(Warning: This blog is very, very long as it mentions the 2024 Election results, Donald Trump, politics, sexual harassment, grooming, swearing and some heavy stuff. Please take care before reading on.)
Well, I did it. I somehow survived the year.
Like I knew 2024 was going to be bad thanks to the general election. But I didn’t expect other bad things to happen in my life that nearly cause me to have a mental breakdown! It’s like the universe wants to punish me for just existing or something!
But despite that, I somehow got through it. Now, I’m wondering how bad NEXT YEAR is going to be! If you want a recap of what happen this year that made my life miserable, just keep on reading.
I knew this year was going on a bad start when two weeks in the brand new year, I found that a Let’s Player who I have been watching since 2013, Chuggaaconroy, was accused of sexual harassment by YouTuber Lady Emily and was later accused of grooming a minor back in the late 2000s’! Those two (completely) different events caused my small world to shatter because I have been watching his stuff since high school! And that he was one of the few non-controversial YouTuber/Let’s Player that I respected!
But after hearing the news, I ended up suffering not from one meltdown, but TWO meltdowns in a span of 8 days! I feel horrible afterwards because I was doing so well in not having them. But it took a scandal of a long time Let’s Player to have it all crashing down! I think I even wrote some ranty posts of this on my Tumblr page, which I apologize for those who had to see that. I was not in a good mental headspace when I wrote all that.
It was thanks to those two meltdowns; I had to step away from the Let’s Play community due to gaining trust issue as I don’t know if the person I’m watching is a good person or not. At the same time, I was suffering from burnout from trying to play catch up with the videos that the Let’s Players posted since my executive dysfunction won’t let me do things that I wanted to do. So, I decided to watch Long Plays instead since they have no commentary and you can focus on the game. But even doing that caused me to get burnout as I rather do other things instead of watching videos.
Three months later, it turns out the accusations against Chuggaaconroy were (mostly) proven false as it happened thanks to some miscommunication on both parties’ side. This caused most people who ditched him, to take back all the terrible things about him and give him another chance. Which is a good since the scandal has negatively affected him to the point; he had suicidal thoughts from receiving hate messages on Twitter and later went to rehab to get help!
After saying his view and vanish from the Internet due to his doctor’s orders, Chugga returned in June and started posting bonus videos of some of the Let’s Play he played in the past, to see if he’s ready to come back. Thankfully, (most) the Let’s Play community welcomed him back with open arms as I feel like it was the sign that everyone is ready to move on from the event. It was and now he is posting Let’s Plays on his channel again, just like old times.
While it’s nice to see things are back to normal for him and his community, but it’ll be awhile until I decide to come back and watch his and the Runaway Guys’ (a collab that he’s in with two other Let’s Players) stuff again. Of course, I’m willing to forgive him and give him a second chance since he took responsibility for his past actions of accidently stepping into people’s boundaries (a bad habit of his, which was the main reason why he was accused of sexual harassment) and is willing to get help for what happened. But for some reason, I don’t feel comfortable going back since I’ll judge him for what he did in the past.
However, there’s a chance that despite all that, I’m worried that I won’t come back as I might be growing out of watching Let’s Plays (which is sadly might come true) thanks to one scandal, which caused one of my worst meltdowns in months! If that’s the case, then at least I’m thankful that his (and others) Let’s Plays got me though university when I needed a break from life.
As I was copping from the scandal above, Nintendo was making some questionable moves this year, such as shutting down fan games and a few Switch emulations that made many mad. They’re even suing the creator of Palworld for patent infringement as we speak! Yeah, I get that Nintendo is doing this to protect their IPs from “bad actors”. But doing that is going to make you look bad in front of everyone’s eyes and will cause them to stop buying your stuff and flee to other consoles instead.
Especially the main reasons why people are emulating their games in the first place are because we can’t legally buy their older games anymore as the physical cartages are too expensive! It also doesn’t help that Nintendo keeps shutting down their online stores (RIP the Wii Shop Channel, DSi Shop, the 3DS and WiiU eShop) in order to save money! Then you’re wondering why so many people are starting to pirating video games again (which I’ll get to soon).
While Nintendo decided to be jerks to their fans, I keep hearing horror stories of video game developers losing their jobs in the past two years. This one makes me sick as these are the one who make the video games that we love. Then they get laid off due to being too expensive to keep. Of course, this is what happened when video game companies’ over-hired during Covid in 2020, where people stayed home and played video games in order to keep in touch with their families and friends.
But that boom ended somewhere in 2022, when the majority got vaccinated and is now allow to go out and socialize again. Because of that, less people playing video games; which mean the video game industry started losing money. So now, they have to start cutting back, which sucks for both the developers and the gamers.
As for the people they mostly laid off, they tend to be junior staff, women, disabled, POC and queer, which will have a negative effect on diversity. I feel like those layoffs are going to cause people to stay away from becoming video games developers and it’s going to cause future games to be boring and bleh!
You know things are so bad that the host of the Game Awards; actually called out the video game industry about the layoffs! During the CEREMONY, that received numerous praises from everyone who saw it! They’re even glad that the event is finally doing something about it other than sweep it underneath a rug, like they did last year! That’s when you know you mess up bad.
Oh, and don't get me started on gaming companies who decided to start pulling their games off the Internet, which they have been doing A LOT this year! It doesn't matter if the games been around for decades or even 2 WEEKS (I'm looking at you Sony!), it makes me mad that I though we can keep the games if we brought them. Now it turns out we can't and now we have to start pirating games again for preservation!
These three events caused me to have second thoughts on like video games due to finding out that video game companies are greedy, like every major businesses as they rather prioritize short-term profits over long-term sustainability. It didn’t help that I was suffering from either regular burnout or an autistic burnout from not having a fulfilling life as of late. And seeing bad news about video games in general, didn’t help. It was to the point I wondered if it was time for me to ditch my video game interests for good after having it for 11 years.
Thankfully, the creator of Stardew Valley released the huge 1.6 update (that he hyped for months) that came out around the same time I was suffering from my video game burnout and made me appreciate video games again. It was because of that; I decided that I should stick with indie games instead as it’s where the better games have been coming out in the past few years.
Then I heard that the video games industry (might) recover next year as they have big games coming out (such as Grand Theft Auto VI and Metroid Prime 4), which means video game companies will make money again. So this means no more video game layoffs! But something tells me to not get too hopeful on that.
Yeah, I better stick to indie games and older Nintendo emulated games for the time being. Like, I know there are good AAA games (and companies) out there; but it’s the bad ones that’s making the gaming community and industry look bad.
Then it makes me sad that not even Neocities is safe from bad things happening! Yeah, there’s that occasional “someone stole my layout” callout post and some social media drama that no one want no part of. But this one was way bigger than those two. And it’s so bad; it caused some to quit the site for better places!
What happen is that in mid-October, the founder of Neocities relieved that he’s a fan of Gen AI, which is a hot topic issue that AI is known for stealing from artists and writers, is polluting the environment, stealing jobs for those who rather work from home and spreading misinformation on the Internet. While he did have some concerns on AI itself, it didn’t stop some from being disgust with his statement before announcing on their websites that they are leaving because of him! It also didn’t help that early this year, he tried to put AI in the coding, but didn’t as knew that people will get upset over it.
This made me sad that Neocities isn’t that “shining city on a hill” that I heard about as it too, has controversy. Just like everyone else on the Internet. This makes me gain more trust issues instead.
That event is what caused me to finally make a Nekoweb account, after flirting about making one for months. At least when the worst comes, I can go to Nekoweb along with the rest. But the same time, I don’t want to abandon those who decided to stay on Neocities, despite AI being there. Sigh…
Then we get to the “Big One”. That’s right; I’m talking about this year’s general election. If you had been reading my blogs this past year, you see that I have been stressing over it and my fears that Trump will somehow win the election. Sadly, my fears were proven to be right as he DID WIN! I feel like it’s like 2016 all over again, where we have a female Democrat candidate that everyone don’t like and a racist Republican candidate who promise to make America “great” again (when in reality, he’ll make it worst)!
Like in the last few months, the left-wing media keeps telling the common people to not vote for Trump as he’s racist, sexist, xenophobic and will take away your rights if you’re not a white, straight, rich Christian man.
Turns out that the common people don’t care if Trump is a FUCKING CRIMINAL! They want their groceries to stop being so expensive! And that they remember that the only time the economy was good was when Trump was in office!
So they’ll basically sacrifice their own rights so they can have money in their pockets again! But they don’t know about the tariffs that are going to hit them in the next few years…
It also doesn’t help that the Democrats keep shunning the working class Republicans for being backward and racist when in reality, they want someone to fix their local economy! Find a way to make housing more affordable. Make their health insurances stop being so expensive. And see why so many white working class men are complaining that they’re lonely and are being left behind when it comes to social progress.
Instead, the Democrats rather focus on Globalization, urbanization and social issues such as LGBT rights, abortion and DEI. The working class Republicans doesn’t care about all that! They want someone to save their dying rural towns and their farmlands! Then you wonder why half of the 76 million people, voted for Trump!
Then there was the Israel-Hamas war that drove away young, progressive and Muslim voters due to the Democrats being pro-Israel. Instead, they did what the Bernie Bros did in 2016 and decided to stay home and not vote. It was because of that, some people on Internet decided to blame them for not voting in this year’s general election!
Now this one I correctly predicted that this was going to cause the Democrats to lose. As I discovered so many people on my social feed were against the Israel government for all the terrible things they did to the Palestinians and the American government for handing them weapons and missiles, which allow the apartheid country to commit genocide against the Palestinians! As the result, many were going to vote against the Democrats in next year’s election as punishment and vote 3rd party instead (which is basically throwing away your vote in America). I hate it when I’m right…
Then it makes me sick to hear that some of the Muslims end up voting for Trump. Which I found it ironic as he was responsible for banning several Muslim countries from entering America during his first term. And now those same Muslims (who voted for him), are mad at him for picking pro-Israel nominees, which is the opposite of what they wanted!
Then it doesn’t help that Biden made some mistakes during his time in office, which made many (both on the left and right side) angry. Angry to the point, that some of the Democrats won’t even bother voting for Harris (when she eventually stepped in his place as candidate in late July), as they think she’ll continue making the same mistakes that Biden did and that no progress will be made! Basically, Harris was doomed to fail no matter how much she tried to distant herself from Biden and his administration.
So at the end, the Democrats end up making the same mistakes they did back in the 2016 Election that got Trump elected. But now, he knows how to hide his mistakes better and actually become a threat that the non-Trump supporters have been warning us in the past few years. So don’t be shocked if we have either another Recession, a civil war and/or get into a major war with China or North Korea because of him!
Then there’s my poor mother. I think she’s in denial over the election result. When she first heard that Trump won, she said the votes were rigged! That Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet (that the voting polls were connected to) was used to steal them! No mother, the votes were not rigged and the voting polls weren’t online for them to hijack the votes. The government debunked that one.
Or she said that Trump suffered from an anxiety attack after the election as there an ambulance near his Mar-a-Lago estate! Nope, there wasn’t either. It was following our future vice president’s entourage, as it always should.
It doesn’t help she’s been watching YouTube astrologers in the past few months, where they all say that Harris is going to win this year’s general election. So now they’re telling her and their followers to look for clues, photos, vibes and the stars that this was all the fluke and that Harris was the winner all the along!
The government isn’t hiding anything, mother. Harris really did lost and that Trump actually won the election, fair AND square!
Look, I love my mom. And I understand this is her way of coping that Trump won again. But I don’t want to tell her the hard truth that will make her mad. The truth that 76 million people REALLY don’t like Harris and the Democrats and that they decided to vote for Trump as they want the economy to be good again. It’s the truth that Trump won and she has to accept it. I sure did (sadly).
What happened to my mom as of late, made me glad I decided to stay away from social media as influencers like those astrologers, keeps giving everyone a false sense of hope that everything is going to be fine (when it’s not).
Actually, the election itself caused me to get off of most of my social media for my mental health as I don’t want to suffer a huge meltdown just like I did in the 2016 Election! Like, this was planned in a year advanced as I had a bad feeling about this year’s election. However, things got bad to the point that I had to get off of it, a few weeks BEFORE Election Day, in order to get away from the discourse and the misinformation!
Sounds like I did the right thing as after the election results came in, I heard that many on the various social media sites that I’m on, were devastated that Trump won and fears that their rights are about to be taken away once more. So much that some thought about killing themselves! I feel for them as I wasn’t expecting the results as well. Even the users of Neocities and Nekoweb were upset about the election to the point that, I have to stay away from their blogs from that month for the sake of my mental health!
Of course, I wish I was proven wrong on Trump winning and that he rigged the votes in his favor. Like, I really do! But if the government said Trump won fair and square with proof, then so beat it.
As the result of him winning, I have to stay away from most of my social media for a while in order to cope that he really did came back. I mostly browsed TV Tropes and Wikipedia instead of Reddit whenever I ate food at the kitchen counter. I even stayed away from reading the online news as it’s nothing but Trump doing dumb shit. Such as picking the anti-vaxxer Kennedy as the secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and the ex-wife of the former WWE owner (whose accused of sex trafficking) as the secretary of the United States Department of Education! So expect chicken poxes to make a comeback and dumber children in the next few years or so! /s
But it wasn’t until late November when I decided to slowly return to social media since everyone (mostly) got over the election aftermath and that the American election won’t be mention again for the next 4 years. I return to Reddit first and decided that I won’t be browsing the r/all and r/popular pages anymore as its where most of the problem (and the mental stress from the last few months) came from.
A week later, I returned to Tumblr and went back to liking fan art, photos and non-political posts that I missed while I was away. I still won’t be going back to the Following section of my Home page for the foresee future as it’s going to be nothing but politics and posts that are about Trump and the Republicans ruining everyone’s lives who isn’t a white, straight, rich Christian man!
Heck, I hear according to some here, Tumblr might be dead soon because some are going to Bluesky, which actually gain over 25 million new followers after Trump won last month! I have been flirting about making a Bluesky account as of late as it was Twitter back when it was first started. But the main difference is that Bluesky full of left-wing and LGBT people instead.
Of course, I already have a Mastodon account that I made last year, which is supposed to be my Twitter replacement. But I couldn’t figure out how to use it. So, I don’t use it as much as I thought I should. I might swap out the Mastodon link with the Bluesky link instead (when I eventually make the account).
If I do have a make a Bluesky account, I hope that I can last longer there than I did on Cohost as I made that account back in February…just for it to shut down 7 months later! What made me sad that Cohost was one of the few places that trans people can fully be themselves when most social media accounts (such as Tumblr and Twitter), kicked them out for not being business friendly and such. I’m worried how more of social media is going to limit the LGBT community and the minorities when Trump eventually gets into office in a few weeks…
As for life back at home, there were some bad things that happened there as well. Such as my disappointment with the Total Eclipse that happened back in April. Yeah, while I mentioned in my birthday blog that this was one of the better things that happened, I was still disappointed by it. Why? It was because it was cloudy, that my mom and older sister caught vertigo from it and I had to scoop out a dead squirrel that was floating in our pool. Then there’s the fact that there won’t be another one until in 2045! Bleh!
Then two months later, me and most of my family suffered from food poisoning from what my older sister cooked. She cooked some pasta and used some, just recently expired chicken in her homemade sauce. I remember spending days in the bathroom with diarrhea and end up losing at least 5 pounds over it (which is a good thing since I’m overweight and need to lose weight for a while)! Too bad I later regained the 5 pounds thanks to Thanksgiving, loaded baked potatoes (which became my comfort food as of late) and the colder weather kept me from going out as much.
Even though I beat 14 games this year, there were 2 games that I played and for some reason, I could never beat. I mention at the end of last year’s blog, that I was going to try playing Final Fantasy VIII Remastered again after getting walled by the opening boss of Act 4. While I did things differently from my pervious playthrough such as not grinding as much and play the card game side quest so I can earn parts for the character’s weapons, it wasn’t enough and made it to Deling City (the first time) before quitting once more.
It didn’t help that I was spoiled on huge plot twist of the game (which was my fault, by the way) several years back, which caused me to lose motivation in beating the game.
Then you wondered why I bother play this game in the first place!? That’s because during the 2020 Awesome Games Done Quick, a trio did an 8 hour speed run of the game and was good at it! Too bad it was later relieved that one of them was a member of a far-right political party in Spain and is now banned from attending future events!
Then there was the graphics, which I feel in love with as it looked impressive on the PlayStation at the time. And it was a HUGE improvement compare to the graphics of Final Fantasy VII (look, I’m not bashing the game or what so as this was Square Enix’s first 3D game; but still…) So, I end up buying the remaster on the Switch when it went on sale later that year.
Look, I’ll eventually beat this game one day. Or maybe I’ll play Final Fantasy V instead as not only I saw a Let’s Play/Fiesta run of it back in 2017, but I also have the emulated version of it on my laptop. It helps that V is a more traditional JRPG, compare to VIII. Maybe V will be the first Final Fantasy game I finally beat.
The second game I could never beat this year was Advanced Wars for GBA. I know there’s the remaster version that came out on the Switch last year after numerous delays. But I’m too broke to buy it, so I decided to play the original emulated version of it instead. I think one of the few mistakes I did with the game is not use a guide and just winging it. As the result, it took me forever to beat the levels and lose so many tanks and soldiers! Then the later stages get mean and I end up stuck on the final boss with no way of winning!
I think I need to redo the game again and try to follow the guide more carefully this time. Maybe I’ll do that next year, I guess…
…
Well, seeing what I have been thought this past year is prove that 2024 is cursed and that it needs to be burn to the ground! That is true. But however, there were some good things that made this year tolerable for me. Or for me to not remember that Trump is president again for 2 seconds.
First thing is that Total Drama (the animated parody of Survivor that I keep talking about in the second half of this year’s blogs) FINALLY aired the new season! For me, it’s one of the few things I was looking forward to this year! Yeah, it’s technically been out since last year. Despite that, I never bother watching the bootlegs on the pirating sites when it first came out, as I thought it won’t be for long until it aired in the States. It didn’t and it wasn’t until this SUMMER that Cartoon Network finally aired it here, jerks! You can blame scheduling conflicts for that one!
Like I mention on this year’s birthday blog, the new season of Total Drama was one of the better seasons I’ve seen in a long time. So much that not only it kept me distracted from remembering all the terrible things are going on in the world, but it also brought back my Total Drama special interest after an 8 year hiatus! This one surprised me because I didn’t like the new cast at first thanks to seeing the first episode. But thankfully the second episode changed that and now I like the 4th generation cast, as much I love the 1st and 2nd generation cast that I grew up with (sorry for those who like the 3rd generation cast, I didn’t like them that much, beside a few)!
But the downside is that I had to give up my Danganronpa Another special interest after having it for 4 years. This is what happened you got attached to the series, AFTER it ended! Oops. And my Everlasting webcomic as well as I was suffering burnout from trying to resume making the comics and try to tell myself that my art style for the series isn’t that bad (it probably is). I still love the series, but not as much I like my Total Drama special interest.
Then a few months after season 7/6a finished airing, I end up developing a Total Drama slasher AU series while I was away from social media. Like, it came from reading a slasher fanfic on the weekend before Election Day and it kind of helped me cope with Trump winning again. By seeing my favorites get hurt that is! Okay, that sounds a bit harsh and all, but at least it's better than having another meltdown about the election results!
Of course, I thought about writing the series and publishing it on Ao3. But I was hesitant in making an account there (even though I'm been using the site for years) for reasons. However, I decided to bite the bullet and make one anyways. Then I decided to publish my 2 fanfics from the Danganronpa Another series (that I posted early this year both on Neocities and Tumblr) to test the water.
So far, the second fanfic has 37 views and both fanfics has 1 kudo each, which means I'm doing something right...right? Well it doesn’t help that Danganronpa Another fandom is (mostly) dead as it’s been almost 5 years since the series ended and that it’s a fan game, which means the fandom tend to be smaller than main series.
At least the Total Drama fandom is still alive! So I should think about publishing my AU series, quick before the show gets cancelled again. And maybe put some one-shot fanfics with that too! I will when my executive dysfunction allows me to…
Then there is my website that is still going strong. Since the last post where I celebrate the 1 year anniversary of my Neocities website, I have now 209 followers and over 250,000 views! Like wow, I have been here for 15 months and I’m getting so many views. Like thanks guys, I really appreciate it! Seeing the huge numbers is what motives me to stay here as long as I can. Maybe it might encourage me to finally fill out the missing links on some of my webpages after putting it off for numerous reasons.
I would say ditto to my Nekoweb website as well. It’s been 2 months since I made my account and website there. Now, I have 42 followers and at least 4,000 views! I know Nekoweb is smaller than Neocities, but they have a few things that the former has that the latter don’t. Such as a better file editor, no limits for file types, protection from AI crawlers (which is the reason why some switched over) and an actual RSS feed (which took me a bit to setup)!
Of course, Neocities will still be my main website and I’ll be updating both sites as needed. At least it’s good to have a backup site in case Kyle Drake (the founder of Neocities) will eventually put AI in the code, which will drive away many.
When Nintendo isn’t being terrible to their fans, they like to put out great things such as their famous Nintendo Direct! Unfortunately, they only have one “actual” direct this year as they were too busy developing the Switch 2 (which the CEO confirmed to be a real thing back in May) and doing other pet projects, such as opening the Nintendo Museum and announce the opening of the Donkey Kong Country section to the Super Nintendo World attraction. But whenever they do have a direct, it tends to be a good one as this is where the hype and the memes came from.
The one from June didn’t let their fans down as they announced so many big games! Some of the highlights included them confirming that Metroid Prime 4 is alive and breathing. The Mario and Luigi series has their first new game in 9 years! Zelda “finally” (as Nintendo refuse to acknowledge the two CDi games that Zelda was a playable character) gets her own game! And Ace Attorney Investigations 2 is finally getting an official English release after being Japan exclusive in 13 years! Okay, that was Capcom’s game. But it’s still a huge deal for the Ace Attorney fans as this mean now all the Ace Attorney games has been officially released in English!
Not surprisingly, the memes that came from the event were funny, great and made everyone forget that Nintendo is a jerk! For a minute that is… The direct also surprised everyone that they’re still making new games, even though we’re getting towards the end of the Switch era and that they have been releasing nothing but remake and remasters of older games in the past few years.
Speaking of older games, the biggest positive thing that Nintendo did this year is finally confirming that Vivian (a fan favorite character from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door), is a transwoman! The reason why this is a big deal for the fandom is because when the game first came out in 2004, the original English release took that out in order to not anger the Moral Guardians, who used to control the American media. This made American fans upset when they later found out her sexuality on her wiki page. This was me as well as when first got into the game, back in 2014. At least we understand why Nintendo did that at the time.
When Nintendo announced the remake of the game last year, many wondered if they’re going to keep the original translation or not, as times has changed. Changed to the point that you can have trans and queer people in the media without getting backlash from the Moral Guardians! Well, the Moral Guardians will still complain about it. But they’re now (mostly) ignored by the mainstream media, who see them as backwards and controlling.
Then as a person who saw a 100% Let’s Play of the game 10 years ago, I wasn’t too worried about what Nintendo is going to do with the remake. But I was worried on how the fandom will react as The Thousand-Year Door is one of the best Paper Mario RPG that they have ever made and that hell will break loses if Nintendo changes anything that might upset them! At least I don’t have to worry about getting spoiled by the plot though! It’s what changes that Nintendo made in the remake that will be considered spoilers to me. So, I had to be careful when the game comes out.
But a few days before the game came out in May, I got spoiled anyways as there were leaks on Tumblr about Vivian’s sexuality being confirmed. When I first saw it, I was like “Oh no, this was the big one (as in spoilers from the remake)!” Then it was like, “I hope it’s actually true. Otherwise, there will be a huge backlash against the fandom!”
Then I looked at the screenshots and links that the blogs have and it confirmed that Vivian is 100% trans in the remake! I’m glad Nintendo finally came around and correct the mistake they made 20 years ago, so the game won’t get banned for having a trans character. Not surprisingly, the Moral Guardians on social media got angry about it, saying that Nintendo went “woke” or something. But they’re thankfully ignored by everyone else on that matter. Instead, many are happy that we get a LGBT representation in a Nintendo game and hope that they will keep doing that in the future!
So see, Nintendo is not THAT bad (most of the time that is)! Now we need to tell their lawyers to leave the emulation and fan games alone.
While I beat only 14 video games this year (compared to last year), I did manage to play some of the ones I have such as Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak, Super Mario 64, Costume Quest, Luigi's Mansion, Night in the Woods and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. One of them, Luigi's Mansion, was the game I have wanted to play since I was 12 and thanks to emulation, I finally have the opinion to do so! Same thing with Super Mario 64, even though I hate the slippery movement and camera controls to the point I have to save state, multiple times due to falling so much! Then I finally played Night in the Woods after getting the game last year and somehow avoided the big plot twist that the game had. So at the end, I mainly played games that are either on Steam or by emulation.
Then I received my end of the year recaps from Nintendo and Steam and I’m reminded that I didn’t play too many games there, compared to last year. I blamed my burnout, that my Total Drama special interest came back and stressing about this year’s election for not playing that much. I need to do a little better next year, though.
Just like with my video games, I didn’t watch too many anime this year. I only watched 7 this time as I wasn’t feeling it as much as I did in the past. Once again, I blame what I say above for that one! Despite that, it didn’t stop me from reading anime news to see what the big thing and so for. I watched Pokémon Concierge, which I liked due to having a stop-motion animation. I also watched Violet Evergarden and One Punch Man, which was sitting on my backlog list for a while now. Violet Evergarden was pretty emotional and I can see why people liked One Punch Man so much.
Then I heard the 2nd season of One Punch Man is not good because it suffered from a huge animation downgrade to the point it scared away some. I heard a 3rd season is finally getting made, but I heard everyone’s expectation is still low due to their anime studio is using the same downgrade animation from the last season. I might watched the 2nd season if the 3rd season ends up good.
Well, I never expect to watch Delicious in Dungeon this year, but I did because it was giving rave reviews for those who watched it and it reminded those who played Dungeon and Dragons, which was me when I used to play it back in university. Now, I’m looking forward to the 2nd season, which won’t air until next year.
But one bad thing about all this is that I (somewhat) accidently got spoiled the ending of My Hero Academia, as the manga ended this year and it ended BADLY! Badly to the point that there’s a Know Your Meme article that explain how bad the ending was and I end up getting spoiled the plot twist that is in the title! As the result, for those who only watched the anime (which the current season is a HUGE improvement compare to the last one), have to keep their expectations low when it airs the final season (which cover the second half of the final arc) next year!
I also know that “Oshi no Ko”’s manga also ended this year too. But thankfully, I avoided that one as it came out when I was hiding from the Internet due to recovering from the election aftermath. I heard that it ended strangely, though. Then I know that I was supposed to watch the 2nd season this summer, (which I heard was better than the 1st season). But once again, special interest and other stuff kept me from watching the show. Maybe I’ll get around to it next year…just like the rest of my anime backlog!
As for real life, one of the better things that happened to me is that I finally got my passport renewed! My pervious passport expired last year and I held off in renewing it due to being too broke to renew it (it cost $130 to do it) and that I won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. That changed in September when mom send me a news article link that the government is finally allowing the option of renewing it online as long your still in the system! I got interest real quick as not only this will save me time, but it’s also better for the environment as this means no more wasting paper!
Despite that, it wasn’t until November when I finally send in my application. Why? Because I have to go out and get my photo taken as they add the new rule that you can’t wear glasses anymore when you have your photo taken (grr….)! And that every time I tried to go to the local CVS store to have it taken (which is not too far from my house, mind you), I’m either too tried or that mom doesn’t feel like driving there (as I can’t drive).
I find it funny as the day I finally got my passport photo taken and submitted my application, it was the day Trump won the election! So basically, I feel like it’s a sign that I made a right choice to renew my passport in case Trump does something stupid and dangerous in office in the next few years. To the point it’ll be too dangerous for me and my mom to stay in America, as we’re the only ones in our household to have passports!
Then the funny thing about submitting my application is that it actually took 12 days to get it approved and send my passport in the mail! It helped I live near a major city, where it’ll take less time to get it, compared to 6-8 weeks if I live in the rural area. And even more due to people all the sudden wanted to renew their passports thanks to Trump winning!
The next biggest thing that happened to me is that my vegetable garden survived the year! Compared to last year, it actually rained and the weather wasn’t as hot either! Well, it was still hot as I live in Southern Texas. But not as in it was 100 degree for over 100 DAYS, like it was last year! Now next year, I’m planning to grow more vegetables since Trump is going to put a tariff on our groceries, which will make them more expensive than they were before! Hopefully, the weather won’t be that hot next year to allow me to do so…
The last biggest thing that happened to me is that I haven’t had any more meltdowns since January! I was worried that I might have another one when I found out Trump has won again last month. But it didn’t happen for some reason. Even when I return from my Internet hiatus, a few weeks back and read some the heartbreaking blog posts of how Trump winning is going to hurt them; I didn’t have a meltdown from reading them. I think being older and wiser helps as I learned what triggers I should not use when browsing the Internet and I think that’s how I handle his reelection, a bit better than what I did 8 years ago.
Hopefully, I can continue of not having any more meltdown by being careful what I read and where I browse on the Internet. Do that and before I know it, it’ll be a year since I had one!
…
Welp, I think that’s it for all the things that happened to me this year. Now let’s talk about my plans and goals for next year! I’ll continue to make progress and stuff on my websites. I’ll still try to beat the games and watch the anime on my backlog lists. I’ll even try to watch more movies; more TV shows and read more books that I never got around to!
I said on my last year’s end of the year blog, I’ll try to stay away from the news for the sake of my mental health.
Yeah, so much for that…
But I will this time, as next year is going to be nothing but Trump doing and saying dumb, dangerous shit that’s going to make my country the laughing stock!
Right before I go, I want to apologize for how I ended my November 7th blog as I sounded too snarky and said that there is no hope for us with Trump coming back to the White House. That was my honest reaction at the time as I was both angry and numb that despite all the terrible things Trump did during his first term, 76 million Americans decided to vote him back in office anyways!
Assholes.
Then you wondered why so many foreigners make fun of us! I feel like this year’s election is so bad to the point, I feel like my vote doesn’t matter and that maybe I should stop voting completely. I said that as no matter how much I vote, the Republicans will always win at the end!
I also want to apologize for mentioning the election in this year’s blogs (which were 15) as I know some of you are either non-Americans who don’t care about American politics or are Americans and wanted to get away from the politics as for some, Neocities and their websites is their safe place. I get that and try to keep my site political-free as much as I can. At least I give out a warning whenever I do mention it.
Thankfully, next year’s blog won’t be mentioning current events as much as I did this year. But like I mention before, it’s nothing but Trump doing dumb shit. Unless it’s something big to the point that it somehow affects all of us. Even then, I’ll give out a warning when I do mention it. But, I will talk about how some past political events such as Covid and when America legalizes same-sex marriage, affects me.
But for those who don’t support Trump: fight. Fight as much as you can! We did when he was in office. We can do it again. Go to the protests (if you can and be safe when you do go), find a community that you can trust (which is easier said than done for me since I don’t drive and is a shy, anxious person in real life) and fight like your life depends on it!
It won’t be easy now since he knows the loopholes and can cover his mistakes more easily. But we’ll fight; fight as much as we can! And maybe when the 2028 Election finally shows up, maybe, MAYBE we’ll have real change as the Democrats will (hopefully) pick someone that everyone can agree with and not some white, old man who has no guts! We (somewhat) did in 2020, we can do it again!
Maybe there might be some hope in the future…