As I write this I’m here preparing for Christmas, doing some last-minute cleaning, some last-minute gift buying, checking out the Steam sales, thinking about the three main categories of this site that have the most Christmasy/Holiday feelings without being explicitly about the Holidays. The first one, books, is easy.
Books – The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
In the year 3018 of the Third Age of Middle-earth (S.R. 1418 if you’re using the Hobbit calendar) at the Council of Elrond on October 28th, it was decided that Frodo would take the One Ring to Mordor, and his companions, chosen, formed the Fellowship of the Ring. It was on December 25th that the Fellowship departed Rivendell on the quest to destroy the ring. J.R.R. Tolkien knew what he was doing when he picked that day.
This gif is ancient now.
Wrestling – Coming Together
Obviously, over the years, there has probably been a Christmas-themed plunder match. The New Day were known for this kind of thing, so I imagine they were involved where all sorts of Christmasy types of weapons were used, like big candy cane decorations or whatnot, but that’s not what we’re going for here.
What part of the wrestling has those Christmas vibes? It feels like it’s about coming together or those moments of eucatastrophic moments where the babyfaces, who previously had been at odds with each other, have a united front against the heels and triumph. It could be when the underdogs who everyone expected to lose get the surprise victory, like getting that surprise present you wanted but had no expectations you’d actually get. The parts of wrestling that probably feel the most like Christmas are the ones that feel straight from a storybook. The lone wolf babyface who used to be a heel is struggling to overcome the odds, but finds out they have unexpected allies after all. Reunions also have that kind of Christmas magic to them with tag teams, factions, or groups that have long since broken up, having a reason, even if temporarily, for one night only, to get back together.
Games – The North Wind Howls
Batman: Arkham Origins, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Parasite Eve all take place during Christmas, but obviously, the games (and books for that matter too) that probably have that feeling of Christmas are the ones that you received on the Holiday and cherish. As an adult looking back, I feel pretty lucky to have a dad who worked many Thanksgivings and many Christmas Eves to make sure we received the presents we desired which for me was video game consoles. So many Christmases my parents would be like “Sorry you didn’t get many presents the game console you wanted was expensive (or previously, it took Santa a lot of work to make the game console) and I’d be like “It’s cool this is what I wanted! Video games are awesome!”
Games like Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Street Fighter II Turbo, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Star Fox 64, Bomberman 64, Metroid Prime, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and others I received on Christmas I’ll forever associate with those Christmasy vibes.
1996 was like the Holy Grail of Video Game Christmases for me. From my parents I received a Nintendo 64 and Super Mario 64, my grandmother gave me Sonic and Knuckles, and my godmother/aunt gave me Super Mario RPG and it was one of those Christmases, if I remember correctly, where it was in the middle of the week so the school district had no choice but to give kids two weeks off. One of the best Christmases ever and not just cause of video games.
As far as vibes though, something about Chrono Trigger’s fairy tale like storytelling gives Christmas vibes to me. If the developers had put a quest to save Santa in it, it would not feel out of place. Neither would any Dragon Quest game to be honest. It’s those sword and sorcery traditions that give me that feeling.
Likewise, I can’t quite put my finger on it, I associate Raiders of the Lost Ark with Christmas time, maybe that’s when I watched it as a kid, but Indiana Jones and the Great Circle I’ve now played mostly in December likely for the same reason.
I’ve been rewatching matches, finishing some 2025 games, and reading up a storm to wrap up the year, plus to be hones,t working a lot more to have some extra money for Christmas presents, Steam sales, and whatever deals may interest me. I haven’t found any worth it though, and by the time my normal bills came a calling.
This post is going to be mostly on all the end-of-the-year wrap-ups I’ve gotten this year as I work on a longer post. I hope everyone reading this has a good holiday.
Music
Halfway through this year, I cancelled my Spotify Premium account and switched to Tidal, then proceeded to listen to very little music so my Tidal 2025 wrapped doesn’t paint much of a picture of my 2025 music. I’ll just say it was a lot of Paramore, The Beaches, Kendrick Lamar, Aesop Rock, Freddie Gibbs, the scores for Deltarune chapters 3 and 4, and the soundtrack to Hollow Knight Silksong.
Since it’s likely to be my last wrapped, I did temporarily reinstalled the app to get it, so here you go. The only surprise to me here is how fast the Deltarune Chapters 3+4 shot up my personal listening stats, considering I quit Spotify in July and those chapters only came out in June. Last Girls at the Party is not only, in my opinion, a good song but a real earworm that gets my ADHD brain playing it on repeat.
Nintendo introduced their own music app either late last year or early this year if you’re an NSO subscriber, so of course they had to do their own wrapped. My number one and two are a result of Donkey Kong Bananza and Mario Kart World’s great soundtracks that harken back to older games. I do wish Nintendo were faster on the draw to bring those games’ soundtracks to the app, maybe next year.
Games
Speaking of Nintendo, they’ve delayed their 2025 recap release to January, so expect me to include that whenever it comes out in any post I make then. I will, however, make some educated guesses. With the release of the Switch 2, Donkey Kong Bananza is probably at the top of my list,t with Super Mario Odyssey in second because I wanted to replay before making the switch from the first Switch to the second. I put in a decent number of hours of Mario Kart World before I became bored with it, and maybe Kirby Air Riders or Metroid Prime 4 squeezes in towards the end there, depending on when Nintendo chooses a cut-off date.
I expect my stats to be much more spread out between my Switch 2 and Steam next year, but with getting a Steam Deck OLED last August, saving and purchasing a new gaming PC this year, and Switch 2’s launch titles being kind of dry until November – December, these are some very Steam-heavy stats. Plus, I may have spent way too Steam Sale purchase happy Fall 2024 with how I excited I was about my Steam Deck, so I had a lot of different games to play this year. Plus, after receiving a fancy new monitor for my birthday, I really wanted to see the difference between my Nvidia 2030 and my 5060 TI.
What was I doing December 6th that ended my Streak? No idea.The Steam Deck really changed things up for how and how much I play, huh?
Monster Hunter Wilds and Hollow Knight Silksong served as two peaks where I really locked in. The big difference is with Silksong if I didn’t own so many other games I want to play, I’d still be playing it. Actually, no, I am still playing the window of time is just smaller since release. Monster Hunter Wilds, while I do very much like it, once I finished all the main quests, it left me nothing to keep me going through the loop like previous games did, where I’d unlock different add-ons and such to min-max my gear for future scenarios. I do plan on returning to it next year since they’ve had so many updates, but I expected to put in like a hundred more hours than I did on that game. Silksong, though I will continue to play especially when that Sea of Sorrows expansion comes out in the Spring. It’s not only my number one most played game on Steam this year, but my Game of the Year. More on that later.
On the other games on my list. With the release of Sagat, my favorite character to main, SF6 could easily have been number one, but I’ve played so much Street Fighter 6 that I needed a break and that so happened to be when Silksong came out. However, with a recent patch that buffed Sagat I’m ready to dive back in and really learn Sagat until whenever the New Virtua Fighter Project comes out.
Persona 5 Royal could also have been number one, but I did mod the shit out of the PC version to reduce the time I need to play it. I’ll accept no judgment. I’ve 100% this game twice on PS4, once on Switch, and once on PS5, so a little modding won’t hurt anyone.
The last game on my list I bought before finding out about the BDS Movement, so I’ll be posting a link to that instead.
Between the Switch 2, the Steam Deck, buying games on Steam Sale, and buying a powerful new PC I’m just about done with PlayStation, and my time playing it this year reflects that.
2025
Now look at 2024. All these games I own on Steam now and have paid half the price. Why would I buy anything on PS5 ever again? They mostly don’t have any! Not pictured in 2024 is Dragon’s Dogma 2, which I also own on Steam now. What I’m going to do with my PS5 now, I’m not sure cause not even playing Ghost of Yotei before it comes to PC could entice me. With the basic end of exclusives between the Steam Deck and maybe purchasing a Steam Machine in the future unless Playstation 6 has something crazy to play on it where I can’t play it anywhere else I’m probably done with it.
Books
I’ve been putting in the work over on GeeklyInc.com with my reviews, which is also part of why this post is so delayed after Thanksgiving, and I’ve got two more I hope to get out there this week. I’ve also snapped into it and been reading a lot since Thanksgiving, just about eleven books with two more probably before the end of the year. One of those books is from one of my favorite authors, Jenn Lyons, who this year raised money on Backerkit to publish a science fiction book called Full Negative. The digital copies came out to backers about three weeks ago, and I just finished it about a day ago. I loved it. I’m working on a full review that’ll be published later, but here is a link to the BackerKit if you want to preorder a future copy (Sorry, I don’t know exactly how that works.
While I don’t have my Books of the Year list complete, that’ll be a future post. Here is my article in what I likely consider my favorite book of the year I did for GeeklyInc
The problem every fan has to deal with when it comes to their favorite wrestlers is two things: one day, they’re going to hang up their trunks and no longer wrestle, and when they win the big one, they’ll eventually have to lose the big one. I expected Hangman’s reign to eventually end, maybe even before the year was over, but I did not expect it to end in such a stupid way. Hook being the catalyst to end his reign is such horseshit. Hook’s first match was in December 2021, and it was exciting because he looked like he had a lot of potential as the son of Taz, likely the greatest ECW World Champion ever. The problem is that just a little bit above that level of his debut is where he has stayed since then. He doesn’t seem interested in improving either with just eighty matches since he started. Never seen him advertised for an indie date, hardly ever see him on Ring of Honor, never hear about veterans working with him like they talk about other wrestlers. So, after All In using Hook for this person seems such a foolish idea.
It mostly doesn’t matter, though, because none of this shit after Hangman’s loss is going to matter. A month ago, Samoa Joe being the one to dethrone Hangman at forty-six in what should be a young man’s company, while also having acting jobs he’d have to be written off TV for at a moment’s notice, seemed just as foolish as using Hook. Now MJF is back, and nothing Samoa Joe has done for the past month is going to mean a damn thing. Neither will Swerve Strickland’s return nor his teaming up with Hangman. At World’s End in a four-way for the AEW World Championship, MJF is going to win, and we’re going to have to deal with his bullshit flavor of ice cream until Will Ospreay beats him a Wembley Stadium, which is 251 days away. So, for those who shit on Hangman fans when they were upset (at least they fucking felt something, which is part of the point of pro wrestling), I hope you enjoy Swerve taking a backseat and MJF delivering what is likely going to be a borderline racist promo to Bandido at Maximum Carnage.
To all my readers, I hope you have a Merry Christmas or a Happy Holiday, in whatever way you celebrate.
It’s November, and to be honest, I’m terrible at doing end-of-the-year writing, but this year I’m determined to do some posts on here and GeeklyInc.com in the “…of the Year” variety. There are only eight weeks left of the year, but I’m not against talking about the best or favorites of 2025 into the first weeks of 2026. Wrestling is the easiest to talk about because most of my matches of the year have already happened, but with the Continental Classic, one Ring of Honor PPV, and two AEW PPVs I don’t want to write off the potential of those shows. I don’t think anything will top my number one book, game, or wrestling match of the year, but it’s everything underneath that is up for grabs.
Wrestling – Random AEW Musings
I don’t have one particular topic in mind, but I do have some thoughts. Between All Out and now, AEW has been relatively good to very good. I’m enjoying myself even if I have some criticism of the booking here and there. For example, and keep in mind this is someone who relatively enjoys the C-show that is Tony Khan’s Ring of Honor TV, but there is no reason for Yuka Sakazaki to be wrestling on ROH and not be appearing in AEW, especially with her new presentation and music. As a big fan of hers, at first I was just happy to see her back from injury and wrestling regularly, but her team-ups with Alex Windsor have been good enough that I am left scratching my head as to why they’re not on AEW TV or having Yuka in singles matches on Dynamite or Collision. I am hoping they’re just spinning their wheels with them before having them on TV, since Women’s Tag Championships will need contenders.
I miss Will Ospreay and Swerve Strickland, but Bandido has been filling that void they have left for me. It’s between Hangman and him, for me personally, for wrestler of the year, but I must admit I have been watching far less of other companies this year than in previous years. It’s one of my goals for next year to watch more CMLL, Stardom, and TJPW. Perhaps some NJPW as well, but it has not been hitting for me much this year except for Goto’s tite reign and Konosuke Takeshita.
Games – From Xbox 360 to PlayStation 4
If you’ve read enough of these entries and came back with the thought “Josh might have undiagnosed ADHD,” I would probably agree with you because I went from a theme of Xbox 360 games to PlayStation 4 games as I was sucked into God of War (2018) full throttle to the point that I beat every Valkyrie and completed the game. That somehow transitioned to me diving deep into another of my personal PS4 mainstays, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which I played to completion, but I find the having to choose different options in Chapter 9 to unlock different quests to complete every side quest in the game so tedious that I attempted it once, got annoyed, closed the game, and uninstalled. Completing both has left me excited to start God of War: Ragnarok and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on my new, fancy PC, but I might play more Silksong first, as well as replay Metaphor ReFantazio on PC, which I previously played on PS5.
Lastly, I’ve been delving briefly here and there into some DS Pokémon games such as SoulSilver, Platinum, and Black, with the latter being the first time I’ve ever played that generation. I think the release of Z-A and every gaming podcast discussing it to different degrees led me to have Pokémon on my mind.
While I was editing this, and since I’ve been playing Platinum, I was reminded that Piplup might be top five favorite Pokémon ever, and the YouTube algorithm decided to remind me of this.
Books – In Between Books
I am at the moment in between books, having finished both Blood for the Undying Throne by Sung-il, Born of an Iron Storm by Anthony Ryan, and a rereading of The Incandescent by Emily Tesh. To be honest, I’m not exactly sure what I am going to read next, but I’ve definitely felt the pull of reading this autumn that I did not feel in the summer. It has been a while since I have reread The Lord of the Rings, which used to be an annual event before I started expanding my fantasy library, and there has been this illustrated edition that came out a few years ago that has been sitting on my shelf waiting to be read.
I also have some advanced reader copies for next year that maybe I should get the jump on, but I am unsure and would not be able to talk about them here, making this section very short and boring. We’ll see. The podcast will be reading Network Effect, the fifth Murderbot Diaries book, soon, which is the full-blown novel of the series rather than a novella. It is my favorite book in the series. Murderbot has to go off planet with Dr. Mensah’s teenage daughter, and hijinx ensue that force it to bond with a teenage girl on a deserted space station. It feels like a culmination of the first four novellas and the starting point of the rest of the series.
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