Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 22 – Live from NY

July 31, 2026July 31, 2026 / Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

Wrestling – Live posting AEW Redemption

The following paragraphs were written live while watching AEW Redemption

I’m writing this live. I think opening with the ladder match for a shot at the International Title is a good choice. Speedball Mike Bailey has to be winning this, right, considering he’s Canadian? That was a pretty fun ladder, but a standard AEW ladder match. That sounds so entitled, like it was just another good AEW ladder match, boo hoo, but it makes it harder to write about, to be honest.

The Young Bucks’ tag match is up next. I’ve made my opinions on this Ospreay/Moxley story very clear, but I know when it comes to wrestling, this is going to show out. I am curious who is going to win if the Bucks are going to face Cope and Christian at All In, and Ospreay is going to face Omega, perhaps Moxley should take the pin. Jon Moxley pinning anyone in this match if he doesn’t have a match yet at All In would just be weird. Perhaps this match will end with a returning Swerve involvement? I’m not sure. The match started off a little slow, but it’s really starting to pick up the speed of what I tend to expect from a Bucks match. The story of the match seems to center around Nick Jackson taking a lot of abuse, being out of it, and Will Ospreay being unsure how far he’s willing to go. Personally, I’ve said my opinion on tweeners and Opsreay leaning that way is no different. The ending of the match was exactly what I wanted. Moxley took the pin, and less waffling about whether Moxley is heel or not. The seeds of descent between Ospreay and Mox are what this has needed the whole time. Young Bucks save Jon Moxley’s stories once again.

I know Bandido and Kyle Fletcher is going to be incredible, but do we really need Bandido losing again? I like the way Bandido and Fletcher’s gear sort of feels counter to each other. This match is starting off a lot slower than I expected, but my friend is distracting with bad Bandido puns. I might need my own hydration break soon. Bandido’s dead lift suplex is a thing of beauty. I could see Bandido versus Kyle Fletcher being a future AEW World Championship match within the next two years. They seem to have good chemistry. I thought the power bomb to the outside was intense until Bandido did a frog splash on him from the top rope to the Kyle below. A lot of people predicted these two would steal the show, and so far, they’re not wrong. Owwww, Bandido just slammed Kyle’s face into the mat. This match has done a great job of convincing me that Bandido could really win this, and that is when wrestling is at its best to me. One of those matches where I go this is it for a pinfall and then someone kicks out. The crowd is with Bandido, and I know this won’t be their last match together. I just love saying Michinoku Driver. I knew Kyle would, but I still feel slightly deflated. Bandido has lost again. Fantastic match though. This should be Bandido’s last loss on an AEW PPV for a while.

Bang Bang Gang vs. The Dogs? Hydration break time. I don’t think Jay’s cowboy boots go well with his pants. I say that observation causes this match isn’t really doing anything for me, even with the chain. Someone mentioned two chains on commentary, and this is how I found out 2Chainz left Def Jam. Clark Connors and Juice Robinson have done more for me in this match than David Finlay and Jay White. It looked like Finlay dropped Jay White right on his neck at one point. I really am trying to feel something for this match but damn this might be really bad. Wait, nevermind, Wheeler, Yuta, and Daniel Garcia are here to get beaten up by the Gunns and let Marina hand Finlay the Shillelagh, wow. If this cements the Death Riders as more heels than tweeners, I’m happy with that, but what the fuck was this chain match? What was Jay White wearing? It felt like Clark and Juice cared more about this match than their partners.

Will Ospreay referencing a winning bonus, hell yeah, love it. See, this is another reason why what Mox is doing isn’t working for me. He gets on the mic and says this championship doesn’t matter, or this match doesn’t matter, then why should I, the viewer, watch anything Mox does?

Since Shida’s return, she has felt significantly slower and less graceful. I was pretty disappointed by the Queen Aminata match, so I have low expectations for this Maya World match. Maya World has improved with every match I’ve seen her in, and I hope she’ll get to bring something out of Shida and win the TBS title. Shida has had exceptionally bad-looking gear for a while now, but this most recent one is a much-needed improvement. To me, selling a hurt body part during a match would be one of the more difficult aspects of wrestling, so Maya selling her injured leg that Shida is targeting is working for me. This match has been better than my expectations, with Shida getting overconfident and trying to bully Maya, only for it to be her downfall. The right result in the end.

It’s Cope and Christian time which means it’s look at my phone or play video games time. I love The Bastard PAC, and like Claudio, but it’s not enough.

The Painmaker is so funny to me. I thought Ciampa vs. Jericho at Beach Break was actually good and Jericho’s best match since returning but this probably could have ended with Ciampa just getting the win and Jericho facing someone else in Canada. Jericho always needing to get his win back has always been a detriment to him trying to get people over. He’s already getting some points, though, for pocket sand. The plunder in this match has really heightened how much it rules. As my friend said in the group chat, as this was going on, I do love it when a wrestler does a move on a plushie. The sandpaper to the face had me cringing in phantom pain at the spot. Oh my god, Jericho has a tac in his head. This mirror spot Jericho is setting up as I type this is rad as hell. I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying a Chris Jericho match in 2026. ANOTHER MIRROR? A PAINMAKER MIRROR? MIST? A Judas Effect with Ciampa’s own weapon and Ciampa kicked out, WHAT? A drill to the head submission for the ending? Wow, what a match.

NEVER COUNT OUT CHRIS JERICHO pic.twitter.com/uqt1yiDauC
— Hiroshi Ta-Nehisi ⏳️🅾️ L (@RichLatta32) February 24, 2022

I got distracted and missed some of this Andrade v. Mark Davis match. It seems hard-hitting now that I’m focused on it again. I did really dig what I think is new music for Andrade with the how you know? worked into it. I was having trouble getting into this match at first, but Mark Davis and Andrade are just too good to ignore. Andrade’s spinning back fist cannot be matched. It rules. I hope Andrade takes the belt to other promotions like CMLL and NJPW, too, as it was originally envisioned.

I’m excited for Willow vs. Thekla. Thekla’s entrance jacket looked more like nacho cheese than fire to me. Thekla’s hair looks strange without the part, but I love her red and white gear. Willow’s pink and gold gear is magnificent, though. Canada is on Willow’s side, and who I expect to win. Whoops, spoke to soon, the Thekla fans in the crowd have since let their voices be known. Oh shit, she’s biting the injured ear on Willow, hell yeah. Thekla had a lot of doubters when she won the world championship, but I think she has done an excellent job with no Mercedes Mone and no Toni Storm to either heighten her run or take some of her spotlight. She has one hundred percent earned her spot, but I’m ready for Willow to take her place as the top women’s babyface (and possible top babyface in the company) with the World Championship. This match is hard-hitting, and I’m loving it so far. Willow is so great at getting the crowd behind her; she is so easy to root for. I would have preferred Willow win with her finisher, but that was an excellent reversal into the pin. I’m so looking forward to Willow vs. Mercedes III. Willow Nightingale has deserved this for quite sometime and I am glad they finally crowned her here.

Main event time. Kevin Knight, how dare you interrupt Kenny’s entrance! Kenny Omega silencing the crowd and yelling at Kevin has been fun for me. I love it when Kenny is a nice guy outside of the matches, but then turns on the Best Bout Machine button when he wrestles. It’s the kind of intensity and in-match storytelling that has always fired me up when watching him wrestle. Kenny has earned being cocky in the ring, even if he is the babyface. Kenny catching Kevin with a dropkick on the outside was awesome. I was hooting and hollering at the sunset flip from the top rope from Kenny, followed by the V-Trigger, what a move. I’m disappointed Kevin Knight got out of the top rope Snap Dragon Suplex. I really wanted to see it. The switcheroo with the two belts by Knight was nicely done. One Winged Angel for the win. That match was incredible. This is why I love Kenny Omega and, oftentimes, All Elite Wrestling.

…and then Jon Moxley and the Death Riders have to come out, of course. This sucks. Is this a Will Ospreay story or a Jon Moxley story? Is this a Kenny Omega v. Ospreay story or a Kenny Omega v. Moxley story? Enough. Ospreay is not a great storyteller, to be honest, but I’m glad he made some kind of choice there (but I still think Kenny should retain at All In.) Just as I type this, though, oh my god, Kenny, thank you so much. I laughed maniacally when Kenny Omega One-Winged-Angeled Ospreay, he deserved it.

Post-PPV Thoughts: Ospreay got what he deserved at the end of the main event. He may have hesitated to take out Kenny but he thought about doing and Kenny knew it. I don’t think that was a heel turn, but more teaching Ospreay a lesson for trusting the Death Riders and listening to Mox in the first place. As many others have said about the situation, and other wrestlers have said to his face, he’s thirty-three and shouldn’t be surprised the ruthless guys are ruthless. The booking has done no favors to persuade me to root for Ospreay to win at Wembley, and that is kind of a shame. If Ospreay shows up to Dynamite saying he can’t trust Kenny, well Will maybe it was you who broke that trust first.

Books – Decision Paralysis

I don’t really have an update as far as reading is concerned. I’m kind of having decision paralysis on what I want to read next, but I’m still read The Thrice-Bound Fool and Jade City. What I’m really reading is my email waiting for Lit Escalates to ship my The First Law New Edition Hardcovers that I contributed to Kickstarter for. Not that they’re late, they’re actively shipping them with 4000 orders already on their way, but when is it gonna be my turn? I’ve already seen they made the shipping label recently so fingers crossed my editions ship soon.

Games – Backloggd My Personal 100 and Bomberman 64

I believe it was either Dan Ryckert or Mike Minotti of Giant Bomb who discussed creating their own list of the one hundred greatest games of all time, so as an active Backlogged user I decided to do the same.

It’s an interesting task to do. At 41 years old, the top five are likely cemented with a little wiggle room, and that wiggle room grows as the list goes from 6-10, then 11-25. 26 – 100 is a lot more maleable. The difference between whether Batman: Arkham Asylum is above Spider-Man (2018) is sometimes down to how recently I’ve played it. It’s become a fun thought experiment for me about recency bias. For example, I haven’t played The Witcher 3 or Yakuza 0 since 2018, so they’ve fallen to around the fifties on my list. However, I wonder if I play them again, whether they’d stay in their positions. When I think about The Witcher 3, I worry that I won’t like it as much as I did when it first came out, because my taste in games has expanded. On the other hand, it might remind me of all the fond memories I had playing it originally, which may raise its ranking on the list.

This brings it around to what I’ve been playing on my Retroid Pocket 4, Bomberman 64, which I now have as ninety-seven on my list. I was surprised how much I still love the Adventure mode after all these years, finding all the different customization parts, unlocking gold cards, making bomb staircases to get to secret areas, and pumping up bombs to hit bosses on the head with. I kinda wish Bomberman had stayed on this track for future games or go back to it, because both the story and the gameplay in single player are so much fun to me. The only downside is I know what framerate is now, and this game chugs when you have too many bombs on screen, but I have a lot of fond memories of bringing my custom Bomberman to a friends hosue via the N64 control pack and playing multiplayer for hours. If whoever owns the rights to Bomberman released a remastered collection of the N64 Bomberman games, I’d cop that instantly. I still have the commercial for this song ingrained into my memory more than the actual Spider-Man theme it’s based on.

A month ago, this game wasn’t on my list at all, a beloved childhood game, so what else am I forgetting? There is a lot of the PSX, PS2, and PS3 staples that I completely missed being a former Nintendo fanboy and Xbox 360 owner. I do find myself having difficulty going to older games on my Retroid that are new to me, probably as an ADHD side effect, where I’ll lose focus and retreat to a game I know better. It feels like now is the time to play old games, though, because Autumn is loaded with new games that might end up on this list in the future. My biggest curiosity is whether the Ocarina of Time remake could possibly enter in the top ten or even rise above the original, which sits at number seven on my list. That’s all from me, until next time.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 21 – The Way It’s Meant To Be

July 22, 2026July 21, 2026 / Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

I like books. I like wrestling. I like video games. I like writing about those things. Let’s just get into it.

Wrestling – Hangman’s Back, Moxley’s There, Redemption Soon

It was announced late that Hangman Page was going to return on AEW Collision, much to the excitement of multiple group chats I’m in. I wasn’t sure what to expect when he returned or what he’d say, but I thought he did a great job of setting up his character arc for the foreseeable future. He made it clear that the stipulation he’d never challenge for the World Title was an oath he swore on a handshake deal only, meaning that the only person holding him to it right now is himself. He makes an impassioned speech about his journey, continuing to go after the other singles championships. All that sounds tantalizing for match-ups, but we’re all in agreement he’s a big fat liar who is big fat lying to himself. I don’t know which of these belts he’s going to win, if any, but the Hangman is going to find it unsatisfying. The question is what it will take for him to break the promise, when it will happen, and whether it’ll be as a face or a heel. I think people who assumed it was going to be a heel turn weren’t paying attention to the audience when he said he wouldn’t break the stipulation; they were not happy. Hangman’s character has always had a connection to the crowds, so will Hangman finally snap on a babyface and break the stipulation, or will a threat of a heel world champion on the rampage convince Hangman that breaking his word will be for the greater good? It’s going to be fun to see.

I’m going to try to keep this short because it’s easy to be negative, and it’s easy to nitpick wrestling storytelling, but I am so tired of Jon Moxley and the Death Rider’s storytelling. Let me be clear, Jon Moxley has been one of my favorite wrestlers for most of AEW’s history and a lot of times as Dean Ambrose in WWE, but this shit sucks. It’s nonsense, and it’s boring, and it has made me uninterested in Will Ospreay as a world champion. If Jon Moxley is just going to win every match, there has to be a good story to go with it. Jon Moxley used to give promos straight to the point that he was the toughest motherfucker in the room, and it was going to take everything you had to beat him. Now, he cuts promos like he’s second billing in Léon: The Professional when he’s actually coming off as second billing to Gerard Butler in Gamer. It doesn’t help that ninety percent of tweeners in wrestling have 1. not worked, 2. sucked, and 3. never helped anyone involved get over. Every time the Death Riders come out during a Will Ospreay segment, I find myself groaning. Dynamite was the worst of it because they had just come out to jump Cope and Christian (babyfaces), and now they’ve come out to fend off the Don Callis Family (heels) for Kenny Omega and Ospreay. You can deep dive into what you think Moxley is doing beyond the bounds of babyface and heel with the Death Riders, but that doesn’t make it interesting.

An Avengers level cast assembled around Hangman to help him win the title last year & they still managed to make him feel like the main character from Double Or Nothing to Texas.

There’s no reason why Ospreay should be playing third fiddle to Mox & Co. a month out from Wembley.
— Lyric ✨ (@LyricWrestling) July 21, 2026

I’ve seen some people who are fans defend the Death Riders in 2026, and it feels like what they’re describing and what is on screen do not match up. How exactly has the Death Riders formation helped any of the members since their formation, and what does Jon Moxley beating everyone and offering a handshake do for his opponents? The most exciting the Death Riders have ever been was the lead-up to Moxley’s match against babyface Hangman Adam Page at All In. The group was spinning their wheels with the AEW World Championship before then, and then had a disappointing feud with Darby Allin that did not help Darby get over at all. Now, since the C2 Jon Moxley as a tweener has found a way to not get anyone over. Not the Death Riders, not his opponents, and not Will Ospreay leading up to what is supposed to be his biggest moment after a severe neck injury. Now here come the Elite, specifically the Young Bucks, to inject some life into this storyline once again, just as they did after Dynasty 2025. Pick a lane, Jon, so the Young Bucks don’t have to keep saving your storylines for you, and kill the Josh Barnett groundwork, Jon, this isn’t MMA, and you’re not Bryan Danielson.

“Mox & the Death Riders haven’t changed.”

The @YoungBucks lay out a challenge to @JonMoxley & @WillOspreay for #AEWRedemption. Will this open the eyes of AEW World Champion @KennyOmegaManX?

Watch #AEWCollision on TNT & HBO Max pic.twitter.com/owFnlqQxwB
— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) July 19, 2026

Phew, got that off my chest. That being said, the card for AEW Redemption actually looks sick as hell. I would have preferred a big defense for Kenny Omega at Redemption, considering all signs showed that was originally going to be the MJF match, which was moved up for whatever reason, but Kevin Knight versus Kenny Omega is going to be awesome, and it’s going to be something to look back on when Knight reaches the top guy level sooner rather than later. I’ve loved Thekla as AEW Women’s World Champion despite beating one of my favorites, Kris Statlander, but it’s Willow’s time now, and I’m hoping for her to go all the way, beating both Thekla and Mercedes at All In to crown her as the top babyface of the women’s division. Kyle Fletcher vs. Bandido might steal the show, but I’m not looking forward to Bandido losing on pay-per-view again (see also: complaints about Jon Moxley’s current run). I thought Ciampa vs. Jericho on Beach Break was Jericho’s best match since his return, and the two of them seem to have great chemistry, so I can’t believe it, but I actually might be looking forward to Painmaker Jericho vs. Ciampa’s No Holds Barred match. I do remain a little skeptical that they can do better and may, in fact, do too much. Young Bucks on PPV are going to Young Bucks on PPV despite my misgivings about Mox and Ospreay’s story. Mark Davis vs. Andrade will be good. Claudio, Christian, and PAC will do their best to make Copeland look good. I hope Maya World beats Hikaru Shida for the TBS title because, unfortunately, Shida has gotten really slow and messy in her matches, which makes me sad as she used to be the highlight of the women’s division.

Books – Hodgepodge

This section is going to be rather short because I’m just like, unfocused, in my reading right now. I’m all over the place. I started reading Gareth Hanrahan’s The Dungeon Book, which seems like just the right kind of fun fantasy book I could use right now. Reading those special edition hardcovers of the Green Bone Saga for the podcast has me wanting to reread The Bloodsworn Saga by John Gwynne, which I bought some fancy hardcover for that series as well. A.K Larkwood’s The Serpent Gates duology is also calling to me, as it’s world buidling is not weird but unusual enough that it feels refreshing.

Games – The Mermaid Mask, Control, Vampire Crawlers.

I think it was February 2021 before most people, including me, got the vaccine, and because of the pandemic, the release of new games was, to put it lightly, in fucking chaos. I asked on Twitter if anyone had any game recommendations because my backlog was so much smaller back then, and a fellow Josh in the GeeklyInc community recommended Tangle Tower to me on the Nintendo Switch.

I fell in love with it almost instantly. Grimoire and Sally have a fun dynamic as a duo that balances each other out between being funny and effective detectives. The art style is tremendous, with stand-out character design and animation that make the cast’s personalities clear to the player. Except for one or two, the puzzles are fairly easy. The mystery itself is so intriguing, with an ending that left me just slightly deflated, but overall, I loved Tangle Tower.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1696770/The_Mermaid_Mask (You should buy it.)

I’ve been following The Mermaid Mask closely since it was announced, waiting and waiting and waiting for more information, and now, finally, it has been released. I devoured this game with all the free time I could muster. Everything I loved about Tangle Tower feels leveled up in The Mermaid Mask, with an ending that had me glued to my Steam Deck. This cast of characters is all in this cramped submarine with a murdered captain and an open cauldron that had previously never been opened before. Everything that was in Tangle Tower is here, but the animation and voice cast have been especially upgraded. I generally read much faster than most voice actors read the lines, and sometimes I can be impatient, skipping over dialogue before the voiceover is finished, but not with The Mermaid Mask. I would listen closely to each character describing who they are, why they are on the submarine, the murder, and their thoughts on the clues Grimoire and Sally discover closely, and watch the animation of the characters, so beautifully done. I struggled with some of the puzzles, in a good way, that I generally didn’t with Tangle Tower. From what I’ve gathered from social media, this game wasn’t easy to make but I would generally buy one of these Grimoire games every year, and as long as SFB Games keeps making them, I will buy them for the rest of my life.

With Control Resonant coming out, I reinstalled Control because I never finished. Last time I played it was in 2021, when it fried my coolant system for my CPU and killed my computer for like a month before I had a friend come over and help me install a new cooling system and redo the thermal paste because I did a terrible job. So I never played it after that on that computer out of a suspicious fear it would do it again. Now my latest computer laughs at the requirement for Control, so I decided to restart it from the beginning, only to encounter a game-breaking glitch in the year 2026 for a seven-year-old game that kept me from progressing. Luckily, Control has Mission Select, so I can technically go back to where I left off in 2021, but that isn’t what I wanted to do. I’m going to try to restart it again to see if I can get the mission I need to work on, and if not, I might just put Control away once again.

Speaking of that old computer, I’ve been using it as a home for a lot of smaller, less graphic powerhouse games that I connect to via Steam Link on my Retroid Pocket 4 when I’m outside or away from home, and the game I’ve invested the most time into that way is this year’s Vampire Crawlers. That game is just fun as hell, and it’s so satisfying following the combo patterns of picking the 0 mana card, then 1, then 2, and so on. I’ve been using my Retroid Pocket 4 a lot more since I came up with this idea, and I preordered the Retroid Pocket Nova, which comes out fairly soon. That’s all for now, until next time.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 20 – Deltajuly in the Summer of Kenny Omega

July 10, 2026July 10, 2026 / Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

There have probably been four or five of these in my drafts since April, when I last updated, maybe more, nearly fully written, but a combination of things has taken my attention away from finishing editing. The Knicks in the NBA playoffs and winning the NBA Championship, the weather is finally getting warmer, and my carpal tunnel in my right hand is acting up. So in the different sections, I’ll give a brief summary of my April through June before I get to the main events of each section. I’m writing this one somewhere else rather than in front of my computer, which sometimes helps me focus through my ADHD. Let’s hop right into it before this becomes another draft I don’t publish. It’s been so long that I originally got the volume number wrong.

Books – In Between Several Books

Summary – Shadows of the Daemon Realm manga, from the author of Fullmetal Alchemist, Hiromu Arakawa, is excellent, though I’m only on Volume 5 so far. I got all my cohosts to read The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson; they enjoyed it, and we’re going to do an episode on it, to my delight. I have an ARC copy of The Thrice-Bound Fool by Christopher Buehlman I’m working through, and it’s nice to have Kinch as the main narrator again even though I loved Galva in The Daughters’ War

I’m usually reading two books at once, but besides The Thrice-Bound Fool, which I’m making through slowly, I’m actually in between books. For my birthday, I was gifted a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time manga just in time for them to announce the remake, so I’m thinking of starting that. It’s always interesting to see how game stories are changed in manga versus how they stay the same, such as in the Persona 5 manga adaptation.

Also, since Alecto the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir’s publishing date is nowhere in sight, we’re starting our series on the Green Bone Saga for the podcast, so I’m excited to do a close reading of Jade City and the rest to really get into the nitty-gritty of that series, which is far different from A Chorus of Dragons and The Locked Tomb. It also allows me to read the special editions I bought last year that are so nice. I am expecting some big book mail this summer from Backerkit and Kickstarter so I’ll probably post about those as soon as I receive them. The whole *gestures to everything happening in the world* of it all has delayed a lot of that stuff but I’m hoping it comes soon.

Wrestling – A Kenny Omega Summer

Summary – Despite my misgivings of Darby Allin’s promos, person, and character work, he had an excellent title reign with some of the best AEW TV matches. I usually switch between Knicks in the playoffs and AEW TV the last couple of years, sometimes watching both of them at once, but this Will Ospreay and the Death Riders story and MJF’s third title reign has been so fucking boring to me that I skipped most of the Dynamites and Collisions before Forbidden Door to watch the NBA. The Swerve/Ospreay interactions were the most I’ve enjoyed Ospreay since his return. Despite all that, Double or Nothing was an all-timer and Forbidden Door was an excellent show, as most AEW PPVs not named World’s End are.

Kenny Omega, The Cleaner, The Belt Collector, The God of Pro Wrestling, and The Best Bout Machine is once again AEW Men’s World Champion and it feels so good. I woke up the next day bright and early for someone who works overnights and was productive the whole day. You can probably thank Kenny Omega for winning the Men’s World Champion for this post right now. Let me be perfectly clear, I do not like MJF and probably never will again, and will not waste time with the details of why. However, he was excellent in this AEW Dynamite main event, keeping a lot of what I normally find frustrating with his matches now to a minimum. The idea of having this match here rather than on AEW Redemption has opened up a lot of possibilities for a Kenny Omega defense there that I’m excited for. I saw Rich Latta of One Nation Radio and the Social Suplex Network post an idea I can really get behind.

time for kenny to get his REDEMPTION pic.twitter.com/KiH3eqHei9
— Hiroshi Ta-Nehisi ⏳️🅾️ L (@RichLatta32) July 9, 2026

they dont have the pressure to lean on the entire NJPW history of it with the mammoth expectation to match it, it can still be pretty great anyway with the levels these guys are wrestling at right now. Okada isnt up to much at the moment.
— Hiroshi Ta-Nehisi ⏳️🅾️ L (@RichLatta32) July 9, 2026

I think the match from All In: Texas was great, but it didn’t quite reach the heights I thought the two of them could, so the idea of running it back with a Kenny Omega victory in Canada sounds good to me. My ideal defenses if Kenny is going to have a short reign before dropping it at Wembley Stadium to Ospreay would be Kevin Knight, Andrade, and Bandido. We’ll see what happens, as I often say about wrestling.

On top of the Kenny Omega win, we got the Willow Nightingale return from injury after she had to drop the TBS title and bounce from the Owen Hart Tournament which was disappointing. Now she’s won the Casino Gauntlet and is going to face Thekla at AEW Redemption. It’s time to give Willow that big top star babyface push. That’s right, I think not only should Willow Nightingale beat Thekla at AEW Redemption but she should then go on to beat Mercedes Mone at All In. I can see the pathways they might be heading towards, Willow having the same struggles she had as TBS Champion. She wins the big belt, loses to Mercedes, then gets her redemption later on, and if they go that way I won’t be mad or upset because I do think Mercedes is up there with Manami Toyota as one of the best women’s wrestlers of all time, but lets switch it up with Willow as the victor before we eventually put the Women’s World Title on Mercedes.

Games – Deltajune becomes Deltajuly

Summary – The Wind Waker and Tears of the Kingdom are still excellent. I think I like Tears of the Kingdom even more now than when I originally played it in 2023 because that year was so stacked with games that I felt I had to finish it before all the other games came out. The Wind Waker is still my second favorite Zelda of All Time and having never experienced the HD version on the Wii U I’d be willing to pay for it on Switch 2. Star Fox (2026) adds a lot of great character development to the main characters, not in the original game, plus Star Fox 64 has always been excellent, hope this leads to more Star Fox games in the future. I’m really excited for the Ocarina of Time remake and Persona 4 Revival, but I want to see more of the Ocarina of Time remake.

Deltarune‘s Chapter 5 has been released one year after Chapter 3 and 4 and it is equally excellent. It has some of the best gameplay in any chapter yet. Emotionally, it doesn’t quite hit as hard as Chapter 4, but to say it has none of those hard-hitting story beats would be lying. Some of the reveals are devastating, but Toby Fox really sold this as the Fun Gang’s (The $!$? Squad in my save) So we’ve finished watching a movie, show, wrestling, etc and I ended up streaming the end of Chapter 3 to them one night. It was compelling enough that my friend wanted to see it from the beginning. So that’s what I’ve been playing in July, allowing them to choose most of the choices that Kris will get, which has led to me seeing scenes and dialogue I’ve never seen before, as I tend to make the same choices over and over again. Hearing the excitement about the story from someone else has been so much fun. We are at the beginning of Chapter 4 now, my favorite chapter, and I’m looking forward to them seeing even more of the game. I’m ready for Chapter 6 to wreck me with heartbreak, and if I have to be devastated, so do they. Until next time.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 19 – The One About An Ocarina of Time Remake

April 2, 2026 / Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

To be honest, this one is going to be more about games than books or wrestling. More hits than misses, leaker Natthehate shared a lot of Nintendo’s 2026 plans with Video Games Chronicle, backing it up with confirmation from their own sources. One of those plans includes a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and now that the info is spreading around, the people with sources seem to imply it is a robust remake far beyond what the 3DS version did.

Sources: Nintendo is planning a new Star Fox and a major Zelda remake this year, but no 3D Mario

Ocarina of Time isn’t even my favorite Zelda game (it’s my fourth), but it might be the most important Zelda game in my life. A Link to the Past introduced me to fantasy as a genre, and it was my first RPG, even if it was an Action RPG. Following that and getting a Nintendo 64 in 1996, Ocarina of Time was the first game that I ever followed the news about its release, both in magazines like Nintendo Power and on the internet in message boards on America Online. Back then, the idea of a game taking three years to come out was crazy, and each time Nintendo Power introduced a new delay to the game, it drove my childhood best friend and me crazy.

It was the first game I ever bought with my own saved-up money, not for my birthday, not for Christmas, or any other occasion. I don’t remember what kind of tree, it was either a Douglas Fir or a Norway Spruce, but we had it in our backyard near our pool, near my treehouse, so I’d often climb in it. The same year Ocarina of Time came out, the tree got very sick. It was already shading our pools, so my parents wanted to be rid of it anyway, but my dad didn’t want to hire someone to cut it down. When he did, he needed someone to help cut branches off it, and I needed the money for Zelda, so he generously offered me $10 for every hour I helped. I don’t think he expected me to make it very long, but I kept at it until I earned at least forty to fifty dollars. I got my dad to take me to Toy’R’Us and preorder the game, which involved grabbing a ticket off the wall where the title was and putting a payment of ten dollars down. If you pre-ordered the game, you’d get a special gold cartridge, but I had school the day it came out. Ocarina of Time was also the first time I can remember vocalizing being angry with my sister and my mother, who brought home a regular cartridge even though I had pre-ordered the game with my own money. I was the only one among my friends who didn’t have the gold cartridge. I can’t remember exactly what my mother said, but I remember she was exasperated with my disapointment as if I was lucky enough she had picked it up from the store for me because the store was swamped, and she didn’t think it was a big deal. I was lucky, but it was a big deal to me. I have more memories tied to Ocarina of Time, but I’ll save those for a later date. Here’s books and wrestling.

Books – Green and Deadly Things by Jenn Lyons

Green & Deadly Things by Jenn Lyons slipped through my fingers. For some reason, maybe it’s because most of the Advance Reader Copies of books I actually am super invested in all come out in May I had assumed this also came out in May, as Jenn Lyons is one of my favorite authors currently. Nope! This came out March 3rd, and I had barely read the first chapter. Now, I’m halfway through, and you can expect this book to be covered on No Page Unturned soon enough. When I started it, I was comparing Mathaiik to Kihrin from A Chorus of Dragons, but he’s really more of a Brother Qown-like. My one criticism of the books I’ll share here is that I wish it were a multi-POV book rather than just Math the whole time. Math’s inability to accept that not everything Idallik Knights have taught is true, still halfway through the book, is a little annoying, and Kaiataris’s point-of-view, who is from a thousand years ago and seeing a new world born from her own world, would have been a breath of fresh air. It’s still a great book so far, but that’s just my two cents.

Wrestling – AEW Bullet Points

Just some quick bullet points on my current thoughts going on in AEW

If Kenny Omega beats MJF at Dynasty to become AEW Men’s World Champion, and only if then will I buy tickets for Double or Nothing in New York.
I used to say if only MJF wrestled as much as he took up time talking in segments on AEW television, I would like him more, but I don’t even like his wrestling anymore. He does way too much goofy shit in every match of his when he used to, if rarely ever wrestling, actually try. I feel like I’m watching Triple H in his prime, and I hated the way Triple H wrestled, even when he was good. I feel like this entire championship run has been carried by AEW having the best roster on the planet as his opponents. Bandido, Brody King, Hangman Page, Kevin Knight, and Speedball Mike Bailey have all done tremendous jobs to make him look good. If he’s beating Kenny and someone like Darby Allin, who feels very stale right now, is going to be his Double or Nothing opponent, then let’s see how that goes because I’m not feeling confident.
This Jon Moxley v. Will Ospreay feud isn’t really working for me, mostly due to how aimless and pointless I feel the Mox and the Death Rider’s story has become, cemented by how dumb Moxley beating Takeshita was.
Jack Perry, being a white-meat babyface right now, is really working for me, and so is his current wrestling style.
Some of you are weird about Kenny Omega’s enthusiasm, projecting a lot of your own feelings on a dude you don’t actually know.
I thought I’d be more annoyed that Chris Jericho is back, but I actually don’t care all that much until he actually does something. I’d rather see Chris Jericho than Adam Copeland.
Speaking of him, if it wasn’t for Christian Cage, Cope would be entirely intolerable.

Games – What I would like to see in an Ocarina of Time remake.

When the news first broke on this remake, I wasn’t quite sure what I would change about the game, but I have had almost a week to stew on it, so I have some ideas. The big one is Hyrule Field. Often in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, you can see NPCs walking from one place to another, taking paths on foot or horseback to different places, making it feel more lived in despite the Calamity and Upheaval. That is something I’d like to see in Hyrule Field when you’re young Link. It would make a drastic change when you become Adult Link, and Hyrule Field is now not just Stalchilds attacking you at night, but soldiers and monsters aligned with Ganondorf attacking you, and even maybe hunting you down like guards loyal to Agahnim in A Link to the Past hunted you down in that overworld.

A lot of what else I’d add is just a little more details on a lot of information that is given in this game. After you finish the Forest Temple as Adult Link, the Deku Tree Sprout reveals Link’s mother escaping the chaos of the Hyrulean Civil War. She flees into the forest with Link as a baby and gives him to the Deku Tree to care for. Give me a face to that mother and more about the Hyrulean Civil War that Deku Tree Sprout mentions. Likewise, we see Ganondorf for the first time kneeling to the King of Hyrule as Zelda and Link spy on him through a window. Give me a face to that King of Hyrule and maybe even a name. The game is littered with things like that. I would like just a little more detail on. The Shadow Temple and the well in Kakariko Village are another example. The Shadow Temple served as a place for the Sheikah to torture enemies of the royal family of Hyrule for information, and one day Impa, one of the few remaining Sheikah, sealed the Shadow Temple boss, Bongo Bongo, beneath the well before it escaped in Ocarina of Time. Give me more details about what links the bottom of the well, which has its own undead and torture chambers with the Shadow Temple, and how Bongo Bongo relates to all this tortured history of Hyrule’s imprisoned enemies. Honestly, just give me more about the Sheikah in general. The bosses of the Spirit Temple, Kotake and Koume are said to be hundreds of years old and have been leading the Gerudo tribe in secret, and also served as the surrogate mothers to Gandondorf. Give me more details on that! That’s just the lore I can remember. Now, like I said, just give me a little more. Don’t go crazy with it. Oh, I just thought of a big one I’d like to see more details of: Ganondorf’s betrayal and attack. I missed it so many times as a kid, but when you head back to Hyrule Town after getting all the Sacred Stones, you get that wonderful scene of Zelda and Impa escaping, Zelda throwing the Ocarina of Time into the moat, and your first confrontation with Ganondorf. At this time, Ganondorf has presumably killed the King of Hyrule and the royal soldiers with his own force. The part I missed the first of many times I’ve played it is the soldier in the back alley of Hyrule Town who warns of Ganondorf’s treachery before succumbing to their injuries. I want more details on that, even if it means exploring Hyrule Castle again.

Speaking of lore, back when Ocarina of Time came out, the developers said this was to serve as the earliest point in the Zelda timeline at the time. Since then, Skyward Sword is now the earliest game in the timeline. Maybe give some nods to that, like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom did with the Master Sword healing itself, making the same noises Fi did. Just like a hint of Hylian once living above the clouds or something. One thing I believe they are one hundred percent going to lean into is the Goddess Hylia having a more prominent mention in the story, especially in the telling of Hyrule’s creation as told by the Deku Tree to Link, which details how the three golden goddesses created the world. Right after he tells Link how the Triforce was creted Nintendo can just add in the line about how the Goddess Hylia was entrusted to protect the Triforce, which was evil, and Zelda’s family line is connected to that.

Skyward Sword, you know, the origin story of the Master Sword, has me thinking, let’s finally give the Master Sword something more. It doesn’t have to shoot a beam at full hearts like it did in A Link to the Past, but there should be something special about the Master Sword when you get it, beyond just doing more damage. Even if it’s a new quest to add some kind of ability to it, let me do something extra cool with the sword that is evil’s bane. On the subject of gameplay, let me use the boomerang as an adult. You get the boomerang, defeat the boss in Jabu-Jabu’s belly, then if you follow the story, you’ll end up at the Temple of Time and an adult fairly shortly, giving you barely any time with the boomerang. Sure, you get the hookshot shortly after that, but let me use the boomerang as an adult. Also, since we’re remaking the game, give a more important role to some items, specifically the fire and ice arrows. Make them important to the game rather than just extra items of some convenience against enemies and certain puzzles.

I wonder if they’ll give Link some kind of parry ability like in the two Switch Zelda games. What if young Link can do the reaction attack like Link in Breath of the Wild, but adult Link, facing stronger enemies, can shield parry like Link from Breath of the Wild? If we’re adding things, I’d like there to be Sheik fight after you do three temples as adult Link, just for fun. Sheik comes on all like “I’m here to test what you’ve learned if you’re really worthy of being the Hero of Time, and maybe hint at the reveal that happens later, both the Zelda one and the Triforce of Courage one. If they want to expand upon Zelda/Sheik’s character and role in this game, I wouldn’t mind that at all. I’ve loved what they’ve done with Zelda as a character in Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom, so I welcome getting more Princess Zelda. I also wouldn’t mind Ganondorf getting different hair, maybe.

The biggest change I’d like to see to the game is a bigger impact to the areas Link brings hope back to as an adult when he rescues/reveals/revives the Sages in the different temples. Biggest of all, Zora’s Domain must finally melt and bring the Zoras back besides the king but do this in all the other regions also. I want to see these places in despair thanks to Ganondorf’s rule and then see the light, and hope brought back to the same places once Link is done with them. I want Mido to acknowledge that Adult Link is the Link that he knew and see the Kokiri change as a result of the birth of the Deku Tree Sprout. I want to see Daruna’s son Link take Daruna’s place as leader of the gorons and, like his father become a sworn brother to Link. Maybe introduce a new NPC in the Geurdo Tribe that becomes their leader, with Kotake, Koume, and Nabooru all gone. I’d like to see the carpenters that appear in the game slowly change Kakariko Village as the game progresses, even more so after you’ve completed the Shadow Temple, maybe even Gerudo’s Fortress too, as the carpenters eventually go that way.

I’m not sure what style the game should look like, but I’d know what the wrong choice was if I saw it. It shouldn’t look like any other Zelda game to be perfectly clear. I don’t think it necessarily needs a new style, but it should look beautiful with as many frames-per-second as the Switch 2 can do. The music has to be fully orchestrated as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has some of the most iconic music of all time in a video game. In a way, though, this is like fantasy booking wrestling. If you do too much of it and it doesn’t happen, you can end up disappointing yourself when you didn’t need to. With Ocarina of Time widely available on NSO, 3DS, and other means, it seems like a good opportunity if you’re going to remake it to give a little bit more beyond what the Nintendo 64 was capable of. One last thing, though.

It was just for a demo of what was called Zelda 64 at the time, but it shows Link opening a weird blue chest and the full Triforce being revealed. On the message board, it was rumored this would finally come to fruition in a quest after the main quest of the game for the 64DD, an add-on to the Nintendo 64 that came out in Japan, failed, and never came to the United States. In this new quest, you’d go to the Sacred Realm and take on new challenges that eventually led to seeing the full Triforce together. This later turned out to be nonsense and the Master Quest, a remixed, harder version of the game you’d get if you preordered The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, is what was originally planned for the 64DD. Now, however, is your chance Nintendo. I don’t care about a quest after the main quest of anything else I just want to be able to unlock in some way Link, the Hero of Time, finally getting a chance to make a wish on the full Triforce.

Maybe this is how you fix the timeline of Zelda. This brings up a good question of whether Nintendo will change the ending. Adult Zelda sends Adult Link back in time to when he was a kid again. Then that young Link, after supposedly meeting with young Zelda, saving Hyrule in the original time by revealing Ganondorf’s plot, grows up to find the Triforce and wishes for the timeline he is no longer in to be saved. There I go, fantasy booking again. I’ll just have to wait and see.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 17 – Seasonal Affective Disorder

March 13, 2026March 13, 2026 / Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

I’m doing something a little different and writing about all books, games, and wrestling together, rather than in separate sections, for a particular reason; you’ll see why in a moment.

I don’t know if it’s SAD, depression, or just the state of the world, but I’ve found myself retreating into games more and more over the past year. Recently, though, since about January, I’ve found myself less excited to read or watch wrestling, and I’m struggling to figure out if it’s me or not. I’ll watch a great match or an exciting turn of events on AEW Dynamite, which my brain will register as a great match or a good part of a feud or story, and I’ll just feel no excitement when I think about it.

Two examples I can think of are this MJF/Hangman Page feud going on. I feel like it’s going well. Hangman has set stakes that feel important while giving me a stipulation that I actually want to see MJF in. On the other side, MJF feels like he has been on his best behavior, avoiding anything too edgy or obnoxious. I’m curious to know what MJF in a Texas Death Match is going to be like and how violent it’ll actually get compared to Hangman’s previous TDMs with Swerve and Moxley. Yet, I’m feeling just like, not excited for some reason. If Hangman loses, which I think he might, I’m very intrigued where they could go from there and how they can write themselves out of that corner. Yet when I sit back and think about it, I’m just kind of feeling nothing. Everything leading up to AEW Revolution 2025 is feeling similar. I am anticipating Jon Moxley vs. Konosuke Takeshita to be a killer match, and the possible fallout if Takeshita wins, within both the Death Riders and the Don Callis Family, has story threads I’m interested in. Yet, that usual feeling of anticipation isn’t really there.

A more recent example just happened on Dynamite this week. Speedball Mike Bailey and Kyle Fletcher have this unbelievable chemistry in the ring, and the match they had this week was incredible, and I knew it was incredible. I even said to my friend in the voice chat, “Oh my god, this match rules,” but it didn’t really hit me like I knew it should. This has been happening to me a lot. My brain is saying, “I like this,” and then basically not feeling kind of neutral about it. My attention span has also taken a massive hit somehow. Fingers crossed it is just how fucking cold it has been here in New York this winter.

I’m in a similar situation with books. I have a lot of great books on my plate right now, I know, a great problem to have. Oh no, Josh has a lot of books that are good before they come out, but besides what I’m reading for the podcast, I’m struggling to sit down, read, and stay reading. Maybe now that spring is practically here, that’ll change soon, fingers crossed. One thing I am reading and simultaneously listening to is the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. It’s one of the okayest series I’ve ever read, basically how I feel about it. I can feel an underlying righteous anger in Carl, the titular character, over the entire dungeon-crawling system and the corporations in charge of it. Brief aside, that is another reason I’m struggling reading books as gigantic mega corporations controlling society and making it horrible for everyone seems to be an ongoing theme in a lot of new books recently, and it doesn’t exactly feel great, don’t know why, hmmm. The jokes, specifically the jokes in the achievements Carl and friends unlock, are so fucking bad. Each time they pop up it makes me want to stop reading the book or turn off the audiobook for good. I’m trying to stick with it cause it’s what I read or listen to at work, but I don’t love it. It’s pretty okay and has some fun moments and fight scenes.

I finished Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth on PC right before Resident Evil Requiem came out. It’s basically my second playthrough, even though I stopped at the temple on PS5, but this second time around, and experiencing the final act has me completely reevaluating not only how I feel about the remake trilogy. When I finished it I felt an emotional gut punch that left me unable to play any other game with any enthusiasm for a day or so. Not the way I was talking about earlier, but sort of the residual emotional drain afterwards when something impacts you deeply. It made me really want to go back and play the original again, though, as the first time I experienced it was sneaking into my sister’s room when she was out to quickly play it on the PlayStation her then boyfriend had gotten her (which she hardly ever played) at an age where I didn’t really appreciate the story.

Finishing Rebirth also has me reevaluating where it sits on my top 2024 list. I’ve edited my backlogged list to put it above Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth now at #2, just below Metaphor ReFantazio. This year, I hope to finish my second playthrough of that game, and then we can reevaluate if I still believe that was my number one game of 2024. Less on that and more on 2026, though. Let’s start with the negative. After all the drama around Yakuza Kiwami 3, I returned my preorder to Steam and used that money to buy Resident Evil Requiem instead. Maybe I’ll play Kiwami 3 in three years when I buy it for fifteen dollars on a Steam sale, but right now, not spending my money with RGG is the only real power in this situation I have. It was the right choice because if not for one other game, RE9 might be my game of the year.

Requiem feels like a love letter to a lot of the previous Resident Evils. Grace’s section feels like they included a lot of what was best from seven and eight. Now, while I don’t hate Ethan Winters, Grace might be the best Resident Evil character in many iterations, and her as a protagonist in the more survival horror section was excellent. As someone whose first Resident Evil game was four, I’m a huge Leon fan and was excited to see him return in the action-oriented sections. The Leon sections feel like a combination of the remakes of two and four. My one criticism of the game is that just as I’m getting into the groove of one character, it switches to the next. I wouldn’t want a Resident Evil game to ever be long, but maybe an extra half-an-hour to an hour for each character would be good. The way it ends has me really curious about both the direction of the story of DLC they have planned and where the next game is going, as this feels like closing the book on a lot of the series’ past.

The game that supplants it and has been eating all my time, my surprise game of the year so far, Pokémon Pokopia. Combine Dragon Quest Builders, whose team worked on this game, Animal Crossing, and Viva Piñata with Pokémon. There is an element to this game that I think is missing in the main games. There is always a mini game that has you interacting with your Pokémon in the main games that is supposed to increase your bond with them. They’re not really characters or your friends, though. In a away the Pokémon are more like toys or tools that you use. This game makes them into real characters, since you’re a Ditto transformed into a human, you can talk to them. The premise is quite sad. All the humans have disappeared, and the Pokémon are missing. As a Ditto, you wake up and miss your trainer, so you transform into them and go around restoring Pokémon habitats where all of them seem to have been sleeping for a long time. A lot of them are talking about natural disasters hitting certain areas and humans running out of food or having to leave. I don’t know quite how it ends yet, but I get the feeling it’s not going to be one hundred percent a happy ending. I don’t think the humans are coming back, to be honest. It’s up to the Pokémon to rebuild the world, and rebuild the world I have been doing so for many hours. It’s now my most-played Switch 2 game, not counting the upgraded versions of Tears of the Kingdom, Breath of the Wild, and New Horizons.

The one thing I will say about it is I don’t know if I feel the pull of creativity with it as much as I did with New Horizons. Everything I do is to facilitate getting more Pokémon or putting my favorite Pokémon in a house I built. Once that is over, I don’t know if I’m going to want to just keep building and editing the towns for hours like I did with Animal Crossing. The effect both Resident Evil Requiem and Pokopia have had is to make me want to play the other games in the series. I interact with the Pokemon and I want to battle again. I visit Racoon City as Leon and want to be young Leon again on the first day on the job.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 16 – Lords, Links, and Lulls

February 3, 2026 / Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

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.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 14 – Most Holiday Vibes

December 30, 2025 / Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

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.

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.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 13 – That’s A Wrap

December 22, 2025 / Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

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.

https://bdsmovement.net/

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.

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

Why I Love The Incandescent by Emily Tesh

A Tide of Black Steel Review – A Vanguard for Violence

Brigands & Breadknives Review – Finding Your Own Dreams

Wrestling

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.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 11 – The Hands of the King

November 14, 2025November 14, 2025 / Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

I pretty much know what my game, book, and wrestling match of the year are as far as number ones, it’s everything else underneath I’m not sure of. I’m working on an article/review for GeeklyInc.com on what I think is my favorite book of the year. The part of the end of the year, even though I only do this for fun, that I have a tough time balancing is finishing the last releases I haven’t finished yet, finding time and space for writing, and getting ready for the Holidays. Hence why I mentioned wanting to make more use of the library in previous volumes.

Books and Video Games – The Lord of the Rings and Metaphor ReFantazio

You might not know this, but the date the Fellowship of the Ring leaves Rivendell on the quest to destroy the ring is December 25th. Therefore, I tend to associate at least the first book of The Lord of the Rings with the beginning of November to the end of December season. It has been a while since I’ve read through this book, probably since 2017-2018. It’s one of the few books I insist on reading a physical copy despite owning it digitally in multiple places. I’ve read it all the way through six times, so I wonder if this time away, I’ll observe something new from it. I will say, to anyone reading it for the first time I think you can skip the Concerning Hobbits prologue chapter until at least finishing The Fellowship of the Ring. As much as I love it, it does feel like it slows down the pace immediately.

Credit to https://www.tumblr.com/katschneider

On my mind is the connection between finishing Blood for the Undying Throne, rereading The Lord of the Rings, and replaying Metaphor ReFantazio in the form of a quote from Tolkien’s book itself, “The hands of the king are the hands of the healer.” In College, with my thesis advisor, we’d discuss the connection between William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and how the kings, such as Macbeth, The Witch-King of Angmar, and Aragorn, affect the land positively and negatively. This obviously has biblical roots, which I am no expert on, so I won’t delve into it, nor the real political implications that monarchies believing themselves to be divine have had on our history. This is more the exploitation of the idea of the king in terms of mythology and fantasy. Major Metaphor ReFantazio endgame spoilers ahead.

In Metaphor, the king dies, and a contest is held to determine who will be the next king. In the game, there is a connection between the king, magic, anxiety, and the “humans,” who are abominations in the game based on artwork by Hieronymus Bosch. The magic that Euchornia has turned into an industry, called magla, turns out, towards the end of the game is revealed to be the physical manifestation of anxiety. If a person succumbs to their own anxiety, magla can actually turn them into a human. Louis, the main antagonist, wants to do this to everyone, and whoever can survive, aka overcome their anxieties, will be part of the new world with him as king. The protagonist you play ends up being the other character vying for the throne to improve the inequality in Euchronia. It’s all a cycle; you and the main character are trying to break it as there are multiple tribes of humanoids, and they don’t all get along. The game surmises the prejudice the different tribes feel towards each other is rooted in anxiety, thus creating more magla, thus creating more opportunity for people to turn into humans.

The death of the previous king and the absence of a replacement will lead to increased anxiety and tension between the tribes, thereby increasing the likelihood that people will succumb to their anxiety and transform into a human. Therefore, the protagonist becoming king will heal the land by healing the people’s anxieties. If the main character makes the serious changes in society the party and he intends to throughout the game as they meet more people and make more connections, this will ease the anxiety of the people. The connection between you and the protagonist is through the royal magic the previous king had cast, which is revealed at the end of the game, connecting you to the protagonist to guide them. Therefore, it is you, the player, who is also the king with the hands of a healer who heals the land by easing the anxiety of its people, including the main character you play and his party. This and many other reasons are why Metaphor ReFantazio was my game of 2024.

Wrestling – Blood and Guts 2025

Straight off the bat, while Blood and Guts is my preferred War Games style match, it has never been my favorite match stipulation. The need to do it every year doesn’t help at all, either, though I know it tends to be a ticket mover. With two different Blood and Guts this year, a Men’s and Women’s, they were always going to be compared, and while the Men’s Blood and Guts was good, the Women’s blew it out of the water.

It comes down to urgency and hatred. The participants in the Women’s B&G showed they had an urgent desire to get their hands on each other with real hatred. The build to this Blood and Guts was odd, but it had the roots of several feuds, giving it heightened tension. Like a spider-web, there is a line of connection each team member had with the other team throughout the year, and continuing past Blood and Guts into the Women’s World Tag Team Championship Tournament. I think AEW did its due diligence towards the event with matches between the two sides, but it definitely needed some more time and promos. Can Jamie trust Toni Storm, given their history? Have Willow and Kris buried the hatchet with the help of Harley Cameron? How did they talk Mercedes into joining the team? Questions that should have been asked and answered but it did not affect the quality of the match.

It had proper violence between Kris and Mercedes. It shortly ended at Willow and Kris communicating before the heels ruined it. Harley Cameron got to display both her silliness with the Mercedes puppet and equal violence in the match. Marina Shafir, whose wrestling matches I have never been impressed with, absolutely showed out. The key to all this is the speed at which they did this. A lot of these Blood and Guts matches have moments where they stall the action to set up a spot, but this one didn’t feel like that at all to me. The ending I thought was the best heel ending to a Blood and Guts yet, with the heel team forcing a lot of the big guns out of the cage and the Triangle of Madness forcing Toni Storm to surrender to save Mina Shirakawa. This will surely come up again in the tag team tournament.

For the Men’s Blood and Guts, all I have to say is never sleep on Kyle O’Reilly again. I will say, though, I think I loved the Hangman Page vs. Powerhouse Hobbs Fall Count Anywhere match better than either of these two Blood and Guts matches, and am of the belief Hobbs should have been Hangman’s Full Gear opponent instead of Samoa Joe, but I think I’m in the minority on this.

https://www.tumblr.com/allelitewrestlings/800064297134948352?source=share Gif by allelitewrestlings.tumblr.com

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 10 – A Touching Reunion

November 7, 2025 / Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

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.

FourofFiveWits

Everything that is Me, Joshua MacDougall, @FourofFiveWits: Genre Fiction, Video Games, Professional Wrestling

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