Checking out Sof’s Fruit Water Szn Movement

Just checking in

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Just Checking In

Blog

I so sleepy right now. I don’t even know why, exactly, because I feel like I got a decent amount of sleep last night anyway. Maybe it’s because I’ve actually been exerting energy outside more regularly and I’m a weak little boy so I can’t take it. Maybe it’s because I eat junk and so I don’t get enough energy in that regard. Regardless, I’m glad I am more active again and I’m grateful I have some good friends that have helped “keep me busy” more recently and as a result I can spend less time dwelling on the negative. I feel like I experienced some genuine happiness this past week, which is a nice change of pace compared to the usual weeks where even during the good times I feel like I always have something negative looming over me.

In terms of the video-making side of things, which is always a big part of me “keeping busy,” I have been lacking when it comes to solo videos (though still going strong with Tarqaron). That ultimately comes down to the conditions I’m working with rather than motivation, though. Simply put, the summer heat, in conjunction with not being able to run my air conditioner while recording since the noise is so obnoxious, does not make for the most ideal conditions. It’s hard enough enduring it for the few hours of Tarqaron recording each week, especially on particularly hot nights. It also doesn’t help that I still feel very limited when it comes to equipment, lighting, and overall space. So those elements combined don’t make for the best video-making environment, but I will continue to make do the best that I can. Ideally one day I can have a lot more space to work with and I can film videos without having to worry about sweating to death or my internet connection being spotty or my laptop not being up to snuff. I love making videos, but all this technical and behind-the-scenes stuff is what I hate dealing with the most.

I think that’s really what is keeping my video-making operation from running like complete clockwork (other than all of the time I have to spend on my non-creative work). Once I just have a comfortable work environment then I think I will have no problem sitting down to crank more videos out. Part of why I have been able to be so consistent with Tarqaron is because it is a consistent weekly schedule of recording and editing, one that I haven’t quite been able to get down with my solo videos recently. It doesn’t hurt to have another person involved to hold you accountable as well. With my solo channel it’s a lot easier to brush off or put on the back burner since it only really concerns me. That being said, I have so many things I want to do with my solo channel specifically, so I feel bad about the inconsistency. That’s something I want to work towards and prioritize for sure, because at this rate I can barely get anything going.

I have a week off from work coming up, followed by another week off soon after, so that will be much needed time for me to buckle down and really focus on not only working towards a more consistent production schedule but also working towards getting other aspects of my life where I want them to be, and prepping for more drastic change in the near future. I feel like I’m nearing a fair sense of stability in the social part of my life so I need to work on the other parts of my life that have contributed to my depression in many ways. Now all that’s left is for me to make the most of the time I’ll have to work with soon.

Videos I Posted This Week:

Survivor: Vanuatu Ep. 14 Reaction (FINALE!) – Tarqaron
Survivor: Vanuatu Ep. 15 Reaction (Reunion) – Tarqaron
The Suicide Squad Review – Tarqaron
Our July 2021 Favorites! – Tarqaron

Things I Enjoyed This Week:

Being Sociable

Blog

One thing I’ve noticed about myself over the years is that I really do value friendship and being around good company. I am a sociable person! Growing up and even into high school to an extent I would often describe myself as a “loner” and say that I’m okay just being by myself for long periods of time. Looking back, though, I see that was more of a coping mechanism and a way to justify those times where I just was alone. So instead of conceding that I felt lonely, I would embrace it and pretend that it is just part of my character in some way. But as more and more time has passed, I’ve realized just how friend and community-oriented I seem to be naturally. I’m not a social butterfly necessarily, and I’m usually not a fan of larger, less personal gatherings like parties or weddings, but throughout my life I’ve always felt happier the more I am around good company.

From online forums to in-person friend groups, I’m usually drawn to being a part of some sort of community at most points in my life. Maybe that’s just human nature, that natural desire for like-minded groups to come together and connect, but more often than not I’ll find myself actively starting groups or organizing community events rather than being a passive participant. Even in the parts of my life where I wasn’t a part of any in-person groups and just did a lot of community things online, I would still spend a lot of my time with my best friend, and those were some of the best times that I had. Now more than ever I value genuine friendships and bonds so much, and love bringing good people together. I rarely ever will turn down spending time with good company in favor of spending time by myself.

And that right there, that community-oriented trait, is not really a trait of mine that I was cognizant of throughout most of my life. Maybe that’s why I’ve felt so much regret about how I handled certain parts of my life. I would describe myself as “the weird kid”, or off-beat, or a bit of an outcast as a means of explaining why I don’t need friends, and as a result was dismissive of some of the true feelings of loneliness I would go through. A few years ago is when my depression really started to sink in as I finally acknowledged my issue for what it was: Loneliness. I wasn’t a “loner,” I didn’t want to be alone, but I found myself in this spot and my mental health was struggling in many ways. As I went through college feeling this way, even though I understood that I wanted more friends and more of a sense of community in my life, I didn’t make enough of an effort to actually make this happen. This is a big part of why I didn’t enjoy a lot of my college experience and also why I remained depressed for several years.

As I’ve discussed a lot, I still deal with depression now but in terms of friends I am in a much better spot than I was for most of my college years. Though I still battle with a sense of loneliness which I’ve also talked about on these blogs a lot, most of my depression now is rooted in my position in life rather than just the social element. Now I have some really good friends who I care about and who seem to care about me so that’s a good feeling to have to help with my depression overall.

The biggest takeaway from all of this is that I feel like I’ve realized a lot about myself over the years. Like, maybe I was the kid that sat by himself a lot because I was a “nerd” or because I was a little different than others, but that didn’t mean that that’s the way it had to be. I could have stepped out of my comfort zone more back and changed that narrative then but I didn’t. I could have branched out and done more to change that narrative in college but I didn’t. So now I’m doing the best with my life to live with less regrets and to make the most of my time with the people around me who I care about, now that I fully acknowledge my desire to spend time with good company. Not to mention that I love to make people laugh and have fun rapport with people so a lot of time alone can be particularly draining for me, especially with my continuing mental health struggles. But I’m doing my best and will continue to improve on other aspects of my life now that my social life is in a much more sound place than it was even just a few months ago.

Videos I Posted This Week:

Survivor: Vanuatu Ep. 13 Reaction (Julie Gets Burned) – Tarqaron
Conclusion to the TRUE Gents Challenge 2021 – Tarqaron ft. Ryan
Jungle Cruise Review – Tarqaron

Things I Enjoyed This Week:

A Decade of Making Videos

Blog

It’s crazy to think that’s been over a decade since I started creating YouTube videos. If you go on to my YouTube channel and sort my videos to show the oldest first, you will say videos that literally say “10 years ago” under them, which is just wild to see. Believe it or not, I even had a channel on which I did videos as far back as 2009, but the videos on that channel have since been deleted. So the oldest relics of my YouTube experience that I have are those 10 years ago videos, back when my username was still ZRPGRevamped (a follow-up to the aforementioned channel from 2009 which was called pokemonzrpg). For the years that I went by this name, I was young and it wasn’t as much of a known aspect of my life. I was a part of an online video game collecting community (which I am still part of to this day) and all of my videos revolved around my passion for video games. I was also the host of a gaming podcast for much of those years within that community called “Hey, Listen!” At the time primarily only people within my sphere of online friends and that community knew about my videos and podcast, so it’s wild to think that now making videos is such a big part of my identity.

For the years that I was just doing videos within the gaming community, my rate of uploads and overall interest in making videos was often inconsistent. 2015 is when I started going to college and I got more of a spark for creating videos regularly. I transitioned into doing videos on all of the things I love, not just gaming, and started posting videos daily for some time, and at my worst I was still posting some amount of videos weekly. This is when I really started to find my love for music more than ever before and my channel became largely geared toward that for years to come. To this day, music is the primary subject of my channel and is where most of my viewers have come from, but I still struggle with striking a balance between all of the things I love. It wouldn’t be until 2019 that I would create a YouTube channel with my friend Alec called Tarqaron in which we could talk about everything from film to gaming to television in addition to being able to talk about Survivor which is another passion of mine.

Fast-forward to 2021 and all it takes is one look at any of my social media accounts to see that I make videos, and that between both my solo channel and my collaborative channel making videos is a pretty big part of my life. Some weeks I might post more than others, but it’s pretty much a guarantee that I will upload some amount of videos every week, so I’m pretty proud of that level of commitment. That being said, there are are still plenty of things I want to improve on and lots of ideas and directions I haven’t explored yet, but that’s part of what keeps things exciting and why I’m still so interested in continuing to create videos after all of these years. It’s crazy to think that I’ve been doing videos for over a decade now but it’s almost like creating has been such a constant in my life since then that I can’t imagine my life without it. Here’s to many more years of creating awesome stuff!

Videos I Posted This Week:

Survivor: Vanuatu Ep. 12 Reaction (Dethroned Queen) – Tarqaron
SUPERtheticals: 50 New Questions for Strange Conversations (#4) – Tarqaron

Things I Enjoyed This Week:

Big Brother (TV series)
Sherlock (TV series)

The Rise and Fall of Paper Mario

Blog, Gaming, Written Posts

Tonight I decided to talk about what was historically one of my favorite series of video games ever: Paper Mario. While there certainly is a “fall” referenced in the title of this blog, make no mistake… Paper Mario as a series is beloved to me. Few video game series bring me as much joy just to think about. But the unfortunate reality is that I always have to preface my love of the Paper Mario series in saying that my love is for the older games in the series rather than the newer ones. I equate it a lot to a feeling that many Star Wars fans have when talking about the original trilogy versus the prequels. It’s almost a 1:1 comparison for me, really. The first three (Paper Mario, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and Super Paper Mario) correspond almost perfectly to the original trilogy. Paper Mario on the Nintendo 64 is the equivalent to A New Hope in that it is a true gem and you can’t go wrong with the one that started it all. The Thousand-Year Door on the Nintendo GameCube is like Empire Strikes Back in that it is the GOAT and really perfected what made the series great. And lastly, Super Paper Mario on the Nintendo Wii is most like Return of the Jedi in the sense that it is the more off-beat of the trilogy and slightly more contentious than the others, but appreciated nonetheless. Although the correlation isn’t quite as direct, the newer trio of games (Paper Mario: Sticker Star on the Nintendo 3DS, Paper Mario: Color Splash on the Nintendo Wii U, and Paper Mario: The Origami King on the Nintendo Switch) would be viewed similarly to the prequel trilogy of Star Wars films in that they are so different stylistically from the first three and, in my opinion, lose a big part of that original spark and can’t compare in quality as a result. Hopefully that comparison is as apt for you as it has always been for me.

For me, the first two in the series stand head and shoulders above the rest. The Thousand-Year Door has always been my favorite but the original is almost equally timeless and is up there with some of my favorite role-playing games. The worlds, characters, dialogue, music and presentation of both games just ooze charm and in many ways can’t be rivaled in my eyes. Super nostalgic, for sure. At the time of Super Paper Mario‘s release, I definitely expressed my concerns with it in that it was quite a departure from what I wanted from the series and was a far cry from the legendary status of TTYD, but in retrospect and juxtaposed with what was to come, I have a much greater appreciation for it. It isn’t exactly what I want when I play Paper Mario, but it had its own charm and certainly had no shortage of clever writing, with a surprisingly detailed story and fun (but different) gameplay. That being said, I and many other Paper Mario fans naturally hoped the series would see a return to form with its next installment, and remained optimistic for the future.

Everything changed when Sticker Star attacked. Years had passed since SPM‘s release, and naturally hope for a revival of the series was dwindling. But lo and behold, Nintendo bring Paper Mario: Sticker Star out of the woodwork and raise fans’ excitement, only to have it come crashing down with an unbridled rage. Was it really that bad? Well, it is MAYBE a decent game by itself, but it is a horrible Paper Mario game, and that is a trend that the series will continue to have to date. The greatest artistic crimes it commits include completely disincentivizing battling enemies while taking out the really fun battle system of the original games as well as completely taking away the unique character designs and fun dialogue that made the Paper Mario series so special. It’s almost as if Nintendo had no idea why their fans took a liking to the series to begin with and just assumed they liked the haha funny paper gimmicks, so they decided to go all in on that. If you like being paper and that’s all you want from a Paper Mario game, then this is the game for you. It has it in spades.

Color Splash came along a few years later and while it was a noticeable improvement, it immediately reeked of Sticker Star in presentation as well as some gameplay elements. There was still no incentive for battling enemies, really, and the worlds were full of exclusively Toads rather than unique character designs. The dialogue was alright, I guess, but doesn’t even remotely resemble what fans have still been dying for since TTYD. I do want to point out that I thought Color Splash was genuinely a fun game, but it just doesn’t have any of what I want from Paper Mario. It’s an insult to fans to call it that just because Mario happens to be made out of paper in it. Get it outta here. Full disclosure, though, I barely played any of The Origami King, but from all that I’ve seen of it, it doesn’t in any way remedy the problems that I’ve had with the series since TTYD, so even though it may be a swell game in comparison to the previous two, I’m fine batching it in with the prequel trilogy here. At some point I’ll get around to playing through it, for sure, but for now I’ll stick to Bug Fables (an awesome indie game that shamelessly rips off the best qualities of the original games- almost like a spiritual successor for the fans).

I can only hope this isn’t the end of the Paper Mario story. There have been persisting rumors over the years of a true return to form for the series, but I continue to be disappointed, time and time again. One day, hopefully, I can be a Paper Mario fan with pride once again.

Videos I Posted This Week:

Box Art Battles! – Episode 5 [Shrek Edition] – Tarqaron ft. Rusty
Black Widow Review – Tarqaron
Survivor: Vanuatu Ep. 11 Reaction (The Leann Blindside) – Tarqaron
Smash Summit 11 was absolutely insane
Loki: Season 1 Review – Tarqaron
Is Dimash the greatest singer in the world?

Things I Enjoyed This Week:

Is Dimash the greatest singer in the world?

Music (Zach), Videos

Smash Summit 11 was absolutely insane

Gaming, Videos

24 hours to live

Blog

What if you had 24 hours to live? What would you do? This is a question I’m sure you’ve asked yourself or have been asked at least one time in your life, but the question usually comes with some level of brevity, like oh man that would be wild, I would go bungee jumping or some shit, I would fuck some shit up, like fuck it bro, YOLO, I’d do some bucket list shit or some shit. But imagine you are really presented with this scenario. To not only be aware that it would be your last day alive but to also be completely coherent while knowing this fact is an “opportunity” not often afforded to people. You might be terminally ill, and you might be given some time frame as to when you’re expected to die in some very particular instances, but even then you are more often than not deteriorating on some level, and you certainly wouldn’t know when exactly you were going to die, down to the day! So as much as the “what would you do if you had 24 hours to live” quandary can just be a wacky conversation starter, it really can be a thought-provoking hypothetical dilemma when you take the time to think about it. It can be sad to think about what it would be like to know of your impending doom, but also really intriguing to try to put yourself in that position. And that’s exactly what I’m trying to do here.

My first priority would honestly be to show appreciation to everyone who has had a positive impact on my life. I already try to make a more conscious effort to do that regularly, just showing my appreciation whenever I can. But 24 hours to live means it’s crunch time. Cut the bullshit, tell everyone my full and unapologetic truth. If I appreciate you on any level you’ll be hearing from me, no doubt about it. That being said I have a lot of ground to cover, so that could range anywhere from a one-sentence message to a full-blown conversation. But no hard feelings regardless. This time would be reserved for anyone I wouldn’t be able to come in actual contact with on my final day. As tasteless as it might sound, I feel like I would have to put out an “I have 24 hours left to live” video on my YouTube channel with one last goodbye because making videos has undeniably been a huge part of my life and it would be only fitting.

With the formalities out of the way, I can go on with living the remaining hours of my life. With some pep in my step I feel like I could have condensed that goodbye stuff into only a couple of hours. What to do with the rest of my day, though? I don’t know, even though the instinct might be to try to check off bucket list things, I feel like that would be something reserved for if I had a year or even a week to live. Because realistically, as much as I want to see more of the world, I don’t think it would necessarily be worth it to spend a significant portion of my final hours stuck on plane ride to somewhere just to spend a couple hours there. So as much as I want to see Japan, or go to Disney World, it just might not be in the cards for this scenario. With most bucket list things off the table, I’ve been kind of stumped as to how I’d spend the majority of this day, but I think I’ve come to a bit of a conclusion.

As ridiculous as it sounds, I would 100% host my own “going away” party and invite literally everyone I care about to join me. Not just a basic party of course, it would have to be a tour de force of experiencing all of my favorite things, with everything from basketball to just some good old-fashioned laughs. The things I enjoy are pretty simple when it comes down to it. As much as I’d like the chance to expand my life experiences much more, this scenario wouldn’t give me enough time to, so I’d just have to live (and then not) with some of the simple things. That being said, I’d do those things in the most outrageous and off-the-wall ways possible, given the time that I have to work with and however many people are able to join me on such short notice. Especially given this opportunity, I’m not the kind of person who would go out quietly. I’d like for my last 24 hours to not only consist of some valuable experiences that I can be happy with *at the end of the day* but also to consist of some valuable experiences for everyone else involved to be able to walk away from and remember forever. If I’m gonna be given this unique opportunity, I might as well make the best of it, right?

Videos I Posted This Week:

Shrek Series Overview & Ranking – Tarqaron
Our June 2021 Favorites! – Tarqaron
Survivor: Vanuatu Ep. 10 Reaction (Scout’s Resistance) – Tarqaron

Things I Enjoyed This Week:

Summit

Blog

I am in crunch time today so I won’t be able to do any of the more elaborate blogs I talked about last time, but here I am nonetheless. The unfortunate reality is that as I sit here amidst this crunch time, since I have to work for the rest of the night, I really can’t think of anything to write about. For my own sanity I should really make a more conscious effort to give myself much more time to write these things. But hey, then I would probably be writing about one of the ideas I mentioned last week, then, wouldn’t I? Well, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? I can see I’m getting no where here.

As much as procrastination has been a problem for me in the past, it’s not actually procrastination that has left me with such limited time to write this time around. It’s actually because one of my favorite events to watch online, Smash Summit, was streaming all yesterday and today. And since I was working and then watching The Forever Purge with some friends yesterday (bad movie, by the way), I spent pretty much all day today just catching up on everything I missed plus enjoying everything that has been coming out for it today as well. I have it muted and still playing as I type this, because I just had to pull myself away for at least a little bit if I was going to have any chance of writing the blog today.

Smash Summit (this one specifically is Smash Summit 11) is a four-day event that brings together some of the best Super Smash Bros. Melee players (a 20-year-old game at this point, by the way) for a more intimate invitational tournament environment, which is also padded with a lot of fun side events and skits to round it out. Most notably it features a lot of the players playing games of Mafia at the end of each day, which is always one of my favorite parts of the event. Melee is my favorite game to watch competitively and Summit has always been my favorite event to watch because of the really unique vibe and superior production quality that it offers. This time around it will have the largest prize pool in Melee’s history and there are so many great players present this year that it has been a joy to watch thus far.

I honestly always wish I had thought to take off these days from work so I can watch it all live because there is just so much to catch up on after a whole day of work, on top of editing videos and everything else. But regardless I’m just excited to get home tonight so I can catch up on everything again!

In terms of my mental health, I’m still dealing with smoothing out the real low lows that I experience in any given week, but I am also working on maximizing the highs as well. Just trying to enjoy things more in the moment, but there are still some obvious steps I need to take to really improve many aspects of my life. A small first step would be to give myself more time to write these so I can start bringing out some of those ideas!