About Me

Right off the bat, I'm going to apologize for the sheer length of this endeavor, but a lot of you don't know me at all or not as well as you may think you do. So I thought it was long overdue that I wrote an autobiography of sorts for this blog. 

Given that this is the first time that I have shared this much about myself on this blog, I might come to regret this decision to "bare my soul" so to speak, but we'll cross that bridge whenever we get to it.

Table of Contents:

Who am I?

An Introduction of the Mind Behind the Madness

For the sake of this "About Me" primer, I'm still going to stick to my online alias of Xion Zeros or simply "ZX" for the sake of this blog. I've gone by several different handles and names online over the years and still do honestly, including but not limited to Zero-X, Flaming_Zero, HeeroYuyZX55, DomonKasshu55, zeroxssvegeta, zx55nightmare, and zx55soultaker. My Zero-X/ZX moniker is callback and tribute to both Mega Man X and Zero of the Mega Man franchise. Xion Zeros is the name of the protagonist of one of my creative writing works and I see no harm in using it for my work here. 

I have frequented several message boards and communities over the years, including but not limited to GameFAQs, SRK (Shoryuken.com), Yahoo! Groups, Caws.ws, Tripod.com (for my own personal websites), 8WayRun.com, Devil's Lair (Devil May Cry), reddit, and I'm a frequent lurker to a wealth of Discord servers and communities/fandoms. 

I'm not really a sports guy. I don't watch football (NFL nor college), basketball (NBA nor college), baseball, soccer, or anything of the sort. I may be perturbed to check out a boxing or mixed martial arts (MMA) match every now and then, but the only "sport" that I have followed thoroughly was professional wrestling. And even that, I'm starting to lose interest in - at least in its modern incarnation. 

Family & Early Life

I'm the youngest of four children, with three older siblings (two older sisters and one older brother). Out of my older siblings, only two of them are collectors or have any strong interests in geek/nerd culture in some capacity. 

My oldest sister collected Barbie dolls as far back as I can remember, but really slowed down after having children. She still maintains her collection though and has started collecting a few Star Wars collectibles lately (mainly Grogu and Ahsoka-related until wanting to do a similar display to mine for her work space of her favorite Star Wars characters). 

My older brother collects mostly G.I. Joe, Marvel Legends (VERY few as he's extremely picky and selective), DC Multiverse/DC Universe, Lord of the Rings (mainly that ToyBiz 2003 movie line that I collected with him back then. I honestly told him to just keep my half of those figures as the collection looks better altogether instead of separated), Visionaries, Masters of the Universe (2002 series, MattyCollector, and SOME of the Classics), and tons of shoes and sneakers/gym shoes. He was a pretty big Star Wars Power of the Force 3.75" collector at one point, swinging to all of the toy stores every weekend to pick up the new Star Wars figures and vehicles. He stopped collecting after the hype of the prequel films died down though. I feel sorry for him, especially seeing how a vast majority of that stuff is borderline worthless now from constant rereleases and rehashes from Hasbro's Star Wars Black Series and The Vintage Collection lines. 

My fondest memories in relation to geek culture are our times playing the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) together, waking up on Saturday mornings to watch the various '80s cartoons (G.I. Joe, David the Gnome,  Transformers, Jem, Disney Afternoons - Chip 'N Dale Resuce Rangers, Gummi Bears, Talespin, DuckTales, etc), and our annual holiday marathons of watching the original Star Wars trilogy on television. We would later apply that to the Lord of the Rings trilogy too when those films were in releasing theaters. 

I blame both of my sisters for getting me into and being more tolerable to more 'girly' cartoons than I care to admit, such as Jem, Sailor Moon, etc. when they were hogging and dominating what we watched on the television when we were growing up.

I owe a lot of my fondness for comic book art and collecting toys and collectibles in general to my older brother. 

He and his best friend who lived in our neighborhood would bring piles and piles of comic books for us to read at home. That's when and where I found my love for Jim Lee and Chris Claremont's legendary Uncanny X-Men run. 

Then the years would go on with him exposing me to more mature comics, especially after some of our favorite artists band together would leave Marvel Comics to start their own studio, Image Comics (Top Cow). I would then read several books under that banner, including but not limited to Witchblade, Spawn, Cyberforce, WildC.A.T.s, Wetworks, and Stormwatch. 

That would veer into anime and other films too, as I saw stuff such as Ninja Scroll, Heavy Metal, Critters 1 & 2, and so many other mature films and anime that I was exposed to much younger than I care to admit in my days of youth. 

He'd also kick-start my toy collection "obsession" by starting me off on the WildC.A.T.s Playmates toyline. When he left home after graduating from high school and joining the military, he would gift me a few of the figures from the local Target whenever he came home to visit. Of course, the cartoon didn't last past a single season so they didn't stay in stores for long so I was left to hunt the rest of the toyline up to this day. I would pick up the figures when I saw them on the cheap throughout the years.

We'd also frequent the local comic book shops almost every weekend when he did come back to the States while I was in college. I have far too many loose comics from digging through those dollar bins for classic Marvel Comics and various other comics I tried out on a whim, such as Lady Death, various DC Comics titles, and other various indie books. 

Last but not least, I appreciated that my parents always encouraged by nerdiness and fascination with geek culture. My father would reward my good grades and academics with a new video game or something along those lines, even though my mother would always remark that stuff was "warping" and/or rotting my brain. To this day, I appreciate the fact that they never pressured me into sports or none of that other stuff. They always encouraged me to do the things that brought me joy as long as I wasn't hurting myself or anyone else. 

Mental Health

Weak Mind, Fragile Body

Being diabetic and having some other undisclosed medical conditions, I already fulfill that fragile body criteria, but I'm willing to swallow the bitter pill to admit to myself that I'm a weak-minded person as well. (Laughs) I'm sure that would be the reason most people will point to as why I like CM Punk so much. 

I'm an individual that is easily frustrated and depressed by my surroundings and environment. If I consume too much negativity, whether from social media, people I interact with, or just from day-to-day endeavors, it consumes my internal head space and disrupts my inner peace. I find myself unable to focus or concentrate on anything. Far many times than I care to admit, I have allowed (and continue to do so) negativity (whether it's their energy or written/verbal remarks) destroy my compassion for things that I love and enjoy by making me feel less than for entertaining said media. I get it - I'm a weirdo who likes and consumes a lot of content that most other "normal" people don't like or would not even entertain on their best day. I go out of my way to see things from everyone else's perspective and respect their opinion(s) and become easily frustrated when that sentiment isn't returned the other way around. 

I will never understand the people who just pile on and on across social media or whatever platform on a daily basis about things that they hate or dislike. If you want to dedicate that much of your free time on a daily basis to express that amount of hatred, then that's great for you in terms of what you want to spend that energy doing, but I have my right to mute, block, and flat out ignore your negativity. Protecting my headspace and inner peace for the sake of my mental health means more to me than anything at this stage of my life, even if it costs me friends, relationships, etc. Today's society makes it so easy to absorb so much of the toxicity in terms of negativity being spewed on a regular basis that it starts to affect your health to the point that it's detrimental to your future if that is all of the content and social interaction that you are consuming everyday. That's why I force myself to take periodic breaks from engaging and interacting with individuals on social media and interacting with various communities across Discord/reddit. 

My brain is wired to think of and expect the worst case scenario in every situation as it lessens the blow (not really) of possible heartbreak, disappointment, sadness, or any other psychological trauma. Perfect example? I recently confessed to my older siblings that once my mother was admitted into the hospital, I had already given up all hope of her pulling through. I wasn't wrong as she died roughly 2-3 months later, but it didn't lessen the blow any less. It hurt more that I saw it coming and there wasn't nothing I could do to stop it. I'll be honest. My life has been full of so many disappointments, shortcomings, overall "no's" and outright failures that I am at the point where I fail to see any good out of anything. When something good does happen, I am always looking for it to fall apart at any time. I would love to be able to turn that part of my brain off but it's like a defense mechanism (read: trauma response). 

I hear it all the time from other people, "Learn to grow thicker skin" or "Just be an asshole to those types of people". 

I'm not a very confident person if you can't tell already. "Isn't that something you should have grown out of by now?" or "You're too old to be thinking like that" are things I hear a lot from people too that doesn't help my disposition and overall mindset. It sucks too when a lot of people use this knowledge to (attempt to) manipulate my emotions and "trigger" a reaction, but at least I've learned that the best reaction is no reaction at all as I just distance myself from people like that. "Oh you're just being a coward by not being confrontational and resolving your problems" No, it's just a waste of time and energy - both of which things I have very few of in the first place. 

Introvert (INFJ personality type)

Here's the #1 thing people misunderstand about me - I'm an introvert. I'm not anti-social, I'm not mad, I don't hate people. People as a whole exhaust me. I, like most introverts, have a limited threshold for social interaction - whether it be in person (face-to-face), over the phone/internet, etc. After that, we need our alone time to recharge the batteries so to speak. I can't speak for other introverts but I have different thresholds for different kinds of people, so that engagement time and recharge time will vary. People who always want you to check in with them frustrate and drain me constantly. I have struggled with almost every type of relationship/interaction with "clingy" people. That's just not the type of person I am.

I cherish my alone time more than anything. I come from a family of mostly introverts, even though my siblings and father are much more extroverted than me in other capacities. We all love our alone time. Much like my dearly departed mother said shortly before I took her to the hospital and her condition turned to the worse, I don't want to be a burden to anyone. My problems are mine to figure out. I'm not going to dump my shit into anyone else's lap as I don't want to carry anyone else's. Trust me, I have more than enough on my plate currently. 

The same goes for not being wanted/acknowledged. I don't like bothering or bugging people in general so it doesn't hurt me in the least to leave people to their own devices. I understand everyone has their own lives to live and struggles to navigate through. It's not all about me. That's why I leave people alone - a lot. When people fail to understand and comprehend where I'm coming from with all of this, I'm done. It's exhausting when people are constantly in your face asking "Did I do something wrong?", "Are you mad at me?", or "You look like you're upset or don't want to be here" EVERY.FUCKING.SINGLE.DAY invading into my personal space. I tell them they did nothing wrong, but they get offended anyway when I want my space and when I do blow up at them for denying my request, they get madder. It's a goddamn lose-lose situation no matter what I do. It sucks, but I've fallen out with a lot of people about this over the course of my life. 

Content Creation

BlogSpot would end up being this blog's home for a very long time until I made the move during the COVID-19 pandemic to start migrating everything onto a proper website, hence why it exists on Google Sites currently for the time being until I cave to pay for my own domain instead of these free web hostings. 

As of August 25, 2023, this will be my 12th year on this blogging journey since my first post published on August 25, 2011. I've been doing this that long and I still don't know what exactly this is supposed to be or what sort of audience should I be looking to draw or pitch to. Most of the time, this blogging thing is the only that really keeps me sane more often than not. 

Believe it or not, but I have been primarily running this blog solo for the past 12ish years. I don't have a "team" nor do I have any graphic design artists making banners and logos for me, so any of the low quality and subpar efforts you see on this blog throughout the years, they were done all by me unless they were gifted to me by my much more talented, professional graphic design artists friends and colleagues. Outside of that, I have only had guest writers, specifically Sn0H and my good friend Serena (who I met via my years of e-fedding), submit guest reviews a handful of times or have collaborated with me in some other capacity on a case by case basis. Nothing never full-time or consistent. 

I like to think of myself being stubborn in these endeavors, where I won't be satisfied unless I complete a task myself without any outside help, despite may or may not having the skills to do so. That's problematic of course, especially when I become easily frustrated and stressed by attempting to acquire said skills. I am very reluctant (read: hesitant) to rely on other people due to lackluster and horrible experiences in the past. Plus, I can only blame myself when things go wrong instead of having to rely on other people. It's easier to crack the whip behind myself than trying to coerce/convince others to pull their weight in a project or collaboration. 

My reviewing process is rather simple to be honest. I used to rank everything in a 1 to 10 scale but over time as I had accumulated a lot more  reviews on this blog, I didn't think it was a fair grading/ranking scale so I simplified it to merely asking one question after my personal breakdowns and opinions, asking whether or not this film/television show/video game/etc. was worth your time watching or playing it and that's it. 

I honestly had to remind myself that this isn't a gaming publication nor am I trying to compete with the other media coverage outlets. 

Another thing that I feel that I should mention is that while I did enjoy laughing at the satire of "Cinema Sins" while studying film theory and media arts in college, I do not consider myself an individual of that same way of thinking that is so prevalent online these days where every fandom is nitpicking and griping about the most minute detail of every aspect of all of these games, films, and television shows. That is a horrible way to critique and analyze not just cinema but any medium as a whole. I find it hard to relate those individuals who find nothing but negativity to poke holes through every shred of media that is out there and go out of their way to make everyone feel as miserable as they do and to echo their displeasure. You will find me distancing myself to a lot of those types of people. I respect everyone's opinions and understand not everything is everyone's cup of tea, but I draw the line when people try to tear me down for what I like and find joy out of. 

Method To Madness & Let's Talk Wrestling - Two Separate Blogs???

This was a happy accident that has become a costly mistake as the years have rolled on. When I started this blog, it was solely for nerd culture without any intention to talk about professional wrestling. When I wanted to devote talk to just professional wrestling, I created an offshoot of Method to Madness to cover professional wrestling exclusively and keep those audiences separate since I'm painfully aware that not everyone is a fan of one or the other. As time went on, it was proving difficult to maintain a balance of running both sites so I merged the two for my own sanity under the Blogspot era of this blog, but as it stands currently today, both Method to Madness and Let's Talk Wrestling have two separate Twitter accounts and two distinct/separate Facebook pages. I should have known this was going to happen as now I'm stuck with two communities with one being far more popular than the other. It sucks too as I'm not enamored with covering wrestling as much as I was when I first started this blogging adventure, but that's my biggest following by leaps and bounds in comparison to the run of the mill nerd culture stuff. My ongoing struggle is trying to figure out how to continue creating content for this blog while keeping both sides of the spectrum happy while not driving myself nuts in the process. As it stands, it's one hell of a balancing act. 

Live Streaming (YouTube | Twitch)

When I first dabbled with livestreaming, I bought a Hauppauge HD PVR (HD video capture on consoles and satellite television), EasyCap Video Capture (mostly for gaming consoles that didn't have component cables), and a Roxio Game Capture (for anything between the PSX to Xbox 360 console generations) device to record videos that I streamed to my Twitch TV account that simultaneously backed up and saved them on my YouTube account. That's where the bulk of the 500+ videos currently on my YouTube account comes from. After the infamous ordeal where my ENTIRE channel was taken down for a copyright strike for the better part of a year (read about that here), I lost my enthusiasm entirely for going all in on being some sort of a gaming livestreamer, especially when one of these platforms can just pull the rug out from underneath you and everything that you've built on a whim. It was soul crushing, especially when I had saved recordings (read: precious memories) from gaming with friends and colleagues that have moved on with their lives or who don't game at all anymore, so that was a literal punch to the gut to lose all of that content. 

What little I had left, I did save as "collections" or rather playlists of saved highlights on my Twitch channel, but it wasn't anything nearly as significant as what I had built up previously. Recording sessions of gaming with my various friends and partners while playing Monster Hunter: World did help raise my spirits a bit, but I'm still not fond of the idea of going all in on the livestreaming thing. I'll leave that to the younger generation with a lot more free time on their hands than me. 

I'm technically a part of the Lazy Gamers group of gamers/streamers/content creators, even though my friend, Sn0H, has been pretty much cranking out videos and content on his own for several years now and officially Twitch affiliated with his own corresponding channel and content. To this day, he constantly reminds me that I'm still a part of the team. I would pop in regularly on his streams when we were playing Monster Hunter: World together, but not much over the past few years since that game's content rollout ended. We did do a discussion panel of upcoming gaming releases pre-COVID, but that's about it as I haven't streamed much next to anything lately, despite investing into a new machine that can handle streaming better than the bare bones laptop that I was working with for several years prior.  

Do me a solid and give Sn0H a follow and subscribe to his channel. He puts in a lot of work to keep that thing alive with a lot of regular new content. 

Interests: Anime & Manga

Like most children of the 80s I was exposed to the Americanized version of Macross, Robotech and I really fell in love with that as all of my siblings got into watching that together. I wouldn't see it in its entirety until in my teenage years when it aired on the early days of Cartoon Network's weekday animation block that would later become Toonami once they picked up the anime powerhouse that would be known as Dragon Ball Z. I remember prior that point, I would come home from school, watch Sailor Moon, Robotech, Thundercats, Voltron: Defender of the Universe, and the Real Adventures of Jonny Quest in succession every afternoon before doing my homework for the evening. On weekends, that animation block on Cartoon Network would sprinkle in airings G-Force: Guardians of the Earth that I would remember my older siblings watching back in the 80s too.

Most of my early exposure to anime outside of what little I saw in the 80s and what Cartoon Network would air prior to forming their Toonami animation block by the early 2000s would be on Saturday mornings due to Sci-Fi (renamed to the SyFy channel in 2009) channel's own weekend animation block called "Saturday Anime", where they would air edited English dubs of AKIRA, Project A-Ko, Dominion Tank Police, Vampire Hunter D, Record of Lodoss War, and more. The two anime that really stuck out to me the most were Casshan: Robot Hunter and Iria: Zeiram - The Animation. 

I like to credit Casshan (more commonly remembered as Casshern to most anime fans) to fueling my fondness of heroic robots like him and Mega Man, who Keiji Inafune has admitted that has a lot of influences on that character. I owe Iria for my fondness to bad ass female protagonists in general and more notably to bounty hunters. 

Once Toonami became a regular addition to weekdays on Cartoon Network, I think I gravitated to a majority of all of the anime that they picked up and aired on that network in some capacity. I even stayed up late at night to catch their "uncut" airings of Gundam Wing, Cowboy Bebop, and Inuyasha. There's no denying that I wasn't like everyone else who was fixated on Dragon Ball Z, despite the fact that I saw a vast majority of that series (Ocean dub) on the Fox affiliates in my area on most weekends if you got up early enough at the crack of dawn to see that, Sailor Moon, and Ronin Warriors. I just remember that those networks only carried as far as when Goku arrived to Namek and immediately started over after that point. That was so infuriating at the time. I was lucky enough to have a classmate who imported most of the later seasons following the defeat of Frieza, so I was able to watch most of the Androids Saga and movies prior to those showing up stateside. (Laughs) That advanced knowledge made me a bit of a celebrity in some of the conversations about the show at school at the time, especially when this was at the early stages of the Internet where all of that information wasn't so easy to obtain. 

I'm sure that I've mentioned it before, but I became a huge fan of the Gundam franchise as a whole after seeing Gundam Wing in its entirety when it aired on Toonami. I bought the model kits (Gunpla as what they are called nowadays) whenever I could and even went out of my way to check out the various spin-offs and elseworlds stories and timelines. I still haven't even scratched the surface of EVERYTHING that franchise has produced to date, but I'm sure as hell willing to try. 

I think everyone got caught up in the big anime boom as a result of both Toonami and Pokemon flooding the American markets in the early 2000s. I don't feel the need to list everything that I have watched but much like Toonami and SyFy's Saturday Anime blocks there were stuff I gravitated to and liked from the other various networks that were picking up a lot of anime at the time or just various stuff that I was renting on VHS from the local Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, or Sycamore Video (who from my hometown remembers THAT?), such as Digimon, Monster Rancher, Yu-Gi-OH!, Cardcaptors, Escaflowne, Cyborg 009, Big O, Shinzo, Outlaw Star, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Zoids (Future Century Zero and Chaotic Century), Trigun, S-cry-ed, Ninja Scroll, M.D. Geist, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Wolf's Rain, and among others. 

Speaking of video stores, I have so many of those VHS tapes from when Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and Sycamore Video all went out of business that I just stocked up on a ton of anime for cheap. It's still boxed up in my storage unit actually since one of my VHS players broke a while back. I probably wasting my time hanging onto a lot of that stuff, especially when it has probably been rereleased in a better format with upgraded/enhanced visuals and/or with extra features.

When TechTV (and later G4TechTV after the two networks mashed up together) was in its infantcy, I gravitated to that channel's late night anime block "Anime Unleashed" as well. The standouts that stuck out to me were Banner of the Stars, Crest of the Stars, Serial Experiments Lain, Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure, The SoulTaker, and Silent Möbius. I went out of my way to pick up The SoulTaker and Silent Möbius on DVD though while I was in college. 

One Piece I flat out hated when I was exposed to it in the early 2000s when it aired on Fox Kids under the infamous 4Kids English dub, despite the cool opening rap theme song. I wouldn't warm up to it until at least more than a decade later when my co-worker at the time suggested that I skip majority of the bullshit in the earlier story arcs and try it again from the Water 7 arc. To his delight, it worked. I was hooked for the most part. I've seen through the defeat of Donflamingo as of this writing and the One Piece: RED film. I haven't seen any of the other films though. 

I gotta admit that Pluto TV's 24/7 One Piece stream has helped me in a large degree in refreshing me on the details of the earlier seasons/story arcs that I skipped out on. Regardless, it's still something I don't watch full time and I mostly keep the Pluto TV stream on as background noise when I'm either sleeping or working on something at my desk. 

Attack on Titan / Shingeki no Kyojin and KILL la KILL were both two anime that I gravitated to in the height of my depression in my late twenties. Attack on Titan showed me that humanity has the capacity to rise up and overcome the most dire of situations and circumstances. No one's fate is forever etched in stone. I couldn't help being drawn in by the boldness of the writing too in terms off killing off characters. Nothing was sacred. 

KILL la KILL didn't have a profound effect on me as Attack on Titan did, but it did remind me that art can be "fun" much like Studio TRIGGER's previous work, Gurren Lagann. 

Currently, I really don't have much time for keeping up with everything under the sun that releases in terms of anime. I tend to watch, rewatch, or revisit a lot of older releases I never got to finish (Cyborg 009, Zeta Gundam, Zone of the Enders Dolores, etc.) or checking out the sequels and spin-offs to stuff I loved in the past (Yashahime: Half-Demon Princess, Bleach: Thousand Year War, Attack on Titan: The Final Season, etc.) instead of newer outings that I have been told I should be watching, such as Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, etc. 

(Sighs) I'll get around to it... eventually. 

Interests: Collectibles

I consider myself a collector first and a (part-time) seller secondary as I don't resell collectibles full-time as a second job. Sure, I have eBay listings for stuff that I have for sale out of my personal collection(s), but I have nothing but respect for my friends and colleagues who have transformed that into a full-blown business. My reselling profits go right back into funding more stuff for this hobby. 

I think a lot of us can credit toy collecting and reselling becoming so popular due to the boom of interest thanks to social media and popular collectors/resellers on YouTube, but I personally started considering reselling after checking out that short-lived Toy Hunter television show that aired on the Travel Channel for three seasons back in 2012. To put it bluntly, I thought that dude was a goddamn crook for how much he was scamming a lot of people to buy pivotal pieces from their collections only to resell them to someone for double, triple, and even quadruple the price in some cases. Between this show and Pawn Stars, a lot of people are now well aware of what they have and what it is worth and you're not going to find so many "suckers" to fall for crap from guys like the Toy Hunter. At the same time, it's made the reseller game so much more difficult, even if you're a honest reseller. EBay, Mercari, and so many other online outlets are full of scalpers and resellers to the point where it's a highly oversaturated market. More often than not, I personally find myself unvaluing what I have just to get rid of stuff for I won't have to compete with scalper prices. After eBay takes their cut along with shipping and handling, I don't make next to anything in a lot of cases, but the saving grace in a lot of scenarios is hearing the pleasant stories from buyers about how happy their kid(s) are to have said item in their collections or the collector in particular so happy that I hooked them up with something they have been looking for. I take joy in making some of my fellow collectors happy as well as seeing the tidbits from my own collection find a good home instead of continuing to collect dust in my storage unit. 

The first figures of any kind that I collected in any capacity was those WildC.A.T.s action figures based off of the cartoon and comics of the same name that was created by Jim Lee. I've mentioned that toy line on several occasions so I won't repeat myself for the millionth time on that but I loved the hell out of that line. I finally acquired all of the mainline figures (except for all of the variants and 2-packs) over the past calendar year, but I'm going to continue to hunt down the rest of the variants at a leisurely pace. I don't want this adventure to be over quite yet. If anything, I might pick up those Savage Dragon/TMNT figures Playmates did at the same time that are advertised on the back of the packaging of the last wave of figures that were released under the Image Universe banner. (Shrugs) I already have a few of the Witchblade (Clayborn Moore) figures, She-Dragon (Playmates' Savage Dragon line), and a Cyberforce Ripclaw mini-statue, I suppose I could hunt down that Cyberforce Ballistic mini-statue and have them all collectively be one big Image Comics display. 

Before I went really all in on particular lines of toys, I just picked up random figures from whatever thing in pop culture - gaming, comics, film, anime, television - that I saw figures of. FYE, Hot Topic, Camelot, Sam Goody, Spec's Music, DiscJockey, Manifest, Suncoast Motion Picture Company, etc. were all so good places to find that stuff which was a huge niche market at the time. My fellow nerds and geeks, consider yourselves very lucky currently that you can walk into any retailer and find this stuff everywhere without a hassle or looks from people seeing you walk into stores that most "normies" would consider being the adult-entertainment stores or what not. 

I only started collecting Star Wars Black Series figures for myself a lot more over the past year in all honesty. In previous years, I would just pick up particular figures here and there of my favorite characters (mostly from Clone Wars and Rebels) I liked in that line as I thought it was far too pricy, even back then. Now in hindsight, I'm glad that I did pick and choose as I have a solid foundation of characters for display purposes, despite rereleases and what not. 

Truth be told, but I never really collected the ToyBiz Marvel Comics/X-Men toys. They were gifted to me growing up at various points of my childhood, but the only one I ever kept mint in box was the Bishop figure that my older brother gifted me when I was in college as a throwback. I ended up taking that out of the packaging over the past year since the plastic and paint job started to discolor in the packaging. (Laughs) Those things weren't made to last for shit. The old trading cards that they came with still hold some value though.  

I didn't start picking up Hasbro's Marvel Legends figures until I started seeing them on the cheap in the dying days of K-Mart locally. I would pick them up here and there in Toys R' Us and even then, I wasn't paying full price for them, especially when they were going out of business. I would continue collecting them to this day as popularity with Marvel grew with the growth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I was just happy to see characters who I never saw figures of growing up and better quality figures of other beloved characters getting shown love in this line. I have my gripes about the quality throughout the years with a lot of these figures but I can't deny that I love seeing them on my display shelves. We can argue about too much or too little articulation all day until you're blue in the face, but there's a lot to love in that line, even though it sucks that some of these figures are ridiculously overpriced, hard-to-find, and even worse, completely off the table.

I still remember the first wrestling figure that I ever bought was a WWE Ruthless Aggression Series 28 Torrie Wilson for a mere $2.99 on clearance at the local FYE in the mall. Prior to that, I never owned any wrestling figures of my own. When I did play with them growing up, it was whenever my cousins or neighborhood friends came over to visit. After that I would pick up a random wrestling figure on a whim whenever I saw them cheap. That would change in college when I just started buying figures of whoever was the "most popular" and bigger names in wrestling at the time in terms of my favorites in WWE at the time. I ended up having tons of the women's wrestlers since they are rarer to come by, so I made a point of picking those up over the guys who were always plentiful in hopes of resales down the road. Plus it didn't hurt that the local comic book shop that I would frequent would have tons of older wrestling figures on the cheap so I picked up those too whether they were mint in box or loose out of the package but in acceptable condition. When I was frequenting the TNA/IMPACT Wrestling house shows in my area around the 2010s, I would always order Don West's Brown Bag Special either in person or via online that included either some figures, a T-Shirt/banner, and a few DVDs. I had most of that line at one point, then scored some of the NWA-TNA Marvel ToyBiz made figures from one of the local comic & toy conventions in my area. At one point, my collection was so big that I was making regular trips to the local flea market, selling off a few wrestling rings and figures to free up space and have more than enough dough to pick up newer figures and extra for holiday shopping that year. It was a great system/cycle, but as I'm going to mention in the wrestling section later in this bio, my interest with wrestling started waning and I slowed down considerably in terms of what I was picking up. I'm at the point currently where I'm selling off a vast majority of my wrestling collectibles save for personal favorites and that's it. 

I'm currently at the point now where I only pick up figures of the VERY few wrestlers I still like that I don't have figures for or if Mattel releases an "Ultimate" edition Elite figure that pretty much shits all over their older figures as the "definitive" version of that figure that one would want in their collections. All Elite Wrestling figures are far too expensive for my taste to buy brand new and I think many collectors feel the same way as I'm starting to see those marked down left and right for the cheap. It makes me sad to see that wrestling rings aren't a dime a dozen anymore. A bare bones wrestling ring for figures used to be $10-20 at the most and now most retailers don't even carry those anymore. 

As of this posting, my favorite thing to collect right now are those Final Faction off-brand G.I. Joe figures that are exclusive to Dollar Tree. They are only $1.25 and there's so many variants and accessories to pick up. Then they have fucking vehicles that don't cost an arm and a leg like those goddamn G.I. Joe Declassified figures cost. I think I've nearly got the entire line and still haven't paid the full price for a single G.I. Joe Declassified figure yet. 

The best advice I can give anyone who is into collecting or want to start a collection is collect what you love and are passionate about while at the same time, realize that you do NOT have to break the bank to own some cool shit in your collection. Pick up pieces that speak volumes to you and don't get caught up in FOMO (fear of missing out). That's a scary pitfall to fall into and hard to pull yourself out of. I have no shame in admitting that a lot of this stuff nowadays is well above what I feel comfortable dropping a ton of my paycheck on. Mad respect to those who are baller status like that in terms of disposable income, but I know how deep my pockets go.

I stay in the game mostly as I'm still hooked to that thrill of the hunt and who doesn't get that high of that new toy smell when you open the packaging? That just never gets old to me.

Interests: Comic Books

Right off the bat, I'm going to put it out there that I'm not an expert on comic books. I'm not one of those people who can spit out encyclopedic knowledge of every writer, artist, and storyline for the past 60+ years of comics in-depth and detail what made those storylines great and better than what's being made today. 

I'm just a guy who has a few favorite books that I enjoyed throughout my youth and still look back on fondly today while willing to give the some of new stuff a fair chance too. I get there's some stuff not geared for me and a lot of these characters and books aren't what I grew up reading but that's okay too. It's not the end of the world. 

Marvel Comics

Even though I was reading a ton of Marvel Comics that my older brother was bringing over from his best friend that lived in our neighborhood, I wouldn't own another Marvel Comics-related book on my own until my dad purchased me a copy of Avengers West Coast #69. I remember that issue fondly for the issue-long fight between U.S. Agent and Hawkeye. To this day, I'm; still disappointed that we haven't gotten a single figure of Hawkeye in this look in the slightest (at least to my knowledge). Like come-fucking-on. That looks leaps and bounds better than that wannabe-Wolverine mask that everyone loves him in.

Avengers West Coast or West Coast Avengers would be a team I would fondly read the adventures of in my youth as I went back and collected a lot of the original run of this team. By the time I read up to the point of U.S. Agent and Hawkeye's fight, I really didn't care how "mainstream" their team had become with more heavy hitters and more popular names on this Avengers team when it was supposed to be an off-shoot of the main Avengers team roster. This team would be my first exposures to characters, such as Mockingbird, Tigra, U.S. Agent, Wonder Man, among others who I still love fondly today, despite them not getting as much representation or any at all in the MCU currently. 

Spectacular Spider-Man #50 and Fantastic Four #221 were both given to me on a whim at one point in my childhood. I still don't know nor remember how did those fall into my collection. But yeah, those were my first exposures to those characters in comic book form despite having a copy of Secret Wars #1 in my collection too. Another oddity in terms of me having absolutely no idea where that wind up in my collection during my childhood. 

I find that fascinating in hindsight that these three particular comics would play a role in terms of molding what I would enjoy out of these characters and team-ups even to this day. 

I've went in-depth with my fascination and fandom over She-Hulk in both my Stuff I Like post and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Disney+ series review, but I will mention that I first discovered the character back in those old Marvel history books at the local public library. I would check that book out from the library every chance that I could, along with those Nintendo Games Secrets (Secrets of the Games) books whenever they were in stock, just to read about all of the various Marvel Comics characters. 

(Laughs) Plus, I think almost anyone who was a fan of the '90s The Incredible Hulk animated series can tell you that the "Doomed" episode that featured Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk's origin story and first transformation was forever changed by the sheer amount of sexual innuendo in that episode. Still blows my mind how that scene got past censors back then. Trekkie fanboys have their green alien women to lust after and then there's nerds like me who like their green amazon women. I see no harm done.

I had a healthy fascination with those Official Handbooks of the Marvel Universe too and still collect them off and on whenever I see them in pull boxes or whenever my older brother isn't gifting me one of the compilation volumes for my birthday. By today's standards, they are completely out of date and mostly irrelevant in terms of the information in relation to modern comics, but that was the era of comics that I grew up in, so I'd love to own all of them out of sheer nostalgia someday. 

Indie (Independent) Comics

When I took a break from reading Marvel Comics around the "Heroes Reborn" period, I was dabbling into reading a lot of whatever I could get my hands on and wanted to try out while thumbing through the dollar bin long boxes at the local comic book shops. I was already reading Image/Top Cow Comics, so naturally I was picking up Cyberforce, WildC.A.T.s, Witchblade, and a lot of their other books - Stormwatch, Wetworks, Savage Dragon, etc. 

I went down that rabbit hole of reading a lot of "edgy" female-led comics too, such as Avengelyne, Shi, and Chaos Comics' Lady Death. I like to credit my interest into those books for my own designs with similar sultry and curvy women in my own stories and artwork. I notice that genre is referred to as "bad girl" comics and that moniker/label totally fits. Those ladies were crossing over all over the place in other books that I was reading anyway, so it just felt natural to pick up their books too - at least whenever I could find them. I can't speak for anyone else but they were pretty scarce in my area. 

DC Comics

My older brother would suggest that I pick up a few of the Green Lantern Corps books that he was enamored with mostly before and after the New 52 relaunch (Sinestro Corps War, Blackest Night, Brightest Day, etc.) and while I did enjoy those books, I was enjoying reading the Batman (mostly the Court of Owls stuff) and Justice League comics, especially since my all-time favorite comic book artist was doing the artwork for those books - Jim Lee. Also, I would tend to mix up this time period with the 52 novelization I read as I was under the impression that it was under the same banner/timeline/whatever, so bare with me, hardcore DC fanboys. 

And before the DC Comics purists and hardcore fanboys come at me in the comments, save it. I've gotten shit from that particular sect of DC fanboys for YEARS when I mention to people that I don't hate and loathe the New 52 run of DC Comics with every fiber of their being like they do like a badge of honor to prove your fandom to that brand. Look at it from my perspective as someone who was fairly new into DC Comics who didn't have any prior jumping in point to get familiar with these characters up to this point. Was it perfect? No, but there was some good in there despite it being flawed. At the same time, I understand the anger and frustration from the long-time fans as it was a similar feeling of betrayal and abandonment that I felt when Marvel Comics did their Heroes Reborn reboot in late 90s that drove me to try out other comics. Getting that reaction from people as if I smoking turds hanging out of my mouth and face is the main reason why I really don't tell people what I enjoyed reading in DC Comics over the years. I really don't want to hear someone's thesis statement about why DC is bad now and why the glory years that some jilted fanboy worships with every fiber of their being is the best thing DC ever done to this day and nothing else will compare. 

I'll admit that I didn't stick around with majority of those books before the New 52 took a nosedive in quality as how the hardcore DC Comics fanboys LOVE to point out, but I didn't read much of DC Rebirth either. By that point, I was doing like I was doing with a wide variety of comics and listening to audio readings and/or summaries of storylines that interested me before picking up the complete volumes/hardcover graphic novels to own down the road once those storylines/events were completed. 

One would think that I would be over the moon to read DC Comics now that my favorite comic book artist was working for the company (even got a big cheese promotion currently) and even brought over and migrated a lot of the Wildstorm properties under the DC Comics umbrella, but it's the same that it's always been for me with DC Comics. I don't see them as "inferior" but their books are nothing that I'm going to go out of my way to pick up and read. 

Am I going to pick up that WildCATs reboot whenever the complete volumes start dropping of that? Sure. I picked up that Yara Flor Future State Wonder Woman reboot when that dropped a few years ago since I loved the concept/idea of that take of Wonder Woman. Even cooler to see that she's been made into a regular character going forward. I still keep tabs on whatever events are going on with the Justice League and the better part of that universe along with the various Bat Family books here and there, so it's not like I'm completely checked out on DC Comics. I'm just very selective on what I want to read under their banner. I really appreciate that they go out of their way to have something for everyone - a wide variety of representation that definitely should be applauded, even though there's a few occasions where I feel like they try a little TOO hard to please everyone and to check certain boxes, but that's a conversation for another day I suppose. 

Interests: Music

I know that I joke about it all the time, but I'll say it constantly. My black card should be revoked as I don't know nor follow any of the major rappers and R&B singers by name nor I could name any of their songs if someone held a gun to my head. The few artists' music that I am aware of have either been suggested to me by college roomies, art classmates, my siblings, or have played on the radio, MTV's TRL, or BET's 106 & Park enough times that I couldn't help but know what it was. For example, my older brother introduced me to The Alchemist and I really loved his stuff, then a few of my art classmates turned me onto Bone Thug N Harmony and my college roommates listened to so much Lil' Jon and the like that I couldn't help but find something to like there too. 

Truth be told though, the one thing that fills up my Spotify favorites and streaming history more than anything else is anime and gaming soundtracks. I am fond of a lot of that music as I'm addicted to that feeling of amazement and wonder while experiencing that art form. The same feeling is conveyed in some film and television soundtracks too. 

Outside of the previously mentioned artists and genres, the rest of my musical taste comes from what I have heard growing up as a fan of professional wrestling if I'm perfectly honest. I wouldn't have dabbled into the music of heavy metal and rock stars otherwise to be quite honest.

Interests: Fantasy & Adventure

My earliest memories of fantasy adventure films and the like goes back to watching the Beastmaster films, Conan the Barbarian (and later Red Sonja) films, Disney's The Sword in the Stone, and even the Neverending Story with my sisters growing up. 

I would later get into watching Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess on television while in my teenage years. I enjoyed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World too. 

I have absolutely no shame admitting that I have never read any of the Lord of the Rings nor Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, but I have enjoyed the films, animated movie(s), and Amazon Prime television show. I have my oldest sister and older brother to consult in terms of questions and clarifying stuff for me as they have read all of that stuff. 

Interests: Horror

Over the years, I grew to respect more implied horror than the bloodbaths that Hollywood has resorted to in more modern cinema, even though you would find me as a fan of films like the SAW franchise and Paranormal Activity series, while at the same time having respect for Alfred Hitchcock's classics and other horror staples, such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Chucky, Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday The 13th. 

I really need to get around to watching that American Horror Story television show that I keep hearing so much about. 

Interests: Sci-Fi (Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, etc.)

As a child of the '80s, I saw a lot of those movies and TV shows that have been regarded as pop culture icons today, such as RoboCop, Terminator, Aliens, Predator, Critters, etc. A lot of that stuff I still hold in high regard today. 

Star Wars

I mentioned my Star Wars fandom originating with my siblings' annual marathons of watching the original trilogy on television growing up. We enjoyed the prequel films for what they were worth, but didn't hold them to any higher regards to the original trilogy. 

I'll be honest. Even though I liked the Genndy Tartakovsky-made Clone Wars animated mini-series, I didn't care for the Clone Wars 3D animated cartoon that followed after it at first, especially in it's initial seasons with the one-off stories and disconnected plot. It didn't resonate with me until it's later seasons when they had an overarching plots and storylines. That feeling would be the same for its spin-off/follow-up series, Rebels, where I felt creator Dave Filoni really hit his strive in terms of expanding and fleshing out the lore in the Star Wars universe. 

I understand that the sequel trilogy has its fans but I feel that for everything good that Dave Filoni has done with making people fans of Star Wars again by bringing a lot of his animated characters to live-action and Jon Favreau has with bringing in a brand new crowd into the fandom with their love of The Mandalorian, I fear that Disney is steering and forcing this new direction of Star Wars lore to redeem the sequel trilogy in the eyes of those who have frowned upon it. Much like that overpriced Galaxy's Edge weekend getaway, I think both Disney and Star Wars as a whole need to just take that L, admit the sequel trilogy was a failure, and just move on. Quit dwelling on it and reminding people of that flop. There are so many other unexplored avenues of Star Wars that can be adapted, fleshed out, and focused on instead of the Skywalker family melodrama. 

Star Trek

I'm not a Trekkie in any capacity. Sorry, not sorry. 

I know who the original Star Trek cast is with Captain Kirk and Spock of course, along with The Next Generation cast with Picard, but the only other Star Trek series I watched from start to finish was Voyager in its entirety. That was mostly due the awesomeness of Janeway as a leader and the sultry hotness that was Seven of Nine. I do remember my dad renting those films from The Next Generation time period and watching those with him and being fascinated with the Borg alien race though. 

I tried to watch Deep Space Nine but was bored to tears and then Enterprise didn't hold my interest for long, especially when I had so much going on my plate in college at the time. I watched a little bit of Star Trek: Discovery but didn't keep up with it past the first season. I'm a little intrigued to check out Picard since they brought back some of the older cast members from previous series back for that but again, I'm not that hardcore of a Trekkie fan to go out of my way to watch it.

Interests: Tokusatsu

Power Rangers / Super Sentai

The original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is going to be forever engraved as part of my childhood and generation. I've been teased and ridiculed at several various points of my life for being a fan and remaining as such, despite falling out of interest throughout some of the seasons following the end of the Zordon Era (Lightspeed Rescue and Wild Force still don't do absolutely nothing for me to this day outside of their team-up/crossover episodes... and anything involving Ms. Fairweather...). I came back around for the Disney Era (Ninja Storm, Dino Thunder, SPD, Mystic Force, Operation Overdrive, Jungle Fury, and RPM) in full swing, even though I missed out on RPM in its entirety during it's run on ABC at the time. 

Without a shadow of a doubt, Gokaiger singlehandedly renewed my love for Power Rangers and gave me a newfound appreciation for Super Sentai in general since it was the first series that I watched in its entirety. I watched it when I was going through some pretty depressing times of my life in my late twenties and this celebration of all things Super Sentai to honor that franchise's rich history was a joy to watch. I went above and beyond to go out of my way to find the means to watch the ten anniversary reunion special/movie a year or two ago as well. 

(Laughs) I keep eyeing those Gokaiger import figures and weapons too over on BigBadToyStore, but I just can't condone putting down that much dough on some plastic. Someday, I fear I'm going to cave though.

Long story short, Gokaiger was a gateway for me to discover more Super Sentai series while simultaneously digging me out of pit of darkness in my life at the time. My memories of watching this will always bring a smile to my face and hence why I get frustrated and mad that Saban would massively drop the ball in terms of its American adaptation in Power Rangers Super Megaforce.  

I would discover Mirai Sentai Timeranger in a similar low point of my life, specifically when the world seemed to shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, but I was one of the few who still had to go in to work to a nearly empty building and work for eight hours like nothing has changed while everyone else was working via remote. Yeah, fuck that noise. I bought my laptop with me and was watching this via Tubi TV and ShoutFactory's channels. 

Much like the Power Rangers adaptation (Time Force), it's a powerful story about no one's fate/destiny is set in stone, no matter how dire it may be. 

I watched the majority of Jetman, Hurricaneger, and Kakuranger over the past year and thought they were both solid seasons as well. PlutoTV's TokuSHOUTsu channel has been great at periodically streaming stuff in this genre and not just Super Sentai, but Kamen Rider as well.

Background: Arts & Film

Film Studies / Film Theory

Speaking of film theory, this blog exists mainly to put those analytical skills to use. Y'know to give me some reassuraance that I didn't waste my time (and my parents' hard earned money...) going to college and accumulating all of that student loan debt for nothing. It could be worse, I guess. At least I'm not paying a montage payment in loan repayments monthly like some people are. So yeah, this blog exercises and flexes those film studies muscles in terms of analyzing and critiquing media. I have mostly stuck with covering stuff that I am generally interested in nerd culture. What sucks is that most people hear that I went to college for that only to ask/assume that I'm opting to make movies. (Laughs) Yeah right. I barely passed photography class and the recorded footage of me in acting classes will be burned with my body the day I die. I promise NO ONE else will see that footage until after I leave this world. Otherwise, I'm sure I would die of embarrassment anyway. 

I guess that I could credit film studies/theory in college contributing to my knack for being able to see all of the angles in a piece of media. Even to this day, I find myself constantly asking why and looking to see what was intended vision or conveyed message by the filmmaker, author, or "auteur" in a body of work. It's big reason why I laugh at the whole idea of "wokeness" in modern media when most film theorist should be able to quickly tell anyone that ALL media is "woke" in a sense in terms of the filmmakers and/or creators of said media is trying to instill their own values and morales onto the spectators of their content. It's not a new concept. It's just a term coined by people with fragile egos and narrow, closed-minded thinking habits that they are too stubborn and ignorant to step outside of to see the bigger picture. 

I like to think that all of that was forced out of my way of thinking when I had to sit to through a ton of racist, offensive, and downright disgusting stuff throughout my coursework for film studies, only to be put on the spot immediately after those screenings in classes to give your unfiltered, raw opinion on what you just watched before having to go home to write a five paragraph essay on said material too. 

My personal favorite topic in film theory is Laura Mulvey's "the male gaze" theory, which is defined below:

"Mulvey believes that women are in fact “the bearer of meaning and not the maker of meaning,” which suggests that women are not placed in a role where they can take control of a scene, instead they are simply put there to be observed from an objectified point of view. In addition, she believes that this way of watching film is never alternated so that the men are in fact the ones who are being viewed in this manner. This inequality enforces the ancient and outdated idea of “men do the looking, and women are to be looked at.”

The Male Gaze theory, in a nutshell, is where women in the media are viewed from the eyes of a heterosexual man, and that these women are represented as passive objects of male desire. Audiences are forced to view women from the point of view of a heterosexual male, even if they are heterosexual women or homosexual men." - Film Theory 101 

This analysis can be applied to all facets of media as how it was presented to me while studying it in-depth in college. 

I understand how it frustrates, enrages, and infatiuates a lot of people, regardless of gender and sexuality, when this realization dawns upon them. I am constantly fascinated to see how it applies and dictates a lot of mediums even to this day, despite a lot of adamant attempts to resist and deny this way of point of view from being accepted. I see it this way - the female form is exceptionally powerful component in cinema that she dictates and demands this much attention from the spectator, whether the female form is on screen or not. I don't see her objectification as a negative (in most cases anyway), but as a form of worship and plea of acceptance/approval from those who wish to please or lust after her. And it doesn't always have to apply to a sexual nature either, such as a man merely wanting to succeed at life in a narrative - earning a steady income and providing for his wife and offspring is merely actions to please his creator, i.e. the woman that gave birth to him, his mother.

I even applied to my final project in my Women's Studies course, where I used a combination of film, television, and video games to express the male gaze as a form of women's empowerment. My only regret is not making a copy of that video that I made for future reference since my professor asked to keep it for her lectures in the future. 

Oftentimes, I find myself pondering how I could apply this theory to whatever I may be watching just for fun and breaking it down in similar means. 

3D Rendering

I'm not even going to front about it, but I got into 3D rendering after following a lot of adult-oriented and erotic art using that medium. I'm closing in 40 years old sooner more than later as of this posting, so I'm not going to lie and clutch my pearls as if I won't do any sort of art of that nature. Any of you who follow my content on DeviantArt are well aware of that fact anyway, so yeah. 

(Laughs) Been there, done that, even though it's nothing of par and the high standard of Leee's Altawoman comics or other NSFW 3D artists' work, such as akizz (creator of Viona, Warrior of Beauty), Bmtbguy (creator of Cheap Tricks & Dominia's Valley comics), or dozens more out there. 

I'm mostly self-taught, mostly from YouTube videos and tutorials scattered online. I have shied away from asking for help for a long time, especially after a lot of unsavory experiences from other 3D artists who get defensive and act as if you're trying to "steal their (Patreon, Ko-Fi, SubscribeStar, Pixiv, etc.) consumers away" or steal their secrets as if this art form is exclusive club that only the "elite" are allowed in. I didn't kiss anyone's ass to fit in back in high school and I'm sure as hell not starting now just to please the various niche fandoms and fetish content creators. I'm just fortunate enough currently over the past few months to connect with a few genuinely good people to help me learn this eternally frustrating software and put up with my constant whining about it. 

The practical reason why I have opted to work in 3D is because of a medical condition and birth defect that I have. The older I get, the more it hurts to write and hold a pen or pencil for extended periods of time - one from the growing carpal tunnel syndrome I have in my wrists from typing since my youth, along with my birth defect in my wrist(s) where I can't fully rotate one of them. To the average eye, I can rotate both wrists, but in my left, I can't fully rotate it without discomfort. If that's not bad enough, tendonitis runs in my family and that's something I found out the hard way while playing fighting games excessively for roughly 7+ years. Long periods of using my hands in that capacity and such positions used for drawing by hand will cause my fingers to "lock up" and be unable to move. I regularly wear wrist supports and compression gloves to tolerate occasional flare ups. 

(Laughs) It's almost like a higher power is trying to tell me that I shouldn't be doing any of this artistic or creative writing crap with my hands at all...

Feedback - Giving & Receiving

I think this would be the perfect place to address something I'm sure a lot of people wonder about who specifically follow me on DeviantArt.

I don't like/comment on a lot of posts, especially in the same genres/mediums that I create content in out of personal preference. I stopped doing it after I was accused of "stealing" someone else's work on that platform (who will not be named since it's a popular creator on there and I was already heckled enough by their cronies in the past) for simply having a character of the same name as their own. For clarity, my character(s) predate that user even creating an account on that site, so I never bothered to change that character's name in the least. After that situation, I stopped giving likes/comments to that particular genre and circle of users altogether. Until that point, I bent over backwards leaving comments and issuing likes for everything on my feed while getting little to nothing in return. So yeah, I saw it as a slap in the face when I was accused by one of peers - one of the artists whose work I found myself admiring no less - for something I didn't even do. 

This incident, along with other similar unsavory experiences with some of my artistic and literary peers whose work that I grew to admire in my life, drove me frown upon them as individual people. What's that saying? "Don't meet your heroes, folks." Those individuals have incredible, amazing talent at their disposal. I can't ever take that away from them, but at the end of the day, my respect for them as people are well out the window.  

Mind you, if you want me to check out your work, follow your content, and give my honest opinion of it, I'm more than willing to do so if you ask me personally to do so. 

To be honest, I stopped looking at a wide variety of content on there altogether, not just the AI stuff and fetish porn that has consumed that site to the point where I question whether or not my feed is the frontpage of PornHub more often than not, but it wasn't doing my mental state any favors. Call it professional envy, jealousy, or just plain stupidity on my own behalf, but seeing a lot of the work and pieces on that site was demoralizing me and killing my passion to work on my own work. I know an artist shouldn't be comparing themselves to their peers, but that shit is hard to practice what you preach, especially when the gravity of the situation sets in of how far you have to go/reach before you can present/depict your craft at that same level or capacity. It's even more soul crushing when you have a cool idea, just happen to share it to one of your much more skilled peers and they execute it in masterful fashion to the point of where I'm going, "Why should I even bother?"

If I'm completely honest to myself, I can recognize that I can't take criticism when it comes to my art, but while I find that to be true, I can't help that I already hate 99.99999999% of my work or could stare it at long enough to start seeing faults and/or room for improvement to the point that it consumes me that it's all wrong. It's hard for me to see any sort of growth at this point of my life. I hate to admit it but all of those years in grade school of winning awards and prizes at the county fairs did nothing but fool me into a false sense of pride in talents that weren't very good to begin with. 

Dreams, goals, and artistic aspirations? 

Some realistic goals would be actually learning how to digitally color and draw in PhotoShop or some of the other graphic design programs that I see a lot of my peers using to stellar results. In comparison to digital renders/colored drawings, I see no reason to share personal sketches/doodles anymore as it looks so archaic, primitive, and overall unprofessional in comparison. I love seeing sketched, rough drawings via pen/pencil and paper but you rarely see that type of work getting a lot of attention by casual viewers online and that just sucks. 

Another realistic goal for me would being able to confidently say that I have some sort of mastery over Daz Studio. I have been at this for about 3-5 years at this point and I barely feel like I have made any progress outside of dropping a ton of dough onto a new machine and hardware to handle said program. I still need to invest time into studying principles of design and elements of design that I neglected and failed to apply back when I was studying that in college to my work now on top of learning proper applications and usage of said program. 

Last but not least, I want to be able to write out all of my characters' journeys across both Diosa's story and the overall Bullets, Blades, and Blood narrative. Once all of that is done, I would love to be able to finish Rebel Unit VVG someday too and fully illustrate all of these stories and characters. I would hate to fail my creations as their creator. 

Growing up I used to dream and aspire to work for one of the two big comic book companies (Marvel or DC) but after college, that pipedream went down the drain a long time ago. While I would love to draw Spider-Man or some of my other favorite characters from either banner professionally at least once in my lifetime, I don't want a full time job doing that anymore. 

I would love to complete an entire volume of finished character biographies/profiles for all of my original characters in the same vein as the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe that I loved so much growing up. At the rate that I'm going, I'll be old and grey before I get even fourth of that done, especially with my constant revisions and adjustments to the few that I have already done previously. 

Original Works

I'm going to be honest. I got into a huge argument with one of my peers the matter of wanting some acknowledgement concerning my work. I don't want to frown on the encouraging people who always say that I always create for me, but I'm going to be real here and say that shit gets fucking depressing. More often than not, I have been told or made to feel like I don't matter or anything that I do doesn't matter. Do you understand how soul crushing and self-defeating that sounds and feels like? Or how hard it is to continue staying motivated to continue creating when you constantly have to convince yourself that this matters? For my own sanity and my conscience, I just ask the universe to give me something - doesn't even matter how big - just to give me some reassurance that it is worth it. That pipedream and promise of a bright tomorrow doesn't always cut it and I'm at the point of my life where I understand "no" is the default response. 

I bet you're wondering if I feel this way, why do I still keep going? Simple. I don't want to fail my creations as their creator. It's the same reason why I don't commission out any other much more talented artists or writers to do my work for me (NOT knocking anyone who does so either), despite not having the technical know-how or other skills required to depict them as how I want to envision them. My creations speak to me and trust me to bring them to life as crazy how that sounds. Much like my personal problems and inner demons, I can't just pass my burdens and work onto someone else's shoulders to bare. I probably won't live long enough to see all of that come to fruition but at least I want to try, even though I want to throw in the towel so many times. 

Space Crew

The first superhero team that I concocted back in elementary school - hence the name. I still cringe when I think back at the team name. The team consisted of an alliance of aliens and superhumans, which was largely inspired by the X-Men, Avengers, and even the Killer Instinct video game at the time on the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System). Sadly, none of my early art of this team exists anywhere to my memory unless some of my old classmates are still hoarding it or hanging onto it in some capacity. I know my mother was hoarding a ton of my old grade school art at one point, despite me telling her to trash it while I was in college since I couldn't stomach the sight of it anymore after all that transpired. 

Metalfist & Tecto

My best friend won't EVER allow me to forget this duo that was a total knockoff of Ironman and War Machine, who were heavily inspired by the Ironman cartoon that was airing in the middle '90s with Marvel Comics' other cartoons based on The Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and the X-Men. I would end up giving them two more sidekicks who would be later love interests and the two heroes' wives, Witch Woman and Scarlet Falcon. Witch Woman was like a mix of Scarlet Witch and Wonder Woman in terms of powers and the fish-out-of-water concept in terms of living with "normal" humans while Scarlet Falcon was similar to Birdgirl (of Hanna-Barbara's Birdman cartoons who had only made a single appearance in that cartoon if memory serves) and X-Men's Angel in a sense in terms of powers. Both were reformed villains who had a change of heart after crossing paths with the armored heroes. 

I forget why I shelved this idea but much like the Space Crew, I think "outgrew" this idea and just never came back to it. I also don't have any original artwork left of this from my younger years. 

I did find a place for them in the reboot of Bullets, Blades, and Blood though as like an Easter Egg to my close friends who remember this far back into our younger years. 

Fighting Power

(Whistles) This team was spawned from a combination of me wanting to create something in the same vein as Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and other various fighting games in the 90's, along with Dragon Ball Z a bit too. I think Fighting Force (a beat 'em up video game created by Eidos) heavily skewed by my design choices at the time too. I can still see that painfully so today when I look at lot of the old artwork I have of the team. 

Rebel Unit VVG 

This was my own attempt at a Gundam/Robotech-esque story with giant mechas/robots and a world consumed in global conflict against alien invaders that seemed eeriely similar to humanity. I started writing this during classes in high school and continued throughout most of my time in college. To this day, it's still largely incomplete. I don't think that I will rewrite this its entirety, but instead, I will eventually tweak a few things and finish the story someday. The bulk of the story in its entirety (so far) is still up on my old FictionPress account, while the very few images that I illustrated for it in the vein of mock comic book pages are up on both my blog page and DeviantArt. 

Other inspirations including and excluding the Gundam and Robotech/Macross franchises:

• The special functions were heavily inspired by the Battle Skills that were unlocked in Front Mission 3 and the specialty techniques in Mobile Fighter G Gundam. 

• The team/formations and pairings was inspired by teams and groups in Zoids: Futury Century Zero and IGPX: Immortal Grand Prix. 

• I loosely based the Techians alien race off both the Zentradei (Robotech/Macross) and the Principality of Zeon in the original Mobile Suit Gundam. God I need to cook up a better name for those aliens...

• The "evolution" and dual-nature of the Nightmare Zero and Nefertiti VVGs was influenced by the learning system in the Jehuty and Anubis Orbital Frames in the Zone of the Enders franchises. 

• Bianca Blood was heavily inspired by Viola's A.I. doppelganger in Zone of the Enders: 2nd Runner. 

The Light in the Knight | Bullets, Blades, and Blood

The Light in the Knight was a one-shot pilot that I wrote that was a medieval romance adventure storyin the same vein of Inuyasha and Escaflowne in its earliest concepts/pitch. I would later turn it into a story (i.e. the original iteration of Bullets, Blades, and Blood) more skewed into themes both inspired by Bleach, Inuyasha, and Devil May Cry by the time it was all said and done. I co-wrote the original iteration of this story with two different female collaborators at the time - one for The Light in the Knight original pitch and another who stuck around for the entire first 25 chapters of Bullets, Blades, and Blood. After that point in the story, we agreed to amicably part ways due to a difference in opinion over the future of the story. There's a lot of unused/unseen parts of the story that I shared on DeviantArt recently but the rest is up on FictionPress in its original incarnation. 

Truth be told, there was an endgame planned for that iteration of this story, but it won't see the light of day.

The current iteration of Bullets, Blades, and Blood acts as a shared/amalgamation of all of my previous works (exception Rebel Unit VVG that exists in its own continuity) that is a fresh restart/retelling of those characters' journeys and stories. 

My biggest influence on this revamp to this story is Marvel Comics' Civil War and Secret Invasion events that pose the question of "who do you trust?" with multiple factions and allegiances (across multiple genres) at play but the readers would have to decide who do they want to cheer for as the story plays out. 

Influences and Inspirations

I wrote a few journal posts/articles on my DeviantArt (NSFW warning BTW) page that I later shared on Instagram of my various inspirations and influences for a lot of my original works. 

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Background: Gaming

Video Games

The first game console I ever owned was a Turbo-Grafx-16 for less than 24 hours that Christmas that my dad got it for my siblings and me. It ended up malfunctioning and he ended up having to return it right back to Service Merchandise the next day. He exchanged that for a Nintendo Entertainment System instead (mainly because he wanted to play the new Mario Bros. at the time), which ended up not even working out of the box too. Dad exchanged that console in and the NES that we ended up with is still working well even to this day. Nuts, I know.

After years of playing the Super Nintendo (SNES) and Sega Genesis at neighbors and cousins' houses, my dad would get me a Sega Genesis so late into the game that most of my friends were moving onto the Nintendo 64 and the like at the time. Hell, he was still buying me games for the NES too at the time. I remember going into KayBee Toys at the time and the only two NES games left on the shelves were Mega Man 6 and StarTropics. The rest of the stock was full of SNES and Genesis games, along with the Sega CD, Sega Saturn, and Nintendo 64 games that they were making room for. I would end up getting that copy of Mega Man 6 that following Christmas too, which would be the first Mega Man title I would personally own, but I had already played Mega Man 4 at a neighbor's house then one of my classmates and I were regularly playing Mega Man X when I'd hang out with him after school, so yeah, my exposure to that series is all over the place and out of order. 

Speaking of Mega Man titles, I wouldn't play most of the classic series until I played them via emulation or as part of the Mega Man Anniversary Collection on PlayStation 2 years later. Mega Man X and it's sequels I played mostly via emulation (and later the Mega Man X Collection on PlayStation 2) since I never owned a SNES even to this day. 

The first Metroid title I would play would be Metroid II: Return of Samus on the original Game Boy, which was the first games I had on that handheld. I would play its sequel, Super Metroid, via emulation one summer, before spending part of study hall my senior year of high school playing Metroid Fusion on one of my best friend's Game Boy Advance handheld. 

My future brother-in-law would introduce me to the Castlevania series when he loaned me his copy of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the original Playstation. That same brother-in-law would loan me his copy of Final Fantasy VIII (the first disk) that blew through in a single weekend and begged the hell out of my dad to get me my own copy, thus starting my love with that particular Final Fantasy title. 

Speaking of Final Fantasy, my first introduction into that series was with Final Fantasy VII on the original PlayStation after my best friend literally begged me to get it for he could have someone to talk to about it while he played through said game. I still haven't played most of the previous entries on the NES and SNES to this day, but for those wondering, I have played through Final Fantasy VII, VIII, X, XII, and XIII in their entirety. I own IX and XV and will get around to them eventually. I remember playing one of the SNES entries briefly via emulation but not getting too far into it. 

Some other RPGs that I have enjoyed or have dabbled in: Breath of Fire III, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Vagrant Story, NIER, Xenogears, Front Mission 3, Golden Sun, .hack// series (original), The Legend of Zelda series, and I was really hardcore into Diablo II my freshman year of college to the point that it was affecting my grades at the time. 

Ultimately, I look back at the "Squaresoft" era of Square Enix fondly back on the original PlayStation as I have either played a lot of those JRPG/RPG games or have checked them out of in some other capacity, via demo disks or watching friends or college roommates play through them. 

Overall, I have interests across all genres of games, but I don't own too many sports games, even though I wasn't opposed to playing them when I was younger. 

I played the hell out of Double Dribble, NBA Live '95 through 2001 with my older brother and cousins across Sega Genesis and the original PlayStation (alternatively NCAA March Madness too during that era) before dabbling with the NBA 2K sports titles on Sega Dreamcast, NBA Jam and NFL Blitz briefly in arcades and the NBA Street series on PlayStation 2. After that console era, I haven't touched a single sports game that's not wrestling oriented. 

Other sports games I dabbled in? SSX series, mostly SSX Tricky on PS2 and the later sequel on Xbox 360. Tony Hawk Pro Skater and Driver briefly over on the original PlayStation. Loved playing Hydro Thunder and CyberSled in arcades but not so much the home console ports. I know it's blasphemy but I was never a Mario Kart or F-Zero guy either. 

Monster Hunter

I'm not one of the Monster Hunter series veterans, but my buddy Sn0H (Kuniko is his Hunter's name in-game) taught me the ropes and I earned my stripes throughout my tenure through Monster Hunter: World and its expansion Iceborne. My save data currently says that I have over 1260+ hours of gametime clocked in as of this posting on PlayStation 4 and I probably have another hundred or two across Monster Hunter: Rise and Monster Hunter: Generations Ultimate on Nintendo Switch. 

I was mostly a Hammer main for most of my playtime in the base game of Monster Hunter: World, but after being inspired by the awesomeness of my friend, Ophelia, I opted to pick-up Gunlance as my secondary main weapon for most of Iceborne and the bulk of Monster Hunter: Rise. I owe Ophelia for opening my eyes to how fun that weapon is. Much like Sn0H, she's another Monster Hunter series veteran that I had the honor of learning from. 

I loved the community and online environment so much in World to the point where I still log on currently and still help randoms and friends with hunts, especially after redeeming my 12 month voucher for PlayStation Plus. Sure, you had your typical "Git Gud" dude bros that you would find from the Soulsborne/Souls-like genre of games, but overall, this is a welcoming and very helpful community of gamers that go above and beyond to help each other out and try to show players of all skill levels the means to enjoy the game.

As of this posting, I'm still patiently waiting for a sale on Rise's expansion, Sunbreak, for I can play through that game as well. Truth be told, I didn't love Rise nowhere as much as I did World, but I do want to finish the story. (Laughs) I still need to go back and grind my way through Generations Ultimate and see for myself why the rest of the MH veterans hold that game in such high regard. 

Fighting Games / FGC

The first fighting game that I took seriously in any capacity was probably Tekken 2 after playing those demo disks that came with the 90's gaming magazines so many times to the point where my dad finally broke down and got me the actual full retail release. Between unlocking all of the fighters and taking it over to my cousin's house when I'd spend weekends hanging out with, I think I had roughly most of the cast's movesets memorized down to their 10-hit combo strings. I can still recognize parts of them in most of the modern iterations of Tekken to this day, despite not dedicating the time and effort to continue keeping those skills up to par.

Other fighting games I dabbled into? Street Fighter EX plus alpha, King of Fighters '95 and '99, Ehrgeiz, Darkstalkers 3, Capcom's various Vs. titles (X-Men: Children of the Atom, X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, etc.), Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Killer Instinct Gold. I wasn't very good at most of those but I just enjoyed either trying to do the flashy moves or just watching other people play them while crowding around the machines at the local arcade in the mall. 

I love when everyone likes to assume that I'm an "'09er" (term used to describe the generation of gamers who started playing fighting games upon the arrival of Street Fighter IV) only because I embraced a lot of the fighting game culture when Street Fighter IV dropped when in reality, I've been around arcades and fighting games for a VERY long time. 

I ended up finishing 3rd in that tournament, but I honestly let my ego get the best of me after being knocked into the loser's bracket. Truth be told, I took my opponent lightly after trying to show off for the crowd by trying to connect Ivy's Calamity Symphony move in a tournament setting. That ended up backfiring when that showing off cost me the set and I was eliminated and my chances of the the salty runback against the dude who won the tournament (another Ivy main) went out of the window. 

I should mention that I used to frequent the 8WayRun message boards a lot back around this time period in the early 2000s. I don't even remember what my handle was back then, but I don't think I revisited the forums again even after it's revival once Soul Calibur V dropped years later. 

Boy did I get a wake up call in college of how bad I was at fighting games that weren't Soul Calibur II (and later III) when went to college. I got my ass beat thoroughly in Tekken Tag Tournament and Tekken 4, along with Marvel vs. Capcom 2. I was the only one in my dorms who had the slightest idea how to play Guilty Gear XX, so I was able to cheese a lot of wins in that with those instant kills. I would pick up a copy of Urban Reign for PS2 at one point and beat so many people in that since so many people have never heard of that game nor have played it to this day. Such an underrated gem. 

After that, I didn't compete in any tournaments until after Street Fighter IV dropped. It wouldn't be until the tail end of the "vanilla" version of that game's shelf life would be when I would enter a tournament for that. At that point, I was essentially a "shoto scrub"/Flowchart Ken for the better part of vanilla SF4. I wouldn't pick up Chun-Li (who would main for every iteration/update to that game until Street Fighter V dropped) until after this tournament when Capcom would formally announce Super Street Fighter IV as an update to the current game with more fighters and new Ultra Combos to spice things up. I would enter the Street Fighter IV tournaments at the local university's anime/gaming convention for almost every year that followed, joined by a few of my close friends and sparring buddies. It would be our annual thing to do together and reconnect from high school for those of us who were still part of our circle of friends. I would enter the side tournaments in Tekken 6, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, King of Fighters: Ultimate Match '98, and whatever Arc System Works fighter(s) were offered too, but my primary focus was always Street Fighter IV at the time. They had tournaments in Super Smash Bros. Brawl too at the time, but ugh, that scene was too childish for me. Entering that tournament once was enough for me, plus I couldn't handle the BO (bad body odor) going on in that room of the venue. It made the roof of my mouth itch. 

I almost forgot to mention that a few of my friends and I (Ad Infinitum included) got together and started an official team/group/clan as part of the World Tekken Federation community support website that was integrated into Tekken Tag Tournament 2 at launch that tracked player stats and what not. You can check out our team stats in the images below. 

I ended up parting ways with the group since I was primarily the only one putting time into grinding on Ranked Matches and trying to level up our team standing. The way I saw it was that if I'm the only one who's putting in the man hours grinding then I'm better off not being in a team anyway if I'm doing 90% of the work. You've seen the video above. C'mon, Ad Infinitum's WAAAAYYYY better than me in Tekken and he couldn't sniff how much EXP I put in for the team. It wasn't even close. 

To be fair though, Tekken Tag 2'd netcode was ass but that's besides the point... (laughs).

I can watch this footage back and can specifically cite the moments where my saltiness and frustration went to an all-time high, especially when I knew he was going easy and/or trolling me just to make me feel good at points. By the end of that set, I wasn't even having fun anymore. For those wondering, I don't know if DeathByToffee is still competing or playing fighting games anymore, but I do remember him mentioning that he was one of Cloud805's sparring buddies. 

I would never place high in those tournaments but it would always give me something to go back home and work on for the next year in terms of leveling up my game. I did have one highly unfavorable outing in relation to how one of the TOs (tournament owners) was running that particular year's tournament. He inserted himself personally into that bracket just to eliminate and avenge his buddies that I perfected in the prior sets. Here goes another example of my ego getting the best of me when I foolishly decided to stay the course of not changing characters when this fool obviously counter-picked me when I beat his Boxer/Balrog convincingly like his buddies. I've had a pocket Rose since Super and I was adamant that I was going to prove a point with my Chun but nope. Still lost that set anyway and didn't place high in that tournament at all. The most fucked up part about that tournament was that the TO stopped playing after he eliminated me as if his mission was accomplished right there. He just wanted to cock block me from winning anything. Truth be told, I didn't come back the following year after that shit. 

The last Street Fighter IV tournament I would enter into would be one at the same grounds as the local Soul Calibur II one I entered back in high school. By this point, this was at least a decade and a half later since then but that GameStop was hanging on by a thread. They held the tournament in Ultra Street Fighter IV, i.e. the last update to that game prior to the pending release of Street Fighter V that was being developed for the PlayStation 4. The most fucked up part about that tournament for me personally was that you couldn't use your own controllers, so you had to use the controllers that the store provided for you. FYI I played Street Fighter IV and most fighters from that console generation on a PS2 to Xbox 360/PS3 controller converter. Yes, I'm a pad player, even though I can play some charge characters on an arcade stick to some extent but I'm most comfortable on pad. This tournament was all on those bland, mediocre GameStop-branded Xbox controllers. Right off the bat, I knew I was fucked, but I went through it anyway as this was my "last hurrah" to Street Fighter IV. 

My close friends who I thoroughly enjoyed sparring with on weekends and work nights laughing it up and trash talking had all moved on in their lives. They did essentially what Guile's win quote said to do, "Go home and be a family man." I can't knock anyone for finding happiness and purpose in life, so I found myself as the wandering world warrior like Ryu, sinking hours on Ranked Match throughout the tail end of Super Street Fighter IV ver. 2012 prior to Ultra Street Fighter IV's release. When the Ranked Match bracket standings reset, I told myself I was done. It was mentally draining to go through the highs and the lows to level up to B+ rank and to break in within the standings of the top 100 Chun-Li players in North America. I was done fighting to keep that position, especially when I still considered myself slightly above average at best at the time, despite all of the hours I had sank into the game by that point. 

Back to that tournament, it was single elimination too from the sheer amount of people who had entered. I breezed through most of my matches until facing a Juri player who had some decent footsies and zoning but I still managed to knock him out of the tournament. Then about towards semi-finals, I faced off that previous Juri player's sparring buddy, apparently the much more skilled of the two. God that set was intense with back and forth footsies and zoning, but it came down to a bad gamble on my behalf in the last round of the best of 3 set. I picked Ultra 1 (Hosenka) thinking that the Juri would do something stupid for I could punish with raw Ultra but he didn't and my gamble whiffed and he was able to win the set. I'll never forget that the other players watching saying that "We had the best match in the entire tournament in the undercard and there's not going to be anything else as good as that." So there was at least that much to be proud of. I played my ass off in that set and got beat by a honest/legit player who was the better man in that set, so I had nothing to be ashamed of. That was the perfect note to close the book of Street Fighter IV (at least competitively) on for me. 

Not going to lie but I'm still kinda salty that my close friends and old sparring buddies just left me to drown in the pool on my own at that point though. One of many reasons why I have a hard time picking up any new fighting games when I'm reminded that almost all of my close friends have moved on from the genre or gaming as a whole around this point. It's not fun when you only have Ranked Matches to play online instead of some actual friends that you can train and level up with. 

I should also mention that I was active in a few of the FGC (fighting game community) message boards and social media, even contributing to a few character guides/tutorials, specifically one for learning how to play Chun-Li in Street Fighter IV. After seeing the comprehensive guide for Ibuki and Akuma that was floating around the SRK (Shoryuken.com) forums, I pitched to that end of the community in terms of Chun-Li players and mains that maybe we should archive and pool all of the knowledge for the character into something similar. Since everyone else was dragging their feet about it, I took it upon myself to do so, fishing throughout all of the corners of the internet on match-up knowledge, combos, and even frame data. I even cited the proper credits in terms of who discovered or contributed the data collected in that guide. The problem I had was that I did all of the work compiling the information for the guide, yet there were people in that community who wanted all of the credit for themselves yet didn't help me in any capacity. That didn't sit with me well at all so I revoked all access to it since it was my Google Docs file after all and to this day, it's per request only. I only worked on it up to before the release of Ultra Street Fighter IV and stopped once I felt the community was trying to take my hard work and effort out of my hands. Was it a petty move though? Yes. At that point, I had my fill of the "wannabe thug" mentality of the FGC anyway where a vast majority of these people and internet personalities just want to throw their weight around in hopes of getting mainstream famous like the rest of the eSports crowd. 

After I washed my hands with Street Fighter IV, I pretty much ex-communicated myself from the rest of the FGC after similar situations from other FGC-related communities like those previously mentioned or others where groups tried to guilt-trip members into funding other players' trips to Evolution Tournament Series or other regional and local major tournaments. Look, I'm not funding no one else's hobbies nor am I just going to tournaments to "support the scene" just to pay to lose when I'm not even playing said games. 

This shit wasn't sitting well with me at all and I had enough. Sure, I might dabble in fighting games here and there, but I stopped calling myself a fighting game player nor do I identify myself as a part of that community/scene anymore. 

Background: Professional Wrestling

My earliest memories of watching wrestling are seeing it on television in passing when my mother was getting my siblings and I ready for church on Sunday mornings and my brother and I would watch WWF Superstars on the USA Network before we would have to be dragged out of the door. Back then, I liked a lot of what I saw of "Macho Man" Randy Savage and The Ultimate Warrior, but I don't remember much outside of those two in the late 80s. 

I didn't watch too much wrestling until my teenage years when I was heavily into World Championship Wrestling (WCW) during the height of the Monday Night Wars during the 90s. I naturally followed whatever Randy Savage was doing, so when he left the WWF, I went wherever I heard he was going next and that's how I landed watching WCW. I'm a Carolina native, so of course I'm familiar with "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes, so those two were popular in these parts. My older brother would educate me on some of who's who in terms of some of the older stars and veteran talents. Gotta say, I was never a Hulk Hogan fan so when he turned on heel to join the nWo, I didn't care either way. You can point to that infamous return of his at WrestleMania IX being the principle offender of why I couldn't stand his ass as far back as back then. 

The height of my fondest memories watching and following WCW over WWF's product at the time was roughly the end of 1996 to the early part of 2000. I remember pretty much seeing the writing on the wall that WCW was a sinking ship when all of the Radicals had migrated over to WWF at the time. Plus my favorite stable, Team Madness (Randy Savage, Sycho Sid, Madusa, Gorgeous George, and Miss Madness/Mona) had broken up for the most part, with Mona (Molly Holly) departing the company and joining WWF too, I really didn't see the point of continue following along. Once they killed the magic and aura of Bill Goldberg, WCW really was losing steam big time. 

Some of my favorites in WCW at the time included the following: Team Madness (obviously), Diamond Dallas Page, Harlem Heat (Booker T & Stevie Ray), the Four Horsemen (all of the iterations), Prince Iaukea, Psychosis/Psicosis, Rey Mysterio Jr., La Parka, Silver King, Alex Wright, Meng, Scott Steiner, Kaz Hayashi, Mortis/Chris Kanyon, Kevin Sullivan (w/ Woman), Sting, Konnan, Bret Hart, Bill Goldberg, and Fit Finlay to name a few.

My best friend and I became huge fans of the Hardy Boyz & Lita (Team Xtreme) at that time and had a ton of favorites on the WWF roster when we migrated over to watching that product over WCW, including but not limited to: The Rock, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Mankind, The Undertaker, Kane, the Dudley Boyz, the Radicals (Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero, and Perry Saturn), Kurt Angle, Shane McMahon, D-Generation X (Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Chyna, Road Dogg, Billy Gunn, X-Pac, Tori), Jacqueline, Terri Runnels, Trish Stratus, Ivory, and so on. 

I still have the Hardy Boyz' first book/autobiography and first WWF DVD release. One of my most cherished wrestling-related memories is being able to at least meet Jeff Hardy in person with my best friend at one of the TNA/IMPACT Wrestling house shows during the height of our fandom at the time. For us, that moment legitimized our fandom getting to do the Team Xtreme pose with him in one of their rings. Even though my feelings about the Hardyz currently have soured, I will forever be thankful for that moment that I got to share with my best friend. 

I fell out of love for the WWF, or rather WWE (since they lost that fight with the World Wildlife Foundation) at this point, after the colossal failure that was the complete shitting of the bed that was the Invasion storyline that saw WWE go head-to-head against the invading talents from WCW and ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling). It would have been a great concept on paper but WWE had essentially bought all of their competition out so this was made to be a pretty one-sided "war", especially when a lot of the biggest names from those companies were left out, specifically those from WCW who were riding out their deals from the America Online-Turner Broadcasting buyout for guaranteed money. By the time they did jump ship over to WWE, the storyline was an afterthought. The fallout of this time period was the infantcy of WWE's brand split concept that split the roster down the middle with talents exclusive to RAW and SmackDown! brands. That's where we saw the infamous "Reign of Terror" with Triple H as the World Heavyweight Champion on RAW and the SmackDown! Seven running a blaze of glory on the blue brand. 

I think I took like a year or two off before coming back into the swing of their product again, but not before being introduced to independent wrestling thanks to some of peers in high school and college. I can thank the early days of Napster and Limewire to being able to download clips and full shows from some of those promotions, specifically the early NWA-TNA days of TNA Wrestling and Ring of Honor. By this point, my best friend and I were making weekly trips to the local FYE and other video stores to pick up wrestling DVDs and VHS tapes on the cheap to add to our collections. Boy, did I buy a lot of wrestling videos that I still have to this day - some good, bad, and very ugly too. 

While I was exploring the wide world of independent wrestling, I really got hooked to women's wrestling - for obvious reasons being a heterosexual male, but I did appreciate their in-ring talents for the ones who could bring it just as well, if not better than the men in a lot of cases in that time period. Mind you this was back in a time period where most women's matches in WWE at the time were regulated to merely bra and panty matches or essentially a bathroom break. Gone were the days of hard-hitting women like Sherri Martel, Madusa/Alundra Blayze, Jacqueline, etc. who were holding their own against the men while pulling double duty as valets/managers and in-ring competitors. It would take mainstream wrestling, specifically WWE, at least another decade before they would realize that there's money to be made off of women's wrestling, especially with women who could go as well as the guys in terms of work rate. Fortunately, TNA/IMPACT Wrestling would profit and benefit off of that first. It still irks me that they still don't get as much credit as they deserve with their Knockouts division essentially being the "true" women's revolution in professional wrestling that essentially put women's wrestling on the map in the mainstream markets (at least in the United States). 

A lot of those talented women would come from Shimmer: Women's Athletes, Ring of Honor, Women's Extreme Wrestling (before that promotion transformed essentially into softcore porn...), and from various international promotions across the globe and were many of which I collected DVDs from just to sample all of the talent that wasn't on WWE programming. Even though I was very interested in indie wrestling, I tuned back into WWE on a full-time basis by the tailend of 2004 to early 2005. I was pretty much buying blank VHS tapes to record both WWE RAW, SmackDown!, ECW (after they bougth that), and TNA IMPACT! on a weekly basis for myself since I had a full load of classes and two jobs at the time during my undergrad period in college. I still don't see how I was juggling all of that on my plate at the time. I would record all of this during the week, watch it all on the weekends while doing my coursework, then book, setup, and record simulated matches in WWE video games at the time for the e-federation I was running at the time too. (Laughs) I still have a box full of those VHS tapes in storage that I keep telling myself that I'm going to digitize and upload to YouTube someday. 

E-Fedding

To keep the explanation brief, think of e-fedding like a fantasy sports league. In this case, it involves professional wrestlers and those involved choose their favorite wrestlers or even make up/create their own original wrestlers. My friends and I have been creating characters in WWE games for YEARS up to this point so it was a natural transition. The only extra work was writing out matches and promos and trusting to bring this world to a bigger audience online. That was another avenue/outlet that I had to flex my creative writing muscles for better or worse.

I ran my first e-federation for about a decade and shut that down. That story's been told on here in the past (*ahem* Chronicles of a Fed-Head on the previous iteration of this blog...) so I'm not going to reopen old wounds and repeat that story at length, but I opened and ran another e-fed for roughly five more years and I quit shortly after my grandmother passed away about 4 years ago. Long story short, I got tired of navigating through the egos and the constant drama, especially when I was at the point where I felt I wasn't getting anything (joy, gratitude, feedback, etc.) back from it anymore. 

Sure, I keep in touch with a lot of the friends I made over the years of e-fedding who didn't just immediately stopped talking to me since I wasn't a fedhead (owner/runner of an e-federation) anymore, but I don't regret my decision to leave and close shop in the least, even though I had several characters whose stories would remain unfinished. 

Falling In and Out of Love With Wrestling

I'm at this point with wrestling where there's VERY few stuff I still love about wrestling but the negatives far outweigh those to the point where I can't tolerate putting up with this shit anymore. As a result, I stopped watching a vast majority of the weekly shows from both WWE and AEW. That's a major reason why I stopped covering a lot of wrestling content on here for the sake of my sanity. 

I hate the people who try to act like if I watch New Japan or any of the indies then all of my problems and/or reservations about modern wrestling would be instantly cured. I went through that phase of checking out everything in Ring of Honor in the 2010s back when they had that working relationship with New Japan. I watched New Japan during those formative years when AJ Styles, Finn Balor, Shinsuke Nakamura, and others were on a tear and the Bullet Club was in its infantcy. I loved the hell out of Lucha Underground before WWE and almost every promotion raided all of their talent after the fact and now that style is bastardized in every promotion. I liked watching MLW before Tony Khan raided them of almost all of their top names and talent to fill up the undercard of AEW when they first started. I thought it was a fresh breath of air to have a fixture of the past represented in the NWA reboot before that fell into the toilet. And I have stuck with IMPACT throughout everything - the Dixie Carter regime, the Destination America era with Billy Corgan, and the current regime with Scott D'Amore in charge. The only thing I really care about in WWE is the Bloodline storyline and a few promising individuals in the undercard and in development on NXT, but not enough to invest my time to watch on a weekly basis anymore. A vast majority of my time when it comes to wrestling nowadays is mostly watching clips on YouTube, Twitter, or Instagram. Outside of the occasional PPVs, I might watch IMPACT, Collision, or maybe NXT if I'm bored that night or have it on as background noise while I'm working on something else. I used to livetweet my reactions to all of these shows on Twitter, but I stopped that when it was just me tweeting how bored or miserable I was watching this crap. 

When I was fresh out of high school I would have killed for all of this wrestling to watch at my disposal when I didn't have a life. Now, it's overkill and I fear it's at the point of extreme oversaturation. I feel like these wrestling companies are just churning out content (no matter if it's good or not) just to have content to bloat streaming networks and to support the argument of having said content to continue having weight to throw around for these television broadcasting contracts. 

To be honest, I get more kicks out of listening to podcasters review these shows than from me actually sitting through them myself. Jim Cornette and Konnan's shows always give me a good laugh on my daily commutes to and from work, while Solomonster, Taylor Wilde, and the Wrestling News aren't bad at all for interviews, daily news, and opinions from the other side of the tracks. 

Truth be told, my on-and-off again collaborator for this blog, Serena, and I have thought about doing a few audio reviews at one point, given her background in radio but she's in the same boat as me where she's not really fully enamored with modern wrestling to care nor invest a lot of time on it. That sucks too, especially when she's younger than me and even feels that way. 

If I stop kidding myself, I know that a big reason why I don't give up wrestling cold turkey is that I've made so many great friends from talking wrestling with them or interacting with them via e-fedding that I don't know what I would do without that aspect of social interaction - good or bad. 

Closing Remarks