my own little BEST COLLECTION 2024 (shoutouts to versus wolves)
I’ve been in a weird ass funk lately. Fighting games are hard to enjoy, most everything is hard to enjoy, and it’s been a struggle. Got plantar fasciitis in my left foot earlier this year as well, so the whole “being disabled” thing is growing harder and harder as I enter my 29th year on this revolving sphere in a couple months. One of the things that has been keeping me going is that every weekend or so for a while now, me and some real life buds try to do what we call homie night — simply put, we just hang out and watch shit.
We got through Ultraman Blazar, Jujutsu Kaisen, Serial Experiments Lain, Arcane S2, played through some Dokapon Kingdom, started a co-op playthrough of Tales of Symphonia, watched some dogass movies; the works while celebrating in good ol’ love for the homies. Thankfully, since we’re all dorks, we also listen to Versus Wolves — a podcast/insanely powerful bookclub ran by Super Eyepatch Wolf and WoolieVersus where they recommend each other experiences to do and report back at the end of the month. Utterly fantastic time, and at homie nights, we try to keep up with the book club and do whatever it is being recommended.
November’s episode was very simply their BEST OFs of the year, and honestly, after listening to it today at work, I just got a lot of joy from listening to these two folks talk about their favorite experiences of the year. So I got to thinking to myself at work, “Aaron” I thinks to myself, “why don’t you write about your favorite things of the year that you experienced and try to like, bust through this dogass funk you’re in.”
“You’re right, Aaron” I reply to myself, “I should write about my favorite things of the year I experienced and bust through this dogass funk I’m in.”
So here we are. Everything is on the table, so we’re just gonna rock this in order from top to bottom. We’ll see how many I go, but I can at least knock out one honorable mention.
HONORABLE MENTION: Balatro
It’s Balatro. I feel like at this point, you’re either in the camp of this being one of the most ruinous gaming experiences of the year or you haven’t picked it up yet. It’s not on my list proper because honestly, I’ve spent more time watching Balatro then playing it myself. I only have 37 hours played, but guaranteed hundreds at this point watching folks like Roffle, Skootie, and Nothernlion play through it. It did take over my personality for a couple weeks, but I consider it as something I can always boot up when I’m in a empty nothing mood versus one of the more defining things this year.
It’s pretty funny to me that I’m just putting Balatro outside of the list, but I dunno, that’s just the bar of the stuff I liked this year. I think we’ll just continue right on with…
Ultraman Blazar Episodes 24 & 25: The Approaching Third Wave & The Ones Who Embrace The Earth
I love Ultraman. I’ve been planning an entire piece about my own little history and journey with tokusatsu centering around Kamen Rider Faiz because I think it’d be fun, but that’s beside this point. I picked up Ultraman with Orb back in 2016 and kinda kept up on and off until the pandemic when I went whole hog on keeping up with Ultraman. It’s actually kinda crazy that it’s been almost a year since Blazar, the 2023 entry in the franchise, finished up but by god, was this series electric.
From the opening episode, you could tell that this was something brand new for Tsuburaya. It was electrifying, pushing the boundaries of what the series had done up until this point. The direction was riveting, the characters were so fun and dynamic, and most of all, it was unlike anything we’d gotten up to this point. Blazar as a entry threw out so much of the conventions we’ve come to know for the series (no color timer, no beam finishers, an almost primal Ultra that isn’t able to communicate with its host, two fully autonomous beings inhabiting the same body to fascinating outcomes) and blazed its own path.
It also helps that each episode was fantastic. So many of these episodes would be the standout of a different series between the Ultra Q send up “Planet of Music”, the three minute long one-take fight in “Betwixt Morn and Dusk”, probably the series’ most emotionally compelling episode in “The Wanderling Zangill”, or the moment when you realize that this show really isn’t messing around in the phenomenal two parter “Rainbow Appears”. I’m trying so hard to not just name every episode at this point, but it really was just the best Ultraman show to date.
But it’s the finale that closes it off perfectly. Between one of the craziest kaiju designs in a run that had some real killers with Varallon, the culmination of this question — Just what is V99 and how it relates to series deuteragonist Emi — that rips off the bandaid and screams the answer at the audience what they’ve been trying to say all series long. That’s not the real standout moment to me though.
For the entire show, the relationship between Gento and Blazar was fascinating. The two couldn’t directly communicate, but they tried. It was hard and it ultimately drove both of them to the edge of death, eventually leading to Blazar seemingly biting the bullet in Episode 24. DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE THE MOMENT IN EPISODE 25 WHERE GENTO THANKS BLAZAR FOR ALL OF HIS HARD WORK AND TELLS HIM SKARD WILL HANDLE IT, ONLY FOR BLAZAR TO REAWAKEN AND FINALLY TELL GENTO THAT WE’VE GOT THIS, THE CATCHPHRASE GENTO HAS BEEN SAYING THIS ENTIRE TIME GOT ME CRYING SO HARD IN THE CLUB. ONLY FOR TOMOYA WARABINO TO DELIVER A KILLER PERFORMANCE AND TEARFULLY RELINQUISH COMMAND KNOWING THAT THIS MIGHT BE IT FOR THE TWO OF THEM???????? WITH THE PIANO RENDITION OF THE MAIN THEME AS THE TWO OF THEM REACH OUT FOR EACH OTHER AND CONNECT INTO THE BEST FUCKING RISER OF THE SERIES????? I WAS OUT OF MY GODDAMN SEAT.
AND THEN YOU HAVE A FANTASTIC FIGHT ENDING WITH BLAZAR FINALLY PULLING OUT HIS BEAM ATTACK, I WAS SCREAMING SO HARD AAAAAAAAAAAAA.
I love Ultraman Blazar and this was my favorite finale. A fantastic way to start the year.
Addictive Little Sounds by Voluntary Hazing
Ska is probably my favorite genre of music, let’s just be frank about it. BAD OPERATION, Jeff Rosenstock, Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, JER, everything that you can consider under the umbrella of Newtone is incredibly up my alley. This year had a lot of really good releases as well, that I mostly knew about thanks to a pal I met during one of the other experiences this year who put me onto Ska Punk International — a real cool publishing label who spreads the good word and does a lot of cool charity stuff to boot. Folks like Devon Kay & The Solutions and Runaway Ricochet from SPI and local local groups like Plastic Presidents (which is how I found out that there is, in fact, such a thing as Omaha Ska). It was talking with this new friend of mine that I realized I had met another soul on the planet Earth who also knew about a tiny band called Voluntary Hazing.
They popped up on my Discover Weekly one week on Spotify, and I’d just been following them for awhile as of April 2024. As of writing this right now, December 3rd of 2024, they only have 160 monthly listens and I’m fairly sure I was one of the first 50. They had a few singles and EP as of early 2024, and I really enjoyed it! It’s a newer band, and they were just figuring stuff out, which is to say it had a rougher sound and edge to it, but songs like Reciprocate Some and Skemsco were really fun so I just listened to them on and off.
Come middle of July and I see that they released a full album! Y’all, this thing rules so much. The biggest thing I can say about Addictive Little Sounds is that it is filled with so much heart, every song has so much care and love put into it. From breezy jams like You May Be Entitled to Compensation and Phone Jam to heavier hitters like Pretty Boys and Neurotic, there’s a ton of diversity and exploration of tone and style to be had here. A common throughline in the album is, as best I can describe it, loss — starting the album with 3 Years and potentially losing out on a relationship and closing it with the anthemic Sing You To Sleep about this sad bitter pill that is the end of a relationship. Kayla Renelle’s vocals carry so much emotion that gets augmented by really fun/beautiful/passionate playing from the 12 piece group and all of that is really cemented in one single song.
Literal Rock Star made me cry, y’all. It came so close to being my favorite song of the year. It’s just this gorgeous tribute that shares a lot of stories Kayla had with her mom, and the storytelling in this understated performance is just. Ugh, it pulls on the heartstrings.
That’s all I really got for Addictive Little Sounds. Check it out if you like ska or good music. Give them some love! Not gonna leave music right away because up next is actually my favorite song of the year. Probably favorite song period.
Luv(sic), Pt. 3 on Luv(Sic) Hexalogy [OMA and Shing02 Live at Liquidroom]
RIP Nujabes. Spiritual State is an all-timer for me, Yes (feat. Pase Rock) has legitimately been my anthem for years at this point, and the man just never missed at all. Truly a legend taken too soon, and that’s all I can say about the man — everyone has said the rest at this point.
The Luv(sic) hexalogy is a very special group of songs, but the one that always hit for me the most was Pt. 3. There was just something about it, an ethereal something that just ensconced my soul and keep it safe in the hardest trials of my life. The piano on it is just so soothing and gorgeous, and the performance from Shing02 is perfect. Those stirring strings rouse a nostalgia for a life I wish I had, but I gotta live with what I got because this is worth living. It was already an important song to me, and it was a shock to me that I found this later in the year then I anticipated.
OMA is this group that performs really sick instrumental covers of big hip-hop songs, and they united with Shing02 to do this tour of the Luv(sic) Hexalogy and I gotta say that this is the definitive version of these songs. The Luv(sic) Hexalogy album is really solid, and obviously the original versions of those six tracks are legendary, but no, this is it. Having Shing02 perform these with a live backing band is nothing short of breathtaking, and that comes so apparent with the performance of Pt. 3.
This version of Pt. 3 is my favorite song of all time now. The bass rings out clear and true, the piano is just as effervescent as always, those drums kick loud and keep everything going, but it’s the rapping and solos that turn it into the most magnificent version of this song. Being a live performance, there’s just that added energy of someone singing from his soul along with the truly angelic guitar solo midway through and the effortless piano solo by the end. It lets everything shine in the best way possible. I’m sure it would make Nujabes proud. The entire album is amzing, but Luv(sic), Pt. 3 is, and always will be, on a different level to me. It’s perfect.
Another Crab’s Treasure
I’m still working on a much larger piece dedicated to this game, so I’ll keep it brief but what I can say is that this is the best Soulslike I’ve played that isn’t from the namesake franchise, and it comes real goddamn close to beating my favorite one there so that’s what I’ll say about it for right now. It was my Game of the Year for the majority of the year, until. Well.
Mouthwashing
Easily the best game of the year. All competition literally does not even come close to touching how good Mouthwashing is. The storytelling is so brave and compelling, not a single shred of wasted time or space. The confidence on display from Wrong Organ who, up until this first commercial release, only did the student project How Fish Is Made (which is incredibly fun) outpaces some AAA releases. It’s not fair to even compare the two when Mouthwashing does what it can to be the most intense horror game I’ve had the pleasure of playing this year. Legitimately, go play Mouthwashing. Right now. Drop everything and go play Mouthwashing. This can wait. Mouthwashing can’t. I won’t say anything else about it, because it needs to be experienced. One of a fucking kind, y’all.
Also I think it’s cool that they follow me on Twitter.
I Saw The TV Glow
My first exposure to this movie was actually thanks to Spy X Family: Code White. Me and some pals went to go see the fun little anime movie and so we get there in our seats, and the trailers start rolling. Up comes this peculiar little movie with Justice Smith starring and this intensely moody atmosphere and I’m like “Yeah okay, I’m on board.” and they start putting on the critic quotes and I’m like “Damn okay, let’s go?”
But then the big one hits.
My friends looked at me like I was crazy for popping off the way I did. I really really liked We’re All Going To The World’s Fair so seeing their name hit like that immediately made me tell them “We gotta go see this one, trust me on it.”
Fun fact, I’m not allowed to bring my friends to the movies without at least telling them something about the movie or giving them the trailer. I told them “Hey, let’s go see this movie Midsommar! I have zero clue what it’s about because I was told to go in blind but it’s apparently great!”
That was Strike One. Not necessarily anything imposed yet, but damn, we all walked out of that screening without a fuckin’ peep from anyone until I broke the silence by saying “Man, I wish I didn’t drive y’all here because I just wanna go back to the box office and see the next showing at 10:15pm.” We all got nightmares from how fucked up that movie made us.
End of 2019, I once again approach my pals and say “Hey, let’s go see this movie Parasite at the re-opening of a theater in town, I have zero clue what it’s about but it’s apparently great!”
That was Strike Two. I had to give them a synopsis at the least going forward because Parasite blind was uh. quite intense. We all loved it! But yeah, for them, that was the dawning realization that Aaron might be bringing us to the movies to see us squirm for him. (I also wanted to squirm for the record.)
Two days later and I pay 80$ USD to drag ten of my closest friends free of charge to the movies under the condition that said movie was a 10am Sunday screening of Cats 2019 because that was literally the only one my theater had. Strike Three, and this was the one that incited the rule that I had to tell everyone involved what was going on and provide a trailer/synopsis for any wild ass bullshit I wanted to see in the theaters.
All of this is to say that we all went in knowing the I SAW THE TV GLOW would be an intense watch. What we didn’t expect was to have our hearts ripped out in front of us in one of the best depictions of dysphoria I’ve seen in film. It was simply heartbreaking to watch Owen repeatedly reject himself over and over and over, and that goddamn finale, man. I had quite literally never left a movie so defeated. Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine just absolutely crushed their performances, both embodying these characters so beautifuly. Watching Brigette emote and develop their screen presence, trying so hard as Maddy finds herself and does while Owen is too afraid or scared or unsure of what he wants — the dynamic between the two actors is electric. Justice Smith really goes all out by the end of the movie, displaying decades of sorrow and despair effortlessly.
The cinematography and special effects is especially great. Those sequences of the Pink Opaque perfectly match the TV shlock of the era, bringing out the horrors in HD at the right moments to illustrate what we were just heightening in our heads on the pixels of our CRT televisions. The color grading? Ugh, immaculate. The entire thing is gorgeous.
I really resonated with this one to such a personal degree. I SAW THE TV GLOW is such an obvious allegory for being trans, you would have to willfully ignore it, but it was also an incredibly powerful allegory for dysmorphia as well. As a disabled person who has spent so goddamn long regretting the body I was born into, seeing someone in so much pain gutted me. Seeing that timeskip at the end of the movie legitimately gutted me, I felt so fucking awful and depressed. But then. The ending occurs. You see that thing that Owen buried so so deep inside of himself.
You’re not sure if he’s apologizing to everyone for his outburst or for not being true to himself. All that matters is that there is still time. No matter what, there is still time. Go support the people you love and be there for them. There is still time.
This would have been my movie of the year except for one other thing. Rather, hundreds of other things.
Hundreds of Beavers
Listen. There is no fucking way to segue off of I SAW THE TV GLOW in a graceful manner like that. Especially since I’m talking about the fucking micro budget slapstick BEAVER movie immediately after, but que sera sera. I cannot help that HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS is the single best movie I have ever seen in my life, and I legitimately believe the entire artform has been building to and was made for this movie.
I saw this back in April with a nearly sold out State Theater in Sioux Falls, SD and holy shit, folks, I laughed so hard I cried four different times throughout the movie. I hurt after the credits rolled. It is quite simply one of the funniest fucking things I’ve seen.
It’s such a simple movie, too! Jean Kayak. Man’s man. Makes applejack. Gets drunk off of applejack. A solitary beaver steals one of his giant ass barrels of applejack and almost gets the other one. Drunk ass Jean Kayak ends up blowing up his entire goddamn orchard with the comically large barrel of applejack. He wakes up and sees that there are, in fact, HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS and he needs to figure out how to survive in the most brutal of winter climates: Wisconsin.
Queue the remaining 105 minutes with so many jokes packed into every second that just build and build and compound and grow into this giant fucking monstrosity. Everyone involved in this understood the assignment and go 110% on delivering. Ryland Brickson Cole Tews is the next Charlie Chaplin at this rate, his physicality and mannerisms and facial expressions are all just peak. Mike Cheslik simply pops off with his directing, doing so much with so little. Olivia Graves, Wes Tank, Doug Mancheski, and Luis Rico are all amazing in their roles. The absurdism on display feels like it was custom built to make me into the loudest cacophony of laughter ever. I literally just have to think of the thunk in the finale and I make myself laugh.
In the intervening 8 months, I have seen this movie well over 16 times. Some by myself, most of them showing it to as many people as possible. I just got one of the limited edition Blurays today. I have been RIDE OR DIE for HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS since I first saw it and I will continue to be vocal about my love for this film.
This is why films were made. It is an inspiration to any creative out there because if this can be made, you can do whatever the fuck you want and it has the chance to be the pinnacle of the medium you choose. Make it for yourself, and you will never be disappointed — a wild maverick of a movie and easily the best thing I’ve experienced these year.
Well…outside of something that quite literally changed the course of my life as I know it.
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, Training Mode Network, and Commentary
Granblue Fantasy Versus and I go back to its launch. The reason why I have a PS4 is because all of my pals were super hyped for it, so I got one to play with them. I made a Hong Kong PSN account so I could grab it a month early. Then y’know, the world came to an end and the game had delay based netcode.
I still played it occasionally, but never to any big extent. Sure enough, when Rising gets announced, I decide I’m gonna go in hard on Rising. A lot of this came down to the extended, continued difficulty trying to run All Star Battle R tournaments online (It would quite literally brick my ethernet connection for months on end with zero explanation and I got burned out on running things for the game online) but also because, once more, my friends really wanted to get into it. Sure enough, I grab it and I’m in love. Game is super sick, I love everything about it gameplay wise, Siegfried is super cool to pick up and play, but then I switch over to Anre and get hooked on him while also going “Hey forget not playing top tiers, I’ll jump back on Seox”.
On the other side of things, I’m starting to more commentary stuff online. At this point in my “career”, I’ve done mostly ASBR stuff online with only Frosty Faustings 2024 as my offline credit. I’ve done some Persona 4 Arena Ultimax stuff in the past but not a ton. It was enough, however, to do some work online for P4U2 and things went pretty okay there. This eventually helps me land up on the Training Mode Network, which was this community built around beginner and intermediate level tournaments and stuff.
I get the go ahead to start doing stuff with Persona with them, it’s a lot of fun and I feel good about it so I ask Doveingly, the organizer at the time, if he needs anyone for Granblue one week. He says yeah, we’ll give you a shot, and I go for it. I do pretty well for where I was at, and I start to roll things up hill now. I keep doing Training Mode Network stuff and slowly building my little profile online as a commentator for different games and I end up helping my pal Thun Lunk on one of his tournaments on the mic. This lead to me actually getting on the mic for Persona 4 Arena Ultimax at Combo Breaker 2024. I also do ASBR because lmao I’m the TO and also good at commentary for that game.
This was the first time I was behind the scenes at a major ever. The CB backstage is super dark with only the dim glow of production monitors and the bright lights of the commentary table. I was anxious, nervous as hell, and a total wreck but I manage to pull through to do what I’d call an okay job. I’ve successfully commentated at a major, even if it is for the side games. Frosty Faustings was technically the first, but the vibe was different there — the commentary for side games could see the crowd, you felt their energy and love, it was out in the open. Combo Breaker felt different.
There’s so much to recount about CB2024 but the important thing is that I felt good. I felt confident in my abilities afterwards. I continue to work on my Granblue commentary. It’s going well. And eventually, Training Mode Network comes to an end because Dove wanted to retire. Folks were starting to talk about continuing TMN in some manner and I was one of them for Granblue. We ultimately end up coming together and organizing under this banner called TMN: NEO.
I’m not going to get into too much detail about it, but eventually, I find myself starting to take more of a lead on it alongside my bud ChemicalJade. We’re organizing team meetings, she built out an entire scheduling sheet for us, I made an email to create a new shared Twitch channel for us and suddenly I find myself as an organizational head for this big group of volunteer TOs and commentators.
At the same time, I’m starting to break out a bit more with other tournaments. I end up doing offline commentary for the Minnesota FGC’s summer regional: P.R.Evo Party (I even got third place in their Cyberbots tournament which made me very happy.) All of this is enough gas in my tank that I decide to send clips to WASD Open one day when ImpurestClub put out an open call for commentary, and to my complete shock, he said he’d give me a shot.
Here I am on one of the bigger weekly tournaments for GBVSR, I’m working with people I admire a ton, people seem to like my work? I end up going on more weeklies, more biweeklies, working with amazing people like Khalil and ParagonFGC for Paragonline, Kirbio with his Dreamland tournament, PariahDox and OEG for Sky Island Showdown, more and more and more tournaments until eventually, it comes time for the next event I was gonna go to.
I’m Minnesota born and raised, I love the state. The Minnesota FGC is so lovely. I’m 100% going to their regionals because a four hour drive is not even a day trip to me. So when they put out the call for commentary, I decide that I need to actually build a commentary reel. I have one now, I send off my application. I applied for UNI2 (which I was and am still learning), their mystery tournament Run The Gauntlet (because it sounded like fun) and GBVSR (because I’ve been working so hard all year on it.)
I had never felt so much pride in myself seeing the email that said I was accepted for all of those games. The moment I saw that, I ran out of my room to my girlfriend Jaclynn to tell her and I felt disbelief. I had put in so much effort over the past year and it paid off.
I got my face on a commentary roster image. I’m up there, man. I’m right there. This is something that I literally never believed would happen for me. I never thought that I’d be good enough to be considered, let alone accepted but man, I was and I am good enough.
Midwest Mixfest 2024 is such a special event to me. I had people recognize me from other events and commentary stuff. I got to work with incredible people. I felt true success for the first time in my professional career, genuinely, that the hours and hours I spent researching, studying frame data and storylines, working on my cadence and performance, building a rapport with my fellow commentators; literally all of the blood, sweat, and tears paid off.
2024 was a year. It was brutal and unkind in so many ways, but it was filled to the brim with so many special moments and things and experiences. I’m glad to be alive and here in this moment, even if things are so uncertain. I’m happy with where I am, and 2025 will be even better. Love you all.
Thank you to everyone who’s reading this, it means a lot. I’m on Bluesky, Twitter, Twitch and all over the place.
except for the plantar fasciitis, this sucks so much and the socks are awful
