I haven’t written on here in awhile and the format in draft form is all wonky now. I have no idea what is going on. If it looks weird, font and size-wise, it’s not my fault.

Wrestling – Truckin’ along.

Here’s the thing. I thought MJF as World Champion was going to eat up a lot of time on TV and have a lot of edgelord bullshit that made me not want to watch the show. Instead, he has, ultimately, been super boring, and the least interesting part of any feud has been in it. Surely he has something else right beside the two poles of problematic and boring, right?

Honestly, I don’t have much to say about what is going on in the world of wrestling at the moment. Tanahashi’s retirement match against Okada was very emotional. I’m happier that Yota Tsuji has brought back the V4 IWGP Heavyweight Championship than I am the fact that he is champion. I think he’s good, but his matches don’t quite excite me as much as bringing back my favorite championship of all time. I’m still watching AEW and enjoying it, but it’s like, just my little show I watch every week with friends. I am excited about Kenny Omega wrestling more singles matches and going after the AEW World Championship, but I think I’d have more to yell about it if I thought he had any chance of winning. All the stuff involving Hangamn, Swerve, Andrade, and him is fun. It feels like the ranking system back without actually showing the rankings on screen (I will always wish we still had the rankings and AEW used them better for storytelling). That’s just sometimes how it goes.

Books – The Boys (Fellowship) are back in town.

So, I don’t know how it started, but my friends and I started watching The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition movies, and I was giving little commentary about information that is in the books but isn’t in the movies at their request. I think I wrote on here that around December, I used to start Fellowship a lot because Christmas Day is the date the Fellowship takes off from Rivendell. Well, I did start it last year, but didn’t commit. Now I’m committed as I’ve already finished Fellowship and moved on to The Two Towers. I even broke out my pocket editions, which I usually keep in my car. It’s a nice feeling when you have a niche interest in something, and your friends are like, “Yes, let’s hear it. We want to hear it.”

This is just an aside, but I prefer volumes of The Lord of the Rings to be three separate books rather than just one large volume. In hardcover form, that is few and far between, but still, that is my preference.

Games – A Bundle of Swords

All the jumble of games I’ve been playing feel sword themed. I put in a lot of hours into the remastered Oblivion, completing all of the Thieves’ Guild, the Mage’s Guild, and the Dark Brotherhood. All I have left is the Main Questline and the Fighter’s Guild before I go to the Shivering Isles. I’ve finished all of Silksong Act 2 for the second time, and I’m trying to beat Grandmother Silk while cursed for probably the last achievement I’m going to go for in this game. The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker is available on the Nintendo Switch Online service for the Switch 2, and I’ve been surprised how well that game’s look has held up. Whatever upscaling they’re doing, if they’re doing any, makes the game look amazing on my Switch 2. However, I’ve never played the Wii U’s HD remake of that game and, in fact, have barely seen it. I wonder how that looks?

A Keyblade is a kind of sword, and I’ve set up a Steam Deck Dock near my treadmill and have been going through Kingdom Hearts 1 while I walk. There was a game I started on Steam Deck on the treadmill that I had to stop because I wanted to play on my good PC, Lies of P, a game I bought on sale but have had on my backlog for a while. I think I’m past the point where it’s like, emulating Bloodborne too much and has become its own thing. The last sword game I’ve been playing is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on my PC which, man, that game looks a lot better on PC than my PS5, especially the faces, where sometimes on the PS5 the lighting made their faces look weird. I get people being mad about some of the open-world aspects, but I love this game. The battle system is definitely my favorite of the new non-turn-based battle systems Square has tried to use recently in FF games.