Don’t worry, I can already hear all of your complaints. “Three posts in a row about fixing your room up? What’s the deal Jason, why even bother?”
To be fair, until about an hour ago I was not going to put anything up on my blog today. I have two ideas set for tomorrow and an event on Friday, so the rest of my week in writing is planned out and I figured that could be enough of an excuse to skip a day.
But then I realized I would honestly feel terrible about myself if I broke my New Year streak so early.
So this quick n’ dirty post is mostly for me to make sure I don’t have a gap, and if you want to just come back tomorrow when I have a Fire Emblem Heroes banner release and a movie review lined up, I won’t harbor any ill will.
Yesterday I talked about how my room hadn’t changed much since the last time I showed it off. That was early into the cleaning process and it turned out to be a lie. A lot of the tchotchkes taking up space on my countertops hasn’t changed in terms of contents, but the layout is pretty new.
For instance, here’s the top of my TV cabinet — now featuring a fancy new backdrop:
Told you that’s where I was going to put the Naruto poster. Even if I wound up having to move Diancie to make space.
As usual, my line-up of chess club trophies from elementary school remains in-tact. For years I’ve adored the way younger me happened to conveniently win enough trophies in specific placements to create an upscaling pattern, and I always put them up.
Except now in front of the trophies are the Luna wand I got from Universal Studios and a toy car that I happened to pull out of the dust and turmoil underneath that same cabinet when my sister and I pushed it flush against the wall.
We did so to clear some room next to my desk for where this Gladeo computer is going to go. Though it’s admittedly strange to not have that cabinet take up a diagonal space.
Fun fact, on top of that convertible I also found a list of interview questions from when I covered my friends taking part in the Bay Math League way back in middle school.
Now that’s definitely a story for another day. Remind me to tell it, because I actually have some fun throwback material I can use.
Beyond that car, the most notable changes to the collection are that Han Solo is on the left side instead of the right, replaced by Tanuki Mario — who used to be on top of my main clothing drawer.
I also added a few plushies to make the right side into a Pokémon-dedicated corner and it’s one of the best ideas I’ve ever had. I’m considering moving some other posters over there as well to really complete the picture, but I don’t know how much it would mess with the feng shui.
You know, if you believe in that sort of thing.
I took Chinese for three years in high school so I feel like I’m somewhat obliged to try believing in it.
The next most changed surface in the room is that aforementioned main clothing drawer, which is constantly subject to me coming up with new Amiibo configurations:
All things considered this is probably the most stable configuration I’ve tried yet, and I think my Star Wars legos fit in pretty well on this side of the room.
However, this wasn’t the first layout I tried.
Originally I thought about spacing the Amiibo out across both surfaces in a curving manner:
I love the way this set-up looks, but unfortunately it took up too much space.
Saying that is a bit crazy when I realize I have 19 Smash Bros. character Amiibo and there are 73 fighters so far? But still.
Needed some room to fit all my other stuff too.
On the bright side I have an outlet like this to save a photo of the curving configuration, since it is one of my favorites aesthetically.
I think that about covers all the major changes to my room decor starting out 2019. As usual I’m sure it’ll be subject to adjustments as I pick up more useless garbage throughout the year, but for now I’m pretty happy with how it looks!
Hopefully this filler post was worth your time, because it wound up being more fun for me to write than I had expected.
Oh yeah, I’m clickbaiting all you social media folks today.
It’ll be worth it. I promise.
After an interview fell through this afternoon, in order to not be a complete bum for the day I decided to finally put my full energy into another New Year tradition that I’ve been half-assing for a little while now:
It will sometime soon when I finally get this new computer together and put in a proper spot, but for now you can get the gist of things from that other post. All the decor is mostly the same.
Arguably the most notable thing I had originally wanted to talk about with this post was how nice it feels to finally clear off a usually cluttered surface.
Because just look at this:
Especially with the new calendar, it’s looking pretty slick.
At least until you turn around and look at where all the stuff wound up…
Slightly less slick.
Though I’ll admit it’s also satisfying to remind myself how much I usually put up without it looking too busy.
However, if you’re keen on picking up context clues with blog post headlines, featured images and past tense language in text, you know that I wound up finding something completely different to talk about.
Something much more whacky and interesting.
Hidden away behind my bookshelf in an unopened plastic casing was this astounding poster:
You may be wondering why I decided to just put up a picture of the woman’s face instead of the full image for my Featured Image, and to be fair it’s 99 percent just to be funny clickbait.
But it’s also because that was genuinely my reaction when I first unraveled this thing.
Now you can’t just dig up something this bizarre and not try to do a little bit of research into it.
As the corner of the poster suggests, this was a promotional poster for “Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution,” a 2014 game released on the most notable last gen consoles besides the Wii U.
I never played the game, and in fact I don’t think I’d even heard of it until right now.
But after a while, employees just started to give them away with anything. I must have picked it up alongside some totally different game and forgot about it.
I shared this rare finding with my friends and together we did a bit more fun elaboration into it. For instance, my friend Nina (who lives in Japan and is studying to be a translator) gave us a bit of insight into exactly what it says:
Knowing this is basically like a cheesy B-movie poster is kind of fascinating, honestly.
Then my friend Jonathan went out to YouTube and found us some footage of Mecha Naruto in action.
It’s uhh…
It’s something else.
Probably the most beautiful nightmare fuel I’ve seen in a long time.
Just look at his ultimate jutsu. I’m dumbfounded staring at such a glorious spectacle and frankly want to go thank anyone who was involved in the executive decision to include it in the game.
It’s just that good.
I’m absolutely putting this up on my wall tonight. Probably right up next to my Mega Diancie poster.
Gotta fit that call to action in here somewhere, so let me know what kind of weird stuff you’ve found while cleaning up around the house! This is probably one of the more strange things I’ve ever dug up, so I’d be curious to know if any of you have some similarly unexpected items hiding away.
Oh boy, it’s a brand new year! Everything feels fresh and crisp, absolutely rife with possibilities. I can’t imagine what kind of great blog posts are going to come out of 2019!
…
What’s that? Fire Emblem Heroes updated?
Welp. If that’s not the most Jason’s Blog way of starting off the new year, I don’t know what is.
Grants Speed +3. At the start of the turn, inflicts Attack, Speed, Defense and Resistance -4 on the nearest foe within four spaces through their next actions.
Glimmer (Cooldown = 2)
Boosts damage dealt by 50 percent.
Swift Sparrow (A Skill)
If unit initiates combat, grants Attack and Speed +4 during combat.
Desperation (B Skill)
If unit’s Health ≤ 75 percent and unit initiates combat, unit can make a follow-up attack before foe can counterattack.
Joint Hone Speed (C Skill)
At the start of the turn, if unit is adjacent to an ally, grants Speed +5 to unit and adjacent allies for one turn.
Effective against flying foes. At the start of the turn, inflicts Speed -7 on foe on the enemy team with the highest Speed through its next action.
Reposition (Range = 1)
Target ally moves to opposite side of unit.
Attack/Speed Bond (A Skill)
If unit is adjacent to an ally, grants Attack and Speed +5 during combat.
Attack/Speed Link (B Skill)
If a Movement Assist skill is used by unit or targets unit, grants Attack and Speed +6 to both units for one turn.
Even Resistance Wave (C Skill)
At the start of even-numbered turns, grants Resistance +6 to unit and adjacent allies for one turn (bonus granted to unit even if no allies are adjacent).
At the start of the turn, inflicts Attack and Speed -5 on foe on the enemy team with the highest Defense through its next action.
Rehabilitate (Range = 1)
Restores Health = 50 percent of Attack -10 (Minimum of 7). If target’s Health is ≤ 50 percent, the lower the target’s Health, the more Health is restored.
Earthfire Balm (Cooldown = 1)
When healing an ally with a staff, grants Attack and Defense +6 to all allies for one turn.
Wrathful Staff (B Skill)
Calculates damage from staff like other weapons.
Even Defense Wave (C Skill)
At the start of even-numbered turns, grants Defense +6 to unit and adjacent allies for one turn (bonus granted to unit even if no allies are adjacent).
With Legendary Azura having literally just happened and the Christmas units still in rotation, I was a little burnt out coming into this New Year’s banner.
Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to see that the Múspell and Nifl units getting more love. Even if they still had to be in Hoshido to make this another pseudo-Fates banner.
But I paid little-to-no attention to what they were actually offering. I wasn’t strongly anticipating any of the units besides Laevatein, as she’s my favorite.
It seemed Intelligent Systems knew that, as they offered me a little New Year’s gift:
Yee.
Having paid their skills more mind now, I can easily say Laevatein is the weakest of the bunch… But character preference is half the battle.
We’re getting free summon tickets for this banner, so I’ll keep throwing some orbs at it to get some of the Nifl units. Any of them look great honestly.
Luckily, even if I’m ambiguous on the units, there’s plenty happening at the start of 2019 to keep me invested. Not only are there January quests, we also have New Year’s celebration orbs, Aether Raids quests AND a new run of the Tempest Trials.
Plus, of course, there’s the Paralogue.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
The interesting thing about Paralogue 29 is that there really isn’t too much of a story to discuss. Rather, it serves as an outrealm circumstance of sorts.
It stipulates how great things could have been if the Nifl and Múspell siblings teamed up to defeat Surtr instead of slaughtering one another. Because they get along quite well.
Laegjarn and Fjorm have a moment together:
As do Gunnthrá and Laevatein:
And everything ends with the very sweet sentiment of Laegjarn’s wish:
It’s a feel-good moment meant to wrap up the Book II character arcs.
Unfortunately, it would ring out much more sweetly if we didn’t have the knowledge that in our universe they do, in fact, all slaughter one another and end their stories in a more somber note.
Alright I know, it’s silly for me to start the year off with one of these. But what can I say? It’s an easier banner this time around, and that gives me the chance to spend the first day of 2019 relaxing.
… If that weren’t obvious by the fact that I seem to have completely abandoned my desire to put these out early in the morning. *Glances anxiously at the clock*
I’m sure you all don’t mind, though.
Still convinced I’m the only one who enjoys these posts.
But that said I dostill enjoy them, even in our new year of 2019! There are still interesting little tidbits that entice me. Like the fact that Laegjarn is more prominent in the Paralogue than Hríd in spite of being a Tempest Trials reward.
So let me know what you think about this first banner of 2019, and what you might be looking forward to seeing later into the year! Lord knows I’ll still be blathering on about this game.
I’m sure most people would agree that 2018 was a maddening political clusterfuck, no matter which side of the aisle or where in the world you sit.
While I can’t help but agree with the hope of moving past that in the new year… At the same time, I sort of disconnected myself from the news-y world in 2018 and focused a lot more on myself.
Overall that wasn’t a bad decision. A lot of nice things came out of the more chill personal year!
Seemingly the most poignant place to start charting out my year is with my health. That feels ironic considering the first week of Winter Break was spent dying in bed, but I’m talking about the grand scheme of things.
A sizable chunk of my 2017 year in review was devoted to finding out about my blood disorder, ITP, and crazy things like the hospital stay that resulted from our early attempts to treat it.
It’s kind of insane to think that we’re more than a year out from that now, especially since so much of my stress at the time was getting better enough to cover Milo Yiannopoulos at Halloween.
Tangent aside, this year I never had a big medical scare. In fact, the whole incident inspired me to be better to myself, as this summer I started regularly going to the gym for the first time.
The summer was also significant to my personal growth this year because I started my Summer 2018 Initiative: Writing something here on my blog every day.
My drive to force myself to become better at my craft each and every day persisted past the summer and into the fall semester. Then my buddy Spencer encouraged me to try to be concise with allof my posts for the sake of practicing, which has definitely helped.
You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve cut an extra 500 words off of these since.
Sure, I may have found out I’m not a fan of drinking, but a whole new world of spending time with people has opened up.
Back to the original point though. Putting more effort into my blog has proven fruitful, because as it turns out posting something every day really drives up that website traffic:
Can’t wait to see how big that bar gets in 2019 when I hopefully get a whole year of pseudo-daily posts out!
Also on the media front, I finally caved and got a few new gizmos to play with this year. Instagram, Paypal, LinkedIn, Discord…
I don’t know that I’d say any of them have significantly impacted my life per-say, but Instagram and LinkedIn have been interesting insights into the world of photo-based and work-based media.
Ah, did I say the dreaded “w” word? Guess I should talk about that too.
2018 was a bizarre transitional period for work. The spring semester had me stepping down as an editor at the Daily Titan so I could focus on writing for the journalism capstone class.
However, I decided not to return to the paper for the fall semester. Gave more priority to my major and minor classes, knowing graduation is slowly rearing its ugly head.
Quicker than I thought it would be at the beginning of 2018, I should say. A really happy part of the year was finally finding a mentor for my Senior Honors Project and working things out with the program director to graduate on-time rather than needing an extra semester!
But otherwise that seems like as much fellating myself as I can handle for one year.
So! Here’s hoping even more great things happen in 2019, where it seems I’m slated to finally move past my schooling days and enter the workforce full-time.
Yikes.
Let me know about some of the great things that happened with you this year, with all the negativity buzzing around on TV I’d absolutely love to hear why 2018 was great for people!
When I watched Sony Picture’s “Venom,” my major take-away was that the post-credits preview scene from “Into the Spider-Verse” was the best part.
Little did I know how right I was when I said my time could have been far better spent.
I just walked out of this Spider-Man adventure, having seen it with my friend Juan. Frankly I regret every single day that it took me to see this movie.
Firstly because it’s an absolute joy visually and from a narrative standpoint. It hits things out of the park in every category. That’s also from someone who isn’t very knowledgable about Spider-Man lore, so there are whole other categories I can’t appreciate as well as others!
But I also regret not seeing it sooner because holding off has left me in a very enigmatic place as far as what to say.
It took me 20 minutes of staring at a blank screen to figure out where to start because despite the unadulterated passion I had walking out of it, just what can I add to the conversation at this point in the film’s life cycle?
Yeah I know what you’re going to say, “Jason this is the Internet, it’s the place where opinions thrive.”
I get that. I probably wouldn’t have bothered writing anything if I didn’t feel like I should at least spread my opinion that “Into the Spider-Verse” is a film everyone should see, regardless of their feelings on comic book blockbusters.
The only problem is… I know for a fact I’m not the only person who has that opinion.
For weeks, all I’ve heard about this movie is that it’s phenomenal. The best comic book movie in years, if not ever.
I knew they couldn’t be lying, because the trailers did look great. Though I expected to walk out feeling like hype drove my expectations too high.
Yet… That’s not at all the case.
If anything I walked out of the theatre floored at how much this movie ruled IN SPITE of the over-hyped praise.
Not only does “Into the Spider-Verse” balance six different art styles at once with various Spider-people, it does so after proving itself with a masterful blend of comic book aesthetics so engrained in the narrative that not a single flashy effect feels superfluous.
Take notes Ang Lee, this is the movie you wanted to make with “Hulk” back in 2003.
But even with such a complex dance of art styles and truly fluid, engaging action , somehow the story doesn’t falter. Any joke or meme you could make about previous Spider-Man movies are addressed in the first few seconds, leaving audience members open for something completely novel.
From there, every single character is given a perfect amount of exposition.
There wasn’t a single person in this film that was not relatable or well-developed in some way. Other than some brief cameos who didn’t need anything to appear and be awesome.
It’s not a joke to say that “Into the Spider-Verse” crams in seven or eight origin stories and tells you just enough with each to feel invested better than some movies handle an entire 2-hour origin story.
Plus most of it is so comedic that barely any part of the film is dull. The sensory overload is welcomed.
The only moments that could be described as ‘duller’ in terms of that overloaded sensory splendor are poignant, emotional character-building scenes that all seem to appear exactly when they need to.
But with all that film fellating, the thing that truly astounded me about this Spider-Verse film was how little got spoiled for me.
If this were “Infinity War,” it would have been dangerous to go anywhere online because people like to slip spoilers into unexpected places. For this movie, I’ve seen nothing but praise and still got a ton of surprises.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say this movie has one of the best “secret villain” reveals I’ve seen in ever. I won’t say anything more.
The problem, however, is just that. I don’t know that there’s anything I can say that wouldn’t spoil a thing, or that you wouldn’t get out of some big media site review.
Especially since you should just see the damn movie!
After three Sam Raimi movies, two Amazing Spider-Men, a number of Marvel Cinematic Universe appearances and enough cartoons to choke a small village, the biggest piece of praise I can give “Into the Spider-Verse” is that it is truly fresh and original and an absolute joy to behold.
If you’re writing your list of New Year’s resolutions, be sure to add ‘watch this movie’ onto it if you haven’t already. Or even if you have already seen it, go see it again!
Just give this movie all the money, people. What more can I say?
Okay so in my end-of-year post earlier today I mentioned that I would be doing something “when New Year heroes dropped tomorrow.”
I apparently don’t know how to read dates because as it turns out they’re here for New Year’s Eve, not New Year’s Day.
Then I went to bed early last night before checking the game, so I never found out until this morning.
Oops.
That said, looks like you’re all getting two posts today, even though I was planning to try and use this as a kicking-off point to do a post every day for the first week of the new year. I’ll see if I can still get that to work out.
But enough pussyfooting around, let’s get into these Heroes, shall we?
Okay before I do get into these new heroes, I am actually still a little annoyed about this timing. Why aren’t the New Year heroes out on the first day of 2018? I feel like that would make so much more sense. Especially since there’s still one more day for the Winter/Christmas units. Why not just hold off one more day?
I suppose there’s no use complaining about it, it just does bug me a bit.
That said, I’m not necessarily mad that these new summonable heroes are here, because I do like them quite a bit.
I mentioned briefly in my Top 10 Games of 2017 list that I was going to try and figure out a way to either cut down on my Fire Emblem Heroes posts, or at least shorten them somehow so they aren’t quite as much work for me to produce so often.
I’m going to be trying a couple things in the next few posts, this time by distilling down the skills list for each new character through using the official descriptions. After all, for something like this there’s no better way to summarize information than to just have it in the original form, right?
Takumi is frankly the most ‘eh’ hero on this list for me. I really like his weapon (even though I’m disappointed that he doesn’t throw soup at people), especially in combination with a natural Moonbow, since together they give him repeated high special attack potential. However, the Attack and Resistance boost is a little situational because he needs to be next to someone, and Bowbreaker is contradictory if you want him to have boosted resistance. Plus, let’s be honest with ourselves, not many dagger-based units are viable. So all-and-all, I might skip out on Takumi for now, but we’ll see how good my luck is elsewhere.
Camilla is clearly the odd one out when it comes to these New Years heroes. While I acknowledge that it’s part of her character in the Birthright game’s conclusion that she travels Hoshido, I still can’t see a reason why they wouldn’t include a Hoshidan sibling that hasn’t gotten any love yet – Hinoka and Ryoma, namely. Well… Okay, I know why they would choose Camilla, because everyone loves her and probably spends a lot of money to get her… But still. She is special as our first sword-wielding Wyvern unit, which opens up the possibility of a fully balanced wyvern-based team, but otherwise she’s somewhat unremarkable too. Okay weapon effect that stacks with her ward skill alongside a strong special attack, but also a strangely combined boost to her Defense and Speed. Maybe it makes sense for her stat spread, but personally I’m not sure I understand it.
While Camilla is an odd flying unit in this banner, Azura is a freaking incredible flying unit in this banner. I’m not going to bury the lede here, she’s the unit I’m after right now. As far as I can recall, she’s also unique as an axe-wielding pegasus knight, but she’s also a flying unit with Azura’s signature Sing ability. That. Is. Awesome. Even if she doesn’t have the same beneficial weapon buff that the Performing Arts Azura has (in fact her weapon is basically a clone of Camilla’s, so it’s just ok), she does grant a large defense boost with her Earth Dance skill. Plus, she comes with Hone Fliers, arguably one of the best skills you’ll need on a flying unit focused team. Give this girl the Iote’s Shield Sacred Seal that was added during this last Tempest Trial, and I get the feeling she’s going to be an unstoppable force.
Honestly I’m really glad Azura’s skills look as good as they do. Even when I originally talked about these guys a few days ago I was convinced I would love Azura just because of her nice artwork, so it all just seemed to work out perfectly.
My only question is… What happened to Corrin, exactly?
Back in those leaks I talked about before, a bow-wielding Corrin was one of the featured heroes:
And he does, in fact, appear through the Paralogue missions that accompanied these heroes. Yet, he’s not in the main summoning focus banner, and the upcoming Winter’s Envoy vs. New Years Voting Gauntlet is not going to feature him as a hero to support. So what happened to him?
Is he going to be in a separate banner that drops on New Year’s Day? Is he going to be a future reward unit, perhaps in some sort of Grand Hero Battle or? Who knows.
I get the feeling Azura would have been my focus whether or not Corrin was here too, so I suppose his absence is alright for now. It’s given me more of a chance to blow all my orbs on green, after all.
Except for the one time I pulled a series of summons that didn’t include a green unit.
Which was the one time I naturally got a five star unit.
Love you Tharja, really I do… But you didn’t have to show up now you know.
Also why couldn’t you have shown up during my attempts at the Winter/Christmas banner?
Ah well, guess I can’t really complain about a new five star. Especially since this banner is going to be around for the entire month of January, so there’s going to be more than enough opportunities to get my Azura.
In the meantime, I’m getting a bunch of Cecilia clones all of a sudden, which means I’ll be able to keep improving mine in place of getting a Gunnthrá. Gotta love consolation prizes.
This story portion of the main event is probably going to be a short one, or at least a photo-heavy one. There really isn’t a hell of a lot to say about the Paralogue this time around besides the fact that Corrin shows up in it despite being absent elsewhere.
Even the maps you battle on aren’t super exciting for me this time around.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
I suppose there’s some traditional Japanese elements to them considering how Hoshido is heavily inspired by feudal Japan, but most of those references go right over my head if they’re there. As a result, all I really see is a couple of maps that are less visually enticing than the last few special holiday maps we’ve gotten for Halloween and Christmas.
But I digress. What exactly is the story here?
Well… You and the Order of Heroes start off by going to Hoshido to celebrate the New Year.
When you get there, the special heroes have already made their contracts with Princess Veronica, so as usual it’s right to battling – though you do get some interaction between the characters beforehand.
For example, leading into the first map, Corrin and Takumi talk about getting fortunes:
Spoiler alert, Takumi’s fortune says the exact same thing as Corrin’s fortune does. They’re just playing up the ‘Takumi doesn’t like Corrin’ thing I’m pretty sure.
The interactions between Azura and Camilla are a bit more interesting to me, admittedly.
Not going to lie, pretty sure they’re referring to the fact that her bust is way more restricted in this outfit than in… Just about any other outfit she gets in this game.
But that’s not the part that’s interesting to me. Rather, it’s the aspect of them interacting as sisters, playing on their relationship in Conquest version where Azura turns out to be the sibling from Nohr that was stolen away to Hoshido at a young age – opposite Corrin, as the plot goes.
It’s nice to see them have a moment to be sweet with one another from that perspective.
Even if it does get kind of weird.
Camilla is just a wonderfully awkward character in almost every respect. Honestly that’s one thing Heroes has done well, made me care more about her than I ever really did in the original games.
The final map is just about as generic as it gets. Everything leads in with the four heroes preparing to fight their last stand:
I’m definitely Takumi in this scenario.
Then you win the battle, and the Order of Heroes decide to stay back a bit and make wishes for the New Year.
As is characteristic, Alfonse wishes for world peace, Sharena wishes to be friends with everyone forever and Anna wishes to fill the coffers of the Order with lots and lots of money.
And that’s it. No more pomp and circumstance, no tie-in to a more overarching plot. Just a simple filler arc to celebrate the New Year, exactly what you might expect to see.
I suppose I can’t complain, after all we got an easy 12 orbs out of it. Plus, it houses my new dream hero Azura.
I will get to you eventually, Azura. No matter what it takes. As long as what it takes doesn’t include spending money because I’ve already done that too recently and I’m not starting bad habits for the New Year.
With that said, here’s all there is to say about this Heroes update. Like I said above, I’m going to keep experimenting with these to try and cut them down, so let me know what you think about trying to summarize the skill list using the list given in-game.
Also, let me know what you think of the New Year-themed heroes! And what you think about the absence of Corrin, for that matter. Will he appear soon? How will he appear? I’d love to know what you think.
The timely journalist in me couldn’t resist getting this post out the day the update happened, so now that this post is the last one I’m publishing for the year I’d like to wish everyone a happy and healthy 2018! May it be full of good times… And good luck when pulling heroes.
Looking back at my 2016 end-of-the-year post before starting this one off was a pretty interesting little experience. Mostly because I reflected on the fact that last year was a pretty universally divisive time with a lot of personal accomplishment that made things worth it all in the end.
This year, I have essentially the same thing to say. Except I would argue that the divisive part of things had been turned up to 11. Plus, while things have been great for me, a lot of things also have not been so great.
Spoiler alert, I’m basically just ready for 2017 to end.
Unlike in last year’s discussion, I won’t go too far into detail about my video game playing experiences this year. I kind of already did it with my top 10 games list the other day, even if that was in order of my personal enjoyment rather than the chronological order I played things.
I’m going to just leave this off as a ‘check that list out here‘ note rather than talking too much more about it, especially since I’m probably going to do a few more video game-centric posts soon enough.
Namely tomorrow when Fire Emblem Heroes New Year units are released.
To cover all of my bases in this post just in case you guys don’t want to look back, just know that I didn’t play nearly as many games as I would have liked this year, and while I thoroughly enjoyed just about everything I did play, it’s a shame I couldn’t have done more due to my time commitments.
Speaking of, those time commitments wound up bookmarking my 2017 more than my video games did in that respect.
The Daily Titan has been the main driving force of that throughout the year. While last spring semester was my first time being an editor for the paper alongside Megan Maxey, I continued on in that role both semesters this year, only getting better and better at the job (in my opinion, at least).
During the fall semester, I worked together with Sarah Wolstoncroft – who had been one of my amazing assistants the semester before. Then this last semester, I worked together with Brandon Pho – who again had been one of my amazing assistants the semester before. Amazing how that pattern works out in the smaller College-level news industry, especially when you’re one of the younger starting people in the room to observe it.
Looking back at my archive, I’ve written a total of 40 stories between these last two semesters combined. That’s a lot of writing, even kind of overwhelming to think back to considering everything else I balanced, and there are some of them I’ll probably never forget working on.
A couple of articles were really serious last minute things I’ve had to do, such as our reporting the night of the Las Vegas shooting. A couple of them have been little passion projects for things like video games, such as my reviews of the Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga remake and Fire Emblem Heroes. I’ve even done a few things I never quite expected to do at this point in what is a burgeoning career, like writing entire articles off of my phone while translating documents at Downtown Disney. The policies put into place by President Donald Trump, as well as things like the CSU-wide tuition increase, played big parts in the overarching issues we covered.
However, I think the stories I especially won’t forget are the massive projects I helped lead during my time as an editor.
During the spring came the work we did on Homeless in OC, a series that blossomed out of the Daily Titan advisor Bonnie Stewart’s Investigative Reporting class where I got to participate in the all night Point-In-Time count and do extended research into the Anaheim shelter system, particularly under Mercy House.
Spring was also the semester of the Eric Canin incident that shook up Cal State Fullerton. For those who don’t remember, at an anti-Trump rally early on in the year, an anthropology professor reportedly struck a member of the College Republicans club as both the protest and counter-protest made their way through campus. There wound up being many months worth of stories to follow as a political shitstorm erupted over the altercation, eventually resulting in the Professor coming back to teach as the verdict came out that he did strike the student, but there were enough caveats to the moment given it was his first offense that no harsh action was taken outside a few month’s suspension. That last story in particular was special for me in that our Chief Communications Officer Jeffrey Cook reached out specifically to give us information ahead of time so I could write a substantial story over the summer wrapping things up.
Part of the Canin story involved me growing a close relationship with members of the College Republicans club, which was extra useful come the fall semester when I got to be the lead reporter in our work on Milo Yiannopoulos coming to CSUF.
Granted, that whole experience did kind of wreck my Halloween this year, but the aspect of working on and learning from such a high-controversy story was something I wouldn’t change for the world.
The fall semester was also bookmarked by dealing with (current) University President Mildred Garcia. I got to be part of the team that did an interview with her toward the beginning of the semester, and I was also the person that covered the fact that she would be leaving at the end of the semester. In my opinion, it’s never a bad thing to build a good reputation with the higher-ups in an organization. Makes it easier to do things like get comments down the line.
Those big stories weren’t the only things that made this such a hard-working year for me. I also kept on with Dr. Jason Sexton as a part of Boom, which led to me becoming the inaugural editor for an offshoot publication called California Connections in the spring. That project did get off the ground, but most of the work in creating a publication is going to flourish in 2018, so stay tuned for that.
I also started on probably my first major internship over the summer by joining a non-profit organization called Gladeo. Gladeo’s goal is to create a database of business profiles and job descriptions that can all be in one place and help students decide what they want to do for a living. A pretty noble goal, and one that I likely would have benefitted from if I haven’t found my place as a Journalist.
Even if certain other events (that I’ll go into in a bit) got in the way of working hard for that group over the spring semester as well, I’m sticking on with them too and will continue to produce profiles as the organization revamps its web presence in the early months of this upcoming year.
On top of that, I’ve also had a few other fun trips throughout the year. Revisiting Old Fort MacArthur Days comes to mind, as does events I’ve taken part in at places like The Autry Museum. Plus, I got to go to the Fox studio lot for a movie screening – though I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures there, unfortunately.
Being a journalist is only half of my professional moniker, however. The other half is being a student, and I have to say that my classes have been quite enjoyable this year… For the most part.
During the fall I took California Government and got a wider understanding of just how crazy things are in the old Golden State I’ve grown up in. I also took Primate Anthropology, which gave me a pretty deep appreciation of our mammalian ancestors that I never exactly expected to care so much about. My aforementioned Investigative Reporting class allowed me to work with Bonnie and other members of The Daily Titan and journalism majors in general to do some really fascinating and personally perspective-changing research into Homeless populations. Finally, I also thoroughly enjoyed my honors class, which delved into the history of the modern world from a deep perspective, offering in part some really interesting connections to today’s political and social workings.
When spring came along, for some reason I decided to kill myself further by kicking things up a notch and taking five classes.
I coincided my work on California Connections with an internship class out of the English college under the instruction of our internship advisor in Communications, since I was able to get extra credits toward my degree despite not being able to take the Comm-focused internship. Beyond that, I picked up my minor in psychology and jumped right in with a Statistics course (with its corresponding lab) and a course in Developmental Psychology. Both were undoubtedly great entry points into the minor… Even if I admittedly was not the strongest stats student, at least in part due to the fact that I wasn’t a huge fan of my professor. However, my Multimedia Journalism class under Bonnie once again gave me a great opportunity to practice doing video journalism, which at one point helped me bolster my working relationship with the Project Rebound program on campus, and my Junior Honors Colloquium course began me down the journey of preparing for my inevitable Senior Honors project.
Plus, I was in the same class as the president of the College Republicans club, which made things vastly easier to keep up on the Milo coverage than it otherwise could have been.
Sheesh, just writing all of that out was a bit exhausting. Like a lot of people have asked me in the past, I too kind of question how I’ve been able to do all of this with enough competency not to necessarily fall on my ass in any of it.
Who knows, maybe I’m just a bit better at this whole life thing than I give myself credit for.
Despite this wealth of academic and real-life opportunities that have flourished for me over the last year, not everything in 2017 has been all sunshine and rainbows.
Namely, health has been a major concern for my family all throughout.
A lot of the beginning of the year focused on some of my dad’s diabetic complications, which led to him being off his feet for a long, long time due to the introduction of a number of foot surgeries into his life. Luckily, he’s way better now and did not have to go through anything seriously traumatic, so he’ll be apt to tell you that the big take-away from it all was the ease that comes from now having a handicap permit.
My mom and sister also went through their own little arcs, the prior dealing with bronchitis and badly scraping up her knees and the latter dealing with tendinitis that has minorly inconvenienced her blossoming career in music.
However, the other big medical complication of the year came from one other than yours truly.
I haven’t exactly talked about this little chapter of my life too publicly because it was a very personal thing, but at this point I’m well past the blunt of it and figure now would be as good a time as ever to recount the details for posterity.
During a blood test as part of my routine check-up in September, the doctor found that my blood platelet count was abnormally, if not dangerously low. When that result continued to show itself, I was sent to a Hematologist, where we tried a number of treatments to resolve the issue, such as taking steroids over a long period of time in hopes of correcting what was believed to be a potential issue with an overactive immune system.
When that didn’t show as promising a result as expected, I instead took part in an Intravenous Immunoglobulin (IvIG) treatment. After two days worth of a number of hours sitting in a chair, I wound up being in the lucky .01 percent minority that suffered from aseptic meningitis as a result of the treatment.
It was a viral form of the problem, which meant it wasn’t nearly as serious, life-threatening or contagious as a potential bacterial strain would have been. However, I landed in the hospital for a couple days as a result.
On the one hand, I will admit that it was kind of nice getting a reprieve from the world and some quiet time to catch up on work while I was there. Though, on the other hand, it obviously put a wrench in… Basically everything. Even after I got out of the hospital, where I got to try a bunch of new things like a spinal fluid tap, there was at least a week afterward that I still had to rest at home and couldn’t look in the light for more than a few minutes.
Once my life began to normalize again, I was still a little fuzzy-headed for a while, but eventually I got to a comfortable place again, where I continue to stay today.
Unfortunately, despite the fact that my blood platelet count normalized perfectly after the IvIG (a rather ironically perfect twist of fate I’d say), the number has fallen back down since. It’s an issue I might be dealing with for the rest of my life as things go, but for now I can happily report that things are going fine.
That long, drawn-out experience which interrupted a part of my 2017 was only one part of why I’d say things were so rough. Among them were the echo chamber of news that I now tend to subject myself to as a semi-professional journalist.
I don’t like to get very political on my blog here. Or anywhere, in fact. My whole choice in career is built upon the ideal that I should simply be a reporter of things, as objective as possible about as many things as possible. So, I’ll leave it at this. Watching things happen in the world of national politics that I don’t agree with has been a constantly draining force in 2017, especially given that it seems to be all we hear about day-in and day-out for months on end.
Though as usual things like video games and time with my friends are a great escape from that endless grind, as I mentioned before I’ve found myself busier than ever with the work that keeps me immersed in that world, so it’s been a fairly relentless cycle.
Even with all the negativity that has defined 2017 for me, however, I can’t help but continue to look optimistically into the future.
2018 has some big projects in the works, such as the hopefully successful publication of California Connections toward the end of this spring semester.
On top of that, I’m going to be working as a staff member of The Daily Titan through the journalism concentration capstone class, Comm 471. Alongside that opportunity for a break from the hard-working job of editorial board that I’ve hammered at for the last year-and-a-half, I’m also going to hopefully be an assistant on a more feature-focused desk to give me a better grasp of the newspaper as a whole.
Past that, 2018 should hopefully be a year where I find myself less downtrodden by things like medical concerns. With a Nintendo Switch in my possession for the whole year ahead, it should also be a good opportunity to try even more games should I find the time to do so.
As I like to get meta with this site as well, I’ve put together 103 posts throughout this year (this one included), and I’ve gotten a good chunk more views in the process.
I’m looking forward to watching this little passion project of mine grow about as much as everything else, since it really has developed into something I enjoy doing. One thing I’d like to do in the coming year is hopefully diversify what I post just a bit more, but we’ll see what my time permits.
Lastly, for now at least, 2018 will also be the year that I turn 21. A typically sought-after time where I’ll finally be able to round-out the governmental privileges of adulthood like drinking. Though I don’t plan to do a whole lot of that, I admit I am looking forward to a certain sense of prestige that comes with it.
If you have any favorite, or I suppose not-so-favorite memories from 2017, feel free to let me know about them in the comments section. I’m hoping it’s been an overall happier year for all of you out there than it has been for me, since I’m just about ready to leave everything behind for something better around the corner.
Here’s to a Happy New Year for everyone who continues to stick around on this little journey I call my life!
Well, it seems as though we’re actually going to have a short Fire Emblem post here today because we got a pretty underwhelming and small update all things being equal.
Even if there’s going to be another update soon enough, a subject I’m also going to touch upon here to make things a bit heftier, I wanted to write this post now while I’m also thinking about the future of this kind of content on my blog.
That said, before I jump into all of that existential BS, let’s look at this new Legendary Hero Summoning Banner.
Fjorm’s sister, Gunnthrá (gotta love these probably Slavic inspired names – if I have that Etimology right), is now available through a special summoning event.
Isn’t it just nifty how that kind of premonition-y future sight works?
Despite that minor degree of plot importance and characterization in the past, Gunnthrá’s actually arrival in the world of Heroes now is a little downplayed to say the least. Literally, the developers announced she would be coming in a banner a few days ago, and now she’s here. There’s no new story missions or paralogue missions or anything offering some sort of further explanation as to who the character is or to offer her the chance to interact with her sister. She’s just here.
Have fun with your random chance to summon.
She isn’t a free gift through the story of the game like Fjorm was. To add her to your army, you have to brave the now infamous 12 character, 8 percent summoning chance banner. It has high potential to force you into wasting a lot of orbs for the chance to get her, only to wind up with one of the other two green heroes on the banner.
Our new Legendary Hero is a green mage cavalier, making her an arguably apt replacement for the horse-based team staple, Cecilia. Her special tome Blizzard gives her +3 Resistance and adds to her Attack stat when the opponent has debuffs applied, an effect similar to the well-worn Gronnblade. She also comes with the special attack Glacies to deal massive damage based on her Resistance stat and three passive skills: Fortress Resistance grants her a +5 Resistance boost in exchange for a -3 Attack reduction, Resistance Ploy makes foes in cardinal directions suffer -5 Resistance and the new skill Chilling Seal inflicts -6 Attack and Speed to the opponent’s unit with the lowest defense as long as she’s above 50 percent health. As far as the wording suggests, this afflicts anyone no matter where they are on the map.
In my opinion, Gunnthrá seems interesting… But not necessarily worth the effort.
Of course, she does come with the ability to bless an ally using her Wind element, which gives said blessed ally a +3 Health and +4 Resistance boost during a Wind season if they go into battle together. Especially for a cavalier unit, this ability can probably give her a solid place on a horse team boosting someone like Reinhardt.
That blessing and her Chilling Seal skill sound interesting, but the rest of her packaging just feels… Okay. Nothing particularly awe-inspiring.
Not knowing her actual stat spread, she looks to be a highly resistant unit with low attack that’s compensated by a weapon with an effect less useful than its counterpart, the Gronnblade.
I think of the situation similarly to Pokémon in this respect. In a Pokémon battle, it’s always better to use a status move that buffs one’s own stats as opposed to one that debuffs an opponent’s stats. In the latter situation you defeat that opponent and start from zero, while in the prior situation you keep your stronger standing for multiple opponents to come.
Similarly, Gronnblade buffs a Fire Emblem Heroes unit based on the stat boosts you give to your unit, whereas Blizzard gives Gunnthrá a boost based on the debuffs attached to the single opponent you hit. Decent synergy if you hit the unit afflicted with your Chilling Seal, but otherwise not the most optimal.
On top of that, Gunnthrá is a limited time unit that’s hard to summon, making her inherently a little less desirable than a unit like Cecilia who can constantly be merged and improved, despite whatever power creep might be involved for their stat differences.
At least, that’s my opinion on the matter. It’s one of the reasons I don’t think I’m going to spend a lot of orbs on this banner.
Another one of the reasons is the aforementioned saturation of heroes on the banner. Like I said, there are 12 available:
Greens: Gunnthrá, Amelia, Spring Chrom
Reds: Ryoma, Sigurd, Brave Roy
Blues: Fjorm, Spring Lucina, Bride Charlotte
Colorless: Innes, Elise, Bride Lyn
If I was going for any of these outside of Gunnthrá, I would personally focus on Ryoma, Bride Charlotte and Bride Lyn.
However… My efforts right off the bat didn’t give me the best results.
A sparkling new unit, but unfortunately a duplicate.
Yes, I did get a 5 star Sigurd. However, I already have one. If anything, that just makes him unit merging fodder. While that’s not an inherently bad thing, I would have much preferred getting someone like Ryoma.
That kind of disappointment from the over-saturation of the heroes leads to the third main reason why I won’t be spending a lot of orbs on this banner, despite it ending on January 1st.
Apparently there are going to be New Year-themed Heroes coming out.
And I’ve been spoiled on who they’re going to be by my friend Jonathan.
Obviously I’m going to talk about these guys when they arrive, but as for my first impressions:
Takumi is going to throw soup at people and that’s amazing, Azura is a cutie in that kimono, Corrin got his arrows as a gift from Lilith which is also amazing and Camilla… Well she’s Camilla.
I want them more than I want Gunnthrá, so for now I’m going to save the energy and orbs I get from the current Tempest Trial for later.
With that said, I believe that about sums up everything I have to say about this banner. Of course, the post as a whole is far longer than I expected because I need to learn to write less, but that’s a whole other story for another day.
Actually, it is somewhat of a story for today.
With New Years Heroes coming soon – a reminder of the more general arrival of 2018 in a couple days – I can’t help but reflect on my blog content a little.
2017 has been the first full year of my blog’s existence, and for the most part I’ve been keeping it afloat with a combination of archiving my Daily Titan articles and Fire Emblem Heroes posts.
The Fire Emblem posts are fun, but to be honest I think they’re a little bit of a crutch for me. It’s really easy to produce them in a sense because all I have to do is take screenshots on my phone and talk for a long time. For most other games I have to take external photos off my iPhone, which works… But not very well.
My Pokémon Ultra Moon tweets are a perfect example. I can get decent quality out of them, but I would definitely prefer to be able to capture those photos directly through some sort of capture card or something.
Because I can’t get nicer photos, I feel like I can’t write a lot on other subjects. So I don’t.
Fire Emblem provides a perfect solution to the problem: It’s easy to capture, fun to talk about and gives me plenty of opportunities to just write on a time frame I can handle.
Just writing practice in general is more or less the goal of my blog, besides making an archive of my work for future employers, so the content doesn’t make much of a difference in that regard.
However, the time frame is arguably a big part of the problem for me in my head right now. If it wasn’t obvious, I have to stay up pretty late whenever there’s a substantial update,so I can have something written about the 11 p.m. release out in the world by 8 a.m. the next day.
That’s arguably the job of a journalist I suppose, to be timely and quick with writing, so again this serves as decent practice… But it is a real energy drain for something that I’m feeling kind of iffy about sticking all my eggs in one basket for.
So, for 2018, I’m going to be thinking about restructuring how I do my Fire Emblem Heroes posts. They’re either going to get less abundant or I’m going to come up with a format that allows me to get them out faster and hopefully in a shorter form.
Working smarter, not harder and all that jazz.
I just wanted to get my thoughts out on that here so that anyone who reads this can potentially give me some advice on what they think.
How would you restructure what I do with Fire Emblem now? Do you have any advice or suggestions? Or do you like how I do things currently? Let me know in the comments below! For this I’m genuinely interested to hear what others have to say.
Also, on that note, let me know how you feel about the actual subject of this post originally, Gunntrá! Is she worth the hype? Or, as the case may be, is she worth the lack of hype?
As the holiday season and the year 2016 come to a close (very conveniently at the same time in this case), I feel like I can’t help but take a moment to reflect on some things. As I mentioned in my last post about Carrie Fisher’s passing, the general attitude seems to be that 2016 can’t end soon enough. Globally, the world is a bit of a mess. In the United States, the incredibly divisive presidential election we just completed left everything feeling a little bit fractured and not-so-unified. In the world of popular culture lots of people who were well-known and highly adored by the general public passed away.
It’s understandable why people feel the year was so bad, and admittedly there’s some of that I’ve gotten bogged in too over the last couple months. However, for me personally, the year really hasn’t been all that awful. In fact, it’s been a fairly great year all things considered.
One thing I always find interesting as a gamer is reflecting on what games “defined my year,” as it were. Granted I didn’t necessarily diversify my interests a whole lot, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t a lot of things I played.
Toward the beginning of the year, I was still riding some of my Wii U hype. I just got my system as a present last Hanukah, in fact, so games like Super Mario Maker were still huge time sucks, moreso than they are now.
While the game wasn’t a traditional Zelda game like we’d all been waiting for in the relatively soon-to-be-announced Breath of the Wild, it was still a blast to play. The game had some awesome multiplayer functionality both with friends and with strangers, and to this day I don’t think I’m over how hilarious it is to spam the cheerleader pom-pom Link emoji.
On top of that, you could literally dress Link up as a cheerleader and it was one of the most viable costumes in that game. Not sure I ever thought I’d be so gung-ho to get Link to cross dress in all honesty, but I was.
Also earlier on in the year, while I was still getting into the swing of the Spring semester, I remember binging every Shantae game that’s been released thus far.
Not only did I play the original Shantae for the Game Boy, I played Shantae: Risky’s Revenge and Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse. I fell in love with the series fast thanks to the lovable characters, the quirky and fun writing, the beautiful animation style and of course the music (composed by Jake Kaufman, who also produced the music for another one of my favorite games in the same general style: Shovel Knight). I literally played through all three in a row and loved every minute of it, even if none of the games were necessarily all that beefy.
Doing a little bit of research, it looks like the latest installment in the series, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, has been released just recently, but it apparently slipped under my radar somehow. I’m wholeheartedly Ret-2-Go with that game as soon as I can pick it up, as there are a few too many games in 2016 that I unfortunately missed despite wanting to play them. Didn’t have quite as much time to devote to these things as I would have liked.
Next on the list of my year’s rundown is the first in what I would consider my ‘return of old gaming loves’ trilogy. That, of course, was Fire Emblem Fates. All three together technically, but Birthright was undoubtedly my personal favorite.
There’s a few things I’ll never forget just leading up to the games being released. First, I’ll never forget the hunt my friends and I went on trying to find some of the special edition three-in-one game cartridges for Fates that was a resounding failure but had some great moments. Like getting literally laughed at by a guy in a Game Stop one time. That was awesome.
I’ll also never forget getting the first game, Birthright, as it was actually a gift that was given to me by the editors of the News section on the Daily Titan, Micah and Brianna, as thanks for being their assistant for the Fall 2015 semester. Seriously, check it out, I still have the note here:
It was really awesome, especially considering it apparently took a lot of work to build up to the reveal, including using my friend Kaleb as a spy to figure out which version of the game I wanted more.
Fire Emblem took up a huge chunk of my life from there on out, as I went on to play all three versions. In a row. In hindsight, admittedly not the best idea, but I’m really into the games so it was the decision I made at the time. Birthright was incredible, rose-colored glasses or not, Conquest literally made my just about cry on multiple occasions from how unnecessarily difficult it got to be at times (Seriously, screw the port level. If I never play that game again, the port level is to blame) and Revelations was… Admittedly underwhelming.
I meant to talk about it on here a little bit, but beyond just being burnt out on the games by the time I hit the third, there were a few things that really sort of killed the experience for me unfortunately. First, I padded it out too much for myself. I tried to grind all the characters up to have a ton of diverse skills rather than planning ahead what I would’ve wanted, and it wound up being far more effort than I was honestly willing to put in. Second, they killed off my favorite character in what was literally the worst possible way in my opinion. I have a huge, huge rant still built up about it because the moment was so caustic for me, but this isn’t really the time or the place, so perhaps I’ll still come back to it later. Third, there was another game coming on the horizon that left me rushing to finish, which took away a lot of my enjoyment toward the latter half of the storyline. Who knows, maybe if I go back to it now I’ll have a better time, but for now Birthright will continue to be the high point of my memories for Fire Emblem Fates.
The second game in my personal trilogy was Monster Hunter Generations.
I talked about it on here a bit, so I don’t think I need to go into too much detail, but this game sucked away quite a bit of my time as well. Though I’ve only been playing Monster Hunter since the last major release, Monster Hunter 4U, it has quickly become one of my favorite franchises.
The seemingly near infinite levels of customization thanks to a wide range of monsters and a progression-based-on-skill system is something almost totally unique to Monster Hunter in my gaming experience, and it ticks boxes like crazy for me. There are very few games that I get super in depth about building sets and doing hours of research into said sets and also things like lore, but Monster Hunter is definitely one of them. It’s also one of the favorite games of my friend Juan, so we always have a good time going on extravagant hunts as a super powered duo, Hunting Horn and Charge Blade in hands.
Granted, I’ll admit that the game wasn’t quite as invigorating as MH4U for me, since that was the game where I truly had a skill curve to learn and overcome so I could truly become a master, but Generations was still a blast to play through and through.
Last, but certainly not least, comes what must be an obvious entry on this list. Hell, there’s only one game that really defined not only the latter half of my year, but also most of what I’ve built my blogging experience on so far.
And that game is, of course, Pokémon Sun and Moon. Because technically they go together even if they’re two separate games. Because Pokémon works like that.
Really I’ve said more than enough about these games in many, many posts over the last year, so I don’t think I need to waste too much time on it right now. Not only were the games beautiful and fun experiences in themselves, surpassing what I consider to be some of my favorite and some of the best constructed games in the series thus far, they reinvigorated the love of competitive Pokémon breeding that I fostered in Alpha Sapphire and got me back into the Pokémon YouTube communities I followed around the same time.
I have been and will continue to do some breeding in the games, especially once the Pokébank opens in January, and I’ve considered doing more competitive battling in 2017. There’s an official battle competition coming up pretty soon that I’m pretty sure I’ll be entering, so I’m sure there will be plenty more posts in the future on the subject as well.
Beyond those massive entries that took up my time, there are a few other games that permeated my year’s experiences. The 20th Anniversary of Pokémon for me included the continued playing of Pokémon Shuffle and Pokémon Picross on my 3DS, which were my puzzle game obsessions that I’ve only recently seemed to kick.
The summer was undoubtedly defined by Niantic’s Pokémon GO, the game which really felt the most universally unifying during the sub-par situations of the year surrounding it.
My whole family was playing the game together and I still remember wandering El Camino College hatching eggs after my summer classes there. Though I wound up a little disillusioned with the game, and still haven’t jumped in to catch the start of the Generation 2 Pokédex, I still can’t imagine Pokémon GO won’t hold a place in history in some way or another.
Also hitting the mobile gaming scene this year was Super Mario Run.
I gave my thoughts on the game in depth a little while ago, and as a small follow-up I will say that having spent money on the full game has made the experience even better for me. I’ve gotten really into collecting all the colored coins in single player on long road trips and I have a pretty well developed town so far. As a first jump into the mobile scene for Nintendo, I can personally say that Super Mario Run has been a success, and I’m looking forward to seeing more.
I also replayed quite a few older Steam games that I adore but haven’t touched in some time this year.
My friend Samantha and I played Terraria for a long stretch of time together, progressively getting better and better as we learned and built more complicated structures and items together. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth ate up huge chunks of my time in brief intervals throughout the year, as it’s always an addictive rogue-like experience that I’ll never get tired of. The same could be said for FTL, which I can only describe as a real-time rogue-like spaceship command and battle simulator. For anyone who hasn’t heard of the game it can be hard to explain, but it’s one of my favorite games of all time.
My 2016 was defined by more than just the video games I played, however. It marked the end of my first year at college. It also included my first semester as an editor for a college paper, one which I feel went really well considering all the crazy things that happened politically while I was in charge of the News page.
2016 was where I really feel like I got into the rhythm of driving and being able to get myself places. It was also the first year where I got to vote for a serious election – despite how divisive it might have been as far as an election went.
However, because of my time as a journalist, I felt like this was the first time I really got to apply what I was doing and learning to a real-world event. Literally the more I learned, the more prepared I felt to vote in November.
On top of that, I feel like I really learned a lot just in general. Two semesters and a summer intersession at college had me taking classes all over the proverbial spectrum at two different schools: Cal State Fullerton and El Camino College. Not only was the subject matter of the things I learned interesting, I also got to explore more places at the same time, which I also enjoy doing.
I got my first few relatively well-paying jobs in 2016 between being an editor on the Daily Titan and working for Boom: A Journal of California. Thanks to that, I’ve felt more independent than I ever really have before.
In 2016, I went to New York for the first time in I honestly don’t know how long.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
I used to have a lot of family living out there, but now most of my close relatives live here in California, so I rarely ever get to go out to the East Coast anywhere that isn’t Florida. The trip was amazing and so much fun, and I really felt like I got close to a lot of my friends and colleagues in the newsroom that went with me.
I also got to relive a part of my Dad’s childhood by finding his old high school.
So, all and all, I’d say that trip was probably one of the most memorable parts of the year for me.
I got to visit SpaceX for the first time this year, and though I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures inside, it was still a phenomenal place to see. Seriously, some of the stuff they have going on in there is incredible.
In my opinion, I really started to come out of my shell a little bit more in 2016, and that helped me meet and interact with some people who I can really see myself continuing to talk to for a long time to come. Both those in and out of the newsroom.
2016 was also the first year I’ve let my beard grow out. It started as a No Shave November thing we did for the Daily Titan, but in the end I wound up getting such a positive reception that I kept the hair grown out.
Before
After
Seriously, what a difference a little bit of hair will make. I look totally different from one picture to the other, if you ask me. Probably helps that I had more hair on top of my head to cover my forehead in the first picture too… But that’s another story.
Finally, 2016 was where I really got into blogging. Yeah, seems like a silly thing to cap this whole list off with, but you are literally reading this on my blog. I started this blog back on February 18, a day after my birthday, thanks to some school assignments I had to do. My Communications 233 class required us to have a blog that we posted 20 things on of any subject we chose. Naturally, I chose to make this a blog about video games and about my journalism experience.
Though it started as an assignment, one that I literally had to come up with ways to finish by coming up with admittedly silly things to post, I’ve come to really love doing this. Writing is a passion of mine, and getting the chance to write more often has been wonderful. It’s also been a way to voice my opinions and thoughts on various subjects, which I don’t tend to do in a largely public forum like this very often. I may be a relatively small blog still, but I feel like I’ve found somewhat of a rhythm thanks to Pokémon Sun and Moon, and I’m looking forward to writing more on whatever comes up in 2017. As goofy as it might be to say it, one of my New Year’s Resolutions is to try and write more next year, so I hope you all stick around to see whatever it is I come up with to write about.
Really, from the bottom of my heart thank you to everyone who’s following my blog, everyone who’s read anything I’ve wrote and to all my family and friends who have helped me explore, encouraged my writing ambitions, and worked to make sure I put my best foot forward. If you have any of your own favorite memories from 2016, or if you just want to send a good riddance sendoff to the year, feel free to share them down in the comments below.
I hope everyone has a Happy New Year, and here’s to 2017 being a happier time overall than 2016 seems to have been!
Jason's Blog - Work in Progress 