steering off into oblivion because the course is pretty straight and stable… we just have to decide if we really want to go down it.

No drastic changes… no fast movements. I just felt like I owed it to my readers who are not avid followers of social media to catch you up on what had transpired. The whole “one soft kinky nerd girl found” portion will be news to the social media folks as well. Ace curses me for once again “Bel Luck” playing a role here, because my dumb ass plea into the void should not have worked, but it seemingly did. We will see where things go from here with “Erasure” but I have always liked that band as well… so it might just work. I stole the title of the post from The Hearts Filthy Lesson by David Bowie, which comes off the concept album Outside… which I think I might be one of the only fans of. It just seemed fitting.

2025 Year in Review: The Movies

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Good Morning Folks! This morning I am keeping it going with my year in review series as this time I talk about some of the movies that I watched. Normally speaking I would say that these are movies that both impressed me or disappointed me enough to have something to talk about. In this case… I mostly just enjoyed all of them for various reasons. With everything that was going on this year, I leaned way more heavily into YouTube, Books, and Serialized content than I did on movies. However I did buy a fancy new television and a nice soundbar setup, which caused a significant uptick for awhile in movie viewing. There are tons of things that I did not watch last year and will probably watch in the coming year. Normally speaking I would say these are things that I watched in a given calendar year, but I also think in this case everything in the list actually came out last year.

This morning I am also going to try something a little different. I did this the other day for a friend who was dyslexic, and I recorded an alternate track of narration for my blog post. I don’t think this is going to be something that I can reasonably do for EVERY post, but I thought it might be interesting to experiment with it. So essentially I am going to write this post in full, and then come back by and talk about things again, not necessarily following the written script…. so you will end up with two slightly different experiences. Hopefully it works and drop me a line if you participated in this experiment and enjoyed it.

Happy Gilmore 2

This is probably the biggest shock for me of the year is that one… a Happy Gilmore sequel was released, and two… that it was really freaking good. There is a lot of heart in this movie and it is well worth the watch even if you have not liked anything Adam Sandler has released in years. For me he peaked at The Wedding Singer, but this movie is charming as fuck especially for those of us who grew up during his heyday. The real take away of this movie though is how amazing Bad Bunny is in a comedic role. This man is delightful and has been charming in pretty much any situation I have seen him in, but he stole every single scene he was in as the busboy turned caddy. Seriously, you need to watch this for no reason other than just how funny he is as Oscar. I hope we see him in more comedic roles going forward.

Tron: Ares

If I had a disappointment of the year, it would probably be Tron: Ares. Everything about this movie seemed like it was primed to blow me the away. You have a Nine Inch Nails soundtrack, you have these really cool red and black suits… and I obsessively loved Tron: Legacy and was pretty hungry for a sequel. This movie is not that. This movie is its own thing and clearly sort of exists as a side adventure in the world of Tron lore. It doesn’t really dabble much in the tale of Flynn and Tron, but instead sort of goes off into its own territory telling the tale of Sark. If treated with the appropriate perspective… I enjoyed the film a lot and look forward to what is supposedly the proper sequel to Tron: Legacy that is coming next. The film has some really fucking cool visuals though, and I think that was sort of its entire point. I am always deeply suspicious of Jared Leto, his literal cult leader status, and what it brings to the movies he is in… but for the most part it did not seem to adversely impact the end product.

Adulthood

Now we move on to very very dark comedy in the form of Adulthood. This is a tale of siblings, family, death, and inherited secrets. Josh Gad does an amazing job of playing the deadbeat manchild that never quite grew up, and is chasing a goal that he will never seem to reach. Kaya Scodelario does an excellent job at playing the sibling that was forced to be the adult for everyone in the household, and continues to be as things start to fall apart. There are a number of genuinely hilarious moments and Billie Lourd does an excellent job playing the effective villain of this tale… where everyone is already a wholly bad person. It is not necessarily an amazing movie, but it is a fun watch.

Takeout

This film is a bit rough around the edges, and is of all things a Tubi exclusive… which means it is on a free movie service. However what you end up getting is this really gritty horror/slasher/drama set around the folks who are working at a very low rent fast food restaurant in the middle of nowhere late at night. The character actors are pretty uneven in their delivery. For example N’kone Mametja does an excellent job in the lead role as Nova, and Daniel Janks puts up a great performance as a professor character. Even Darron Meyer does a pretty solid job and is an actor that I have liked in other things before. The characters of Harper and Susan the owner of the restaurant however are thoroughly unlikable in mostly annoying ways. I enjoyed it and it is worth a watch… and has a relatively decent plot twist… but other than that it largely is just a pretty stylized take on the slasher-in-one-location genre.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

I am not sure we will ever return to the heyday of Marvel, where we are getting multiple banger must see movie experiences every year. However I still think last year was a pretty decent year for Superhero films. I’ve always low key enjoyed the Fantastic Four, but never really felt like anyone managed to capture what I enjoyed about it. As a kid it was always about the Nasapunk futurism and interesting technologies… more than the actual superpowers that they had. This film gives us that feeling in spades as it takes us to an alternative version of history that is deeply compatible with the whole Walt Disney world of tomorrow vibe. It has been so long since we have seen anything close to optimistic futurism, and this movie delivered on that. Sure things went off the rails and that civilization was essentially taken to the brink of destruction, but it was delightful seeing it on screen and rendered beautifully.

Superman

Last year also delivered the best Superman film that we have seen since the 80s heyday of Christopher Reeves. If this is at all what we can expect from the James Gunn DC Universe, then I am all on board. We got the first rendition of Kryto the Superdog I believe in a live action film ever, and it was delightful. We also got a cameo for the Milly Alcock played Supergirl character coming to the screen this year. I am on board with all of this. Essentially the DCU had to start somewhere and I think this was a good place. The blue boyscout has always been one of the major pillars of DC comics, and now they just need to nail a good Batman film set in this shared universe… and they will own my soul. Gotham is my favorite setting and always will be, and the best version is the old Batman Animated Series. I have hope and quite honestly I think James Gunn gets where things need to go.

Bring Her Back

There are sometimes experiences that are so weird that you have to experience them for yourself. This movie is a fucking mess and do not watch if you are not prepared for gore and body horror. Sometimes resurrection goes wrong, and takes way more effort than it is worth. This is one of those situations. Holy shit is this movie fucked up, but in the best possible of ways. I can’t say it was phenomenal but it was really interesting. That is all I am really going to say here. Watch it if you like twisted things and have a reasonably strong stomach.

Weapons

If you want phenomenal genre defining masterpiece though… look no further than weapons. I’ve loved Zach Cregger since his days in White Kids you Know. The Gallon of PCP sketch is still one of the funniest things I have ever seen, and Zach plays the titular character with his Gallon jug of PCP. I had thoroughly missed his transition into horror auteur, but apparently there is something about making people laugh that works beautifully for also scaring the shit out of them. I also highly suggest going back and watching Barbarian, which is fucked up in so many ways but is an amazing viewing experience. Everything about Weapons was just perfect… and it is a film effectively told out of order through the point of view of a bunch of different characters… all looping through the same time. Once you have seen multiple perspectives you start to learn more details about what is happening before it all comes crashing down in the final act. Pure magic. I hope this sweeps all of the award shows.

K-Pop Demon Hunters

It is hard to deny that this was the year of the K-Pop Demon Hunters. They dominated everything and even the little Korean donut shop that I go to on Sundays… has specialty Rumi, Mira, and Zoey themed donuts. If you somehow made it through 2025 without watching this… stop what you are doing… go watch it… you will thank me later. It is overwhelmingly charming. I do not care at all about K-Pop or Boy/Girl Bands in general, but this show is infectuous and has so many great characters. I would die for Derpy the Tiger and Sussie the Crow. This movie is especially important for you to watch if you have kids, and more importantly if those children are little girls. They need to see this film. I would be shocked however if they are not already indoctrinated into this madness. While I hope Weapons does well, this is probably the film that took the hearts of the world by storm… especially because no one was really expecting much from it.

28 Years Later

I’ve been a fan of this series since the first film, and I still think it is one of the better zombie films that we have ever gotten. 28 Years Later is something that I was really looking forward to… and I can’t necessarily say I am disappointed in it… but it was not the film I was expecting. This is more a tale centered around a family than anything else, but it does happen to exist within the settings of a truly bizarre and interesting world that has grown up around a rage virus based zombie apocalypse. Nature is healing… in weird and interesting ways, and it is at least cool to see what a potential future for this world looks like. I thought Ralph Fiennes character of Doctor Ian Kelson pretty much stole the movie though, and I am very interesting to see where the next film which is a side-story centered around the Bone Temple takes us.

The Monkey

Another really great horror film and dark comedy this year is The Monkey. It is centered around a cursed object that ultimately leads to major catastrophe befalling the owners. Essentially each time the monkey drums… someone dies in a truly disturbing way. The narrative largely focuses on twin brothers… played by the same actor… who deliver WILDLY different performances… and the role they have been forced into as the caretaker of this malicious object. There are a lot of genuinely hilarious moments that center around death, so I have to admit this was a great film for me to watch while I was grieving… because sometimes it is important to be capable of laughing at loss. I am wired to love horror films… but not everyone is. Some of the deaths are pretty bloody and gruesome, so if you have a weak stomach this might not be your film. I enjoyed it thoroughly though, but also I am pretty freaking twisted at times.

Freaky Tales

Now we finally arrive at the film that is truly my movie of the year. Freaky Tales is an anthology of interlocking tales that center around Oakland California in the late 80s. The wildest part about this narrative is that some of it is based on real world events and people, and KQED has a good article/podcast episode talking about this. You have Rainbow Punks, Fascist Cops, a Hitman with a Heart of Gold, and an Astral Projecting Samurai Basketball player. What more could you want? Rap legend Too Short serves as the narrator for all of these tales, and while the totality is a bit rough around the edges at times, it is a really good experience to watch. I think more than anything the reason why this is my movie of the year is because it kind of came from out of nowhere, and has so much heart that I can’t help but love it.

Were there movies this year that you loved that I missed? Do you disagree on my takes on any of the films I did talk about? drop me a line below.