Back in my Exfanding days, I wrote at length about attending Otakon, PAX East, and New York Comic-Con. I've been to other conventions since then—Castle Point Anime Convention and Trekonderoga, off the top of my head—but you'd never know it from this blog. It's been several years since I've posted anything about a convention experience, and my last attempt was essentially a self-reminder to have fun at conventions. I must have internalized my own advice pretty well, because I had a fantastic weekend at AnimeNEXT 2018.

...Wait, didn't I just get back from AnimeNEXT 2019? Apparently I've been sitting on a half-written convention writeup for the past 11-12 months, so I'd better discuss last year before moving on to this year. Here goes.

THURSDAY

I scooted out of work a bit early, picked up my wife, and began the trek to Atlantic City, NJ. My wife and I are relics from the era of putting together mix tapes for car trips, so she had burned a CD for the occasion: an assortment of intro and ending songs from anime series we'd watched together in the last few years. There's nothing like tunes from Bleach, Silver Spoon, Restaurant to Another World, Kill la Kill, Yuri on Ice!!, Himouto! Umaru-chan, Arpeggio of Blue Steel, Valerian and Laureline, Magical Girl Ore, Kakuriyo: Bed and Breakfast for Spirits, Bodacious Space Pirates, Free!, Orange, Little Witch Academia, and the original Devilman to get you pumped for sitting around in traffic. And there's nothing like the preceding list of titles to get you to question our taste in anime.

Our first destination was actually just outside Atlantic City—we had a room reserved at the historic Joseph Pitney House in Absecon. Ever since our honeymoon, my wife and I have been staying at bed and breakfasts instead of hotels whenever we have the opportunity; the food, hospitality, and unique charm are often as memorable as whatever we're in town to see or do, plus we tend to get better prices and quieter neighbors than we would at a hotel. We arrived fairly late in the evening, picked up our room key, visited the always-open snack pantry for some homemade shortbread, and settled into our spacious room.

We missed the window to check in early at the convention, so we didn't have our schedules and program booklets to be able to plan out our first day. Instead, my wife doodled around on her tablet while I read a book (specifically, Live From New York, a fascinating and highly entertaining collection of interviews recalling the first few decades of Saturday Night Live). My wife laughed about how we were spending the first night of our vacation doing exactly what we'd be doing at home. "Yeah," I responded, "but we don't have to worry about cleaning, or cooking, or going to work tomorrow; everything's taken care of, and we can relax without feeling like there's something else we should be doing."

I cannot begin to articulate how comfortable the bed was—once my head hit the pillow, the world beyond the bed ceased to exist. It was magnificent.

FRIDAY

The world beyond the bed reasserted its existence at 5:30 AM. My wife had a different costume planned for each day of the convention, and today's required over 2 hours to prepare. Taking into account when breakfast would be served, how long it might take to find parking at or near the venue, and how long the registration line was likely to be, we resigned ourselves to an unpleasantly early morning. Fortunately, I was cosplaying as "dude attending an anime convention," so I went back to sleep.

Eventually, I left the bed to pursue the "and breakfast" part of the arrangement, and it was delightful. Vanilla yogurt parfait with granola and berries (I'm not big on berries, but I'll eat them if sprinkled sparingly on yogurt parfait), followed by a two-egg omelet and a glass of orange juice—enough to fuel me through the start of the convention.

I get anxious driving around unfamiliar urban areas, what with their endless traffic lights and surprise one-way streets and claustrophobia-inducing architecture right up against the sidewalks, but the drive to the convention center was downright pleasant. There was plenty of parking onsite at the convention center—and as I would later discover, there were several food vendors and even a train station onsite, making this the most convenient convention venue I think I've ever been to.

I remember PAX East being obnoxious because the layout made no sense and there were waiting lines for everything (my wife refers to it as "Line Con"). I remember it taking forever to get around Comic-Con because of the incredible masses of people everywhere. The last Otakon I attended was uncomfortably over capacity, to the point where even the restaurants outside the convention center were overrun by otaku at all hours. As a midsized convention in a well-organized space, AnimeNEXT had none of these problems. The convention never got in the way of the convention, if that makes sense.

AnimeNEXT had the dealers' room, video game room, and concerts on the second floor; all the panels and screenings on the third floor; and all the niche events and novelty rooms (eg, the Cosplay Repair room, which I think is a brilliant idea) on the fourth floor. Escalators were plentiful and logically placed; and the design of the convention center gave every level a good view of the ground floor, where audience-participation events such as a cosplay wrestling tournament would occasionally occur. I also have to credit the building staff—from the folks in the parking garage to the folks at the front desk—for being friendly the entire weekend, and for being incredibly helpful every time I approached them with a question (mostly pertaining to food).

Of course, the first order of business was getting through the registration line. Ahead of us in the lobby was a group with one person cosplaying as Shrek, and someone in the group periodically used their smartphone to play a selection from the Shrek soundtrack to get us pumped for standing around in line. We struck up conversations with other attendees as the line snaked back and forth, commenting on one person's clever "Shyguys Burgers and Fries" t-shirt, praising an excellent Castle Crashers costume, and asking about a superb Stephen Universe cosplay we didn't recognize because we'd never seen Stephen Universe. I swear this was an anime convention.

Oh, but that was just the line to get into the registration line. Once we made it through the big doors into the registration area (which was the size of a basketball court), we split off into the queue for people who preregistered for tickets. There we encountered new cosplayers, such as Blair from Soul Eater, whom I mistook for I-No from Guilty Gear because my brain still thought we were at a video game convention. The hardest part of appreciating convention cosplay is that, as my wife put it, it's like playing one big trivia game all weekend. "Name that character." Which gets harder and harder with every passing year, thanks to new characters I've never heard of and old characters who've slipped my mind.

Case in point: my wife was cosplaying as Ujibe, the coach from Keijo!!!!!!!! (yes, there really are that many exclamation points in the title), and not a single person made any indication that they recognized her. This was a little heartbreaking to me, knowing the effort she had put into this costume. She had painstakingly reviewed clips and screencaps from the show to ensure every detail of her outfit was accurate. She had hand-dyed her shirt in an involved process using tea and tumeric. She had hand-stitched the clover logo on the shirt (never mind that it was rotated 45 degrees; it was late, she was tired). She had spent the morning styling her wig and beauty mark to precise specifications. I was proud of her for what she pulled off.

Granted, Ujibe is a side character in an anime that a lot of people might not admit to watching, on account of its subject matter. (I swear I watched it for the story, but it's about girls in bathing suits hitting each other with their butts.) However, I think my wife hit the nail on the head: she believes people just aren't accustomed to seeing plus-size women cosplaying as plus-size women. If people assumed my wife was pretending to be one of the bajillion characters as scrawny as Sailor Moon, of course they wouldn't recognize her costume. This would account for why one dude thought she was the 4chan mascot.

Anydigression, as soon as we cleared the registration line, we sat down with our schedules and mapped out the first half of our day. I marked up anything that seemed remotely interesting (I wanted backup plans, in case anything was a dud or too full to get into), but I opted to follow my wife around whenever there was any overlap in our interests. Our last Otakon was marred by the logistical frustrations of trying to meet back up with people after going off to do our own things, and I was more concerned about having a fun convention together than getting to do and see everything I wanted most.

Japanese Feminism 101: In our first dynamic panel of the day, we waited about half an hour for the presenter to show up. Around 11:35, one of the convention staff wandered in to see why we were sitting around in an empty room. Apparently, there had been schedule changes since the agenda was printed.

Look, I understand that plans change. But nobody at registration told us about it. Nobody put up a sign. Although we later discovered that the most current room schedule was displayed in a tiny box beside the door, that didn't help anyone trying to plan their day before they got to the room. I asked the staff at the information desk whether they had a list of corrections to the printed agenda. Not only did they seem surprised about there being schedule changes, but they directed me to view the updated schedule online—which is a poor solution for anyone who doesn't have a smartphone or has to deal with roaming data in a place with no public Wi-Fi. We eventually noticed a widescreen monitor rotating all the events and their locations for the next couple hours—not ideal, but better than nothing.

Game the Gamer: With an unexpected hole in our schedule and the dealers' room not yet open to the public, we wandered over to the only event that wasn't already deeply in progress. The premise of "Cutthroat Kitchen, with Wii games" sounded like a decent use of the next hour, but I started to lose interest when too much time was being spent auctioning off more sabotages than I felt were necessary for the first round. I stuck around long enough to see one of the contestants attempt WarioWare: Smooth Moves while handcuffed to a chair; my wife stayed for the whole thing, but I headed out somewhere around when they were trying to get someone to play Smash Bros. with a Wii bowling ball.

Kaibyo: The Supernatural Cats of Japan: I'm sorry I missed the beginning of this, because I'm interested in Japanese mythology and folklore, the presenter (Zack Davisson) was very engaging, and I'm enough of a cat person that my wife and I meow at each other as a form of communication. At least I got there in time to laugh about cats who gain power from wearing silly things on their head, see the tragic portrait of a cat minstrel playing a shamisen (an instrument that would have been partially constructed of cat leather), and learn about the origin of Japan's fondness for catgirls. The Japanese government at one point prohibited artists from drawing or painting people of a certain social variety (eg, prostitutes)—and the artists cleverly got around the issue by creating the exact same art, but with anthropomorphic cats instead of humans.

Lunch: I think I had a barbecue chicken wrap. I'm not a big wrap guy, but that's what they served at Esquires, the food stand in the train station attached to the convention center. I don't know about you, but I don't think of wraps when I hear "Esquires."

Finding Your Anime Voice: I popped in a bit late for what I hoped would be a panel on doing different voices, which would have been helpful for me on Twitch and YouTube with all the dialogue I read aloud while playing games. Unfortunately, the part for which I was present consisted mostly of random audience members trying to speak in a different register (eg, head voice) with minimal coaching. I left after maybe 5 minutes.

Dealers' Room: With an unexpected hole in my schedule and the dealers' room now open to the public, I meandered down to peruse the treasure trove. Geekery in every format was for sale—posters, wall scrolls, books, clothes, figurines, body pillows, DVDs, video games, and so on. Normally, this is where most of my convention budget goes, but I found myself exercising an unexpected amount of self-control.

Much of the merchandise was from new anime series that I hadn't seen or didn't have a special attachment to, so that helped. But I'm also in a different phase of my life than I was the last time I attended a convention with this much for sale. There's very little I actually want anymore—and I'm subscribed to the Star Trek Official Starships Collection, so shelf space in my home is at a premium like never before. I think about all the other ways I could be using my money—bills, charities, clothes that fit.

To that end, one of the few things I bought for myself was a t-shirt mashing up Mega Man and Iron Man. I also picked up a copy of the NES game Faxanadu, which has been on my radar for a while, as well as a RWBY poster. I'm particularly happy with the poster, because I had a similar image as a desktop wallpaper for a while and I love the multi-panel aesthetic.

HIATUS

Then I saved this post as a draft and didn't come back to it for almost a year.

My original intention was to pick up where I left off, using the online schedule for 2018 (with the numerous updates not reflected on my print schedule) to jog my memory and organize my storytelling. However, at the time of this post, I can only find online schedules for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017...and 2019. As much as I want to keep going with the blow-by-blow recap, I recognize that this is a good excuse to scale back the verbosity and focus on the highlights. Nobody needs to hear about the mediocre pizza I ate.

I could regale you with tales of the three minutes I spent at an 18+ panel that I thought would be like Mystery Science Theater 3000 for adults only, but ended up being a YouTuber showing us his skeevy hentai game playthrough videos and creepily talking over his own recorded commentary. I could gush about Anime Burger Time, the BYOB (Bring Your Own Burger) panel where the host chowed down on Johnny Rockets while showing us clips of hamburgers appearing in various anime. I could recount what I recall of the Mazinger Z: Infinity movie, or of the Gaijin Girl: Life in Japan presentation. I could describe the hilarious Bad Anime Bad! panel and invoke the infamous names Garzey's Wing and Titanic: The Legend Goes On.

Instead, I'll attempt to work some untold stories into my writeup of AnimeNEXT 2019, where they'll still be relevant due to how often I found myself thinking back to 2018. If I write in a less comprehensive and detail-oriented format, I may even finish before the 2020 convention. In the meantime, please enjoy some photos from 2018, which we'll pretend are the intended conclusion to this post.

NOTE: If you (you, the reader) are in any of the photos below and don't want to be featured here, or if you'd like to be credited, please let me know (see the main page for contact options) and I'll action your request accordingly.

First up, a couple scenes from the convention in general:

A couple characters I don't recognize, but their costumes looked cool:

Some woman I'm married to, cosplaying as Tamako from Silver Spoon and then Ujibe from Keijo!!!!!!!! in an alternate outfit:

Umaru from Himouto! Umaru-chan, Uno and Nico from Nanbaka, Ryuko from Kill La Kill, and Dark Samus from the Metroid Prime series:

Nora, Ruby, and Yang from RWBY:

Buncha characters from the Phoenix Wright series:

Lastly, some group cosplay from Fullmetal Alchemist, Black Lagoon, and Gurren Lagann:

Ah, but that's not all. Carrying on with a tradition my wife started at the 2011 New York Comic-Con, I purchased a sketchbook and went around collecting doodles from the people at the booths in artist alley (regardless of whether they were an artist or just the person looking after the booth). These weren't formal commissions; rather, I asked for whatever they felt like drawing, if they felt like drawing anything in the first place. No pressure, no restrictions. Surprisingly, only one person drew genitalia.

Here are the sketches I collected—and as with the photos above, please contact me if your art is featured here and you'd like it to be removed or credited:

So there you have it. AnimeNEXT 2018. At least, as much of it as is contained in this post.

The third Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest is closed, and the grand total of level entries is...185.​ For comparison, that's twice the size of the last contest plus the size of the first contest. Or, to put it another way, that's more levels than there are in Mega Man 1-11 combined.

We judges are gonna die.

I asked for this, though. I saw how popular this contest was and knew what I was getting into. I'm a writer, a game critic, a game developer, a diehard Mega Man fan, an experienced player, and an authority on both the official and unofficial games; this is exactly the kind of thing I do for fun.

Beyond my personal enjoyment and satisfaction, this is a chance to do some good for the community. No doubt there are several aspiring game developers who have submitted to the contest—and speaking from experience, it's important for them to receive feedback that's comprehensive, fair, and encouraging. I intend to keep that in mind as I write my judge reviews. I'm already projected to be the "nice judge," but I can be just as critical and nitpicky as anyone. The key is remembering that this contest is for fun, and that there's a real person with real feelings and a desire to succeed on the receiving end of my criticism.

As the development team readies the first batch of levels to be judged, I'm bracing myself for a long winter of nonstop Mega Man...and really, that's no different from any other winter. For the last decade, most of my major side projects have centered around this franchise; I'm accustomed to the Blue Bomber being a daily part of my life. There was a span of several years where I was blogging every other day, contributing occasional articles to GameFAQs and GameCola, and keeping up with a personal journal; I can handle writing 185 short reviews in a couple months.

I have a colossal task ahead of me, to be sure, but I'm not intimidated by it. I'm looking foward to it. If I can find the right balance between judging and everything else I want and need to do, the next few months should be very rewarding indeed.

Hi. I...uh...I haven't been around for a while, huh? I can explain that.

I've been busy. Not necessarily any busier than usual, but my focus has been elsewhere. I recently moved, and now I'm close enough to friends that I might be busy any given weeknight. I started a new job, and there's a "no blogging" policy that's curtailed my lunchtime writing breaks. I've thrown myself into developing a small Mega Man fangame, which has consumed almost all my free time for the last several weeks. Most importantly, I've taken stock of all my activities and obligations, and I've started turning my attention away from the things that don't energize and fulfill me the way I used to. Blogging, much to my surprise, is one such thing.

To be clear, I still love to write. I still intend to update my Series Opinions when I have the time and inspiration, and I'm not abandoning blogging altogether. But I look at the last several months--heck, the last year or two--and I can't consider myself a "blogger" anymore. With rare exception, my only posts have been my monthly Retrospectives--a holdover from my days with Exfanding Your Horizons, when we relied on regularly scheduled filler posts (which, ostensibly, were also of some benefit to our less-regular readers) to meet our blogging quotas. Until recently, I didn't stop to consider whether I wanted to keep going with a recurring summary of my online deeds. It was simply something I did. I never thought much of it because of how little time it took, in the grand scheme of things. Not like the GameCola articles that took me weeks to assemble, or the YouTube videos that took months. But when I assessed everything I was doing with my life, I came to realize that even the small effort it took to keep up with a monthly Retrospective was still an intrusion on how I wanted to be spending my time anymore.

If you're following an obscure blog that never updates, then you're probably following me on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and maybe even The Backloggery, where you'll get updates on my online deeds in real time. Neither of us needs a Retrospective anymore. (Apologies to the one person who misses the Retrospectives.)

That's how I operate: I accumulate more and more obligations and join more and more activities until I'm completely overburdened, then I clean house and start over again. I never want to let people down, and I often feel guilty backing out of a commitment (no matter how good the excuse is), and I'm also a creature of habit. Once I start something, I'm disinclined to stop. This is why I've played through so many video games I haven't enjoyed. Even that has changed, though; you may recall my Backloggery Revolution earlier this year, and I haven't looked back. I've lost all patience for things that should be fun but aren't. I have so little time to myself anymore that I can't afford to waste a second on anything that doesn't build me up.

That's a little unhealthy for a perfectionist, mind you. I already want the things I do in my free time to go smoothly; now I'm pressuring myself to choose the best possible activities and make sure they go off without a hitch. I'm making myself unhappy by trying to be happy. How messed up is that? The solution, or at least part of the solution, is to free up more time for myself so I'm not so pressured to make every moment count. To awkwardly employ a metaphor, they say there's no use crying over spilled milk, but I'll still cry less if I spill the same amount from a fuller glass.

Regardless, no matter what I do, I will always question whether it's the best thing I can do. Suppose I volunteer to be a friendly visitor at a nursing home. Great, right? But then I'm not helping out at a homeless shelter, providing disaster relief in the wake of the latest hurricane, mentoring a troubled teenager, or doing any number of other important things. And let's be honest; the activities I'm choosing between are playing AM2R and watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain Goes Somewhere You'll Never Visit, At This Rate. Maybe that's not all bad, though. Giving of oneself is arguably the highest pursuit there is, but giving is hollow without someone to receive the gift. By being a consumer of entertainment, I'm validating the time and effort that countless people have spent on trying to make me happy, however indirectly. Maybe, with the right mindset, whatever I'm doing is the best thing I could be doing. At the very least, I can aim to make the most of any situation, however trivial and wasteful it may seem.

It feels good to write again. I missed this. I missed you, dear reader. Even if I'm only writing for myself, this feels worthwhile. Even if this wasn't the best thing I could have done with my time, this feels worthwhile. Maybe perfectionism is the fear of things being less than worthwhile. Well, then. Things are going perfectly.

I've been lurking around the World Wide Web since the days of dial-up, but it wasn't until my first post with Exfanding Your Horizons in 2008 that I established any kind of online presence. Before then, you'd never find anything of mine by accident—if you had my e-mail address, it was because I knew you in person and gave it to you; if you were on my Angelfire website (about which I remember nothing, other than that it was as much an eyesore as anything else from the Web 1.0 era), it was because I sent you the link. I had a brief flirtation with AOL chat rooms in the '90s, but such a presence is ephemeral at best.

The only public trace of my online existence was a website I created for a high school history project, which was ostensibly about the American Civil War, but which was secretly a playground where the popup text for hovering over Roger B. Taney's portrait was "Would you buy cookies from this man?" and where clicking on the conspicuous blank space at the bottom of the last page would make a picture of Boba Fett appear. It looks like the site has finally been taken down, but I was able to Google and Yahoo! my way back to it for a good many years after I graduated. Other than a stray photo or guestbook signature on someone else's site, you'd never know I was around before 2008.

Or so I thought.

On a whim, I did a web search for "Flashman85," my default handle for general geekery online. Don't ask me what possessed me to do this—I'm not even sure myself. The first several results were no surprise—my profiles on Twitch, YouTube, The Backloggery, Sprites INC, and a few other sites where I felt the urge to comment that one time. But then there was a review of Mega Man for the NES written by a Flashman85. Funny, I thought to myself. I've only ever reviewed that game on GameCola, under my real name. Let's see who this other guy is.

"To paraphrase a friend of mine," the review began, "Capcom's idea for Megaman was 'Mario with a gun.' Indeed, few would suspect how popular a franchise the Blue Bomber would become. The original game was similar to other NES games of the time, but it also had laudable properties that would help it to endure into the next century."

That's an odd coincidence, I thought. I also had a friend who described Mega Man as "Mario with a gun." And I'm definitely the only person on the Internet who uses the words "indeed" and "laudable." Who is this guy?

As it turned out, that guy was me.

Now, I've written a lot during my time with a keyboard in front of me. I may not be able to readily call to mind every post and comment I've virtually penned, but show me something I've written and I'll at least be able to recall a few details about it. Staring at this review—dated 2002, well before I really existed on the Internet—I had no recollection whatsoever of it. I didn't even recognize the website it was on. But there was no mistaking that this was my writing.

The shockingly low word count is what initially threw me the most. The whole review weighs in at a downright economical 231 words, which is barely enough for me to develop an introduction these days. However, it would be totally like me to spend almost 50% of the review complaining about Ice Man's stage. "'If you can beat Ice Man's stage, you can beat any Megaman game' is my motto." A little hint of Dave Barry there. I used to read a lot of Dave Barry. There were signs everywhere that this was me, notwithstanding Past Me's insistence on writing "Mega Man" as one word. Silly Past Me.

I looked around the site for other reviews that I had apparently written, and I found that I had covered all six of the NES Mega Man games. MM3 was no surprise: "My only real qualm is that many of the weapons go unused for most of the game." If I hadn't already caught on by then, my gushing praise for MM4 would have been a complete giveaway that this was me of 14 years ago writing all these reviews: "There is almost nothing for me to complain about in this fantastic game. Buy it. Now."

I've reread enough of my old material to know how far I've come as a writer since 2008, but it's surreal to jump back to 2002. There's little elegance to my old writing, but there's character. You can tell exactly how much I care about each aspect of each game—there's no veneer of objectivity and no time wasted describing anything that doesn't significantly impact my enjoyment of the game, no matter how important it might be for the reader to know. Most of the opinions expressed have remained unchanged in the last 14 years, but the way I express those opinions has evolved dramatically.

I still think MM1 is a classic, I still think people are too quick to label MM2 as easy, and I'm still a bit lukewarm about MM6 in the context of the rest of the series. I had forgotten just how wild about MM5 I used to be; my enthusiasm has cooled somewhat, but it's still one of my favorites. I'm less fanatical about MM4 as well; "Pure Excellence" is not a review title I would ever use anymore, even if the game remains my favorite. It's almost unsettling to hear myself describe MM3 as "one of the best Mega Man games ever." Perhaps you've seen my videos?

It's fascinating and almost a little bittersweet to read my own opinions from an era when I could like or dislike something without putting too much thought into it. Clearly, I was already attuned to certain aspects of game design, but I was capable of both zealotry and indifference without having to provide exhaustive support for my feelings. I've become so analytical that I need to understand why I'm having fun, and I clash so much with the mainstream nowadays that I need to be ready to defend my unpopular opinions at the drop of a hat. I'm too much a champion of separating fact from opinion to be able to share my feelings so unequivocally anymore. I envy Past Me for his ability to play something, enjoy it, write a quick blurb about it, and get back to having fun. He can keep his expository writing style (all the criticism I got from teachers about my essays is starting to make sense), but I wouldn't mind if some of that carefree enthusiasm were to come back.

If you'd like to open this time capsule for yourself, I present to you my old reviews of MM1, MM2, MM3, MM4, MM5, and MM6. Watch for the part where I continue complaining about Ice Man in a game where he doesn't even appear. That's so me.

One of my favorite blogging traditions with Exfanding Your Horizons was making up New Year's resolutions with my blogging buddy and then reflecting on them a year later. The blog went on permanent hiatus on the day we'd normally do our writing and reflecting, and I somehow never reinstated the tradition on this blog.

That's because, originally, this blog was little more than a place to get my writing fix until Exfanding came back from hiatus. Something temporary. I wasn't planning on setting down roots here and carrying on with traditions. This was the same thing I said about moving to the moon, and I've been living here since 2011. Somewhere along the line, this blog and my moon base became my home, and it's only recently that I've been treating them as such. I'd been waiting for the day where I'd resume business as usual, but this is business as usual. Time to stop looking to the past like it's the future. Time to look at the present and do something about it if it's not to my liking. What a good time to start making resolutions again.

"Resolutions" isn't the right word, though. Resolutions are promises you feel guilty for breaking. I prefer to set goals; goals are things you feel good about achieving. I've learned to set reasonable goals for myself that are general enough to accomplish, but specific enough to be meaningful. Here's what I have in mind for 2016:

Goal #1: Start and finish a YouTube playthrough of Mega Man 8.
Anyone familiar with the saga of Mega Man 7 knows how much of a stretch this one is. Each Mega Man video series I've done has taken longer than the last, so smart money says I won't accomplish this goal until 2020 at the very earliest. Smart money is inanimate and highly flammable, however, so you shouldn't listen to it. I've streamlined my recording process and am livestreaming on a regular basis, which keeps me in the recording spirit, so I believe I can make this happen if I keep at it.

Goal #2: Make serious headway on the video game my wife and I are planning.
We don't talk about it much because we want to keep the particulars a secret, but my wife and I are working on a video game. It's still in the planning stages, but I'd like to have at least a partially playable beta ready before the end of the year.

Goal #3: Run at least one D&D campaign, then learn a new tabletop RPG system and run another campaign.
Since I started playing in college, Dungeons & Dragons has been an endless source of stories and one of my favorite ways to spend time with people. Moving to the moon has put me out of touch with a regular group of players, but nothing says I can't host the occasional one-shot campaign for friends and family who are willing to hop on a rocketship and drop in for a weekend. I'm also looking to diversify beyond D&D, as my other tabletop RPG experience is quite limited, and there's a copy of the Serenity Roleplaying Game rulebook on my shelf that's been gathering dust for too gorram long.

Goal #4: Read 12 books.
I was an avid reader up until late middle school or early high school, at which point I started associating reading with work, rather than with leisure. I've since warmed back up to reading as a pastime, and I casually follow a number of blogs, but I'd like to get back in the habit of reading as an alternative to the electronic entertainment that dominates my life. One book a month doesn't seem unreasonable, especially if I include graphic novels, which totally count.

Goal #5: Get my Backloggery progress index into positive double digits.
It's only since 2014 that I've been finishing more video games a year than I add to my collection, but just barely. Net progress in 2014 was +5, and 2015 was a measly +2 (technically +3, if you count the game I sold in December but forgot to remove from my list until New Year's Day). Lest you think this is a "play more video games" goal, my intention here is to be more discerning with how I spend my time and money, trimming my collection down to only the games I truly want to be there.

Goal #6: Write like I used to.
There are three meanings here: write regularly, write positively, and write for myself. Writing is cathartic, and I want to look back on a year's worth of posts that I would want to read, even if I hadn't written them. I want to unearth the bright-eyed, happy little kid inside me who's been buried under the layers of anger, frustration, disappointment, and anxiety that have accumulated over the last few years of resisting the present instead of reshaping it. With GameCola on hiatus, it's more important than ever that I make this website feel like home, and writing like I used to may be the best way to do it.


Ta-dah! A half-dozen goals, and those are just the ones I'm writing down (I'll spare you the one about eating less fried dough this time). Ambitious? Yes, but not unreachable. These aren't only goals; they're lifestyle changes, or at least catalysts for such—and after the 2015 I had, I have never been so ready for change. See you back here in a year to assess my success!

2015 ended on a high note for me. Good time spent with friends and family, some of the best weeks of work I've had all year, plenty of vacation time, meaningful personal development, and a change of focus that I hope will lead to a joyful and productive 2016. You'll note one big absence on this list: GameCola.net suffered a catastrophic server failure early in the month—the day before the shortest review I've ever written got posted, as though the website couldn't cope with me writing anything of substance shorter than 700 words.

Normally we'd revert to a recent backup version of the site, but due to mysterious technical issues, the latest backup we had was from sometime in November. An executive decision was made to put the site on hiatus to give our webmaster time to look into recovering the lost data, but also to give the Editor-in-Chief time to work on GameCola 4.0, a revised version of the site with all the modern bells and whistles we've been missing. I'll no doubt write more about the situation as time goes on, but in the meantime, I've been devoting my free time to other side projects that have been languishing for too long.

This Blog:

It's good to be writing again on a regular basis, and writing more positively, at that. In addition to the posts below, which hopefully represent a return to the kind of writing I used to do for Exfanding Your Horizons in its heyday, I was busy working on my Series Opinions for Star Trek: The Original Series and Enterprise, which I'll formally link to once they're complete.

- Retrospective: November 2015
- Star Trek Beyond the Point of No Return
- Always in Motion Is the Future
- Running With Superheroes

YouTube:

One GameCola contribution managed to slip through, despite the main site being out of commission. In honor of the new Star Wars movie, I kicked off a playthrough of one of my all-time favorite games, and it's been helping me refine my livestreaming style. The third installment of Jedi Knight and the second Backloggery Choice stream are two of my favorites so far (if nothing else, watch the Paperboy section of the first video below).

Of course, no mention of YouTube videos would be complete without a celebration of the true, final, real end of the Mega Man 7 recording saga. One of the funniest things I've ever released, according to me, and a joy to assemble.

Flashman85LIVE:
- Backloggery Choice #2: Crystalis, StarTropics II, Metal Storm, Paperboy
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight (Live Playthrough) - Part 1: The Force Awakens
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight (Live Playthrough) - Part 2: Elevator Action
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight (Live Playthrough) - Part 3: Confusing the Commentator

GeminiLaser:
- Mega Man 7: Audio Outtakes

GCDotNet:
- Hacks'n'Slash #10: Mario & Sonic Christmas Special

The Backloggery:

December is always a bad month for my struggle against the evil Bak'laag. Between Christmas, winter sales on Steam and GOG, and holiday travels that take me near used game stores, my game collection always seems to inflate around this time. At least my patience has run out for games that aren't worth my time; I'm abandoning bad and unrewarding games with a vengeance nowadays, and I've decided to go back to playing only the games I think I'll like—anything that's culturally worthwhile but not worth the effort is something I can watch someone else play on YouTube.

New:
- Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze  (WiiU)
- Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition  (PC)
- Final Fantasy X  (PS2)
- Final Fantasy X-2  (PS2)
- Gun Metal  (Steam)
- Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis  (PC)
- LEGO Jurassic World  (WiiU)
- Mega Man Battle Network 5: Double Team DS  (NDS)
- Mega Man Star Force: Pegasus  (NDS)
- Rokko Chan  (Brwsr)
- Star Trek: 25th Anniversary  (PC)
- Super Smash Bros. for Wii U  (WiiU)
 
Started:
- Final Soldier  (VC)
- Gargoyle's Quest II  (NES)
- StarFox Assault  (GCN)
- Wario Land 3  (GBC)
 
Beat:
- Final Soldier  (VC)
- Gargoyle's Quest II  (NES)
- The Misadventures of Tron Bonne  (PS)
 
Completed:
- Final Soldier  (VC)
- Gargoyle's Quest II  (NES)
- Love  (Steam)
- The Misadventures of Tron Bonne  (PS)
 
Removed:
- Wario Land 3  (GBC)

That about wraps it up for 2015! Off we go into another year.

I've done a fair amount of yammering about recording videos for YouTube and my time writing for Exfanding Your Horizons, but it's not as often that I talk about GameCola, the videogame-humor-turned-gaming-outside-the-mainstream website for which I've been writing since the beginning of 2009. Here and on Exfanding, you might see me mention the site in passing or rattle off links to posts I've written or participated in, but most of the behind-the-scenes tidbits are scattered in bits and bobs across 5+ years of videos, posts, and podcasts on the GC website itself. What's it like to be a Staff Writer/Editor and the YouTube Administrator for the most prestigious gaming website referred to in this paragraph? Well, since you asked...

Ostensibly, it's very easy. The longstanding rule for writers, dating way back to the dinosaur days when GameCola was published in a monthly newsletter format, is that you contribute one article per month. That's it. End of requirements. In our current format, this typically works well: we're posting one article a day, Monday through Friday, with our regular podcast posting on the first Sunday of each month; with a little over a dozen staff writers, some of whom are inevitably prolific enough to contribute more, it should be no trouble to meet our monthly quota. Anytime you see a "Classic 'Cola" article go up with a golden oldie pulled from the archives, it means we totally blew it.

As an editor, I can see how many articles are in the queue for review, and when things are scheduled to be published. During a dry spell, I'll often try to churn out a fluff post to help tide us over until the pace picks up. Anytime you see an article about a video series that's at least three years old, that's a sure sign our most prolific writers are on vacation, or else I'm really struggling to come up with a post this month. Actually, that's only half true; as both the administrator of GameCola's official YouTube channel and a completionist, I like to make sure all the videos we record get proper coverage on the main site.

Unofficially, I'm also GameCola's resident historian. When I was first invited to join the staff, I started doing my research, reading through the archives from the beginning. With the editor privileges I was given during the site's big relaunch in 2010, I soon embarked on a massive quest to bring all of our old articles up to code, proofing and editing them as I read them to ensure a minimum standard of consistency and polish across (at that point) nearly ten years of history. We have a GameCola Style Guide I adhere to when reviewing these old posts, and several of my suggestions for future revisions have come from past posts. I'll do a full editorial review of one or two new articles in the queue per month, and I'll instinctively spot-check any others I read, but what I most look forward to is the day I catch up with the relaunch articles. Anyone who's familiar with my creative works probably knows how much of a sucker for continuity I am; seeing where we've been makes me appreciate that much more where we are now, and it's a joy to be working toward connecting those two places in a meaningful way.

That being said, there's some scary stuff in the archives that I'm sure most people would prefer to keep buried. But at least it'll look extra pretty. Like a skeleton wearing makeup, maybe. We can be selective about what we reference, but we can't always control where Google searches and those suggested "You May Also Like" posts take people, so I figure it's in the site's best interest for every metaphorical room of our metaphorical house to be as tidy as possible when we leave all the metaphorical doors open.

Likewise, I strive to keep our old videos on our GCDotNet channel in good order, moving things into playlists and updating descriptions if need be. The review process is much less structured and stringent there: upload a video privately, and I'll take a quick peek before posting it to the public, ensuring the description, tags, title, and video and audio quality all meet our basic consistency and quality standards. I very rarely watch YouTube videos unless someone specifically shares a link with me, but I make an exception for GCDotNet out of loyalty and my silly notion that I should be informed about the content I'm supposedly administrating. Of course, it sometimes takes me years to do anything more than skim through a video (have you seen our Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward series!?), but I plan to get completely caught up eventually, I promise.

That's one of the fun things about GameCola: I'm as much a fan as I am a contributor. I have side projects within my side project. Call it GamatryoshkaCola. Or don't, because that sounds terrible.

As one of the senior members on staff, I also feel a strong sense of investment in the site. I've been here longer than the majority of the people currently on our staff roster, and aside from Alex "Jeddy" Jedraszczak (our Editor-in-Chief), I'm the only old-timer who's been continuously active over the last year or two. I'm relieved that Paul Franzen didn't fire me about a half-dozen times while he was Editor-in-Chief, because it's been a fun ride so far, and I've been honored to collaborate with him and with Jeddy on some big and small decisions behind the scenes. Together, we've developed a process guide for editors, diffused a few potentially ugly situations on the YouTube channel, and turned The END DAY into an official GameCola holiday. My perfectionist and control freak tendencies have mellowed considerably since joining the staff; frequent participation in group e-mail discussions, podcasts, and video commentary has a way of instilling an appreciation for effective teamwork.

Do I see myself staying with GameCola indefinitely? Hey, I'm happy to stick around as long as they'll have me. As with Exfanding, there could come a day when it's no longer sensible for me to keep going, but I don't anticipate giving up being a gamer anytime soon. GameCola is a great outlet for that side of my personality, and I've met some wonderful and hilarious people as a result of being here; I'm in no rush to break away, especially with all those side projects left to finish. I've got some video and column ideas yet, and at least one more RPGcast that I'm really looking forward to pulling together. And let's not forget about the 40-odd Mega Man games I have yet to review.

In other words, as I say in my biographical blurb on the site, you're pretty much stuck with me. Sorry.

Six years ago today, I wrote my very first blog post.

At the time, I was all excitement and ideas. Endless possibilities. Within two months, the grand premise of our blog, "to introduce, explain, discuss, and demystify various hobbies and fandoms to promote an understanding between geeks and to spark an interest in the things that interest us," had become less of a mission statement and more of a general suggestion. My blogging buddy Alex and I didn't write for Exfanding Your Horizons so much as we wrote for ourselves, and the things we wrote happened to be a good fit for the blog most days. Even when the enthusiasm cooled and the inspiration ran thin, there was never any question about keeping the blog going. It was a habit. It was a part of our lives. Nobody wonders how long they'll keep their routine of eating breakfast in the morning before giving it up forever; there are certain assumptions we make. There was never any question that Exfanding would go on indefinitely.

Then suddenly it stopped, and we were on indefinite hiatus.

Look at my first post on this blog. James Bond would return. It was only a matter of time.

Look at my reflections from this time last year. That guy flipping burgers in the back might be Elvis, but in all likelihood, the King had come and gone.

By now, I've come to grips with the fact that I'll never have breakfast again.

Not that I'd turn it down. If Alex came back and said, "Hey, let's get the blog going again," I'd say, "Whoa! I haven't heard from you in, like, a year! How's work? How's life? And also, yes." But The Great Exfanding Revival of 20XX is no longer something I anticipate, or even necessarily hope for. I'll say it again: We had a good run at Exfanding. Past tense. It took me some time to wrap my head around the inevitable discontinuation of the thing that would go on forever, but my satisfaction with what the both of us accomplished through our humble little blog has never wavered.

If anything, I look back more fondly as the years go by. Perhaps that's the real reason why I'm still celebrating. I replay Crystalis every year on The END DAY not because I'm secretly hoping for a sequel, but because I love the game and don't need much of an excuse to relive the fond memories. Why should Exfanding be any different?

I'm something of an amateur film and television buff. Growing up, I received a great deal of exposure to shows and movies of all sorts, thanks to my dad—just like video games are my favorite way to unwind, practically any kind of TV and cinema are his. I'd often sit down to watch something with him, or else do homework or play Game Boy or read a book in the same room, so that we could still spend time together while he was catching up on the latest episode of Don't Really Care 'Cuz There Are Lawyers In It. Visits with my grandparents broadened my horizons even further—I picked up a bit of a taste for boxing, professional wrestling, Britcoms, cooking shows, and even a low tolerance for farming shows and home shopping networks.

By the time I left for college, I'd seen—in whole or in part—films and shows from a broader spectrum of genres and time periods than the average kid my age. Aside from a few things my dad refused to put up with—I have yet to see A Christmas Story or anything from start to finish starring Woody Allen—I'd potentially watch anything as long as I could stomach it (I'm quite squeamish and don't do well with horror flicks, much to my dad's—and my wife's—chagrin). I arrived on campus with a willingness to at least try watching whatever anybody put in front of me, because I'd learned that even the oldest, campiest, weirdest, and most awful-looking shows and movies can sometimes be surprisingly enjoyable...and that you can always flip to something else if not.

One of the first extracurricular activities I got involved with at college was the anime society. Saturday afternoons until dinnertime we'd sit down to watch five back-to-back episodes of an anime series; same deal on Sundays, but with a different series. Now, I had seen a few episodes of Sailor Moon and Speed Racer here and there, but Japanese cartoons weren't part of the regular lineup in the Hoover household when I was younger. I believe it was my roommate who suggested I attend the first meeting, and any excuse to hang out with people at college was a good one. We started with Blue Seed, a charmingly formulaic monster-of-the-week show with occasional humor and plenty of action. We also had at least a dozen other people with us—a few of whom provided fantastic MST3K-worthy commentary the whole time—as well as having an auditorium and its huge projector screen all to ourselves. I was hooked.

By sophomore year, I was marathoning all of Neon Genesis Evangelion in my dorm room in a day and a half. Reading subtitles had become second nature to me, and I'd grown to appreciate the preservation of the original voices and inflection that subtitles provide. Anime was a gateway to foreign films, another category that wasn't a staple growing up. Between my Spanish classes, my semester abroad in Spain, and a handful of on-campus screenings that I otherwise wouldn't have attended without that initial exposure to anime (and that willingness to try watching anything), foreign films from any country became a minor interest.

When I discovered a wall of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplain movies in the school library, I added silent films to my list as well. If I could read subtitles, I could read cue cards, and having no spoken language wasn't that far off from having a spoken language whose meaning I couldn't comprehend. Besides, I was used to the decades-old war movies and Christmas movies and Twilight Zone episodes that I and various members of my extended family enjoyed; black-and-white was nothing new to me. It's amazing what you miss by limiting yourself to a single era or genre of film; since watching Battleship Potemkin, and more recently, Metropolis, any preconceived notions I ever had about the standards and limitations of vintage cinema have been thrown out the window.

I believe it was my junior year of college when I began my great movie project. Whenever I was home on break, I'd make trips to the local library to stock up on movies for the week, going through the DVD shelves in alphabetical order. I didn't pick up every movie available; just the ones that (a) were landmark films that everyone assumes you've seen, such as The Godfather; (b) were being talked about with any sort of frequency at school, such as Fight Club; and (c) I felt like watching for the heck of it, such as *batteries not included. By the time my project formally came to a close, I was up to Hotel Rwanda.

In the years that followed my graduation, my friends, wife, and in-laws were largely responsible for the continuing expansion of my cinematic experience. I got roped into trying the 3-D fad with the likes of Beowulf, Avatar, and A Christmas Carol. My buddy Alex and I sat down to watch five films by Akira Kurosawa for an Exfanding project one year. Out of self-preservation, I began watching Doctor Who so that I could keep up with the inevitable conversation topic anytime I was with my wife's family. I was at the US premiere screening of the Japanese film Ramen Samurai thanks to my wife, who has also introduced me to more classic children's movies than anyone else who's not a blood relative. (What do you mean you've never seen Thumbalina!? We're fixing that right now!)

Netflix, of course, has been the biggest contributor of the last few years. Given my wife's eclectic tastes, and my eclectic tastes, we've successfully confused the adaptive suggestions of this delightful on-demand movie streaming service. We choose to share a profile that tracks both of our viewing habits so that we can get movie recommendations from categories such as, "Quirky, Action-Packed, and Cerebral Korean Buddy Cop Documentaries from the 1930s Featuring a Strong, Scantily Clad Mad Scientist Female Lead and Visually Striking Animated Bollywood Musical Sequences for Children, Filmed in Outer Space, with Vampires." Needless to say, our movie queue is quite colorful.

It's been a long time since I've watched movies and TV shows purely for entertainment. There's the joy of discovering new things I never realized I'd like. There's the cultural experience of learning about a different country, or time period, or way of life through film. There's the academic pursuit of becoming informed about this My Little Pony thing that people keep asking about. Call me a cinematic sponge, absorbing whatever I can. If it happens to be fun, so much the better. After years of pushing the boundaries of what I watch, I've learned it's the viewing experience—the quality time I spend watching with other people, and the knowledge and in-jokes and discussions that we take away from it—that makes it potentially worthwhile to watch practically anything.